Brown Bag Seminar

Evaluating the Targeting and Redistributional Efficiency of Alternative Transfer Programs
[or: the Decompoistion of the Lambdas]

Wednesday, April 5, 2000, 12:30 - 1:30 p.m.

We decompose the distributional characteristic of alternative transfer instruments into their "targeting" and their "redistributional" efficiencies. This enables us to give a welfare interpretation to the more conventional indicators of targeting efficiency (i.e. undercoverage and leakage) and to identify their shortcomings as valid indices of the welfare effects of transfer programs. Such indices fail to capture the relative redistributional efficiency of policy instruments and assume a set a value judgements consistent with only the commonly used poverty gap. We present an empirical application of our decomposition approach which helps to identify how alternative transfer programs differ in terms of their targeting and redistributional efficiencies.

For more information, please e-mail N.Harvey or write to IFPRI, 2033 K Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006-1002, USA.