Evaluation pro-poor growth enhancing investments in infrastructure and rural development requires comprehensive appraisal tools. Traditional methods have taken a project or sector perspective that did not capture economy-wide effects. However, in addition to inter-sectoral effects, large-scale investments can also have long-term impacts on national capital formation, the government budget and the foreign trade balance. This study builds a computable general equilibrium model and links it to a micro-accounting module for poverty analysis in Vietnam. The spatial dimension is captured by incorporating two regions into the model: the lagging mountainous province of Son La is compared to the rest of Vietnam. This model is applied to several infrastructure investments and identifies economic growth rates that would be needed to achieve the first Millennium Development Goal.

The Author: Clemens Breisinger received his MSc and Ph.D. in agricultural economics from the University of Hohenheim, Germany. During his Ph.D. research in cooperation with the Thai-Vietnamese-German Special Research Program (SFB 564), the author worked as a research associate at the Department for Rural Development Economics and Policy at the University of Hohenheim and is assistant to the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.