The Economics of Poverty Traps and Persistent Poverty: Empirical and Policy Implications
梳理了贫困陷阱的产生机制，聚焦于多重金融市场失灵这一机制，提出通过检验特定理性行为来识别贫困陷阱，而非直接估计资产动态，为政策设计提供依据。
The moral and economic imperatives to intervene in poverty traps motivate the identification of poverty traps and their structural causes so as to inform the design of appropriate policy responses. However, empirical identification remains challenging because of poverty traps’ complexity. After reviewing mechanisms that can generate poverty traps, we focus on one – multiple financial market failures – emphasising its heretofore underappreciated testable implications, including specific behaviours that are rational only in the presence of a poverty trap. We therefore recommend tests for these behaviours rather than more econometrically challenged efforts to directly test for poverty traps in estimated asset dynamics.