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This article examines the implications of urban growth on youth migration decisions in Nigeria. We use night light intensity data combined with Living Standards Measurement Study‐Integrated Surveys on Agriculture data, as an indicator of urban growth and associated economic opportunities. Employing alternative econometric approaches that exploit the spatial and temporal differences in urban growth as proxied by night light intensity, we find that urban growth in potential migrant destinations encourages youth migration. We also find heterogeneous responses to urban growth among various groups of youth as well as varying responses to different types of migration. Broadly, women and those youth with more education are more likely to migrate, while those in households with livestock are less likely to migrate. Often, however, the effects are complex and varied. For example, land and physical asset ownership encourage temporary migration; but greater land ownership discourages permanent migration, while physical assets have insignificant effects. Our results from Nigeria show that policy makers concerned about rural–urban youth exodus should adopt a differentiated, in terms of targets, and multidimensional policy approach to reap the benefits of urbanization while avoiding its negative consequences.

The Republic of South Africa faces the imperative of escaping economic stagnation. This article seeks to synthesise results from a series of research efforts, including but not limited to the articles presented in this special issue, and consider policy options for escaping economic stagnation. The focus is on South Africa and South African policies yielding relatively quick dividends in terms of growth and taking the rest of the world as given. Four broad implications are presented. These could form part of a concerted effort to escape from South Africa's long running economic malaise.

Aid and aid institutions constitute an important element of the global response to interlinked global developmental and environmental challenges. As such, these institutions are now being drawn into new arenas beyond the traditional focus on improving the livelihoods of poor people in low-income countries. Development aid, by itself, cannot “save the planet.” Nevertheless, development aid and development institutions do have the potential to become important catalytic actors in achieving developmental and global environmental objectives. This requires bold reforms and political action. Without appropriate restructuring of the international institutional architecture to confront the new development context combined with the necessary complementary policy frameworks, future aid, including aid for environmental objectives, risks substantially under-performing.

This special issue focuses on a collaborative effort between the National Treasury and the South African Revenue Service (SARS) to employ administrative record data from SARS for economic policy analysis. It contains six research articles plus a synthesis article designed to draw out potential policy implications and to place this research into a broader context. Exploitation of tax administrative record data has become global best practice. We conclude that this effort demonstrates strong prospects for developing a better understanding of the South African economy with positive implications for economic policy formulation.

We explore a novel first-order dominance (FOD) approach to poverty mapping and compare its properties to small-area estimation. The FOD approach uses census data directly, is straightforward to implement, is multidimensional allowing for a broad conception of welfare and accounts rigorously for welfare distributions in both levels and trends. An application to Mozambique highlights the value of the approach, including its advantages in the monitoring and evaluation of public expenditures. We conclude that the FOD approach to poverty mapping constitutes a useful addition to the toolkit of policy analysts. © 2015 UNU-WIDER. Journal of International Development published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

We estimate the impact of Malawi Farm Input Subsidy Programme using an economywide approach. We find potentially substantial net benefits with indirect benefits accounting for about two-fifths of total benefits. Due to these indirect benefits, the cut-off

We estimate the carbon intensity of industries, products, and households in South Africa. Direct and indirect carbon usage is measured using multiplier methods that capture inter-industry linkages and multi-product supply chains. Carbon intensity is found to be high for exports but low for major employing sectors. Middle-income households are the most carbon-intensive consumers. These results suggest that carbon pricing policies (without border tax adjustments) would adversely affect export earnings, but should not disproportionately hurt workers or poorer households. 7per cent of emissions arise though marketing margins, implying that carbon pricing should be accompanied by supporting public policies and investments.

Decision-makers who are responsible for determining when and where infrastructure should be developed and/or enhanced are facing a new challenge with the emerging topic of climate change. The paper introduces a stressor–response methodology where engineering-based models are used as a basis to estimate the impact of individual climate stressors on road infrastructure in Mozambique. Through these models, stressor–response functions are introduced that quantify the cost impact of a specific stressor based on the intensity of the stressor and the type of infrastructure it is affecting. Utilizing four climate projection scenarios, the paper details how climate change response decisions may cost the Mozambican government in terms of maintenance costs and long-term roadstock inventory reduction. Through this approach the paper details how a 14% reduction in inventory loss can be achieved through the adoption of a proactive, design standard evolution approach to climate change.

Climate change may damage road infrastructure, to the potential detriment of economic growth, particularly in developing countries. To quantitatively assess climate change's consequences, we incorporate a climate–infrastructure model based on stressor–response relationships directly into a recursive dynamic economy-wide model to estimate and compare road damages with other climate change impact channels. We apply this framework to Mozambique and simulate four future climate scenarios. Our results indicate that climate change through 2050 is likely to place a drag on economic growth and development prospects. The economic implications of climate change appear to become more pronounced from about 2030. Nevertheless, the implications are not so strong as to drastically diminish development prospects. Our findings suggest that impact assessments should include damages to long-run assets, such as road infrastructure, imposed by climate change.

Due to their reliance on rain‐fed agriculture, both as a source of income and consumption, many low‐income countries are considered to be the most vulnerable to climate change. Here, we estimate the impact of climate change on food security in Tanzania. Representative climate projections are used in calibrated crop models to predict crop yield changes for 110 districts in Tanzania. These results are in turn imposed on a highly disaggregated, recursive dynamic economy‐wide model of Tanzania. We find that, relative to a no‐climate‐change baseline and considering domestic agricultural production as the channel of impact, food security in Tanzania appears likely to deteriorate as a consequence of climate change. The analysis points to a high degree of diversity of outcomes (including some favorable outcomes) across climate scenarios, sectors, and regions. Noteworthy differences in impacts across households are also present both by region and by income category.

The papers in this special issue represent some of the most comprehensive analyses of the implications of climate change for developing countries undertaken to date. The papers employ a bottoms-up systems approach whereby the implications of climate change are evaluated using structural models of agriculture and infrastructure systems. The authors of the paper hail from multiple disciplines. This comprehensive, multi-disciplinary, structural approach is designed to allow for more robust insight into the potential implications of climate change. The approach also allows for experimentation with alternative policy options for achieving development objectives in the context of climate change.

The global economy is passing through a period of profound change. The immediate concern is with the financial crisis, originating in the North. The South is affected via reduced demand and lower prices for their exports, reduced private financial flows, and falling remittances. This is the first crisis. Simultaneously, climate change remains unchecked, with the growth in greenhouse gas emissions exceeding previous estimates. This is the second crisis. Finally, malnutrition and hunger are on the rise, propelled by the recent inflation in global food prices. This constitutes the third crisis. These three crises interact to undermine the prosperity of present and future generations. Each has implications for international aid and underline the need for concerted action.

While economic growth generally reduces income poverty, there are pronounced differences in the strength of this relationship across countries. Typical explanations for this variation include measurement errors in growth–poverty accounting and different compositions of economic growth. We explore the additional influence of economic structure in determining a country's growth–poverty relationship and performance. Using structural path analysis, we compare the experiences of Mozambique and Vietnam—two countries with similar levels and compositions of economic growth but divergent poverty outcomes. We find that the structure of the Vietnamese economy more naturally lends itself to generating broad-based growth. A given agricultural demand expansion in Mozambique will, ceteris paribus, achieve much less rural income growth than in Vietnam. Inadequate education, trade and transport systems are found to be more severe structural constraints to poverty reduction in Mozambique than in Vietnam. Investing in these areas can significantly enhance the effectiveness of Mozambican growth to reduce poverty.

Rising world prices for fuel and food represent a negative terms-of-trade shock for Mozambique. The impacts of these price rises are analyzed using various approaches. Detailed price data show that the world price increases are being transmitted to domestic prices. Short-run net benefit ratio analysis indicates that urban households and households in the southern region are more vulnerable to food price increases. Rural households, particularly in the North and Center, often benefit from being in a net seller position. Longer-term analysis using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of Mozambique indicates that the fuel price shock dominates rising food prices from both macroeconomic and poverty perspectives. Again, negative impacts are larger in urban areas. The importance of agricultural production response in general and export response in particular is highlighted. Policy analysis reveals difficult trade-offs between short-run mitigation and long-run growth. Improved agricultural productivity has powerful positive impacts, but remains difficult to achieve and may not address the immediate impacts of higher prices.

This article analyzes the impact of road rehabilitation on the spatial market efficiency of maize markets in Mozambique. We estimate a modified version of the Parity Bounds Model (PBM) that allows us to test the impact of road rehabilitation on spatial efficiency. This article seeks to contribute to the existing literature in three ways. First, a unique data set, where road rehabilitation episodes between market pairs are identified, is developed. Second, special care is devoted to estimation of transaction costs due to the sensitivity of the PBM model to the quality of transaction costs estimates. Finally, as opposed to most existing literature that focuses on relatively distant markets, the article focuses on spatially closed markets. We find that maize markets tend to be segmented due to high transport costs. Following road rehabilitation, inefficiency and average absolute price differentials tend to decrease, and market pairs have tended to shift toward autarky regimes. Overall, while the results point broadly toward a positive impact of road rehabilitation on spatial efficiency, they are not as strong or as robust as one would like. Large increases in fuel prices likely offset the positive impacts of road rehabilitation on transaction costs, contributing to the increase in the probability of being in an autarky regime.

Building upon the cost of basic needs (CBN) approach, an integrated approach to making consumption-based poverty comparisons is presented. This approach contains two principal modifications to the standard CBN approach. The first permits the development of multiple poverty bundles that are utility consistent. The second recognizes that the poverty line itself is a random variable whose variation influences the degree of confidence in poverty measures. We illustrate the empirical importance of these two methodological changes for the case of Mozambique. With utility consistency imposed, estimated poverty rates tend to be systematically higher in rural areas and lower in urban areas. We also find that the true confidence intervals on the poverty estimates—those incorporating poverty line variance—tend to be considerably larger than those that ignore poverty line variance. Finally, we show that these two methodological changes interact. Specifically, we find that imposing utility consistency on poverty bundles tends to tighten confidence intervals, sometimes dramatically, on provincial poverty estimates. We conclude that this revised approach represents an important advance in poverty analysis. The revised approach is straightforward and directly applicable in empirical work.

The objective of measuring poverty is usually to make comparisons over time or between two or more groups. Common statistical inference methods are used to determine whether an apparent difference in measured poverty is statistically significant. Studies of relative poverty have long recognized that when the poverty line is calculated from sample survey data, both the variance of the poverty line and the variance of the welfare metric contribute to the variance of the poverty estimate. In contrast, studies using absolute poverty lines have ignored the poverty line variance, even when the poverty lines are estimated from sample survey data. Including the poverty line variance could either reduce or increase the precision of poverty estimates, depending on the specific characteristics of the data. This paper presents a general procedure for estimating the standard error of poverty measures when the poverty line is estimated from survey data. Based on bootstrap methods, the approach can be used for a wide range of poverty measures and methods for estimating poverty lines. The method is applied to recent household survey data from Mozambique. When the sampling variance of the poverty line is taken into account, the estimated standard errors of Foster–Greer–Thorbecke and Watts poverty measures increase by 15–30 percent at the national level, with considerable variability at lower levels of aggregation.

This study is motivated by the high HIV prevalence in Mozambique, which, among adults aged 15-45 years in 2005, is estimated to be about 16.2% and is projected to climb (INE et al. 2004). By 2003 an estimated 400,000 Mozambicans had died of AIDSrelated causes since 1991, and this number is projected to grow rapidly through the rest of the decade to double by 2010. Due to the tendency of the pandemic to strike young adults, AIDS-related deaths leave significant numbers of orphans in their wake. A demographic and health survey carried out in 2003 found that, for children under 15 years of age, approximately one child in ten had been orphaned (paternal, maternal, or dual) (INE 2004). Demographic projections based on a time series of HIV prevalence data point also to large numbers of orphans (INE et al. 2004). Furthermore, the number of orphans appears set to climb dramatically. Mozambican national policy specifically favors the integration of orphans into substitute or extended families. This mirrors policy in other highly afflicted countries such as Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Uganda (UNAIDS 1999). It has the advantage that orphans remain integrated within a family. This approach to coping with orphaning also implies that the resources available to families that accept orphans and the allocation of those resources within the household become of policy interest. Generally, resources are tight within Mozambican households. In 2002-3, 58% of all children lived in households that were ab

Member countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are expected to form a West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) by December 2009, whereby members would use a common currency in an attempt to promote regional integration. Evidence suggests that reduction in transaction cost as a result of a decrease (or elimination) of nontariff barriers (NTBs) and real interest rates in response to elimination of exchange rate differentials positively influence trade. The objective of this study is to quantify the effects of (a) a 7% real interest rate on capital and (b) zero NTBs within ECOWAS countries, on cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp) trade to provide a measure of the potential impacts of the WAMZ on grain trade. The study applies a spatial and temporal price equilibrium model formulated in a mixed complementary programming (MCP) framework and solved using GAMS/PATH. The focus is on the Nigerian cowpea grainshed (NCG) comprising Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Togo in ECOWAS, and Cameroon, Chad, and Gabon in the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CAEMC). The results show that if WAMZ results in reduced real interest rates within ECOWAS, the larger of the two monetary unions, consumers in the relatively larger coastal economies and producers in the smaller Sahelian economies would benefit while all others lose. However, net social welfare would increase by 0.19% over the base case of 6.3 billion US$ (bUS$). Removing NTBs among countries in the larger trading bloc may alter the pattern of cowpea flows with total trade volume increasing by 3%, but inter-bloc trade decreasing by about 8%. The net total regional social welfare would increase by 0.14%, or 15 million US$ (mUS$), benefiting only consumers in importing countries and producers in exporting countries. The results emphasize the importance of specialization based on regional comparative advantage, but also draw attention to the need to devise ways to ensure acceptable welfare distribution among producers and consumers in line with policy objectives of the individual countries within the proposed WAMZ. Finally, this article contributes to the literature on the application of spatial and temporal models incorporating both ad valorem tariffs and differential interest rates in developing economies.

This paper shows how credit market failures can lead to large welfare losses in grain markets by inducing increased transport for seasonal storage in locations with low credit costs. The burden of these welfare losses falls primarily on rural households. These conclusions are obtained from a spatial/temporal model solved using a mixed complementarity formulation that easily handles interest rate differentials across space. Efforts to address credit market failures and to improve the efficiency of rural storage should be given priority as opposed to the creation of large, formal sector grain collection centers.

South Africa is currently confronting an HIV/AIDS crisis. HIV prevalence in the population is currently estimated at about 13 per cent with that number projected to increase over the next five years or so. Given the massive scale of the problem and the concentration of effects on adults of prime working age, the pandemic is expected to sharply influence a host of economic and non-economic variables. While the pandemic will certainly influence the rate of economic growth, structural changes are also likely to be one of the primary economic hallmarks of the AIDS pandemic. This paper builds on the work of Arndt and Lewis (2000) who estimated the aggregate macroeconomic impacts of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in South Africa using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) approach. They found that, despite dramatically lower rates of growth of the unskilled labor pool relative to the ‘no AIDS’ trend, estimated unemployment rates for unskilled labor in their base ‘AIDS’ scenario increased absolutely over most of the upcoming decade and are essentially the same (slightly higher in fact) as the rates estimated for a fictional ‘no AIDS’ scenario. In this paper, we seek to further investigate the interactions between unemployment and AIDS using the basic modeling approach set forth in Arndt and Lewis. Before projecting the impacts of the pandemic on unemployment, recently compiled historical data on employment, unemployment, and remuneration are presented. The unemployment problem is, rather, an employment problem; and it is concentrated primarily in the unskilled and semi-skilled labour category. Job creation performance over the past three decades in this category has been dismal with total employment (formal sector and informal sector) of unskilled and semi-skilled labourers in 1999 at only 92 per cent of the level present in 1970. In a country with an extraordinarily complex historical legacy such as South Africa, it is impossible to attribute this disastrous job creation performance to any single factor. Nevertheless, large differences in remuneration trends across labor classes and standard economic theory point to these trends as major contributing factors. By 1999, real remuneration per unskilled and semi-skilled worker had grown to 250 per cent of the 1970 level while remuneration for other categories had remained essentially flat. Based on these data, the neoclassical conclusion that unskilled and semi-skilled labor has been systematically pricing itself out of the market seems practically unavoidable. Employment growth has, given slow economic growth rates, gone hand in hand with wage moderation as in the highly skilled and skilled segments. In contrast, employment compression has been associated with substantial real remuneration growth as in the unskilled and semi-skilled segment. With this historical background in mind, we turn to examining the interactions between the AIDS pandemic and unemployment using a CGE approach. In the model, the unskilled and semi-skilled wage is fixed relative to the producer price index. As a result, employment levels by activity are the equilibrating variables. We find that, even though the pandemic is projected to drive growth rates in the supply of unskilled and semi-skilled labour to around zero, our analysis indicates that the pandemic will also depress labour demand leaving the unemployment rate, in our base ‘AIDS’ scenario, essentially unchanged compared with a fictional ‘no AIDS’ scenario. The pandemic depresses labour demand through three effects. Declines in the rate of overall economic growth. Pronounced declines in sectors that supply investment commodities, particularly the Construction and Equipment sectors. These two sectors happen to use unskilled and semi-skilled labour intensively and together account for a significant share (16.3 per cent) of total payments to this category of labour. Beyond this investment demand effect (brought on by reduced savings), AIDS induced morbidity effects on unskilled and semi-skilled workers tend to depress output relatively more in sectors that use unskilled and semi-skilled labour intensively with further negative implications for employment. Countering these three effects will be key to palliating the negative economic consequences of the pandemic and reducing unemployment rates. To reduce the unemployment problem, South Africa must have rapid overall economic growth ideally with sectors that use unskilled and semi-skilled labour intensively leading the way. Results indicate that a policy of real wage moderation (or even modest decline) presents a straightforward option for bolstering overall economic growth. A wage moderation policy also provides a particularly large stimulus for sectors that use unskilled and semi-skilled labour intensively with further positive implications for employment. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

South Africa now stands at the brink of a full-blown AIDS crisis. The key question now is to how to deal with the impending crisis. The epidemic has moved beyond its earlier status as a health issue to become a development issue, with social, political, and economic dimensions. This paper focuses on the economic aspects. While the research and policy analysis agenda is large, the authors' objectives in this paper are more modest: they undertake a preliminary analysis of the macroeconomic effects of the AIDS epidemic for South Africa using an economy-wide modeling framework. The outline of the paper is as follows: First, the authors review the major channels through which the HIV/AIDS epidmeic affects economic activity. Next, they describe the analytic approach employed in this paper, which involves constructing a disaggregated model of the South African economy that embodies the important AIDS-economy linkages identified above. Finally, they use the model to generate alternative medium-term scenarios to simulate the quantitative impact of these AIDS-related effects on macroeconomic performance.

Key features of the Mozambican economy are synthesized in this paper based on a new 1995 social accounting matrix. Particular attention is paid to the critical role of home consumption and large marketing margins. The fundamental importance of agricultural development emerges clearly from the analysis in which the multiplier for value added by capital is re-examined. Agriculture has large sectoral multipliers and is generally more effective in the use of scarce capital than industry and services. Commodities with attractive features for the promotion of agriculture in the short to medium term include maize, rice, as well as small-scale livestock and forestry.

This paper outlines the complex historical legacy and structural adjustment efforts in Mozambique in addition to reviewing recent economic developments. An in-depth analysis of new and more reliable national accounts data show that macroeconomic stabilisation has occurred through recovery from a suppressed outset. Yet, easy import substitution has now been used up, and structural transformation on the export side remains to be addressed. Moreover, a coherent development strategy geared towards poverty reduction is still to be implemented. The government budget also remains problematic, and aid dependency continues. Accordingly, fundamental development challenges lie ahead.

The paper examines results presented by Batra in an article entitled “The Fallacy of Free Trade” (Review of International Economics 1(1) (1992): 19–31). Batra contends that technical change in Japanese manufacturing necessarily reduces US real wages in the confines of a two-good, two-country Ricardo-Viner model. A parsimonious empirical Ricardo-Viner model is constructed to analyze the same issue. It is found that the impact on US real wages is very small. Systematic sensitivity analysis shows that increases in the ral wage are as likely as decreases. It is concluded that Batra’s assertions are empirically unlikely.

We provide a comprehensive approach for analyzing the evolution of poverty using Mozambique as a case study. Bringing together data from disparate sources, we develop a novel "back-casting" framework that links a dynamic computable general equilibrium model to a micro-simulation poverty module. This framework provides a new approach to explaining and decomposing the evolution of poverty, as well as to examining rigorously the coherence between poverty, economic growth, and inequality outcomes. Finally, various simple but useful and rarely-applied approaches to considering regional changes in poverty rates are presented. Copyright 2012, Oxford University Press.