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The study examines the impact of fiscal policy shocks on economic growth and income inequality in Ghana. This has become necessary because of the interdependence between growth and income inequality and the role fiscal policy plays in this relationship in the development process of a country. Thus, a study that investigates how government expenditure shock and tax revenue shock influence the relationship between economic growth and income inequality could assist policymakers to adopt the best policy mix to ensure income equity and sustained economic growth in Ghana.

It employs sacrifice ratio from structural VAR model using quarterly time series data from 1996 to 2019 on Ghana.

Our results show that government expenditure shock impacts economic growth, exchange rate and education positively and significantly in the long run. Also, tax revenue shock has a positive impact on income inequality, economic growth and education. The findings further show that there exists a trade-off between economic growth and income inequality in the long run.

The relationships between fiscal policy shocks, economic growth and income inequality have been extensively discussed among scholars. Understanding how these three macroeconomic variables are determined and their interrelationships are crucial for policymakers. This is because fiscal policy aids in both economic growth and income inequality. In the empirical literature, the emphasis has been on independently estimating the growth effects of fiscal policy or the distribution effects of fiscal policy, leaving out the existence of possible trade-off between economic growth and income inequality following a fiscal shock. To the best of our knowledge, no empirical study has been done on Ghana to empirically examine the trade-off between economic growth and income inequality as we do in this paper.

This study aims to investigate the impact of local windfall gains from the Spanish Christmas lottery on household consumption behavior.

The study applies differences-in-differences to assess permanent income hypothesis (PIH) validity, examining pre- and postlottery consumption effects. Additionally, it also uses an instrumental variable regression, using the lottery shock as an instrument for total expenditures, to estimate the Engel curves.

The paper finds a PIH violation; households in winning region notably increase consumption on durable and nondurable goods compared to nonwinning ones. Moreover, durable goods consumption is responsive to lottery winnings, while nondurable goods consumption are unit-elastic to expenditure shocks.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first paper analyzing the effects of winning regions of the Spanish Christmas lottery in all types of consumption goods, testing its consequences in the PIH and estimating its effects in the Engel curves.

This study aims to test the validity of the Rajan theory in South Africa and other selected emerging markets (Chile, Peru and Brazil) during the period 1975–2019.

In this study, the researchers used time-series data to estimate a Bayesian Vector Autoregression (BVAR) model with hierarchical priors. The BVAR technique has the advantage of being able to accommodate a wide cross-section of variables without running out of degrees of freedom. It is also able to deal with dense parameterization by imposing structure on model coefficients via prior information and optimal choice of the degree of formativeness.

The results for all countries except Peru confirmed the Rajan hypotheses, indicating that inequality contributes to high indebtedness, resulting in financial fragility. However, for Peru, this study finds it contradicts the theory. This study controlled for monetary policy shock and found the results differing country-specific.

The findings suggest that an escalating level of inequality leads to financial fragility, which implies that policymakers ought to be cautious of excessive inequality when endeavouring to contain the risk of financial fragility, by implementing sound structural reform policies that aim to attract investments consistent with job creation, development and growth in these countries. Policymakers should also be cautious when implementing policy tools (redistributive policies, a sound monetary policy), as they seem to increase the risk of excessive credit growth and financial fragility, and they need to treat income inequality as an important factor relevant to macroeconomic aggregates and financial fragility.

This study aims to understand the socioeconomic impact of flood events on households, especially household welfare in terms of changes in consumption and coping strategies to deal with flood risk. This study is based on Bihar, one of the most frequently flood-affected, most populous and economically backward states in India.

Primary data were collected from 700 households in the seven most frequently flood-affected districts in Bihar. A total of 100 individuals from each district were randomly selected from flood-affected villages. Based on a detailed literature review, an econometric (probit) model was developed to test the null hypothesis of the availability of consumption insurance, and the multivariate probability approach was used to analyze the various coping strategies of these households.

The results of this study suggest that flood-affected households maintain their consumption by overcoming various losses, including income, house damage and livestock loss. Households depend on financial transfers, borrowings and relief, and migrate to overcome losses. Borrowing could be an extra burden as the government compensates for house damage and crop loss late to the affected households. Again, there is no compensation to overcome livelihood loss and deal with occurrences of post-flood diseases, which further emphasizes the policy implications of strengthening the health infrastructure in the state and generating alternative livelihood opportunities.

This study discusses flood risk in terms of changes in household welfare, identifies the most effective risk-coping capabilities of rural communities and contributes to the shortcomings of the government insurance and relief model.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-07-2023-0569

Informal migrant workers and street vendors have long been recognized as vulnerable groups in urban areas of Global South countries. However, limited studies exist on the economic challenges faced by migrant street vendors during crises. We aim to address this gap by shedding light on their livelihood and welfare losses during a public health crisis.

This research uses descriptive and qualitative analyzes to triangulate the results. Data are derived from surveys and in-depth interviews with migrant street vendors in the two biggest cities in Vietnam during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The street vendors experienced significant business loss and consumption reduction during social distancing as well as encountered difficulties in recovering their businesses in the “new normal.” These adverse consequences were also found to disproportionately affect women vendors. Additionally, despite adopting various strategies and mitigation mechanisms to sustain their businesses and consumption, these efforts proved insufficient.

This research underscores the importance of short-term and long-term urban policies aimed at supporting and promoting the social inclusion of street vendors, particularly migrant and women vendors.

This research represents one of the early attempts to explore the adverse effects of a public health crisis on migrant street vendors and to examine whether the crisis disproportionately affected vendors from different genders and educational backgrounds. It also examines their business recovery in the “new normal.”

This paper aims to propose a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model for the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) to assess the response from the household sector to monetary policy shocks through the consumption function. Moreover, the transmission from monetary policy to household consumption and income distribution is experimented with through the vector autoregression (VAR) model.

In this study, the authors used the maximum likelihood estimation to estimate the DSGE and VAR models with the sample from 1996Q1 to the end of 2021Q4 (104 observations).

The DSGE model’s results show that the response of the household sector is as expected in the theory: a monetary policy shock occurs that increases the policy interest rate by 0.29%, leading to a decrease in consumer spending of about 0.041%, the shock fades after one year. Estimates from the VAR model give similar results: a monetary policy shock narrows income inequality after about 2–3 quarters and this process tends to slow down in the long run.

Based on the research results, the authors propose policy implications for the SBV to achieve the goal of price stability, and stabilizing the macro-economic environment in Vietnam.

The findings of the study have theoretical contributions and empirical scientific evidence showing the effectiveness of the implementation of the SBV’s monetary policy in the context of macro-instability, namely: flexibility, caution and coordination of different measures promptly.

This paper examines the impact of extreme rainfall shocks on the performance in test scores of students living near at-risk urban areas in Brazil.

To identify the causal effect, we consider the exogenous variation of rainfall at the municipal level conditioned on the distance from the school to risk areas and the rainfall intensity in the school months.

The results suggest that extreme precipitation shocks, defined as a shock of at least three months of high-intensity rainfall, have an adverse impact on both math and language performance. Through a heterogeneous effects analysis, we find that the impact varies by student gender, with girls being more affected. In addition, among students who study near at-risk areas, those with better previous school performance and higher socioeconomic status are more negatively affected.

Our results suggest that extreme weather events can increase the differences in human capital accumulation between the population living near risk areas and those living more distant from these areas.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the implications of COVID-19 shocks on household income, food security and the role of social protection in Tunisia.

We used food insecurity classes proposed by FAO and data from the Economic Research Forum (ERF) Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Monitor Household Survey conducted over four waves of COVID-19 (November 2020, February 2021, April 2021 and June 2021). Here, the regression of a multinomial logistic model (MLM) is used to highlight the likelihood that a respondent’s eating habits were degraded by the COVID-19 crisis.

The findings first indicate that low-income and labor income-dependent households are the most vulnerable to shocks induced by COVID-19 and have had their food habits deteriorate considerably. Second, self-produced food by farmers who inhabit rural areas represented a food safety net during the pandemic. Finally, households that received a social transfer did not manage to overcome severe food insecurity.

As a result, the challenges are to extend social protection coverage to households that face transitory poverty.

This is among the first studies to examine the effects of COVID-19 on household income and food insecurity in Tunisia. The study uses a new survey whose main objective is to monitor the impact of health crisis on Tunisian households, taking into consideration the strong labor market fluctuations. Indeed, these fluctuations, when measured against the pre-pandemic period and subsequent periods, would help to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on households’ well-being.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2023-0867.

This paper aims to determine the implications of Covid-19 on the livelihood of marine fishermen. It gives a concrete picture of how vulnerable communities like marine fishermen are affected due to the lockdown policies. The paper examines these communities' present status and the extent of vulnerability during the post-Covid period.

The study uses an exploratory research design to find the solution to the research problem. 298 samples were collected and analysed within a sustainable livelihood theoretical framework. The scope of the study is limited to marine fishermen in Kerala, residing in six districts out of the nine coastal districts. The impact of the lockdown on income was analysed using paired t-test and results linked with the theory.

The study has done an empirical analysis for three periods: before lockdown, lockdown and after lockdown, to identify the impact of lockdown on marine fishermen. The study's significant findings are that these fishermen's livelihood is at risk during the post-lockdown period, and many families are moving into a “debt-trap”.

Policymakers can develop appropriate policy strategies to enhance the livelihood assets of vulnerable communities to include them in a sustainable framework.

Only a few studies are highlighting the impact of Covid-19 on vulnerable communities in India. The effects of climate change on the marine ecosystem are already endangering marine fisher folks' livelihoods. In this light, it is vital to study the extent of the impact of income shock on the livelihood assets of marine fishermen due to the lockdown policy implemented in the State to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-03-2023-0192

We study five exogenous shocks: climate, violence, price hikes, spoilage and the COVID-19 lockdown. We analyze the association between these shocks and trader characteristics, reflecting trader vulnerability.

Using primary survey data on 1,100 Nigerian maize traders for 2021 (controlling for shocks in 2017), we use probit models to estimate the probabilities of experiencing climate, violence, disease and cost shocks associated with trader characteristics (gender, size and region) and to estimate the probability of vulnerability (experiencing severe impacts).

Traders are prone to experiencing more than one shock, which increases the intensity of the shocks. Price shocks are often accompanied by violence, climate and COVID-19 shocks. The poorer northern region is disproportionately affected by shocks. Northern traders experience more price shocks while Southern traders are more affected by violence shocks given their dependence on long supply chains from the north for their maize. Female traders are more likely to experience violent events than men who tend to be more exposed to climate shocks.

The data only permit analysis of the general degree of impact of a shock rather than quantifying lost income.

This paper is the first to analyze the incidence of multiple shocks on grain traders and the unequal distribution of negative impacts. It is the first such in Africa based on a large sample of grain traders from a primary survey.