are household production decisions cooperative evidence on pastoral migration and milk sales from northern kenya market based development efforts frequently create opportunities to generate income from goods previously produced and consumed within the household production within the household is often characterized by a gender and age division of labor market development efforts to improve wellbeing may lead to unanticipated outcomes if household production decisions are noncooperative we develop and test models of household decision making to investigate intrahousehold decision making in a nomadic pastoral setting from kenya our results suggest that household decisions are contested with husbands using migration decisions to resist wives ability to market milk

on the indeterminacy of capital accumulation paths abstract in neoclassical optimal growth models the stability of the accumulation paths depends on the discount parameter we prove that for discount factors small enough the policy function which describes an optimal path can be of any type the result is achieved using the notion of concavity we adopt a constructive approach given any twice differentiable map we show how to construct an optimal growth problem which produces that map as the optimal policy function a consequence is that chaos can appear in these models we also provide bounds on the values of the discount parameter for which indeterminacy is possible

a characterization of erratic dynamics in the overlapping generations model abstract in this paper we characterize and give examples o wide classes of utility functions which generate erratic dynamics in the standard deterministic overlapping generations model erratic dynamics refers to feasible trajectories which are bounded but which do not converge to stationary points or periodic orbits we show that such trajectories are pareto efficient we introduce credit into the model and show how a constant credit expansion rate can result in erratic trajectories in prices and the real value of credit finally we briefly discuss certain technical aspects of the mathematics used and the statistical nature of the dynamics that can arise from deterministic dynamical systems

food preferences and nutrition in rural bangladesh t he dietary choice of households near subsistence levels of nutrient intake is one of obvious policy importance in many countries such as bangladesh national goals are set in terms of nutritional intake and there is heavy intervention in the markets for foods however little is known about the manner in which food preferences vary with food expenditure and nutrient intake the design of efficient programs to aid nutritionally deficient households in attaining minimal levels of nutrient intake requires information on all ownand cross price elasticities for both target and non target groups the net effect of a food price subsidy on the consumption of food nutrients cannot be predicted without knowledge of the complete elasticity matrix results presented below demonstrate that substitution effects can be so strong that the subsidization of certain foods quite often reduces nutrient consumption in this study demand equations for nine foods which allow for extremely flexible consumer price response are estimated from the individual budgets of 5 750 rural bangladeshi households estimation at the household level is preferred because it more readily permits the incorporation of household composition variables into the demand analysis such as household size occupation and employment status that are typically lost in aggregation there is also a greater range and variation in expenditure levels than found in grouped data this is of particular importance in the study of nutritional well being as it is the poorest households which are of special interest moreover the household sample provides sufficient degrees of freedom to estimate a simple varying parameter model which requires the estimation of 270 parameters previous econometric analysis of income class specific dietary choice has been limited and not altogether satisfactory pinstrup anderson de londono and hoover 1976 estimated complete sets of price elasticities for different income strata using frisch s scheme in order to study the impact of changes in relative prices on nutrient consumption their results are suspect because of the assumption of want independence necessary for this methodology to be valid alderman and timmer 1980 who were also concerned with studying the relationship between food price policy and nutrient intake by income classes econometrically estimated separate price coefficients for each income group by including slope dummy variables in their demand equations for rice and cassava in indonesia the inclusion of these dummy variables revealed surprisingly large differences in compensated price response across income groups although their results support the notion that poorer households respond differently to prices than the rich the limitations of their data constrained them to consider only two foods and to specify changes in price response which are discontinuous with respect to income i the formulation and estimation of the food demand equations is discussed in section ii below section iii presents the results of the estimation and discusses the nutritional implications of movements in relative food prices and other exogenous variables section iv summarizes our findings

economic growth comparative advantage and gender differences in schooling outcomes evidence from the birthweight differences of chinese twins abstract data from two surveys of twins in china are used to contribute to an improved understanding of the role of economic development in affecting gender differences in the trends in levels of and returns to schooling observed in china and in many developing countries in recent decades in particular we explore the hypothesis that these phenomena reflect differences in comparative advantage with respect to skill and brawn between men and women in the context of changes in incomes returns to skill and or nutritional improvements that are the result of economic development and growth

intergenerational transfers in philippine rice villages gender differences in traditional inheritance customs abstract this paper examines education land and nonland asset transfers from parents to children in five rice villages in the philippines a model with family fixed effects explains transfers better than either individual heterogeneity or observed parent and child characteristics without family fixed effects families facing different land constraints exhibit significantly different patterns of educational investment in children in a subsample with completed inheritance daughters receive less education land and total inheritance but are compensated with nonland assets parents also exhibit preferential behavior towards children of the same gender daughters of better educated mothers receive more land nonland assets and total inheritance better educated fathers give land preferentially to sons but favor daughters in education

endowments at birth and parents investments in children do parents invest more in higher quality children or do they compensate for lower quality by giving more to children with lower endowments we answer this question in the context of a large scale iodine supplementation programme in tanzania we find that children with higher programme exposure were more likely to receive necessary vaccines and were breastfed for longer siblings of treated children were also more likely to be immunised fertility behavior and investments at the time of birth were unaffected

alcohol availability prenatal conditions and long term economic outcomes this study examines how a policy that sharply increased alcohol availability during 8 5 months affected the labor productivity of those exposed to it in utero compared to the surrounding cohorts the prenatally exposed children have substantially worse labor market and educational outcomes and lower cognitive and noncognitive ability effects on earnings are found throughout the distribution but are largest below the median males are more affected than females consistent with growing evidence that boys are less resilient to early environmental insults the long term effects seem primarily driven by changes in prenatal health rather than changes in the childhood environment

input choices in agriculture is there a gender bias summary this paper examines evidence of gender biases in the decisions of agricultural households utilizing data from international crops research institute for the semi arid tropics s village level studies in india 1975 85 the main empirical finding is that households with a high proportion of boys tend to use some agricultural inputs including fertilizers and irrigation services more intensively than households with girls this pattern is more pronounced among wealthier households but does not appear to be driven solely by bequest motives or male child labor productivity

productivity health and inequality in the intrahousehold distribution of food in low income countries a model is formulated incorporating linkages among nutrition labor market productivity health heterogeneity and the intrahousehold distribution of food and work activities in a subsistence economy empirical results based on a sample of households from bangladesh indicate that despite considerable intrahousehold disparities in calorie consumption households are averse to inequality furthermore consistent with the model the results also indicate that both the higher level and greater variance in the calories consumed by men relative to women reflect in part the greater participation by men in activities in which productivity is sensitive to health status copyright 1990 by american economic association

dynamic complexity in duopoly games abstract we discuss the occurrence of periodic and chaotic phenomena in infinite horizon duopoly games where firms maximize their discounted sum of profits and use markov perfect equilibrium strategies in the alternating case their corresponding actions are then constrained orbits of a map similar to a cournot t tonnement we show that any behavior is possible for small discount factors and that one obtains the cournot t tonnement as the discount factor goes to zero in the simultaneous case we show by mean of an example that many cournot t tonnements can be viewed as markov perfect equilibria of an infinite horizon game and that one obtains the nash equilibrium of the static game as the discount parameter goes to zero we are thus led to study in detail the dynamical properties of a cournot t tonnement

fiscal policy and monetary integration in europe fiscal policy economists policy makers and the media often argue that the maastricht treaty and the stability and growth pact make it difficult for governments of emu countries to stabilize their economies with appropriate fiscal policy and to provide adequate public investment our empirical analysis offers little support to this view discretionary budget deficits have actually become more counter cyclical in emu countries after the maastricht treaty as well as in the other eu and non eu industrialized countries we study and while public investment has declined recently in emu countries a similar tendency is apparent in other countries and started well before the maastricht treaty was signed jordi gali and roberto perotti

loss aversion in a consumption savings model abstract we propose a model of consumption and saving based on kahneman and tversky s prospect theory that implies a fundamental asymmetry in consumption behavior inconsistent with other models of consumption when there is sufficient income uncertainty a person resists lowering consumption in response to bad news about future income this resistance is greater than the resistance to increasing consumption in response to good news we present empirical evidence from five countries that confirms this behavior

reassessing discretionary fiscal policy in 1992 president bush proposed legislation intended to speed up the recovery from the 1990 91 recession congress rejected this proposal for countercyclical fiscal policy stimulus in early 1993 president clinton proposed his own stimulus package but congress rejected this proposal too many reasons were given for deciding against these two discretionary fiscal policy proposals but perhaps the most common one was the large federal budget deficit in the early 1990s with the rapid disappearance of budget deficits in recent years this reason to vote against a discretionary fiscal stimulus is unlikely to be mentioned in the next economic cycle discretionary countercyclical fiscal policy again appears to be a politically feasible option but should america use it after so many years of disuse much has happened in macroeconomics since the 1960s and 1970s when discretionary countercyclical fiscal policy was last considered a serious option in the united states first monetary policy making has changed substantially over the last two decades the federal reserve s interest rate decisions have become more explicit more systematic and more reactive to changes in both inflation and output the fed has placed a greater emphasis on keeping inflation low the experience with this new policy has been very favorable inflation has been low since the early 1980s and the real economy has been more stable the 1980s and 1990s saw two lengthy expansions separated by a relatively short and mild recession in terms of the tradeoff between output variability and inflation

fiscal policy in central and eastern europe with real time data cyclicality inertia and the role of eu accession this article evaluates the cyclicality inertia and effect of eu accession on fiscal policy in central and eastern europe cee using a real time dataset budget balances are found to react in a stabilizing way to economic activity every extra percentage point of economic growth is associated with an improvement in the budget balance of 0 3 percentage points of gross domestic product gdp and there is no evidence of an asymmetric reaction to the cycle balances are much less inert than is typically found in western europe however there is clear evidence of a fiscal loosening in the run up to eu accession this began in 1999 in larger central european countries often identified as front runners the other seven began loosening in 2001 after the nice treaty was agreed for both sets of countries this loosening cumulatively amounts to some 3 of gdp

who benefits more from higher household consumption the intra household allocation of nutrients in china abstract previous studies find that human capital investments in boys are less income elastic than investments in girls attributing this result to favoritism toward boys i show theoretically that it is plausible for more productive or favored household members to have higher income elasticities i then investigate this question empirically utilizing panel data on individual nutrient intake from the china health and nutrition survey chns to analyze how changes in household per capita nutrient intake affect the intra household allocation of nutrients to deal with potential biases due to omitted variables and simultaneity i use measures of rainfall variation as instruments i find that nutritional intakes are more elastic for males especially prime age men than for females and significantly less elastic for the elderly

on endogenous competitive business cycles the belief that the long run equilibrium of a competitive monetary economy that does not experience any exogeneous shocks whether originating from the external environment or from policy should be modelled as a state that is stationary or perhaps growing at a constant rate seems to be deeply rooted in the mind of some economists

whose fast and whose feast intrahousehold asymmetries in dietary diversity response among east african pastoralists thisarticleexploresintrahouseholddietarydiversityallocationwithinpastoralisthouseholdsineastern africa we estimate income elasticities of dietary diversity for demographic cohorts allowing asymmetric behavior depending on household circumstances we find that household heads disproportionately bear the nutritional burden when household income is below mean while other cohorts disproportionately enjoy the nutritional gains when it is above mean the commonly assumed symmetric framework masks this intrahousehold behavior and produces biased elasticity estimates stochastic dominance tests show adult daughters as better off than other household members in their dietary diversity sons as worse off and little difference between male heads and their wives nutritional welfare is an individual not household characteristic while the average nutrient intake and dietary quality of the household can be one of the largest determinants of the well being of its members nutritional well being is individually experienced therefore development policies targeting nutrition are typically more concerned with their possible implications for individual welfare than for household community or national level aggregates the household though may be one of the most important institutions influencing individual nutritional welfare consequently in order to evaluate income generation and pricing policies it is essential to understand both how households allocate resources to individual members as well as how allocations

on rational dynamic strategies in infinite horizon models where agents discount the future abstract in this paper we show that the equilibrium dynamics arising in three models of rational choice over an infinite horizon are described by choice functions belonging to huge classes of maps including chaotic ones the results are obtained by studying the relationship between the primal functions of the models and the corresponding choice functions the three models are the economic growth model with discounting a duopoly game with alternate moves a duopoly with simultaneous moves

how serious is the neglect of intrahousehold inequality in this report the authors develop a framework for assessing the consequences of ignoring intrahousehold inequality in the measurement and analysis of poverty and inequality they apply this framework to data for the philippines and conclude that 1 the result of neglecting intrahousehold inequality will probably be considerable understatement of the levels of poverty and inequality with the philippine data measured levels of inequality and poverty were off 30 percent as a result of ignoring intrahousehold variation and 2 patterns of inequality revealed by household level data are somewhat different from patterns revealed by individual level data but the differences seem not to be dramatic to confirm these results the exercise should be repeated with data from other countries

milk sales and dietary diversity among the maasai in maasai culture responsibilities are traditionally divided between genders men are in charge of grazing and managing the livestock herds women take care of the family administer food supplies and are responsible for milking for them balancing home consumption of milk for the family and for the calves milk sale and food purchase is a major task in this article we first investigate how different milk sales groups vary regarding the use of different food items and the respective quantities consumed by the enkaji i e a maasai subhousehold then we address the commercialization decision and assess the effect of milk sales on the enkaji s food item use and food consumption using the data of maasai enkajijik in the milk catchment area of a milk collection center in ngerengere tanzania we estimate the effects by employing propensity score matching procedures our findings suggest that milk sellers especially those selling to the milk collection center have a more diverse diet in terms of per person consumption the groups are markedly similar therefore we conclude that income generated by milk sales is invested in diet diversification rather than in increasing the quantity of food consumed hence the enkajijik appear not to make use of caloric terms of trade

rational choice and erratic behaviour in this paper we show that rational choice in a stationary environment can lead to erratic behaviour when preferences depend on experience we mean by erratic behaviour choice sequences that do not converge to a long run stationary value or to any periodic pattern early investigations of the effects of experience on choice goes back to pareto see also benhabib 1979 some keynesian theories of the consumption function incorporate the effects of experience and habit formation on current levels of consumption duesenberry 1949 modigliani 1949 and brown 1952 a general model of experience dependent choice was described in day 1970 and investigated in day and kennedy 1971 while the specific issue of the existence of stable representable long run consumer demand when tastes vary endogenously has been treated by gorman 1967 pollak 1970 1976 weizsaicker 1971 mccarthy 1974 and hammond 1976 pollak gave conditions for the representability of long run choice when the equations of preference dependence are linear and utility additive hammond in a generalization of these findings provides conditions for stable representable long run choice when preferences are acyclic a condition which in essence assures convergence to a long run choice

savings and nutrition at low incomes while many development theorists assume saving propensities vary among different groups there has been limited theoretical justification for this view this paper analyzes two complementary theories stressing the effect on saving of physiological consequences of poor nutrition at low incomes one influence is on the probability of survival another is on workers productivity either effect means that the average propensity to save can rise with income issues considered include annuities exogenous changes in survival and efficiency implications for the efficiency wage theory of unemployment and distinctions between wage and nonwage income implications of nutritional effects for econometric specification of saving functions are stressed

estimation of a fiscal policy rule for emu countries 1984 2005 the primary objective of this article is to estimate a fiscal policy rule for each of the emu member states from 1984 to 2005 in order to know if there has been a systematic response of the cyclically adjusted primary balance to output gap and debt level variations also we aim to discover whether the change in the fiscal framework which took place after 1992 has had a substantial impact on the fiscal policy applied the principal novelty is that the estimation is performed simultaneously by means of a seemingly unrelated regression estimator model we are thus able to obtain different coefficients for each country while developing possible correlations between national fiscal policies which would reveal the existence of common factors the results provide clear evidence of a structural break in the rule after the introduction of the new fiscal regulations and as the hypothesis of equality in the national coefficients of the rule is clearly rejected reveal a need to consider specific national factors

health and hunger nutrient response to income depending on caloric availability in nepal using data from nlss iii we estimate nutrient income elasticities for macronutrients vitamins and minerals we further allow for differential nutrient demand response to income depending on where a household is in the caloric availability distribution we find that some nutrients are income inelastic indicating that they are necessity goods while others are relatively income elastic we further test and reject equivalent nutrient income elasticities across the caloric availability distribution households in the lowest calorie quintile have highly income elastic nutrient demand leaving them vulnerable to income fluctuations moreover as households meet their first order caloric needs they substitute away from cheap calorie dense staples toward more expensive nutrient dense foods finally for most nutrients households in the highest calorie quintile exhibit more elastic nutrient demand similar to households in the lowest quintile our results suggest that policies aimed at improving income will likely also improve household nutrient availability particularly for the most calorie poor households they further suggest that policies aimed at protecting poor households from negative income shocks will also likely yield nutritional benefits

asymmetric intrahousehold allocation of calories in china to analyze intrahousehold calorie allocation we propose a new framework that takes into account asymmetric consumption behavior due to liquidity constraints and loss aversion we find that intrahousehold calorie allocation responds asymmetrically to expected declines and increases in household food availability in china compared with previous studies based on symmetric consumption behavior our framework provides stronger evidence of gender bias in intrahousehold calorie allocation among children in urban areas and among elderly people in rural areas and of demographic bias between girls and prime age adults in both urban and rural areas implications for demographic targeting in nutrition programs are discussed copyright 2010 oxford university press

does better nutrition raise farm productivity household level data from sierra leone are used to test whether higher caloric intake enhances family farm labor productivity this is the notion behind the efficiency wages hypothesis which has found only weak empirical support a farm production function is estimated accounting for the simultaneity in input and calorie choice instruments include prices household demographic characteristics and farm assets the latter two sets of instruments are later dropped to explore the robustness of the results to different specifications of exogeneity the exercise shows a highly significant effect of caloric intake on labor productivity providing solid support for the nutrition productivity hypothesis the marginal effect on productivity falls drastically as calorie consumption rises but remains positive at moderately high levels of intake one result is a fall in the effective price of food a decline that is larger for households that consumer fewer calories

the theory and econometrics of health information in cross sectional nutrient demand analysis understanding the role of health information in food and nutrient demand has become an important issue over the last decade endogeneity and measurement error are two empirical problems that are inherent in this type of analysis while some type of instrumental variables estimation would appear the obvious solution this article provides several theoretical and empirical reasons why this is not the case in cross sectional analysis an alternative estimation strategy is pursued an empirical example is given and the implications are discussed copyright 2001 oxford university press

agricultural production dietary diversity and climate variability nonseparable household models outline the links between agricultural production and household consumption yet empirical extensions to investigate the effect of production on dietary diversity and diet composition are limited although a significant literature has investigated the calorie income elasticity abstracting from production this paper provides an empirical application of the nonseparable household model linking the effect of exogenous variation in planting season production decisions via climate variability on household dietary diversity using exogenous variation in degree days rainfall and agricultural capital stocks as instruments the effect of production on household dietary diversity at harvest is estimated the empirical specifications estimate production effects on dietary diversity using both agricultural revenue and crop production diversity significant effects of agricultural revenue and crop production diversity on dietary diversity are estimated the dietary diversity production elasticities imply that a 10 percent increase in agricultural revenue or crop diversity results in a 1 8 percent or 2 4 percent increase in dietary diversity respectively these results illustrate that agricultural income growth or increased crop diversity may not be sufficient to ensure improved dietary diversity increases in agricultural revenue do change diet composition estimates of the effect of agricultural income on share of calories by food groups indicate relatively large changes in diet composition on average a 10 percent increase in agricultural revenue makes households 7 2 percent more likely to consume vegetables and 3 5 percent more likely to consume fish and increases the share of tubers consumed by 5 2 percent

the intrahousehold demand for nutrients in rural south india individual estimates fixed effects and permanent income good estimates of nutrient intake responses to prices and income are very useful for the evaluation of the numerous efforts to improve nutrition in many developing countries through pricesubsidy and income generation policies we discuss three problems in standard estimates of these responses and then illustrate their implications for nutrient demand relations for a poor sample from rural south india 1 intra household nutrient allocations usually are ignored in this case nutrient intakes for females systematically have algebraically lower price elasticities than do those for males which may leave the females particularly vulnerable at times of food shortages 2 unobserved fixed effects may bias the estimates of responses to observed variables in this case not only the community fixed effects on which the previous literature has focused but also household and individual fixed effects are important failure to control for them results in substantial algebraically upward biases in many estimated price responses 3 most previous studies use current instead of permanent income which a priori may account for the low estimated income elasticities in this case however the use of permanent income does not change the conclusion that the nutrient intakes responses to income are quite small

the effects of human capital on wages and the determinants of labor supply in a developing country abstract the heckman procedure is used to correct for sample selection bias in estimating wage offer and net labor market supply equations the findings show that wages are affected by education and experience in addition the wage offer is influenced by other genetic and environmental influences captured in the wage of one s father calories as predicted by exogenous instruments are also shown to influence the wage offer suggesting that better nutrition increases labor productivity the probability of market labor participation as well as the amount of net market labor supply declined with the size of paddy landholding in addition to the net market supply elasticity increasing with the amount of land owned and being lower for urban than rural workers

market opportunities genetic endowments and intrafamily resource distribution child survival in rural india the authors examine how intrafamily resource allocations respond to changes in economic conditions and to genetic differences in children by estimating the determinants of variations in the sex specific survival differentials of rural indian children based on standard census and household survey data they explore in particular the hypothesis that such differences are related to the relative returns to survival with households selectively allocating resources to children in response to variation in sex differences in their expected earnings opportunities as adults data are from the 1961 census and a 1971 household survey excerpt

induced technical change in centrally planned economies abstract it has generally been assumed that the inferences of the induced technical change model with respect to the direction of technical change could not be expected to hold for the centrally planned economies in this paper we test three hypotheses generated from the induced technical change hypotheses against the experience of centrally planned economies a if land becomes increasingly scarce new technology will be biased in a land saving direction b if labor becomes increasingly scarce new technology will be biased in a labor saving direction and c changes in the land labor ratio have been induced by changes in relative factor endowments the results suggest a bias toward mechanical and against biological technology regardless of factor endowments this is consistent with the well known ideological or policy bias in a number of centrally planned economies toward a capital intensive development strategy

an exogeneity test for a simultaneous equation tobit model with an application to labor supply a test of weak exogeneity in the simultaneous equation tobit model is proposed and illustrated using a female labour supply model estimated using cross section data the test statistic can be simply output from any standard tobit maximum likelihood package and is asymptotically efficient the procedure provides consistent estimators for the simultaneous tobit model whose asymptotic covariance matrix is a simple extension of the usual tobit formula we also provide the lagrange multiplier test of weak exogeneity this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the safety first expected utility model experimental evidence and economic implications abstract roy s roy a 1952 safety first and the holding of assets econometrica 20 3 431 449 safety first criterion advocates the minimization of the probability of outcomes below a certain disaster level this paper examines safety first theoretically and experimentally we find that safety first plays a crucial role in decision making inducing choices that cannot be explained by and even contradict risk aversion prospect theory and loss aversion in general yet safety first alone cannot explain individual choice therefore we propose an expected utility safety first eu sf model where decisions are made based on a weighted average of the safety first criterion and standard expected utility maximization we experimentally estimate these relative weights and discuss their economic implications