activity choice labor allocation and forest use in malawi this article examines the determinants of activity choice affecting forest use among low income households in malawi data from three villages are used to estimate a system of household labor share equations for maize production forest employment and non forest employment a system estimation approach is used to identify factors influencing the competing and synergistic livelihood strategies which households undertake at the forest margin results from constrained maximum likelihood estimation indicate heightened incentives to degrade forests when returns to forest use are high factors reducing forest pressure include favorable returns to non forest employment secondary education of the household head and wealth

the consequences of legal minimum wages in honduras summary minimum wage policies are implemented in most developing countries so understanding their consequences is critical to determine their effectiveness this paper quantifies the labor market and poverty effects of honduran minimum wages from 2005 to 2012 using 13 household surveys as repeated cross sections i estimate the net effects of minimum wage hikes using variation from annual reforms to multiple minimum wages a 60 increase and changes in the number of minimum wage categories evidence shows that employers are partially complying with minimum wage laws and respond to hikes by increasing their level of non compliance higher minimum wages reduce covered formal employment and increase uncovered informal employment formal sector wages increase but greater labor supply in the informal sector leads to a negative net effect on wages this last result is often empirically ambiguous although consistent with the dual sector minimum wage model i find no evidence that minimum wages reduce extreme or moderate poverty

is it possible to improve environmental quality without reducing economic growth evidence from the qatar economy abstract in line with the priorities of the qatar national vision qnv 2030 and its principal pillars we examine in this paper the energy use economic growth nexus for qatar during the period 1970 2014 using recent development in both unit roots and ardl bounds testing approach with structural breaks we found strong evidence for the growth hypothesis this result indicates that the qatari policymakers should recognize that energy conservation policies will have adverse effects on economic growth and therefore alternative means must be undertaken to preserve the environment this paper presents and discusses a detailed economic energy and environmental policies that can help qatari policymakers in achieving the objective of balance between economic growth and environment quality

minimum wages for domestic workers impact evaluation of the indian experience abstract what impact does minimum wage legislation have on wages and employment opportunities in an informal sector in a developing country the paper answers this question in the context of minimum wage legislation for domestic workers in india over the period of 2004 2012 combining matching procedure with difference in difference estimation approach supported by extensive robustness checks the paper estimates both the short run and the long run impact of the legislation on real wages and employment results show a positive impact of the legislation on real wages in the shortrun while there is limited evidence of this effect persisting in the long run further the legislation did not seem to have any impact at the extensive margin on the probability of being employed as a domestic worker over short or long run our analysis further reveals that the wages of majority of workers remain below the minimum wage available evidence from the ground in line with theoretical predictions point towards weak enforcement of the legislation as the potential driving factor of observed results as india recently extended national level minimum wage for all workers the paper provides a cautionary tale on the potential pitfalls of implementation of this legislation in informal sector and suggests some ways to overcome the same

input demand under yield and revenue insurance previous studies disagree on the effects of insurance on fertilizer application rates the effect of increased fertilizer on the probability of low yields primarily determines whether fertilizer and insurance are substitutes or complements we estimate conditional distributions of corn yields to determine if the technical relationship between yields and fertilizer supports the hypothesis that insurance increases optimal application rates our results indicate no support for this hypothesis at all nitrogen fertilizer rates and reasonable levels of risk aversion nitrogen fertilizer and insurance are substitutes suggesting that those who purchase insurance are likely to decrease nitrogen fertilizer applications

poverty and environmental degradation in the nicaraguan hillsides abstract this article questions the assumption of poverty as a major cause of environmental degradation examining five environmentally harmful natural resource management practices in the nicaraguan hillsides it shows that the immediate agents of environmental degradation are the nonpoor farmers not the poorest it argues that to analyze the causal links between poverty and environment a distinction between poverty as a state of deprivation and poverty as a relational phenomenon is necessary finally the article warns that the often strategic reference to poverty as the major cause of environmental degradation made by nonpoor and poor farmers may lead to negative environmental impacts

law and employment lessons from latin america and the caribbean analyzing the effects of regulation and deregulation on latin american labor markets law and employment joins the ongoing debate about the virtues and costs of legislating mandatory benefits for workers of the numerous labor regulations that were altered or created in latin america during the last thirty years many have had unintended and far reaching results nobel prize winning economist james j heckman and carmen pages document the behavior of firms attempting to stay in business and be competitive while facing the high costs of complying with these labor laws they challenge the prevailing view that labor market regulations affect only the distribution of labor incomes and have little or no impact on efficiency or the performance of labor markets this volume shows that mandated benefits reduce employment have a disruptive impact on turnover rates and labor market flexibility promote inequality and discriminate against marginal workers along with in depth studies of colombia peru brazil argentina chile and uruguay law and employment provides comparative analysis from a range of european countries and the united states while also covering important changes in reg

natural resource management and household well being the case of posaf ii in nicaragua summary measuring the impact of natural resource programs is a key element in the formulation and implementation of policies designed to promote farm income while enhancing the quality of the surrounding environment in this paper we analyze the economic impact of natural resource technologies delivered by the socio environmental and forestry development program ii posaf ii in nicaragua we use cross sectional data for 1 483 households from 212 treated and control communities results obtained from propensity score matching psm ordinary least squares ols weighted least squares regression wls based on psm and instrumental variables iv regression indicate that posaf ii has had a positive impact on the total value of agricultural production of beneficiary farmers an internal rate of return analysis supports the hypothesis that increasing household income while encouraging the sustainable use of natural resources through the implementation of suitable management programs can be complementary development objectives

who gets what from minimum wage hikes a re estimation of card and krueger s distributional analysis in myth and measurement the new economics of the minimum wage i ve studied the arguments and the evidence for and against a minimum wage increase i believe that the weight of the evidence is that a modest increase does not cost jobs and may even lure people into the job market but the most important thing is you can t make a living on 4 25 an hour president clinton state of the union address 1995

tradeoffs in balancing multiple objectives of an integrated agricultural economic and environmental system in the past environmental concerns were mostly addressed using piecemeal evaluation that redirected the crop production and management decisions in favor of achieving a single objective such as soil conservation or a water quality goal which may worsen the desirable levels of other objectives lakshminarayan s research develops and implements a conceptual framework for integrated agricultural economic and environmental modeling using a multicriteria decision making approach grounded in multiattribute utility and social welfare theory developing a theory for the integrated modeling method and a statistically consistent approach to integrate spatial variability is what distinguishes the present work from other studies on economic environmental modeling readers will find this to be an excellent summary of impacts of alternative crop production systems on soil and water quality and crop yields the monograph includes color maps 20 00

brazilian policies that encourage deforestation in the amazon this paper shows that general tax policies special tax incentives the rules of land allocation and the agricultural credit system all accelerate deforestation in the amazon these policies increase the size of land holdings and reduce the chances of the poor to become farmers the following are the key provisions i the virtual exemption of agricultural income from income taxation makes agriculture a tax shelter ii rules of public land allocation provide incentives for deforestation because the rules used in determining the security of a claim and its land area encourage land clearing iii the progressive land tax contains provisions that encourage the conversion of forest to crop land or pasture iv the tax credit scheme aimed toward corporate livestock ranches subsidizes inefficient ranches established on cleared forest land and v subsidized credit is available for sudam approved ranches

segmentation in the brazilian labor market abstractthis article measures the degree of segmentation in the brazilian labor market controlling for observable and unobservable characteristics workers earn more in the formal sector which supports the segmentation hypothesis we break down the degree of segmentation by socioeconomic attributes to identify the groups where this phenomenon is more prevalent we also investigate the robustness of our findings to the inclusion of self employed individuals

sweatshops economic analysis and exploitation as unfairness the economic and moral defense of sweatshops given by powell and zwolinski j bus ethics 107 449 472 2012 has been criticized in two recent papers coakley and kates j bus ethics 117 553 558 2013 focus on putative weaknesses in the logic of powell s and zwolinski s argument preiss bus ethics quart 24 1 55 82 2014 argues that even granting the validity of their economic argument powell s and zwolinski s defense is without force when viewed from a kantian republican viewpoint we are concerned that sweatshop critics have misinterpreted the economic literature and overstated the conclusions that follow from their ethical premises we show that the best understanding of the current economic literature supports powell s and zwolinski s conclusions about the negative effects of sweatshop wage regulation and that it is unreasonable to reject economic analysis in moral argument against sweatshops even from a kantian perspective additionally we defend the theory of exploitation as unfairness given by wertheimer exploitation 1996 and show how economic analysis can be applied to that theory to identify cases of sweatshop exploitation

sugar prices labor income and poverty in brazil this paper assesses the impact that a potential liberalization of sugar regimes in oecd countries could have on household labor income and poverty in brazil the authors first estimate the extent of price transmission from world markets to 11 brazilian states to capture the fact that some local markets may be relatively more isolated from changes in world prices they then simultaneously estimate the impact that changes in domestic sugar prices have on regional wages and employment depending on worker characteristics finally they measure the impact on household income of a 10 percent increase in world sugar prices results suggest that workers in the sugar sector and in sugar producing regions have better employment opportunities and experience larger wage increases more interestingly households at the top of the income distribution experience larger income gains due to higher wages whereas households at the bottom of the distribution experience larger income gains due to movements out of unemployment

has the minimum wage policy been important for reducing poverty in brazil a decomposition analysis for the period from 2002 to 2013 abstract this study aims to analyze the contribution of the minimum wage valorization policy to the reduction in poverty that occurred in the first decade of the 21st century in brazil considering not only the incidence of poverty but also its intensity and severity a decomposition methodology was used to isolate the marginal contribution of the minimum wage in the observed changes taking into account the roles of setting the values of basic pension and social assistance benefits the beneficio de prestacao continuada or bpc in addition to setting the wage floor between 2002 and 2013 the minimum wage contributed to a 38 2 reduction in the proportion of impoverished people a 39 4 reduction in the intensity of poverty and 40 6 decrease in the severity of poverty our results also reveal geographic differences with the minimum wage being more important in the poorest regions

inequality as a cause of environmental degradation abstract this paper advances two hypotheses first the extent of an environmentally degrading economic activity is a function of the balance of power between the winners who derive net benefits from the activity and the losers who bear net costs second greater inequalities of power and wealth lead all else equal to more environmental degradation

minimum wage effects throughout the wage distribution this paper provides evidence on a wide set of margins along which labor markets can adjust in response to increases in the minimum wage including wages hours employment and ultimately labor income not surprisingly the evidence indicates that low wage workers are most strongly affected while higher wage workers are little affected workers who initially earn near the minimum wage experience wage gains nevertheless their hours and employment decline and the combined effect of these changes on earned income suggests adverse consequences on net for low wage workers

crop insurance acreage decisions and nonpoint source pollution the redirection of farm policy in the 1996 farm bill has generated much interest in seeking environmentally friendly and economically viable ways to protect farm income agricultural insurance has been suggested as such an instrument this article estimates the effect of crop insurance on crop mix and the resulting change in chemical use in the central nebraska basin providing corn insurance will shift land from hay and pasture to corn which will increase chemical use at the extensive margin this extensive margin effect dominates the effect of crop insurance on the application rate leading to an increase in total chemical use

heterogeneous effects of imperfectly enforced minimum wages in low wage labor markets abstract we present minimum wage effects across different enforcement regimes exploiting state time variation and policy discontinuities at contiguous districts across state borders in india we show that the effect of minimum wages on wages and employment significantly increases with an increase in enforcement in weak enforcement regimes estimated wage effects are negligible and employment effects are negative or null in stricter regimes wage effects are positive and strong and employment effects are positive or null in most specifications these results are consistent with theories on imperfect enforcement in monopsonistic labor markets and are robust to alternative definitions of enforcement and employment and employing instrumental variables for enforcement

human development means and ends from growth to basic needs sometimes the change in the fashions of thinking about development appears like a comedy of errors a lurching from one fad to another economic growth employment creation jobs and justice redistribution with growth basic needs bottom up development participatory development sustainable development market friendly development liberation liberalisation human development thus goes the carousel of the slogans but this would not be a correct record there has been an evolution in our thinking about development both internal logic and new evidence have led to the revision of our views previous and partly discarded approaches have taught us much that is still valuable and our current approach will surely be subject to criticisms a brief survey of the evolution of our thinking may be helpful the discussion started in the 1950s influenced by arthur lewis 1955 and others who emphasised economic growth as the key to poverty eradication even at this early stage sensible economists and development planners were quite clear in spite of what is now often said in caricature of past thought that economic growth is not an end in itself but a performance test of development arthur lewis defined the purpose of development as widening our range of choice exactly as the human development reports of the united nations development programme do today three justifications were given for the emphasis on growth as the principal performance test one justification assumed that through market forces such as the rising demand for labour rising productivity rising wages lower prices of the goods bought by the people economic growth would spread its benefits widely and speedily and that these benefits are best achieved through growth even in the early days some sceptics said that growth is not necessarily so benign they maintained that in certain conditions such as increasing returns restrictions to entry monopoly power unequal distribution of income and assets growth gives to those who already have it tends to concentrate income and wealth in the hands of the few this is where the second assumption came in it was that governments especially democratic ones are concerned with the fate of the poor therefore progressive taxation social services and other government interventions would

uma avaliacao dos impactos do salario minimo sobre o nivel de pobreza metropolitana no brasil this paper estimates the impact of recent minimum wage adjustments on poverty level for the six major brazilian metropolitan areas we make a decomposition of the observed variation on poverty level registered for a sample of longitudinal data based on a monthly employment survey pme ibge according to the decomposition we point the share of the observed variation on poverty level due to the wage and ocupational status variation of workers affected by the minimum legislation we break the decomposition in several steps to be able to consider several alternatives of the group of workers affected by the minimum wage legislation we have evidences of significant impacts of minimum wage on poverty level for metropolitan areas the medium elasticity for the period analyzed 1995 1998 was approximately 0 4 when this effect is incorporated which means that in the very short run poverty rises in brazilian metropolitan areas when the value of the minimum wage is increased

poverty and environmental degradation a review and analysis of the nexus abstract there is much controversy surrounding the poverty environmental degradation nexus the predominant school of thought argues that poverty is a major cause of environmental degradation and if policy makers want to address environmental issues then they must first address the poverty problem another school of thought argues that a direct link between poverty and environmental degradation is too simplistic and the nexus is governed by a complex web of factors in this paper a formal structure for analyzing the complex web of factors is formulated and used to review the existing literature on the links between poverty and the degradation of four natural resource sectors the analysis highlights the important role institutional and market failure in encouraging agents from various income groups to exhibit unsustainable activities which in turn forces some of the agents to fall into poverty another important factor is the role of conflicts between different agents income groups in the povertyenvironmental degradation nexus the analysis also highlights the presence of feedback loops between environmental degradation and poverty

does air pollution aggravate income inequality in china an empirical analysis based on the view of health abstract given the rapid development of the chinese economy especially its accelerated urbanization air pollution and income inequality as two of the most important global issues have also become hot topics in china however limited attention has been devoted to understanding their joint evolution in the literature in this study we thus investigate the relationship between them using a multi level nested data model which enables us to estimate the long run distribution effect of air pollution on individuals of different socioeconomic statuses based on china s city level pm2 5 emissions and individual level income we further examine the mechanisms behind the evolution using a 3sls model the estimation results reveal that the increase in air pollution concentration has short term positive production effects and long term negative impacts on individual income and will exacerbate the income inequality across socioeconomic statuses individuals of lower socioeconomic status have disadvantages in achieving efficient avoiding knowledge and measures the results of 3sls model confirm the existence of the health channel through which air pollution exerts influence on income inequality these results provide a roadmap for policymakers first a comprehensive assessment of the health burden distribution from air pollution on individuals of different socioeconomic statuses should be considered for environmental policymaking second the regional disparities and differences among income groups should also be considered during this process third equal access to basic public services should be the primary target of environmental regulations moreover compensation and assistance for the health issues caused by environmental pollution could be an important supplement to these regulations future study could do further analysis of the specific level of health burden due to different types of pollutants and their relationship with income inequality

the effects of the minimum wage in brazil on the distribution of family incomes 1996 2001 abstract the brazilian economy has long relied on the minimum wage having first implemented a minimum in 1940 shortly after taking office in 2003 brazil s president raised the minimum wage by 20 and promised to double the value of the minimum wage before his term ends in 2006 the usual rationale for minimum wage increases is to bring about beneficial changes in the income distribution by raising incomes of poor and low income families the goal of this paper is to evaluate the efficacy of the minimum wage in brazil in bringing about these changes in the income distribution we examine data drawn from brazil s major metropolitan areas studying the years after brazil s hyper inflation ended the estimates provide no evidence that minimum wages in brazil lift family incomes at the lower points of the income distribution if anything some of the evidence points to adverse effects on lower income families

the economic relevance of sustainable agroforestry practices an empirical analysis from tanzania abstract this paper investigates the economic relevance of sustainable behavior of agroforestry practices for smallholders using the example of firewood exploitation in rural tanzania three questions are addressed 1 to what extent do households behave sustainably regarding firewood extraction from agroforestry 2 which factors determine the likelihood of households practicing sustainable agroforestry 3 are sustainably behaving households better off in terms of income compared to households practicing unsustainable agroforestry the analysis is based on cross sectional data of 314 households a sustainability indicator shows that the share of sustainable households varies between 14 and 41 depending on the underlying wood growth rate the results of the logistic regression indicate that property rights regarding the ownership of agricultural land and environmental awareness increase the likelihood of sustainable firewood extraction empirical evidence from the quantile regression reveals that poorest households generate higher income if they extract firewood unsustainably the opposite is true for households of upper income percentiles thus the poor are likely to increase environmental degradation to generate more income causing a downward spiral of the poverty environment trap resulting in income losses in the long run households with a per capita income of 524 tzs or more manage their tree stocks sustainably

the environmental impact of poverty evidence from firewood collection in rural nepal abstract we investigate determinants of household firewood collection in rural nepal using 1995 96 and 2002 3 world bank living standards measurement survey lsms data we incorporate village fixed effects endogenous censoring measurement error in living standards and heterogeneous effects of different household assets we find no evidence in favor of the poverty environment hypothesis the evidence for the environmental kuznets curve depends on the precise measure of living standards and time period studied firewood collections fall with a transition to modern occupations and rise with increasing population and household division the local interhousehold collection externality is negligible indicating that policy interventions are justified only by ecological considerations or nonlocal spillovers

assessing the effect of payroll taxes on formal employment the case of the 2012 tax reform in colombia in 2013 colombia implemented a tax reform that reduced payroll taxes by a total of 13 5 percentage points of wages this paper evaluates the effects of this component of the 2012 colombian tax reform on firms formal employment and average wages we construct a panel of firms based on their employees administrative records to account for the endogeneity of the treatment we use an instrumental variables technique that exploits the exogenous variation from the decisions of firms that are similar to each other in several dimensions but belong to different economic sectors based on our preferred specification we estimate a positive and significant increase in formal employment as a result of the implementation of the reform of approximately 213 000 jobs in existing pre reform firms in the long run these effects will increase to more than 600 000 jobs the effect of the reform on the average wages paid by firms was also found to be positive for some sizes of firms but the overall effect in the short run is rather small

regional labour informality in colombia and a proposal for a differential minimum wage the very high level of informal labour in colombia is a symptom of the labour market is not functioning properly moreover this undesirable outcome is highly heterogeneous across the country the

the effects of minimum wages on the distribution of family incomes a nonparametric analysis an oft stated goal of the minimum wage is to raise incomes of poor or low income families we present nonparametric estimates of the effects of minimum wages on the distribution of family income relative to needs in the united states although minimum wages increase the incomes of some poor families the evidence indicates that their overall net effect is if anything to increase the proportions of families with incomes below or near the poverty line it would appear that reductions in the proportions of families that are poor or near poor should not be counted among the potential benefits of minimum wages

ceepes an evolving system for agro environmental policy over potential sources of environmental degradation see for example shortle and dunn 1986 russell and shogren 1993 although partially related to scientific advances in measurement and detection perceived risks due to chemical loading have intensified the pressure to more closely coordinate agricultural and environmental policy cohen eiden and lorber 1986 johnson wolcott and aradhyula 1990 but strategies to coordinate these policies have been impeded by a serious information gap in the explicit environmental and economic trade offs of various public and private actions although most decision makers would agree that securing this information is critical for more effective agro environmental policy the question remains as to the best course of action

towards a unified scheme for environmental and social protection learning from pes and cct experiences in developing countries environmental protection and poverty alleviation in the developing world are usually heralded as joint objectives however these two goals are often associated with different sectoral policy instruments while so called payments for environmental services pes are increasingly being promoted for environmental protection poverty alleviation is increasingly addressed by conditional cash transfers cct program these instruments although aimed to achieve distinct objectives have a number of similarities and challenges in their design and implementation phases this paper elaborates on these similarities and develops a unifying generic framework that is used to discuss the extent to which both approaches could be unified

age differentiated minimum wages in developing countries abstract the fact that minimum wages seem especially binding for young workers has led some countries to adopt age differentiated minimum wages we develop a dynamic competitive two sector labor market model where workers with heterogeneous initial skills gain productivity through experience we compare two equally binding schemes of single and age differentiated minimum wages and find that although differentiated minimum wages result in a more equal distribution of income such a scheme creates a more unequal distribution of wealth by forcing less skilled workers to remain longer in the uncovered sector we also show that relaxing minimum wage solely for young workers reduces youth unemployment but harms the less skilled ones

anticipated effects of the minimum wage on prices there is little empirical evidence on the effect of minimum wage increases on prices particularly for developing countries this paper provides estimates of this effect using monthly brazilian household and firm data over 18 years as minimum wage increases in brazil sare large and frequent they have a potentially important impact on aggregate prices rational agents in anticipation of such price effects may take minimum wage increases as a signal for future price and wage bargains we find that the minimum wage raises overall prices not only on the month of the increase but also in the two months prior to the change as well as after the change

assessing poverty deforestation links evidence from swat pakistan abstract this paper contributes to the debate on the links between poverty and forestry degradation the view that due to poverty and the meeting of subsistence needs the poor use natural resources more intensively and hence cause them to degrade using the case of the forest rich swat district pakistan the paper addresses the issue empirically historically and institutionally we do not find empirical support for the poverty environment nexus in that the poor and other income groups are equally resource dependent and also show that resource degradation is not associated with poverty our historical and institutional analyses provide alternative explanations for resource degradation selective and rotating ownership patterns starting with the 17th century provided limited incentive for resource conservation it also created tension between de jure and de facto owners that has persisted and is one source of forest degradation ill defined resource rights have also exacerbated the impacts of several other factors contributing to forest degradation which is compounded by poor management corruption and perverse incentives

minimum wages globalization and poverty in honduras summary we test whether minimum wage legislation is an effective poverty reduction tool in a poor country trying to stay competitive in the global economy in honduras increases in relatively high minimum wages lead to reductions in poverty especially extreme poverty however the impact is felt only in households with workers in large firms and felt more strongly among those with low wage workers increases in the minimum do not affect poverty in sectors where minimum wages are not enforced or do not apply hence minimum wages can be a poverty reduction tool in the formal sector which competes globally

income and the environment in rural india is there a poverty trap we study the relationships between rural income distributions and changes in environmental conditions in southern western and central india between 1994 95 and 2000 01 other than the relatively rich we find that all income strata benefit from an improved environment and intermediate expenditure households benefit more than the very poor in absolute terms higher median consumption expenditures and richness are estimated to increase environmental decline but we do not find a significant impact of income poverty on local environmental health the results do not support the poverty trap conjecture with environmental degradation driving expenditure reductions that promote offsetting aforestation which benefits the poor

integration of environmental concerns into agricultural policies of industrial and developing countries abstract the question which this paper addresses concerns the types of environmental and resource related agricultural policy adjustments that could properly address the costs of resource degradation and increase long term prospects for sustainable development various public policy approaches e g polluter pays principle fiscal measures regulations etc are discussed and analyzed with regard to their environmental and resource impacts the paper provides illustrative experiences from industrial and developing nations and where possible lessons and insights of relevance to policy making in developing countries are sought

african evidence on the relation of poverty time preference and the environment abstract it is typically argued in the economics literature that the poor operate with a higher rate of time preference than their wealthier counterparts the poor it is suggested have a higher rate of time preference because they are more concerned about present survival than they are about saving for the future such thinking is also central to the economic growth for environmental conservation and the poverty induced environmental degradation arguments according to these assertions wealth allows people to consider the future and invest in environmental conservation and poverty leaves people with no alternative but to exploit the environment so that they may feed their families today evidence from the food security and famine early warning fields suggests that households in many african contexts behave quite to the contrary during periods of food shortage poor households will often undertake extreme measures in the present including depriving the family of needed calories in order to preserve productive capital for the future such as a plough oxen or seed stock this evidence suggests that poor african households may in fact have very low rates of time preference this calls into question our general assumptions about discount rates for developing countries for which rates of time preference are a theoretical determinant

explaining how preferences change across joint versus separate evaluation abstract this paper examines how preferences for outcomes change across joint versus separate evaluation of alternatives in joint evaluation two or more options are presented and evaluated simultaneously in separate evaluation each option is presented and evaluated separately we review a growing body of evidence demonstrating this type of preference shift and discuss how it is different from existing biases and preference reversals documented in the literature we then review and integrate three competing explanations for this type of preferential inconsistency

tracing the impact of large minimum wage changes on household welfare in indonesia abstract minimum wage legislation has been introduced and expanded in many developed and developing countries in the hope that it would improve the living standards of the poor and reduce inequality this study examines the impact of large minimum wage changes in indonesia the results indicate serious limitations of the minimum wage for improving living standards and reducing inequality

estimating the impact of minimum wages on employment wages and non wage benefits the case of agriculture in south africa assessments of the impact of minimum wages on labor market outcomes in africa are relatively rare in part this is because the available data do not permit adequate treatment of econometric issues that arise in such assessments this paper however attempts to estimate the impact of introducing a minimum wage law in the agriculture sector in south africa based on 15 waves of the biannual labor force survey conducted between september 2000 and september 2007 the chosen sample includes six waves before the legislation s effective date march 2003 and nine afterwards to assess whether the changes experienced by farm workers are unique we identify a control group that has similar characteristics to the treatment group our econometric approach involves using two alternative specifications of a difference in differences model we test whether employers reduced employment and whether they responded at the intensive margin by reducing hours of work the results suggest a significant employment reduction in agriculture from the minimum wage and particularly a noticeable move away from employment of part time workers an increase in wages on average and a rise in non wage benefits compliance our analysis also indicates that firstly overall average of hours worked fell in the post law period suggesting that employers adjusted to some extent on the intensive margin secondly it appears that hours of work increased more in areas where wages were lower in the pre law period driven largely by the fall in part time employment

traps and sustainable development in rural areas a review summary the concept of a poverty trap commonly understood as a self reinforcing situation beneath an asset threshold has been very influential in describing the persistence of poverty and the relationship between poverty and sustainability although traps and the dynamics that lead to traps are defined and used differently in different disciplines the concept of a poverty trap has been most powerfully shaped by work in development economics this perspective is often constraining because as many studies show poverty arises from complex interactions between social and environmental factors that are rarely considered in development economics a more integrated understanding of poverty traps can help to understand the interrelations between persistent poverty and key social and ecological factors facilitating more effective development interventions the aim of this paper is to provide a critical appraisal of existing trap conceptualizations in different disciplines and to assess the characteristics and mechanisms that are used to explain poverty traps in rural contexts thereby broadening the traps concept to better account for social ecological interactions complementarities and tensions among different disciplinary perspectives on traps are identified and our results demonstrate that different definitions of traps share a set of common characteristics persistence undesirability and self reinforcement yet these minimum conditions are not sufficient to understand how trap dynamics arise from complex social ecological interactions to broaden the utility of the concept we propose a more social ecologically integrated definition of traps that includes four additional considerations cross scale interactions path dependencies the role of external drivers and social ecological diversity including these wider dimensions of trap dynamics would help to better account for the diverse social ecological feedbacks that produce and maintain poverty traps and could strengthen strategies to alleviate poverty in a more integrated way

minimum wage impacts on wages and hours worked of low income workers in ecuador abstract minimum wage policy aims to raise the real income of low wage workers low wage individuals may be adversely affected by minimum wages however although the empirical evidence on this point is not without controversy we analyzed the effects of the january 2012 increase in monthly minimum wages on the wages and hours worked of low wage workers in ecuador individuals could have chosen to enter occupations covered by minimum wage legislation or those that were not we applied a difference in differences estimation to account for potential self selection bias we also relied on exogenous variations in minimum wages by sector industry and occupation we constructed individual panel data from a household panel and performed estimates that also accounted for potential sample selection bias the results suggest a significant and positive effect on the wages of treated workers increasing them by 0 41 0 48 for each 1 increase in minimum wages relative to the earnings of control workers our results also suggest that effects varied by type of worker i women workers received lower wage increases and their hours worked were significantly and negatively affected both of which may suggest a failure of the minimum wage to reduce the gender wage gap at the bottom of the distribution and ii the hours worked by young workers were significantly and positively affected a result that is in agreement with results found elsewhere in the literature these results persisted after applying robustness checks to account for different control groups full vs part time jobs separate regressions for heterogeneous groups and tests for potential attrition and sample selection bias the range of effects observed across disparate groups of workers suggests areas in which policy change could be useful the income compression effect we found suggests that further studies should address the effects of minimum wage on the drop in income inequality observed in the data

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

interactions between agricultural and environmental policies a conceptual framework agricultural policy has a well documented impact on farmers production decisions and those decisions land water and agricultural chemical use may in turn affect the environment there is a public perception that existing agricultural policies are linked to agricultural pollution as exemplified by the conclusions of the recent national research council report alternative agriculture 1989 there is only limited theoretical or empirical research addressing these linkages however this paper develops a conceptual framework that can be used to analyze the interactions between agricultural and environmental policies and pollution this framework integrates physical and economic models at a disaggregate level necessary to capture the heterogeneity of the physical environment and the economic behavior of farmers following e hochman and d zilberman 1978 the disaggregate units can be statistically aggregated to a level useful for policy analysis agricultural and environmental policies can be categorized according to their effects on the intensive and extensive margins combining the different policy instruments with the microeconomic heterogeneity we find that existing agricultural and environmental policies can have either positive or negative effects of nonpoint source pollution to infer an aggregate effect requires data that do not currently exist our framework provides a basis for empirical investigations of these effects given adequate data moreover we find that agricultural policy instruments can be used to mitigate pollution if used appropriately