how reliable are household expenditures as a proxy for permanent income implications for the income nutrition relationship using short run expenditures from household surveys as a proxy may create attenuated estimates of the impact of permanent income on economic outcomes we use repeated observations to calculate reliability ratios and estimate errors in variables regressions of the impact of income on nutrition we find significant responses to income in contrast to previous influential studies

crises food prices and the income elasticity of micronutrients estimates from indonesia the 2008 global food price crisis and more recent food price spikes have led to a greater focus on policies and programs to cushion the effects of such shocks on poverty and malnutrition analysis of the income elasticities of micronutrients and their changes during food price crises can shed light on the potential effectiveness of cash transfer and nutrition supplement programs this article examines these issues using data from two cross sectional household surveys in indonesia taken before 1996 and soon after 1999 the 1997 98 economic crisis which led to a sharp increase in food prices first using nonparametric and regression methods the article examines how the income elasticity of calories from starchy staples as a share of total calories differs between the two survey rounds second the article estimates income elasticities of important nutrients in indonesia the analysis finds that although summary measures such as the income elasticity of the starchy staple ratio might not change during crises this stability masks important differences across individual nutrients in particular income elasticities of some key micronutrients such as iron calcium and vitamin b1 are significantly higher in a crisis year than in a normal year yet the income elasticities of others such as vitamin c remain close to zero these results suggest that cash transfer programs might be even more effective during crises to ensure the consumption of essential micronutrients but to ensure that all key micronutrients are consumed nutrition supplement programs are also likely required jel classification codes i12 o12 d12 e31 keywords income elasticity crisis prices micronutrients vitamin c starchy staple ratio

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

commitment versus discretion in a political economy model of fiscal and monetary policy interaction abstract does price commitment result in lower welfare i pair an independent monetary authority controlling nominal bonds with a fiscal authority microfounded by the political economy model of battaglini and coate 2008 without price commitment time inconsistency is alleviated by interaction between the benevolent monetary authority and the politically distorted fiscal authority with price commitment nominal bonds will be used for wasteful spending by the politically distorted fiscal authority price commitment results in lower welfare because it eliminates monetary control over fiscal decisions

nutritional status during an economic crisis evidence from russia between 1996 and 1998 russia experienced a spectacular decline in economic activity which was followed by a dramatic rebound between 1998 and 2000 we use panel data to examine the impact of variation in household resources on six dimensions of nutritional status distinguishing longer run from short term fluctuations in resources nutritional status is very resilient to short term variation in household resources gross energy intake adult weight and child stature change very little as expenditure deviates from its long run average longer run resources have a substantively large positive and significant effect on energy intake diet quality adult weight and child stature the evidence indicates that individuals and households are able to weather short term fluctuations in economic resources at least in terms of maintaining body mass and energy intake increased globalisation has resulted in many less developed countries becoming more integrated into world markets this integration carries both benefits and costs for the populations of those countries an oft cited cost is elevated risk of exposure to economic fluctuations which has been manifest in several spectacular economic crises across the globe in the last few decades there is however little evidence on the extent to which individuals and families are able to mitigate deleterious effects of these economic upheavals on their well being in spite of its importance for understanding the consequences of globalisation this article provides new evidence on this issue specifically we examine the relationship between several dimensions of nutritional well being and variation in household resources during the russian economic crisis in the late 1990s the economies of the former soviet bloc have been especially volatile since the transition to market based economies which began in the early 1990s nowhere has this been more true than in russia where in the last half of 1998 real gdp collapsed by around 30 and then rapid growth brought the economy back to its pre crisis level by 2000 the time path of changes in gdp is closely mimicked by changes in the incomes and expenditures of russian households using extremely rich longitudinal household survey data from the russian longitudinal monitoring survey rlms we examine the impact of these large fluctuations in household resources on nutrient intake and on anthropometric markers of nutritional status at the individual level in so doing we address an important issue in the literature regarding the extent to which households in low income settings are able

shareholder value stakeholder management and social issues what s the bottom line we test the relationship between shareholder value stakeholder management and social issue participation building better relations with primary stakeholders like employees customers suppliers and communities could lead to increased shareholder wealth by helping firms develop intangible valuable assets which can be sources of competitive advantage on the other hand using corporate resources for social issues not related to primary stakeholders may not create value for shareholders we test these propositions with data from s p 500 firms and find evidence that stakeholder management leads to improved shareholder value while social issue participation is negatively associated with shareholder value copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

government debt and optimal monetary and fiscal policy how do different levels of government debt affect the optimal conduct of monetary and fiscal policies and what do these optimal policies imply for the evolution of government debt over time to provide an answer this paper studies a standard monetary policy model with nominal rigidities and monopolistic competition and adds to it a fiscal authority that issues nominal non state contingent debt levies distortionary labor income taxes and determines the level of public goods provision higher government debt levels make it optimal to reduce public spending so as to dampen the adverse incentive effects of distortionary taxes but also strongly influence the optimal stabilization response following technology shocks in particular higher debt levels give rise to larger risks to the fiscal budget and to tax rates this makes it optimal to reduce government debt over time the optimal speed of debt reduction is missed when using first order approximations to optimal policies but is shown to be quantitatively significant in a second order approximation especially when technology movements are largely unpredictable in nature

estimating the demand for calories in india this article examines the long run relationship between per capita calorie intake per capita income and food prices using aggregate data for india 1961 1992 cointegration analysis yields an income elasticity of calorie intake of 0 34 while the food price elasticity is insignificant thus economic growth in india as measured by increasing per capita income has significantly improved calorie intake future income growth can alleviate further inadequate nutrition however significant improvements in calorie intake cannot be made directly by food subsidies a further result is that calorie intake is granger caused by income and not vice versa income generation is unconstrained by calorie intake

interactions of commitment and discretion in monetary and fiscal policies we consider monetary scal interactions when the monetary authority is more conservative than the scal with both policies discretionary 1 nash equilibrium yields lower output and higher price than the ideal points of both authorities 2 of the two leadership possibilities scal leadership is generally better with scal discretion monetary commitment yields the same outcome as discretionary monetary leadership for all realizations of shocks but scal commitment is not similarly negated by monetary discretion second best outcomes require either joint commitment or identical targets for both authorities output socially optimal and price level appropriately conservative or complete separation of tasks jel e61 e63

why do we have nominal government debt abstract we study the choice between nominal and indexed debt in a stochastic macroeconomic model with discretionary monetary and fiscal policy with distortionary taxes nominal debt provides valuable insurance against the budgetary effects of economic fluctuations we show that a welfare maximizing government always issues some nominal debt even though nominal debt increases inflation along the time consistent path of the economy the result is fairly robust with respect to changes in assumptions about policy constraints and about the macroeconomic setting

the time consistency of optimal monetary and fiscal policies we show that optimal monetary and fiscal policies are time consistent for a class of economies often used in applied work economies appealing because they are consistent with the growth facts we establish our results in two steps we first show that for this class of economies the friedman rule of setting nominal interest rates to zero is optimal under commitment we then show that optimal policies are time consistent if the friedman rule is optimal for our benchmark economy in which the time consistency problem is most severe the converse also holds if optimal policies are time consistent then the friedman rule is optimal

optimal structure of fiscal and monetary authorities why are monetary authorities not elected like fiscal authorities are advanced economies pair an elected fiscal authority with an independent monetary authority replicating the advanced economies structure with authorities microfounded by a political economy model shows that this structure is the solution to a constrained mechanism design problem that overcomes time inconsistency and results in the highest possible welfare goal and instrument independence singly and in combination are insufficient to minimize time inconsistency though their combination is necessary

will developing country nutrition improve with income a case study for rural south india aggregate estimates of food expenditure are consistent with such a possibility implying income expenditure elasticities close to one however the high degree of aggregation at which such estimates are made means that the considerable increase in price per nutrient as income increases is ignored and the nutrient elasticities are therefore overstated estimates for a rural south indian sample indicate that this bias is considerable and that the true nutrient elasticities with respect to income may be close to zero

child health and household resources in south africa evidence from the old age pension program this paper presents nonparametric evidence on the effects of the expansion of the old age pension program in south africa on child health did this increase in household resources improve child health and nutrition does the gender of the recipient of the pension affect its impact the answers to these questions have very important policy implications there is evidence that inadequate nutrition during childhood and even in utero affects long term physical development as well as the development of cognitive skills this in turn affects productivity later in life see partha dasgupta 1993 john strauss and duncan thomas 1998 t paul schultz 1999 in the united states the evidence suggests that monetary transfers to the poor have very little impact on child welfare janet currie 1995 susan mayer 1997 however the effects of parental income and monetary transfers on child outcomes are likely to be of greater magnitude among poor households in developing countries the south african pension program provides an unusual opportunity to evaluate the possible effects of such a monetary transfer this paper exploits the rapid increase in the coverage and benefits of the old age pension program in south africa which took place in the early 1990 s anne case and angus deaton 1998 at the end of the apartheid era the government committed to achieving parity of benefits and eligibility requirements between whites and africans this was achieved mostly by increasing the benefits received by the africans in 1993 80 percent of african women above age 60 and 77 percent of african men above 65 received the pension the maximum benefit of 370 rands per month aproximately 3 per day was equal to half of the minimum wage and about twice the median income per capita in rural areas due to living arrangements inherited from the apartheid era close to onethird of african children under the age of 5 currently live with a pension recipient children who live with a pension recipient tend to come from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds as a consequence they tend to be smaller than other children their age to estimate the effect of receiving a pension on the anthropometric status of children this paper exploits the fact that height reflects accumulated investments in child nutrition the larger the proportion of her life during which a child is well nourished the taller she will be given her age due to the expansion of the program in the early 1990 s individuals of qualified age became more likely to receive a pension and the benefits became substantially larger thus children born after the expansion of the program are more likely to have spent a larger fraction of their lives wellnourished if they live with a pension recipient to the extent that the pension resulted in improved nutrition in this paper i present nonparametric evidence of the program s effect on nutrition based on this observation

the impact of corporate social performance on a firm s multinationality using panel data of 4 244 company years we examine whether and how corporate social performance csp affects a firm s capacity to achieve profitable sales in foreign markets based on our extension of instrumental stakeholder theory into the international arena we hypothesized a u shaped relationship between csp and multinationality results supported our contention that multinational enterprises mnes need to be substantially committed to social performance objectives if they are to recoup the cost of their csp investments and improve their capacity to compete in foreign markets mnes engaged in intermediate levels of csp achieve lower levels of multinationality than firms operating at either anchor of the social performance continuum in addition this study demonstrates that csp moderates a well established relationship in international business literature the relationship between r d investment and a firm s multinationality implications for research and practice are discussed

food quality calories and household income the authors investigate the relationship between calories food quality and household per capita expenditure using regression and semi parametric methods on a sample of poor households from rural mexico where programa de apoyo alimentario pal a targeted nutritional program is operating the semi parametric method yields an estimate of the elasticity between calorie and expenditure of 0 39 below the median and 0 28 above the corresponding estimates of the elasticity of the calorie price are 0 48 below the median and 0 45 above the authors also examine the extent to which the expenditure elasticity of the calorie price is explained by substitution between and within major food groups it is found that there is a very high incidence of substitution within cereals especially for poor households and that between group substitution explains at most 59 percent of the income elasticity for food quality these estimates suggest that the potential of a cash transfer program to have a positive impact on the food diversity and the nutritional status of households is quite limited the paper is organized as follows section one gives introduction section two describes the data the econometric specification and estimation approaches used and presents and discusses descriptive evidence on the intake of calories and the price of calories in the sample the relationship between calories the cost of calories and household expenditure is studied using regression and semi parametric methods in section three section four concludes by summarizing the policy implications of findings

corporate social and financial performance an extended stakeholder theory and empirical test with accounting measures although agreement on the positive sign of the relationship between corporate social and financial performance is observed in the literature the mechanisms that constitute this relationship are not yet well known we address this issue by extending management s stakeholder theory by adding insights from psychology s prospect decision theory and sociology s resource dependence theory empirically we analyze an extensive panel dataset including information on disaggregated measures of social performance for the s p 500 in the 1997 2002 period in so doing we enrich the extant literature by focusing on stakeholder heterogeneity perceptional framing and disaggregated measures of corporate social performance

resource rents universal basic income and poverty among alaska s indigenous peoples abstract the alaska permanent fund dividend pfd program provides universal basic income ubi to all residents from investment earnings of a state sovereign wealth fund created from oil rents this paper evaluates the effect of the pfd to mitigate poverty among the state s rural indigenous alaska native peoples a population with historically high poverty rates living in a region with limited economic opportunities errors in recording pfd income in data used to calculate official poverty statistics cause them to misrepresent poverty in alaska and understate the effect of the pfd estimating poverty rates with and without pfd income therefore requires reconstruction of family incomes from household level data estimated poverty rates from reconstructed income show that the pfd has had a substantial although diminishing mitigating effect on poverty for rural indigenous families the pfd has had a larger effect on poverty among children and elders than for the rural alaska native population as a whole alaska native seniors who receive additional sources of ubi derived primarily from resource rents besides the pfd have seen a decline in poverty rates while poverty rates for children have increased evidence has not appeared for commonly hypothesized potential adverse social and economic consequences of ubi

the impact of the social cash transfer scheme on food security in malawi abstract the malawi social cash transfer scheme scts was launched in 2006 to improve food security by directly providing cash transfers to the country s most destitute households although government implemented cash transfer schemes have gained popularity throughout latin america these schemes are just emerging in africa while where there is evidence of the beneficial impact of cash transfers on food security from latin american countries there is a dearth of evidence from resource poor countries in africa in order to fill this gap we conducted a longitudinal randomized community control study of the pilot scts in mchinji malawi from march 2007 to april 2008 in this study we describe the impact of approximately us 14 per month on food security among recipient households compared to control households using indicators of food consumption and expenditures and dietary diversity we present compelling evidence whereby each of the tested outcomes yields large effect sizes that are highly statistically significant demonstrating a sizeable impact of cash transfers on food security and food diversity in rural malawi the scts appears to be an effective tool within the national social welfare policy for improving food security in the country s destitute households

the effect of the food stamp program on nutrient intake i introduction one of the goals of the food stamp program as stated in the preamble of the law is to ensure that low income households have the opportunity to attain a nutritionally adequate diet previous economic studies evaluating the effects of food stamp income on nutrient intake have typically found a positive usually small correlation between the receipt of food stamps and nutrition two recent papers by devaney and moffitt 1991 and horton and campbell 1991 reach very positive conclusions concerning the effect of income in general papers from the nutrition literature generally find positive but weak and often insignificant effects of income on nutrition we employ information on two groups of low income people and find slightly different results for the two groups but very different results from many of the other studies for a sample of rural families taken from data from the rural income maintenance experiment we find almost no effect of food stamp income or evidence of selection bias 1 however for a sample of elderly people from the food stamp cashout project we find strong evidence that self selection into the food stamp program is highly correlated with attaining nutritional adequacy and that controlling for the self selection food stamp income and other income have a negative effect on nutrition we re examine the relationship between food stamp income and the nutrient intake of the poor and improve upon the existing literature in several important ways first it is possible that the positive correlation between the receipt of food stamps and nutrition is not a direct causal link but rather is the result of other factors affecting both for example in one of the samples examined in this paper only 50 percent of those eligible actually apply for and receive food stamps it could be the case that those who care more about nutrition are at the same time more likely to apply for and receive food stamps and more likely to maintain a nutritionally adequate diet these possible self selection problems can be disentangled from possible direct effects of food stamp income on nutrition using estimation procedures which correct for selection bias another issue which our research addresses is that the level of one nutrient may be correlated with the levels of other nutrients this may occur either because individuals who care about nutrition may be more likely to attain adequate levels of all nutrients or because combinations of nutrients occur naturally in foods we posit a multi equation model of the levels of nutrients and allow the disturbances in each equation to be correlated none of the previous studies considered this correlation finally we recognize the fact that above some level extra nutrients are superfluous if an individual has attained a nutritionally adequate diet then whether or not food stamp income allows him or her to consume more nutrients is irrelevant we are primarily interested in therefore whether or not an individual attains an adequate level of a nutrient rather than the absolute amount of a nutrient consumed in previous studies devaney and moffitt 1991 had addressed simultaneously the issues of selection bias and the superfluity of nutrients above some level the finding that food stamp income actually lowers nutrient intake ceteris paribus is a novel result for studies of the food stamp program but it would not be novel in the literature on nutrition in less developed countries pitt and rosenzweig 1985 behrman and deolalikar 1987 it is reasonable to believe that as income increases households employ relatively more money than time in household production this is silberberg s 1985 explanation for decreased efficiency in producing pure nutrients in other words as income increases people spend less time preparing meals and more money on foods which are easier to prepare if as is often the case foods which are more convenient to prepare are less nutritious than foods which require a lot of time to prepare then our result is not surprising

do non socially responsible companies achieve legitimacy through socially responsible actions the mediating effect of innovation this study investigates the effects on organization s financial performances of first the extent to which the organizations are involved in controversial business activities and second their level of social performance these companies can be considered non socially responsible given the harmful nature of the activities they are involved in managers of these companies may still have incentives to pursue socially responsible actions if they believe that engaging on those actions will help them to achieve legitimacy and improve investors perception about them we develop a comprehensive methodology to investigate these corporate social performance csp related effects in a complex but specific setting to this end we analyze a sample of 202 us firms for the period 2005 2008 using a novel method in this area partial least squares our results indicate that contrary to the general findings in prior literature companies involved in controversial business activities which engage in csp do not directly reduce the negative perception that stakeholders have about them instead we found evidence of a positive mediation effect of csp on financial market based performance through innovation

on the validity of environmental performance metrics different proprietary databases have been used extensively in research to assess the environmental performance and environmental risk of companies this study explores the convergent validity of the environmental ratings of msci esg stats formerly known as kinder lydenberg and domini research analytics kld thomson reuters asset4 asset4 and global engagement services ges the study shows that the ratings have common dimensions but on aggregate they do not converge on the environmental opportunity side kld environmental strengths and asset4 and ges environmental performance metrics correlate highly and provide convergent scores for us companies from 2003 2011 on the environmental risk side kld environmental concerns converge with the ges environmental industry risk and company emissions from the asset4 database further analysis confirms that industry related risks are drivers of company specific environmental performance

poverty and the forward falling labor supply function a microeconomic analysis abstract existing subsistence efficiency target income and limited aspiration theories impose a backward bending labor supply behavior on poor workers in less developed countries recent empirical studies of worker behavior in the unorganized sectors of ldcs contradict this view and report evidence of both a forward falling and an upward rising labor supply this study formulates an increasing elasticity of substitution utility function model to analyze the observed behaviors the function displays both nonhomotheticity and variable elasticity properties and is capable of generating labor supply curves with forward falling and upward rising segments while the upward rising supply is considered to be usual worker behavior the forward falling segment represents a below subsistence distress sale phenomenon and the subsistence income of the worker is implied to occur at the turning point joining the two segments of the supply curve econometric estimates of the utility and the labor supply functions provide support to the theoretical results

compensating outside directors with stock the impact on non primary stakeholders two obvious trends in corporate governance include broadening board accountability beyond shareholders interests and paying outside directors with equity compensation stock and stock options by integrating common agency and instrumental stakeholder theories we examine the effect of stock compensation on secondary stakeholders and a firm s participation in social issues two areas where interests are less aligned with shareholder value consistent with our predictions we found that while stock compensation may be an effective way to align directors goals to those of shareholders it has adverse effects on important non shareholder constituencies in the company s operating environment

does firm size comfound the relationship between corporate social performance and firm financial performance there has been some theoretical and empirical debate that the positive relationship between corporate social performance csp and firm financial performance ffp is spurious and in fact caused by a third factor namely large firm size this study examines this question by integrating three meta analyses of more than two decades of research on 1 csp and ffp 2 firm size and csp and 3 firm size and ffp into one path analytic model the present study does not confirm size as a third factor which would confound the relationship between csp and ffp that is even if firm size is controlled for across studies comprising on average over 15 000 observations csp and ffp remain positively correlated showing a true score corrected path coefficient p of 0 37

optimal taxation without state contingent debt in an economy studied by lucas and stokey tax rates inherit the serial correlation structure of government expenditures belying barro s earlier result that taxes should be a random walk for any stochastic process of government expenditures to recover a version of barro s random walk tax smoothing outcome we modify lucas and stokey s economy to permit only risk free debt having only risk free debt confronts the ramsey planner with additional constraints on equilibrium allocations beyond one imposed by lucas and stokey s assumption of complete markets the ramsey outcome blends features of barro s model with lucas and stokey s in our model the contemporaneous effects of exogenous government expenditures on the government deficit and taxes resemble those in lucas and stokey s model but incomplete markets put a near unit root component into government debt and taxes an outcome like barro s however we show that without ad hoc limits on the government s asset holdings outcomes can diverge in importa

what good does doing good do the effect of bond rating analysts corporate bias on investor reactions to changes in social responsibility in this study we explore how investors reconcile information on firms social responsibility with analysts assessments of future firm risk in the pricing of long term bonds we ask whether investors pay attention to small strides toward and or small slips away from socially responsible behavior arguing that analysts corporate bias toward gains and against losses influences investor reactions to corporate social responsibility we hypothesize that analysts notice and reward improvements in social responsibility yet excuse lapses we find support for this hypothesis using a unique dataset of long term bonds that combines lagged measures of firm level financial and social performance with bond specific data pertaining to risk of default and pricing the empirically robust asymmetry in investor responses to small but often cumulative increases versus decreases in corporate social responsibility reveals an under examined root cause of longer term larger scale distortions in financial market returns regarding corporate social performance our findings elaborate earlier behavioral research on how corporate bias influences analysts short term assessments of economic risk by theorizing why this corporate bias may influence long term assessments of social risk our work also motivates more critical scrutiny of the role analysts play in revising the future risk of today s social action versus inaction

fuelling calorie intake decline household level evidence from rural india summary in india average calorie intake has declined even as real monthly expenditure has increased since cross sectional evidence suggests a positive relationship between the two variables the trend emerges as a major puzzle using household level data from four recent rounds of national sample survey data on consumption expenditure and a novel instrumental variable estimation strategy we find that rising expenditure on non food items is one of the factors that has led to the calorie intake decline we provide causal evidence for such a food budget squeeze in the case of one type of non food item viz expenditures on cooking fuel

evaluating familial support for the elderly the intrahousehold allocation of medical expenditures in rural pakistan introduction in this article i examine the determinants of medical expenditures on the elderly in rural pakistani households analyzing in particular the dependence of such expenditures on the economic contribution of the elderly to household income the results for older males are contrasted with those for younger males improved life expectancies in the south asian economies as in other developing economies have generated new policy interest in the economic status of the elderly there is however little empirical evidence on this topic while the scant research on the elderly in south asia undoubtedly reflects the fact that they represent one of the smallest demographic groups in these economies it also reflects the widespread belief that they are well provided for by the intergenerational households where the vast majority of them reside with their adult children however this assumption has been questioned by a number of scholars who find that medical expenditures on the elderly are closely correlated with the elderly s individual incomes and wealth household data from pakistan support such claims data on individual medical expenditures and days of illness are available from two household surveys a panel data set collected by the international food policy research institute ifpri and from the pakistan living standards measurement survey lsms both data sets reveal a strong correlation between the number of days of illness reported by adult males and age leading one to expect a similarly strong correlation between medical expenditures and age instead the ifpri data yield a correlation that is less than one would expect given the relationship between illness and age the lsms data set which provides information on many more

does it matter how we survey demand for food evidence from kenya and the philippines abstract this article examines the reliability of food quantity information collected from expenditure surveys and finds that measurement errors will very often be systematically correlated with income such that the response of food intakes to increases in income is seriously overstated this may be firstly because food quantities are not measured independently of income if total expenditures are the proxy used for income and secondly because food transfers in the form of guest and hired worker meals are under recorded these biases are illustrated using household surveys from kenya and the philippines

workforce diversity and religiosity workforce diversity has received increasing amounts of attention from academics and practitioners alike in this article we examine the empirical association between a firm s workforce diversity hereafter diversity and the degree of religiosity of the firm s management by investigating their unidirectional and endogenous effects employing a large and extensive u s sample of firms from the years 1991 2010 we find a positive association between a measure of the firm s commitment to diversity and the religiosity of the firm s management after controlling for various firm characteristics in addition after controlling for endogeneity with the dynamic panel generalized method of moment we still find a positive association between the firm s diversity and management s religiosity we interpret these results as supportive of the religious motivation explanation that views the firm as a human community and considers religion as a factor that influences managers to more positively embrace diversity our results however provide no support for the resource constraint hypothesis that views the firm as a nexus of contracts and sees managers as aiming to maximize shareholder returns under resource constraints that force them to invest only in projects that have a positive net present value npv and reject diversity initiatives since these do not have a positive npv

monetary conservatism and fiscal policy abstract does an inflation conservative central bank a la rogoff 1985 remain desirable in a setting with endogenous fiscal policy to provide an answer we study monetary and fiscal policy games without commitment in a dynamic stochastic sticky price economy with monopolistic distortions monetary policy determines nominal interest rates and fiscal policy provides public goods generating private utility we find that lack of fiscal commitment gives rise to excessive public spending the optimal inflation rate internalizing this distortion is positive but lack of monetary commitment generates too much inflation a conservative monetary authority thus remains desirable when fiscal policy is determined before monetary policy each period the monetary authority should focus exclusively on stabilizing inflation monetary conservatism then eliminates the steady state biases associated with lack of monetary and fiscal commitment and leads to stabilization policy that is close to optimal

more evidence on nutrition demand income seems overrated and women s schooling underemphasized abstract malnutrition is widespread in the developing world controversy continues concerning the roles of income household size and women s schooling on nutrient demand empirical estimates for nicaragua suggest that income elasticities are small and inversely associated with income levels there are some economies of scale in household size the elasticity for women s schooling is higher than those for income or household size and women s backgrounds are important the results cast doubt on the strong emphasis the world bank and others have placed on income and suggest that schooling may be working through tastes not only through productivity

nonparametric and parametric analysis of calorie consumption in tanzania abstract the empirical literature on the demand for calories in developing countries suggests mixed results regarding the role of income and other socioeconomic characteristics on calorie demand this study employs both nonparametric and parametric methods to examine the impact of household expenditure and other socioeconomic variables on household demand for calories in tanzania using recent survey data the parametric methods include estimation strategies that ensure consistent estimates in the presence of behavioral endogeneity and measurement error under each estimation strategy we employ we find a strongly significant and positive relationship between household expenditure and calorie demand lending support to conventional wisdom that income growth can alleviate inadequate calorie intake the results also show a negative and significant relationship between food prices and calorie demand suggesting that effectively targeted food subsidies for very poor households may play a role in improving their calorie intake

effects of treatment beyond the treated a general equilibrium impact evaluation of lesotho s cash grants program africa s social cash transfer programs target the most resource constrained households unlikely to expand supply in response to transfer induced demand we propose a local economy wide impact evaluation model and use it to evaluate local spillovers from lesotho s child grants program we report monte carlo confidence bounds around impact simulation results we find significant spillovers to nonrecipient households and significant real income multipliers although the latter are dampened if factor supply constraints generate excessive inflationary pressures our findings raise questions about how to measure the impacts of cash transfers evaluations focusing only on eligible households are likely to significantly understate program impacts

bargaining in legislatures bargaining in legislatures is conducted according to formal rules specifying who may make proposals and how they will be decided legislative outcomes depend on those rules and on the structure of the legislature although the social choice literature provides theories about voting equilibria it does not endogenize the formation of the agenda on which the voting is based and rarely takes into account the institutional structure found in legislatures in our theory members of the legislature act noncooperatively in choosing strategies to serve their own districts explicitly taking into account the strategies members adopt in response to the sequential nature of proposal making and voting the model permits the characterization of a legislative equilibrium reflecting the structure of the legislature and also allows consideration of the choice of elements of that structure in a context in which the standard institution free model of social choice theory yields no equilibrium

being good while being bad social responsibility and the international diversification of us firms this paper contributes to the discussion on international diversification and corporate social responsibility csr by suggesting that firms can be simultaneously socially responsible and socially irresponsible to test our assertions we analyze data from 222 publicly traded us firms from 1993 to 2003 the findings support our hypotheses and have significant implications for the way in which we conceptualize csr

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

an investigation of real versus perceived csp in s p 500 firms firms are spending billions annually in the name of corporate social responsibility csr whilst markets are increasingly willing to reward good and responsible firms they lack the instruments to measure corporate social performance csp to convince investors and other stakeholders firms invest heavily in building a reputation for good corporate behaviour this article argues that reputations for csp are often unrepresentative of true csp and investigates how differences in perceived and actual as measured by the fortune and kld databases respectively can partly be explained by firm characteristics amongst other things it finds that overrated firms are more likely to be relatively big profitable operating in non polluting but competitive industries and with no history of wrong doings to their primary stakeholders they will also typically spend a lot of effort satisfying the claims of their secondary stakeholders above all the results emphasise the need for researchers to recognise that the databases measure different phenomenon and are not interchangeable

impacts of the malawi social cash transfer program on household food and nutrition security abstract this study uses panel data for 3290 households to analyze the effect of an unconditional cash transfer on food and nutrition security among ultra poor and vulnerable households study data are from an impact evaluation of the government of malawi s social cash transfer program a cluster randomized control trial that employs both random selection and random assignment we use the difference in differences specification to estimate average treatment effects of the program on three components of food and nutrition security current economic vulnerability diet quantity and diet quality results show protective program impacts during the lean season on diet quantity as beneficiary households are 11 percentage points more likely to consume multiple meals per day than control households p 001 have a higher level of apparent caloric availability 267 49 kcal p 05 are 10 percentage points less likely to be food energy deficient p 05 and have a reduced hunger depth 111 11 kcal p 05 however study findings indicate that after one year of program exposure beneficiary households have experienced little improvement in diet quality or current economic vulnerability to food insecurity clear policy and program implications emerge related to the purchasing power of the cash transfer particularly during the lean season and the importance of integrated social protection initiatives

corporate social performance and innovation with high social benefits a quantitative analysis this article analyses the link between innovation with high social benefits and corporate social performance csp and the role that family firms play in this this theme is particularly relevant given the large number of firms that are family owned also the implicit potential of innovation to reconcile corporate sustainability aspects with profitability justifies an extended analysis of this link governments often support socially beneficial innovation with various policy instruments with the intention of increasing international competitiveness and simultaneously supporting sustainable development in parallel firms pursue corporate social responsibility csr and environmental management activities partly in the hope that this will foster such innovation in their organisation alongside their main aim of improving csp hence the main research question of this article is about the association of csp with innovation with high social benefits and the determinants of the potential moderation of this association based on panel data the article analyses the link between csp and innovation and the effect of being a family firm using panel estimation techniques the results point to a moderating role of family firms on the link between innovation with high social benefits and csp the article concludes by assessing the policy implications of this insight

sowing for food security a case study of smallholder farmers in bolivia abstract this paper explores the role that agriculture can play in the food security agenda to meet this objective this study measures the impact of the programa de apoyos directos para la creacion de iniciativas agroalimentarias rurales criar an agricultural technology adoption program implemented in highly food insecure areas of rural bolivia the paper analyzes whether changes in food security are due to improved food availability production and local sales and or greater food access income and production used for home consumption to this end data from a sample of 1287 households 817 beneficiaries and 470 controls interviewed specifically for this purpose are used to address self selection issues the program s impact is estimated using an instrumental variable model the results present evidence that program participation improved food security specifically positive impacts on agricultural productivity agricultural sales and household income are found these findings confirm the importance of considering agricultural programs as policy tools to address food insecurity

optimal fiscal and monetary policy some recent results this paper studies the quantitative properties of fiscal and monetary policy in business cycle models in terms of fiscal policy optimal labor tax rates are virtually constant and optimal capital income tax rates are close to zero on average in terms of monetary policy the friedman rule is optimal nominal interest rates are zero and optimal monetary policy is activist in the sense that it responds to shocks to the economy

a dynamic theory of public spending taxation and debt this paper presents a dynamic political economy theory of public spending taxation and debt policy choices are made by a legislature consisting of representatives elected by geographically defined districts the legislature can raise revenues via a distortionary income tax and by borrowing these revenues can be used tofinance a national public good and district specific transfers interpreted as pork barrel spending the value of the public good is stochastic reflecting shocks such as wars or natural disasters in equilibrium policy making cycles between two distinct regimes business as usual in which legislators bargain over the allocation of pork and responsible policy making in which policies maximize the collective good transitions between the two regimes are brought about by shocks in the value of the public good in the long run equilibrium tax rates are too high and too volatile public good provision is too low and debt levels are too high in some environments a balanced budget requirement can improve citizen welfare

a rose by any other name are family firms named after their founding families rewarded more for their new product introductions the authors explore the relation between the way different family firms are named and the shareholder value impact of these firms new product introductions using an event study of 1 294 product introduction announcements of 107 publicly listed u s family firms the authors find that the presence of the founding family s name as part of a family firm s name acts as a valuable firm resource increasing the abnormal stock returns surrounding the firm s new product introductions superior returns to family named firms new product introductions are partially mediated by these firms history of ethical product related behavior family named firms particularly those with corporate branding and those wherein a founding family member holds the ceo or chairman position are more likely to exhibit a history of avoiding such product related controversies as product safety issues and deceptive advertising the authors highlight the managerial and theoretical contributions of this research

gender biased redistribution and intra household distribution abstract this paper examines the implications of income redistribution from men to women for the welfare of married women and children we develop a cournot model of a two person household where agents provide market labor and allocate their spending between a private consumption good and goods for children we show that under plausible restrictions on individual preferences small redistributions to married women reduce their welfare this happens because the income redistribution induces men to reduce their own spending on children by more than the amount redistributed a relative increase in women s independent earnings may however improve children s welfare

nutrition health birth order and seasonality intrahousehold allocation among children in rural india abstract nutrients available to children are determined largely by intrahousehold allocations there are a number of reasons why birth order may affect these allocations a model is developed to estimate critical parameters of parental preferences regarding the allocation of nutrients among their children latent variable estimates for rural south india indicate that parental preferences have productivity equity tradeoffs and parents favor older children the productivity equity tradeoff however is much less for the lean season therefore when food is scarcest parents follow more closely a pure investment strategy exposing their more vulnerable children to greater malnutrition tisk

the construct validity of the kinder lydenberg domini social performance ratings data carroll 1991 encouraged researchers in social issues management sim to continue to measure corporate social performance csp from a variety of different perspectives utilizing a variety of different measures in addition wolfe and aupperle 1991 and others have asserted that there is no single best way to measure csp and that multiple measures and perspectives help develop the field however pfeffer 1993 suggest that a lack of consistent measurement has constrained organization studies and by implication the field of social issues management in its development as a field it may be in the best interest of social issues management researchers to try to development a common body of measures and data recently kinder lydenberg and domini co kld a social choice investment advisory firm has made available their social performance database the kld data have potential to become a widely accepted set of csp measures the purpose of this paper is to present a construct validity study comparing the kld data to other measures of csp

improving the efficiency targeting of malawi s farm input subsidy programme big pain small gain abstract the farm input subsidy programme fisp in malawi was introduced in the 2005 2006 season against a background of bad weather affecting production and prolonged food shortages vouchers are distributed empowering eligible farmers to exchange them for fixed quantities of inputs at subsidized prices since its inception there has been a debate at national level about whether the fisp s potential has been fully exploited with policy makers exploring options to improve the programme proposals include targeting efficient and productive farmers to maximize returns in this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of these proposed changes to the existing fisp design by utilizing two waves of the lsms isa survey merged with climatic data we estimate how the national demand for agricultural inputs varies according to a variation in the targeting criteria by means of a two stage demand system then we identify more efficient farmers by means of a stochastic frontier approach we observe a mismatch between voucher recipients and efficiency with approximately 60 of vouchers being allocated to the three bottom quintiles of efficiency this mismatch is observed also at the spatial level with more vouchers going to districts characterized by less efficient production while concerns on the distributional impacts of the new criteria are discussed together with some suggestions for spatially diversifying the structuring of the policy and incentivizing crop diversification our results highlight a high substitutability of commercial with subsidized inputs by new eligible farmers consequently simulating the targeting policy variation we obtain an outcome that would lead only to a limited increases in predicted food expenditure ranging from 0 27 to 0 8 and maize production from 0 2 to 1 3 scope for analysing different adjustments in the functioning of fisp are thus proposed to policy makers

the convergence of ethical investment business models and their reliance on the conventional us investment market this study investigates the extent of convergence of the two key types of ethical investment business models islamic finance if investment and socially responsible investment sri and the level

impact of income on nutrient intakes implications for undernourishment and obesity the relationship between income and nutrient intake is explored nonparametric panel and quantile regressions are used engle curves for calories fat and protein are approximately linear in logs with carbohydrate intakes exhibiting diminishing elasticities as incomes increase elasticities range from 0 10 to 0 25 with fat having the highest elasticities countries in higher quantiles have lower elasticities than those in lower quantiles results predict significant cumulative increases in calorie consumption which are increasingly composed of fats though policies aimed at poverty alleviation and economic growth may assuage hunger and malnutrition they may also exacerbate problems associated with obesity

poverty and public policy the problem of poverty is particularly acute in india with 14 of the world s population we have the misfortune of having almost twice as large a share of the world s poor indeed as i shall presently underline the question of poverty and its amelioration has been at the center of our concerns from the beginning of our planning efforts almost four decades ago little therefore can be said on it that some distinguished indian economist has not already said in some ways therefore to talk on the design of public policy for poverty to an indian audience is to carry coal to newcastle or as the old saying goes to teach your grandmother how to suck eggs nonetheless i hope to provide a fresh perspective by putting the problem into an explicit analytical framework that permits alternative policy designs to be sharply defined and contrasted i also intend to draw on international experience to put our efforts and problems into both historical and comparative perspectives

is corporate social responsibility performance associated with tax avoidance this study examines whether corporate social responsibility performance is associated with corporate tax avoidance employing a matched sample of 434 firm year observations i e 217 tax avoidant and 217 non tax avoidant firm year observations from the kinder lydenberg and domini database over the period 2003 2009 our logit regression results show that the higher the level of csr performance of a firm the lower the likelihood of tax avoidance our results indicate that more socially responsible firms are likely to display less tax avoidance finally the results from our additional analysis show that the csr categories community relations and diversity represent particularly important elements of csr performance that reduce tax avoidance

agricultural household models extensions applications and policy this book presents the basic model of an agricultural household that underlies most of the case studies undertaken so far the model assumes that households are price takers and is therefore recursive the decisions modeled include those affecting production and the demand for inputs and those affecting consumption and the supply of labor comparative results on selected elasticities are presented for a number of economies the empirical significance of the approach is demonstrated in a comparison of models that treat production and consumption decisions separately and those in which the decisionmaking process is recursive the book summarizes the implications of agricultural pricing policy for the welfare of farm households marketed surplus the demand for nonagricultural goods and services the rural labor market budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings in addition it is shown that the basic model can be extended in order to explore the effects of government policy on crop composition nutritional status health saving and investment and to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the effects on budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings methodological topics primarily the data requirements of the basic model and its extensions along with aggregation market interaction uncertainty and market imperfections are discussed the most important methodological issues the question of the recursive property of these models is also discussed

driven to be good a stakeholder theory perspective on the drivers of corporate social performance despite growing evidence of the benefits to a firm of improving corporate social performance csp many firms vary significantly in terms of their csp activities this research investigates how the characteristics of the stakeholder landscape influence a firm s csp breadth using stakeholder theory we specifically propose that several factors increase the salience and impact of stakeholders demands on the firm and that in response to these factors a firm s csp will have greater breadth a firm s csp breadth is operationalized as the number of different sub domains of csr for which a firm has taken positive actions and is captured using a unique dataset from kinder lydenburg and domini kld this data set includes positive and negative firm actions across more than 35 different dimensions of socially responsible behavior findings based on a longitudinal multi industry sample of 447 us firms during the period from 2000 to 2007 demonstrate that firms which 1 have greater sensitivity to stakeholder needs as a result of the firm s strategic emphasis on marketing and or value creation 2 face greater diversity of stakeholder demands and 3 encounter a greater degree of scrutiny or risk from stakeholder action have a greater breadth of csp in response to the stakeholder landscape that they face

stakeholder pressures as determinants of csr strategic choice why do firms choose symbolic versus substantive self regulatory codes of conduct to encourage corporations to contribute positively to the environment in which they operate voluntary self regulatory codes src have been enacted and refined over the past 15 years two of the most prominent are the united nations global compact and the global reporting initiative in this paper we explore the impact of different stakeholders pressures on the selection of strategic choices to join srcs our results show that corporations react differently to different sets of stakeholder pressures and that the src selection depends on the type and intensiveness of the stakeholder pressures as well as the resources at hand to respond to those pressures our contribution offers a more specific and finely variegated analysis of firm stakeholder interactions

community religion employees and the social license to operate the world bank recently noted social license to operate has traditionally referred to the conduct of firms with regard to the impact on local communities and the environment but the definition has expanded in recent years to include issues related to worker and human rights world bank 2013 http go worldbank org fz88vmom90 in this paper we examine a factor that can influence the kind of work conditions that can facilitate or obstruct a firm s attempts to achieve the social license to operate slo specifically we examine the empirical association between a company s employee practices and the religiosity of its local community by investigating their fixed and endogenous effects using a large and extensive u s sample we find a positive association between the employee friendly practices of a firm and the religiosity of the local community after controlling for several firm characteristics in addition after mitigating endogeneity with the dynamic panel system generalized method of moment and after employing several other econometric tests we still find a robust positive association between the religiosity of the local community and employee friendly practices since recent research has shown that the firm s treatment of its stakeholders is a key to achieving an slo and since employees constitute a highly significant stakeholder group we interpret our results as supporting the view that religion is an important influence on the kinds of employee practices that can increase the likelihood that a firm will acquire the slo

discretionary monetary policy and the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates abstract ignoring the existence of the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates one considerably understates the value of monetary commitment in new keynesian models a stochastic forward looking model with an occasionally binding lower bound calibrated to the u s economy suggests that low values for the natural rate of interest lead to sizeable output losses and deflation under discretionary monetary policy the fall in output and deflation are much larger than in the case with policy commitment and do not show up at all if the model abstracts from the existence of the lower bound the welfare losses of discretionary policy increase even further when inflation is partly determined by lagged inflation in the phillips curve these results emerge because private sector expectations and the discretionary policy response to these expectations reinforce each other and cause the lower bound to be reached much earlier than under commitment

optimal intertemporal consumption decisions under the threat of starvation abstract this paper studies consumption and saving decisions over time in a life cycle model in which survival from one period to the next is endogenous survival probabilities depend on health which is a capital stock subject to depreciation and which can be augmented by consumption nutrition borrowing is ruled out in our model and we investigate optimal consumption decisions when income fluctuates at seasonal frequencies and when income follows a stochastic process among other results we show that understanding the pattern of income is necessary for understanding consumption decisions when survival is probabilistic and endogenous

distributional effects of maize price increases in malawi abstractin the wake of highly volatile world prices of staple commodities we examine the impacts of increases in maize prices on various categories of households in malawi using household level data changes in household income are calculated taking into account the net maize production status of the household and food price elasticities estimated from a censored demand system while maize price increases have unequivocal deleterious effects on the incomes of urban households rural households experience differential impacts net producing households in rural areas benefit from price increases with households above the poverty line obtaining proportionally higher incomes

cash transfer programs and agricultural production the case of malawi cash transfer programs are increasingly utilized to combat poverty and hunger while building the human capital of future generations however they have been faulted by some for failing to build the productive capacity of current generations this article analyzes the impact of the malawi social cash transfer scheme on agricultural production the results show strong increases in ownership of productive agricultural assets in time devoted to household farms and in food types consumed from own production coupled with a sharp decrease in ganyu labor which is often used as a coping mechanism once food stores have been depleted these results are most likely achieved by helping farmers overcome credit and liquidity constraints this research shows that cash transfer programs can help the capacity of extremely poor farm households to expand agriculture production even if the goal of the program is focusing on other dimensions of poverty

fiscal policy over the real business cycle a positive theory this paper presents a political economy theory of the behavior of fiscal policy over the business cycle the theory predicts that in both booms and recessions fiscal policies are set so that the marginal cost of public funds obeys a submartingale in the short run fiscal policy can be pro cyclical with government debt spiking up upon entering a boom however in the long run fiscal policy is counter cyclical with debt increasing in recessions and decreasing in booms government spending increases in booms and decreases during recessions while tax rates decrease during booms and increase in recessions data on tax rates from the g7 countries supports the submartingale prediction and the correlations between fiscal policy variables and national income implied by the theory are consistent with much of the existing evidence from the u s and other countries

food preference poverty and the nutrition gap in recent decades widespread poverty has been observed in the developing economies studies probing the relationship of development to income distribution or poverty suggest either no development effect on the extent of poverty or a widening of inequality of incomes during the initial stages of development 2 a recent study by dandekar and rath of poverty in india showed the prevalence of poverty in both rural and urban areas after nearly three five year plans although these plans enabled india to achieve a sustained high rate of growth 3 other studies just preceding and following confirmed and extended the major conclusion of dandekar and rath s study 4 while income distribution studies relate to the extent of relative poverty studies similar to dandekar and rath s relate to absolute poverty in the latter the measurement of poverty is related to calorie intake levels in at least one study it is related to a collection of basic goods recent studies at the international level give evidence of poverty in the past decade and project a further spread in the next they too have used the calorie based poverty line 6 in this paper i maintain that calories or other nutrients taken singly or together measure only one attribute of food another is its taste the demand for food is a joint demand for these attributes and others like bulk which gives a sense of fullness i maintain that to concentrate on nutrition or calories alone leads to inaccuracy in measuring the extent of poverty we must ask therefore what role food preferences play in food consumption and nutrition intake my attempt is to understand food habits especially at low income levels although measurements are given regarding food preferences

the demand for food quality in rural china many studies of food demand do not use actual prices but unit values obtained by dividing expenditures by the quantity consumed this can bias empirical analyses because unit values are not exogenous market prices they reflect household food quality choices within each food category this article develops a framework for assessing the resulting bias in income and price elasticities of demand and applies the framework to data for rural china empirical results indicate that households in rural china tend to consume higher quality food as income increases with a greater sensitivity to income for basic foods than for luxury foods copyright 2009 oxford university press

central bank independence and the monetary instrument problem we study the monetary instrument problem in a dynamic noncooperative game between separate discretionary fiscal and monetary policy makers we show that monetary instruments are equivalent only if the policy makers objectives are perfectly aligned otherwise an instrument problem exists when the central bank is benevolent while the fiscal authority is short sighted relative to the private sector excessive public spending and debt emerge under a money growth policy but not under an interest rate policy despite this property the interest rate is not necessarily the optimal instrument

can drought increase total calorie availability the impact of drought on food consumption and the mitigating effects of a conditional cash transfer program abstract this study uses the panel data of a randomized experiment from the mexican progresa program to evaluate the impact of drought on total calorie availability and the mitigating effects of progresa on food consumption in periods of drought drought reduced total expenditures and total food expenditures but increased the total availability of calories this paradox can be explained by the impact of drought on the composition of calories that is it reduced the consumption of expensive calories in such foods as vegetables fruits and animal products but increased calories consumed from cheaper sources such as grains this study finds that progresa can completely mitigate the negative effects of drought on calorie availability from vegetables fruits and other sources however progresa cannot mitigate the impact of drought on calories available from grains the analysis also shows that during drought households who increase their consumption of grains get them mainly from purchased sources rathe

determinants of food consumption in rural sierra leone abstract this paper reports the application of a quadratic expenditure system with demographic variables to the household consumption leisure choice component of a household firm model a system of seven commodities is estimated including five foods non food and leisure appropriate for such a level of disaggregation a demand system is used the quadratic expenditure system which allows for a flexible relationship between full income and commodity expenditures without sacrificing parsimony in parameters demographic data on households are explicitly incorporated into the model allowing for a richer specification than can be achieved by using per capita variables the data are from a cross section survey of households in rural sierra leone price variation exists by region permitting estimation of a complete demand system engel curves are found to be significantly non linear with marginal expenditure on rice the major staple declining with higher income most foods are found to be reasonably price responsive with sizeable own price substitution effects declining with higher income aggregate labor supply is found to be price inelastic

on the joint determination of fiscal and monetary policy abstract the conduct of fiscal and monetary policy absent commitment depends on the interaction between the objective of smoothing distortions intertemporally and a time consistency problem when net nominal government obligations are positive both fiscal and monetary policies are distortionary and the choice of debt depends on how the anticipated response in future monetary policy affects the current demand for money and bonds there exists a unique steady state with positive net nominal government obligations which is stable and time consistent for any initial level of debt the welfare loss due to lack of commitment is small

central bank independence revisited the case for central bank independence cbi while not a new one has been strengthened by a growing body of empirical evidence by recent developments in economic theory and by the temper of the times the case is a strong one 1 which is becoming part of the washington orthodoxy the purposes of this paper are both to make more precise the type of cbi that is likely to enhance economic performance and to point to some remaining open issues and anomalies i start with the two theoretical approaches to cbi

distortionary fiscal policy and monetary policy goals we reconsider the role of an inflation conservative central banker in a setting with distortionary taxation to do so we assume monetary and fiscal policy are decided by independent authorities that do not abide to past commitments if the two authorities make policy decisions simultaneously inflation conservatism causes fiscal overspending but if fiscal policy is determined before monetary policy inflation conservatism imposes fiscal discipline these results clarify that in our setting the value of inflation conservatism depends crucially on the timing of policy decisions

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

biotechnology for rural nutrition abstract this article evaluates the introduction of algal biotechnology as a nutrition intervention in rural south india in terms of its benefits costs and acceptability to the tastes and income of rural households data were collected from a whole village study and developments in the theory of the economics of tastes are used to analyse the socioeconomic acceptance of algal supplements among the study households the results indicate that the algal food supplement is highly cost effective in providing adequate protein and other micronutrients however the absolute deviation between actual and optimal intake of algal food increased with higher income class several policy implications for food and nutrition interventions in developing countries are derived

dynamic monetary fiscal interactions and the role of monetary conservatism assuming that macroeconomic policies are directed by distinct monetary and fiscal policy makers who cannot commit to future actions we reassess the implications of monetary conservatism and fiscal impatience in a setting with nominal government debt for environments where a non negative steady state level of government debt assets emerges in the absence of conservatism and impatience monetary conservatism induces accumulation of a higher stock of liabilities assets and has adverse positive welfare implications this result obtains irrespectively of the degree of fiscal impatience and questions the unambiguous desirability of monetary conservatism traditionally found in the literature

direct and indirect effects of malawi s public works program on food security labor intensive public works programs are important social protection tools in low income settings intended to supplement income of poor households and improve public infrastructure in this evaluation of the malawi social action fund an at scale government operated program across and within village randomization is used to estimate effects on food security and use of fertilizer there is no evidence that the program improves food security and some negative spillovers to untreated households these disappointing results hold even under modifications to the design of the program to offer work during the lean rather than harvest season or increase the frequency of payments

the demand for food and calories we investigate nutrition and expenditure in rural maharashtra in india we estimate that the elasticity of calorie consumption with respect to total expenditure is 0 3 0 5 a range that is in accord with conventional wisdom the elasticity declines only slowly with levels of living and is far from the value of zero suggested by a recent revisionist literature in these indian data the calories necessary for a day s activity cost less than 5 percent of the daily wage which makes it implausible that income is constrained by nutrition rather than the other way around

environmental corporate social responsibility and financial performance disentangling direct and indirect effects abstract this paper assesses the impact of environmental corporate social responsibility ecsr on corporate financial performance cfp measured by roa and tobin s q we show that the relationship between firms return on assets roa and ecsr strengths and concerns is negative and statistically significant we also show that firms tobin q and ecsr strengths and concerns are negatively correlated in a statistically significant way however accounting for the interaction between firms environmental efforts and r d yields a different perspective while the direct impact of ecsr on cfp is still negative the interaction of ecsr and r d has a positive and significant impact on it ecsr strengths and concerns harm cfp since they are perceived as a potential cost however this csr activity fosters r d efforts of firms which generates additional value indirect effect

the effect of cash transfers and household vulnerability on food security in zimbabwe abstract we study the impact of the zimbabwe harmonized social cash transfer hsct on household food security after 12 months of implementation we investigate determinants of food security as measured by a well known food security scale the household food insecurity access scale hfias and as measured by value of household food consumption composed of own production market purchases and gifts received we find that several dimensions of household vulnerability correlate more strongly with the food security measure than with food consumption labor constraints which is a key vulnerability criterion used by the hsct to target households is an important predictor of the food security score but not food consumption and its effect on food security is even larger during the lean season impact analysis shows that the program has had statistically significant impacts on food security and diet diversity scores but null to low impacts on food consumption however aggregate food consumption hides dynamic activity taking place within the household where the cash is used to obtain more food from the market and rely less on food received as gifts the cash in turn gives beneficiaries greater choice in their food basket which improves diet diversity