sequential labor decisions under uncertainty an estimable household model of west african farmers this paper reports estimates of the structural parameters of a stochastic control model that describcs the labor decisions of small farmers in burkina faso west africa the focus of the estimation is on measuring flexibility in production and intertemporal substitutability in consumption full information maximum likelihood estimates of the primitive parameters of the model are computed even though optimal labor decision rules cannot be derived analytically vuong s non nested model specification test shows that this method yields parameter estimates that are superior to those derived by assuming that farmers solve a deterministic control problem the low levels of agricultural labor effort commonly observed in the survey area are shown to be a consequence both of the low productivity of labor in archaic rainfed agriculture and of farmers awareness that in the absence of a labor market overly ambitious production plans lead to seasonal manpower constraints to meet rainfed farmers concerns agricultural research institutes and extension services should factor flexibility into their research agendas

rational household labor supply traditionally household behavior is derived from the maximization of a unique utility function in this paper we propose an alternative approach in which the household is modeled as a two member collectivity taking pareto efficient decisions the consequences of this assumption are analyzed in a three good model in which only total consumption and each member s labor supply are observable if the agents are assumed egoistic i e they are only concerned with their own leisure and consumption it is possible to derive falsifiable conditions upon household labor supplies from both a parametric and nonparametric viewpoint if alternatively agents are altruistic restrictions obtain in the nonparametric context useful interpretation stems from the comparison with the characterization of aggregate demand for a private good economy

cash transfer programs with income multipliers procampo in mexico abstract cash transfer programs create multiplier effects when recipients put the money they receive to work to generate further incomes when this is the case the ultimate income effects are multiples of the amounts transferred we analyze the procampo program in mexico that was introduced to compensate farmers for the anticipated negative effect of nafta on the prices of basic crops the transfer rules and the timing of the panel data collected allow unique control of biases in this impact analysis we find that the multiplier among ejido sector recipients is in the range 1 5 2 6 multipliers are higher for households with medium and large farms low numbers of adults in the household nonindigenous backgrounds and located in the center and gulf regions high multipliers reflect income opportunities that had remained unrealized due to liquidity constraints that are relaxed by the transfers opportunities come from the asset endowments that these households received through the land reform particularly irrigated land and they are enhanced by access to technical assistance

nonmonetary effects of the financial crisis in propagation of the great depression this paper examines the effects of the financial crisis of the 1930s onthe path of aggregate output during that period our approach is complementary to that of friedman and schwartz who emphasized the monetary impact of the bank failures we focus on non monetary primarily credit related aspects of the financial sector output link and consider the problems of debtors as well as those of the banking system we argue that the financial disruptions of 1930 33 reduced the efficiency of the credit allocation process and that the resulting higher cost and reduced availability of credit acted to depress aggregate demand evidence suggests that effects of this type can help explain the unusual length and depth of the great depression this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

market response to banks granting lines of credit abstract prior research has shown and this paper confirms that when the market becomes aware a line of credit is granted the borrower s stock has a positive and significant reaction the borrower s reaction is used to identify the exact date the market becomes aware of the granting of the line of credit this date is used as a one day window to investigate whether the bank s stock also reacts this reaction will be most obvious with large lines of credit all lines of credit larger than us 1 billion granted during the years 1993 1996 are investigated the results show as predicted a positive and significant reaction by the bank s stock

raising primary school enrolment in developing countries the relative importance of supply and demand abstract few policies are as universally accepted as raising primary school enrolment in developing countries but the policy levers for achieving this goal are not straightforward this paper merges household survey data with detailed school supply characteristics from official sources in order to estimate the relative impact of demand and supply side determinants of rural primary school enrolment in mozambique policy simulations based on a set of plausible interventions show that in rural mozambique building more schools or raising adult literacy will have a larger impact on primary school enrolment rates than interventions that raise household income when relative costs are considered adult literacy campaigns are nearly 10 times more cost effective than the income intervention and 1 5 to 2 5 times better than building more schools

weighing what s practical proxy means tests for targeting food subsidies in egypt abstract despite achieving a significant cost reduction over the past two decades the absolute cost of food subsidies in egypt is still high relative to the benefits received by the poor there is scope for better targeting these food subsidies in particular for targeting cooking oil and sugar ration cards both because reforms in this area are perceived to be far less politically sensitive than adjusting subsidy policy for bread and wheat flour and because higher income groups presently receive a significant percentage of the benefits targeting the high subsidy green ration cards to the poor and the low subsidy red ration cards to the nonpoor will require identification of both poor and nonpoor households an international food policy research institute research team in egypt in collaboration with the egyptian ministry of trade and supply developed a proxy means test for targeting ration cards the paper describes the process of moving from the optimal income predicting model to the final model that was both administratively and politically feasible an ex ante evaluation of the levels of accuracy of the proxy means testing model indicates that the model performs quite well in predicting the needy and nonneedy households an effective and full implementation of this targeting method would increase the equity in the ration card food subsidy system and at the same time the total budgetary costs of rationed food subsidies would decline moreover the experience gained under this reform would facilitate targeting future social interventions to reduce and prevent poverty in egypt

measuring the effects of regulation with stock price data this article examines the usefulness of stock returns in measuring the effects of regulation when the dates on which market expectations change are not known and standard sources e g the wall street journal are used to choose announcement dates twenty major changes in regulatory constraint since 1887 are considered tests using either monthly or daily data are found to have surprisingly little ability to detect the effects of regulation the evidence shows that formal regulatory announcements are generally anticipated in cases where it is unclear when expectations change

a contribution to event study methodology with an application to the dutch stock market abstract this paper proposes an extended market model for event studies based on daily stock returns for actual data the assumptions of the simple market model are violated the return distribution is not normal and neither the variance of the error term nor the risk parameter beta are constant our model incorporates the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity garch model with t distributed errors and a time dependent beta we test for anomalies by adding dummy variables in the regression equation our model is fairly general and could be used in a wide variety of event study situations we illustrate the model by an analysis of the weekend and the option expiration effect we use return data from the dutch stock market the weekend effect on stock returns is significant but no expiration effect could be detected

economic efficiency and supply response of women as farm managers comparative evidence from western kenya summary this paper assessed the relative economic efficiency and output supply and input demand responses of women farmers in western kenya the results showed that women are as technically and allocatively efficient as men however neither men nor women have absolute allocative efficiency women farmers are equally responsive to price incentives in terms of output supply and input demand while education and extension contact have significant effects on overall maize supply and input demand only extension contact has significant effects among women farmers the paper discusses a number of significant results and concludes with implications for policy

syndicated loan announcements and the the market value of the banking firm this paper examines valuation effects on the stocks of fifteen participating money center banks of 774 announcements of syndicated loans representing announcements of investment decisions for the lenders the authors find that announcements of ldc loans in the 1970s especially those to latin american borrowers are associated with negative abnormal returns to the lending banks while announcements of loans to u s corporate borrowers in the 1980s especially those for takover finance are associated with positive abnormal returns while a number of testable predictions are consistent with the negative abnormal returns for latin american loans they explain response to takeover loans with a return to liquidity hypothesis copyright 1995 by ohio state university press

using relative profits as an alternative to activity based costing abstract activity based costing abc tries to assign overhead costs to cost objects more accurately than traditional cost systems however due to its severe separability and proportionality assumptions using abc for decision making may lead to a considerable economic loss to evaluate products on the basis of their activity based costs we therefore use a data envelopment analysis dea like approach which mainly separates the product portfolio into a set of potentially optimal and a set of non potentially optimal products in contrast to dea we do not need any ad hoc assumptions about the production possibility set or returns to scale furthermore it will turn out that in contrast to conventional abc we will not have to determine the cost driver rates ex ante reducing information cost

social capital and coping with economic shocks an analysis of stunting of south african children abstract south african households live in an environment characterized by risks and many face a significant probability of experiencing economic losses that threaten their daily subsistence using household panel data that include directly solicited information on economic shocks and employing household fixed effects estimation we explore how well households cope with shocks by examining the effects of shocks on child nutritional status unlike in the idealized village community some households appear unable to insure against risk particularly when others in their communities simultaneously suffer large losses households in communities with more social capital however seem better able to weather shocks

improving activity based costing heuristics by higher level cost drivers abstract activity based costing abc tries to allocate overhead costs to cost objects more accurately than traditional cost systems however since abc proportionalizes overhead costs it is a heuristic the paper uses simulations and mixed integer programming to analyze the extent of the sub optimality incurred by abc heuristics while previous research has focused on abc systems with a simple set of cost drivers thereby restricting the potential of abc as a heuristic the paper analyzes the effects of establishing a cost driver corresponding to a higher cost level specifically a portfolio based cost driver captures the demand heterogeneity triggered by the portfolio this heterogeneity driver is then used to proportionalize all costs due to inflexible overhead resources one of the main findings is that such a heterogeneity driver improves the quality of abc heuristics significantly

intrahousehold inequality and the theory of targeting the two literatures on targeting and on intrahousehold inequality have developed rapidly over the past 15 years but largely independent of each other the literature on targeting concerns itself with the design of tax and transfer programs for poverty alleviation in the presence of limited information on who the poor are the literature on intrahousehold inequality arose out of a dissatisfaction with unitary models of the household especially in explaining inequality in consumption and achievements of different household members even after allowing for relevant differences among them the authors begin to forge the link between the two literatures so they can address issues policymakers face around the world after a brief reprise of the key features of the two literatures they indicate how the presence of intrahousehold inequality and allocation mechanisms could affect the standard analysis of targeting theory they conclude with a list of policy questions for further research this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

gender differentials in farm productivity implications for household efficiency and agricultural policy abstract within many african households agricultural production is simultaneously carried out on many plots controlled by different members of the household detailed plot level agronomic data from burkina faso provides striking evidence of substantial inefficiencies in the allocation of factors of production across the plots controlled by different members of the household production function estimates imply that the value of household output could be increased by 10 15 by reallocating currently used factors of production across plots this finding contradicts standard models of agricultural households a richer model of behaviour which recognizes that the individuals who comprise a household compete as well as co operate has important implications for the structure of agricultural production and for the design of agricultural policy

conditioning the return generating process on firm specific events a discussion of event study methods empirical investigations into the codetermination of security prices and eco nomic events are called event studies there are several ways of estimating the codetermination of interest since fama fisher jensen and roll 8 it has been general practice to first translate variables into rates of return then net out gen eral market movements and finally examine the relationship between residual returns and events the methodology in all of its variants fails under the rubric of 4 residual analysis empirical methods used in residual analysis deviate from the structure and terminology generally found in classical econometrics while this is not a criticism of residual analysis it results in a communication problem that is more than simply pedantic in nature a broad body of econometric literature dealing with parameter estimation statistical inference and hypothesis testing often goes untapped by empiricists in finance who within internally consistent sets of as sumptions have created a separate body of statistical methods in this paper a union of the two disciplines is advocated to provide a forum for comparing and contrasting alternative empirical methods the event study problem is broken down into three phases the parameterization of informa tion arrival applicable to the problem an examination ofthe relationship between parameters in the information arrival process and the estimates resulting from alternative estimation methods and aggregation across firms experiencing simi

what s different about banks abstract negotiable certificates of deposit cd s trade in the capital market in competition with other securities like commercial paper and bankers acceptances if cd s must pay lenders competitive monetary interest the reserve tax on cd s is borne by bank borrowers viability of the tax means there must be something special about bank loans that makes some borrowers willing to pay higher interest rates than those on other securities of equivalent risk moreover there must be something special about banks that prevents other intermediaries from competing to assure that it never pays to finance loans with cd s

an examination of the robustness of the weekend effect this paper analyzes the robustness of the day of the week dow and weekend effects to alternative estimation and testing procedures the results show that sample size can distort the interpretation of classical test statistics unless the significance level is adjusted down ward specification tests reveal widespread departures from ols assumptions hypothe sis tests results are reported using robust econometric methods and a garch model the strength of the dow and weekend effect evidence appears to depend on the estimation and testing method both effects seem to have disappeared by 1975

farm productivity in burkina faso effects of animal traction and nonfarm income the purpose of this invited paper is to stimulate at the micro meso and macro levels debate on positive analytical approaches to agricultural productivity the session focuses on africa because it is the only developing region where crop output and yield growth is lagging seriously behind population growth the present paper treats the micro farmhousehold level macro and meso analyses are useful for tracing productivity effects of policy and infrastructure change employing broad samples over long periods micro analyses tend to track smaller samples over shorter periods but dig below the aggregate surface to discern and explain productivity differences over crops zones and farmer groups micro analysis is useful for policy and technology formulation and for infrastructure and commodity promotion strategies further many aggregate studies are limited to only a few composite product categories because of lack of more detailed data on labor land and capital allocations over crops to obtain finer distinctions among crops one needs detailed farm management surveys since the spate of african farm management studies in the 1960s and 1970s soils have rapidly degraded access to land has become increasingly constrained factor and credit markets have changed structurally and nonfarm activity by farm households has apparently increased these changes should affect productivity across farm types suggesting the need to revive attention to farm level analysis past farm level productivity work in africa which largely used positive analysis tended to stratify the sample exogenously based on farm characteristics generally by farm size use of animal traction access to credit use of new seed varieties land tenure status or income we follow these earlier studies by stratifying the farm household data by a factor we expect to affect technical parameters namely farm capital in the guinean zone of burkina faso in particular we stratify according to whether the household owns animal traction equipment foll wing barrett et al and jaeger and matlon besides adding to empirical evidence on the productivity effects of animal traction we endogenously stratify the sample with a selectivity model an approach too rarely taken with a few recent exceptions such as carter in productivity research we then estimate production functions controlling for selectivity bias such an approach also allows us to test the indirect effect of nonfarm income on productivity through its effect on technology adoption as embodied in farm capital acquisition studies of nonfarm income effects on capital acquisition are not absent in the literature e g barrett et al in eastern burkina but they have been somewhat neglected in farm level work and neglected even more in aggregate level research because of the rarity of rural nonfarm income data

male female differences in agricultural productivity methodological issues and empirical evidence abstract most estimates of male female differences in technical efficiency from production function studies show that male and female farmers are equally efficient farm managers controlling for levels of inputs and human capital there is some evidence however of allocative inefficiency within households marginal products of labor depend on the relative scarcities of labor and the gender division of labor in specific farming systems many of these studies however are methodologically flawed greater attention needs to be given to appropriate estimation methods endogenous input choice the use of headship as a stratifying variable and the implications of intrahousehold resource allocation

price policy poverty and power within rural west african households abstract this paper explores the impact of agricultural price policy on poverty in west africa a region in which prices are an important tool for raising rural household incomes a game theoretic collective model of household income generation and resource allocation is developed that incorporates three features typical of west african rural households preference heterogeneity among women and men individual resource control and power mediated bargaining over resource control in the face of changes in households economic environments to explore price effects the model is used to simulate the income impacts of large increases in cotton prices accompanying fast paced agricultural liberalisation in burkina faso in the 1980s the paper shows that where resources are controlled individually by household members rather than pooled pareto efficiency in income generation does not hold the impact of agricultural price policy on poverty is mediated by bargaining over resource control within households bo

are women overrepresented among the poor an analysis of poverty in 10 developing countries abstract this paper presents new evidence on the proportion of women in poverty in 10 developing countries it compares poverty measures for males and females and for male and female headed households and investigates the sensitivity of these measures to the use of per capita and per adult equivalent units and different definitions of the poverty line while poverty measures are higher for female headed households and for females the differences are significant in only a fifth to a third of the datasets the contribution of female headed households to aggregate poverty is less than that of females due to the low population share of the former stochastic dominance analysis reveals that differences between male and female headed households and between males and females are often insignificant except for ghana and bangladesh where females are consistently worse off these results suggest that cultural and institutional factors may be responsible for higher poverty among women in these countries our results point to the need to analyze determinants of household income and consumption using multivariate methods and to give greater attention to the processes underlying female headship

targeting the poor in mexico an evaluation of the selection of households into progresa abstract in this paper we conduct an evaluation of the targeting method used by health education and nutrition program progresa of mexico to identify beneficiary households we address two key questions a how well does progresa s targeting perform and b how does the program perform in terms of its impact on poverty alleviation relative to other feasible methods and transfer schemes the first question is accomplished by comparing progresa s method to an alternative selection method based on household consumption which is our preferred measure of welfare we employ the concepts of undercoverage and leakage and find that progresa selection method is more effective in identifying the extremely poor localities or households but less so when it comes to distinguishing among localities or households in the middle of the scale to address the second question we compare the potential impact of progresa on poverty alleviation against uniform transfers that involve no targeting at all targeting based on consumption and geographic targeting i e targeting at the locality level rather than at the household level we find that progresa s method of targeting households outperforms uniform coverage and targeting at the locality level in terms of reducing the poverty gap and severity of poverty indices even after taking into account the economic costs of targeting but the closeness of progresa s performance to what could be achieved by geographic targeting alone raises some serious questions about the costs and benefits associated with the practice of household targeting within poor localities

the effect of lender identity on a borrowing firm s equity return previous research demonstrates that a firm s common stock price tends to fall when it issues new public securities by contrast commercial bank loans elicit significantly positive borrower returns this article investigates whether the lender s identity influences the market s reaction to a loan announcement although we find no significant difference between the market s response to bank and nonbank loans we do find that lenders with a higher credit rating are associated with larger abnormal borrower returns this evidence complements earlier findings that an auditor s or investment banker s perceived quality signals valuable information about firm value to uninformed market investors previous studies show that certain types of loan announcements generate significantly positive abnormal returns to the average borrower s equity 1 this finding contrasts with the negative equity returns generally associated with a corporation s issuance of public securities smith 1986 this difference in market reactions indicates that private and public securities are not perfect substitutes for the average firm in this sense lender identity defined as public versus private lender significantly impacts the borrower s abnormal equity return the standard theoretical explanation for this difference is that private lenders either obtain private information about the firm s value or they have the incentive and ability to monitor firm behavior more effectively than other outside monitors can although the empirical literature on private lending has evaluated primarily commercial bank loans and lines of credit these theoretical arguments apply equally to any type of private

as a husband i will love lead and provide gendered access to land in ghana summary improving women s access to land is high on the agricultural policy agenda of both governmental and non governmental agencies yet the determinants and rationale of gendered access to land are not well understood this paper argues that gender relations are more than the outcomes of negotiations within households it explains the importance of social norms perceptions and formal and informal rules shaping access to land for male and female farmers at four levels 1 the household family 2 the community 3 the state and 4 the market the framework is applied to ghana using the results from qualitative field work norms on household and family organization and on men s and women s responsibilities and capabilities play a key role in gendered allocation of resources however these norms and perceptions are dynamic and evolve jointly with the development of markets and changes in values of inputs such as labor and land theoretical models that represent the gendered distribution of assets as the result of intrahousehold bargaining should be revised and extrahousehold factors should be included from a policy perspective laws that ensure gender equality in terms of inheritance and a more gender equitable distribution of property upon divorce can play a key role in improving women s property rights yet their impact may be limited where customary rights dominate and social norms and rules continue to discriminate according to gender

productive inefficiency in extended agricultural households evidence from mali abstract in sub saharan african farm households two types of plot management often coexist collective fields are farmed jointly by household members under the authority of the head while individual plots are autonomously managed by members in this paper we explore the productivity differentials between collective and individual plots in the context of extended family farms we find that land yields are significantly larger on male private plots than on common plots after all appropriate controls have been included yet the disadvantage of common plots exists only for care intensive crops and for cash crops we provide evidence that the yield differentials stem from labor incentive problems they may arise from the prevailing reward function and or from preference heterogeneity over the use of the proceeds from the collective field

migration and technical efficiency in cereal production evidence from burkina faso this article uses a double bootstrap procedure and survey data from burkina faso in a two stage estimation to explore ways in which continental and intercontinental migration determine efficiency in cereal production of rural households findings suggest that continental migration has a positive relation and intercontinental migration no relation with technical efficiency for continental migrant households migration has removed surplus male labor a cause for inefficiency in production intercontinental migration leads to a gender imbalance in the household which cannot be compensated for by investments in farm equipment the failure of intercontinental migration to transform cereal production from traditional to modern is attributed to an imperfect market environment

are overhead costs strictly proportional to activity evidence from hospital departments abstract using cross sectional data from hospitals in washington state we test whether overhead costs are proportional to overhead activities this assumption is at the heart of nearly all cost accounting systems which implicitly assume that marginal cost is equal to average cost empirically the proportionality hypothesis can be rejected for most of the overhead accounts on average across the accounts the average cost per unit of activity overstates marginal costs by about 40 and in some departments by over 100 thus the average cost per activity should be used with a great deal of caution in decisions

alternative information sources and the information content of bank loans this paper examines the information content of bank loan agreements we differentiate borrowers according to financial analysts percentage earnings forecast errors and most recent forecast revisions the empirical results suggest that banks rely on other indicators as initial screening devices to determine where to best deploy their evaluation and monitoring efforts if these other indicators are reliable and signalimproving prospects banks do little further investigation however if the indicators are noisy and signal declining prospects banks have incentives to expend resources to investigate the borrowers resulting in the production of valuable information recent theories of financial intermediation concentrate on the role of banks in reducing informational asymmetry leland and pyle 1977 suggest that informational asymmetries may be the primary reason that intermediaries exist campbell and kracaw 1980 demonstrate that an important function of financial intermediation is the production of information diamond 1984 develops a model which shows that financial intermediaries can exist simply because they provide an efficient means of evaluating and monitoring borrowers these information transmission theories argue that banks provide unique information production services in an imperfect capital market they suggest that banks know more about the prospects of the firms they lend to than do others thus bank loan agreements should convey useful information to the market a number of researchers empirically examine the uniqueness of bank loans fama 1985 approaches the issue by examining the rates on certificates of deposit and other high grade commercial papers he concludes that since bank borrowers bear the cost of reserve requirements there must be something special about bank loans james 1987 conducts an event study around the announcement of bank credit agreements and reports a significantly positive two day announcement return his results provide evidence support

determinants and effects of income diversification amongst farm households in burkina faso using four years of household data from three agroecological zones in burkina faso sahelian sudanian and guinean the article examines the determinants and effects of household income diversification harvest shortfalls and terms of trade are found to drive diversification but land constraints do not income diversification is associated with higher incomes and food consumption and more stable income and consumption over years

land tenure and agricultural productivity in africa a comparative analysis of the economics literature and recent policy strategies and reforms summary this paper examines the convergence and divergence of results from economic studies of the relationships between land tenure security and agricultural productivity in africa and how these results have been incorporated into recent agricultural poverty alleviation and land policy documents the paper finds that there are both areas of convergence and divergence in the economics literature similarly the attention given to land tenure and its perceived effects on productivity varies considerably in the policy literature the significant heterogeneity in findings itself suggests that policy responses must pay attention to local context and the overarching macro and sectoral conditions within which tenure systems operate

uninsured health shocks and agricultural productivity among rural households the mitigating role of micro credit this article investigates how health shocks affect farm productivity in the presence of microcredit it is expected that microcredit increases agricultural productivity by enhancing allocative and

investigating the gender gap in agricultural productivity evidence from uganda women comprise 50 percent of the agricultural labor force in sub saharan africa but manage plots that are reportedly on average 20 to 30 percent less productive as a source of income inequality and aggregate productivity loss the country specific magnitude and drivers of this gender gap are of great interest using national data from the uganda national panel survey for 2009 10 and 2010 11 the gap before controlling for endowments was estimated to be 17 5 percent panel data methods were combined with an oaxaca decomposition to investigate the gender differences in resource endowment and return to endowment driving this gap although men have greater access to inputs input use is so low and inverse returns to plot size so strong in uganda that smaller female managed plots have a net endowment advantage of 12 percent revealing a larger unexplained gap of 29 5 percent two fifths of this unexplained gap is attributed to differential returns to the child dependency ratio and one fifth to differential returns to transport access implying that greater child care responsibilities and difficulty accessing input and output markets from areas without transport are the largest drivers of the gap smaller and less robust drivers include differential uptake of cash crops and differential uptake and return to improved seeds and pesticides

bank loan commitments and interest rate volatility bank loan commitments are examined in the context of option pricing models and a valuation formula is obtained the partial takedown phenomenon which is both distinctive and vexatious is considered in detail finally estimates of the value of u s bank loan commitments and their sensitivity to interest rate changes are provided

market reactions to accounting regulations in the savings and loan industry abstract this paper addresses whether events leading to three regulatory accounting principles issued by the federal home loan bank board affected the market value of savings and loan associations s ls the market reaction to these regulations is predicted to be positive since they effectively eased minimum regulatory net worth requirements a significant market reaction is observed for the regulation that allowed s ls to increase regulatory net worth by permitting appraised equity capital however results are inconsistent with the alternative hypothesis associated with the regulations permitting deferral of loan losses and net worth certificates

collective labor supply and welfare the paper develops a general collective model of household labor supply in which agents are characterized by their own possibly altruistic preferences and household decisions are only assumed to be pareto efficient an alternative interpretation is that there are two stages in the internal decision process agents first share nonlabor income according to some given sharing rule then each one optimally chooses his or her own labor supply and consumption this setting is shown to generate testable restrictions on labor supplies moreover the observation of labor supply behavior is sufficient for recovering individual preferences and the sharing rule up to a constant finally the traditional tools of welfare analysis can be adapted to the new setting

do female instructors reduce gender bias in diffusion of sustainable land management techniques experimental evidence from mozambique agricultural innovation is essential to meet the food requirements of africa s growing population one pathway to increasing yields may be to enhance female farmer productivity in many settings married women cultivate plots separated from those of other family members they face different challenges to productivity such as deficiencies in inputs weak property rights and time constraints it has long been argued that traditionally male dominated extension services may also contribute to a gender bias in adoption of new agricultural techniques if this is true placing women in extension positions may help other women overcome barriers to adoption posed by inequitable access to agricultural extension services or exposure to inapt information to better understand the role of gender in the dissemination of sustainable land management slm techniques this study uses a randomized policy experiment conducted in 200 communities in mozambique we examine the impact of training female messengers of slm techniques on the awareness knowledge and adoption of slm practices by other female farmers communities were randomly selected in 2010 to have a female messenger trained in slm who was encouraged to teach other women the techniques using data from panel surveys collected in the experimental areas we find women s awareness of pit planting farming techniques increased by 9 percentage points in 2012 and adoption of the technology by 5 percentage points in 2013 in communities with female messengers

women s empowerment in agriculture what role for food security in bangladesh summary using a nationally representative survey from bangladesh we examine the relationship between women s empowerment in agriculture measured using the women s empowerment in agriculture index and per capita calorie availability dietary diversity and adult body mass index bmi accounting for potential endogeneity of empowerment we find that increases in women s empowerment are positively associated with calorie availability and dietary diversity at the household level overall household wealth education and occupation are more important than women s empowerment as determinants of adult nutritional status although negative impacts of group membership and credit on male bmi suggest that intrahousehold trade offs may exist

the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior in households whose allocation decisions can be represented as nash bargained household decisions extrahousehold environmental parameters eeps serve as pure shifters of the threat points the comparative statics of changes in demands due to changes in these eeps are given these are incorporated into a comprehensive statement of the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior including a nash generalization of barten s 1966 fundamental matrix equation of the theory of consumer demand estimation and data requirements are discussed along with nested testing of the following structure the neoclassical model is nested in the nash bargained model which in turn is nested in an unrestricted model of household demands emphasized throughout is the enriched menu of explanatory variables for demand analysis provided by the nash model as well as the model s ability to jointly analyze i household formation and ii intrahousehold allocation decisions

relative efficiency of women as farm managers profit function analysis in cote d ivoire abstract the efficiency of women farmers in the agricultural sector of developing countries is passionately debated very few studies have examined this issue in african agriculture all previous studies were based on production functions but have been criticised as suffering from simultaneous equation bias because the input levels are endogenous the profit function method avoids these problems no previous study has used the profit function method to test for technical allocative and economic efficiency differences between women and men farmers the objective of this paper was to determine whether women rice farmers are less efficient than men rice farmers in cote d ivoire using the restricted normalised profit function method our results show that the relative degree of efficiency of women is similar to that of men the paper provides empirical support for efforts to eliminate bias against women farmers in african agriculture

productivity of men and women and the sexual division of labor in peasant agriculture of the peruvian sierra abstract this paper estimates the productivity of men and women in the peasant agriculture of the peruvian sierra using recent household survey data a sexual division of labor on the farm implies that male and female labor are not perfectly substitutable evidence is found for female specialization on livestock production a translog production function reveals that the use of animal traction and land affect the marginal productivity of male and female labor differently suggesting that the two types of labor cannot be aggregated overall adult male labor is found to contribute more to farm output at the margin than adult female labor though the extent of the difference is sensitive to how farm output and the labor inputs are measured

fairness and efficiency in smallholder farming the relation with intrahousehold decision making abstractagricultural households face collective action dilemmas when making decisions about investments in their common household farm and the allocation of resources and benefits derived from it we relate intrahousehold decisions as measured in a lab in the field experiment conducted with spouses in agricultural households in western uganda with actual investments and intrahousehold resource allocation intrahousehold decision making that supports cooperation and equitable sharing is associated with greater investment in the intensification of cash and food crop production and more equitable access and control over income freeriding behaviour by husbands is associated with the intensification of cash crop production but not with equitable sharing

are experience and schooling complementary evidence from migrants assimilation in the bangkok labor market abstract this paper models the assimilation process of migrants and shows evidence of the complementarity between their destination experience and upon arrival human capital bayesian learning is assessed using panel data of wages from bangkok thailand it is found that i schooling returns are lower for migrants than for natives ii the accumulation of destination experience raises wages for migrants iii the experience effect is greater for more educated agents and iv the complementarity increases as destination experience accumulates the results imply that more educated migrants have higher learning efficiency and can perform tasks of greater complexity ultimately yielding higher wage growth in the destination market

the certification value of private debt renegotiation and the design of financial contracts empirical evidence from europe abstract by using a sample of bank loan renegotiations by european firms i show that the renegotiation of financial contracts bears a certification value while deeply changing the contractual features of the loan over time to the benefit of shareholders i find that amendments to financial covenants and to loan amounts increase the cumulative abnormal returns of a borrowing firm by 10 15 early and less frequent renegotiations of bilateral loans with short maturities also imply a positive stock market reaction amendments signaling the early accrual of new and positive information allow increasing firm value

the economics of polygyny in sub saharan africa female productivity and the demand for wives in cote d ivoire polygyny is still practiced throughout much of sub saharan africa with important social consequences this paper makes the first attempt to link african polygyny directly to the productivity of women in agriculture using micro data i develop a structural model of the demand for wives that disentangles wealth and substitution effects using a large household survey from cote d ivoire i find that marked geographic diversity in cropping patterns leads to regional variation in female labor productivity i also find that conditional on wealth men do have more wives when women are more productive that is cheaper this substitution effect may explain why polygyny declined in rural areas of cote d ivoire during agricultural development

trust membership in groups and household welfare evidence from kwazulu natal south africa unfortunately these two literatures have remained largely unconnected the group and network literature concludes that participation has important economic benefits even when the stated function of the group is noneconomic in most cases however the mechanisms by which groups and networks achieve this are unclear the determinants of trust and participation in groups literature highlights the importance of income and social homogeneity what remains less understood is whether and how trust can be generated for example via participation in groups this article links the empirical literatures referenced above by exploring the relationship between membership in groups and trust specifically using longitudinal data from kwazulu natal province south africa we examine 1 the importance of trust in the decision to join groups 2 the subsequent ability of groups to generate trust and 3 the effect of group membership and trust on a measure of well being per capita household income in addition we disaggregate groups into financial and nonfinancial and we categorize trust in people by agent or actor therefore we can explore whether trust in different kinds of actors is important for participation in different kinds of groups and whether participation in different kinds of groups is important for generating trust in different kinds of actors excerpt

separate spheres bargaining and the marriage market this paper introduces the separate spheres bargaining model a new model of distribution within marriage it differs from divorce threat bargaining models e g manser brown mcelroy horney in that the threat point is not divorce but a noncooperative equilibrium within marriage this noncooperative equilibrium reflects traditional gender roles the predictions of our model thus differ from those of divorce threat bargaining models in the separate spheres model cash transfer payments to the mother and payments to the father can but need not imply different equilibrium distributions in existing marriages in the long run the distributional effects of transfer policies may be substantially altered by changes in the marriage market equilibrium

how does the choice of the gender indicator affect the analysis of gender differences in agricultural productivity evidence from uganda summary we use ols and decomposition techniques to investigate gender differences in agricultural productivity in uganda using nationally representative surveys from years 2009 2012 the analysis applies different gender dummies female head of household female plot holder and female plot manager to investigate how the variable of choice affects the calculation of the gender gap our analysis obtains different results depending on the gender variable of choice the study finds that regardless of the variable of choice the gender gap in agricultural productivity decreases or disappears when factors of production and crop choice are controlled for the conditional gender gap is about 10 and significant when using female plot manager as the gender variable while we find no conditional gender gap when using the other gender variables the use of time fixed effects and decomposition contributes evidence that the typically available gender variables are insufficient for identifying how gender and decision making of different household members play a role in productivity this finding is problematic for targeting effective interventions to increase agricultural productivity and reduce gender inequalities in agriculture finally we find that the older status of female heads holders and manager of plots child dependency ratio and limited access to adult male labor are factors decreasing productivity in female plots in uganda

income and outcomes a structural model of intrahousehold allocation there is evidence from several sources that one cannot treat many person households as a single decision maker if this is the case then factors such as the relative incomes of the household members may affect the final allocation decisions made by the household we develop a method of identifying how incomes affect outcomes given conventional family expenditure data the basic assumption we make is that household decision processes lead to efficient outcomes we apply our method to a sample of canadian couples with no children we find that the final allocations of expenditures on each partner depend significantly on their relative incomes and ages and on the level of lifetime wealth

can integrated agriculture nutrition programmes change gender norms on land and asset ownership evidence from burkina faso this article uses a mixed methods approach to analyse the impact of an integrated agriculture and nutrition programme in burkina faso on women s and men s assets and norms regarding ownership use and control of assets we use a cluster randomised controlled trial to determine whether productive asset transfers and increased income generating opportunities for women increase women s assets over time qualitative work on gender norms finds that although men still own and control most assets women have greater decision making power and control over home gardens and their produce and attitudes towards women owning property have become more favourable in treatment areas