women leaders and social performance evidence from financial cooperatives in senegal how do women leaders such as board members and top managers influence the social performance of organizations this paper addresses the question by exploiting a unique database from a senegalese network of 36 financial cooperatives we scrutinize the loan granting decisions made jointly by the locally elected board and the top manager assigned by the central union of the network our findings are threefold first female dominated boards favor social orientation second female managers tend to align their strategy with local boards preferences third the central union tends to assign male managers to female dominated boards probably to curb the boards social orientation

does household composition matter the impact of the grain for green program on rural livelihoods in china article i nfo this research introduces family composition into the sustainable livelihoods framework for policy analysis we apply this approach to a case study on the grain for green program in western china using recent survey data from zhouzhi county we show that the impact of the policy on rural livelihoods varies across household compositions the environmental program neither targets asset poor households nor does it necessarily shift the on farm labor to non farm sectors which would improve household incomes after controlling for the effect of assets households with children but without the elderly tend to have lower migration rates and lower incomes after participation in the program policy strategies should consider household heterogeneity particularly household composition in rural china

discrimination against women in formal credit markets reality or rhetoric abstract microenterprises receive several forms of aid but many still report limited access to formal finance it is often argued that women entrepreneurs face discrimination in formal credit markets in this study of ecuadorian microenterprises the results of a multinomial logit model show that although a smaller number of women than men entrepreneurs applied for loans a larger percentage of women than men typically apply for loans the equally small probabilities of both male and female entrepreneurs being quantity rationed for loans implies that this form of credit rationing is not widely practiced in special microenterprise programs in ecuador

tenure land rights and farmer investment incentives in china the goal of this paper is to understand the nature of the property rights associated with china s land tenure systems and to study the impact of these property rights on agricultural production efficiency the results show that land tenure and associated property rights in rural china affect the production behavior of farmers the most robust finding is that the right to use land for long periods of time encourages the use of land saving investments while the results show that land tenure affects agricultural production decisions the difference between collective and private plots however is small compared to the private plotcommunal productivity gap that existed in the pre reform period 1998 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

women s access to credit does it matter for household efficiency studies that assess the impact of credit constraints on farm households efficiency have largely used the household as the unit of analysis this can be problematic when there are gender based market imperfections and asymmetries in how rights resources and responsibilities are distributed within the household constraints on women matter in addition to the efficiency loss associated with the husbands credit constraints when women are unable to meet their needs for capital their households experienced an additional 11 drop in efficiency this suggests that there are efficiency based arguments for enhancing women s access to capital and that studies based only on the household s head may significantly underestimate the true economic impact of credit constraints copyright 2008 oxford university press

domestic violence a nonrandom affair in this paper we develop and estimate a model of domestic violence we extend a noncooperative model of the family to include violence as a source of gratification and an instrument for controlling behavior we estimate the model by robust methods since the violence process appears to have a heavy tailed nonnormal error distribution we find that the properties of the equilibria depend on family income for low middle income families our results indicate an equilibrium in which one person s reservation utility constraint is binding whereas for higher income families both individuals may gain from the relationship

the effect of the sloping land conversion programme on farm household productivity in rural china abstractthe objective of this paper is to examine the treatment effect on farm household productivity induced by the sloping land conversion program using large balanced household level data from five provinces during 1996 2010 this study shows that the slcp significantly improved the productivity of participants during the first round of funding of the programme until 2008 while the effects decreased gradually in the second round with most years not showing significant differences moreover it is found that there are heterogeneous effects on farm household productivity between the south and north as well as between poor and rich regions

an empirical investigation of rationing constraints in rural credit markets in india abstract the literature on rural credit markets has generally assumed that households are rationed in their access to subsidized formal credit the validity of this assumption depends on the level of effective demand for formal credit in turn a function of the demand for credit and its availability from informal sources this paper estimates the demand and the sector specific costs of credit and hence the extent of formal sector rationing through an analysis of household participation in both the formal and the informal credit sectors the results show that the extent of rationing is considerably less than what is conventionally assumed

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

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

remittances and inequality in this paper the authors propose a framework and develop techniques for analyzing the impact of migrant remittances on the distribution of rural income by size and subsequently its impact on rural welfare household data are used to assign numerical coefficients to the impact of net remittances from both internal and international migrants on income inequality in 2 mexican villages the impact of migrant remittances on the distribution of rural income by size depends critically on the degree to which migration opportunities become diffused through the village population on the returns to human capital embodied in remittances and on the distribution of potentially remittance enhancing skills and education across village households our empirical findings demonstrate that in a village where many households contain internal migrants but few have experience migrating to the u s remittances from mexico to us migrants have an unequalizing impact on village incomes while remittances from internal migrants have a favorable effect on the village income distribution by contrast in a village with a long historyh of sending migrants to the us and hence a more ready access to us labor markets us to mexico remittances have an equalizing impact on incomes remittances from internal migrants in this village however embody a large human capital component and are highly correlated with household income hence internal migrant remittances account for a comparatively large share of inequalities in the 2nd village the overall effect of remittances on income inequality is favorable in both villages migration type migration stage and interaction terms all appear to play a role in this context the effects of small changes in remittances upon income inequality and rural welfare in the 2 villages are explored and some implications for migration and rural development policy are considered authors modified

gender disparity in access to information do spouses share what they know summary the united nations un has declared lack of access to information to be the third major challenge confronting women in developing countries after poverty and violence analyzing a unique dataset of husbands and wives in rural paraguay we identify systematic differences between women and men s knowledge of financial markets and find that the factors that help predict individuals knowledge of these markets vary by gender specifically women are less likely than men to be informed about the financial institutions operating in their communities women are more likely to know what is required to obtain loans from financial institutions if they are more educated live with other adult women belong to wealthier households are in a stronger bargaining position vis a vis their spouses or have their husbands approval to take out entrepreneurial loans

credit constraints credit unions and small scale producers in guatemala abstract efficient and equitable development outcomes may depend in part on whether formal financial institutions leave low wealth producers tightly constrained in their access to credit if so can cooperative institutions efficiently relax these constraints these issues are explored using survey data gathered from 950 small scale producer households in areas of guatemala with market oriented credit unions that mobilize savings and make unsubsidized loans nonprice rationing by banks is found to be common among lower wealth households while credit unions relax credit constraints for a significant portion of those rationed by banks but not the poorest of the study households

haddad lawrence john hoddinott and harold alderman eds intrahousehold resource allocation in developing countries models methods and policy baltimore md johns hopkins university press 1997 384 pp 55 00 in this volume economists demographers sociologists and anthropologists collaborate in the study of how resources are allocated within households in developing countries and why it matters from a policy perspective surveying a broad range of theory and evidence the contributors examine the many social and cultural factors that influence decisions about the family and household level about the allocation of time income assets and other resources ths contributors show that a more complete understanding of intrahousehold behaviour can increase the likelihood that policies will reach the people they are intended to affect

an analysis of offer functions of banks and credit unions in guatemala economists have sought to identify institutions which might fill the gap in household access to credit arising from rationing by formal lenders credit unions have been identified as institutions which might use informational and monitoring advantages to fill that gap using information on household perceptions of their access to credit this article analyses the impact of certain credit unions on the access to credit of households in guatemala regression results indicate that credit unions serve markets unserved by formal lenders and that information on household perceptions of their access to credit is important in making inferences about lender lending activities

what constrains financial inclusion for women evidence from indian micro data summary the role and relevance of gender in financial inclusion has been an evolving area of research in recent times although there are several cross country studies on this aspect few within country studies have addressed this issue in a comprehensive manner in this context exploiting disaggregated household level data for india we analyze the interface between gender and finance more specifically we examine whether gender matters for financial inclusion and if so what are the possible factors that influence this relationship our findings suggest significant disparity in both the access to as well as the use of finance by gender on average female headed households are 8 less likely to access formal finance and 6 more likely to access informal finance as compared to households that are headed by males after taking into account other relevant household and state level characteristics that are important in explaining financial access by households similar evidence carries over to the use of finance households headed by female use 20 less cash loans as compared to male headed households subsequently we investigate the possible channels which impede financial inclusion for female headed households our analysis highlights that for female headed households education and wages are more relevant in explaining the access to finance whereas political and social factors are much more germane in explaining the use of finance

who is credit constrained in the u s economy an important assumption of the life cycle model of consumption is the postulate of perfect capital markets this hypothesis has recently been challenged by substantial empirical evidence hall and mishkin 1982 using the panel study of income dynamics estimate that 20 percent of united states families are liquidity constrained mariger 1986 derives a life cycle model with endogenous liquidity constraints and using a cross section estimates this fraction to be 19 4 percent hubbard and judd 1986 simulate a model with a constraint on net worth which shows that with reasonable assumptions about preferences 19 0 percent of united states consumers are liquidity constrained the emerging consensus points therefore to a fraction of approximately 20 percent of the population behaving in a manner that is inconsistent with the pure life cycle model in addition hayashi 1985 and zeldes 1989 investigate the correlation among consumption wealth and income for various population groups and infer that liquidity constraints are more important for younger families with low levels of wealth and saving the main limitation of these studies is that in their data sets constrained consumers are not observable and have to be identified via indirect evidence thus there is as yet little firm evidence about the characteristics of the consumers who are likely to be credit constrained this paper adopts an approach that differs from previous tests for liquidity constraints because it makes use of data where constrained consumers are observable and explicitly links their existence to credit market imperfections and personal characteristics the data drawn from the 1983 survey of consumer finances scf and described in section ii provide information on individuals whose request for credit has been rejected by financial intermediaries in section iii a model is developed in which consumers and lenders behavior jointly determines the probability that a consumer is rationed in the credit market this probability is then

conservation payments liquidity constraints and off farm labor impact of the grain for green program on rural households in china this study evaluates the labor response of rural households participating in the grain for green program in china the largest payments for ecosystem services program in the developing world using a panel data set that we designed and implemented we find that the participating households are increasingly shifting their labor endowment from on farm work to the off farm labor market however the effects vary depending on the initial level of human and physical capital the results support the view that one reason why the participants are more likely to find off farm employment is because the program is relaxing households liquidity constraints

empirical measurement of credit rationing in agriculture a methodological survey empirical analysis of rural credit market failure has been of key scientific and political interest in recent years the aim of this article is to give an overview of the various methods for measuring credit rationing that are employed in the literature furthermore the methods are subjected to a comparative evaluation of their specific strengths or shortcomings six approaches are distinguished measurement of loan transaction costs analysis of qualitative information collected in interviews analysis of quantitative information collected in interviews using the credit limit concept analysis of spill over effects with regard to secondary credit sources econometric household modeling and the econometric analysis of dynamic investment decisions an explicit comparison with a first best solution is impossible in the first three approaches since they essentially rely on a subjective assessment of borrowers access to credit based on qualitative or quantitative indicators the fifth and sixth approaches allow a rigorous interpretation in the framework of neoclassical equilibrium theory the fourth approach takes an intermediate position since spill over on segmented loan markets reveals a willingness to pay with regard to the supposedly less expensive but rationed primary source the approaches are fairly data demanding in general usually requiring specific data on loan transactions even so most approaches are applicable to cross sectional household data with the exception of the first all methods surveyed might plausibly be used to empirically detect credit rationing

on the malthusian theory of long swings in the essay on population economic growth consists of alternating surges of population during which real wages fall and the rate of profit rises and capital during which the reverse occurs a series of temporary equilibria exists at which wages are maximal the rate of profit minimal and fully employed work force in technically determined relation to fixed capital stock between these equilibria occur episodes of excess labour below maximum wages above minimum profit rate and capital accumulation malthus s ratios presuppose a logarithmic production function that implies first that the full employment real wage will fall to subsistence secondly that the full employment wages fund is constant summary in fre

links between rural poverty and the environment in developing countries asset categories and investment poverty abstract this paper presents a framework for analyzing the links between poverty and the environment in rural areas of developing countries it introduces the concept of investment poverty and relates it to other measures of poverty in analysis of these links the notion of poverty is examined in the context of categories of assets and categories of environment change with particular focus on farm household income generation and investment strategies as determinants of the links the strength and direction of the poverty environment links are shown to differ even invert depending on the composition of the assets held by the rural poor and the types of environmental problems they face policy strategies need to focus on conditioning variables that affect market development community wealth infrastructure household asset distribution and the affordability and appropriateness of natural resource conservation technologies

payments for environmental services in costa rica costa rica pioneered the use of the payments for environmental services pes approach in developing countries by establishing a formal country wide program of payments the psa program the psa program has worked hard to develop mechanisms to charge the users of environmental services for the services they receive it has made substantial progress in charging water users and more limited progress in charging biodiversity and carbon sequestration users because of the way it makes payments to service providers using approaches largely inherited from earlier programs however the psa program has considerable room for improvement in the efficiency with which it generates environmental services with experience many of these weaknesses are being gradually corrected as the psa program evolves towards a much more targeted and differentiated program an important lesson is the need to be flexible and to adapt to lessons learned and to changing circumstances

rural women s access to credit market imperfections and intrahousehold dynamics summary credit rationing studies carried out at the household level and based on responses from male heads of households present an incomplete and biased assessment of who is likely to be constrained why they are constrained and what is the extent of the constraints they ignore possibly conflictive intrahousehold dynamics and assume that imperfections in rural financial markets are gender neutral this paper addresses both issues theoretically and empirically the semi cooperative household model developed for this analysis formalizes the conditions under which spouses and particularly women s individual access to credit can be affected by their own position in the financial market as well as by intrahousehold dynamics these notions are then explored empirically using husbands and wives individual perceptions of their access to credit in rural paraguay the most significant empirical findings of the paper are that i compared to men women are more likely to be credit constrained ii women s rationing status responds to a different set of factors than men s and iii husbands may choose not to intermediate capital to their wives even when they are able to do so results from this exercise provide empirically sound support for the assumptions underlying women targeted credit programs

malthus on long swings the general case 3 major assumptions provided the basis to malthus theory of population food is necessary to human existence passion between man and woman is necessary and will continue nearly in its present state and the power of population is indefinitely greater than the earths power to produce subsistence for humans with this as his base malthus proposed the thesis that strong and constant forces need to hold the superior power of population over subsistence in check the forces include both positive checks e g infant mortality and preventive checks e g foregoing early marriage malthus evidently had a theory of long swings in mind because he began his essay questioning whether humankind will experience unlimited improvement or a state oscillating between happiness and misery waterman 1987 offers a new interpretation of malthus theory of long swings concluding that the malthusian theory of oscillations as sketched in the essay on population may justly be represented by a zig zag path of real wages 2 questions arise does the text literally mean what waterman suggests and is the text consistent with malthus general position the quotation offered by wasserman focuses on a special case that illustrates how oscillations might take place but fails to represent malthus general position in any society the populations response to wages determines the level of subsistence due to the different living habits in each state the subsistence level varies from state to state and malthus devotes much of the 1st essay to discussing what determines the living habits and the subsistence level in different countries in malthus theory of long swings real wages do not follow a zig zag path this is due to the fact that neither the accumulation of capital nor the growth of population behaves as he proposes whenever the rate of profit is sufficiently attractive capital accumulates and the response of population to a change in wages depends on a complex of forces termed by malthus as positive and preventive checks generally the path of wages over time is dependent on the prevailing conditions at a particular time and place excerpt

the sloping land conversion program in china effect on the livelihood diversification of rural households summary through addressing the motivations behind rural households livelihood diversification this paper examines the effect of the sloping land conversion program slcp on livelihood diversification using a longitudinal household survey data set spanning the overall implementation of the slcp our results show that the slcp works as a valid external policy intervention to increase rural livelihood diversification in addition the findings demonstrate that the implementation of the slcp has had heterogeneous effects on livelihood diversification across different rural income groups the lower income group was more affected by the program in terms of income diversification

environmental income and rural livelihoods a global comparative analysis this paper presents results from a comparative analysis of environmental income from approximately 8000 households in 24 developing countries collected by research partners in cifor s poverty environment network pen environmental income accounts for 28 of total household income 77 of which comes from natural forests environmental income shares are higher for low income households but differences across income quintiles are less pronounced than previously thought the poor rely more heavily on subsistence products such as wood fuels and wild foods and on products harvested from natural areas other than forests in absolute terms environmental income is approximately five times higher in the highest income quintile compared to the two lowest quintiles

gender agricultural production and the theory of the household virtually all models of the household assume that the allocation of resources is pareto efficient within many african households agricultural production occurs on many plots controlled by different members of the household pareto efficiency implies that factors should be allocated efficiently across these plots i find in contrast that plots controlled by women are farmed much less intensively than similar plots within the household controlled by men the estimates imply that about 6 percent of output is lost because of inefficient factor allocation within the household the paper suggests a new approach to modeling intrahousehold allocation consistent with the empirical results

the relationship between credit and productivity in chinese agriculture a microeconomic model of disequilibrium credit is an important element in agricultural production systems it allows producers to satisfy the cash needs induced by the production cycle which characterizes agriculture preparation planting cultivation and harvesting of the crops are typically done over a period of several months in which very little cash revenue is earned while expenditures on materials purchased inputs and consumption must be made in cash cash income is received a short time after the harvest in the absence of credit markets farmers would have to maintain cash reserves so as to facilitate production and consumption in the next cycle the availability of credit allows both greater consumption and greater purchased input use and thus increases welfare of the farmers

the new economics of labor migration this paper reviews selected theoretical and empirical developments in the field of labor migration economics the migration behavior of individuals differs in accordance with their perceived relative deprivation those who are relatively more deprived tend to have stronger incentive to migrate than those who are relatively less deprived moreover a reference group characterized by more income inequality is likely to generate more relative deprivation highly skilled workers are also more likely to migrate migration decisions are often made jointly by the migrant and nonmigrant with a contractual arrangement regarding the sharing of costs and returns the exchange of commitments to share income provides coinsurance of particular interest are the determinants of the speed of adoption of migration as an innovation and the characteristics associated with the delay in the adoption of innovation new econometric techniques including techniques for the analysis of qualitative dependent variables techniques that correct for sample selection bias and those for the analysis of longitudinal data have substantially benefited empirical research in this area new methods that can correct for the biased estimate of the wages particular individuals would receive at 2 or more locations at the same point in time allow researchers to test locational decsion making models estimates of these structural models of labor migration support the hypothesis that individuals respond to income incentives in making the decsion to migrate further research is needed on the pazzling observation that migrant workers earn less than native born workers with similar characteristics during the 1st few years after migration but more thereafter other topics that need further research include the macroeconomic effects of migration the microeconomic and macroeconomic relationships between aging and labor migration and the migration behavior of dual earner families

direct elicitation of credit constraints conceptual and practical issues with an application to peruvian agriculture abstract this article provides a methodological bridge leading from the well developed theory of credit rationing to the less developed territory of empirically identifying credit constraints we begin by developing a simple model showing that credit constraints may take three forms quantity rationing transaction cost rationing and risk rationing each form adversely affects household resource allocation and thus should be accounted for in empirical analyses of credit market performance we outline a survey strategy to directly elicit households status as unconstrained or constrained in the credit market and if constrained to further identify which of the three nonprice rationing mechanisms is at play we discuss several practical issues that arise due to the use of a combination of factual and interpretative survey questions finally using a farm level data set from peru we illustrate how the methodology can be used to estimate the impacts of credit constraints

the canonical classical model of political economy adam smith david ricardo thomas robert malthus and john stuart mill shared in common essentially one dynamic model of equilibrium growth and distribution when the limitation of land and natural resources is added to the model of karl marx he also ends up with this same canonical classical model in its present version the model is stripped down to its minimal essentials for brevity i employ modern mathematical tools but only to characterize in modern terms the relations that were actually common to all these writers the reader should of course be warned that any simple codification of the classical economists discursive writings must be an oversimplification in some of their passages they qualify what they have written elsewhere in some they provide negations and contradictions not a few of the stereotypes about the classical writers are to paraphrase voltaire myths agreedupon by later commentators distortions that both improve and libel the originals the relevant object of study for a modern scholar is the corpus of original texts and the commentaries on them the latter not being genuinely of less interest than the former once we have succeeded in telling them apart to the fascinating question of whether classical political economy does or can be made to offer an alternative paradigm in the sense of thomas kuhn 11 1962 to modern mainstream economics the present investigation provides an instructive answer so to speak within every classical economist there is to be discerned a modern economist trying to be born a ricardo or mill did not so much replace supply and demand by quite different mechanisms but rather sought to be able to say something significant and limiting about their properties quite in the same way that we moderns endeavor to do i describe and analyze here the basic classical model in its essential form

the effects of china s sloping land conversion program on agricultural households in the late 1990s china aimed to mitigate environmental degradation from agricultural production activities by introducing the world s largest payments for environmental services pes program the sloping land conversion program slcp in order to analyze its effects on agricultural households we develop a microeconomic agricultural household model ahm which can model the production consumption and non farm labor supply decisions of agricultural households in rural china in a theoretically consistent fashion based on this theoretical model we derive an empirical specification that we use to econometrically estimate the effects of the slcp and other exogenous factors using a large longitudinal farm household survey data set we estimate the empirical model with the hausman taylor estimation method the empirical results are generally consistent with the results of our theoretical comparative static analysis e g that the slcp significantly decreases agricultural production while the slcp increases non farm labor supply and total consumption in the yellow river basin these effects could not be observed in the yangtze river basin the recent reduction of the slcp compensation payment rates has had some notable but generally small effects

the impact of group based credit programs on poor households in bangladesh does the gender of participants matter this paper estimates the impact of participation by gender in the grameen bank and two other group based micro credit programs in bangladesh on labor supply schooling household expenditure and assets the empirical method uses a quasi experimental survey design to correct for the bias from unobserved individual and village level heterogeneity we find that program credit has a larger effect on the behavior of poor households in bangladesh when women are the program participants for example annual household consumption expenditure increases 18 taka for every 100 additional taka borrowed by women from these credit programs compared with 11 taka for men

moving toward markets labor allocation in rural china abstract china s economic reforms have brought rapid growth in rural off farm employment raising questions about the assumption that rural china is labor surplus and has poorly functioning factor markets we investigate this by testing for separability between household labor demand and supply using panel data we find that separability is rejected overall indicating that factor markets remain underdeveloped nonseparability however is associated with labor surplus in some areas and labor shortage in others moreover separability holds where substantial employment opportunities exist in the wider township suggesting that such employment promotes competitive allocation within villages as well as the inter village movement of resources

the impact of coupled and decoupled government subsidies on off farm labor participation of u s farm operators with the 1996 farm act the united states introduced payments that were designed to be decoupled labor allocation choices are likely to be affected by receipt of payments and income from off farm jobs has been the major source of income for most farm households for sometime this article examines whether the 1996 change has affected the off farm labor participation of farm households we conclude that the observed increase in off farm participation of farm operators who received payments was not the result of the 1996 policy change government payments whether coupled or decoupled have a negative effect on off farm labor participation

taking stock a comparative analysis of payments for environmental services programs in developed and developing countries abstract payments for environmental services pes are an innovative approach to conservation that has been applied increasingly often in both developed and developing countries to date however few efforts have been made to systematically compare pes experiences drawing on the wealth of case studies in this special issue we synthesize the information presented according to case characteristics with respect to design costs environmental effectiveness and other outcomes pes programs often differ substantially one from the other some of the differences reflect adaptation of the basic concept to very different ecological socioeconomic or institutional conditions others reflect poor design due either to mistakes or to the need to accommodate political pressures we find significant differences between user financed pes programs in which funding comes from the users of the es being provided and government financed programs in which funding comes from a third party the user financed programs in our sample were better targeted more closely tailored to local conditions and needs had better monitoring and a greater willingness to enforce conditionality and had far fewer confounding side objectives than government financed programs we finish by outlining some perspectives on how both user and government financed pes programs could be made more effective and cost efficient

farm nonfarm linkages in rural sub saharan africa this paper is an accumulation over the past 25 years of a body of detailed work examining the structure of africa s rural nonfarm economy first it systematically reviews empirical evidence on the nature and magnitude of the african rural nonfarm economy it then explores differences across locality and size across countries and over time in an effort to assess likely patterns of growth a subsequent review of key production and consumption parameters allows an estimate of the magnitude of the agricultural growth multipliers in africa the paper concludes with a brief discussion of policies and programs that will be necessary if farm nonfarm growth linkages are to achieve their full potential

rural household income distribution and inequality in china effects of payments for ecosystem services policies and other factors in the late 1990s china initiated the conversion of croplands to forest program ccfp and the ecological welfare forest program ewfp based on the payments for ecosystem services pes principle positive socioeconomic outcomes of the programs are essential for the long term success of eco environment conservation however there is lack of understanding of their longer term over 10 years impacts on rural livelihoods in this paper we examine income distribution and inequality of rural households under ccfp and ewfp in rural anhui china after 12 years of program implementation results show that ccfp participating households have higher income inequality than non participants while the ewfp does not have an significant effect local off farm work and out migration with remittances are the two principal income sources and both add to inequality a regression based decomposition of inequality shows that the ccfp indirectly alters livelihoods by increasing out migration with remittances but it also adds to inequality from shifting livelihoods to non agricultural activities meanwhile ewfp payments positively affect agricultural incomes and contribute 16 to agricultural income inequality finally human capital natural capital and physical capital all play important roles in generating income and inequality but the factors affecting inequality from agricultural and non agricultural activities are different

are women better bankers to the poor evidence from rural microfinance institutions microfinance institutions mfis provide financial services to the poor and in many ways resemble both banks and non profit organizations many mfis target women because more women than men are poor especially in rural areas studies show that women manage money differently from men and have different leadership styles thus in credit unions and financial firms female and male managers achieve different results in microfinance gender diversity on the board of mfis is beneficial and loans authorized by female loan officers have lower default rates motivated by these findings we ask whether mfis with a female chief executive officer ceo are more efficient at serving the poor without jeopardizing financial sustainability we adapt the banking approach to managerial in efficiency to account for the outreach and sustainability goals of the mfis and evaluate whether mfis outreach efficiency differs by the gender of their respective ceos we estimate a stochastic frontier cost function using the battese coelli 1995 model and the true random effects estimators using panel data from over 250 mfis we find that mfis with female ceos have significantly higher outreach efficiency than mfis with male ceos similar results are found with a two step stochastic frontier approach overall the results suggest that promoting gender diversity at the top levels of mfi management is likely to have both social and financial benefits

separate spheres bargaining and the marriage market this paper introduces the separate spheres bargaining model a new model of distribution within marriage it differs from divorce threat bargaining models e g manser brown mcelroy horney in that the threat point is not divorce but a noncooperative equilibrium within marriage this noncooperative equilibrium reflects traditional gender roles the predictions of our model thus differ from those of divorce threat bargaining models in the separate spheres model cash transfer payments to the mother and payments to the father can but need not imply different equilibrium distributions in existing marriages in the long run the distributional effects of transfer policies may be substantially altered by changes in the marriage market equilibrium

land retirement and nonfarm labor market participation an analysis of china s sloping land conversion program summary china s sloping land conversion program pays more than 32 million households to plant trees on highly erodible cropland and has effected major land use changes farmers retire land indefinitely but receive time limited subsidies after which they in principle enter nonfarm employment we analyze annual data we collected on over 3 000 individuals and plots from 1998 2006 which contain variation in enrollment timing and alternative measures of enrollment and conclude enrollment has a small but significant and robust positive effect on nonfarm employment it arises not from alleviating constraints as recent papers have suggested but rather from simple farm to nonfarm labor substitution

microfinance and gender issues challenges and the road ahead this special collection examines the claim that microfinance promotes gender equality the focus is on three areas of the debate first the question of how successful microfinance has been in empowering women second whether and how negative gender discrimination operates within the sector third how power relations within and beyond the household shape the context and outcomes of microfinance initiatives the papers in this collection demonstrate the divergence of circumstances and emphasise the need to go beyond the past searches for a simple narrative regarding the impact of microfinance rather as the sector evolves and is incorporated into the mainstream financial system the challenge ahead for researchers is to marshal the evidence on gendered dynamics to ensure that the gains made are built on through deeper understanding of why impact outcomes and processes differ and use this to inform new initiatives to further gender equality

hicks and hollander on ricardo a mathematical note the model of ricardo s economy that john hicks and samuel hollander 1977 explored in this journal laid to rest the notion that ricardian models can be adequately constructed with the wage assumed to be at subsistence the model in that paper dealt for the most part with an economy possessed of circulating capital only 1 it examined the behavior of the wage and labor force as the economy approaches the stationary state in the course of their investigation hicks and hollander encountered the possibility that the wage and labor force might not approach stationary state levels in a smooth way but might instead oscillate the wage passing sometimes below subsistence sometimes above it the labor force increasing and decreasing such behavior which ricardo mentioned only briefly 2 they named the exception hicks and hollander 1977 p 358 when such a possibility arises it is natural enough to investigate the conditions that give rise to it hicks and hollander did so and concluded that the approach to stationary state equilibrium will be smooth provided only that the elasticity of the marginal product curve must be greater than 1 hicks and hollander 1977 p 356 this note reexamines the model formally 3 on the basis of pasinetti s 1960 article it shows that the hicks hollander condition for nonoscillatory behavior is sufficient but not necessary

rural household energy use and its determinants in china how important are influences of payment for ecosystem services vs other factors abstract fuelwood is an essential environmental good for livelihood in rural china heavy reliance on fuelwood is associated with numerous negative externalities due to decades of rapid economic growth in china we hypothesize that the increase in rural household income would reduce reliance on fuelwood using data from a survey of 481 households conducted in 2014 we examined the effects of two payments for ecosystem services programs the conversion of cropland to forest program ccfp and the ecological welfare forest program ewfp on energy use along with other factors we found that the ccfp did not significantly affect fuel choice nor the quantity of fuelwood used but households with more forestland in ewfp were less likely to adopt modern fuels and likely to use more fuelwood household per capita annual income was the main factor promoting adoption of modern fuels while household size was the most important factor determining the quantity of fuelwood used per capita overall the gradually increasing adoption of modern fuels has thus far not resulted in any significant abandonment of fuelwood fuelwood remains the dominant fuel across all income groups suggesting that households in the study area are in the early stages of the energy transition

determinants of credit rationing a study of informal lenders and formal credit groups in madagascar abstract previous research on the determinants of credit rationing focused exclusively on the behavior of formal lenders who contract directly with an individual borrower based on survey data from madagascar this paper presents an analysis of credit rationing by informal lenders and by members of community based groups that allocate formal group loans among themselves the results show that group members are able to obtain and to use locally available information about the applicant s creditworthiness in much the same way as informal lenders do both types of lenders use the applicant s debt servicing obligations and income as the main criteria for credit rationing this paper therefore empirically confirms theoretical arguments that community based groups have an information advantage over distant formal bank agents