introduction understanding structural transformation in africa summary the limitations of neo classical growth models have led to a resurgence of interest in dual economy models and structural change structural change entails the movement of labor from low productivity sectors like agriculture into more modern sectors of the economy because the share of the labor force in agriculture is so high in most of sub saharan africa the potential for structural change to lead to growth and poverty alleviation in africa appears to be enormous yet very little of this new literature on structural change focuses on africa this special issue begins to fill that gap the first half of this special issue contains five original contributions that provide new insights with respect to the nature of africa s growth over the past two decades the second half contains six original contributions that examine opportunities for structural transformation in africa

green revolution in sub saharan africa implications of imposed innovation for the wellbeing of rural smallholders green revolution policies are again being pursued to drive agricultural growth and reduce poverty in sub saharan africa however conditions have changed since the well documented successes of the 1960s and 1970s benefitted smallholders in southern asia and beyond we argue that under contemporary constraints the mechanisms for achieving improvements in the lives of smallholder farmers through such policies are unclear and that both policy rationale and means of governing agricultural innovation are crucial for pro poor impacts to critically analyze rwanda s green revolution policies and impacts from a local perspective a mixed methods multidimensional wellbeing approach is applied in rural areas in mountainous western rwanda here malthusian policy framing has been used to justify imposed rather than induced innovation the policies involve a substantial transformation for rural farmers from a traditional polyculture system supporting subsistence and local trade to the adoption of modern seed varieties inputs and credit in order to specialize in marketable crops and achieve increased production and income although policies have been deemed successful in raising yields and conventionally measured poverty rates have fallen over the same period such trends were found to be quite incongruous with local experiences disaggregated results reveal that only a relatively wealthy minority were able to adhere to the enforced modernization and policies appear to be exacerbating landlessness and inequality for poorer rural inhabitants negative impacts were evident for the majority of households as subsistence practices were disrupted poverty exacerbated local systems of knowledge trade and labor were impaired and land tenure security and autonomy were curtailed in order to mitigate the effects we recommend that inventive pro poor forms of tenure and cooperation none of which preclude improvements to input availability market linkages and infrastructure may provide positive outcomes for rural people and importantly in rwanda for those who have become landless in recent years we conclude that policies promoting a green revolution in sub saharan africa should not all be considered to be pro poor or even to be of a similar type but rather should be the subject of rigorous impact assessment such assessment should be based not only on consistent objective indicators but pay attention to localized impacts on land tenure agricultural practices and the wellbeing of socially differentiated people

capital budgets borrowing rules and state capital spending abstract this paper compares the level and composition of government spending in u s states that maintain separate budgets for capital and operating expenditures with that in states that employ unified budgets it also investigates the effects of pay as you go financing rules for capital projects the empirical findings suggest that states with separate capital budgets spend more on public capital projects than comparable states with unified budgets there is no evidence that the presence or absence of a capital budget affects the level of non capital spending pay as you go requirements for financing capital projects are associated with lower levels of both capital and non capital spending

government policy and the firm s capital structure abstract the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of commonly observed forms of government intervention on the firm s capital structure we show that since market claims against the firm are always properly priced the firm is forced to take market claimants interests into account on the other hand since government claims are usually not adjusted for risk the firm can take advantage of the government it does so by choosing strategies that extract maximum value minimum cost from these policies in particular the firm uses its capital capital structure to maximize the value of the policy thus leading to a determinate capital strucure

economic development institutional change and the political economy of agricultural protection an econometric study of belgium since the 19th century this empirical study uses 100 years of annual data on 11 agricultural commodities from belgium to measure the impact of structural changes coinciding with economic development and changes in political institutions on agricultural protection the analysis shows that changes in agricultural protection are caused by a combination of factors governments have increased protection and support to farmers when world market prices for their commodities fell and vice versa offsetting market effects on producer incomes other economic determinants were the share of the commodities in total consumer expenditures negative effect and in total output of the economy positive effect with belgium a small economy there was no impact of the trade position changes in political institutions have affected agricultural protection democratic reforms which induced a significant shift in the political balance towards agricultural interests such as the introduction of the one man one vote system led to an increase in agricultural protection the integration of belgian agricultural policies in the common agricultural policy in 1968 coincided with an increase in protection ceteris paribus both institutional factors related to changes in access to and information about the decision making at the eu level and structural changes in the agricultural and food economy may explain this effect

structural transformation and the deterioration of european labor market outcomes this paper examines hours worked in continental europe and the united states from 1956 to 2003 the empirical work establishes two results first hours worked in europe decline by almost 45 percent compared to the united states over this period second this decline is almost entirely accounted for by the fact that europe develops a much smaller market service sector than the united states a simple model of time allocation is used to understand these patterns i find that relative increases in taxes and technological catch up can account for most of the differences between the european and american time allocations over this period

organizational responses to public and private politics an analysis of climate change activists and u s oil and gas firms we explore how activists public and private politics elicit different organizational responses using data on u s petroleum companies from 1982 to 2010 we investigate how climate change activists serving as witnesses at congressional hearings and engaging in firm protests influenced firms internal and external responses we find that public politics induced internally focused practice adoption whereas private politics induced externally focused framing activities we also find that private and public politics had an interaction effect as firms faced more private political pressure they were less likely to respond to public political pressures similarly as firms faced greater public political pressure they were less likely to respond to private political pressures the results suggest that activists can have a significant impact on firm behavior depending on the mix of private and public political tactics they engage in we discuss the implications of our study for social movement research organ

a signaling model of environmental overcompliance abstract we present a theory of unilateral regulatory overcompliance as a signaling device firms that have a competitive advantage in the use of a cleaner but more costly technology overcomply in order to signal to an imperfectly informed benevolent government that compliance costs are low thereby triggering tougher regulation we identify the conditions under which such an overcompliance signaling equilibrium arises showing that there may be over overcompliance in that firms may overcomply even when tougher regulation is not socially desirable we also discuss the differential implications of the signaling theory as compared to other theories of unilateral regulatory overcompliance

inducing environmental disclosures a dynamic mechanism design approach this paper studies the design of voluntary disclosure regulations for a firm that faces a stochastic environmental hazard the occurrence of such a hazard is known only to the firm the regulator if finding a hazard collects a fine and mandates the firm to perform costly remediation that reduces the environmental damage the regulator may inspect the firm at any time to uncover the hazard however because inspections are costly the regulator also offers a reward to the firm for voluntarily disclosing the hazard the reward corresponds to either a subsidy or a reduced fine depending on whether it is positive or negative thus the regulator needs to dynamically determine the reward and inspection policy that minimizes expected societal cost in the long run we model this problem as a dynamic adverse selection problem with costly state verification in continuous time despite the complexity and generality of this setup we show that the optimal regulation policy follows a very simple cyclic structure which we fully characterize in closed form specifically the regulator runs scheduled inspections periodically after each inspection the reward level decreases over time until a subsequent inspection takes place if a hazard is not revealed the reward level is reset to a high level restarting the cycle in contrast to the reward level the mandated remediation level is constant over time nonetheless when subsidies are not allowed in the industry we show that the regulator should dynamically adjust this remediation level which then acts as a substitute for a subsidy our analysis further reveals that optimal inspection frequency increases not only when the inspection accuracy decreases but also when the penalty for not disclosing the hazard increases

going global in groups structural transformation and china s special economic zones overseas summary china s special economic zones helped the country industrialize by attracting foreign investment in 2006 beijing initiated an overseas trade and cooperation zone program assisting chinese companies to invest abroad while also building china s soft power through the transfer of a key component of china s development success little is known about the 19 zones approved so far under this program or the impact they are likely to have on structural transformation and industrial development in their host countries this paper identifies the 19 zones and their proposed locations the process of selection developers implementation and the chinese incentive regime it then focuses on the african zones using a typology of factors that have proven critical for zone development in the past the paper evaluates the potential of these zones for fostering structural transformation in africa

voluntary threat approaches to reduce ambient water pollution this article considers the regulation of nonpoint source water pollution through the use of a voluntary threat approach which allows a polluter group to meet a standard voluntarily but imposes an ambient tax upon noncompliance in particular we develop an endogenous voluntary threat approach that can be parameterized to induce compliance as a unique subgame perfect nash equilibrium and eliminate zero abatement equilibria experimental evidence on the proposed approach as well as the exogenous approach of segerson and wu 2006 suggests that the severity of the threatened tax and the opportunity for communication are critical in determining policy outcomes

quality leadership when regulatory standards are forthcoming in many markets governments set minimum quality standards while some sellers compete on the basis of quality by exceeding them such quality leadership strategies often win public acclaim especially when they involve environmental attributes using a duopoly model of vertical product differentiation we show that if the high quality firm can commit to a quality level before regulations are promulgated it induces the regulator to weaken standards and welfare falls our results raise doubts about the social benefits of corporate self regulation and highlight the dangers of lengthy delays between legislative mandates for new regulations and their implementation

some effects of business environment on retail firms abstractthis paper empirically tests how formal retail entrepreneurs perception about the business environment in cameroon affects the performance of the retail sector i use business owners responses from the 2009 enterprise survey to estimate an econometric model that corrects for heteroscedasticity the results show that regulation costs corruption credit constraints and lack of infrastructure negatively affect the gross margins of firms in contrast the competition of the informal sector perceived by many formal entrepreneurs as a major constraint is positively associated with the gross margins of formal firms policy implications are discussed

can cities or towns drive african development economy wide analysis for ethiopia and uganda rapid urbanization is an important characteristic of african development and yet the structural transformation debate focuses on agriculture s relative merits without also considering the benefits from urban agglomeration as a result african governments are often provided conflicting recommendations on the importance of rural agriculture or urban industry we develop dynamic economy wide models for ethiopia and uganda that capture both traditional aspects of the debate growth linkages and foreign trade and benefits from urbanization internal migration and agglomeration effects simulations suggest that urban agglomeration is an important source of long term growth and structural transformation but that investing in cities does not greatly reduce national poverty over the short term in this regard agricultural growth is more effective albeit with slower national growth given these trade offs we conclude that

budgetary policy with unified and decentralized appropriations authority the divestiture of the house appropriations committee in the1880 s has received considerable attention of an empiricalnature this paper presents a formal model of legislativedecisionmaking using a common agency formulation to representinterest group lobbying of legislators this framework is usedto analyze the effects of decentralizing appropriationsauthority the conditions under which decentralization leadsto higher spending are characterized it is argued that theconventional view that divestiture caused higher levels ofspending only holds if decentralization created barriers tolobbying and political bargaining across different committees in addition the role of specialized committee knowledge isexamined

voluntary environmental agreements good or bad news for environmental protection abstract there has been growing interest in the use of voluntary agreements vas as an environmental policy tool this article uses a simple model to determine whether vas are likely to lead to efficient environmental protection we consider cases where polluters are induced to participate either by a background threat of mandatory controls the stick approach or by cost sharing subsidies the carrot approach the results suggest that the overall impact on environmental quality could be positive or negative depending on a number of factors including the allocation of bargaining power the magnitude of the background threat and the social cost of funds

pricing and regulating affect environmental ethics effluent charges and tradeable permits are economically efficient but rarely used a new explanation for this discrepancy is offered pricing may crowd out environmental ethics in the pricing and via spillovers also in non pricing sectors pricing may therefore increase pollution providing a reason why decision makers tend to reject environmental pricing five propositions showing the conditions for counterproductive effects are advanced they are consistent with available empirical evidence regulation by setting standards and subsidies damage environmental ethics less than pricing because pollution is condoned damaging environmental ethics may prevent political action in favor of the environment

ideological conviction and persuasion in the rent seeking society abstract the paper develops a model of rent seeking in a democratic political context where voting as well as rent seeking matters in this context the paper demonstrates that voter ideology is a constraint on the rent seeking game as well as a possible avenue of rent seeking in a setting where there are both rent seeking and ideological interest groups rent seekers can free ride on the efforts of ideologues which tends to reduce rent seeking effort in a setting where complementary economic and ideological interest groups coordinate their efforts both rent seeking and ideological conflict tend to increase

voting and paying for public goods an application of the theory of the core abstract let any coalition with a majority of all voters have the power to choose the quantities of public goods under rule i a majority coalition bears a cost of its decision that is proportional to its size under rule ii it must bear the whole cost of its decision thus rule i imposes costs on minorities although they have no power to choose the quantities of public goods while rule ii allows goods to have some attributes of semiprivate goods it is shown that a nonempty core under rule i implies a nonempty core under rule ii but not conversely necessary and sufficient conditions in terms of the properties of the von neumann morgenstern characteristic function are given

the role of the structural transformation in aggregate productivity we investigate the role of sectoral differences in labor productivity in explaining the process of structural transformation the secular reallocation of labor across sectors and the time path of aggregate productivity across countries using a simple model of the structural transformation that is calibrated to the growth experience of the united states we measure sectoral labor productivity differences across countries productivity differences between rich and poor countries are large in agriculture and services and smaller in manufacturing moreover over time productivity gaps have been substantially reduced in agriculture and industry but not nearly as much in services in the model these sectoral productivity patterns generate implications that are broadly consistent with the cross country evidence on the structural transformation aggregate productivity paths and relative prices we show that productivity catch up in industry explains about 50 percent of the gains in aggregate productivity across countries while low relative productivity in services and the lack of catch up explains all the experiences of slowdown stagnation and decline observed across countries

the link between social movements and corporate social initiatives toward a multi level theory this article offers a first step toward a multi level theory linking social movements to corporate social initiatives in particular building on the premise that social movements reflect ideologies that direct behavior inside and outside organizations this essay identifies mechanisms by which social movements induce firms to engage with social issues first social movements are able to influence the expectations that key stakeholders have about firms social responsibility making corporate social initiatives more attractive second through conflict or collaboration they shape firms reputation and legitimacy and third social movements ideologies manifest inside the corporations by triggering organizational members values and affecting managerial cognition the essay contributes to the literatures on social movements and csr extends the understanding of how ideologies are manifested in movement business interactions and generates rich opportunities for future research

joint liability borrowing and suicide the case of japan abstract this paper develops a model for joint liability borrowings that facilitates credit market transactions ex ante but may induce the borrower s suicide ex post through the stigma associated with default a japanese suicide survey provides some supportive evidence

good day sunshine stock returns and the weather psychological evidence and casual intuition predict that sunny weather is associated with upbeat mood this paper examines the relationship between morning sunshine in the city of a country s leading stock exchange and daily market index returns across 26 countries from 1982 to 1997 sunshine is strongly significantly correlated with stock returns after controlling for sunshine rain and snow are unrelated to returns substantial use of weather based strategies was optimal for a trader with very low transactions costs however because these strategies involve frequent trades fairly modest costs eliminate the gains these findings are difficult to reconcile with fully rational price setting

the bias in favor of pro tariff lobbies abstract we show that the probability of success of the pro tariff lobby defined as a decreasing function of the ratio of consumer loss to producer gain rent generated by the tariff rises with the tariff under very general conditions this appears as an exception to becker s view that less distortionary measures tend to be adopted over their more distortionary counterparts we then provide a micro foundation for our probability definition using the imperfectly discriminating lobbying framework

the african growth miracle measures of real consumption based on the ownership of durable goods the quality of housing the health and mortality of children the education of youths and the allocation of female time in the household indicate that sub saharan living standards have for the past two decades been growing about 3 4 3 7 percent per year that is three and a half to four times the rate indicated in international data sets

rent seeking market structure and growth we study the role of productive and unproductive entrepreneurship in economic growth in a setting where firms compete in both economic and political markets specifically firms compete for market share through cost reducing technological innovation and they vie for influence over government transfer policy through rent seeking activities we find that rent seeking affects growth in two ways it allows firms to ignore economic competition leading to less innovation and it alters the number of firms that are supported in equilibrium the former effect is negative while the latter is ambiguous we show how these effects depend on various characteristics of economic and political markets

appropriation violent enforcement and transaction costs a critical survey this paper focuses on the extension of transaction costs to appropriative activity and coercive power in the property rights approach it has been argued that including the costs of appropriation and violent enforcement in transaction costs is based on the assumption that coaseian bargaining can be extended to any institutional scenario i e voluntary as well as coercive exchange however voluntary transactions cannot capture the logic of coercive power this means that the assumption of an efficient political market is not valid and that the political coase theorem lacks the logical consistency to provide a cornerstone for political theory

examining the conventions of voluntary environmental approaches in french agriculture in this paper we consider how growing awareness of environmental problems in agriculture has triggered certain interactions between producers and consumers since both public and private actors resort to collective action to address these problems this article will seek to examine the different forms of economic coordination and their dynamics using an adaptation of salais and storper s worlds of production framework 1992 1997 considering that each world of production is a world of conventions we focus on environmental conventions this work is based on an empirical study of agricultural voluntary environmental approaches as these provide a means of ensuring coordination between producers and consumers and enable products to be differentiated according to their environmental quality copyright oxford university press

transaction costs institutional design and the separation of powers abstract the internal organization of the government can be used as a constraint on the capture of political decision makers in a setting where multiple interest groups try to influence policy outcomes centralization i e the choice of a single agency dealing with all interest groups is costly because it induces a better coordination of their influences the choice of specialized agencies is better because it increases the overall transaction costs of capture making agencies more immune to capture by interest groups more generally we discuss how an institutional design relying on separation of powers among specialized agencies may improve policy outcomes

the economics of special interest politics the case of the tariff this paper investigates the interaction of politicians and special interest lobbies the goal is to model the equilibrium levels of redistributive policies such as taxes subsidies tariffs and regulatory decisions the model is applied throughout to the setting of tariffs by contributing to political campaigns special interest lobbies generate economic returns higher tariffs generate revenue for import competing industries through higher product prices higher milk support prices raise dairy farm income and so forth the lobby invests to maximize these net economic returns in evaluating their chances of election politicians weigh the favorable effects of special interest money against the unfavorable association with the lobby and the social cost of the redistributive policy section i explores the lobby s problem it describes a formalization of mancur olson s discussion of the voluntary provision of public goods and optimal contributions by lobbies to political campaigns section ii describes determination of the equilibrium tariff positions of each politician in a political campaign

self regulation taxation and public voluntary environmental agreements an increasingly popular instrument for solving environmental problems is the public voluntary agreement va in which government offers technical assistance and positive publicity to firms that reach certain environmental goals prior papers treat such agreements as a superior low cost instrument that can be used to preempt a threat of traditional inefficient regulation we present a more general model in which public vas may instead be weak tools used when political opposition makes environmental taxes infeasible we explore the conditions under which taxes public vas and unilateral industry actions are to be expected and the welfare implications of the various instruments notably we also show that welfare may be reduced by the introduction of public vas 2002 elsevier b v all rights reserved

optimal environmental taxation in the presence of other taxes general equilibrium analyses this paper examines the optimal setting of environmental taxes in economies where other distortionary taxes are present we employ analytical and numerical models to explore the degree to which in a second best economy optimal environmental tax rates differ from the rates implied by the pigovian principle according to which the optimal tax rate equals the marginal environmental damages both models indicate contrary to what several analysts have suggested that the optimal tax rate on emissions of a given pollutant is generally less than the rate supported by the pigovian principle moreover the optimal rate is lower the larger are the distortions posed by ordinary taxes numerical results indicate that previous studies may have seriously overstated the size of the optimal carbon tax by disregarding pre existing taxes this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

overcoming successive bottlenecks the evolution of a potato cluster in china summary although the role of industrial policy in economic development is a frequent topic of debate in both the literature and the political arena most discussions focus on industrial policymaking at the national level using a case study of a potato cluster in china we show that industrial policymaking at the local level contributes greatly to economic development as well many of the industrial policies affecting the cluster including leveling land developing better varieties establishing a potato trade association lobbying for increasing freight car quotas and attracting processing firms were implemented at the local level highlighting the need for discussion of local industrial policymaking as a major determinant of cluster development as the case study demonstrates economic development is a continuous process with constantly evolving binding supply side and demand side constraints often after a local policy helps remove one binding constraint a new one emerges that in turn may require a new set of policies therefore the success of clusters depends upon local industrial policies that respond to emerging binding constraints at different stages of the cluster s development

migration and economic mobility in tanzania evidence from a tracking survey this study explores the extent to which migration has contributed to improved living standards of individuals in tanzania using longitudinal data on individuals the authors estimate the impact of migration on consumption growth between 1991 and 2004 the analysis addresses concerns about heterogeneity and unobservable factors correlated with both income changes and the decision to migrate the findings show that migration adds 36 percentage points to consumption growth during a period of considerable growth in consumption these results are robust to numerous tests and alternative specifications unpacking the findings the analysis finds that moving out of agriculture is correlated with much higher growth than staying in agriculture although growth is always higher in any sector if one physically moves economic mobility is strongly linked to geographic mobility the puzzle is why more people do not move if returns to geographic mobility are high the evidence is consistent with models in which exit barriers are set by home communities through social and family norms that prevent migration of certain categories of people

explaining price policy bias in agriculture the calculus of support maximizing politicians a model is developed to explain observed patterns of policy intervention in agriculture we analyze the interaction between political support seeking politicians and supportsupplying citizens society consists of a rural and urban group we determine the effects on transfers of relative group size disparities in income endowments between groups and the deadweight loss of redistribution the framework advanced is an alternative to that of the interest group model and is used to explain for example why the export sectors in developing countries are taxed more and why the united kingdom is less adamant for higher price supports than germany

poverty reduction during the rural urban transformation the role of the missing middle as countries develop they restructure away from agriculture and urbanize but structural transformation and urbanization patterns differ substantially with some countries fostering migration out of agriculture into rural off farm activities and secondary towns and others undergoing rapid agglomeration in mega cities using cross country panel data for developing countries spanning 1980 2004 the analysis in this paper finds that migration out of agriculture into the missing middle the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns yields more inclusive growth patterns and faster poverty reduction than agglomeration in mega cities this suggests that patterns of urbanization deserve much more attention when striving for faster poverty reduction

private vs public regulation political economy of the international environment minimum standards set by a world environmental organization weo and ngo labelling are promoted as alternative approaches to international environmental protection we explore the potential inter play between these two approaches when the weo is subject to pressure from producers we find that if weo and ngo schemes are mutually exclusive then the existence of an ngo alternative increases industry resistance to weo proposals and this may reduce welfare if however the schemes are run in parallel existence of the ngo lessens producer opposition to weo activities this allows the weo to be bolder in its proposals which is good for welfare

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

protecting the environment when costs and benefits are privately known in this survey i analyze different approaches for protecting the environment when stakeholders are privately informed about the costs and benefits of pollution reduction the presence of asymmetric information calls for some important departures from the textbook prescriptions of marketable permits and emission taxes for controlling pollution for instance it may no longer be optimal to equate the social marginal benefits to the marginal cost of cleanup in determining appropriate abatement levels i conclude this review with some suggestions for future research in this area

studying the role of political competition in the evolution of government size over long horizons here we argue for the use of cointegration and error correction analysis to combine economic factors that are nonstationary with political factors that are stationary into an empirical model of the evolution of public policy over long periods the approach is applied to disentangle the contributions of economics and politics to the evolution of public expenditure by the government of canada over 130 years political competition emerges as the primary political factor affecting government size

people on the verge of death evidence from impacts of celebrity suicides we attempt to identify the population who are vulnerable to emotional shocks by exploiting an unprecedented series of celebrity suicides in south korea during the last decade including one of the most famous actresses as well as a former president our conservative estimates show that for 5 out of 11 celebrity suicides observed 1 celebrity suicide on average yielded to more than 10 excessive suicides per day over a time frame of at least 2 weeks the results indicate that a significant number of people are very much mentally unstable to end their life by emotional shocks that should be irrelevant to their economic status

the strategic use of innovation to influence regulatory standards this paper investigates the welfare consequences of strategic behavior by firms to affect the amount of environmental regulation they face environmental regulation often attempts to force an industry to develop cleaner technology but the regulator may have no means to commit to a specific standard this lack of regulatory commitment induces firms to choose innovation strategically it is well known that firms have incentives to suppress innovation to induce the regulator to ratchet down the standard and this strategic behavior lowers welfare this paper explores a countervailing incentive in oligopoly settings firms have heightened incentives to innovate so as to increase regulation and raise rivals costs in equilibrium the incentive to raise rivals cost can mitigate the welfare loss arising from no regulatory commitment also a regulator who is unable to commit ex ante to the stringency of a regulatory standard can induce more clean technology than a regulator with a commitment mechanism

labor productivity and employment gaps in sub saharan africa drawing on a new set of nationally representative internationally comparable household surveys this paper provides an overview of key features of structural transformation labor allocation and labor productivity in four african economies new micro based measures of sector labor allocation and cross sector productivity differentials describe the incentives households face when allocating their labor these measures are similar to national accounts based measures that are typically used to characterize structural changes in african economies however because agricultural workers supply far fewer hours of labor per year than do workers in other sectors productivity gaps disappear almost entirely when expressed on a per hour basis what look like large productivity gaps in national accounts data could really be employment gaps calling into question the prospective gains that laborers can achieve through structural transformation these employment gaps along with the strong linkages observed between rural non farm activities and primary agricultural production highlight agriculture s continued relevance to structural change in sub saharan africa

the political economy of farmland ownership regulations and land prices one of the most ubiquitous forms of agricultural regulation is a restriction on farmland ownership one canadian example of a farmland ownership restriction is the saskatchewan farm security act fsa passed in 1974 the purpose of this article is to explain using a political economy framework why the fsa was implemented and to estimate the effect of the fsa on saskatchewan farmland values a present value pv model is used to estimate the relationship between land values rents and the regulation the hausman endogeneity test reveals that the regulation variable is endogenous with the land price the sign of the regulation variable is negative which fits with the theory i e the more stringent the regulation the lower the land value we estimate that the regulation lowered saskatchewan farmland prices by an average of 4 to 34 us acre depending on whether ordinary least squares ols or two stage least squares tsls is employed in the estimation over the period of 1974 2001

non mandatory approaches to environmental protection the approach to environmental protection has been evolving from a regulation driven adversarial government push approach to a more proactive approach involving voluntary and often business led initiatives to self regulate their environmental performance this has been accompanied by increasing provision of environmental information about firms and products to enlist market forces and communities in creating a demand for corporate environmental self regulation by signaling their preferences for environmentally friendly firms this paper provides an overview of the non mandatory approaches being used for environmental protection and surveys the existing theoretical literature analyzing the economic efficiency of such approaches relative to mandatory approaches it also discusses empirical findings on the factors motivating self regulation by firms and its implications for their economic and environmental performance it examines the existing evidence on the extent to which information disclosure is effective in generating pressures from investors and communities on firms to improve their environmental performance