democracy visibility and public good provision we examine the role of visibility in influencing government resource allocation across a multiplicity of public goods we show that a visibility effect distorts governmental resource allocation such that it helps explain why governments neglect provision of essential public goods despite their considerable benefits we show that greater democratization widens the gap in resource allocation between more visible such as famine prevention versus less visible such as malnutrition prevention public goods up to an intermediate level of democracy beyond this level this gap decreases furthermore public goods with low visibility are prone to multiple equilibria in resource allocation with voter expectations being shown to be important

democracy and human capital formation education spending in latin america 1980 to 1997 this article examines the relationship between democratic representation and spending on education in latin america the authors assess the impact that democracy has on the distribution of resources between different levels of schooling and on total spending on education specifically they test whether democratic governments allocate a greater share of resources to primary education the level that benefits the largest segment of the electorate and that is most critical for human capital formation in developing countries using time series cross sectional analysis the authors find that democracies devote a higher percentage of their educational resources to primary education and that they maintain higher absolute spending levels on education in the aggregate thereby enhancing the prospects of human capital formation

lessons from strange cases democracy development and the resource curse in the u s states the work linking natural resource wealth to authoritarianism and under development suffers from several shortcomings in this article the authors outline those shortcomings and address them in a new empirical setting using a new data set for the u s states spanning 73 years and case studies of texas and louisiana the authors are able to more carefully examine both the diachronic nature and comparative legs of the resource curse hypothesis than previous research has they provide evidence that natural resource dependence contributes to slower economic growth poorer developmental performance and less competitive politics using this empirical setting they also begin parsing the mechanisms that might explain the negative association between resource wealth and political and economic development they draw implications from intranational findings for resource abundant countries across the world and suggest directions for future cross national and cross state work

private food safety and quality standards for fresh produce exporters the case of hortico agrisystems zimbabwe abstract there is evidence that the challenges of complying with stricter food safety and quality standards are acting to exclude small scale producers from export supply chains for high value agricultural products the case of hortico agrisystems illustrates the considerable challenges and costs faced by supermarket suppliers in sourcing from a broad base of small scale producers in the context of evolving food safety and quality standards while small scale producers are able to achieve levels of compliance at least equal to those of large scale producers multi tiered and dynamic systems of control are required to maintain control these need to include measures that facilitate compliance incentives to reward good performance and penalties to punish non compliance in establishing a sustainable supply system in this context both exporters and small scale producers face a steep learning curve in adjusting to new requirements further emphasising the need for supply chains to be responsive to change

the missing dimension of the political resource curse debate given the methodological sophistication of the debate over the political resource curse the purported negative relationship between natural resource wealth in particular oil wealth and democracy it is surprising that scholars have not paid more attention to the basic statistical issue of how to deal with missing data this article highlights the problems caused by the most common strategy for analyzing missing data in the political resource curse literature listwise deletion and investigates how addressing such problems through the best practice technique of multiple imputation affects empirical results i find that multiple imputation causes the results of a number of influential recent studies to converge on a key common finding a political resource curse does exist but only since the widespread nationalization of petroleum industries in the 1970s this striking finding suggests that much of the controversy over the political resource curse has been caused by a neglect of missing data issues

the microfinance promise in the past decade microfinance programs have demonstrated that it is possible to lend to low income households while maintaining high repayment rates even without requiring collateral the programs promise a revolution in approaches to alleviating poverty and spreading financial services and millions of poor households are served globally a growing body of economic theory demonstrates how new contractual forms offer a key to microfinance success particularly the use of group lending contracts with joint liability for the most part however high repayment rates have not translated into profits and studies of impacts on poverty yield a mixed picture in describing emerging tensions the paper highlights the diversity of innovative mechanisms beyond group lending contracts the measurement of financial sustainability the estimation of economic and social impacts the costs and benefits of subsidization and the potential to reduce poverty through savings programs rather than just credit the promise of microfinance has pushed far ahead of the evidence and an agenda is put forward for addressing critical empirical gaps and sharpening the terms of policy discussion

pressure groups and redistribution abstract the simple pressure group model of political redistribution can predict more with less restrictive assumptions instead of ready made pressure groups composed of individuals who vote their pocketbooks we posit heterogeneous agents each of whom decides which group to join and how much effort to expend on political activity our model then examines social affinity conditions that foster pressure group formation political sympathies based on social affinity imply testable effects of growth rate and income distribution on progressive transfers effects that prove substantial in pooled time series cross section regressions for 13 oecd countries 1960 1981

are developing countries really defying the embedded liberalism compact this study evaluates the embedded liberalism hypothesis in a broad swath of less developed countries ldc s the authors find that ldc governments pursue a distinct welfare state policy that protects citizens from economic insecurities associated with global market expansion specifically governments use public employment and particularly employment in civil services and administration to foster domestic stability alongside market expansion however such jobs are targeted to politically salient groups not poorer groups that might also face increased economic uncertainty postopenness in turn public employment shores up public support for openness the authors findings suggest that free traders have reasons both to celebrate and to bemoan this ldc embedded liberalism compact on the positive side ldc governments are working hard to maintain political support for free trade on the other hand the compromise of protecting privileged groups at the expense of others in society raises questions about the long term sustainability of their strategy

the globalization of organic agro food networks summary this article analyzes the booming world trade in organic agro foods such as tropical products counterseasonal fresh produce and processed foods research focuses on expanding south north networks linking major us and european markets with major production regions particularly in latin america employing a commodity network approach i analyze organic production distribution and consumption patterns and the roles of social political and economic actors in consolidating international trade organic certification proves central to network governance shaping product specifications production parameters and enterprise participation my analysis identifies key contradictions between mainstream agro industrial and alternative movement conventions in global organic networks 2004 published by elsevier ltd

basic health care provision and under 5 mortality a cross national study of developing countries summary in two cross sections of developing countries under 5 mortality is found to be associated strongly with maternal and infant health program effort and with the share of births attended by trained personnel but never with any indicator of health care spending from the standpoint of reducing under 5 mortality then the main challenge in many developing countries may be less to raise overall public health spending or even the share of public health spending devoted to basic services than to assure that a very small absolute amount of revenue is spent effectively to raise access to or improve the quality of maternal and infant health care

social policy and mortality decline in east asia and latin america abstract since 1960 chile and costa rica have improved life expectancy and infant survival as much as south korea and taiwan despite growing more slowly suffering more income poverty and having more unequally distributed incomes this paper analyzes the origins and impact of the publicly funded social services that allowed chile and costa rica to achieve rapid reductions in the risk of early death despite relatively poor performance on income related indicators and explores how south korea and taiwan managed to achieve similar progress at reducing premature mortality despite making less deliberate efforts to fund social services for the poor

why has under 5 mortality decreased at such different rates in different countries controlling for socioeconomic and geographic factors under 5 mortality 5q0 in developing countries has been declining at about 2 7 per year a high rate of technical progress this paper adduces theoretical and empirical reasons for rejecting the usual specification of homogeneous technical progress across countries and uses a panel of 95 developing countries for the period 1970 2000 to explore the consequences of heterogeneity allowing country specific rates of technical progress sharply reduces the estimated income elasticity of 5q0 and points to country variation in technical progress as the principal source of the large cross country variation in 5q0 decline education levels and physician coverage also contribute and are less affected than income of allowing country variation in technical progress the paper concludes by decomposing 1970 2000 5q0 decline into its different sources for each country

coordination risk and cost impacts on economic development in poor rural areas this paper addresses issues relevant to a critical problem in economic development how to get rapid pro poor economic growth in poor rural areas in africa and south asia where most of the world s dollar a day poor live it examines constraints to the development of coordinated exchange systems in poor rural areas focusing on the core problem of thin markets and low density of economic activity in these areas transaction cost and risk analysis is integrated into a conventional neoclassical production economics framework to describe the existence of low level equilibrium traps in transactions and supply chains and to generate important insights for development policy

national institutions and global public goods are democracies more cooperative in climate change policy this article examines whether democracies contribute more to the pro vision of global public goods it thus contributes to the debate on the effects of domes tic institutions on international cooperation the focus is on human induced climate change in stern s words the biggest market failure the world has ever seen 1 using new data on climate change cooperation we study a cross section of 185 countries in 1990 2004 the results show that the effect of democracy on levels of political com mitment to climate change mitigation policy output is positive in contrast the effect on policy outcomes measured in terms of emission levels and trends is ambiguous these results demonstrate that up until now the democracy effect has not been able to override countervailing forces that emanate from the free rider problem discounting of future benefits of climate change mitigation and other factors that cut against efforts to reduce emissions even though democracies have had a slow start in moving from political and legal commitments policy output to emission reductions policy out comes particularly in the transportation sector we observe some encouraging signs the main implication of our findings for research on international politics is that greater efforts should be made to study policy output and outcome side by side this will help in identifying whether more democratic countries experience larger words deeds gaps also in other policy areas and whether there are systematic differences of this kind between domestic and international commitments and across different policy areas

state intervention for food price stabilisation in africa can it work abstract although its arguments may have more general applicability this paper discusses the desirability and options for the stabilisation of staple food prices principally in eastern and southern africa it addresses three broad questions i why is stabilisation of food grain prices desirable ii what is technically feasible and iii can the governance and trade issues thrown up by suggested mechanisms be solved it considers a number of options for price stabilisation assessing the strengths and weaknesses of each and suggesting situations in which each may be appropriate

contract farming and smallholder incentives to produce high quality experimental evidence from the vietnamese dairy sector in emerging markets for high value food products in developing countries processing companies search for efficient ways to source raw material of high quality one widely embraced approach is contract farming but relatively little is known about the appropriate design of financial incentives in a small farm context we use the example of the vietnamese dairy sector to analyze the effectiveness of existing contracts between a processor and smallholder farmers in terms of incentivizing the production of high quality milk a framed field experiment is conducted to evaluate the impact of two incentive instruments a price penalty for low quality and a bonus for consistent high quality milk on farmers investment in quality improving inputs statistical analysis suggests that the penalty drives farmers into higher input use resulting in better output quality the bonus payment generates even higher quality milk we also find that input choice levels depend on farmers socio economic characteristics such as wealth while individual risk preferences seem to be less important implications for the design of contracts with smallholders are discussed

realigning research and extension to focus on farmers constraints and opportunities this paper argues that research and extension have failed to 1 develop technologies that take into account farmers resource constraints and risks and 2 improve farmers capacity to adapt technologies to their own situations the paper critiques continued use of blanket high dose fertilizer recommendations arguing for approaches that teach farmers how to maximize returns from smaller more affordable input purchases developingsuch technologies requires that researchers integrate a wider range of stakeholders farmers extension agents agricultural exporters and processors into research activities at an earlier point in time than has been the case although evidence that these new approaches are increasing the use of purchased inputs remains weak a number of important lessons are emerging about how research and extension outcomes are influenced by institutional culture and incentives the authors conclude that developingrecommendations for small affordable input doses and trainingfarmers so they can adapt recommendations to their particular circumstances is as much an institutional challenge as a technology challenge 2003 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

a policy agenda for pro poor agricultural growth abstract sub saharan africa and parts of south asia are likely to hold large numbers of very poor rural people into the foreseeable future although both history and theory suggest a pre eminent role for agricultural growth in poverty reduction in poor agrarian economies such growth today faces new difficulties many of these difficulties are endogenous to today s poor rural areas others result from broader processes of global change but some are due to changes in the dominant policy environment emphasizing liberalization and state withdrawal examination of 20th century green revolutions suggests that active state interventions were important in supporting critical stages of agricultural market development unfortunately such interventions benefits in institutional development are easily overlooked whereas their high costs are much more visible policy implications are discussed

has democratization reduced infant mortality in sub saharan africa evidence from micro data does democracy help babies survive in sub saharan africa by using retrospective fertility surveys conducted in 28 african countries i compare the survival of infants born to the same mother before and after democratization to disentangle the effect of democracy from that of changes in population characteristics which is infeasible with country level statistics on infant mortality i find that infant mortality falls by 1 2 percentage points 12 of the sample mean after democratization in the post cold war period relevant aspects of democracy appear to be the combination of multiparty elections and leadership change

how private contract enforcement mechanisms can succeed where public institutions fail the case of juhocukor a s the enforcement of contracts is necessary for efficient exchange and investment in economic activities contracts can be enforced through a variety of mechanisms both public and private however in many developing and transitional countries these public institutions are either absent or ineffective in ensuring contract enforcement under such conditions private enforcement mechanisms may provide a suitable replacement for public enforcement institutions this may be done externally through a third party or internally through self enforcing agreements this paper analyzes the use of self enforcing arrangements or internal private enforcement mechanisms using a case study of an agri business in a transition economy juhocukor a s a slovakian sugar processor we show that the use of internal private contract enforcement mechanisms can have a significant positive effect on output and efficiency for both partners to the exchange transaction in an environment characterized by the absence or ineffectiveness of public enforcement institutions 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

randomized evaluations of educational programs in developing countries some lessons this paper reviews recent randomized evaluations of educational programs in developing countries including programs to increase school participation to provide educational inputs and to reform education it then extracts some lessons for education policy and for the practice and political economy of randomized evaluations

cash crop production food price volatility and rural market integration in the third world large farmers in the third world often devote to cash crops a larger share of their land than do small farmers this paper suggests a possible explanation even in the presence of food markets third world farmers food security is best assured by food self sufficiency a model of crop portfolio choice under multivariate risk is used to show that reasonable assumptions regarding risk and preferences reproduce the observed pattern simulations further indicate that food market integration reduces the need for food self sufficiency policy implications are drawn regarding domestic trade liberalization and agricultural technology

using self organizing maps to adjust for intra day seasonality the existence of an intra day seasonality component within financial market variables volatility volume activity has been highlighted in many previous works to adjust raw data from their cyclical component many studies start by implementing the intra daily average observations model iaom and or some smoothing techniques e g the kernel method in order to remove the day of the week effect when seasonality involves only a deterministic component iaom method succeed in estimating periodicity almost without estimation error however when seasonality contains both deterministic and stochastic components e g closed days we show that either the iaom or the kernel method fail to capture it we introduce the use of the self organizing maps som as a solution som are based on neural network learning and nonlinear projections their flexibility allows capturing seasonality even in the presence of stochastic cycles

competition and coordination in liberalized african cotton market systems abstract private operators now dominate input supply crop buying and ginning activities in many african cotton sectors varying levels of competition are observed but greater levels of competition are not necessarily associated with better system performance this paper explores this phenomenon drawing on the liberalization experience of ghana mozambique tanzania uganda zambia and zimbabwe while the capacity of the state to support markets remains weak there may be tradeoffs between the level of competition and the degree of coordination achieved between players within a sector different sectoral structures are observed with a different role for the state appropriate for each

the determinants of mortality mortality rates have fallen dramatically over time starting in a few countries in the 18th century and continuing to fall today in just the past century life expectancy has increased by over 30 years at the same time mortality rates remain much higher in poor countries with a difference in life expectancy between rich and poor countries of also about 30 years this difference persists despite the remarkable progress in health improvement in the last half century at least until the hiv aids pandemic in both the time series and the cross section data there is a strong correlation between income per capita and mortality rates a correlation that also exists within countries where richer better educated people live longer we review the determinants of these patterns over history over countries and across groups within countries while there is no consensus about the causal mechanisms we tentatively identify the application of scientific advance and technical progress some of which is induced by income and facilitated by education as the ultimate determinant of health such an explanation allows a consistent interpretation of the historical cross country and within country evidence we downplay direct causal mechanisms running from income to health

impact of financial crises on poverty in developing world an empirical approach in this paper we adopt a cross country perspective to analyze the short term effects of currency banking and debt crises on poverty we employ multivariate fixed effects panel data analysis in order to examine whether and to what extent different types of financial crises impact the poverty headcount ratio and the poverty gap as measured by the world bank our findings suggest that out of the three categories of financial crises we identify it is currency crises that most significantly exacerbate both the incidence and depth of poverty in the short run we find evidence that banking crises are associated with an increase in the depth of poverty but not the incidence however this effect tends to be short lived while our analysis shows no direct effect of sovereign debt crises on short term poverty

deutsche mark dollar volatility intraday activity patterns macroeconomic announcements and longer run dependencies this paper provides a detailed characterization of the volatility in the deutsche mark dollar foreign exchange market using an annual sample of five minute returns the approach captures the intraday activity patterns the macroeconomic announcements and the volatility persistence arch known from daily returns the different features are separately quantified and shown to account for a substantial fraction of return variability both at the intraday and daily level the implications of the results for the interpretation of the fundamental driving forces behind the volatility process is also discussed the efficient market hypothesis contends that financial asset prices provide rational assessments of fundamental values and future payoffs by implication price changes should reflect the arrival and processing of all relevant new information however the proportion of return variability that can be ascribed to public news announcements is low for example cutler poterba and summers 1989 find that even the largest daily price changes in the stock market generally cannot be associated with any significant economic news 1 moreover proxies for the flow of public information e g the number of news items released by reuter s news service berry and hiowe 1994 or dow jones company mitchell and mulherin 1994 explain little of the overall variation thus if private information is ruled out proponents of rational price formation have to assert the existence of important news items

does the median voter model explain the size of government evidence from the states despite an attempt by its own authors it is difficult to argue that the influential model of the size of government developed by meltzer and richard 1981 has had convincing empirical backing in this paper we adapt that model to a model of state government size the main testable hypothesis is that as income inequality grows government size as measured by the percentage of income devoted to government redistribution grows we test the model using panel data from the us states from 1979 1991 in contrast to the results found by meltzer and richard 1983 we find little evidence to support the model the results are robust to several model specifications and estimation techniques

fertilizer market development a comparative analysis of ethiopia kenya and zambia abstract this article synthesizes case studies from kenya zambia and ethiopia to assess how differences in the implementation of fertilizer marketing policies have affected the costs and risks borne by marketing actors the investment response by private traders and fertilizer consumption financial cost accounting techniques indicate that domestic marketing costs account for 50 or more of farm gate prices the sum of importer wholesaler and retailer profit margins generally account for less than 10 there are opportunities to reduce domestic marketing costs through the following reducing port fees coordinating the timing of fertilizer clearance from the port with up country transport reducing transport costs through port rail and road improvements reducing high fuel taxes and reducing the uncertainty associated with government input distribution programs that impose additional marketing costs on traders estimated reductions in the farm gate price of fertilizer from implementing the full range of options identified in each country range from 11 to 18 price reductions of this magnitude if passed along to farmers would increase farmers effective demand for fertilizer investments in selected publically provided goods often considered outside the scope of fertilizer marketing policy per se strongly affect the costs of fertilizer farmers willingness to pay for it and hence the performance of markets

the political economy of growth democracy and human capital democracy is more than just another brake or booster for the economy we argue that there are significant indirect effects of democracy on growth through public health and education where economists use life expectancy and education as proxies for human capital we expect democracy will be an important determinant of the level of public services manifested in these indicators in addition to whatever direct effect democracy may have on growth we predict an important indirect effect through public policies that condition the level of human capital in different societies we conduct statistical investigations into the direct and indirect effects of democracy on growth using a data set consisting of a 30 year panel of 128 countries we find that democracy has no statistically significant direct effect on growth rather we discover that the effect of democracy is largely indirect through increased life expectancy in poor countries and increased secondary education in nonpoor countries t he relationship between democracy and economic growth has received considerable attention in recent years as yet however there is no consensus among analysts on the relationship between these two widely studied variables sound theoretical positions have been advanced suggesting that democracy is both an impediment and facilitator of growth careful quantitative tests of the relationship have produced contradictory results in our view existing studies fail to develop an adequate political theory of growth and as a result their empirical models are typically misspecified with competing arguments on both sides of the question many analysts merely add a variable for democracy to existing economic models and then look at the sign of the coefficient and its significance this is inadequate democracy is more than just another brake or booster for the economy we argue that there are important indirect effects of democracy on growth that are manifested through public health and education where economists typically use life expectancy and secondary school enrollment as proxies for human capital we expect that democracy will itself be an important determinant of the level of public services captured in these indicators thus in

smallholders institutional services and commercial transformation in ethiopia this article examines the role of institutional services of credit input supply and extension in the overall commercial transformation process of smallholder agriculture in ethiopia survey data collected in 2006 from 309 sample households in three districts of ethiopia are used for the analyses tobit regression models are used to measure the effect of access to services on the intensity of inputs use for fertilizer and agrochemicals a probit model is used to measure these effects on the adoption of improved seeds intensity of use of seeds is analyzed using an ordinary least squares model logarithmic cobb douglass functions are estimated to analyze the effect of access to services on crop productivity heckman s two stage estimation is used to examine determinants of household market participation and the extents of participation results show that access to institutional support services plays a significant role in enhancing smallholder productivity and market orientation our results imply that expanding and strengthening the institutional services is critical for the intensification and market orientation of smallholder agriculture in ethiopia in particular appropriate incentives and regulatory systems are urgently needed to encourage the involvement of the private sector in the provision of agricultural services

linking farmers to markets different approaches to human capital development abstract programs focused on developing community level management skills and human capacity can increase the opportunities for small farmers to benefit from market participation using a framework that links the concepts of collective power and agricultural development and drawing upon evidence from mali mozambique and cameroon the authors differentiate three types of approaches to capacity building contract business programs such as out grower and cash crop schemes facilitate farmer access to goods and services required for production and marketing of a target commodity project technology programs usually mediated by non governmental organizations ngos focus on the promotion of improved technology process human capacity investments also facilitate technology adoption and marketing but focus initially on the development of foundation skills and social capital including assistance for collective self help literacy programs marketing activities and decentralized development planning although the latter programs tend to be slower in producing tangible results the skills emphasized often determine the ability of a community to access inputs and market production beyond the life of a project

marketing cooperative vs commission agent the turkish dilemma on the modern fresh fruit and vegetable market in turkey the wholesale markets law was enacted in 1995 to facilitate small scale growers access to the fresh produce market cooperatives and commission agents have thus become the main marketing structures available to small scale fresh produce growers to supply supermarkets and comply with their new requirements in this paper we question the advantages and disadvantages that confront small farmers with respect to those marketing structures to allow for market matching or quality upgrading drawing on ownership and transaction cost arguments we use an analytical framework to identify and compare the costs of these marketing organizations based on data collected through a large number of interviews with stakeholders we show that commission agents and credit cooperatives tend to be more efficient than traditional cooperatives as regards sales performance and decision costs however the lack of apparent competition between commission agents does not allow for sufficient provision of incentives for producers to invest in high quality production consequently credit cooperatives are the only structure progressively turning to strategies of quality upgrading and supermarket supply the flipside of such strategies is that they may lead to the marginalization of small scale farmers

the meaning of failed replications a review and proposal the welcome rise of replication tests in economics has not been accompanied by a consensus standard for determining what constitutes a replication a discrepant replication in current usage of the term can signal anything from an unremarkable disagreement over methods to scientific incompetence or misconduct this paper proposes a standard for classifying one study as a replication of some other study it is a standard that places the burden of proof on a study to demonstrate that it should have obtained identical results to the original a conservative standard that is already used implicitly by many researchers it contrasts this standard with decades of unsuccessful attempts to harmonize terminology and argues that many prominent results described as replication tests should not be described as such adopting a conservative standard like this one can improve incentives for researchers encouraging more and better replication tests

effective foreign aid following civil war the nonstrategic desperation hypothesis when does aid foster development after civil war a testable model is needed to account for the uneven outcomes in postconflict development this article proposes and empirically tests the novel nonstrategic desperation hypothesis an explanation based on the varied incentives that fragile postconflict governments face when confronted with donor development goals paradoxically incentives to meet development goals only exist when donors have little strategic interest in the recipients and when recipients lack income from resource rents and are therefore desperate for income ten year data on infant mortality changes following civil wars ending 1970 96 and a variety of robustness checks support the hypothesis by focusing on how income sources constrain the choices of aid recipients and how these constraints can provide incentives to meet donor development goals the nonstrategic desperation hypothesis explains how the good use of aid can take place following civil war when institutions are weak

can public private partnerships leverage private investment in agricultural value chains in africa a preliminary review summary public private partnerships ppps may be one way of increasing the level of private sector investment into poorly performing agricultural value chains this paper considers a range of ppp mechanisms that respond to different market failures affecting such chains and draws on principal agent theory to illustrate the challenges it reviews emerging experience with a number of these mechanisms along with experience from other sectors that may shed light on generic problems of implementing ppps in africa while finding some positive impacts on investment it notes that state failures can also undermine ppp effectiveness as the evidence base is still limited it calls on organizations promoting innovative ppps to disclose available information for critical examination

the taxman tools up an event history study of the introduction of the personal income tax abstract the introduction of income taxation was a landmark in the historical development of the fiscal state of the now developed world this paper presents an event history study of the adoption of the income tax in 17 countries from western europe north america oceania and japan between 1815 and 1939 we find evidence that spending pressures reductions in tax collection costs and to a lesser extent social learning played a significant role for the adoption decision we also find evidence that the extension of the franchise at first reduced the likelihood of adoption of the income tax but eventually as universal suffrage was approached increased the likelihood

wealthier is healthier we estimate the effect of income on health using cross country timeseries data on health infant and child mortality and life expectancy and income per capita we use instrumental variables estimates using exogenous determinants of income growth to identify the pure income effect on health isolated from reverse causation or incidental association the long run income elasticity of infant and child mortality in developing countries lies between 0 2 and 0 4 using these estimates we calculate that over a half a million child deaths in the developing world in 1990 alone can be attributed to the poor economic performance in the 1980s

politics the state and basic human needs a cross national study this study examines ways that political processes influence the provision of basic human needs once the effects of aggregate national wealth are removed three general explanatory approaches are examined these are based on the size or strength of the national government the achievement ofdemocratic processes and the ideological orientation ofruling elites along a left right dimension these three approaches are analyzed by regressing an index of physical well being the pqli on measures drawn from each perspective for a sample of 1 16 contemporary nations the findings indicate that political attributes do indeed have an impact on the provision of basic needs even when controlling for aggregate social wealth democratic processes are related to positive welfare outcomes irrespective of state strength and ideological norms for regimes with a roughly centrist ideology state strength appears to make little noticeable difference one way or another for those on the left state strength promotes welfare performance for those on the right state strength is found to inhibit the provision of basic needs how do political processes affect the welfare of individuals this question in countless variants has motivated students of political economy at least since the advent of the modern nation state in its simplest form the empirical question becomes what kind of state achieves the highest level of welfare for its citizens although it may seem that there are as many answers as possible dimensions of states most analyses have centered on one or more of three general explanatory approaches the first focuses on the size or strength of the state apparatus as the essential ingredient in translating productive potential into welfare outcomes successful welfare performance hinges on the capability of the state because the state is considered the one social institution concerned with the material needs of the population as a whole a second model highlights procedural aspects of the political system rather than the budgetary strength of the state by linking successful welfare outcomes to the relatively even distribution of political power brought about by political democracy the third approach is distinguished from the other two by its emphasis on the ideological orientation usually on a left right continuum of ruling elites this model posits welfare

land reform as commenced business the evidence against stopping abstract in the new paradigm institutions are long term endogenous thus the aims of land reform must be compatible with replace or substitute for initial incentives and power structures many reforms e g compulsory collectives are not redefinition of land reform is therefore needed yet the case for private land redistribution with ceilings remains the inverse relationship rests firmly on lower cost labor transactions in small farms though large but competitive transport or processing firms which enjoy lower cost capital transactions may be needed crucial is the impact of the postreform structure on livelihoods especially for the growing rural majority near landless workers new style market based reforms have potential probably best combined with old style ceilings substantial compensation with urban taxpayers sharing costs alternative off farm prospects and progressive taxes on large landholdings or bequests

looking beyond national boundaries regional harmonization of seed policies laws and regulations countries in west eastern and southern africa are pursuing the regional harmonization of their seed laws and regulations common regulatory frameworks are expected to reduce the costs of trading seed and encourage scale economies in seed production as a result commercial seed production is expected to expand providing farmers with improved access to new varieties and stimulating productivity growth the impact of these harmonization efforts will depend on the details of the regulatory agreements policy makers are being asked to consider a complicated series of trade offs between stricter measures for quality control and the need to encourage the multiplication and distribution of lower cost seed they are also being confronted with two possible views of sectoral development one view entails the pursuit of better linkages between distinct national seed markets the second involves the development of truly regionalized seed markets where seed can be readily produced in one country and sold in any other country this implies greater regional interdependence of seed supply the paper compares the harmonization agreements being pursued in each of the three african regions and progress in implementing the accords efforts to adapt international seed market standards to the contingencies of african markets are discussed and priorities for further policy analysis are identified

the role of warehouse receipt systems in enhanced commodity marketing and rural livelihoods in africa most african countries have since the 1980s liberalised agriculture without experiencing food crisis as feared by sceptics but the outcome of reforms has been rather disappointing and agricultural markets remain underdeveloped and inefficient one means to improve agricultural marketing which is the focus of this paper is to develop regulated warehouse receipt wr systems the system will curtail cheating on weights and measures ease access to finance at all levels in the marketing chain moderate seasonal price variability and promote instruments to mitigate price risks it will also reduce the need for the government to intervene in agricultural markets and reduce the cost of such interventions if needed the major problem in establishing wr systems in africa is disabling elements in the policy environment drawing on experience from projects implemented in africa during the last decade 1 the authors outline how this challenge can be addressed the most crucial being to build strong stakeholder support behind the initiative 2002 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

once in a generation yen volatility in 1998 fundamentals intervention and order flow abstract the dramatic yen dollar volatility of 1998 has been popularly ascribed to order flow driven by changing tastes for risk and hedge fund herding on unwinding yen carry trade positions rather than fundamentals high frequency evidence of shifting fundamentals is provided by a comprehensive list of macroeconomic announcements news is found to have significant effects on volatility but order flow may play a more important role since portfolio shifts are revealed to the market through trading the results are consistent with order flow playing a significant role in the revelation of private information and associated exchange rate shifts

traders teachers and tyrants democracy globalization and public investment in education this article develops a model of the redistributive political economy of education spending focusing on the role of democracy and economic openness in determining the provision of education i argue that democratization should be associated with higher levels of public education spending lower private education spending and a shift from tertiary education spending toward primary education spending furthermore i argue that integration with the international economy should lead to higher public education spending conditioned on regime type and income and should push the balance between tertiary and primary education toward states particular comparative advantages these propositions are tested on a data set of more than one hundred states from 1960 to 2000 using a variety of panel data techniques including instruments for democracy the logic of the causal mechanism developed in the formal model is also tested on a number of case histories including the philippines which shows great variation in democracy and openness and india and malaysia which constitute unusual cases that lie off the diagonal of open democracies and autarkic autocracies the author would like to thank beth simmons torben iversen michael hiscox jeffry frieden jim alt teri caraway john freeman jane gingrich david samuels w phillips shively mark kayser john ahlquist and michael kellerman for highly useful comments and criticisms in addition i thank the current and past editors lou pauly emanuel adler david stasavage and lisa martin and three anonymous reviewers for their suggestions

where has all the education gone cross national data show no association between increases in human capital attributable to the rising educational attainment of the labor force and the rate of growth of output per worker this implies that the association of educational capital growth with conventional measures of total factor production is large strongly statistically significant and negative these are on average results derived from imposing a constant coefficient however the development impact of education varied widely across countries and has fallen short of expectations for three possible reasons first the institutional governance environment could have been sufficiently perverse that the accumulation of educational capital lowered economic growth second marginal returns to education could have fallen rapidly as the supply of educated labor expanded while demand remained stagnant third educational quality could have been so low that years of schooling created no human capital the extent and mix of these three phenomena vary from country to country in explaining the actual economic impact of education or the lack thereof

contractual arrangements between farmer cooperatives and buyers in china the agrofood market in china is dominated by spot market exchanges of small farmers and various small traders with only minor penetration of the modern supply chain at the farmgate the emerging farmer professional cooperatives fpcs are expected to facilitate vertical coordination the overall goal of this study is to investigate the contractual arrangements between the fpcs and the buyers based on a national representative survey of 157 fpcs in china this study shows that 32 of fpcs introduced written contracts in the primary marketing channel contracts are more likely to be adopted in the livestock sector and are positively related to the scale of production while branding promotes contracts between fpcs and buyers public certification of quality and food safety often substitutes for contracts furthermore the membership heterogeneity of fpcs affects an fpc s decision to use contractual arrangements with the buyer

poverty and famines an essay on entitlement and deprivation this book focuses on the causes of starvation in general and famines in particular the traditional analysis of famines is shown to be fundamentally defective and the author develops an alternative analysis

innovation in the energy sector the role of fossil fuels and developing economies abstract this paper analyzes the effects of fossil fuel rents on r d expenditures and patent grants in the field of energy related technology we argue that an increasing share of fossil fuel rents lessens the innovation of new energy technologies we consider a sample of countries beyond the common selection of oecd members and investigate innovation efforts in the energy sector of 116 countries from 1980 to 2012 we observe the gradually growing influence of resource abundant countries on global r d expenditures and find that increasing fossil fuel rents have a negative effect on patent grants this study contributes to the ongoing debate concerning the potential effects of resource abundance more importantly it increases our understanding of innovation activities within the energy sector and further underscores the need to extend future research to countries that have not been taken into account thus far

the countervailing effects of competition on public goods provision when bargaining inefficiencies lead to bad outcomes political competition is widely recognized as a mediator of public goods provision through its salutary effect on incumbents electoral incentives we argue that political competition additionally mediates public goods provision by reducing the efficiency of legislative bargaining these countervailing forces may produce a net negative effect in places with weak parties and low transparency typical of many young democracies we provide evidence of a robust negative relationship between political competition and local public goods using panel data from mali tests of mechanisms corroborate our interpretation of this relationship as evidence of legislative bargaining inefficiencies to explore the generalizability of these findings we analyze cross country panel data and show that political competition leads to better worse public goods provision under high low levels of party system institutionalization the paper sheds light on why political competition is only selectively beneficial and underscores the importance of considering both the electoral and legislative arenas

poverty and survival a recent literature highlights the uncertainty concerning whether economic growth has any causal protective effect on health and survival but equal rates of growth often deliver unequal rates of poverty reduction and absolute deprivation is more clearly relevant using state level panel data for india we contribute the first estimates of the impact of changes in poverty on infant survival we identify a significant within state relationship which persists conditional upon state income indicating the size of survival gains from redistribution in favour of households below the poverty line the poverty elasticity declines over time after 1981 it is invariant to controlling for income inequality but diminished upon controlling for education fertility and state health expenditure and eliminated once we introduce controls for omitted trends

is democracy good for the poor many scholars claim that democracy improves the welfare of the poor this article uses data on infant and child mortality to challenge this claim cross national studies tend to exclude from their samples nondemocratic states that have performed well this leads to the mistaken inference that nondemocracies have worse records than democracies once these and other flaws are corrected democracy has little or no effect on infant and child mortality rates democracies spend more money on education and health than nondemocracies but these benefits seem to accrue to middle and upper income groups

imperfect information screening and the costs of informal lending a study of a rural credit market in pakistan many governments have perceived the rural moneylender as usurious this article takes a first step toward directly testing the validity of this view in a study of services costs and charges of fourteen informal market moneylenders and their clients in chambar pakistan the article examines whether the high implicit interest rates charged reflect the actual costs of operating in that market estimates of the resource costs incurred by informal lenders for screening pursuing delinquent loans overhead and cost of capital including unrecoverable loans suggest that lenders charges are equal to their average cost of lending but exceed their marginal cost this finding is consistent with the view that the informal credit market is characterized by excess capacity and monopolistic competition in the presence of imperfect information

to elect or not to elect leaders alternation in power and social welfare in sub saharan africa abstractthis paper investigates whether and how multiparty elections introduced in many african countries since the early 1990s affect a government s commitment to welfare policies we hypothesise that contested multiparty elections and turnovers between different leaders and political forces in government even when democratic standards are not met positively impact the promotion of social welfare we test these hypotheses through a cross sectional and time series research design making use of our new comprehensive africa leadership change alc dataset empirical results confirm that leaders elected through multiparty elections and countries that experience political alternations in government are associated with higher levels of social welfare

how democracy affects growth abstract this paper introduces a new methodology to examine the empirical relationship between democracy and economic growth democratic institutions are assumed to affect growth through a series of channels we specify and estimate a full system of equations determining growth and the channel variables results suggest that democracy fosters growth by improving the accumulation of human capital and less robustly by lowering income inequality on the other hand democracy hinders growth by reducing the rate of physical capital accumulation and less robustly by raising the ratio of government consumption to gdp once all of these indirect effects are accounted for the overall effect of democracy on economic growth is moderately negative our results indicate that democratic institutions are responsive to the demands of the poor by expanding access to education and lowering income inequality but do so at the expense of physical capital accumulation

do electoral institutions have an impact on population health there is an emerging political economics literature which purports to show that legislatures elected based on proportional electoral rules spend more and redistribute more than legislatures elected based on majoritarian electoral rules going a step further the authors of this paper consider whether degree of electoral proportionality has an impact on population health and in particular the health of the least advantaged members of society a panel of 24 parliamentary democracies for the years 1960 2004 is used to examine the relationship between electoral institutions and health the authors find that greater electoral proportionality is positively associated with overall population health as indicated by life expectancy and with the health of the poorest as indicated by a reduction in infant mortality a panel of 17 countries for the years 1970 2004 is then used to show to that electoral permissiveness modifies the impact of health spending on infant mortality

cash cropping and food crop productivity synergies or trade offs the case for promoting export oriented cash crops in africa has generally been based on their direct potential contribution to agricultural productivity and small farmer incomes a relatively neglected avenue of research concerns the synergistic effects that cash cropping can have on other household activities including food production the conventional view that cash crops compete with food crops for land and labour neglects the potential for cash crop schemes to make available inputs on credit management training and other resources that can contribute to food crop productivity which might otherwise not be accessible to farmers if they did not participate in cash crop programs this article builds on previous research by hypothesising key pathways by which cash crops may affect food crop activities and empirically measuring these effects using the case of cotton in gokwe north district in zimbabwe analysis is based on instrumental variable analysis of survey data on 430 rural households in 1996 results indicate that after controlling for household assets education and locational differences households engaging intensively in cotton production obtain higher grain yields than non cotton and marginal cotton producers we also find evidence of regional spill over effects whereby commercialisation schemes induce second round investments in a particular area that provide benefits to all farmers in that region regardless of whether they engage in that commercialisation scheme the study suggests that the potential spill over benefits for food crops through participation in cash crop programs are important to consider in the development of strategies designed to intensify african food crop production

local capture evidence from a central government transfer program in uganda according to official statistics 20 percent of uganda s total public expenditure was spent on education in the mid 1990s most of it on primary education one of the large public programs was a capitation grant to cover schools nonwage expenditures using panel data from a unique survey of primary schools we assess the extent to which the grant actually reached the intended end user schools the survey data reveal that during 1991 1995 the schools on average received only 13 percent of the grants most schools received nothing the bulk of the school grant was captured by local officials and politicians the data also reveal considerable variation in grants received across schools suggesting that rather than being passive recipients of flows from the government schools use their bargaining power to secure greater shares of funding we find that schools in better off communities managed to claim a higher share of their entitlements as a result actual education spending in contrast to budget allocations is regressive similar surveys in other african countries confirm that uganda is not a special case

expanding access to agricultural inputs in africa a review of recent market development experience abstract this paper asks what can be done to expand input use in africa and can it be done in a manner that supports continued growth of private sector input markets the precarious food security situation in many african countries has prompted governments and donors to use input distribution or credit programs as a means of rapidly increasing food supply for the poor these efforts however often reduce the ability of input market development programs to stimulate commercial interest in input supply a review of both types of programs describes recent efforts to address constraints to expanded input use and finds that further expansion is often constrained by inadequate investment in a variety of public goods needed to stimulate input led agricultural intensification rather than continuing to invest resources in programs to provide inputs or credit directly to farmers governments with donor assistance should consider shifting their focus to the serious deficiencies in the provision of public goods roads irrigation basic education market information systems research and extension and improved institutions contract law and enforcement systems of grades and standards improvements in these areas can both lower costs of supply and increase farm level demand creating a situation where the private sector will have greater incentives to expand input distribution networks to zones and farmers who currently do not have access

institutional arrangements in the emerging biodiesel industry case studies from minas gerais brazil connecting small family farmers to the emerging biodiesel industry requires careful design of the institutional arrangements between the producers of oil crops and the processing companies according to institutional economics theory the design of effective and efficient arrangements depends on production and transaction characteristics the institutional environment and the organizational environment supporting the transaction between producers and the industry this paper presents a comparative study on two cases in the feedstock for biodiesel industry in the state of minas gerais brazil the two case studies represent the production and transaction system of soybeans glycine max l merrill and castor beans ricinus communis l important elements of effective and efficient institutional arrangements are farmer collective action availability of technical and financial support and farmer experience with particular crops

false promise or false premise the experience of food and input market reform in eastern and southern africa abstract the literature on the effects of agricultural market reform in africa is sharply divided and inconsistent this article attempts to reconcile opposing viewpoints on the effects of food and input market policy reform in eastern and southern africa drawing from studies of ethiopia kenya malawi zambia and zimbabwe we argue that a major source of the controversy stems from assumptions that countries have actually moved to a liberalized market environment we find that many of the most fundamental elements of the reform programs either remain unimplemented were reversed within several years or were implemented in such a way as to negate private sector investment incentives a framework is developed for explaining why some countries have been able to liberalize their food and fertilizer markets while others have not these findings have implications for how donor assistance and policy oriented research can more constructively contribute to an improved policy environment

aid fragmentation or aid pluralism the effect of multiple donors on child survival in developing countries 1990 2010 while most policy makers and researchers stress the negative impact of aid fragmentation on development outcomes in recipient countries we argue that the greater diversity of perspectives entailed by higher multiplicity of donors can help select better policies we hypothesize a u shaped relationship countries with a moderate number of donors fare better than countries with either few or many donors the hypothesis is supported by a generalized method of moments gmm analysis of the relationship between health aid donors and child survival in 110 low and middle income countries during 1990 2010

globalization domestic politics and social spending in latin america a time series cross section analysis 1973 97 this study examines the effects of globalization democratization and partisanship on social spending in fourteen latin american countries from 1973 to 1997 using a pooled time series error correction model the authors examine three sets of issues first following debates in the literature on oecd countries they want to know whether social spending has been encouraged or constrained by integration into global markets within this context they examine the extent to which such outcomes might be influenced by two additional sets of domestic political and institutional factors discussed in work on developed countries the electoral pressures of democratic institutions and whether or not popularly based governments are in power the authors show that trade integration has a consistently negative effect on aggregate social spending and that this is compounded by openness to capital markets this is the strongest and most robust finding in the study neither democratic nor popularly based governments consistently affect overall social spending the authors then disaggregate spending into social security transfers and expenditures on health and education they find that popularly based governments tend to protect social security transfers which tend to flow disproportionately to their unionized constituencies but they have a negative impact on health and education spending conversely a shift to democracy leads to increases in health and education spending which reaches a larger segment of the population the authors conclude by emphasizing the contrasting political logics of the different types of social spending

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

the effects of capital mobility trade openness and democracy on social spending in latin america 1980 1999 empirical studies measuring the impact of globalization on social spending have appeared recently in leading journals this study seeks to improve upon previous work by 1 employing a more sophisticated and comprehensive measure of financial openness 2 using a more accurate measure of trade openness based on purchasing power parities and 3 relying on social spending data that are more complete than those used by previous studies on latin america our estimates suggest that several empirical patterns reported in previous work deserve a second look we find that trade openness has a positive association with education and social security expenditures that financial openness does not constrain government outlays for social programs and that democracy has a strong positive association with social spending particularly on items that bolster human capital formation t he international integration of markets for goods and services over the past two decades is unprecedented amidst a broader context of international integration latin america has experienced the most dramatic change in its economic policy orientation since world war ii few regions have undergone as rapid and thorough an economic transformation how has economic integration affected the social welfare policies of latin american governments has it forced them to reduce spending on social programs in order to compete in the world economy or has it induced them to provide social safety nets for those hurt by economic competition has democratization in latin america compelled governments to spend more on social programs in relatively open economies

level playing fields and laissez faire postliberal development strategy in inegalitarian agrarian economies focusing on the rural sector in latin america this paper explores the microeconomic linkages between distribution and growth which drive the possible reproduction of rural poverty over time the result of this exploration is a neostructuralist perspective which argues that actually existing laissez faire agrarian economies do not present a level playing field and that low wealth farms face disadvantages which tend to reproduce or even deepen sectoral inequality the paper then tries to identify the sorts of public policy and collective action which might modify the nature of growth and distribution in post liberalization agrarian market economy

openness and the politics of potable water improving access to potable water has become an increasingly urgent concern for developing nations in the current era of globalization according to standard wisdom if developing countries undertake certain domestic reforms such as investing in infrastructure and engineering then safe and clean drinking water will improve this analysis uncovers however that in addition to such domestic efforts one of the greatest factors affecting water uncertainty is in fact internationally induced trade surprisingly both scholars and practitioners have neglected the potential impacts of expanding trade on access to potable water this analysis is the first large n cross national study of water that focuses on the interplay of trade and politics both international and domestic as the primary driving forces behind improvements in or constraints to water access the author hypothesizes that growing export pressures are constraining drinkable water in poor countries but a particular domestic condition can mit

improving social well being through new democratic institutions we evaluate the role of a new type of democratic institution participatory budgeting pb for improving citizens well being participatory institutions are said to enhance governance citizens empowerment and the quality of democracy creating a virtuous cycle to improve the poor s well being drawing from an original database of brazil s largest cities over the last 20 years we assess whether adopting pb programs influences several indicators of well being inputs processes and outcomes we find pb programs are strongly associated with increases in health care spending increases in civil society organizations and decreases in infant mortality rates this connection strengthens dramatically as pb programs remain in place over longer time frames furthermore pb s connection to well being strengthens in the hand of mayors from the nationally powerful ideologically and electorally motivated workers party our argument directly addresses debates on democracy and well being and has powerful implications for participation governance and economic development

behavioural and material determinants of production relations in agriculture in this essay we develop a framework for analysing the major institutions governing the production and exchange of output and the primary factors of production in rural areas the analysis incorporates general considerations of risk and information constraints jointly with the principal material attributes of agriculture and of agricultural production factors the framework is used to analyse barriers to the existence of the major intertemporal and factor markets it is applied specifically to land scarce environments for which it provides an internally consistent explanation for many of the well documented institutional features of such settings in addition the analysis provides new implications for among other phenomena the inter relationships among ownership holdings operational scale family size and factor productivity for the scarcity of animal rental markets and use of animals as collateral for the renting out of land by small landowners and for the existence of plantations for certain crops

politics and the effectiveness of foreign aid abstract critics of foreign aid programs have long argued that poverty reflects government failure in this paper i test predictions for aid effectiveness based on an analytical framework that relates aid effectiveness to political regimes i find that aid does not significantly increase investment nor benefit the poor as measured by improvements in human development indicators but it does increase the size of government the impact of aid does not vary according to whether recipient governments are liberal democratic or highly repressive but liberal political regimes and democracies ceteris paribus have on average 30 lower infant mortality than the least free regimes this may be due to greater empowerment of the poor under liberal regimes even though the political elite continues to receive the benefits of aid programs an implication is that short term aid targeted to support new liberal regimes may be a more successful means of reducing poverty than current programs

the future of small farms new directions for services institutions and intermediation summary efficient pre and post harvest services are essential if small farms in high potential areas are to intensify production contribute to economic growth and reduce poverty they also matter if small farms in marginal areas are to manage their natural resource base in the face of growing population pressure and climate change difficulties that smallholders face in accessing services are reviewed showing how incentives for commercial delivery of services to smallholders differ between staple food traditional cash crop and high value product supply chains the major challenge in service delivery to smallholders in much of africa concerns coordination of service development and delivery different forms of intermediary institution for achieving such coordination are examined

electoral institutions and the politics of coalitions why some democracies redistribute more than others standard political economy models of redistribution notably that of meltzer and richard 1981 fail to account for the remarkable variance in government redistribution across democracies we develop a general model of redistribution that explains why some democratic governments are more prone to redistribute than others we show that the electoral system plays a key role because it shapes the nature of political parties and the composition of governing coalitions hence redistribution our argument implies 1 that center left governments dominate under pr systems whereas center right governments dominate under majoritarian systems and 2 that pr systems redistribute more than majoritarian systems we test our argument on panel data for redistribution government partisanship and electoral system in advanced democracies w hy do some countries redistribute more than others most work on the politics of redistribution starts from the premise that democratic institutions empower those who stand to benefit from redistribution the basic logic is succinctly captured in the meltzer richard 1981 model where the voter with the median income is also the decisive voter with a typical right skewed distribution of income the median voter will push for redistributive spending up to the point where the benefit of such spending to the median voter is outweighed by the efficiency costs of distortionary taxation this argument implies that redistibution is much greater in democracies than in nondemocracies at least of the right authoritarian variety and that among the latter inegalitarian societies redistribute more than egalitarian ones there is some evidence to supportthefirstimplication althoughitisdisputed see ross 2005 but most of the variance in redistribution is probably within the same regime type according to datafromtheluxembourgincomestudy forexample the reduction in the poverty rate in united states as a result of taxation and transfers was 13 in 1994 whereas the comparable figure for sweden was 82 thepovertyrateisthepercentageofhouseholdsbelow 50 of the median income to explain this variance we have to look at political and economic differences

many borrow more save and all insure implications for food and micro finance policy abstract among policy makers researchers and micro finance practitioners alike there is much discussion on the role of micro finance for alleviation of poverty this paper focuses on the linkages between access to credit savings and insurance services and household food security what is the role of micro finance in the overall mix of policy instruments what types of financial services are demanded by the poor and which are offered by micro finance institutions mfis hence which are the gaps in financial products we present a conceptual framework that addresses these questions and provide a synthesis of the empirical results of a multi country research program in ten african and asian countries we conclude that insurance can be considered as the missing third of micro finance during the 1990s and that the mfi s outreach to the poor can be improved by offering savings credit and insurance products that enhance the poor s ability to bear risks applied research on the poor s preferences as well as bold experimentation with new financial products appear to be particularly promising in making progress towards that goal since insurance services are difficult to be offered except for easily observable idiosyncratic risks precautionary savings services can be a valuable insurance substitute in particular for the poorest