The Economics of Regional Poverty-Environment Programs: An Application for Lao People's Democratic Republic
Program administrators are often faced with the difficult problem of allocating scarce resources among regions in a country when interventions are aimed at addressing multiple objectives. One main concern is the tradeoff between poverty reduction a...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, D.C.
2013
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2004/04/3540673/economics-regional-poverty-environment-programs-application-lao-peoples-democratic-republic http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14751 |
| Summary: | Program administrators are often faced
with the difficult problem of allocating scarce resources
among regions in a country when interventions are aimed at
addressing multiple objectives. One main concern is the
tradeoff between poverty reduction and improvement of
environmental quality. To provide a framework for analysis,
the authors develop a model of optimal budget allocation
that allows for variations in three factors:
administrators' valuation of objectives; their
willingness to accept tradeoffs among objectives and
regional allotments; and regional administrative costs. The
results from an application of this model using information
for Lao People's Democratic Republic show that simple
poverty indicators alone do not provide consistent
guidelines for policy. However, when different poverty
indicators are embedded in an optimizing model that
incorporates preferences and costs, the resulting provincial
allocations are very similar. This suggests that adoption of
a formal analytical approach to resource allocation can help
promote the harmonization of regional policy guidelines. |
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