A New Approach to Modeling the Impacts of Financial Crises on Income Distribution and Poverty

Abstract

Most studies attempting to link macroeconomic trends—particularly growth—and poverty have used aggregate cross-country data and unsophisticated regression models with limited usefulness for policy analyses. They do not really explain the mechanisms through which growth, let alone macroeconomic fluctuation, affects poverty. In the context of financial crisis, many studies compare poverty conditions before and after the crisis, as if everything that led to the rise of poverty was due to the financial shock. The current study is intended to fill the gap, by making use of an economy-wide model with a price endogenous feature, detailed financial sector, and explicit poverty module. Applied to the case of a specific country—Indonesia—the model is subsequently used to generate a set of counterfactual policy scenarios. It is shown that alternative policies during the crisis would have been more favorable in terms of employment, income distribution, and poverty, compared to the actual (benchmark) scenario.