analyzing nutritional impacts of policies an empirical study for malawi summary widespread malnutrition in developing countries calls for appropriate strategies presupposing good knowledge about nutritional impacts of policies little previous work has been carried out in this direction especially with respect to micronutrients we use representative household data from malawi and develop a demand systems approach to estimate income and price elasticities of food demand and nutrient consumption these estimates are applied for policy simulations given multiple nutritional deficiencies income related policies are better suited than price policies to improve nutrition while consumer price subsidies for maize improve calorie and mineral consumption they can worsen vitamin consumption in urban areas

impact of access to credit on labor allocation patterns in malawi summary this paper uses data from the malawi financial markets and household food security survey to examine the impact of gendered access to credit on labor allocation patterns within the household the paper corrects for potential endogeneity of access to credit in the estimations access to credit relies on the credit limit concept thus an individual has access to credit from a particular source if he she is able to borrow a positive amount from that source results suggest that the impact of access to credit depends upon both the gender of the recipient and whether it is formal or informal credit

non agricultural earnings in peri urban areas of tanzania evidence from household survey data abstract this study draws on purposive survey data of approximately 600 households in peri urban tanzania to describe the degree and nature of non farm diversification in these settings with the exception of relatively dynamic cities such as dar es salaam and arusha overall non farm incomes shares are not unambiguously higher than in rural areas as a whole non farm income shares rise sharply and monotonically with quintiles defined in terms of per capita food consumption in that sense the sector appears to offer an important route out of poverty the evidence suggests that education and access to infrastructure are important determinants of non farm incomes in peri urban areas women appear to be poorly placed vis a vis the non farm sector even after controlling for education age and other characteristics kinship and tribal affinities and time devoted to communal activities appear to deter entrepreneurial activity and non farm employment but trust in officials and public servants and strong heterogeneous village associations are important in stimulating non farm activity

economywide impacts of climate change on agriculture in sub saharan africa two possible adaptation scenarios to climate change for sub saharan africa are analyzed under the sres b2 scenario the first scenario doubles the irrigated area in sub saharan africa by 2050 compared to the baseline but keeps total crop area constant the second scenario increases both rainfed and irrigated crop yields by 25 for all sub saharan african countries the two adaptation scenarios are analyzed with impact a partial equilibrium agricultural sector model combined with a water simulation module and with gtap w a general equilibrium model including water resources the methodology combines the advantages of a partial equilibrium approach which considers detailed water agriculture linkages with a general equilibrium approach which takes into account linkages between agriculture and nonagricultural sectors and includes a full treatment of factor markets the efficacy of the two scenarios as adaptation measures to cope with climate change is discussed due to the limited initial irrigated area in the region an increase in agricultural productivity achieves better outcomes than an expansion of irrigated area even though sub saharan africa is not a key contributor to global food production rainfed irrigated or total both scenarios help lower world food prices stimulating national and international food markets

a cross country comparison of rural income generating activities summary this paper uses a newly constructed cross country database composed of comparable income aggregates to examine the full range of income generating activities carried out by rural households the analysis paints a clear picture of multiple activities across rural space in countries on all four continents though less so in the included african countries for most countries the largest share of income stems from off farm activities and the largest share of households has diversified sources of income diversification not specialization is the norm nevertheless agricultural sources of income remain critically important for rural livelihoods in all countries

nonfarm income diversification and household livelihood strategies in rural africa concepts dynamics and policy implications abstract asset activity and income diversification lie at the heart of livelihood strategies in rural africa this paper introduces a special issue on the topic income diversification and livelihoods in rural africa cause and consequence of change we concentrate on core conceptual issues that bedevil the literature on rural income diversification and the policy implications of the empirical evidence presented in this special issue

two stage residual inclusion estimation addressing endogeneity in health econometric modeling the paper focuses on two estimation methods that have been widely used to address endogeneity in empirical research in health economics and health services research two stage predictor substitution 2sps and two stage residual inclusion 2sri 2sps is the rote extension to nonlinear models of the popular linear two stage least squares estimator the 2sri estimator is similar except that in the second stage regression the endogenous variables are not replaced by first stage predictors instead first stage residuals are included as additional regressors in a generic parametric framework we show that 2sri is consistent and 2sps is not results from a simulation study and an illustrative example also recommend against 2sps and favor 2sri our findings are important given that there are many prominent examples of the application of inconsistent 2sps in the recent literature this study can be used as a guide by future researchers in health economics who are confronted with endogeneity in their empirical work

weathering climate change some simple rules to guide adaptation decisions this paper discusses some of the elements that may characterise an efficient strategy to adapt to a changing climate such a strategy will have to reflect the long time horizon of and the prevailing uncertainties about climate change an intuitively appealing approach therefore seems to be to enhance the flexibility and resilience of systems to react to and cope with climate shocks and extremes as well as to improve information in addition in the case of quasi irreversible investments with a long lifetime e g infrastructure investments development of coastal zones precautionary adjustments may be called for to increase the robustness of structures or to increase the rate of depreciation to allow for earlier replacement many of these measures may already have to be considered now and could be worthwhile in their own right independent of climate change considerations

costs and benefits of livestock systems and the role of market and nonmarket relationships in developing countries livestock are kept not only for their physical products but also for insurance financing and to display status though this range of purposes is acknowledged livestock policies nevertheless often emphasize physical production a limited perspective that hampers the formulation and implementation of effective livestock policies this article presents a comprehensive appraisal of costs and benefits of livestock systems that takes into account the institutional environment of livestock keepers indicators are developed that capture quantify and organize not only the benefits resulting from the physical production but also those from the intangible functions the method is illustrated by an analysis of cattle in the western province of zambia the results indicate that the perspective on livestock systems developed more closely reflects the observed decisions of the livestock keepers

using evidence of household income diversification to inform study of the rural nonfarm labor market in africa abstract the labor market literature in developing countries has seldom drawn on the studies of rural household income diversification this paper draws on such studies to inform future study of the rural nonfarm labor market in africa the review of evidence provides some surprising departures from traditional images of nonfarm activities of rural households among the most striking is the dominant importance in the majority of case study areas of nonfarm wage labor as compared to self employment of nonfarm sector earnings as compared to farm sector wage earnings and of local nonfarm earnings as compared to migration earnings the most worrying finding was the poor distribution of nonfarm earnings in rural areas despite the importance of these earnings to food security and farm investments this poor distribution implies significant entry barriers and market segmentation it is probable that this will lead over time to an increasingly skewed distribution of land and other assets in rural africa

diversification strategies and adaptation deficit evidence from rural communities in niger summary the paper provides fresh empirical evidence on the adaptation process in niger rural communities using original longitudinal socio economic panel data merged with granular geo referenced climatic information we identify the main drivers and impacts of crop and labor diversification which constitute two livelihood strategies on moderating the adaptation deficit in doing so we account for the interdependence between the two diversification practices and potential reverse causality between welfare outcomes and diversification behavior moreover we condition the impacts of diversification on different sections of the welfare distribution to capture potential non linear effects our results reveal that the diversification has positive and significant welfare impacts when most vulnerable households rely on it as an adaptation strategy to mid run climate variability and as a coping strategy to short run market shocks at the same time our results find lower but still positive impacts for well endowed households that are likely to diversify their activity portfolio given the very limited presence of policy support we conclude that the rural nigerien communities are characterized by a large and autonomous adaptation response which constitutes a key leverage mechanism for policy makers we thus suggest government interventions aimed at supporting the most important diversification drivers but also aimed at straightening some channels such as network infrastructures or the promotion of local crop varieties which may have a greater potential in triggering diversification

the dynamics of livelihood diversification in post famine ethiopia abstract based on data for almost 300 households this paper explores associations among income diversification household perceptions of livelihood risks and changes in consumption outcomes across two points in time in post famine ethiopia four key questions are addressed i to what extent did households emerging from the famine period with relatively higher income and calorie consumption levels also have a more diversified income base ii was higher income diversification in 1989 associated with higher income and consumption levels by 1994 iii which households increased their share of income from non cropping activities most during the inter survey years and iv did household heads perceive a lack of non farm income activities to be an important risk factor in famine vulnerability we find that wealthier households tended to have more diversified income streams those initially more diversified subsequently experienced a relatively greater increase in both income and calorie intake households with a greater concentration of assets were more likely to fall in their relative outcome ranking as were female headed households and initially less diversified households subsequently realized greater gains in income diversification we also find suggestive evidence that personal perceptions of risk factors guided subsequent diversification decisions

effort and comparison income experimental and survey evidence the authors test the hypothesis that individual effort on the job depends both on one s own income and on the individual s position in the relevant income distribution combining experimental evidence from a gift exchange game with multi country issp survey data they analyze the extent to which relative income affects an individual s effort finding that an individual s rank in the income distribution more strongly determines effort than does others average income which suggests that comparisons are more ordinal than cardinal their experiment also reveals that comparisons over time affect effort individuals who received higher income offers or enjoyed higher income rank in the past exerted lower levels of effort for a given current income and rank

risk crop choice and savings evidence from tanzania rural households engaged in agricultural activities face considerable risks in their income process these income risks are especially important if they result in consumption fluctuations this is likely if insurance and credit markets are absent one possible strategy for household is to take up low risk activities even if they imply lower returns such response cannot be viewed independently from the other options available to households to reduce consumption fluctuations this paper focuses on the importance of liquid asset formation for risk taking behaviour by households an intertemporal model of consumption under liquidity constraints is developed in which households can choose between income activities with different returns and riskiness it shows that if liquid asset holdings are large providing a buffer for consumption shortfalls then households will be more willing to take up high risk activities evidence based on survey data from shinyanga district tanzania is presented consistent with this prediction this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

impacts of prices and transactions costs on input usage in a liberalizing economy evidence from tanzanian coffee growers despite improvements in production incentives agricultural output in africa remained sluggish through the 1990s low use of purchased inputs may be part of the cause of persistently low productivity in african agriculture this article analyzes the roles of relative prices and transactions costs in explaining low use of chemical inputs among tanzanian coffee growers a sample selection model indicates that output prices exert great influence on input purchases and that both fixed and variable transactions costs affect input use decisions travel costs in input and output markets have distinct effects on input usage implying distinct avenues for interventions to promote more intensive use of agricultural inputs

the macro dimensions of food security economic growth equitable distribution and food price stability abstract rather than asking how to cope with hunger and famine the question might be how to escape their threat altogether important in this regard is recognizing that agriculture and the rural economy are greatly influenced by policies and outcomes in the rest of the economy strategies include economic growth with unchanging income distribution and growth with redistribution the latter encourages balanced growth to create non farm employment opportunities while investing in rural infrastructure

income smoothing and consumption smoothing one way that risk averse households protect consumption levels is to borrow and use insurance mechanisms another way common in low income economies is to diversify economic activities and make conservative production and employment choices households thus tend toward limiting exposure only to shocks that can be handled with available credit and insurance typically both types of mechanisms are studied independently but much more can be learned by studying them together first we obtain a more complete picture of risks costs and insurance possibilities second it opens the way to considering biases in standard tests of credit and insurance

crop biodiversity risk management and the implications of agricultural assistance this paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of the impact of financial assistance to farms on crop biodiversity in an uncertain setting the findings reveal that risk aversion is an important driving force for crop biodiversity conservation risk averse farmers can hedge against the uncertainty they face by allocating land to different crop species however policies intended to stabilize revenues by supporting particular species may alter this link by delinking crop biodiversity from the management of revenues risk

did residential electricity rates fall after retail competition a dynamic panel analysis abstract a key selling point for the restructuring of electricity markets was the promise of lower prices there is not much consensus in earlier studies on the effects of electricity deregulation in the u s particularly for residential customers part of the reason for not finding a consistent link with deregulation and lower prices was that the removal of transitional price caps led to higher prices in addition the timing of the removal of price caps coincided with rising fuel prices which were passed on to consumers in a competitive market using a dynamic panel model we analyze the effect of participation rates fuel costs market size a rate cap and switch to competition for 16 states and the district of columbia we find that an increase in participation rates price controls a larger market and high shares of hydro in electricity generation lower retail prices while increases in natural gas and coal prices increase rates we also find that retail competition makes the market more efficient by lowering the markup of retail prices over wholesale costs the effects of a competitive retail electricity market are mixed across states but generally appear to lower prices in states with high participation rates

peasant household behaviour with missing markets some paradoxes explained a model of peasant household behavior under varying degrees of household specific food and labor market failures is constructed to show that these structural features can explain several well known patterns of peasant response which have often been attributed to peculiar motives presumed specific to peasants the model explains sluggish response to cash crops prices and high instability in perceived food and labor scarcities the key role of manufactured consumer goods prices in stimulating peasants effort in cash crops production the effectiveness of taxation as opposed to incentives in stimulating cash crops production and the key role of technological change in food production to enhance cash crop production results are obtained analytically in the case of one market failure and by numerical simulation with more than one

gender and education impacts on employment and earnings in west africa evidence from guinea this study examines the determinants of labor force participation for men and women in guinea for three sectors and for earnings employment includes self employment private wage employment and public wage employment data were obtained from a survey of 1725 households in the capital city of conakry in 1990 labor force participation lfp was 40 for women aged 15 65 years and almost 100 for men aged 30 50 years men were engaged almost equally in all three sectors while women were mostly engaged in self employment self employed women tended to come from low income households all public sector employees were well educated about 10 12 years average levels of education among the self employed were very low 2 3 years in the private wage sector men averaged 5 years and women averaged 9 years of schooling 47 of men and 59 of women in the public sector were in professional or managerial jobs in the private sector over 50 of women were in professional managerial or clerical jobs compared to only 16 of men few women in the private sector were engaged in skilled trades or unskilled work most self employed women and only 50 of men tended to work in retail trade migration during the past 5 years was positively associated with mens entry in self employment and the private sector and negatively associated with their public sector employment determinants of womens self employment included residence near commercial areas of the center city electricity in the house and work activity during the rainy season of april september fulani and malinke women were less likely to be self employed for women the benefits of education and experience declined after a certain level returns to schooling were high for both genders men earned more than women there is a need to increase educational and employment opportunities for women

can modern input use be promoted without subsidies an analysis of fertilizer in ethiopia fertilizer use in ethiopia has nearly quintupled since official elimination of direct input subsidies in the early 1990s during this time policies changed from liberalization with both private and public sector participation to a government monopoly over imports along with exclusive marketing through farmers cooperatives this article presents estimates of detail costs and margins in the value chain econometrically derived profitability and yield responses as well as costs of the government s fertilizer promotion policies results suggest that a irrespective of the methods of calculation fertilizer use in major cereal is profitable b while there is no official subsidy program fertilizer promotion has involved large fiscal costs estimated at us 40 million per year since 2008 and c there has been a mismatch between government s policy targets and the effective fertilizer demand resulting in large carryover stock with estimated implicit costs of us 30 million per year during 2008 2011 areas of policy attention value chain improvements and ongoing efforts to improve for fertilizer use and profitability are discussed

on crop biodiversity risk exposure and food security in the highlands of ethiopia this paper investigates the effects of crop genetic diversity on farm productivity and production risk in the highlands of ethiopia using a moment based approach the analysis uses a stochastic production function capturing mean variance and skewness effects welfare implications of diversity are evaluated using a certainty equivalent measured as expected income minus a risk premium reflecting the cost of risk we find that the effect of diversity on skewness dominates its effect on variance meaning that diversity reduces the cost of risk the analysis also shows that the beneficial effects of diversity

conceptualizing interventions to support on farm genetic resource conservation abstract interest is increasing worldwide in on farm conservation as a component of a strategy to conserve crop genetic resources this may require outside support to small scale farmers in areas of crop diversity this paper argues that crop diversity maintained by farming households results from the interplay between a demand and a supply for this diversity interventions to support on farm conservation can be conceptualized by the way they influence these two factors demand interventions should increase the value of crop diversity for farmers or decrease the farm level opportunity costs of maintaining it while supply interventions should decrease the costs of accessing diversity

economic development and the impacts of natural disasters abstract we use disaster impact data over time to examine the degree to which the human and economic losses from natural disasters are reduced as economies develop we find that countries with higher income higher educational attainment greater openness more complete financial systems and smaller government experience fewer losses

selling labor low wage responses to productivity shocks in developing countries productivity risk is pervasive in underdeveloped countries this paper highlights a way in which underdevelopment exacerbates productivity risk productivity shocks cause larger changes in the wage when workers are poorer less able to migrate and more credit constrained because of such workers inelastic labor supply this equilibrium wage effect hurts workers in contrast it acts as insurance for landowners agricultural wage data for 257 districts in india for 1956 87 are used to test the predictions with rainfall as an instrument for agricultural productivity in districts with fewer banks or higher migration costs the wage is much more responsive to fluctuations in productivity

the significance of diversification for rural livelihood systems abstract there is an increasing awareness that diversification plays a strategic role in rural livelihood systems the principal question to be addressed in this paper pertains to the conditions and the ways in which rural households diversify their livelihood activities and strategies to answer this question empirical evidence will be reviewed specific attention will be paid to perspectives that may shed new light on the issue of rural livelihood diversification a gender perspective a temporal perspective and the hiv aids lens in the paper the livelihood system is seen as an open system interfacing with other systems and using various resources and assets to produce livelihood with the household as the locus of livelihood generation diversification is defined as the process by which households construct increasingly diverse livelihood portfolios making use of increasingly diverse combinations of resources and assets

non farm income gender and inequality evidence from rural ghana and uganda abstract this paper examines how the distribution of earnings in rural ghana and uganda differs by income type and by gender we find that non farm earnings contribute to rising inequality but that lower income groups also benefit due to strong overall growth in non farm earnings the inequality inducing effect is driven by self employment income wage income on the other hand reduces inequality the tendency of non farm income to contribute to inequality is greater among female headed households for whom self employment is important and non farm opportunities more constrained determinants of non farm income are estimated and appear to be strongly related to location education age and distance to market estimates of the linkages to agriculture in ghana are weaker than expected showing the non farm sector to be functioning more as an alternative activity to agriculture than as a complement

microcredit social capital and common pool resources abstract the paper presents a conceptual scheme for understanding the impact of microcredit small loans to poor borrowers on common pool resources impacts on common pool resources are posited to occur through changes in household production and consumption the focus on women and the social capital created from group training decision making and risk bearing with the group lending techniques characteristic of many microcredit programs enhanced human and social capital can improve environmental outcomes a nonrandom survey of microfinance organizations suggests increased environmental awareness and potential cpr stewardship through microcredit but empirical research is needed to demonstrate actual impacts

does adaptation to climate change provide food security a micro perspective from ethiopia we examine the driving forces behind farmers decisions to adapt to climate change and the impact of adaptation on farmers food production we investigate whether there are differences in the food production functions of farm households that adapted and those that did not adapt we estimate a simultaneous equations model with endogenous switching to account for the heterogeneity in the decision to adapt or not and for unobservable characteristics of farmers and their farm we compare the expected food production under the actual and counterfactual cases that the farm household adapted or not to climate change we find that the group of farm households that adapted has systematically different characteristics than the group of farm households that did not adapt the relationship between production and average temperature is inverted u shaped for farm households that adapted while it is u shaped for farm households that did not adapt and vice versa in the case of precipitation we find that adaptation increases food production however the impact of adaptation on food production is smaller for the farm households that actually did adapt than for the farm households that did not adapt in the counterfactual case that they adapted

cropland allocation effects of agricultural input subsidies in malawi summary we measure the impacts of malawi s farm input subsidy program on the cropland allocation decisions of farmers in kasungu and machinga districts in central and southern malawi using a two step regression strategy to control for endogenous selection into the program we find positive correlations between participation in the program and the amount of land planted with maize and tobacco furthermore results suggest that participating households simplified crop production by allocating less land to other crops e g groundnuts soybeans and dry beans our findings have implications for policies aimed at promoting both food self sufficiency and crop diversification in low income settings 2011 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

missing women and the price of tea in china the effect of sex specific earnings on sex imbalance economists have long argued that the sex imbalance in developing countries is caused by underlying economic conditions this paper uses exogenous increases in sex specific agricultural income caused by post mao reforms in china to estimate the effects of total income and sex specific income on sex differential survival of children increasing female income holding male income constant improves survival rates for girls whereas increasing male income holding female income constant worsens survival rates for girls increasing female income increases educational attainment of all children whereas increasing male income decreases educational attainment for girls and has no effect on boys educational attainment