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This paper uses an extended cost-benefit analysis to estimate the distributional effect of tobacco tax increases in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The analysis considers the effect on household income of an increase in tobacco prices, changes in medical expenses, and the prolongation of working years under various scenarios, based on data in three waves of the national Household Budget Survey. One critical contribution is a quantification of the impacts by allowing price elasticities to vary across consumption deciles. The results indicate that a rise in tobacco prices generates positive income variations across the lowest income groups in the population (the bottom 20 percent). At the same time, tobacco price increases have negative income effects among middle-income and upper-income groups. These effects are larger, the higher the income level. If benefits through lower medical expenses and an expansion in working years are considered, the positive effect is acerbated among the lowest income groups. The middle of the distribution sees the income effect turn from negative to positive, and the top 40 percent, although continuing to experience a negative effect, see the magnitude of this effect diminish. Altogether, these effects mean that increases in tobacco prices have a pro-poor, progressive effect in Bosnia and Herzegovina. These results also hold within entities and across urban and rural areas.

Disease Control and Prevention --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Inequality --- Life Expectancy --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Poverty --- Price Elasticity --- Public Health Promotion --- Public Sector Development --- Taxation and Subsidies --- Tobacco Use and Control

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Although weather shocks are a major source of income fluctuation, most of the world's poor lack insurance coverage against them. Absence of formal insurance contributes to poverty traps, as investment decisions are conflicted with risk management ones: risk-averse farmers tend to underinvest and produce lower yielding yet safer crops. In the past few years, weather index insurance has gained increasing attention as an effective tool to provide small-scale farmers coverage against aggregate shocks. However, there is little empirical evidence about its effectiveness. This paper studies the effect of the recently introduced rainfall-indexed insurance on farmers' productivity, risk management strategies, as well as per capita income and expenditure in Mexico. The identification strategy takes advantage of the variation across counties and across time in which the insurance was rolled-out. The analysis finds that the presence of insurance in treated counties has significant and positive effects on maize productivity. Similarly, there is a positive association between the presence of insurance in the municipality and rural households' per capita expenditure and income, although no significant relation is found between the presence of insurance and the number of hectares destined for maize production.

Administrative Costs --- Adverse Selection --- Agricultural Development --- Agricultural Insurance --- Agricultural Land --- Agricultural Policy --- Agricultural Production --- Agricultural Productivity --- Agricultural Technology --- Agriculture --- Basis Risk --- Beneficiaries --- Cash Crops --- Cash Transfer Programs --- Cash Transfers --- Checks --- Claims --- Communal Land --- Consumption Smoothing --- Contracts --- Counterfactual --- Covariate Shocks --- Coverage --- Credit --- Crop Insurance --- Crop Varieties --- Crops & Crop Management Systems --- Debt Markets --- Development Economics --- Drought --- Durable --- Durable Assets --- Economics --- Effects --- Efficiency --- Equity --- Exchange --- Expenditure --- Extreme Poverty --- Famine --- Farmers --- Female Labor --- Female Labor Force --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financial Support --- Guarantee --- Household Head --- Household Income --- Household Survey --- Illiteracy --- Implicit Contracts --- Incentives --- Income --- Income Smoothing --- Indemnity --- Indemnity Payments --- Infant Mortality --- Information --- Insurance --- Insurance & Risk Mitigation --- Insurance Company --- Insurance Contracts --- Insurance Coverage --- Insurance Market --- Insurance Policies --- Insurance Premiums --- Insurance Product --- Insurances --- Insurers --- Interest --- International Bank --- Investment --- Investment Decisions --- Irrigation --- Labor --- Labor Force --- Labor Policies --- Lack of Infrastructure --- Land Quality --- Land Size --- Loans --- Loss --- Malnutrition --- Management --- Market --- Market Failures --- Measures --- Minimum Wages --- Moral Hazard --- Mortality --- Organizations --- Outcomes --- Policies --- Policyholders --- Political Economy --- Poor --- Poor Rural Household --- Poverty --- Poverty Index --- Poverty Levels --- Poverty Reduction --- Premiums --- Private Insurance --- Private Insurance Companies --- Production --- Production of Cash Crops --- Productivity --- Productivity Growth --- Profit --- Programs --- Property Rights --- Rates --- Real Income --- Reinsurance --- Reinsurance Markets --- Rights --- Risk --- Risk Exposure --- Risk Management --- Risk Management Strategies --- Risk Sharing --- Risk Sharing Arrangements --- Risk Taking --- Risk Transfer --- Risks --- Running Water --- Rural --- Rural Areas --- Rural Household --- Rural Level --- Rural Population --- Rural Poverty --- Rural Poverty Reduction --- Rural Settings --- Social Protections and Labor --- Standards --- Supply --- Theory --- Training --- Transfer Programs --- Transfers --- Value --- Wages

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Tobacco taxes are usually considered regressive, as the poorest individuals allocate larger shares of their budget toward the purchase of tobacco-related products. However, because these taxes also discourage tobacco use, some of the most adverse effects and their economic costs are reduced, including lower life expectancy at birth, higher medical expenses, increased years of disability among smokers, and the effects of secondhand smoke. This paper projects the effects of an increase in the tobacco tax on household welfare in Ukraine. It considers three price-elasticity scenarios among income deciles of the population. The results show that although tobacco taxes are often criticized for being regressive in the short run, in a more comprehensive scenario that includes medical expenses and working years, the benefits of tobacco taxes far exceed the increase in tax liability, benefitting in large measure lower income households. The results also indicate that lower health expenditure seems to be the main driver, because of the reduction in tobacco-related diseases that require expensive treatments. Tobacco taxes are also associated with positive distributional effects related to the higher long-term price elasticities of tobacco consumption.

Economic Adjustment and Lending --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Poverty Reduction --- Public Sector Development --- Regressive Tax --- Taxation --- Tobacco Control --- Tobacco Tax

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Although weather shocks are a major source of income fluctuation, most of the world's poor lack insurance coverage against them. Absence of formal insurance contributes to poverty traps, as investment decisions are conflicted with risk management ones: risk-averse farmers tend to underinvest and produce lower yielding yet safer crops. In the past few years, weather index insurance has gained increasing attention as an effective tool to provide small-scale farmers coverage against aggregate shocks. However, there is little empirical evidence about its effectiveness. This paper studies the effect of the recently introduced rainfall-indexed insurance on farmers' productivity, risk management strategies, as well as per capita income and expenditure in Mexico. The identification strategy takes advantage of the variation across counties and across time in which the insurance was rolled-out. The analysis finds that the presence of insurance in treated counties has significant and positive effects on maize productivity. Similarly, there is a positive association between the presence of insurance in the municipality and rural households' per capita expenditure and income, although no significant relation is found between the presence of insurance and the number of hectares destined for maize production.

Administrative Costs --- Adverse Selection --- Agricultural Development --- Agricultural Insurance --- Agricultural Land --- Agricultural Policy --- Agricultural Production --- Agricultural Productivity --- Agricultural Technology --- Agriculture --- Basis Risk --- Beneficiaries --- Cash Crops --- Cash Transfer Programs --- Cash Transfers --- Checks --- Claims --- Communal Land --- Consumption Smoothing --- Contracts --- Counterfactual --- Covariate Shocks --- Coverage --- Credit --- Crop Insurance --- Crop Varieties --- Crops & Crop Management Systems --- Debt Markets --- Development Economics --- Drought --- Durable --- Durable Assets --- Economics --- Effects --- Efficiency --- Equity --- Exchange --- Expenditure --- Extreme Poverty --- Famine --- Farmers --- Female Labor --- Female Labor Force --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financial Support --- Guarantee --- Household Head --- Household Income --- Household Survey --- Illiteracy --- Implicit Contracts --- Incentives --- Income --- Income Smoothing --- Indemnity --- Indemnity Payments --- Infant Mortality --- Information --- Insurance --- Insurance & Risk Mitigation --- Insurance Company --- Insurance Contracts --- Insurance Coverage --- Insurance Market --- Insurance Policies --- Insurance Premiums --- Insurance Product --- Insurances --- Insurers --- Interest --- International Bank --- Investment --- Investment Decisions --- Irrigation --- Labor --- Labor Force --- Labor Policies --- Lack of Infrastructure --- Land Quality --- Land Size --- Loans --- Loss --- Malnutrition --- Management --- Market --- Market Failures --- Measures --- Minimum Wages --- Moral Hazard --- Mortality --- Organizations --- Outcomes --- Policies --- Policyholders --- Political Economy --- Poor --- Poor Rural Household --- Poverty --- Poverty Index --- Poverty Levels --- Poverty Reduction --- Premiums --- Private Insurance --- Private Insurance Companies --- Production --- Production of Cash Crops --- Productivity --- Productivity Growth --- Profit --- Programs --- Property Rights --- Rates --- Real Income --- Reinsurance --- Reinsurance Markets --- Rights --- Risk --- Risk Exposure --- Risk Management --- Risk Management Strategies --- Risk Sharing --- Risk Sharing Arrangements --- Risk Taking --- Risk Transfer --- Risks --- Running Water --- Rural --- Rural Areas --- Rural Household --- Rural Level --- Rural Population --- Rural Poverty --- Rural Poverty Reduction --- Rural Settings --- Social Protections and Labor --- Standards --- Supply --- Theory --- Training --- Transfer Programs --- Transfers --- Value --- Wages

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Despite the well-known positive impact of tobacco taxes on health outcomes, policy makers hesitate to use them because of their possible regressive effect, that is, poorer deciles are proportionally more negatively affected than richer ones. Using an extended cost-benefit analysis to estimate the distributional effect of white and clove cigarettes in Indonesia, this study finds that the long-run impact may be progressive. The final aggregate effect incorporates the negative price effect, but also changes in medical expenditures and additional working years. The analysis includes estimates of the distributional impacts of price rises on cigarettes under various scenarios using 2015-16 Indonesia National Socioeconomic Surveys. One contribution is to quantify the impacts by allowing price elasticities to vary across consumption deciles. Overall, clove cigarette taxes exert an effect that depends on the assumptions of conditional price elasticity. If the population is more responsive to tobacco price changes, then people would experience even more gains from the health and work benefits. More research is needed to clarify the distributional effects of tobacco taxation in Indonesia.

Cancer --- Cigarette Smoking --- Disease Control and Prevention --- Health Care Services Industry --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Industry --- Inequality --- Law and Development --- Law and Justice Institutions --- Price Effect --- Price Elasticity --- Public Health Promotion --- Regressivity --- Sin Tax --- Taxation --- Tobacco Tax --- Tobacco Use and Control