Output, prices, and the distribution of consumption in rural India

This paper analyzes the relation among agricultural output, inflation and the distribution of consumption in rural India, using the Singh-Maddala family to model the entire distribution parametrically. Employing a benchmark case in which growth is distributionally neutral and idiosyncratic shocks ar...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bell, Clive (Author) , Klonner, Stefan (Author)
Format: Article (Journal)
Language:English
Published: 2005
In: Agricultural economics
Year: 2005, Volume: 33, Issue: 1, Pages: 29-40
ISSN:0169-5150
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Author Notes:by Clive Bell and Stefan Klonner
Description
Summary:This paper analyzes the relation among agricultural output, inflation and the distribution of consumption in rural India, using the Singh-Maddala family to model the entire distribution parametrically. Employing a benchmark case in which growth is distributionally neutral and idiosyncratic shocks are completely smoothed, and using a GMM-estimator to deal with potential simultaneity between output and consumption, we conclude that: (i) growth was not distributionally neutral; (ii) good harvests (relative to trend) yielded improvements according to first-order stochastic dominance; (iii) slow growth before 1980 went with decreasing inequality; (iv) accelerated growth thereafter tended to increase inequality, though yielding improvements according to first-order stochastic dominance; (v) consumption-smoothing was incomplete.
ISSN:0169-5150