forest incomes and rural livelihoods in chiradzulu district malawi abstract this paper examines forest income among rural dwellers in one of malawi s most densely populated districts chiradzulu 160 households were interviewed in two sites only 20 km apart purposely selected on the basis of access to a forest reserve people are extremely poor with 97 having incomes of less than 1 usd day forest income constitutes around 15 of total income only non farm income 47 and agriculture 28 rank higher the poorest segment depends more on forest income than the least poor group but the medium income group exhibits the highest dependence fuelwood constitutes the major source of such income followed by fodder the incomes mainly support current consumption people with better access to the forest reserve have higher total income forest income and relative forest income as revealed through a gini coefficient analysis forest resources have an important income equalizing effect across rural households a particular group of resource poor farmers 8 1 of sample with little access to agricultural land and a high representation of female heads derives an average of 65 of their income from the forest an important policy lesson is that restricting people s access to forest resources can have substantial effects on household livelihoods and welfare and would serve to increase income inequalities in the area livelihood researchers should now recognize the substantial income from forest resources

the inflation tax in a real business cycle model money is incorporated into a real business cycle model using a cash in advance constraint the model economy is used to analyze whether the business cycle is different in high inflation and low inflation economies and to analyze the impact of variability in the growth rate of money in addition the welfare cost of the inflation tax is measured and the steady state properties of high and low inflation economies are compared

the behavior of prices and inflation an empirical analysis of disaggregat price data this paper analyzes the effects of inflation on the dispersion of prices as well as other aspects of price behavior using disaggregated data on prices of foodstuffs in israel during 1978 84 we find that the effect of expected inflation on intramarket price variability is stronger than the effect of unexpected inflation we show that even in times of high inflation price quotations are not trivially short and price changes are not synchronized across firms these facts taken together confirm that there is some staggering in the setting of prices we find that the distribution of real prices is far from being uniform as many menu cost based models assume or conclude in fact as inflation increases to very high levels this distribution is not even symmetric when the annual inflation rate reaches 130 percent there are equal chances of finding real prices above or below the market average but upward deviations in the real price are further away from zero than downward ones furthermore as the annu

on high inflation and the allocation of resources abstract this paper formalizes some of the disruptive effects of inflation on the organization of markets rapid inflation induces buyers to speed up purchases which thus inhibits the selection of more adequate trading partners through search this blurs distinctions across firms of different productivities and leads to resource misallocations as inflation causes efficient and inefficient firms to be less distinguishable the incentives to engage in cost reduction are dampened and lower growth results the model could provide a rationale for the large number of bankruptcies and large turnover rates following successful inflation stabilization programs like those of israel bolivia and argentina

search sticky prices and inflation this paper examines equilibrium in a deflationary environment in a market with free entry where consumers search and firms set prices on individual units of the commodity prices attached to newly produced goods are continuously adjusted prices attached to previously produced goods can only be changed at a cost deflation cuts into the market power created by the need to search for the good thus consumers welfare is inverse u shaped in deflation

state credit programs and the peasantry under populist regimes lessons from the apra experience in the peruvian amazon abstract a study near iquitos peru finds that a national agricultural program implemented in the late 1980s which provided peasants with access to credit secure land tenure and grassroots organization promised to reduce rather than improve the welfare of intended beneficiaries new economic conditions and strategic behaviors engendered by the program threatened to combine through a process of community enclosure and competitive exclusion to undermine the subsistence viability of peasant communities general lessons are drawn for more effective rural development programs ones that pay particular attention to direct and indirect feedback effects of macroeconomic policy the factors that limit peasant economic competitiveness and to the fundamental spatiality of development processes

search bargaining money and prices the goal of this paper is to extend existing search theoretic models of fiat money which until now have assumed that the price level is exogenous by explicitly incorporating bilateral bargaining this allows us to determine the price level endogenously and leads to additional insights concerning the role of money for example we find that monetary equilibria are generally inefficient in the sense that output and prices differ from the solution to a social planner s problem although the difference can become small as the discount rate or search friction vanishes we also find that there exist nonstationary inflationary equilibria

search inflation and capital accumulation abstract this paper constructs a model to integrate the search monetary theory into a neoclassical growth model with divisible goods and money the model is used to examine the relationship between money growth and capital accumulation the framework uncovers a distinct extensive effect that an increase in the money growth rate increases the frequency of successful trades by increasing the number of agents in the market this positive extensive effect on the number of trades can dominate the conventional negative intensive effects of money growth on individuals labor input and real money balance in which case increasing the money growth rate increases aggregate capital and output

price dispersion and inflation evidence from israel the paper considers the question whether observed price differentials reflect perceived differences in quality service agreements or location or whether information imperfections can explain this phenomenon it sets out theoretical arguments linking inflation to reductions in the information stock held by agents and thus to greater price dispersion the hypothesis is tested using monthly price data for 13 uniquely defined goods sold in israel between 1971 and 1984 price dispersion is shown to be positively related to the rate of market price inflation since inflation is an unlikely proxy for changes in perceived characteristics the findings support price dispersion theories based on optimally imperfect decision making

equilibrium search with continuous productivity dispersion theory and nonparametric estimation in this article we develop an equilibrium search model with a continuous distribution of firm productivity types within a given labor market we characterize equilibrium derive expressions for the endogenous equilibrium wage distributions and characterize the set of wage distributions that can be generated by the model we develop a structural nonparametric estimation method for the productivity distribution we estimate the model using french longitudinal survey data on labor supply and we compare the results with those from a french panel data set of firms the results are informative on the degree to which firms exploit search frictions

menu costs and the neutrality of money a model of endogenous price adjustment under money growth is presented firms follow s s pricing policies and price revisions are imperfectly synchronized in the aggregate price stickiness disappears and money is neutral the connection between firm price adjustment and relative price variability in the presence of monetary growth is also investigated the results contrast with those obtained in models with exogenous fixed timing of price adjustment

existence and persistence of price dispersion an empirical analysis the hebrew university of jerusalem and nber using a unique data set on store level monthly prices of four homogenous products sold in israel i study the existence and characteristics of the dispersion of prices across stores as well as its persistence over time i find that price dispersion prevails even after controlling for observed and unobserved product heterogeneity moreover intra distribution mobility is significant stores move up and down the cross sectional price distribution thus consumers cannot learn about stores that consistently post low prices as a consequence price dispersion does not disappear and persists over time as predicted by varian s 1980 model of sales

a fundamental theory of exchange rates and direct currency trades in this paper we construct a two country search model to determine the nominal exchange rate between two fiat monies our model allows agents to use any currency to trade for goods in all countries however search frictions restrict agents opportunities for instantaneous arbitrage and hence make the nominal exchange rate determinate the nominal exchange rate depends on the two countries economic fundamentals including the stocks and growth rates of the two monies direct exchanges between currencies are essential and they imply a nominal exchange rate that is different from the relative price between the two currencies in the goods markets there are persistent violations of the law of one price and purchasing power parity in equilibrium despite the fact that prices are perfectly flexible and all goods are tradeable between countries nominal and real exchange rates can move together in the steady state in response to money growth shocks

economic exchange during hyperinflation historical evidence indicates that hyperinflations can disrupt individuals normal trading patterns and impede the orderly functioning of markets to explore these issues we construct a theoretical model of hyperinflation that focuses on individuals and their process of economic exchange in our model buyers must carry cash while shopping and some transactions take place in a decentralized setting in which buyer and seller negotiate over the terms of trade of an indivisible good since buyers face the constant threat of incoming younger hence richer customers their bargaining position is weakened by inflation allowing sellers to extract a higher real price however we show that higher inflation also reduces buyers search increasing sellers wait for customers as a result the volume of transactions concluded in the decentralized sector falls at high enough rates of inflation all agents suffer a welfare loss

environmental and market determinants of economic orientation among rain forest communities evidence from a large scale survey in western amazonia abstract large scale surveys of rain forest livelihoods open up new possibilities for understanding the role of forest resources in the well being of forest peoples but often overlook the factors that influence the diverse economic foci of forest based communities in this paper we describe the peruvian amazon rural livelihoods and poverty parlap project which seeks to identify the factors that contribute to rural poverty among indigenous and folk peoples through the first large scale survey conducted in this data poor region our paper draws upon a community census undertaken in four major river sub basins in eastern peru n 919 communities and asks the question how do environmental and market factors influence the economic orientation of rain forest communities recognizing that standard approaches that explain activity choice by current conditions are problematic because of potential endogeneity we propose a new analytical framework that examines how historical initial conditions determine current conditions and thus current economic activities our approach produces a rich array of results that point to the importance of initial environmental endowments and market access of communities in shaping their economic orientation interacting in different ways depending on the key natural resource upon which they rely

environmental income and rural livelihoods a global comparative analysis this paper presents results from a comparative analysis of environmental income from approximately 8000 households in 24 developing countries collected by research partners in cifor s poverty environment network pen environmental income accounts for 28 of total household income 77 of which comes from natural forests environmental income shares are higher for low income households but differences across income quintiles are less pronounced than previously thought the poor rely more heavily on subsistence products such as wood fuels and wild foods and on products harvested from natural areas other than forests in absolute terms environmental income is approximately five times higher in the highest income quintile compared to the two lowest quintiles

modeling the role of retail price formats and retailer competition types on production schedule strategy abstract to study the determinants of choice between make to order mto and make to stock mts production scientists have traditionally focused on production specific factors however the choice can be also influenced by marketing specific factors such as the pricing strategy of retailers this paper therefore develops a modeling framework to link the determination of the optimal production strategy of mts mto to the retailing strategy of edlp hilo we characterize an optimal production strategy as one that maximizes total system wide profits in a centralized system we show that the optimum production strategy would depend on whether the manufacturer is delivering to an every day low pricing edlp store or to a high low pricing store hi lo additionally the production plan is demonstrated to be a function of the nature and type of competition in the market in particular we study the duopoly model of competition under both bertrand and stackelberg conjectures

forest based livelihoods strategies conditioned by market remoteness and forest proximity in jharkhand india summary the study uses a novel method to investigate the role of forest proximity market remoteness and caste in determining household income especially forest income in an underdeveloped region of india a high 50 proportion of total income is earned in cash forest products contribute substantially to total income with fuelwood as the most important forest product proximity to forest is associated with higher forest incomes as expected but remote villages do not have higher forest incomes or lower cash incomes than less remote villages higher off farm income is associated with better road access and higher income households generally 2014 published by elsevier ltd this is an open access article under the cc by nc sa license http creativecommons org licenses bync sa 3 0

price dispersion inflation and welfare we examine the implications of inflation for both price dispersion and welfare in a monetary search economy in our economy if the degree of buyers incomplete information about prices is fixed both price dispersion and real prices are increasing in inflation as the inflation rate approaches the friedman rule both price dispersion and welfare losses vanish if households choose the number of prices to observe then the optimal inflation rate may exceed the friedman rule as inflation induces search and up to a point raises welfare by eroding market power

the consequences of price instability on search markets toward understanding the effects of inflation real price variability depreciates the information about future prices contained in current ones repeat purchase customers have then less incentive to acquire price information the fact that consumers are less well informed allows firms to increase their markups and permits inefficient producers to increase their sales production gets reallocated toward higher cost firms given the well documented correlation between inflation and relative price variability these results help explain some of the costs of inflation copyright 1994 by american economic association

poverty alleviation and tropical forests what scope for synergies abstract this paper explores the state of the art of the two way causal links between poverty alleviation and natural tropical forests microimpacts of rising poverty can increase or slow forest loss at the macrolevel poverty also has an ambiguous effect but it is probable that higher income stimulates forest loss by raising demand for agricultural land the second question is what potential forest led development has to alleviate a country s poverty in terms of producer benefits consumer benefits and economy wide employment natural forests widely serve as safety nets for the rural poor but it proves difficult to raise producer benefits significantly urban consumer benefits from forest an important target for pro poor agricultural innovation are limited and seldom favor the poor absorption of poor unskilled labor is low in forestry which tends to be capital intensive natural forests may thus lack comparative advantage for poverty alleviation there are few win win synergies between natural forests and national poverty reduction which may help to explain why the loss of tropical forests is ongoing this may have important implications for our understanding of sustainable forest development and for the design of both conservation and poverty alleviation strategies

a unified framework for monetary theory and policy analysis search theoretic models of monetary exchange are based on explicit descriptions of the frictions that make money essential however tractable versions of these models typically make strong assumptions that render them ill suited for monetary policy analysis we propose a new framework based on explicit micro foundations within which macro policy can be studied the framework is analytically tractable and easily quantifiable we calibrate the model to standard observations and use it to measure the cost of inflation we find that going from 10 percent to 0 percent inflation is worth between 3 and 5 percent of consumption much higher than previous estimates

safety nets gap filling and forests a global comparative perspective summary in the forest livelihoods literature forests are widely perceived to provide both common safety nets to shocks and resources for seasonal gap filling we use a large global comparative dataset to test these responses we find households rank forest extraction responses to shocks lower than most common alternatives for seasonal gap filling forest extraction also has limited importance the minority of households using forests for coping is asset poor and lives in villages specialized on forests in particular timber extraction overall forest resources may be less important as a buffer between agricultural harvests and in times of unforeseen hardship than has been found in many case studies 2014 published by elsevier ltd

search price setting and inflation a model of monopolistic competition in an inflationary environment is developed which embodies optimal sequential search price dynamics and entry on the part of consumers and firms respectively equilibrium price strategies are s s these bounds increase continuously with consumer search costs and so does price dispersion indeed the whole equilibrium varies smoothly from the competitive bertrand to the monopolistic diamond 1971 end of the spectrum the latter s paradoxical result is explained as a limiting case where frictions on firms side of the market price adjustment costs but not on buyers search costs tend to zero a positive relationship between smooth and perfectly anticipated inflation and price dispersion or uncertainty is established

money and prices a model of search and bargaining abstract this paper makes commodities divisible and incorporates bargaining into the search theoretic model of money to determine the purchasing power of money or price it is shown that two monetary equilibria always coexist where fiat money is universally accepted the two equilibria differ in price output welfare and the velocity of money sunspot monetary equilibria exist in which money is universally accepted in all states of the economy multiplicity has novel implications on the effectiveness of currency substitution and exchange market intervention journal of economic literature classification numbers c78 e40

inflation and efficiency in search markets this paper examines how inflation affects efficiency and output in monopolistically competitive search markets it formalizes the conventional wisdom linking higher inflation price dispersion and increased resources devoted to search it also brings to light the induced exit of arms which reduces rent dissipation but the most important effect of inflation is how it alters the distribution of real transactions prices whether this reduces or promotes efficiency and output is shown to depend critically on preferences and market structure and especially on whether search costs are large or small relative to consumer surplus

forests livelihoods and conservation broadening the empirical base summary more than 10 000 years after the agricultural revolution started millions of rural smallholders across the developing world may still derive as much income from foraging forests and wildlands as from cultivating crops these steady environmental income flows come often from public forests and are extracted by men and women alike however inflexible supplies from nature the physical hardship of harvesting and commonly low returns limit their role as safety nets and pathways out of poverty while their harvesting does not preclude the ongoing conversion of wildlands to agriculture privileged access to high quality environmental resources can become a strong local conservation motive

forest reliance across poverty groups in tanzania an emerging body of knowledge has established that poorer households in forest adjacent communities in developing countries are generally more forest reliant higher forest income share while richer households tend to extract more and generate higher absolute forest income these studies commonly categorize households based on observed income in cross section data presenting a snap shot reflecting both inter household and inter annual income variation in this paper we introduce a new approach to categorize households based on a combination of the observed one year income and predicted income by an augmented asset approach applying this approach on household data from tanzania we find forest reliance to be high among structurally poor households low observed income and assets the highest forest reliance is found among the stochastically non poor households high income and low assets and this group also has the highest absolute forest income

empirical regularities in the poverty environment relationship of rural households evidence from zimbabwe abstract analysis of rural households and environmental resources is beset by inadequate data especially in africa using purpose collected panel data from zimbabwe we demonstrate seven empirical regularities in the rural poverty environment relationship most important environmental resources make a significant contribution to average rural incomes poorer households also depend heavily on these resources which contribute c 40 to their incomes richer households however use greater quantities of environmental resources in total finally considerable differentiation exists in the economic characteristics of environmental goods these results demonstrate the considerable economic significance of environmental resources to rural households surveys which ignore them miscalculate rural incomes and welfare

inflation and efficiency in a search economy we present a model in which purely monetary inflation systematically affects efficiency welfare and relative prices the model focuses on the microeconomics of trade in search markets under inflation inflation by increasing the cost of holding money undermines the market s ability to sustain long term customer relationships because those relationships generate the most efficient transactions patterns overall welfare unambiguously declines