Simulating the Impacts of Rural Social Cash Transfers and Farmer's Subsidies in Malawi and Ghana
A considerable body of experimental economics research examines the impacts of cash transfer programmes. In many developing countries, though, cash transfers are relatively minor compared to other transfer mechanisms in terms of their claim on public resources. In Malawi, fertilizer subsidies dwarf cash transfers, while next door in Zambia, the government pays farmers prices well above market levels for their maize. Yet no study to our knowledge has attempted to compare the full impact of social cash transfers and other kinds of transfers on rural incomes and welfare in low-income countries. (?)
A simulation impact evaluation of rural income transfers in Malawi and Ghana
We use a disaggregated rural economy-wide modelling framework to simulate and compare the impacts of an input subsidy, cash transfer, and output price support on production and welfare in rural Malawi and Ghana. Household groups in the models are defined by their eligibility for current transfers. Simulations are calibrated to official government spending. No intervention appears as unequivocally superior. The impacts and efficiency of each transfer mechanism are shaped by the structure of the economy, market conditions, and programme design.
Migration and the Sending Economy: A Disaggregated Rural Economy-Wide Analysis
Abstract
 Most economic research on migration impacts focuses on the households that send the migrants and get the remittances, ignoring linkages with others in the sending economies. This paper offers an alternative, disaggregated economy-wide perspective on migration and its impacts. Data from the 2003 Mexico National Rural Household Survey are used to calibrate a series of interacting rural household models nested within a general equilibrium model of the whole rural economy. Simulations reveal that the impacts of international migration and remittances on sending areas depend critically on the ways in which local markets transmit influences among households.