the effectiveness of bank capital adequacy regulation a theoretical and empirical approach the aim of this paper is to analyse how banking firms set their capital ratios that is the rate of equity capital over assets in order to study this isue two theoretical models are developed both models deal with the existence of an optimal capital ratio the first one for firms not affected by capital adequacy regulation the second one for firms which are the models have been tested by estimating a disequilibrium model using data of spanish savings banks

planning of renewables schemes deliberative and fair decision making on landscape issues instead of reproachful accusations of non cooperation abstract the main issues related to successful implementation policies concern the socio economic institutions that are conditional to planning in the energy policy domain but also in the domain of spatial planning successful investments and the siting of renewable power plants eventually determine the success rate of national efforts in establishing renewable capacity central planning usually has several objectives and these often have a detrimental effect on the goal of renewable energy application current problems related to implementation decisions concerning wind power schemes are an example to those who will be faced by other renewable power plants notably biomass regarding community acceptance of wind power schemes the visual evaluation of the impact of wind power on the values of the landscape is by far the most dominant factor in explaining opposition or support type of landscape fully overshadows other attitudinal attributes as well as other visual and scenic factors such as the design of wind turbines and wind farms and the number and the size of turbines planning regimes and decision making practices that really enhance the implementation processes of renewable energy require strong ecological modernization this means institutional changes that create involvement and trust of actors at the actual implementation level local opposition cannot be explained by the egotistical motives of local residents when the inclination to behave according to supposed backyard motives is investigated the scale to measure this phenomenon appears to indicate commitment to equity issues and fairness of decision making hence for wind power local involvement to represent the local values of site specific landscapes is crucial for other renewables the source specific features are different but conflicts can be expected as well because the fairness of implementation decisions will be equally significant

measuring global poverty why ppp methods matter abstract we present theory and evidence to suggest that in the context of analyzing global poverty the eks approach to estimating purchasing power parities yields more appropriate international comparison of real incomes than the geary khamis approach our analysis of the 1996 and 2005 international comparison project data confirms that the geary khamis approach substantially overstates the relative incomes of the world s poorest nations and this leads to misleading comparisons of poverty across regions and over time the eks index of real income is much closer to being a true index of economic welfare and is therefore preferred for assessment of global poverty

china s uneven progress against poverty while the incidence of extreme poverty in china fell dramatically over 1980 2001 progress was uneven over time and across provinces rural areas accounted for the bulk of the gains to the poor though migration to urban areas helped the pattern of growth mattered rural economic growth was far more important to national poverty reduction than urban economic growth agriculture played a far more important role than the secondary or tertiary sources of gross domestic product gdp rising inequality within the rural sector greatly slowed poverty reduction provinces starting with relatively high inequality saw slower progress against poverty due both to lower growth and a lower growth elasticity of poverty reduction taxation of farmers and inflation hurt the poor external trade had little short term impact

measuring poverty using qualitative perceptions of consumption adequacy we show that subjective poverty lines can be derived using simple qualitative assessments of perceived consumption adequacy based on a household survey we implement the method using survey data for jamaica and nepal respondents were asked whether their consumptions of food housing and clothing were adequate for their family s needs the implied poverty lines are robust to alternative methods of dealing with other components of expenditure the aggregate poverty rates accord quite closely with those based on independent objective poverty lines however there are notable differences in the geographic and demographic poverty profiles

weakly relative poverty prevailing measures of relative poverty are unchanged when all incomes grow or contract by the same proportion this property stems from seemingly implausible assumptions about the disutility of relative deprivation and the cost of social inclusion the authors propose weakly relative lines that relax these assumptions on calibrating our measures to national poverty lines and survey data we find that half the population of the developing world in 2005 lived in poverty only half of whom were absolutely poor the total number of poor rose over 1981 to 2005 despite falling numbers of absolutely poor with sustained economic growth the incidence of relative poverty became less responsive to further growth the number of relatively poor rose just as the numbers of absolutely poor fell

factors influencing buying behaviour of green energy consumer green energy has gained significant research attention across the globe due to its ability to reduce environmental damage however for complete acceptance of green energy only government regulations are not enough the willingness to use green energy and contribute to the wellbeing of the environment should spring from within consumers such willingness may be developed by enhancing consumers perceived value of green energy however in order to do so it is necessary to assess existing levels of consumers perceived value towards green energy the present study develops a multidimensional green perceived value scale to measure existing levels of consumers perceived value the scale considers green perceived value as a multidimensional second order construct comprising functional value social value conditional value and emotional value dimensions such an attempt has not been made before which highlights the originality value of the present study the scale can be used to assess consumers perception towards green energy such information would help in formulating strategies that encourage consumers to voluntarily adopt green energy the study also reveals that it is not only the financial aspects that lead consumers to decide on adoption of green energy consumers are also driven by emotional and social considerations thus policy makers could formulate pro green energy programmes and mass messages that appeal to consumers sense of responsibility to voluntarily adopt green energy without having to rely on financial incentives researchers could examine the considered dimensions of the scale further with respect to other constructs related to consumer behaviour

community perspectives of wind energy in australia the application of a justice and community fairness framework to increase social acceptance decisions concerning the siting of infrastructure developments or the use of natural resources have the potential to damage a community s social well being if the outcomes are perceived to be unfair justice is accepted as central to the well functioning of society with fairness being an expectation in day to day interactions outcomes that are perceived to be unfair can result in protests damaged relationships and divided communities particularly when decisions are made which benefit some sections of the community at the perceived expense of others through empirical research using a wind farm pilot study community perceptions of a community consultation process are explored using procedural justice principles to evaluate fairness findings from the pilot study indicate that perceptions of fairness do influence how people perceive the legitimacy of the outcome and that a fairer process will increase acceptance of the outcome a key research finding was that different sections of a community are likely to be influenced by different aspects of justice namely by outcome fairness outcome favourability and process fairness based on this finding a community fairness framework was developed which has potential application in community consultation to increase social acceptance of the outcome

poverty and household size the widely held view that larger families tend to be poorer in developing countries has influenced research and policy the scope for size economies in consumption cautions against this view we find that the correlation between poverty and size vanishes in pakistan when the size elasticity of the cost of living is about 0 6 this turns out to be the elasticity implied by a modified version of the food share method of setting scales by contrast some measures of child nutritional status indicate an elasticity of unity consideration of the weight attached to child versus adult welfare may help resolve the non robustness of demographic profiles of poverty excerpt

community comparisons and subjective well being in a divided society using a south african data set the paper poses six questions about the determinants of subjective well being much of the paper is concerned with the role of relative concepts we find that comparator income measured as average income of others in the local residential cluster enters the household s utility function positively but that income of more distant others others in the district or province enters negatively the ordered probit equations indicate that as well as comparator groups based on spatial proximity race based comparator groups are important in the racially divided south african society it is also found that relative income is more important to happiness at higher levels of absolute income potential explanations of these results and their implications are considered

nimby or not exploring the relevance of location and the politics of voiced opinions in renewable energy siting controversies local protests against renewable energy facilities have added fuel to the debate about the so called nimby not in my back yard effect this paper identifies six variables that can hamper the comparison between different public perception studies and offers two broad conclusions on aggregate proximity does have strong influence on public attitudes to proposed projects but the nature strength and spatial scale of this effect may vary according to local context and value of the land residents of stigmatised places are more likely to welcome facilities that are relatively green while people who derive a more positive sense of identity from particular rural landscapes are likely to resist such potential developments especially if they also live there secondly the fear of being branded a nimby and the positive ethics associated with the notion of renewable are both likely to colour the responses of many interviewees these aspects need to be clarified and accounted for in analyses of elicited responses both quantitative and qualitative if we are to improve our understanding of the social construction of individual attitudes in siting conflicts

the economic lives of the poor in what turned out to be a rhetorical master move the 1990 world development report from the world bank defined the extremely poor people of the world as those who are currently living on no more than 1 per day per person measured at the 1985 purchasing power parity ppp exchange rate in 1993 the poverty line was updated to 1 08 per person per day at the 1993 ppp exchange rate which is the line we use in this paper poverty lines have always existed indeed 1 per day was chosen in part because of its proximity to the poverty lines used by many poor countries 1 however the 1 a day poverty line has come to dominate the conversations about poverty to a remarkable extent

drivers promoting renewable energy a dynamic panel approach we study the commitment to renewable energy sources focusing on a set of 24 european countries and applying panel dynamic estimators europe is a leading player in the fight against climate change and the estimators we use reveal themselves to be appropriate in handling the persistency effect on renewables the level of renewable energy use in the previous period has a positive and highly significant effect on the current level of use traditional energy sources restrain the impetus towards renewables social awareness of sustainability climate change mitigation and co2 reduction targets are not enough to motivate the switch from traditional to renewables energy sources income and prices of fossil based fuels were not significant for the development of renewables in the period from 1990 to 2006 suggesting that it was not the market that encouraged renewables

societal poverty a relative and relevant measure poverty lines are typically higher in richer countries and lower in poorer ones reflecting the relative nature of national assessments of who is considered poor in many high income countries poverty lines are explicitly relative set as a share of mean or median income despite systematic variation in how countries define poverty global poverty counts are based on fixed value lines to reflect national assessments of poverty in a global headcount of poverty this paper proposes a societal poverty line the proposed societal poverty line is derived from 699 harmonized national poverty lines and has an intercept of 1 per day and a relative gradient of 50 percent of median national income or consumption the societal poverty line is more closely aligned with national definitions of poverty than other proposed relative lines by this relative measure societal poverty has fallen steadily since 1990 but at a much slower pace than absolute extreme poverty

how to predict future pro environmental intention the spillover effect of electricity saving behavior under environmental and monetary framing abstract the spillover effect in the environmental realm has attracted attention from many researchers the present study took electricity saving as an example to explore the mechanism of the spillover effect under environmental framing ef or monetary framing mf and examine the effect of labeling on the spillover effect to add value to existing environmental research three studies showed that both environmental and monetary framing could promote environmental intention study 1 tested the effectiveness of the intervention materials and found that both ef and mf increased the intention to save electricity study 2 and 3 revealed that the spillover effect was influenced by framing specifically the spillover of ef was positive whereas that of mf was negative at the same time environmental self identity mediated both positive and negative spillover moreover enhancing individuals environmental self identity by labeling them as environmentalists could prevent negative spillover and increase positive spillover the results of the present study also provided practical guidance regarding pro environmental education and campaigns by emphasizing environmental benefits rather than monetary benefits and by strengthening environmental self identity through labeling

the developing world is poorer than we thought but no less successful in the fight against poverty a new data set on national poverty lines is combined with new price data and almost 700 household surveys to estimate absolute poverty measures for the developing world we find that 25 of the population lived in poverty in 2005 as judged by what poverty typically means in the world s poorest countries this is higher than past estimates substantial overall progress is still indicated the corresponding poverty rate was 52 in 1981 but progress was very uneven across regions the trends over time and regional profile are robust to various changes in methodology though precise counts are more sensitive

self rated economic welfare in russia abstract most of those russian adults who feel that they are poor are not classified as such in the poverty statistics and most of those who are classified as poor don t feel that way we study the determinants of peoples perceptions of their economic welfare in an unusually rich socioeconomic survey while income is a highly significant predictor subjective economic welfare is influenced by many other factors including health education employment assets relative income in the area of residence and expectations about future welfare insights are obtained into how objective data should be weighted in assessing economic welfare

social acceptance of renewable energy innovation an introduction to the concept this paper introduces the special issue on social acceptance of renewable energy innovation it is a collection of best papers presented at an international research conference held in tramelan switzerland in february 2006 while there are ambitious government targets to increase the share of renewable energy in many countries it is increasingly recognized that social acceptance may be a constraining factor in achieving this target this is particularly apparent in the case of wind energy which has become a subject of contested debates in several countries largely due to its visual impact on landscapes this paper introduces three dimensions of social acceptance namely socio political community and market acceptance factors influencing socio political and community acceptance are increasingly recognized as being important for understanding the apparent contradictions between general public support for renewable energy innovation and the difficult realization of specific projects the third dimension market acceptance has received less attention so far and provides opportunities for further research particularly from management scholars

the complex relationship between households climate change concerns and their water and energy mitigation behaviour climate change will require commitment by all levels of the community but there is still uncertainty surrounding the best way to influence individual mitigation behaviour this study analyses household survey data on water and energy climate change mitigation behaviour from eleven oecd countries in 2011 and provides new evidence of a form of maladaptation namely a complex rebound relationship between climate change attitudes and mitigation behaviour first results confirm other studies that climate change concerns and economic incentives in terms of electricity and water charges positively influence mitigation behaviour second we find that the more costly in terms of time and or money are the mitigation actions of a household the more likely undertaking such actions directly lessens respondents climate change concerns this negative rebound effect is more likely to occur in environmentally motivated households who are more likely to have stated they believe human actions can help mitigate climate change conversely economic incentives in driving energy and water pro environmental behaviour work better in non environmentallymotivated households this highlights that a portfolio of policies is needed to drive mitigation behaviour

when financial work incentives pay for themselves evidence from a randomized social experiment for welfare recipients abstract this paper summarizes early findings from a social experiment that provided financial incentives for new welfare recipients to leave welfare and work full time the financial incentive was essentially a negative income tax with a requirement that people work at least 30 h week early results show that the financial incentive increased full time employment earnings and income and reduced poverty furthermore at the end of the period discussed in this paper the program was paying for itself through increased tax revenues

federal deposit insurance regulatory policy and optimal bank capital this paper seeks to explain the combination of explicit and implicit pricing for deposit insurance employed by the fdic essentially the fdic sells two products insurance and regulation to span the product space it must and does set two prices we argue that the need to establish regulatory disincentives to bank risk taking is the heart of the controversy over the adequacy of bank capital and that the ability to close risky banks before exhausting their charter value i e the value of their right to continue in business stands at the center of these disincentives and in front of the fdic s insurance reserves just as a book shouldn t be judged by its cover a government agency shouldn t be judged by the words behind its initials with the fdic federal deposit insurance corporation the agency s name describes only part of its formal operations the fdic is quasi governmental has a regional structure and sells deposit insurance however the initials fail to convey the fdic s critical place in the governmental regulatory structure as the sole federal overseer of the approximately 8900 state chartered commercial banks that have chosen not to belong the federal reserve system reflecting the federal reserve s membership problem the number of these banks is growing year by year besides selling deposit insurance at bargain explicit rates the fdic performs four regulatory functions 1 entry regulation it passes on new banks applications for deposit insurance and on branch and merger proposals as well thereby protecting the value of existing bank charters 2 examination two thirds of fdic employees are concerned with inspecting bank records and supervising managerial activity 3 regulation of deposit rates and conditions for withdrawal by tradition fdic policies on these matters conform entirely with regulations applicable to federal reserve member banks and 4 disposition of failed banks when an insured bank fails the fdic usually chooses not to liquidate it 2

sustainable development case study in the implementation of renewable energy in brazil abstract in response to demands by new clean renewable energy sources emerged in brazil in the last 10 years many investors interested in implementing wind farms thus arises the question of how the surrounding communities may be affected positively and or negatively by installing wind farms projects and other energy renewable sources the aim of this study is to propose a set of guidelines and best practices for public managers public authorities and owners of wind farms and other energy renewable sources about the perspective of the sustainable development of the surrounding communities the research was conducted in three phases literature review on sustainable development case study in major community a and minor communities b c and d where were implemented wind farms development of the best practice and guidelines through the brainstorming focus group current reality tree and creating shared value the results show the political dimension of sustainability as a root cause of underdevelopment of communities were proposed a set of 22 guidelines and best practices that contribute to the sustainable development of communities

monetary or environmental appeals for saving electricity potentials for spillover on low carbon policy acceptability abstract the acceptability of low carbon policies is an important precondition for energy system transitions such as the german energiewende this long term experimental study examines the potential for behavioural spillover on the acceptability of low carbon policies caused by a framed intervention to promote electricity saving behaviour clients of a german energy provider were randomly assigned to continuously receive electricity saving tips with either monetary framing saving potential in or environmental framing saving potential in co2 the control group did not receive any information in two follow up surveys four n 333 and nine months n 258 later participants rated the acceptability of several low carbon policies a pre survey assessed the personal ecological norm for saving electricity participants with strong personal ecological norms reported generally higher policy acceptability after environmental framing they also indicated higher acceptability compared to the monetary framing or control group these results indicate that information campaigns should be designed carefully in order to promote positive spillover effects environmental framing of private sphere behaviour can increase the disposition for further pro environmental behaviour in the public sphere e g policy acceptability when appealing to monetary benefits in pro environmental behaviour there is a risk of inhibiting positive spillover effects

relative income effects on subjective well being in the cross section abstract recent work suggests that a person s subjective well being swb depends to a large degree on relative income focusing on the underlying identification this paper makes four contributions to this literature it describes the aggregation problem with past studies implements an estimation strategy to overcome this problem finds micro level evidence in support of the hypothesis that relative income does matter in individual assessments of swb and uses cross section estimates to replicate the aggregate time series the evidence further indicates that relative income effects may be smaller at low income levels the results are obtained from ordered probit techniques and the general social survey gss

the developing world s bulging but vulnerable middle class summary western notions of the middle class are of little obvious relevance to developing countries instead the middle class is identified here as those living above the median poverty line of developing countries even if still poor by rich country standards over 1990 2005 economic growth and global distributional shifts allowed an extra 1 2 billion people to join the developing world s middle class four fifths came from asia and half from china many of those in this new middle class remain fairly close to poverty only 100 million of the 1 2 billion would not be considered poor in any developing county economic growth typically came with an expanding middle class

on forecasting interest rates an efficient markets perspective abstract efficient markets do not preclude economic agents from successfully forecasting movements in short term interest rates for brief forecast intervals however ex ante changes in long term rates are sufficiently close to zero that economic agents are not likely to improve upon the no change prediction of the martingale model economic agents in effect are not likely to succeed in forecasting short term movements in long term interest rates this paper illustrates the closeness of the martingale approximation for two sets of canadian interest rates data emphasizing the importance of the forecast interval the paper then examines three sets of recorded forecasts of canadian interest rates and finds results consistent with the theoretical discussion

is more always better a survey on positional concerns abstract we use survey data to provide some empirical information about concerns regarding relative standing respondents chose between a world where they have more of a good than others and one where everyone s endowment of the good is higher but the respondent has less than others questions asked about education attractiveness and intelligence for one s child and oneself income vacation time approval and disapproval from a supervisor and papers to write half of the respondents preferred to have 50 less real income but high relative income concerns about position were strongest for attractiveness and supervisor s praise and weakest for vacation time

why not consider that being absolutely poor is worse than being only relatively poor abstract no current strategy to measure income poverty is able to i account for both its absolute and relative aspects and ii always consider that an individual who is absolutely poor is poorer than another individual who is only relatively poor i propose a measure of income poverty satisfying i and ii unlike alternative proposals satisfying i a decrease in a poor individual s income never reduces this measure an application illustrates that the measure yields intuitive judgments about unequal growth experiences for which all absolute resp relative poverty measures systematically conclude that poverty has decreased resp increased

the distributional impacts of an energy boom in western canada in the energy rich region of western canada inequality rose over the past two decades while poverty declined begging the question of whether the recent energy boom was a contributing factor this study uses measures of inequality and poverty across local labor markets that vary in energy extraction intensity to identify these distributional impacts the evidence shows that overall the boom increased inequality and decreased poverty there are however a few notable cases where these relationships are reversed the significance and relative magnitude of growth across and between distributional segments were consistent with these findings

the cyclical effects of the basel ii capital requirements abstract capital requirements play a key role in the supervision and regulation of banks the basel committee on banking supervision is in the process of changing the current framework by introducing risk sensitive capital charges some fear that this will unduly increase the volatility of regulatory capital furthermore by limiting the banks ability to lend capital requirements may exacerbate an economic downturn the paper examines the problem of capital induced lending cycles and their pro cyclical effect on the macroeconomy in greater detail it finds that the capital buffer that banks hold on top of the required minimum capital plays a crucial role in mitigating the impact of the volatility of capital requirements

deregulation and bank financial policy the standard view that banks can value maximize by exploiting non risk rated deposit insurance ignores the potential loss of a valuable bank charter due to insolvency recognition of this effect changes the bank s optimal financial policy and can induce extreme risk averting as well as risk taking behavior however as the value of the bank charter falls the risk taking strategy is more apt to dominate therefore current deregulation of the banking industry by easing entry and devaluing charters holds the potential for increases in the incidence of insolvency unless offsetting policies are instituted

do poverty traps exist assessing the evidence why did per capita incomes not increase in burundi haiti and nicaragua countries one possible explanation is a poverty trap which can be understood as a set of self reinforcing mechanisms whereby countries start poor and remain poor poverty begets poverty so that current poverty is itself a direct cause of poverty in the future it implies that much poverty is needless in the sense that a different equilibrium is possible and also that one time policy efforts that break the poverty trap may have lasting effects the concept of a poverty trap at the level of national economies is related to and sometimes based on microeconomic foundations that argue for the existence of poverty traps at the household level the authors discuss behavioral poverty traps as a recent area of research for which the evidence is just starting to accumulate and geographic poverty traps as the most likely form of a trap the policy prescriptions that result are then quite different from the calls for a big push in aid or expansion of microfinance to allow people to overcome credit constraints

the bank capital decision a time series cross section analysis this paper seeks to explain the dramatic decline in capital to asset ratios in u s commercial banks during the last two decades it is hypothesized that the rise in nominal interest rates during this period might have contributed substantially to the fall in capital ratios time series cross section estimation supports the hypothesis regarding the interest rate bank capital is the sum of equity plus debt subordinated to deposits capital provides a cushion that protects the bank from insolvency when the value of its assets falls a bank can meet its obligations to depositors as long as losses on its asset portfolio do not exceed its capital the ratio of capital to total assets in u s commercial banks has fallen dramatically in the last two decades dropping from 11 7 percent in 1961 to 5 7 percent in 1978 the lowest level since world war ijj1 figure 1 shows the decline in the ratio of capital to noncash assets these figures suggest that the federal deposit insurance corporation fdic and uninsured depositors are being exposed to increased probabilities of losses from bank insolvencies however relatively little empirical research has been devoted to the determinants of the bank capital decision further the existing work see for example peltzman 24 mingo 20 or mayne 17 18 uses only cross sectional data and therefore does not necessarily explain the decline in capital to asset ratios over time previous empirical research has also focused on book values rather than market values of debt and equity although market values provide better estimates of the protection afforded by capital this practice might be partly justified by the attention paid to book values by bank regulators however the increasing use of qualitative factors as well as book ratios in capital regulation indicates that regulators are aware of the deficiencies in book values many of the so called qualitative considerations are precisely the factors that distinguish market from book value 6 pp 78 80 finally difficulties arise over the proper measure of capital the empirical studies cited above treat equity and debt capital symmetrically both equity and assistant professor of finance economics boston university school of management this paper was originally written as part of a doctoral dissertation at m i t helpful suggestions from robert mcdonald richard schmalensee larry summers and edward j kane are gratefully acknowledged l these statistics are based on the market values of capital and assets the methods used to construct the market value series are described in the appendix capital asset ratios based on book values also have fallen over the period in question although not as severely

does green consumerism increase the acceptance of wind power abstract in this paper we discuss what might be termed an action based learning approach to promoting important pro environmental actions such as support for or acceptance of environmental policy such an approach involves promoting simple and easy behaviours as entry points for more radical steps towards sustainability referred to as catalytic or wedge behaviours despite the obvious need for innovative approaches to promote important pro environmental behaviour and sound theoretical backing for such concepts there is a lack of research testing the key propositions of this approach in a survey study based on a random sample of residents of the state of maine usa we find that both everyday green behaviour and the acceptance of an expansion of wind power are rooted in environmental concern and that everyday green behaviour gives a significant contribution to predicting acceptance of wind power when controlling for environmental concern hence the promotion of everyday green behaviours may prepare the grounds for increasing acceptance of more far reaching changes in the population such as an expansion of wind power

standby letters of credit and large bank capital an empirical analysis abstract a recent trend in commercial banking has been the rapid growth in the issuance of off balance sheet guarantees revised capital standards presume that banks are increasing the issuance of off balance sheet guarantees to generate fee income and conserve primary capital while shifting out of low risk assets the relationship between standby letters of credit an off balance sheet guarantee and large bank capital is tested using granger causality and then estimated in a structural model to accurately estimate the relationship a simultaneous equation model is required to capture the positive effect of bank capital on standby letter of credit issuance

you are what and where you eat capturing food away from home in welfare measures consumption of food away from home is rapidly growing across the developing world surprisingly the majority of household surveys around the world haven not kept up with its pace and still collect limited information on it the implications for poverty and inequality measurement are far from clear and the direction of the impact cannot be established a priori since consumption of food away from home affects both food consumption and the poverty line this paper exploits rich data on food away from home collected as part of the national household survey in peru shedding light to the extent to which welfare measures differ depending on whether they properly account for food away from home peru is a relevant context with the average peruvian household spending 28 percent of their food budget on food away from home by 2010 the analysis indicates that failure to account for the consumption of food away from home has important implications for poverty and inequality measures as well as the understanding of who the poor are first accounting for food away from home results in extreme poverty rates that are 18 percent higher and moderate poverty rates that are 16 percent lower these results are also consistent in fact more pronounced with poverty gap and severity measures second consumption inequality measured by the gini coefficient decreases by 1 3 points when food away from home is included a significant reduction finally inclusion of food away from home results in a reclassification of households from poor to non poor status and vice versa 20 percent of the poor are different when the analysis includes consumption of food away from home this effect is large enough that a standard poverty profile analysis results in significant differences between the poverty classification based on whether food away from home is included or not the differences cover many dimensions including demographics education and labor market characteristics taken together the results indicate that a serious rethinking of how to deal with the consumption of food away from home in measuring well being is urgently needed to properly estimate and understand poverty around the world

capital and risk in property liability insurance markets abstract this paper investigates the capital and portfolio risk decisions of property liability insurance firms a theoretical model based on option pricing theory is developed which predicts a positive relationship between insurer capital and risk as firms balance these two factors to achieve their desired overall insolvency risk the implications of the model are then tested empirically using a simultaneous equations methodology the results support the predictions of the model they also provide evidence that managerial incentives play a role in determining capital and risk in insurance markets the findings have significant implications for insurance solvency regulation

dollar a day revisited the article presents the first major update of the international 1 a day poverty line proposed in world development report 1990 poverty for measuring absolute poverty by the standards of the world s poorest countries in a new and more representative data set of national poverty lines a marked economic gradient emerges only when consumption per person is above about 2 00 a day at 2005 purchasing power parity below this the average poverty line is 1 25 which is proposed as the new international poverty line the article tests the robustness of this line to alternative estimation methods and explains how it differs from the old 1 a day line

does pricing nature reduce monetary support for conservation evidence from donation behavior in an online experiment abstract ecosystem services valuation attempts to determine the monetary value of the benefits provided by the natural world prior research has shown that making monetary value salient fosters self interested behavior in experimental settings vohs mead and goode 2006 reduces the intrinsic value ascribed to pro social activities such as volunteering pfeffer and devoe 2009 and reduces the efficacy of environmentally relevant interventions steinhorst klockner and matthies 2015 these findings raise concern that ecosystem service valuation information might adversely impact individual s pro environmental behaviors this study uses an experimental framework to determine whether ordinary citizens exposure to valuation information such as one might encounter in a news article or fundraising materials might influence an individual s contribution to a natural resource conservation fund the study is implemented with 250 participants from across the united states we find that participants who receive a natural resource description plus valuation treatment donate a statistically significant lower dollar amount of their experimental earnings on average than those who read the narrative alone based upon this evidence we assert that ecosystem service valuation information has the potential to negatively impact financial support for the exact resources the information is designed to promote

global inequality when unequal countries create unequal people abstract current global inequality measures assume that national mean income does not matter to economic welfare at given household income as measured in surveys the paper questions that assumption on theoretical and empirical grounds and finds that prominent stylized facts about global inequality are not robust at one extreme theories of relative deprivation yield nationalistic measures whereby global inequality is average within country inequality which is rising however other theories and evidence point instead to the benefits of living in a richer country parameter values consistent with research on global subjective wellbeing imply higher inequality than prevailing measures though falling since 1990

what can new survey data tell us about recent changes in distribution and poverty it has been claimed that in recent times the poor have lost ground both relatively and absolutely even when average levels of living have risen this article tests that claim using household surveys for 67 developing and transitional economies over 1981 94 it finds that changes in inequality and polarization were uncorrelated with changes in average living standards distribution improved as often as it worsened in growing economies and negative growth was often more detrimental to distribution than positive growth overall there was a small decrease in absolute poverty although with diverse experiences across regions and countries almost always poverty fell with growth in average living standards and rose with contraction

ethnic inequality and poverty in malaysia since may 1969 part 2 poverty abstract over the last 50 years malaysia has seen one of the fastest rates of income poverty reduction in the world this came alongside falling overall income inequality due in large part to a national policy effort to address ethnic inequalities in the wake of tragic race riots in 1969 the first paper in the two part series examined various measures of ethnic inequality this second paper assesses the role that changes in between group inequality played in malaysia s success against poverty to address this question a new decomposition method is applied to survey data spanning 50 years the results indicate that ethnic redistribution helped reduce poverty but it was not as important as within group redistribution or mean income growth a pure ethnic redistribution effect is defined and isolated empirically sizable potential gains to the country s poor from ethnic redistribution are revealed in the 1970s suggesting that the early policy effort made sense the absolute gains have faded over time and are now small though the elasticity of national poverty to ethnic redistribution remains quite high

on the measurement of poverty official statistics in the united states and the united kingdom show a rise in poverty between the 1970 s and the 1980 s but scepticism has been expressed with regard to these findings in particular the methods employed in the measurement of poverty have been the subject of criticism this paper re examines three basic issues in measuring poverty the choice of the poverty line the index of poverty and the relation between poverty and inequality one general theme running through the paper is that there is a diversity of judgments which enter the measurement of poverty and that it is necessary to recognize these explicitly in the procedures adopted there is likely to be disagreement about the choice of poverty line affecting both its level and its structure in this situation we may only be able to make comparisons and not to measure differences and the comparisons may lead only to a partial rather than a complete ordering the first section of the paper discusses the stochastic dominance conditions which allow such comparisons illustrating their application by reference to data for the united states the choice of poverty measure has been the subject of an extensive literature and a variety of measures have been proposed in the second section of the paper a different approach is suggested considering a class of measures satisfying certain general properties and seeking conditions under which all members of the class which includes many of those proposed give the same ranking those sceptical about measures of poverty often assert that poverty and inequality are being confounded the third section of the paper distinguishes four different viewpoints and relates them to theories of justice and views of social welfare

global poverty estimates a sensitivity analysis summary current estimates of global poverty vary substantially across studies we undertake a sensitivity analysis to highlight the importance of methodological choices by measuring global poverty using different data sources parametric and nonparametric estimation methods and multiple poverty lines our results indicate that estimates of global poverty vary significantly when they are based alternately on data from household surveys versus national accounts but are relatively consistent across estimation methods the decline in poverty over the past decade is found to be robust across methodological choices

rural amenity values and length of residency new residents of rural communities are often assumed to have preferences for development and conservation that differ from those of longer term residents however the literature offers little to quantify presumed preference heterogeneity this article assesses whether stated preferences differ according to length of residency results are based on a conjoint choice experiment survey of rhode island rural residents heterogeneity according to length of town residency is modeled using dummy variables multiplicative interactions and lagrangian interpolation polynomials results are compared across the three models and identify a range of attributes for which willingness to pay depends on length of residency