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What is the welfare effect of a price change? This simple question is one of the most relevant and controversial questions in microeconomic theory and its different answers can lead to severe heterogeneity in empirical results. This paper returns to this question with the objective of providing a general framework for the use of theoretical contributions in empirical works, with a particular focus on poor people and poor countries. Welfare measures (such as Equivalent Variation or Consumer's Surplus) and computational methods (such as Taylor's approximations or the Vartia method) are compared to test how these choices result in different welfare measurement under different price shock scenarios. As a rule of thumb and irrespective of parameter choices, welfare measures converge to approximately the same result for price changes below 10 percent. Above this threshold, these measures start to diverge significantly. Budget shares play an important role in explaining such divergence, whereas the choice of demand system has a minor role. Under standard utility assumptions, the Laspeyers and Paasche variations are always the outer bounds of welfare estimates and consumer surplus is always the median estimate. The paper also introduces a new simple welfare approximation, clarifies the relation between Taylor's approximations and the income and substitution effects, and provides an example for treating nonlinear pricing. Stata codes for all computations are provided in annex.

Access to Markets --- Agriculture --- Choice --- Consumer Demand --- Consumer Preferences --- Consumer Surplus --- Consumers --- Consumption --- Cost of Living --- Data --- Demand --- Demand Curves --- Demand Function --- Developing Countries --- Distribution --- E-Business --- Econometrics --- Economic Research --- Economic Theory & Research --- Economics Literature --- Elasticity --- Electricity --- Emerging Markets --- Engel Curve --- Equity --- Exchange --- Expenditure --- Food Price --- Free Market --- Government Revenues --- Income --- Income Effects --- Index Numbers --- Information --- Interest --- International Economics & Trade --- Lorenz Curve --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Market Prices --- Markets & Market Access --- Money --- Nominal Income --- Normal Good --- Open Access --- Outputs --- Particular Country --- PC --- Price --- Price Adjustments --- Price Change --- Price Decreases --- Price Elasticity --- Price Increases --- Price Schedule --- Price Structure --- Price Variation --- Price_Index --- Pricing --- Private Sector Development --- Product --- Productivity --- Real Income --- Reliability --- Results --- Sales --- Savings --- Subsidies --- Substitute --- Substitute Goods --- Substitution --- Surplus --- Tax --- Tax Systems --- Transactions --- Utility --- Utility Function --- Utility Maximization --- Value --- Variables --- Wages --- Web --- Welfare --- Welfare Economics

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The paper provides basic guidelines and tools for simulating subsidy reforms with Stata using a single cross-section survey. Simulations are discussed under a partial equilibrium and medium-term framework using a marginal approach. The paper distinguishes between single priced products, such as fuel or bread, and multiple priced products, such as household utilities. Part I provides basic instructions for carrying out subsidy analyses. Part II outlines economic theory and formulae for the two types of products considered. Part III illustrates the use of the Stata codes, which are downloadable from the Internet.

Access to Markets --- Climate Change Economics --- Debt Markets --- Economic Theory & Research --- Markets and Market Access --- Micro-simulation --- Poverty Reduction --- Stata --- Subsidies

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This text addresses the understanding and alleviation of poverty, inequality, and inequity using a unique and broad mix of concepts, measurement methods, statistical tools, software, and practical exercises. Part I discusses basic fundamental issues of well-being and poverty measurement. Part II develops an integrated framework for measuring poverty, social welfare, inequality, vertical equity, horizontal equity, and redistribution. Part III presents and develops recent methods for testing the robustness of distributive rankings. Part IV discusses ways of using policy to alleviate poverty, improve welfare, increase equity, and assess the impact of growth. Part V applies the tools to real data. Most of the book’s measurement and statistical tools have been programmed in DAD, a well established and widely available free software program that has been tailored especially for income distribution analysis and is used by scholars, researchers, and analysts in nearly 100 countries worldwide. It requires basic understanding of calculus and statistics. Abdelkrim Araar and Jean-Yves Duclos teach economics at Université Laval in Québec City. .

Quantitative methods in social research --- Microeconomics --- Quantitative methods (economics) --- National wealth --- Economic theory. --- Economic policy. --- Population. --- Economics. --- Population Economics. --- Economic Policy. --- Economic Theory/Quantitative Economics/Mathematical Methods. --- Human population --- Human populations --- Population growth --- Populations, Human --- Economics --- Human ecology --- Sociology --- Demography --- Malthusianism --- Economic nationalism --- Economic planning --- National planning --- State planning --- Planning --- National security --- Social policy --- Economic theory --- Political economy --- Social sciences --- Economic man --- Poverty --- Equality --- Economic History --- Business & Economics --- Egalitarianism --- Inequality --- Social equality --- Social inequality --- Political science --- Democracy --- Liberty --- Destitution --- Wealth --- Basic needs --- Begging --- Poor --- Subsistence economy --- Equality. --- Poverty. --- 330.56 --- 330.56 Nationaal inkomen. Volksinkomen. Gezinsinkomen. Vermogensstratificatie. Particuliere inkomens en bestedingen. Armoede. Honger --- Nationaal inkomen. Volksinkomen. Gezinsinkomen. Vermogensstratificatie. Particuliere inkomens en bestedingen. Armoede. Honger --- Rural development --- Women in development --- Natural resources --- Management --- Research.

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Shortly before the 2011 Libyan revolution, consumers' subsidies were rapidly increased by the regime in an effort to reduce social discontent. In the aftermath of the revolution, these subsidies became important for people's subsistence, but also a very heavy burden for the state budget. Since then, the Libyan government has been confronted with the necessity of reforming subsidies in a politically and socially complex environment. This paper uses household survey data to provide a distributional analysis of food and energy subsidies and simulate the impact of subsidy reforms on household wellbeing, poverty, and the government's budget. Despite the focus on direct effects only, the results indicate that subsidy reforms would have a major impact on household welfare and government revenues. The elimination of food subsidies would reduce household expenditure by about 10 percent and double the poverty rate while saving the equivalent of about 2 percent of the government budget. The elimination of energy subsidies would have a similar effect on household welfare, but a larger effect on poverty while government savings would be almost 4 percent of the budget. The size of these effects, the weakness of market institutions, and the current political instability make subsidy reforms extremely complex in Libya. It is also clear that subsidy reforms will call for some form of compensation for the poor, a gradual rather than a big bang approach, and a product-by-product sequence of reforms rather than an all-inclusive reform.

Economic Theory & Research --- Energy --- Energy Production and Transportation --- Food --- Food & Beverage Industry --- Income Distribution --- Markets & Market Access --- Social Protections and Labor --- Subsidies --- Taxation & Subsidies --- Transport --- Welfare --- Libya