This report investigates the income and equity effects of macroeconomic policy reforms in Zimbabwe, emphasizing linkages between macroeconomic policies and agricultural performance and agriculture's influence on aggregate income and its distribution.Analyses focus on reform of the foreign trade regime, public expenditure, and tax policy, along with the potential benefits of combining these structural changes with various land reform scenarios. The study uses a CGE model that provides a policy simulation laboratory in which exogenous policy changes are analyzed for their economywide income and equity effects.

The report highlights the need for policy complementarities in Zimbabwe that can contribute to equitable growth. It should be of interest not only to those concerned with recent economic developments in Zimbabwe but also to those concerned with the broader issues of macroeconomic reform and its ultimate effects.

Marcelle Thomas is a research analyst in IFPRI's Trade and Macroeconomics Division, where she works on a variety of macroeconomic and trade issues. In recent years she has worked on building and maintaining social accounting matrices and computable general equilibrium models for use in macroeconomic analysis for the Philippines and Zimbabwe. She is currently working on WTO issues and their impact on the food security of developing countries.

Kay Muir-Leresche was a senior lecturer in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension at the University of Zimbabwe at the time of writing this report.

Hans Lofgren is a senior research fellow in IFPRI's Trade and Macroeconomics Division and leads IFPRI's multicountry program,"Macroeconomic Policies, Growth, and Poverty Reduction." Hans' research focuses on the analysis of macro- and microeffects of food, agriculture, and trade policy, as well as on the development of methods for economywide policy modeling.

• Table of Contents, Tables, Figures, Foreword, Acknowledgements, and Summary
  (PDF 91K)
  
  
• Chapter 1: Introduction
  (PDF 83K)
  
  
• Chapter 2: Conceptual Framework and Hypotheses
  (PDF 94K)
  
  
• Chapter 3: Economic Performance and Policies Since Independence
  (PDF 160K)
  
  
• Chapter 4: A 1991 Social Accounting Matrix and a Multiplier Analysis for the Economy of Zimbabwe
  (PDF 162K)
  
  
• Chapter 5: A Computable General Equilibrium Model for Zimbabwe
  (PDF 241K)
  
  
• Chapter 6: Effects of Policy Reforms
  (PDF 112K)
  
  
• Chapter 7: Conclusions
  (PDF 76K)
  
  
• Appendix A: Zimbabwe Micro-SAM.Documentation and Data Sources
  (PDF 117K)
  
  
• Appendix B: 1991 Zimbabwe Micro-SAM
  (PDF 108K)
  
  
• Appendix C: Coefficient Matrix for the 1991 Zimbabwe Micro-SAM
  (PDF 104K)
  
  
• Appendix D: Multiplier Matrix for the 1991 Zimbabwe Micro-SAM
  (PDF 125K)
  
  
• Appendix E: Sensitivity Analysis
  (PDF 77K)
  
  
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
  (PDF 38K)
  
  
• Bibliography
  (PDF 82K)