Katsushi Imai
I would be interested in supervising a student who is willing to work on development micro-econometrics using large household survey data in developing countries, at least, as a part of his or her dissertation. Because my main area is the quantitative analysis of poverty and the effects of poverty alleviation policies, I would particularly welcome the students interested in poverty in developing countries. Below is the specific topic of mine on which have worked recently- but the possible research areas of the students may not be restricted to this. See my personal web page for more details. The links to my current PhD students’ web pages will be found on this page. If you have any questions please feel free to email me (Katsushi.Imai@manchester.ac.uk).
Risk, Vulnerability, and Poverty Dynamics of Rural Households in Less Developed Countries
Outline
Until early 1990s most of the theoretical and empirical studies on poverty in less developed countries (LDCs) used static concepts or indicators, but a number of recent studies have tried to investigated the research questions related to `vulnerability' or `poverty dynamics'. This is not only because recent aggregate shocks, such as Asian Financial Crisis or Tsunami Disaster, and more recently, commodity price surges and global financial crisis, have made researchers and practitioners realize the importance of identifying the poor in LDCs as those whose welfare is changing over time, but also because a lot of new household survey data with good quality and more advanced econometric techniques have become readily available. There are thus a lot of scopes to do an interesting PhD study at Manchester as this is a relatively new area and has a lot of important policy implications. The research questions which have been investigated by the researchers at Economics, School of Social Sciences include:
- How to define `vulnerability'? Are those who are vulnerable to various shocks same as those who are poor? What are the determinants of vulnerability? How would risk-coping behavior, such as savings or risk-sharing among the members of the community, affect vulnerability? How to estimate vulnerability?
- What would the aggregate shocks (e.g. Global Financial Crisis or Tsunami) affect poverty of households in the short run and the long run?
- How to define chronic poverty? How would the short-term shocks affect chronic poverty?
- What sort of mechanism or policy would reduce vulnerability or risk of rural households? What would be the effects of social capital in reducing vulnerability of members (including children) of rural households?
- Does a specific poverty alleviation programme (e.g. National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in India) reduce poverty? Does it reach the poorest of the poor?
- Does the microfinance programme reduce poverty? Does it reach the poorest of the poor?
- How to define poverty traps? If the nutrition-based poverty trap causes chronic poverty, what sort of mechanism or policy would help the poor escape from the trap?
- Would the use of multi-dimensional poverty concepts or indicators (e.g. nutritional indicators) help identify the poor?
- How has nutrition based poverty changed over time in a specific country, such as India? What are the factors which underlie the change?
Required background
Skills on econometrics and knowledge of micro economic theories at the graduate level are required.
Selected Readings
- Pranab Bardhan and Christopher Udry, Development Microeconomics, New York, Oxford University Press, 1999. Chaps 7-11.
- Angus Deaton, The Analysis of Household Surveys: A Microeconometric Approach to Development Policy, New York, John Hopkins University Press, 1997
- Tony Addison, David Hulme and Ravi Kanbur (Eds.), Poverty Dynamics Interdisciplinary Perspectives - 2009, Oxford University Press
- Deaton, Angus. 1991. "Saving and Liquidity Constraints." Econometrica. 59/5.
- Rosenzweig, M. and K. Wolpin. 1993. "Credit Market Constraints, Consumption Smoothing and the Accumulation of Durable Production Assets in Low-Income Countries: Investments in Bullocks in India."Journal of Political Economy.
- Townsend, R. 1994. "Risk and Insurance in Village India." Econometrica. 62:539-592.
- Ravallion, M. and S. Chaudhuri. 1997. "Risk and Insurance in Village India: Comment." Econometrica. 65/1 (January): 171-184.
- Strauss, John and Duncan Thomas. 1998. “Health, Nutrition and Economic Development.” Journal of Economic Literature. 36/2: 766-817
- Deolalikar, Anil. 1988. "Nutrition and Labor Productivity in Agriculture: Estimates for Rural South Asia." The Review of Economics and Statistics. 70:406-413.
- Glewwe, Paul, Hanan Jacoby, and Elizabeth King. 2001. “Early Childhood Nutrition and Academic Achievement: A Longitudinal Analysis” Journal of Public Economics 81(3):345-368.
- Baulch, B. and J.Hoddinott (eds.) (2000), “Economic Mobility and Poverty Dynamics in Developing Countries”, Frank Cass (special issue of the Journal of Development Studies August).
- Ravallion, M. and J.Jalan (2000), "Transient and Chronic Poverty in China", Journal of Development Studies, Vol.36, No. 6, August 2000.
- Hulme,D., K. Moore and A. Shepherd (2001) “Chronic poverty: meaning and analytical frameworks” CPRC working paper No.2, Chronic Poverty Research Centre
- Hoddinott, J., and A. Quisumbing, 2003a, “Methods for microeconometric risk and vulnerability assessments”, Social Protection Discussion Paper Series No.0324,The World Bank
- Ligon, E and L. Schechter, 2003, “Measuring Vulnerability”, The Economic Journal, 113,486,, C95-C102