Knowing, When You Do Not Know : Simulating the Poverty and Distributional Impacts of an Economic Crisis

Narayan, Ambar ; Sá ; nchez-Pá ; ramo, Carolina

World Bank

关键词: ACCOUNTING;    AGGREGATE EMPLOYMENT;    AGGREGATE INEQUALITY;    AGGREGATE OUTPUT;    ANTI-POVERTY;   

DOI  :  10.1596/978-0-8213-8981-2
RP-ID  :  66237

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Economists have long sought to predicthow macroeconomic shocks will affect individual welfare.Macroeconomic data and forecasts are easily available whencrises strike. But policy action requires not onlyunderstanding the magnitude of a macro shock, but alsoidentifying which households or individuals are being hurtby (or benefit from) the crisis. Moreover, in many cases,impacts on the ground might be already occurring as macrodevelopments become known, while micro level evidence isstill unavailable because of paucity of data. Because ofthese reasons, a comprehensive real-time understanding ofhow the aggregate changes will translate to impacts at themicro level remains elusive. This problem is particularlyacute when dealing with developing countries where householddata is sporadic or out of date. This volume outlines a morecomprehensive approach to the problem, showcasing a microsimulation model, developed in response to demand from WorldBank staff working in countries and country governments inthe wake of the global financial crisis of 2008-09. Duringthe growing catastrophe in a few industrialized countries,there was rising concern about how the crisis would affectthe developing world and how to respond to it through publicpolicies. World Bank staff s was scrambling to helpcountries design such policies; this in turn requiredinformation on which groups of the population, sectors andregions the crisis would likely affect and to what extent.The volume is organized as follows. Chapter 1 summarizes themethodology underlying the micro simulation model to predictdistributional impacts of the crisis, along with severalcase studies that highlight how the model can be used indifferent country contexts. Chapters 2 to 4 are written byexperts external to the Bank, two of whom participated asdiscussants at a workshop on the micro simulation workorganized in May, 2010 at the World Bank headquarters.Chapter 2 comments on the broader implications andshortcomings of applying the technique described in Chapter1 and the ability or willingness of governments to respondadequately to its results. Chapter 3 draws parallels betweenthe United States and developing countries to discuss thelessons that can be learned for mitigating the impacts offuture crises. Chapter 4 discusses how the micro simulationapproach can be sharpened to make it a better tool fordistributional analysis moving forward.