how do payments for environmental services affect land tenure theory and evidence from china we gratefully acknowledge the financial support from renmin university for the research on land market development in the forest tenure reform project no 11xnc002 the british academy reference sg121920 the cambridge humanities research grants scheme and the economy and environment program for southeast asia reference pco13 0308 009

are future taxes discounted in this paper i examine empirically the question of whether or not the public recognizes the future taxes implied by current deficitfinanced expenditures as discussed by barro 1 it seems that such recognition does not occur but that by a new hypothesis presented here the aggregate economy behaves much as if it did this alternative hypothesis relies on the widely accepted efficient markets and permanent income hypotheses and it requires considerably less sophistication and information on the part of the average economic agent than does barro s hypothesis

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

the market value of outstanding government debt 1919 1975 abstract several new series on the market value of outstanding government debt are reported and their methods of construction described the new series on federal debt are compared with other existing estimates and are shown to be markedly superior to them

the economic effects of land registration on smallholder farms in kenya evidence from nyeri and kakamega districts effects of land registration and title on security of tenure use of formal credit crop yields and land concentration are analyzed from household and plot data in four kenyan sites results indicate that the registration and titling program had a weak impact on perceived land rights of farmers credit use and terms crop yields or concentration of land holdings the conclusion is that titles are acquired for enhancing security of rights rather than for increasing agricultural production scarce government resources are best targeted towards providing better infrastructure and market opportunities which should also foster a greater demand for titling

agricultural dis incentives and food security is there a link using the world bank database distortions to agricultural incentives this paper analyzes the impact that agricultural dis incentives have on food security for a wide sample of countries over the 1990 2010 period we adopt a continuous treatment approach applying generalized propensity score matching to reduce potential biases stemming from differences in observed country characteristics the results provide strong evidence of self selection and heterogeneous food security impacts at different levels of policy intensity estimates of the dose response functions show that both discrimination against agriculture and large support for it lead to poor performance in the availability access and utilization dimensions of food security

tenure security and land related investment evidence from ethiopia the authors use a large data set from ethiopia that differentiates tenure security and transferability to explore determinants of different types of land related investment and its possible impact on productivity while they find some support for endogeneity of investment in trees this is not the case for terraces transfer rights are unambiguously investment enhancing the large productivity effect of terracing implies that even where households undertake investments to increase their tenure security this may not be socially efficient in ethiopia government action to increase tenure security and transferability of land rights can significantly enhance rural investment and productivity

new tests of the life cycle and tax discounting hypotheses abstract we first test a version of the permanent income consumption function recently suggested by barro the results support the theory except that consumption expenditures show sensitivity to transitory income next we use the consumption model to test the tax discounting hypothesis which is strongly supported this support for tax discounting disagrees with results from some earlier studies using more traditional specifications of the consumption function however we show that when certain obviously inadequate estimation procedures are corrected the traditional models also support tax discounting this uniform support for tax discounting suggests that the sensitivity of consumption to transitory income is not due to liquidity constraints

the market value of u s government debt monthly 1942 1980 abstract the market value of outstanding united states treasury debt is calculated on a monthly basis using price and par value data from the treasury bulletin separate series for treasury bills bonds certificates of indebtedness notes and total treasury debt are presented along with estimates of privately held treasury debt and gross federal debt the calculated market value series is compared to par value and an existing annual market value series

limit theorems for markets with sequential bargaining this paper models trade as a non coopertative strategic game played at an inlinite sequence of dates a single indivisible commodity is traded buyers and sellers have transferable utility and are characterized by their reservation utilities they meet at random and bargain over the price at which a single unit of the good will be exchanged under a variety of circumstances it is shown that as the costs of search and bargaining become negligible the outcome of the game converges to the competitve flow equilibrium even when there is complete information journal of economic literature classification numbers 022 19x7

land tenure arrangements and rural urban migration in china summary obstacles to internal migration in china contribute to inefficiency inequality and land degradation academic and policy debate has primarily focused on discrimination against rural migrants on arrival in urban areas meanwhile barriers to migration out of rural areas have received less attention this paper examines the role of incomplete rural property rights in the migration decisions of rural households we examine the relationship between tenure insecurity and restrictions on land rentals and participation in outside labor markets the results indicate that tenure insecurity reduces migration this relationship is particularly pronounced on forest land which has implications for the conservation of recently replanted forest areas

assessing gender inequality in food security among small holder farm households in urban and rural south africa summary with the ongoing changes in climate household food insecurity is likely to be more widespread in most small holder and subsistence farm households in sub saharan africa however the existence and extent of gendered household food security or lack thereof remains unclear this study extends existing knowledge by assessing gender inequality in household food in security among small holder farm households in urban and rural areas of south africa in doing so we use the gender of the head of household and treatment effects framework our results show that male headed households are more food secure compared to female headed households with the latter depending more on agriculture to increase household food levels we further find that the household food security gap between male and female headed households is wider in rural than in urban areas where rural male and female headed households are more likely to report chronic food insecurity i e are more likely than their urban counterparts to experience hunger interestingly the effects of climatic characteristics on household food security are more apparent in rural than in urban areas our findings suggest that household food security initiatives are likely to be more effective in closing the gender gap in household food security if aligned with policies on urban and rural agriculture and development

nonseparable farm household decisions in a computable general equilibrium model emerging empirical evidence and microeconomic theory suggest strongly that in many developing country settings farm household production and consumption decisions are nonseparable that is the farm household cannot be viewed as a separate or independent profit maximizing producer and utility maximizing consumer the existence of such nonseparability indicates the presence of market imperfections or failures that may have important policy implications for example depending on the nature of the market imperfections there may be threshold effects whereby policy changes have no effect on household behavior until the change is large in some measure in this environment policy analysis assuming the existence of perfect markets may badly misstate the impact of policy changes on producer behavior and household welfare

partial land rights and agricultural outcomes evidence from thailand to disentangle the issue concerning which dimensions of land rights among security tradability and pledgeability affect agricultural outcomes this paper exploits a unique partial land rights entitlement program in thailand that guarantees only security allows a limited access to credit and prohibits any land sale based on an instrumental variables strategy i find that the entitlement increases 1 second rice but not major rice productivity 2 land use intensity and 3 land related investment and leads to 4 better soil quality this suggests that the security dimension alone can play an important role in improving farm activities

tenure insecurity gender low cost land certification and land rental market participation in ethiopia abstract there is a renewed interest in whether land reforms can contribute to market development and poverty reduction in africa this paper assesses effects on the allocative efficiency of the land rental market of the low cost approach to land registration and certification of restricted property rights that was implemented in ethiopia in the late 1990s four rounds of a balanced household panel from 16 villages in northern ethiopia are analysed showing that land certification initially enhanced land rental market participation of potential tenant and landlord households especially those that are headed by females

factors affecting entry and intensity in informal rental land markets in southern ethiopian highlands abstract informal land transactions particularly rental land markets are emerging in rural ethiopia in response to the inadequacies of the administratively based land distribution system to meet the growing demand for land and correct imbalances in factor proportions at the farm level these informal land markets provide a vehicle to equalise factor proportions at the farm level and to improve productivity and hence households welfare among the farmers who lease out land those who live in the highland areas where land is scarce and unequal are more likely to engage in these markets increases in the size of land holdings relative to labour and livestock ownership the number of non working household members and pressure for subsistence increase the likelihood of leasing out land on the other hand increases in the number of working adults improved nutritional status and greater wealth affect negatively the supply of land into these markets the potential exists for these markets to improve factor equalisation reduce inequality in land holdings and shift the income position of participating households however success depends on whether other factor markets are functioning to thwart forced disposal of land to meet subsistence public policy has pivotal role in fostering the growth of these markets and their land transfer and factor equalisation functions by ensuring their legally enforceable status and removing legal restrictions that constrain choices of contracts and trading over greater distances in addition both long and short term policy measures are needed to reduce the extent to which poor farmers engage in distress transactions

gender norms and intrahousehold allocation of labor in mozambique a cge application to household and agricultural economics we model intrahousehold dynamics in two rural provinces of mozambique through the lens of computable general equilibrium cge methods the main features of our modeling framework are as follows a a household social accounting matrix that captures allocation of labor and resources and transfers among household members b the explicit use of social norms in labor allocation across gender c a mechanism that links agricultural production to time poverty d identification of leisure as a commodity that is being produced simulation results and sensitivity analyses show how social norms interact with the allocation of labor and resources at the household level to impact farm production or limit the gains from technological improvements

asset returns and government budgets in a small open economy empirical evidence for canada abstract in this paper we test the validity of the ricardian equivalence hypothesis by examining the relationship between the term structure of asset returns and macroeconomic policy variables our study extends the work of plosser 1982 1987 to the canadian case adapting his analysis to the small open economy the empirical results we obtain are consistent with the debt neutrality proposition of the ricardian equivalence hypothesis

addressing food security in africa via multiple livelihood strategies of women farmers abstract because food insecurity is primarily a problem of low household incomes and poverty and not just inadequate food production projects and programs for food insecure african farmers which aim at increasing production of subsistence crops may be ineffective instead government should look for ways to improve returns to farmers resources in a broader context which may include expanded opportunities for non farm microenterprises and agricultural labor this has been the conventional wisdom since the writings of amartya sen still unclear however are the implications of his thinking for the roles of african women farmers who are traditionally the food crop producers in africa and are often food insecure immediate expansion of income earning activities such as cash cropping and non farm microenterprises may not be possible for women in male headed households in many african societies where cash income is seen as part of the male domain in addition women farmers may need a long adjustment period to diversify their income sources fully because most african countries are at the early stages of structural transformation different developmental interventions both in policy and in technology are therefore needed to address food security and economic transformations in africa in the short and long term

an evolutionary model of bargaining abstract individuals from two populations of bargainers are randomly matched to play the nash demand game they make their demands by choosing best replies based on an incomplete knowledge of the precedents and occasionally they choose randomly there is no common knowledge over the long run typically one division will be observed almost all of the time this stochastically stable division is close to the nash solution when all agents in the same population are alike when the populations are heterogeneous a generalization of the nash solution results if there is some mixing between the two populations the stable division is fifty fifty journal of economic literature classification number c78

equilibrium in a market with sequential bargaining this paper considers a market where pairs of agents who are interested in carrying out a transaction are brought together by a stochastic process and upon meeting initiate a bargaining process over the terms of the transaction the basic bargaining problem is treated with the strategic approach the paper derives the steady state equilibrium agreements analyzes their dependence on market conditions such as the relative numbers of agents of different types and discusses their relations with the competitive equilibrium outcome and other results in the search equilibrium literature this paper considers a market that operates in the following way pairs of agents who have mutual interest in carrying out a transaction are brought together by a stochastic process when two agents meet they initiate a bargaining process over the terms of the transaction if two agents reach an agreement a transaction takes place and they leave the market of course the bargaining positions and hence the agreement reached in any particular meeting will be affected by the conditions prevailing in the market these will include the chances that each of the negotiating parties have of meeting other partners in the event that the agreement in the current negotiations is delayed also the expected length of time required to achieve an alternative transaction and the expected behavior of alternative partners the study of such a market mechanism is of interest for two reasons firstly it captures some realistic aspects of the trade in certain specific markets e g asset markets such as housing and some labor markets secondly it contributes to an understanding of the micro mechanisms of price formation and their role in shaping market outcomes in both cases the features studied are largely neglected in the traditional market equilibrium analyses the related literature includes the articles by diamond 4 5 diamond and maskin 6 mortensen 8 9 and zusman and bell 13 these articles consider markets of the type described above in which transactions are concluded at pairwise meetings of agents the major difference between our work and these articles is in the approach to the basic bargaining problem in the cited articles it is assumed that a meeting is concluded with an instantaneous agreement which divides the associated surplus in an arbitrary predetermined way when the surplus is assumed to be divided equally the division rule is in fact nash s axiomatic bargaining solution in contrast the present paper treats the basic bargaining problem with the strategic approach see rubinstein 19 which constitutes an attempt to look into the bargaining black box this approach explicitly models the time dimension of the bargaining process describes in detail the bargaining procedure and justifies the agreement as a perfect equilibrium in

measuring food insecurity the frequency and severity of coping strategies abstract defining and interpreting food security and measuring it in reliable valid and cost effective ways have proven to be stubborn problems facing researchers and programs intended to monitor food security risks this paper briefly reviews the conceptual and methodological literature on food insecurity measurment describes a particular method for distinguishing and measuring short term food insecurity at the household level and discusses ways of generalizing the method the method developed enumerates the frequency and severity of strategies relied on by urban households when faced with a short term insufficiency of food this method goes beyond more commonly used measures of caloric consumption to incorporate vulnerability elements of food insecurity as well as the deliberate actions of household decision makers when faced with food insufficiency

search adverse selection and market clearing we examine a dynamic decentralized trading model with infinitesimal sellers and buyers to investigate whether or not the market fails to clear in the limit of search friction vanishing a seller who has private information about product quality and a buyer are matched to bargain over price they form a long term relationship if they reach agreement they return to the matching pool if they fail to agree or the existing relationship is dissolved the market fails to clear if and only if the ratio of agents patience over the dissolution rate exceeds a threshold

indigenous land rights in sub saharan africa appropriation security and investment demand abstract we discuss the links between rights appropriation tenure security and investment demand in sub saharan africa common assertions regarding indigenous tenure are 1 a insecurity of tenure leads to suboptimal investment incentives and 2 b appropriation of land rights in the public domain is rent dissipating we argue that land use and investment decisions among african farmers often have two motives productivity and rights appropriation the usual assertions thus seem contradictory we offer a conceptual model to show that indigenous tenure may provide equal or higher investment incentives than private rights and may promote modes of rights appropriation that are productive rather than wasteful

food aid and household food security in a conflict situation empirical evidence from northern uganda it is well established that armed political conflict has a detrimental effect on food security and household welfare conflict induces food insecurity by reducing own food production access to food through the market and various other resources to sustain healthy and productive lives one way of mitigating these adverse effects is to provide food aid in this study we evaluate the impact of a world food programme intervention on household food security and asset protection among conflict affected households in northern uganda we employ propensity score matching to estimate the average treatment effect on food expenditure food consumption and preservation of assets using a sample of 1265 observations from a 2008 survey our results reveal that the operation s system of targeting beneficiaries was effective and in accordance with programme objectives food aid considerably reduced food expenditure of households suggesting that recipients were net buyers of food and that the food aid received was effectively consumed within the household a corresponding positive effect on non food expenditure was not found our results also indicate that food aid was effective in increasing meals consumed and in avoiding distress destocking of low value assets but surprisingly only for male headed households

how does population density influence agricultural intensification and productivity this study uses household level panel data on smallholder farmers in ethiopia to estimate how rural population density rpd affects agricultural intensification and productivity our results suggest that higher rpd is associated with smaller farm sizes and has a positive effect on input demand represented by increased fertilizer use per hectare overall increased input use does not lead to a corresponding increase in staple crop yields and thus farm income declines as population density increases this suggests a situation where farmers in areas of high rpd may be stuck in place unable to sustainably intensify in the face of rising rpd and declining farm sizes 2014 elsevier ltd

cooperation in community interaction without information flows we study cooperative behaviour in communities where the flow of information regarding past conduct is limited or missing players are initially randomly matched with no knowledge of each other s past actions they endogenously decide whether or not to continue the repeated relationship there is incomplete information regarding player types a subset of the population is myopic while the remainder have discount factors that permit cooperation in principle we define social equilibrium in such communities such equilibria are characterized by an initial testing phase followed by cooperation if the test is successful it is precisely the presence of myopic types that permit cooperation by raising barriers to entry into new relationships we examine the implications of increased patience which takes two forms an increase in the number of non myopic types and an increase in the discount factor of non myopic types these two notions turn out to have strikingly different implications for the degree of cooperation that can be sustained

impacts of low cost land certification on investment and productivity new land reforms are again high on the policy agenda and low cost propoor reforms are being tested in poor countries this article assesses the investment and productivity impacts of the recent low cost land certification implemented in the tigray region of ethiopia using a unique household and farm plot level panel data set with data from before and up to eight years after the reform alternative econometric methods were used to test and control for endogeneity of certification and for unobserved household heterogeneity significant positive impacts were found including effects on the maintenance of soil conservation structures investment in trees and land productivity copyright 2007 oxford university press

voluntarily separable repeated prisoner s dilemma ordinary repeated games do not apply to real societies where one can cheat and run away from partners we formulate a model of endogenous relationships which one can unilaterally end and start with a randomly assigned new partner with no information flow focusing on two person two action prisoner s dilemma we show that the endogenous duration of partnerships gives rise to a significantly dierent evolutionary stability structure from the ordinary evolutionary games monomorphic equilibria require initial trust building while a polymorphic equilibrium includes early cooperators than any strategy in monomorphic equilibria and is thus more ecient this

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

the deficit interest rate link empirical evidence for canada this paper explores whether a positive relationship exists between interest rates nominal or real and deficits as postulated by a conventional macroeconomic model mundell fleming using spectral and time series techniques annual and quarterly data for canada and a variety of definitions for the deficit and government spending variables no empirical link between deficits and interest rates could be detected it is suggested therefore that the evidence is inconsistent with themundell fleming model which predicts a positive association between interest rates and deficits a possible explantion for the observed empirical results may be found in the ricardian equivalence theorem

land tenure and agricultural productivity in africa a comparative analysis of the economics literature and recent policy strategies and reforms summary this paper examines the convergence and divergence of results from economic studies of the relationships between land tenure security and agricultural productivity in africa and how these results have been incorporated into recent agricultural poverty alleviation and land policy documents the paper finds that there are both areas of convergence and divergence in the economics literature similarly the attention given to land tenure and its perceived effects on productivity varies considerably in the policy literature the significant heterogeneity in findings itself suggests that policy responses must pay attention to local context and the overarching macro and sectoral conditions within which tenure systems operate

on money as a medium of exchange we analyze economies in which individuals specialize in consumption and production and meet randomly over time in a way that implies that trade must be bilateral and quid pro quo nash equilibria in trading strategies are characterized certain goods emerge endogenously as media of exchange or commodity money depending both on their intrinsic properties and on extrinsic beliefs there are also equilibria with genuine fiat currency circulating as the general medium of exchange we find that equilibria are not generally pareto optimal and that introducing fiat currency into a commodity money economy may unambiguously improve welfare velocity acceptability and liquidity are discussed

using shadow wages to estimate labor supply of agricultural households with few exceptions most studies of the labor demand and supply decisions of agricultural households in developing countries have relied on the empirical advantages of separability given the questionable nature of some of the assumptions sufficient for separability i apply a recent methodology that accounts for the simultaneity between the production and consumption decisions of a farm household using data from rural india direct estimates of the marginal productivities shadow wages of family male and female labor are derived from a cobb douglas agricultural production function the estimated shadow wages and income are then used as regressors in a structural model of labor supply

how can african agriculture adapt to climate change a counterfactual analysis from ethiopia we analyze the impact of different adaptation strategies on crop net revenues in the nile basin of ethiopia we estimate a multinomial endogenous switching regression model of climate change adaptation and crop net revenues and implement a counterfactual analysis households data are combined with spatial climate data we find that adaptation to climate change based upon a portfolio of strategies significantly increases farm net revenues changing crop varieties has a positive and significant impact on net revenues when coupled with water conservation strategies or soil conservation strategies but not when implemented in isolation jel q54 q56

tenure security resource poverty public programs and household plot level conservation investments in the highlands of northern ethiopia land degradation poses a serious problem for the livelihoods of rural producers furthermore there is rarely enough private investment taking place to commensurate the scale of the problem this article examines the role of tenure insecurity resource poverty risk and time preferences and community led land conservation on differentiated patterns of household investment in land conservation in northern ethiopia we control for biophysical household characteristics market access conditions and village level factors investments in soil bunds and stone terraces are specifically studied so as to capture the link between these various factors and the durability of conservation investments we introduce the distinction between the determinants of the decision to invest and how much to invest in conservation regression results show that publicly led conservation programs seem to significantly stimulate private investment a host of plot level variables and household perceptions of returns on conservation investments expressed in terms of perceived improvements in land quality and increased crop yields were found to be critical to the decision to invest and intensify soil conservation the evidence on the significance of households attitudes toward risk aversion suggests the important role of risk and the household s risk bearing capacity in the decision to intensify conservation measures at the same time tenure security indicators and households resource endowments resource poverty had weaker effects in increasing willingness to invest and the level of investment made the policy implications of these results point to the importance of agricultural research and extension efforts that target technologies which reduce household risk and poverty while enabling sustainable investments in conservation measures by individual households

famine and household coping strategies abstract households faced with risks to their entitlement to food will plan strategically to minimize their impact the task of doing this will be particularly demanding during famines this paper reviews the evidence on household strategies for coping with famine in africa and identifies some distinctive patterns in these strategies which can be used to examine household objectives at times of crisis the management of resources to meet these objectives and limits to the effectiveness of coping strategies in particular it examines the role of asset management and trade offs between maintaining current food consumption levels and protecting the future income generating capacity of the household

allocation of land tenure rights in tigray how large is the gender bias this study investigates gender differences in land ownership and use in northern ethiopia female headed households have 23 smaller owned landholdings and 54 smaller operational landholdings household endowments of nonland productive inputs are important but decomposition analysis shows that differences in observable characteristics such as labor and oxen explain less than half of these differences whereas the remaining differences can be attributed to differences in returns to these characteristics the latter suggests a gender bias in land allocation the main policy recommendation is to strengthen women s opportunities to cultivate their land and continue the process of securing women s tenure rights

smallholder land access in post war northern mozambique summary this paper analyzes the inequality and determinants of flexibility in smallholder land access in post war northern mozambique this paper demonstrates that high land endowments in aggregate do not imply equal access to cultivated or fallow land at the household level even if land access has some flexibility across time a formal test establishes the low extent of flexibility in land access at the household level in the study site the econometric analysis further reveals that some groups of households such as female headed households and those with low asset endowments or weak social institutions suffer from significant rigidities in land access

household composition labor markets and labor demand testing for separation in agricultural household models this paper tests the separation of farm labor supply and labor demand decisions using the observation that household composition is an important determinant of farm labor use with nonseparation after assessing the conditions under which the test has power against several alternatives an empirical model is developed to test the proposition that farm employment is independent of family composition the model is estimated on a data set from rural java the null hypothesis that farm labor allocation decisions are independent of household structure is not rejected the results are robust to different specifications of the labor demand function copyright 1992 by the econometric society

expected failures and unexpected successes of land titling in africa abstract the imposition of market oriented economic reforms throughout africa in the 1990s has sparked renewed debate over the desirability of state sponsored land titling programs proponents argue that land titling is an essential foundation for economic growth opponents contend that titling programs are unnecessary and premature at best or detrimental at worst this paper addresses these concerns through an examination of cameroon s 1974 lands ordinance using both quantitative and qualitative data we find that the 1974 lands ordinance has not introduced western style private property rights in cameroon s agrarian sector nevertheless the ordinance is not irrelevant to rural farmers rural farmers have used the ordinance to obtain concrete boundary markers on their land enhancing their tenure security in addition administrators have used the ordinance to register underdeveloped land reducing the contradictions between state law and customary law these findings suggest that policy makers could fruitfully redesign their land tenure policies to render them more attractive to rural farmers and thereby give the state a more constructive role in enhancing tenure security and in promoting economic growth

does trade openness contribute to food security a dynamic panel analysis abstract despite significant progress in the fight against hunger during the last decades food insecurity remains a major problem in many countries especially developing ones in this study we use a large cross country data to investigate the impact of trade openness and other factors on food security measured by dietary energy consumption we employ a system gmm approach to account for unobserved heterogeneity correlated individual effects and potential endogeneity of the explanatory variables the empirical results reveal that trade openness and economic growth exert positive and significant impacts on dietary energy consumption and also contribute to improvements in dietary diversity the results are robust to the inclusion of additional variables capturing specific agro climatic constraints e g weather related and regional country characteristics and to the sample composition most geographical regions are found to have significantly higher food security levels compared to sub saharan africa additional results indicate that besides calorie consumption trade openness also improves dietary diversity and diet quality related aspects of food security

are consumers ricardian when some are liquidity constrained evidence for the united states this paper formulates and estimates a revised specification of evans 1988 test for ricardian equivalence which incorporates the possible presence of liquidity constrained consumers if liquidity constrained consumers are significant in number tests using aggregate consumption data may tend to reject the ricardian equivalence hypothesis when the model allows for liquidity constraints a test which incorporated liquidity constrained consumers could not reject ricardian equivalence over the sample period 1946 91 while the proportion of aggregate consumption which is liquidity constrained is found to be significant it does not appear large enough to affect the test for ricardian equivalence

meso economic filters along the policy chain understanding the links between policy reforms and rural poverty in latin america abstract the paper clarifies the meso economy concept by defining it as comprising both the market mechanisms and administrative procedures through which policy decisions and market signals trickle down to the household level three main bodies of literature are reviewed the policy oriented literature in which the meso economy was initially considered the transaction cost approach analyzing market and policy failures and the micro economy level of agricultural household models the paper develops a synthesis of macro meso and micro economic perspectives which focuses on the roles played by three levels of filters intervening along the policy chain implications for policy and research are drawn

debt management objectives for a small open economy in this paper the authors examine the consequences of using cost minimization as the goal of public debt management in a small open economy soe authorities are assumed to minimize interest costs subject to constraints on their ability to refinance at different maturities and the information conditioning expectations of future interest rates a numerical simulation model and a highly disaggregated canadian data set for the period 1967 87 are used in the analysis the results presented indicate that conditional on the soe assumption savings do result from following a cost minimizing strategy savings decline as authorities are increasingly constrained in their refinancing choices however even the gains in moderately constrained cases suggest that cost minimization is worthy of serious consideration by authorities copyright 1992 by ohio state university press

what determines gender inequality in household food security in kenya application of exogenous switching treatment regression this paper explores the link between the gender of a household head and food security in rural kenya the results show that the food security gap between male headed households mhhs and female headed households fhhs is explained by their differences in observable and unobservable characteristics fhhs food security status would have been higher than it is now if the returns coefficients on their observed characteristics had been the same as the returns on the mhhs characteristics even if that had been the case however results indicate that fhhs would still have been less food secure than the mhhs due to unobservable characteristics

the market value of government of canada debt a comment on the importance of correct valuation of non marketable debt previous attempts to provide market value estimates for both u s and canadian government debt have included nonmarketable debt items specifically savings bonds as part of total marketable debt inclusion of nonmarketable debt items as part of marketable debt presents a significant valuation problem this article demonstrates that previous studies on the market value of canadian government debt used valuation methodologies that significantly underestimated the value of nonmarketable debt a more accurate valuation methodology is provided

land redistribution tenure insecurity and intensity of production a study of farm households in southern ethiopia this study analyzes the determinants of land tenure insecurity and its impact on intensity of use of purchased farm inputs among households in southern ethiopia seventeen percent of the households stated that they were tenure insecure the feeling of tenure insecurity could be caused by the land redistribution policy in ethiopia where household size has been the main criterion used for land allocation after the land reform in 1975 this would imply that land rich households should be more tenure insecure alternatively the local power structure may be strong enough to counter this and cause the land rich who are also likely to be influential to be able to protect their land rights the analysis revealed that in the overall sample relative farm size was not significantly correlated with tenure insecurity when testing for each site however we found that in four of the sites per capita farm size was positively associated with tenure insecurity while in five other sites it had a significant negative association this may be due to local historical cultural and demographic differences giving way to differences in the effects of the redistribution policy and the local power structure on tenure insecurity we assessed the impact of tenure insecurity on the intensity of use of purchased farm inputs the tenure insecurity variable was insignificant farmers in areas with a positive correlation between farm size and tenure insecurity were more likely to purchase farm inputs larger farms were more likely to use purchased inputs but this effect was lower in areas with a positive correlation between farm size and tenure insecurity poverty and subsistence constraints may explain this absence of higher intensity of use of purchased inputs on small farms by contrast the land redistribution policy may have improved small farms access to purchased farm inputs text of abstract

the market value and maturity structure of government of canada debt 1967 83 the market value and maturity structure of outstanding government of canada debt are calculated at monthly frequency for the 1967 to 1983 period the data are disaggregated into general public chartered bank and government holdings the time series behaviour of market value and par value measures are examined to determine whether par value is a reasonable approximation for market value market value data are also used to construct an alternative measure of the deficit flow which is compared with conventional measures of the deficit la valeur au marche et la structure d echeances de la dette du gouvernement du canada 1967 83 la valeur au marche et la structure d echeances de la dette du gouvernement du canada sont calculees par les auteurs pour chaque mois au cours de la periode de 1967 a 1983 on a ventile les resultats en portions detenues par le grand public par les banques a charte et par le gouvernement les auteurs examinent ensuite la chronique des mesures de valeurs au march6 et de valeurs au pair afin de determiner si la valeur au pair est une bonne approximation de la valeur au marche on se sert alors des donnees precisant la valeur au marche pour construire un indicateur de rechange du d6ficit qu on peut alors comparer aux mesures conventionnelles du deficit

budget deficit persistence and the twin deficits hypothesis abstract this paper gauges the twin deficits hypothesis i e a positive causal relationship between the external and budget deficits this relationship is measured by the responses of the external deficit to changes in the budget deficit induced by blanchard s model these responses are positively affected by the birth rate and by the degree of persistence of the budget deficit empirical results for the canadian and us economies reveal that although the relevant birth rates are small the great persistence of the budget deficits yields responses that are numerically large and statistically positive this contrasts with previous tests of the twin deficits hypothesis which have never formally taken into account the stochastic properties of the budget deficit

land tenure and investment incentives evidence from west africa abstract the existing literature on the relationship between property rights in land and agricultural investment in africa has given results that are often confusing and contradictory i make two clarifying contributions to this literature first i pull together existing studies and investigate whether the results they find have been affected by research methods or local contexts studies with small sample sizes those that use binary investment measures and those that control for household fixed effects are less likely to find a statistically significant link between land tenure and investment self reported tenure security has been a poor predictor of investment outcomes second i test for a relationship between land tenure and agricultural investment in nine data sets from west africa while the link between tenure and investment is significant for fallow and tree planting it is less robust for labor use and other inputs such as manure or chemical fertilizer

land fragmentation and food insecurity in ethiopia this paper revisits the economic consequences of land fragmentation taking seriously concerns regarding the exogeneity of fragmentation its measurement and the importance of considering impacts in terms of welfare metrics using data that are well suited to addressing these issues the analysis finds that land fragmentation reduces food insecurity this result is robust to how fragmentation is measured and to how exogeneity concerns are addressed further the paper finds that land fragmentation mitigates the adverse effects of low rainfall on food security this is because households with diverse parcel characteristics can grow a greater variety of crop types

persistent deficits and the market value of government debt summary this paper investigates whether postwar canadian public financial policy satisfies a borrowing constraint direct tests of the present value relation suggested by this constraint shed light on the sustainability of current policy we examine monthly data on canadian federal government finances using tests for cointegration the finding is that the joint behaviour of real debt and real surpluses is inconsistent with intertemporal budget balance for the government one interpretation of this finding is that the government is systematically paying real returns to bondholders by issuing further debt alternatively bondholders may expect the government to finance future interest payments from a source other than primary surpluses e g the sale of physical assets much empirical macroeconomics is concerned with the effects of public financial policies numerous studies have examined whether such policies affect interest rates inflation or national income and its components these examinations raise the question of the efficacy of government budget deficits they generally assume that a borrowing constraint holds in the public finances some positive theories of public debt creation also make this assumption examples include barro s 1979 history of us federal deficits and sargent s 1986 rationalizations of recent us budgetary policy lucas and stokey s 1983 discussion of optimal taxation also involves this assumption hansen roberds and sargent 1987 outline the testable implications of present value budget balance and hamilton and flavin 1986 investigate the feasibility of recurring deficits by directly testing the us federal government s borrowing constraint such tests seem natural given both the recent boom is testing more complicated first order difference equations in macroeconomics and the widespread discussion of current deficits this paper tests the present value borrowing constraint using recently constructed data on the market value of outstanding canadian federal government debt we use monthly rather than annual as in hamilton and flavin data and conduct tests of univariate integration and of bivariate cointegration to investigate the joint time series properties of debt and deficits one finding is that real debt and real surpluses are integrated processes evidence of their cointegration is mixed and point estimates of the cointegrating vector suggest that the expected real rate of return on debt is negative moreover the surplus measured to include interest payments as government spending is nonstationary these findings are inconsistent

blanchard s model of consumption an empirical study this article derives several empirically testable implications for blanchard s consumption model which has been widely used in analytical macroeconomic research cointegration methods are applied the parameter that measures the life horizon of households is estimated and the consumption model is tested quarterly canadian data are used there is no empirical evidence against the assumption that households behave as if they live forever within blanchard s framework blanchard s model of consumption is strongly rejected by the data however

measuring the production efficiency of alternative land tenure contracts in a mixed crop livestock system in ethiopia abstract in this paper we test the hypothesis that land held under varying configurations of property rights will be farmed at different levels of production efficiency production data were collected from 477 plots in a fairly productive mixed farming system in the ethiopian highlands interspatial measures of total factor productivity based on the divisia index were used to measure the relative production efficiency of three informal and less secure land contracts rented share cropped and borrowed relative to lands held under formal contract with the ethiopian government although the informally contracted lands are farmed 10 16 less efficiently the analysis indicates that farmers of such lands actually apply inputs more rather than less intensively i e more inputs per unit of land the gap in total factor productivity thus results from the inferior quality of inputs or lack of skills in applying them rather than a lack of incentive to allocate inputs to mixed crop livestock farming for this reason we find no empirical basis to support the hypothesis that land tenure is a constraint to agricultural productivity

foundation of competitive equilibrium with non transferable utility abstract this paper investigates the dynamic foundation of a competitive equilibrium studying a sequence of random matching models between ex ante heterogeneous buyers and sellers under two sided incomplete information with no entry where each agent is endowed with non transferable utility the economy is populated with two sets of infinitesimal agents buyers and sellers who have private information about their own valuations of the object in each period buyers and sellers in the pool are matched to draw randomly a pair of expected payoffs which will realize if the long term relationship is formed each player decides whether or not to agree to form a long term relationship conditioned on his private information if both parties agree then they leave the pool receiving the expected payoff in each period while the long term relationship continues the existing long term relationship is terminated either by will or by a random shock upon which both parties return to the respective pools of agents we quantify the amount of friction by the time span of each period we demonstrate that as the friction vanishes any sequence of stationary equilibrium outcomes in which trade occurs with a positive probability converges to the competitive equilibrium under a general two sided incomplete information about the private valuation of each agent

property rights and productivity the case of joint land titling in vietnam this paper explores the effect of land titling on agricultural productivity in vietnam and the productivity effects of single versus joint titling for husband and wife using a plot fixed effects approach our results show that obtaining a land title is associated with higher yields for both individually and jointly held titles we conclude that there is no tradeoff between joint titling and productivity and so joint titles are potentially an effective way to improve women s bargaining power within the household with no associated efficiency losses

search theory competitive equilibrium and the nash bargaining solution abstract we investigate a canonical search theoretic model without entry two agents are randomly matched with a long side being rationed the matched agents face a pair of randomly drawn non transferable payoffs and then choose whether or not to form a partnership subject to a small probability of exogenous break down as this probability and friction vanish the nash bargaining solution emerges as the unique undominated strategy equilibrium outcome if the mass of each party is the same if the size of one party is larger than the other the short side extracts the entire surplus a sharp contrast to rubinstein and wolinsky 1985 16

tenure security resource endowments and tree growing evidence from the amhara region of ethiopia we analyze roles of tenure insecurity and household endowments in explaining tree growing in ethiopia where farmers cannot sell or mortgage land and factor markets are imperfect unlike most other studies we use panel data and examine determinants of the decision and intensity of tree growing unlike other studies we compare the decision to keep trees and the decision to plant in the recent past the results suggest that land tenure insecurity influences the decision to grow trees but not the number of trees households grow household endowments time and location also explain tree growing by farmers

the impact of a food security program on household food consumption in northwestern ethiopia a matching estimator approach abstract with the financial support from various development partners ethiopia has designed and implemented several programs to improve household food security yet food insecurity is still a major challenge to several millions of people in the country and it is questionable whether the different food security programs implemented over the past years have been successful using a propensity score matching method to control for pre intervention differences this study examined the impact on household food calorie intake of an integrated food security program ifsp which had been implemented in northwestern ethiopia by two non governmental organizations as a case study the estimated results provide evidence that ifsp has a positive and statistically significant effect on food calorie intake in particular ifsp has raised physical food calorie intake by 30 among the beneficiary households however we also found that ifsp has differential impact depending on family size landownership and gender of head of household overall the paper provides evidence that supporting integrated food security programs is important to improve food security in rural areas

determinants of food security in southern ethiopia at the household level in the early 1980s a paradigm shift occurred in the field of food security following amartya sens 1981 claims that food insecurity is more of a demand concern affecting the poor s access to food than a supply concern affecting availability of food at the national level despite the wide acceptance of sen s thinking many controversies including the relative importance of supply side versus demand side variables in causing and solving food insecurity have remained in academic and policy circles this study develops a recursive household food security model within the framework of consumer demand and production theories following singh et al 1986 and parses out the relative importance of supply side versus demand side variables in determining household food security in southern ethiopia based on results of a test of full reduced model and the magnitude of changes in conditional probabilities of food security we conclude that the supply side variables are more powerful determinants of food security than the demand side variables

do changes in debt maturity composition affect the term structure some canadian evidence this paper examines the time series behaviour of the term structure of interest rates in the government of canada bond market to determine whether changes in the maturity composition of canada debt have had a significant effect on bond yields methodologically a reduced form model is estimated which incorporates exogenous information about both the level of domestic interest rates and the shape of the us term structure the empirical results indicate that the null hypothesis of no debt management effects in the government of canada bond market is rejected for monthly data

rural market imperfections and the farm size productivity relationship evidence from pakistan the subject of this article is the relationships between farm size and productivity and between farm size and profitability in the developing countries the recent controversies over the inverse size output relationship are reviewed and a framework is provided that explains the inverse relationship based on plausible assumptions about imperfections in the markets for labor land credit and risk from this framework a set of testable hypotheses are derived the hypotheses are tested on recent farm level panel data from pakistan a strong inverse relationship between farm size and yield is present in the sample even when household fixed effects are used to account for unobserved heterogeneity moreover the suggested market imperfections framework is consistent with the data