Download or read book Structural Reforms and the Distributional Effects of Price Changes in Argentina written by Fernando H. Navajas and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper focuses on the change in the distribution of consumption in Argentina in the last decade and evaluates the distributional impact of relative price changes to address one dimension of the distributional consequences of massive privatization and de-regulation. The approach used is based on the theory and measurement of marginal tax reform of Feldstein, Guesnerie, Amhad and Stern and others, as developed and implemented by Newbery (1995), using the concept of the "distributional characteristic of goods" as obtained from household expenditure surveys. In general the results contradict the view that relative price changes have had a negative welfare and distributional impact. In particular, the results speak well of the effects due to de-regulations such as the opening-up of the economy to international trade, but they are less positive insofar as privatization is concerned. Although relative price changes due to privatization have had a positive welfare effect, this has been partially reversed in the last years. The paper extends the analysis to other dimensions that are not normally captured by this approach such as 'coverage' (i.e. access by the poor or low-income agents to public infrastructure services) showing positive distributional impacts in this dimension.
Download or read book Trade Reforms Market Access and Poverty in Argentina written by Guido G. Porto and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2003 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much of the literature that studies the relationship between trade and poverty in developing countries focuses on the effects of national trade reforms, such as own tariff reductions. In contrast, the World Trade Organization negotiations at the Doha Round were more concerned with the poverty effects on low-income countries, and of foreign reforms, such as the elimination of agricultural subsidies in industrial economies. The author empirically compares the relative poverty impacts of national and foreign trade reforms in Argentina. The author investigates national trade reforms, including tariff cuts on consumption goods and capital goods in Argentina. Foreign trade reforms include the elimination, in industrial countries, of agricultural subsidies and trade barriers on agricultural manufactures and industrial manufactures. These policies enhance the market access of Argentine exports. Overall, a combination of own reforms and enhanced market access would cause poverty to decline by between 1.7 and 4.6 percentage points. This evidence suggests that trade policies can be important poverty-reducing instruments in Argentina.
Download or read book Assessing the Impact of Structural Reforms Through a Supply side Framework The Case of Argentina written by Ms.Lusine Lusinyan and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2018-08-03 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The paper uses a supply-side framework based on a production function approach to assess the role of structural reforms in boosting long-term GDP growth in Argentina. The impact of product, labor, trade, and tax reforms on each supply-side channel—capital accumulation, labor utilization, and total factor productivity, proxied with an efficiency estimate—is assessed separately and then combined to derive the total impact on growth. The largest effect of structural reforms, involving regulatory changes that promote competition and facilitate flexible forms of employment, comes through the productivity/efficiency channel. Pro-competition regulation also improves labor utilization, while lower entry barriers and trade tariffs are important for capital accumulation. Structural reforms could have substantial effects on Argentina’s long-term GDP growth; for example, an ambitious reform effort to improve business regulatory environment would add 1–11⁄2 percent to average annual growth of GDP.
Download or read book Structural Change Openness and Development in the Argentine Economy written by Jorge D. Buzaglo and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Winners and Losers from Utility Privatization in Argentina written by Omar Chisari and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The economic rates of return for utility privatization projects in Argentina are very high, whether or not distributional weights are considered. But there is a very high shadow price for regulatory activity, which tends to be ignored in most privatization exercises. And how serious a government is about the fair distribution of gains from reform is reflected in how serious it is about regulation. Chisari, Estache, and Romero assess the macroeconomic and distributional effects of the privatization that Argentina began in 1989 in gas, electricity, telecommunications, and water and sanitation. Using a computable general equilibrium model, they track the effects of the changes observed between 1993, the first year by which all the major privatizations had taken place, and 1995, the most recent year for which data are available. In an innovative use of the model, they also assess the importance of the regulator in determining the distribution of gains and losses from utility privatization among sectors and income groups. They conclude that when regulators are effective, the annual gains from the private operation of utilities are about $3.3 billion, or 1.25 percent of GDP, and that all income classes benefit. Ineffective regulation cuts the gains from the reform by $1 billion or 0.35 percent of GDP. This cut in gains represents an implicit tax of 16 percent on the average consumer, paid directly to the owner of the utility rather than to the government. For the poorest income classes, this implicit tax is about 20 percent, meaning that good regulation is in the interest of the poor. The authors also show that the privatization of utilities cannot be blamed for the significant increase in unemployment observed in Argentina since 1993. Effective regulation can lead to a decline in unemployment, and ineffective regulation leads to only a small increase in unemployment. But the gains from utility privatization were not sufficient to offset the negative efficiency and distributional impact on the economy of the Tequila effect, which increased unemployment dramatically by limiting access to credit for users and producers alike. This paper-a product of the Regulatory Reform and Private Enterprise Division, Economic Development Institute-is part of a larger effort in the institute to understand the importance of effective infrastructure regulation. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project "Efficiency and Equity Implications of Argentina's Privatization of Infrastructure Services" (RPO 680-85).
Download or read book Reality Check written by John R. Nellis and published by CGD Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the 1990's, privatization of inefficient state-owned enterprises was strongly embraced in developing and transitional economies. Little attention has gone to the distributional implications of the privatization movement, a particularly surprising oversight given the current backlash in many settings against further privatization. This book offers a comprehensive set of country-specific studies on the effects of privatization on people --winners and losers in different income, employment, and education groups. The studies analyze the changes in public tax revenue from privatized enterprises, shifts in pension and other liabilities, and changes in income of different groups. Contributors include David McKenzie (Stanford University), Dilip Mookherjee (Boston University), Gover Barja (Universidad Católica Boliviana, La Paz), Miguel Urquiola (Columbia University), Samuel Freije (Universidad de Las Américas in Puebla, Mexico), Luis A. Rivas (Ministry of Finance and Central Bank of Nicaragua), Máximo Torero, Enrique Schroth, and Alberto Pasco Font (Group of Analysis for Development [GRADE], Lima), Roberto Macedo (University of São Paulo, Presbyterian Mackenzie University, and Foundation Institute of Economic Research, São Paolo), Antonio Estache (World Bank), Michael Bleyzer and Edi Segura (SigmaBleyzer Corporation), Gary H. Jefferson, (Brandeis University), Su Jian (Brandeis and Peking Universities), Jiang Yuan and Yu Xinhua (National Bureau of Statistics, Beijing), and Malathy Knight-John and P.P.A. Wasantha (Institute of Policy Studies, Sri Lanka).
Download or read book The Distributional Implications of the Impact of Fuel Price Increases on Inflation written by Mr. Kangni R Kpodar and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2021-11-12 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper investigates the response of consumer price inflation to changes in domestic fuel prices, looking at the different categories of the overall consumer price index (CPI). We then combine household survey data with the CPI components to construct a CPI index for the poorest and richest income quintiles with the view to assess the distributional impact of the pass-through. To undertake this analysis, the paper provides an update to the Global Monthly Retail Fuel Price Database, expanding the product coverage to premium and regular fuels, the time dimension to December 2020, and the sample to 190 countries. Three key findings stand out. First, the response of inflation to gasoline price shocks is smaller, but more persistent and broad-based in developing economies than in advanced economies. Second, we show that past studies using crude oil prices instead of retail fuel prices to estimate the pass-through to inflation significantly underestimate it. Third, while the purchasing power of all households declines as fuel prices increase, the distributional impact is progressive. But the progressivity phases out within 6 months after the shock in advanced economies, whereas it persists beyond a year in developing countries.
Download or read book The Poverty and Distributional Impacts of Carbon Pricing Channels and Policy Implications written by Baoping Shang and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2021-06-25 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing the poverty and distributional impacts of carbon pricing reforms is critical for the success of ambitious actions in the fight against climate change. This paper uses a simple framework to systematically review the channels through which carbon pricing can potentially affect poverty and inequality. It finds that the channels differ in important ways along several dimensions. The paper also identifies several key gaps in the current literature and discusses some considerations on how policy designs could take into account the attributes of the channels in mitigating the impacts of carbon pricing reforms on households.
Download or read book Regulatory Reform in Argentina s Natural Gas Sector written by International Energy Agency and published by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This book was released on 1999 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The natural gas sector in Argentina is undergoing profound change as a result of regulatory and structural reforms launched at the end of the 1980s. Critical to achieving national economic restructuring, these reform measures were aimed at improving economic efficiency and increasing investment through greater reliance on market forces and new opportunities for private capital. This report, the first IEA study to focus on Argentina, critically reviews the impact of gas-sector reforms. It identifies challenges that policy makers, regulatory and competition authorities still confront, in particular the promotion of competition in gas supply.
Download or read book Latin American Economic Crises written by E. Bour and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-12-09 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines issues of economic interest faced by Latin America economies in the late Twentieth-century. The fifteen chapters deal with macroeconomic problems, financial crises, the development of trade and trade agreements and labour issues. Of particular interest are the chapters dealing with Argentina, which provide an absorbing background to the financial crisis faced today.
Download or read book Applied Welfare Economics written by Massimo Florio and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-05 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the effect of a new infrastructure on the well-being of a local community? Is a tax reform desirable? Does the privatization of a telecommunication provider increase social welfare? To answer these questions governments and their policy advisors should have in mind an operative definition of social welfare, and cannot rely on simple official statistics, such as GDP. The price we observe are often misleading as welfare signals, and costs and benefits for the society should be based on ‘shadow prices’, revealing the social opportunity costs of goods and of changes of the world. This book explains how to apply these welfare economics ideas to the real world. After a theoretical discussion of the concept of social welfare, a critical analysis of the traditional doctrine of welfare economics embodied in the Two Fundamental Theorems, and a presentation of social cost-benefit analysis, the book introduce the readers to an applied framework. This includes the empirical estimation of shadow prices of goods, of the social cost of labour and capital, the assessment of risk. This book also includes the state of the art of international experience with CBA, including ex-post evaluation of major projects, economic rates of return in different sectors, and a case study on privatisation, is presented. This book offers a unique and original blend of theory, empirics and experience. The theoretical discussion clarifies why shadow prices are not virtual market equilibrium prices, as they arise as the solution of a planning problem, often with governments and economic agents constrained in their information and powers. The empirical chapters show how to compute proxies of the shadow prices in simple ways. The experience chapters draw from first hand research, gained by the Author and his collaborators over many years of advisory work for the European Commission and other international and national institutions.
Download or read book The Distributional Effects of Trade Policies in Argentina written by Guido Gustavo Porto and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Structural Reforms Productivity and Technological Change in Latin America written by Jorge M. Katz and published by United Nations Publications. This book was released on 2001 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last ten to fifteen years, profound structural reforms have moved Latin America and the Caribbean from closed, state-dominated economies to ones that are more market-oriented and open. Policymakers expected that these changes would speed up growth. This book is part of a multi-year project to determine whether these expectation have been fulfilled. Focusing on technological change, the impact of the reforms on the process of innovation is examined. It notes that the development process is proving to be highly heterogenous across industries, regions and firms and can be described as strongly inequitable. This differentiation that has emerged has implications for job creation, trade balance, and the role of small and medium sized firms. This ultimately suggests, amongst other things, the need for policies to better spread the use of new technologies.
Download or read book Argentina written by International Monetary Fund. Western Hemisphere Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2017-12-29 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 2017 Article IV Consultation highlights that Argentina’s government has made important progress in restoring integrity and transparency in public sector operations. These policy changes have put the economy on a stronger footing and corrected many of the most urgent macroeconomic imbalances. Private consumption strengthened in 2017, supported by greater real wages and buoyant credit growth. With stronger domestic demand, the trade surplus turned into a deficit and the current account deficit increased. Annual inflation has declined from its peak in 2016, but remained relatively resilient and inflation expectations moved up, prompting the central bank to raise interest rates. Going forward, GDP growth is expected to consolidate, inflation inertia will slowly subside, and the fiscal deficit will gradually fall.
Download or read book Analyzing the Distributional Impact of Reforms A practitioner s guide to trade monetary and exchange rate policy utility provision agricultural markets land policy and education written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2005 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication is a practitioner's guide for analyzing the distributional impact of reforms to trade, monetary and exchange rate policy, utility provision, agricultural markets, land policy and education. These six areas of policy reform are the ones most likely to have an impact on distribution and poverty. Such analysis helps in policy formulation and development and for implementing poverty reduction strategies in developing countries. Each chapter in this volume provides an overview and guidance on the specific issues arising in the analysis of the distributional impacts of policy and institutional reforms in selected sectors.
Download or read book Using Survey Data to Assess the Distributional Effects of Trade Policy written by Guido Gustavo Porto and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2003 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Reforming Infrastructure written by Ioannis Nicolaos Kessides and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2004 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Electricity, natural gas, telecommunications, railways, and water supply, are often vertically and horizontally integrated state monopolies. This results in weak services, especially in developing and transition economies, and for poor people. Common problems include low productivity, high costs, bad quality, insufficient revenue, and investment shortfalls. Many countries over the past two decades have restructured, privatized and regulated their infrastructure. This report identifies the challenges involved in this massive policy redirection. It also assesses the outcomes of these changes, as well as their distributional consequences for poor households and other disadvantaged groups. It recommends directions for future reforms and research to improve infrastructure performance, identifying pricing policies that strike a balance between economic efficiency and social equity, suggesting rules governing access to bottleneck infrastructure facilities, and proposing ways to increase poor people's access to these crucial services.
