Is the Elimination of Food Subsidies the Right Policy to Address Lebanon’s Public Finance Crisis?

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper, we use a positional dominance approach to assess the desirability of eliminating food subsidies in Lebanon. The analysis is based on aggregate information from the 2004 to 2005 National Survey of Households Living Conditions. We use this aggregate information on expenditure patterns to reconstructroughestimates ofs-concentration curves and efficiency-cost ratio sets. Evidences suggest that the Lebanese government should probably find other avenues to reduce the fiscal deficit.