This study carries out a cross-country analysis of changes in quantity and quality of life during... more This study carries out a cross-country analysis of changes in quantity and quality of life during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic for 124 countries. Changes in the quantity of life are measured as life years lost to COVID-19, including excess deaths not officially reported as COVID-19 deaths. Changes in quality of life are proxied by the average change in daily mobility, compared to a pre-COVID baseline. We find a significant negative correlation between the two, meaning that the countries with the biggest reductions in mobility are also the countries with the biggest losses of life years. We calculate that about 48 million life years were lost during the first year of the pandemic, corresponding to 0.018% of all expected life years. For comparison, at least double the amount of life years are lost every year due to children dying of diarrhea. About 28 million life years are created every day from babies being born, so the first year of the pandemic set us back less than two...
Reducing deforestation could potentially be a cheap and efficient way of reducing carbon emission... more Reducing deforestation could potentially be a cheap and efficient way of reducing carbon emissions. Bolivia, due to its large forest endowment and high levels of deforestation, has qualified as a prime candidate for this kind of policy. Deforestation reduction policies, however, are likely to have important economic-environmental trade-offs and there is currently a gap of quantitative analysis to guide the discussion and design of mechanisms for reducing deforestation in Bolivia. In this paper, we build on the OSIRIS-Bolivia model to create the CISS-Bolivia model, an excel-based tool for modeling the effects of incentives for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) in Bolivia. Similarly to OSIRIS-Bolivia, the CISS is based on a spatial econometric model of deforestation in Bolivia during the period 2001-2005, and uses information on forest cover, deforestation rates, geographical conditions, and drivers of deforestation, including agricultural opportunity...
There is conceptually a big difference between inequality of opportunity and inequality of outcom... more There is conceptually a big difference between inequality of opportunity and inequality of outcomes, and the policies needed to address the two different kinds of inequality are also very different. However, it is difficult to measure inequality of opportunity. This paper proposes a new measure of equality of opportunity, based on the importance of family background variables for nutritional status in early childhood. We applied the proposed methodology to 166 Demographic and Health Surveys, from 60 different countries, carried out between 1991 and 2015. What stands out most strongly from these estimations is the low level of equality of opportunity in Latin America compared to the rest of the world. Family background is much more important for children’s nutritional status in this region than in the rest of the world. In contrast, the countries of sub-Saharan Africa were found to have surprisingly high equality of opportunity, suggesting that in this region other factors than famil...
This paper describes the construction of the most detailed, openly accessible Social Accounting M... more This paper describes the construction of the most detailed, openly accessible Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Bolivia to date. In addition to allowing for “standard” socio-economic analysis common for SAMs - like assessing the linkages between production, factor income distribution and households’ incomes and expenditures – the SAM presented in this paper makes detailed economic assessments at the subnational level, by gender and at detailed agricultural subsector levels, possible. Sections 1-4 present the methodology and data sources used, explain assumptions and criteria adopted for SAM disaggregation, and discuss key findings with a focus on distributional features. Section 5 presents results from a simple SAM multiplier model and section 6 concludes. It is the authors’ hope that this SAM database can make a contribution to evidence-based policy making that helps to further reduce poverty and food insecurity in Bolivia.
Policy interventions designed to simultaneously stem deforestation and reduce poverty in tropical... more Policy interventions designed to simultaneously stem deforestation and reduce poverty in tropical countries entail complex socio-environmental trade-offs. A hybrid model, comprising an optimising, agricultural household model integrated into the ‘shell’ of an agent-based model, is developed in order to explore the trade-offs of alternative policy bundles and sequencing options. The model is calibrated to the initial conditions of a small forest village in rural Bolivia. Heterogeneous farmers make individually optimal land-use decisions based on factor endowments and market conditions. Endogenously determined wages and policy provided jobs link the agricultural labour market and ruralurban migration rates. Over a simulated 20-year period, the policymaker makes “real-time” public investments and public policy that in turn impact welfare, productivity, and migration. National and local land-use policy interventions include conservation payments, deforestation taxes and international RE...
Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, this paper evaluates the effectivene... more Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, this paper evaluates the effectiveness of Bolivia’s national irrigation programs PRONAR and PRONAREC in reducing the vulnerability of agricultural communities. We propose a couple of practical indicators to measure vulnerability, and then develop an explicit Theory of Change that not only explains how irrigation systems are expected to reduce vulnerability, but also highlights where things might go wrong. We then proceed to make a propensity score matched difference-in-differences estimation that compares the change in vulnerability of households in cantons that have benefitted from irrigation projects during the period 2002 to 2012 with the changes in similar households in cantons that have not benefitted from one of the national irrigation programs. In order to complement the quantitative analysis, we carried out interviews and focus groups with past and present program officials and program beneficiaries in the highland...
This paper analyzes gender and ethnic differences in vulnerability and resilience to external sho... more This paper analyzes gender and ethnic differences in vulnerability and resilience to external shocks and stresses in Mexico. Vulnerability and resilience are measured by a combination of the level of household incomes per capita and the degree of diversification of these incomes. Thus, households which have poorly diversified incomes falling below the national poverty line are classified as highly vulnerable, whereas households which have highly diversified incomes above the poverty line are classified as highly resilient. The analysis shows that both gender and ethnicity are almost irrelevant as explanatory factors of vulnerability whereas education levels, dependency ratios and the age of the head of household are very important. Determining the true factors that affect vulnerability is important in order to devise effective policies to reduce vulnerability.
The high oil prices and the sharp increases in royalties mean that the natural gas boom in Bolivi... more The high oil prices and the sharp increases in royalties mean that the natural gas boom in Bolivia has become very important for the economy, and particularly important as a source of government revenues. Using a CGE model, Andersen et al (2006) show that the natural gas boom is likely to boost GDP growth by about 1 percentage point per year. However, if the government continues with past spending and investment patterns, the boom is also likely to have a very adverse effect on the income distribution, so much so that the poorest half of the population is likely to experience absolute reductions in their real income levels compared to a scenario without gas boom. The present paper explores alternative uses of natural gas revenues in the CGE model to see if a better outcome can be engineered.
El volumen reune diversos trabajos sobre los mercados laborales en los tres paises durante la dec... more El volumen reune diversos trabajos sobre los mercados laborales en los tres paises durante la decada comprendida entre 1997 y 2008. En los tres casos se hacen analisis globales de la situacion laboral de cada pais asi como analisis particualres de las areas rurales y las areas urbanas. Lo que se encuentra es que los mercados laborales no se habrian tornado todo lo dinamico que se esperaba fueran despues de las reformas estructurales. Sin embargo es importante mencionar que estas reformas tuvieron diferentes caracteristicas y diferentes periodos de maduracion.
Las ultimas dos decadas han visto mejoramientos sustanciales en la asistencia escolar de ninas en... more Las ultimas dos decadas han visto mejoramientos sustanciales en la asistencia escolar de ninas en America Latina, hasta el punto que, en la mayoria de los paises, mas ninas que ninos asisten a las escuelas. Sin embargo, Bolivia es una excepcion, especialmente en areas rurales donde la brecha educativa entre hombres y mujeres jovenes todavia es significativa. El informe muestra que en 113 de los 314 municipios en Bolivia las ninas tienen menor acceso y/o permanencia en el sistema escolar que los ninos, mientras que las ninas solo tienen ventajes de acceso y/o permanencia en 2 municipios. En el resto de los municipios, los ninos y las ninas tienen el mismo acceso y el mismo nivel de permanencia (medido a 15 anos). La mayoria de los municipios con inequidades genericas en contra de las ninas se encuentran en el altiplano en las zonas con mayor pobreza y mayor proporcion de poblacion Aymara. En terminos absolutos, el problema de inasistencia de las ninas (y tambien de los ninos) se conc...
An important part of Bolivia’s fiscal revenues are directly tied to world oil prices. Since oil p... more An important part of Bolivia’s fiscal revenues are directly tied to world oil prices. Since oil prices are very volatile, so are Bolivia’s fiscal revenues. For example, if oil prices vary as much during the next couple of decades as they did during the previous two decades, then the fiscal revenues arising from our exports of natural gas to Brazil would vary between US$ 141 million per year and US$ 1.1 billion per year, and the revenues in any particular year would be largely unpredictable. Such volatility of fiscal revenues is undesirable, especially for a country that tries to implement a poverty reduction strategy requiring a steady and predictable flow of funds. This paper calculates the likely range values for the revenues that Bolivia will derive from natural gas exports, as well as the likely variation from year to year. Based on these calculations we design a Stabilization Fund, which accumulates money when world oil prices are high and distributes money when oil prices are ...
The increase in Natural Gas sales to Brazil in the coming years will bring about substantial chan... more The increase in Natural Gas sales to Brazil in the coming years will bring about substantial changes in the Bolivian economy. In this paper, we use a general equilibrium model to simulate the changes that will occur in the Bolivian economy and will consider the distributional impacts that are likely to arise from these economic changes.
Labor market frictions are even more pervasive in developing countries than in Western industrial... more Labor market frictions are even more pervasive in developing countries than in Western industrialized economies. In spite of this, stochastic models of frictional markets have rarely been applied to developing countries. In this paper, we estimate structural parameters of both a simple and an extended job separation model with the purpose of understanding constraints in the labor market in Bolivia. The results confirm the hypothesis that skilled labor is scarce in Bolivia, while unskilled labor is abundantly available. This implies that skilled employees shop around for alternative employment opportunities and quit their jobs when a better opportunity arises. The quit rate among skilled employees in the private sector is much higher than the quit rate among skilled employees in the public sector. The reverse is true for the lay-off rate, and together this suggests that the private sector has difficulties maintaining its skilled labor. The private sector might try to improve its capa...
This paper proposes a simple way to measure livelihood diversification, and uses this measure tog... more This paper proposes a simple way to measure livelihood diversification, and uses this measure together with income levels to classify Bolivian households by level of vulnerability. Regression analysis is then carried out to determine the factors and strategies associated with high resilience or high vulnerability. The results show that the single most important strategy for resilience is to have a working and income earning spouse in the household. This is still much too uncommon in Bolivia. A second important factor is the age of the head of household. Young families are considerably more vulnerable than more mature families, as they have not had time to build up assets that can provide alternative sources of livelihood. One of the most surprising results of the study is that urban households are considerably more vulnerable to adverse shocks than rural households, whereas gender and ethnicity are irrelevant. The paper finishes with a comprehensive list of policy recommendations.
This paper evaluates the degree of social mobility in Bolivia, both by comparing to other Latin A... more This paper evaluates the degree of social mobility in Bolivia, both by comparing to other Latin American countries, and by comparing social mobility at different points in time. While Bolivia had one of the lowest levels of social mobility in the region in 1997, the last 10 years have seen spectacular improvements, especially for rural and female teenagers. This is very good news, as it suggests that Bolivia has finally escaped the low mobility – low growth equilibrium where it has been stuck for so long. JEL classification: E60, I32, J12, J13.
This paper analyses non-agricultural work supplied by rural households in Bolivia. It is shown th... more This paper analyses non-agricultural work supplied by rural households in Bolivia. It is shown that roughly 50% of all rural households complement their incomes through non-agricultural work, but that households in the lowlands are more likely to do so than households in the highlands. Since non-agricultural work pays several times better than agricultural work, access to this source of complementary income constitutes an important opportunity to escape rural poverty.
The carbon sequestration potential of an unmanaged and previously unstudied Guadua angustifolia b... more The carbon sequestration potential of an unmanaged and previously unstudied Guadua angustifolia bamboo forest in the Carrasco National Park of Bolivia has been studied, by estimating the total aboveground biomass contained in the forest. It was found that the aboveground biomass consisting of stems, branches, and foliage, contains a total of 200 tons per hectare, leading to an estimated 100 tons of carbon being stored per hectare aboveground, which is comparable to some species of tree such as the Chinese Fir; this bamboo species therefore has the potential to play a significant role in the mitigation of climate change. The relation between the biomass, M, of each component (stems, branches, and foliage) and the diameter, d, of the plant was also studied, by fitting allometric equations of the form M = ads. It was found that all components fit this power law relation very well (R2 > 0.7), particularly the stems (R2 > 0.8) and branches (R2 > 0.9) for which the relation is fo...
This paper calculates and analyzes key indicators from Bolivia’s Green National Accounts during t... more This paper calculates and analyzes key indicators from Bolivia’s Green National Accounts during the period 1990 – 2015, which covers an entire Commodity Super Cycle. The first half includes the Great Commodities Depression while the second half of the period is characterized by an unprecedented commodities boom. We show that the contribution of ecosystem goods and services to the Bolivian economy remain relatively stable over the cycle, while the contribution of non-renewable resources increases by a factor of four between the bottom of the cycle (1993) and the top of the cycle (2011). Similarly, the differences between Net Capital Formation and Environmentally-adjusted Net Capital formation is small at the bottom of the Commodity Super Cycle (2.3% of GDP) but much larger at the top of the cycle (7.7% of GDP).
Este documento presenta una metodologia para medir la diversificacion de los medios de vida de lo... more Este documento presenta una metodologia para medir la diversificacion de los medios de vida de los hogares. Esta medida, junto a los niveles de ingresos de los hogares, nos permite clasificarlos segun la vulnerabilidad que estos pudieran tener. Aplicamos analisis de regresion para detectar los factores y estrategias asociadas a resiliencia y a vulnerabilidad. Los resultados muestran que la estrategia mas importante para lograr resiliencia es que los hogares cuenten con una esposa que aporte a los ingresos del hogar. Esto todavia no es comun en Bolivia, ya que muchas mujeres se ocupan exclusivamente de las labores del hogar. Un segundo factor importante es la edad del jefe de hogar. Los hogares jovenes son muy vulnerables porque no han tenido tiempo para acumular el capital humano, financiero y social que les podria permitir crear otras fuentes de sustento para el hogar. Algunos de los resultados mas sorprendentes es que los hogares urbanos son considerados mas vulnerables que los ho...
This study carries out a cross-country analysis of changes in quantity and quality of life during... more This study carries out a cross-country analysis of changes in quantity and quality of life during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic for 124 countries. Changes in the quantity of life are measured as life years lost to COVID-19, including excess deaths not officially reported as COVID-19 deaths. Changes in quality of life are proxied by the average change in daily mobility, compared to a pre-COVID baseline. We find a significant negative correlation between the two, meaning that the countries with the biggest reductions in mobility are also the countries with the biggest losses of life years. We calculate that about 48 million life years were lost during the first year of the pandemic, corresponding to 0.018% of all expected life years. For comparison, at least double the amount of life years are lost every year due to children dying of diarrhea. About 28 million life years are created every day from babies being born, so the first year of the pandemic set us back less than two...
Reducing deforestation could potentially be a cheap and efficient way of reducing carbon emission... more Reducing deforestation could potentially be a cheap and efficient way of reducing carbon emissions. Bolivia, due to its large forest endowment and high levels of deforestation, has qualified as a prime candidate for this kind of policy. Deforestation reduction policies, however, are likely to have important economic-environmental trade-offs and there is currently a gap of quantitative analysis to guide the discussion and design of mechanisms for reducing deforestation in Bolivia. In this paper, we build on the OSIRIS-Bolivia model to create the CISS-Bolivia model, an excel-based tool for modeling the effects of incentives for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) in Bolivia. Similarly to OSIRIS-Bolivia, the CISS is based on a spatial econometric model of deforestation in Bolivia during the period 2001-2005, and uses information on forest cover, deforestation rates, geographical conditions, and drivers of deforestation, including agricultural opportunity...
There is conceptually a big difference between inequality of opportunity and inequality of outcom... more There is conceptually a big difference between inequality of opportunity and inequality of outcomes, and the policies needed to address the two different kinds of inequality are also very different. However, it is difficult to measure inequality of opportunity. This paper proposes a new measure of equality of opportunity, based on the importance of family background variables for nutritional status in early childhood. We applied the proposed methodology to 166 Demographic and Health Surveys, from 60 different countries, carried out between 1991 and 2015. What stands out most strongly from these estimations is the low level of equality of opportunity in Latin America compared to the rest of the world. Family background is much more important for children’s nutritional status in this region than in the rest of the world. In contrast, the countries of sub-Saharan Africa were found to have surprisingly high equality of opportunity, suggesting that in this region other factors than famil...
This paper describes the construction of the most detailed, openly accessible Social Accounting M... more This paper describes the construction of the most detailed, openly accessible Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Bolivia to date. In addition to allowing for “standard” socio-economic analysis common for SAMs - like assessing the linkages between production, factor income distribution and households’ incomes and expenditures – the SAM presented in this paper makes detailed economic assessments at the subnational level, by gender and at detailed agricultural subsector levels, possible. Sections 1-4 present the methodology and data sources used, explain assumptions and criteria adopted for SAM disaggregation, and discuss key findings with a focus on distributional features. Section 5 presents results from a simple SAM multiplier model and section 6 concludes. It is the authors’ hope that this SAM database can make a contribution to evidence-based policy making that helps to further reduce poverty and food insecurity in Bolivia.
Policy interventions designed to simultaneously stem deforestation and reduce poverty in tropical... more Policy interventions designed to simultaneously stem deforestation and reduce poverty in tropical countries entail complex socio-environmental trade-offs. A hybrid model, comprising an optimising, agricultural household model integrated into the ‘shell’ of an agent-based model, is developed in order to explore the trade-offs of alternative policy bundles and sequencing options. The model is calibrated to the initial conditions of a small forest village in rural Bolivia. Heterogeneous farmers make individually optimal land-use decisions based on factor endowments and market conditions. Endogenously determined wages and policy provided jobs link the agricultural labour market and ruralurban migration rates. Over a simulated 20-year period, the policymaker makes “real-time” public investments and public policy that in turn impact welfare, productivity, and migration. National and local land-use policy interventions include conservation payments, deforestation taxes and international RE...
Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, this paper evaluates the effectivene... more Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, this paper evaluates the effectiveness of Bolivia’s national irrigation programs PRONAR and PRONAREC in reducing the vulnerability of agricultural communities. We propose a couple of practical indicators to measure vulnerability, and then develop an explicit Theory of Change that not only explains how irrigation systems are expected to reduce vulnerability, but also highlights where things might go wrong. We then proceed to make a propensity score matched difference-in-differences estimation that compares the change in vulnerability of households in cantons that have benefitted from irrigation projects during the period 2002 to 2012 with the changes in similar households in cantons that have not benefitted from one of the national irrigation programs. In order to complement the quantitative analysis, we carried out interviews and focus groups with past and present program officials and program beneficiaries in the highland...
This paper analyzes gender and ethnic differences in vulnerability and resilience to external sho... more This paper analyzes gender and ethnic differences in vulnerability and resilience to external shocks and stresses in Mexico. Vulnerability and resilience are measured by a combination of the level of household incomes per capita and the degree of diversification of these incomes. Thus, households which have poorly diversified incomes falling below the national poverty line are classified as highly vulnerable, whereas households which have highly diversified incomes above the poverty line are classified as highly resilient. The analysis shows that both gender and ethnicity are almost irrelevant as explanatory factors of vulnerability whereas education levels, dependency ratios and the age of the head of household are very important. Determining the true factors that affect vulnerability is important in order to devise effective policies to reduce vulnerability.
The high oil prices and the sharp increases in royalties mean that the natural gas boom in Bolivi... more The high oil prices and the sharp increases in royalties mean that the natural gas boom in Bolivia has become very important for the economy, and particularly important as a source of government revenues. Using a CGE model, Andersen et al (2006) show that the natural gas boom is likely to boost GDP growth by about 1 percentage point per year. However, if the government continues with past spending and investment patterns, the boom is also likely to have a very adverse effect on the income distribution, so much so that the poorest half of the population is likely to experience absolute reductions in their real income levels compared to a scenario without gas boom. The present paper explores alternative uses of natural gas revenues in the CGE model to see if a better outcome can be engineered.
El volumen reune diversos trabajos sobre los mercados laborales en los tres paises durante la dec... more El volumen reune diversos trabajos sobre los mercados laborales en los tres paises durante la decada comprendida entre 1997 y 2008. En los tres casos se hacen analisis globales de la situacion laboral de cada pais asi como analisis particualres de las areas rurales y las areas urbanas. Lo que se encuentra es que los mercados laborales no se habrian tornado todo lo dinamico que se esperaba fueran despues de las reformas estructurales. Sin embargo es importante mencionar que estas reformas tuvieron diferentes caracteristicas y diferentes periodos de maduracion.
Las ultimas dos decadas han visto mejoramientos sustanciales en la asistencia escolar de ninas en... more Las ultimas dos decadas han visto mejoramientos sustanciales en la asistencia escolar de ninas en America Latina, hasta el punto que, en la mayoria de los paises, mas ninas que ninos asisten a las escuelas. Sin embargo, Bolivia es una excepcion, especialmente en areas rurales donde la brecha educativa entre hombres y mujeres jovenes todavia es significativa. El informe muestra que en 113 de los 314 municipios en Bolivia las ninas tienen menor acceso y/o permanencia en el sistema escolar que los ninos, mientras que las ninas solo tienen ventajes de acceso y/o permanencia en 2 municipios. En el resto de los municipios, los ninos y las ninas tienen el mismo acceso y el mismo nivel de permanencia (medido a 15 anos). La mayoria de los municipios con inequidades genericas en contra de las ninas se encuentran en el altiplano en las zonas con mayor pobreza y mayor proporcion de poblacion Aymara. En terminos absolutos, el problema de inasistencia de las ninas (y tambien de los ninos) se conc...
An important part of Bolivia’s fiscal revenues are directly tied to world oil prices. Since oil p... more An important part of Bolivia’s fiscal revenues are directly tied to world oil prices. Since oil prices are very volatile, so are Bolivia’s fiscal revenues. For example, if oil prices vary as much during the next couple of decades as they did during the previous two decades, then the fiscal revenues arising from our exports of natural gas to Brazil would vary between US$ 141 million per year and US$ 1.1 billion per year, and the revenues in any particular year would be largely unpredictable. Such volatility of fiscal revenues is undesirable, especially for a country that tries to implement a poverty reduction strategy requiring a steady and predictable flow of funds. This paper calculates the likely range values for the revenues that Bolivia will derive from natural gas exports, as well as the likely variation from year to year. Based on these calculations we design a Stabilization Fund, which accumulates money when world oil prices are high and distributes money when oil prices are ...
The increase in Natural Gas sales to Brazil in the coming years will bring about substantial chan... more The increase in Natural Gas sales to Brazil in the coming years will bring about substantial changes in the Bolivian economy. In this paper, we use a general equilibrium model to simulate the changes that will occur in the Bolivian economy and will consider the distributional impacts that are likely to arise from these economic changes.
Labor market frictions are even more pervasive in developing countries than in Western industrial... more Labor market frictions are even more pervasive in developing countries than in Western industrialized economies. In spite of this, stochastic models of frictional markets have rarely been applied to developing countries. In this paper, we estimate structural parameters of both a simple and an extended job separation model with the purpose of understanding constraints in the labor market in Bolivia. The results confirm the hypothesis that skilled labor is scarce in Bolivia, while unskilled labor is abundantly available. This implies that skilled employees shop around for alternative employment opportunities and quit their jobs when a better opportunity arises. The quit rate among skilled employees in the private sector is much higher than the quit rate among skilled employees in the public sector. The reverse is true for the lay-off rate, and together this suggests that the private sector has difficulties maintaining its skilled labor. The private sector might try to improve its capa...
This paper proposes a simple way to measure livelihood diversification, and uses this measure tog... more This paper proposes a simple way to measure livelihood diversification, and uses this measure together with income levels to classify Bolivian households by level of vulnerability. Regression analysis is then carried out to determine the factors and strategies associated with high resilience or high vulnerability. The results show that the single most important strategy for resilience is to have a working and income earning spouse in the household. This is still much too uncommon in Bolivia. A second important factor is the age of the head of household. Young families are considerably more vulnerable than more mature families, as they have not had time to build up assets that can provide alternative sources of livelihood. One of the most surprising results of the study is that urban households are considerably more vulnerable to adverse shocks than rural households, whereas gender and ethnicity are irrelevant. The paper finishes with a comprehensive list of policy recommendations.
This paper evaluates the degree of social mobility in Bolivia, both by comparing to other Latin A... more This paper evaluates the degree of social mobility in Bolivia, both by comparing to other Latin American countries, and by comparing social mobility at different points in time. While Bolivia had one of the lowest levels of social mobility in the region in 1997, the last 10 years have seen spectacular improvements, especially for rural and female teenagers. This is very good news, as it suggests that Bolivia has finally escaped the low mobility – low growth equilibrium where it has been stuck for so long. JEL classification: E60, I32, J12, J13.
This paper analyses non-agricultural work supplied by rural households in Bolivia. It is shown th... more This paper analyses non-agricultural work supplied by rural households in Bolivia. It is shown that roughly 50% of all rural households complement their incomes through non-agricultural work, but that households in the lowlands are more likely to do so than households in the highlands. Since non-agricultural work pays several times better than agricultural work, access to this source of complementary income constitutes an important opportunity to escape rural poverty.
The carbon sequestration potential of an unmanaged and previously unstudied Guadua angustifolia b... more The carbon sequestration potential of an unmanaged and previously unstudied Guadua angustifolia bamboo forest in the Carrasco National Park of Bolivia has been studied, by estimating the total aboveground biomass contained in the forest. It was found that the aboveground biomass consisting of stems, branches, and foliage, contains a total of 200 tons per hectare, leading to an estimated 100 tons of carbon being stored per hectare aboveground, which is comparable to some species of tree such as the Chinese Fir; this bamboo species therefore has the potential to play a significant role in the mitigation of climate change. The relation between the biomass, M, of each component (stems, branches, and foliage) and the diameter, d, of the plant was also studied, by fitting allometric equations of the form M = ads. It was found that all components fit this power law relation very well (R2 > 0.7), particularly the stems (R2 > 0.8) and branches (R2 > 0.9) for which the relation is fo...
This paper calculates and analyzes key indicators from Bolivia’s Green National Accounts during t... more This paper calculates and analyzes key indicators from Bolivia’s Green National Accounts during the period 1990 – 2015, which covers an entire Commodity Super Cycle. The first half includes the Great Commodities Depression while the second half of the period is characterized by an unprecedented commodities boom. We show that the contribution of ecosystem goods and services to the Bolivian economy remain relatively stable over the cycle, while the contribution of non-renewable resources increases by a factor of four between the bottom of the cycle (1993) and the top of the cycle (2011). Similarly, the differences between Net Capital Formation and Environmentally-adjusted Net Capital formation is small at the bottom of the Commodity Super Cycle (2.3% of GDP) but much larger at the top of the cycle (7.7% of GDP).
Este documento presenta una metodologia para medir la diversificacion de los medios de vida de lo... more Este documento presenta una metodologia para medir la diversificacion de los medios de vida de los hogares. Esta medida, junto a los niveles de ingresos de los hogares, nos permite clasificarlos segun la vulnerabilidad que estos pudieran tener. Aplicamos analisis de regresion para detectar los factores y estrategias asociadas a resiliencia y a vulnerabilidad. Los resultados muestran que la estrategia mas importante para lograr resiliencia es que los hogares cuenten con una esposa que aporte a los ingresos del hogar. Esto todavia no es comun en Bolivia, ya que muchas mujeres se ocupan exclusivamente de las labores del hogar. Un segundo factor importante es la edad del jefe de hogar. Los hogares jovenes son muy vulnerables porque no han tenido tiempo para acumular el capital humano, financiero y social que les podria permitir crear otras fuentes de sustento para el hogar. Algunos de los resultados mas sorprendentes es que los hogares urbanos son considerados mas vulnerables que los ho...
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