Francois Bourguignon - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Uploads

Papers by Francois Bourguignon

Advances in Econometrics, Income Distribution and Scientific Methodology, 1999

ABSTRACT

Africa has recently experienced dramatic urban growth. I argue that standard theories of structur... more Africa has recently experienced dramatic urban growth. I argue that standard theories of structural transformation cannot account for this result, as it was not driven by a green revolution or an industrial revolution but by natural resource exports. I develop a new structural transformation model in which the Engel curve implies that resource windfalls are disproportionately spent on urban goods and services. This drives urbanization through the rise of "consumption cities". I then show that cocoa booms have led to increased urbanization in Ghana and Ivory Coast using decadal district panel data covering more than one hundred years. As an identification strategy, I use the fact that the location of cocoa production has shifted over time for exogenous reasons: (i) for agronomic reasons, farmers deforest a new area every 25 years, and (ii) for historical reasons, the cocoa frontier has started in the South-East and shifted westward in each country. I find that cities boom in newly producing districts and persist in old ones. I document how these cities arise as a result of rural-urban consumption linkages. I discuss how this type of agglomeration can then impact economic growth.

... authors are grateful for the excellent research assistance provided by Shilpa Phadke and Brun... more ... authors are grateful for the excellent research assistance provided by Shilpa Phadke and Bruno ... 30| FRANÇOIS BOURGUIGNON AND CLAUDIA SEPÚLVEDA FIGURE 4. Accumulated Proceeds as Share of ... extent of privatization in a sample of countries over the last 15 years. ...

The second half of the eighties and the present decade are an

... E. Foster, Vanderbilt University Wulf Gaertner, University of Osnabrück Indranil K. Ghosh, Wi... more ... E. Foster, Vanderbilt University Wulf Gaertner, University of Osnabrück Indranil K. Ghosh, Winston-Salem State University Peter Hammond, University of Warwick Christopher Handy, Cornell University Christopher Harris, University of Cambridge Satish K. Jain, Jawaharlal Nehru ...

Policy Research Working Papers, 2002

Cash transfers targeted to poor people, but conditional on some behavior on their part, such as s... more Cash transfers targeted to poor people, but conditional on some behavior on their part, such as school attendance or regular visits to health care facilities, are being adopted in a growing number of developing countries. Even where ex-post impact evaluations have been conducted, a number of policy-relevant counterfactual questions have remained unanswered. These are questions about the potential impact of changes in program design, such as benefit levels or the choice of the means-test, on both the current welfare and the behavioral response of household members. This paper proposes a method to simulate the effects of those alternative program designs on welfare and behavior, based on microeconometrically estimated models of household behavior. In an application to Brazil's recently introduced federal Bolsa Escola program, we find a surprisingly strong effect of the conditionality on school attendance, but a muted impact of the transfers on the reduction of current poverty and inequality levels.

We develop an open economy endogenous growth model with two accumulable factors (physical capital... more We develop an open economy endogenous growth model with two accumulable factors (physical capital and nontradable capital), introducing adjustment costs into the sector producing physical capital and using overlapping generations. Analysis of its dynamics appears surprisingly tractable and shows that the speed of convergence of GDP does not depend locally on the preference parameters nor on the adjustment costs. In a closed economy with the same production structure, the remuneration of physical capital is not constant during the transition to the steady state. Given, for example, that the economy needs to invest more in the nontradable capital, we show that the remuneration of physical capital will be smaller than the international interest rate during the transition. This larger difference in the remuneration of the two capitals leads to a higher accumulation of the nontradable capital and thus to a faster speed of convergence in a closed economy than in an open economy.

This paper analyzes the issue of taxation and redistribution in economies dominated by Elites and... more This paper analyzes the issue of taxation and redistribution in economies dominated by Elites and with limited state capacity. Within an a simple aggregate framework, we discuss the political economy incentives of Elites to tax, redistribute and increase state capacity. Two factors receive particular emphasis: the economic structure of society and political threats of power shifting. The analysis highlights how complementarities or substituabilities in the production process between the factors controled by the Elite and other social groups affect the Elites' incentives to tax and improve state capacity. It is shown in particular that there are natural increasing returns for Elites to increase state capacity. The paper also discusses how the incentives for state capacity building are affected by the threat of exogenous or endogenous shifts in political power.

Annales d'économie et de statistique

There is evidence from several sources that one cannot treat manyperson households as a single de... more There is evidence from several sources that one cannot treat manyperson households as a single decision maker. If this is the case, then factors such as the relative incomes of the household members may affect the final allocation decisions made by the household. We develop a method of identifying how "incomes affect outcomes" given conventional family expenditure data. The basic assumption we make is that household decision processes lead to efficient outcomes. We apply our method to a sample of Canadian couples with no children. We find that the final allocations of expenditures on each partner depend significantly on their relative incomes and ages and on the level of lifetime wealth.

This paper generalizes the poverty ordering criteria available for one-dimensional income poverty... more This paper generalizes the poverty ordering criteria available for one-dimensional income poverty to the case of multi-dimensional welfare attributes. A set of properties to be satisfied by multidimensional poverty measures is first discussed. Then general classes of poverty measures based on these properties are defined. Finally, dominance criteria are derived such that a distribution of multi-dimensional attributes exhibits less poverty than another for all multi-dimensional poverty indices belonging to a given class . These criteria may be seen as a generalization of the single dimension poverty-line criterion. However, it turns out that the way this generalization is made depends on whether attributes are complements or substitutes.

Where redistribution and anti-poverty policies consist of cash transfers allocated according to s... more Where redistribution and anti-poverty policies consist of cash transfers allocated according to some pre-specified rules, evaluating their impact on the distribution of living standards and poverty might seem straightforward. It seems sufficient to apply the transfer rules to some representative sample of households. This is the essence of 'incidence analysis' and micro-simulation techniques used in many countries. In practice, however, things are not so easy.

... In addition, economic growth is indirectly affected through the impact of gender inequality o... more ... In addition, economic growth is indirectly affected through the impact of gender inequality on investment and population growth. ... East Asia and Sub Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East can be accounted for by the larger gender gaps in education prevailing in the ...

Advances in Econometrics, Income Distribution and Scientific Methodology, 1999

ABSTRACT

Africa has recently experienced dramatic urban growth. I argue that standard theories of structur... more Africa has recently experienced dramatic urban growth. I argue that standard theories of structural transformation cannot account for this result, as it was not driven by a green revolution or an industrial revolution but by natural resource exports. I develop a new structural transformation model in which the Engel curve implies that resource windfalls are disproportionately spent on urban goods and services. This drives urbanization through the rise of "consumption cities". I then show that cocoa booms have led to increased urbanization in Ghana and Ivory Coast using decadal district panel data covering more than one hundred years. As an identification strategy, I use the fact that the location of cocoa production has shifted over time for exogenous reasons: (i) for agronomic reasons, farmers deforest a new area every 25 years, and (ii) for historical reasons, the cocoa frontier has started in the South-East and shifted westward in each country. I find that cities boom in newly producing districts and persist in old ones. I document how these cities arise as a result of rural-urban consumption linkages. I discuss how this type of agglomeration can then impact economic growth.

... authors are grateful for the excellent research assistance provided by Shilpa Phadke and Brun... more ... authors are grateful for the excellent research assistance provided by Shilpa Phadke and Bruno ... 30| FRANÇOIS BOURGUIGNON AND CLAUDIA SEPÚLVEDA FIGURE 4. Accumulated Proceeds as Share of ... extent of privatization in a sample of countries over the last 15 years. ...

The second half of the eighties and the present decade are an

... E. Foster, Vanderbilt University Wulf Gaertner, University of Osnabrück Indranil K. Ghosh, Wi... more ... E. Foster, Vanderbilt University Wulf Gaertner, University of Osnabrück Indranil K. Ghosh, Winston-Salem State University Peter Hammond, University of Warwick Christopher Handy, Cornell University Christopher Harris, University of Cambridge Satish K. Jain, Jawaharlal Nehru ...

Policy Research Working Papers, 2002

Cash transfers targeted to poor people, but conditional on some behavior on their part, such as s... more Cash transfers targeted to poor people, but conditional on some behavior on their part, such as school attendance or regular visits to health care facilities, are being adopted in a growing number of developing countries. Even where ex-post impact evaluations have been conducted, a number of policy-relevant counterfactual questions have remained unanswered. These are questions about the potential impact of changes in program design, such as benefit levels or the choice of the means-test, on both the current welfare and the behavioral response of household members. This paper proposes a method to simulate the effects of those alternative program designs on welfare and behavior, based on microeconometrically estimated models of household behavior. In an application to Brazil's recently introduced federal Bolsa Escola program, we find a surprisingly strong effect of the conditionality on school attendance, but a muted impact of the transfers on the reduction of current poverty and inequality levels.

We develop an open economy endogenous growth model with two accumulable factors (physical capital... more We develop an open economy endogenous growth model with two accumulable factors (physical capital and nontradable capital), introducing adjustment costs into the sector producing physical capital and using overlapping generations. Analysis of its dynamics appears surprisingly tractable and shows that the speed of convergence of GDP does not depend locally on the preference parameters nor on the adjustment costs. In a closed economy with the same production structure, the remuneration of physical capital is not constant during the transition to the steady state. Given, for example, that the economy needs to invest more in the nontradable capital, we show that the remuneration of physical capital will be smaller than the international interest rate during the transition. This larger difference in the remuneration of the two capitals leads to a higher accumulation of the nontradable capital and thus to a faster speed of convergence in a closed economy than in an open economy.

This paper analyzes the issue of taxation and redistribution in economies dominated by Elites and... more This paper analyzes the issue of taxation and redistribution in economies dominated by Elites and with limited state capacity. Within an a simple aggregate framework, we discuss the political economy incentives of Elites to tax, redistribute and increase state capacity. Two factors receive particular emphasis: the economic structure of society and political threats of power shifting. The analysis highlights how complementarities or substituabilities in the production process between the factors controled by the Elite and other social groups affect the Elites' incentives to tax and improve state capacity. It is shown in particular that there are natural increasing returns for Elites to increase state capacity. The paper also discusses how the incentives for state capacity building are affected by the threat of exogenous or endogenous shifts in political power.

Annales d'économie et de statistique

There is evidence from several sources that one cannot treat manyperson households as a single de... more There is evidence from several sources that one cannot treat manyperson households as a single decision maker. If this is the case, then factors such as the relative incomes of the household members may affect the final allocation decisions made by the household. We develop a method of identifying how "incomes affect outcomes" given conventional family expenditure data. The basic assumption we make is that household decision processes lead to efficient outcomes. We apply our method to a sample of Canadian couples with no children. We find that the final allocations of expenditures on each partner depend significantly on their relative incomes and ages and on the level of lifetime wealth.

This paper generalizes the poverty ordering criteria available for one-dimensional income poverty... more This paper generalizes the poverty ordering criteria available for one-dimensional income poverty to the case of multi-dimensional welfare attributes. A set of properties to be satisfied by multidimensional poverty measures is first discussed. Then general classes of poverty measures based on these properties are defined. Finally, dominance criteria are derived such that a distribution of multi-dimensional attributes exhibits less poverty than another for all multi-dimensional poverty indices belonging to a given class . These criteria may be seen as a generalization of the single dimension poverty-line criterion. However, it turns out that the way this generalization is made depends on whether attributes are complements or substitutes.

Where redistribution and anti-poverty policies consist of cash transfers allocated according to s... more Where redistribution and anti-poverty policies consist of cash transfers allocated according to some pre-specified rules, evaluating their impact on the distribution of living standards and poverty might seem straightforward. It seems sufficient to apply the transfer rules to some representative sample of households. This is the essence of 'incidence analysis' and micro-simulation techniques used in many countries. In practice, however, things are not so easy.

... In addition, economic growth is indirectly affected through the impact of gender inequality o... more ... In addition, economic growth is indirectly affected through the impact of gender inequality on investment and population growth. ... East Asia and Sub Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East can be accounted for by the larger gender gaps in education prevailing in the ...