The MPIA network aims to develop high-quality national and comparative research, capacity, and new concepts and methodologies in the modelling and assessment of the impacts of macroeconomic policies and shocks on poverty and equity at the household and intra-household levels. In particular, this network aims to: Engage a critical mass of researchers on common issues to develop network interaction and collaboration, and research of high international standards;
MPIA economic modelling activities - training, support and innovation - stand out among the most widely acknowledged of PEP contributions to the advancement of research in development economics.
For some twenty years now, PEP-funded MPIA researchers have been successfully trained and supported in the use of macro-micro modelling and simulation techniques. In recent years, however, MPIA leaders came to find that there was a need for reference models that were more elaborate and closer to real-life conditions than the ones that had been used so far. Moreover, they realized policymakers face new challenges that call for impact assessments that look both forward in time, and beyond national boundaries to the global economy. And so, lead researchers of the MPIA network have devoted time and energy to creating a series of new standard CGE models.
For more information on these models and direct access to the related files, click here.
The basic objective of the MPIA network is to understand the impacts of macroeconomic policies on poverty and income distribution. The identification of the particular issues addressed in any given project should be based on the research team's knowledge of its specific country, considering the pertinence, urgency and technical feasibility of their analysis. Current priority themes are:
The impacts on efficiency and growth of trade liberalization and the implications for poverty and equity have not been explored in our analysis to date. More recently, there is much discussion on pro-poor growth. Without necessarily resorting to overly sophisticated dynamic approaches, we seek to explore the poverty impacts of growth in capital stock, education, technical efficiency, population, etc., resulting from a given policy shock, using the empirical literature on growth as a basis.
The level and composition of public spending is likely to have substantial direct and indirect impacts on poverty and income distribution. Indeed, incidence analysis has shown that public spending has strong direct poverty impacts, as consumption of publicly-provided goods varies significantly between rich and poor households. Furthermore, education and health expenses are likely to affect poverty through their impacts on human capital accumulation and, together with public investment, productivity externalities. The integration of macro models and household surveys makes it possible to analyse household-level consumption of public goods (particularly education and health) and examine the impacts of public spending. Of interest in itself, this extension allows us to examine fiscal policies that are not revenue neutral, but which entail changes in the composition and magnitude of public spending.
Agricultural policies are likely to have important poverty and equity effects given the importance of this sector as a source of income and food for the poor. National agricultural policy reform and international agricultural policy negotiations (e.g. in the WTO) are of particular interest. Other sectoral policies (e.g. textiles/garments or services) could also have important macro/meso-economic and poverty implications in specific countries.
African and Asian governments are increasingly adopting poverty alleviation policies through PRSPs (in Africa), fiscal reform (particularly direct and sales taxes), income transfers, land reform, etc. The MPIA network can provide valuable insights into the macroeconomic aspects of these policies. This might involve the analysis of aspects of national Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) to see which are amenable to macroeconomic analysis.
The majority of the income of poor households comes from labor remuneration. Consequently, labor market issues and policies are central to the analysis of poverty. Some aspects of the labor market functioning that may be of particular interest include: