market access well being and nutrition evidence from ethiopia summary we use a unique data source from a rural area in northwestern ethiopia to analyze the relationship between household individual well being nutrition and market access we find that households residing in relatively more remote areas consume substantially less than households nearer to the market they are more food insecure and their school enrollment rates are lower although their diets are also less diverse we find no significant differences in mother and child anthropometric measures part of the differences in well being that we do observe can be attributed to lower household agricultural production in remote areas nonetheless agricultural production differences alone do not account for all the differences in household consumption levels for remote households an additional contributing factor is the terms of trade for remote households that negatively affect both the size of the agricultural surplus that these households market and the quantity of food items that they purchase reducing transaction costs for remote households and facilitating migration could help equalize well being among more or less favored locations

entrepreneurship and income inequality in southern ethiopia this article uses inequality decomposition techniques in order to analyze the consequences of entrepreneurial activities to household income inequality in southern ethiopia a uniform increase in entrepreneurial income reduces per capita household income inequality this implies that encouraging rural entrepreneurship may be favorable for both income growth and income distribution such policies could be particularly successful if directed at the low income low wealth and relatively uneducated segments of the society

infrastructure and aggregate agricultural productivity international evidence a relationship has long been recognized between a country s agricultural development and its investment in infrastructure capital such as transportation and communication facilities that is not directly related to the agricultural production process the relevant literature spans adam smith s proposition that the division of labour is limited by the extent of the market the work of von thtinen numerous studies by historians and economic historians and the work of economists such as schultz kuznets wharton owens and johnston and kilby to mention a few despite the apparently widespread recognition and acceptance that a relationship exists between agricultural development and infrastructural development few if any empirical studies test this as a hypothesis and provide estimates of the magnitude of such a relationship 2 the aim of this paper is to utilize 1965 aggregate agricultural production data and the concept of the aggregate production function to study the effects of transportation and communication infrastructure on aggregate agricultural productivity the aggregate data come from 47 less developed countries ldcs and 19 developed countries dcs the sample countries are listed in the appendix the use of intercountry comparisons for development studies dates to clark and the pioneering work of kuznets and it has been exploited econometrically by chenery 3 an important contribution to the study of international agricultural productivity was made by hayami and ruttan who showed that an aggregate agricultural production function that accounts for intercountry differences in resource endowments technical modern inputs and human capital can explain a large proportion of the variation in aggregate agricultural output across more and less developed agricultures 4 evenson and kislev modified hayami and ruttan s model by including a variable measuring each country s investment in agricultural research 5 essentially the same

rural nonfarm employment and incomes in latin america overview and policy implications abstract rural nonfarm employment rnfe and incomes rnfi are crucial to latin american rural households the 11 rural household income studies in this volume reviewed in this paper use 1990s data and show that rnfi averages 40 of rural incomes rnfi and rnfe have grown quickly over the past three decades the review of evidence provided some surprising departures from traditional images of nonfarm activities of latin american rural households in terms of shares of rural incomes 1 nonfarm wage incomes exceed self employment incomes 2 rnfi far exceeds farm wage incomes 3 local rnfi far exceeds migration incomes 4 service sector rnfi far exceeds manufactures rnfi these findings suggest the need for more development program attention to wage employment in the service sector versus the traditional focus on small enterprise manufactures moreover poor households and zones tend to have higher shares in their incomes but lower absolute levels of rnfi as compared to richer households and zones the rnfe of the poor tend to be the low paid nonfarm equivalent of semi subsistence farming raising the capacity of the poor to participate in the better paid types of rnfe is crucial via employment skills training education infrastructure credit finally rnfe has grown fastest and been most poverty alleviating where there are dynamic growth motors in particular in the agricultural sector but also in tourism links to urban areas mining and forestry this means that developing rnf jobs cannot be done at the expense of programs promoting agricultural development

nonfarm employment and poverty in rural el salvador abstract this paper analyzes two complementary data sets to study poverty and the nonfarm sector in rural el salvador we find that rural poverty in el salvador remains acute and significantly higher than in urban areas while the rural poor are mainly agricultural laborers and marginal farmers some nonfarm activities are also of importance to the poor in fact nonfarm activities in el salvador account for a significant share of rural employment and income for both the poor and the nonpoor the poor on the one hand are engaged in last resort nonfarm activities that are not associated with high levels of labor productivity the nonpoor on the other are engaged in productive nonfarm activities which are likely to present a potent force for upward mobility significant correlates of these high productivity occupations include education infrastructure location and gender while most of the analysis is at the household level the data also permit some focus on small scale rural enterprise activities it appears that in el salvador very few rural enterprises report utilizing formal credit in setting up their activities in addition a significant proportion of enterprises are engaged in subcontracting arrangements with some larger often urban based firm

do better schools matter parental valuation of elementary education the evaluation of numerous school reforms requires an understanding of the value of better schools given the difficulty of calculating the relationship between school quality and student outcomes i turn to another method and use house prices to infer the value parents place on school quality i look within school districts at houses located on attendance district boundaries houses then differ only by the elementary school the child attends i thereby effectively remove the variation in neighborhoods taxes and school spending i find that parents are willing to pay 2 5 percent more for a 5 percent increase in test scores this finding is robust to a number of sensitivity checks

buying their votes a study of local tax price discrimination i introduction financial support for public schools in developed countries has recently been declining as governments face increasing pressure to balance their budgets by reducing expenditures on public services public school revenues may be particularly vulnerable in countries where elderly residents will compose a rising share of the population while the percent of united states residents over the age of 65 was 12 4 in 2000 the u s census bureau 2008 predicts this will rise to 16 3 by 2020 and 20 7 by 2050 recent growth in the upper middle aged population ages 55 64 has occurred throughout the united states and if current trends continue communities with the largest growth in the elderly share ages 65 and over over the next 30 years will experience this growth primarily due to aging in place rather than residential migration frey 2007 the typical school district will thus have an increasing share of adults who do not consume public schooling services this trend could have two important implications for school districts 1 decreased political support for school expenditures and 2 a greater tax base per student due to a reduction in the relative size of the school aged population if the former effect dominates the latter then local district revenues per student will decline this dynamic would be consistent with prior u s trends figlio and fletcher 2012 find that most of the within metropolitan area variation in suburbs age distributions in 1980 and 1990 can be traced back to these suburbs age distributions when adults settled there in earlier decades those authors simulate the shares of elderly adults residing in various suburbs based on the aging in place of early residents and their simulated elderly shares are negatively correlated with suburban school expenditures state or federal governments could potentially alter this dynamic by subsidizing local property tax reductions that are targeted toward elderly homeowners elderly homeowners receiving these reductions might support higher levels of local public school spending because they can maintain high property values at a relatively low cost in other words elderly homeowners preferred level of local tax revenues may be sensitive to their marginal local tax price the change in their tax payments required to increase local school district revenues by one dollar by influencing elderly homeowners preferred local tax rates targeted tax price reductions may shift the identity of the local median voter and thus moderate how changes in demographics affect local public revenue this article is the first to empirically examine whether targeted tax price reductions moderate the impact of age demographics on local government revenues prior studies examined how the aging in place of local populations affects public school revenues figlio and fletcher 2012 harris evans and schwab 2001 ladd and murray 2001 and this article tests whether there is important within sample heterogeneity in these effects using similar methods as these prior studies the empirical models below isolate the exogenous component of changes in local age demographics by using lagged population shares as instrumental variables predicting future age demographics to test for heterogeneous effects i assembled a longitudinal data set concerning states property tax reduction policies for elderly homeowners the results confirm earlier studies findings that exogenous increases in the fraction of elderly residents ages 65 and over on average decrease tax revenues in u s school districts however state financed reductions in elderly homeowners marginal local tax prices significantly reduce the negative effect of the local elderly population share this negative effect is only large in communities not offering any targeted local tax price reductions to elderly homeowners significant differences in the effects of the elderly share across state policy regimes are robust to several alternative empirical specifications including comparisons of school districts that are located near each other on opposite sides of state borders

credit market constraints consumption smoothing and the accumulation of durable production assets in low income countries investments in bullocks in india in this paper we formulate and estimate a finite horizon structural dynamic model of agricultural investment behavior that incorporates the major features of low income agricultural environments income uncertainty constraints on borrowing and rental markets and the use of investment assets to generate income and smooth consumption the model is fit to longitudinal indian household data on farm profits bullock stocks and pump sets the estimated structural parameters are used to assess the effects on the life cycle accumulation of bullocks agricultural profits and welfare associated with complete markets and bullock liquidity and with second best policies that provide assured sources of income to farmers and weather insurance

marketed surpluses of agricultural households in sierra leone an agricultural household model is used with household level data from sierra leone to estimate elasticities of marketed surplus for several outputs and for labor with respect to price and nonprice variables positive own price elasticities are found with magnitudes considerably above own price output elasticities changes in household characteristics and production technology also affect marketed surpluses but not always in anticipated directions elasticities are reported for households when grouped by their total expenditure not just for the sample mean the differences are important showing that low expenditure households respond as much as high expenditure households

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

why do households without children support local public schools linking house price capitalization to school spending while residents receive similar benefits from many local government programs only about one third of all households have children in public schools we argue that capitalization of school spending into house prices can encourage even childless residents to support spending on schools we identify a proxy for the extent of capitalization the supply of land available for new development and show that towns in massachusetts with little undeveloped land have larger changes in house prices in response to a plausibly exogenous spending shock towns with little available land also spend more on schools we extend these results using data from school districts in 46 states showing that per pupil spending is positively related to the percentage of developed land this positive correlation persists only in districts where the median resident is a homeowner and is stronger in districts with more elderly residents who do not use school services and have a shorter expected duration in their home our findings support models in which capitalization encourages the provision of durable local public goods and provides an additional reason why some elderly support local school spending

credit as insurance in agrarian economies abstract this paper examines consumption credit as an insurance mechanism in agrarian economies it explains the more rapid adoption of new technology in the green revolution by large farmers who had greater access to consumption credit the paper also demonstrates how the emergence and expansion of consumption credit markets by mitigating the need for hoarding in order to meet consumption contingencies enhances growth by encouraging investment

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

suburbanization demographic change and the consequences for school finance abstract the existing literature on the relationship between the share of elderly in a community and the support for local public education has led to mixed results to date one potential reason behind this is that the share of elderly in a community is endogenous and it is very difficult to disentangle the effects of individuals aging in place from that of dynamic tiebout sorting the point of this paper is to carefully document the degree to which aging in place has occurred in the american suburbs and to estimate the degree to which it has influenced school finance once the initial settlers of these suburbs were no longer the parents of school aged children we hand match data from the 1950 and 1960 censuses of population and housing to more recent data to link postwar suburban development to later school finance using a novel method for identifying the causal effects of aging in place we find that the percentage of elderly adults in a school district is negatively related to the level of support for public schooling and that this is particularly true for school districts in metropolitan areas where the school aged population is more heavily nonwhite relative to the elderly population

non renewable and intermittent renewable energy sources friends and foes abstract this paper studies the links between non renewable and intermittent renewable energy sources in the production of electricity using u s state level data from 1998 to 2015 we find that the relationship between the price of natural gas and investments in solar and wind capacity is non linear and can be represented by an inverted u shape hence for relatively low natural gas prices the two modes of production are substitutes after a price threshold is reached the two are complementary a theoretical explanation argues that this stylized fact is the result of a trade off between two characteristics of these modes of production the high degree of flexibility of electricity production using natural gas as an input and the low marginal cost of renewable energy sources

on measuring the benefits of lower transport costs despite large amounts invested in rural roads in developing countries little is known about their benefits this paper derives an expression for the willingness to pay for a reduction in transport costs from the canonical agricultural household model and uses it to estimate the benefits of a hypothetical road project estimation is based on novel cross sectional data collected in a small region of madagascar with enormous yet plausibly exogenous variation in transport cost a road that essentially eliminated transport costs in the study area would boost the incomes of the remotest households those facing transport costs of about usd 75 ton by nearly half mostly by raising non farm earnings this benefit estimate is contrasted to one based on a hedonic approach

efficient pricing and investment in electricity markets with intermittent resources facing growing technological and environmental challenges the electricity industry needs effective pricing mechanism to promote efficient risk management and investment decisions in a restructured electricity market with competitive wholesale prices and traditionally regulated retail rates however there are technical and institutional barriers that prevent dynamic pricing with price responsive demand in regions with limited energy storage capacity intermittent renewable resources present special challenges this could adversely affect the effectiveness of public policies causing inefficient investments in energy technologies in this paper we present an updated economic model of pricing and investment in restructured electricity market and use the model in a simulation study for an initial assessment of renewable energy strategy and alternative pricing mechanisms a key objective of the study is to shed light on the policy issues so that effective decisions can be made to improve efficiency

the last mile s in modern input distribution pricing profitability and adoption increasing adoption of modern inputs remains one of the best hopes for greater agricultural production in developing countries based on unique data from northwestern ethiopia this study examines the last mile s from the input distribution center to the farmer in the chemical fertilizer and improved seed distribution system we find that increasing transaction and transportation costs over a 35 km distance along a route mainly accessible to only foot traffic lead to a 50 increase of the price of chemical fertilizer and to a 75 reduction in its use farmers who live about 10 km from the distribution center face per unit transaction and transportation costs as high as the costs needed to bring the fertilizer from the international port to the input distribution center about 1 000 km tackling the last mile s costs should thus be a priority to improve modern input adoption and use in these settings

unpacking the meaning of market access evidence from rural kenya summary this paper critically examines the dimensions of market access using farm panel survey data from kenya we investigate changes in ten indicators of market access during the 1997 2010 post liberalization period we find major improvements in certain market access conditions and little change in others there is generally low correlation between alternative indicators of market access all purpose indicators may not accurately reflect specific market access conditions of interest distances to physical infrastructure are often not representative of farmers access to markets changes in specific market access conditions may have more to do with the behaviors of marketing agents we consider the implications of these findings for agricultural marketing policies and for research methods

accounting for fuel price risk when comparing renewable to gas fired generation the role of forward natural gas prices abstract unlike natural gas fired generation renewable generation e g from wind solar and geothermal power is largely immune to fuel price risk if ratepayers are rational and value long term price stability then contrary to common practice any comparison of the levelized cost of renewable to gas fired generation should be based on a hedged gas price input rather than an uncertain gas price forecast this paper compares natural gas prices that can be locked in through futures swaps and physical supply contracts to contemporaneous long term forecasts of spot gas prices we find that from 2000 to 2003 forward gas prices for terms of 2 10 years have been considerably higher than most contemporaneous long term gas price forecasts this difference is striking and implies that comparisons between renewable and gas fired generation based on these forecasts over this period have arguably yielded results that are biased in favor of gas fired generation

can deployment of renewable energy put downward pressure on natural gas prices abstract high and volatile natural gas prices have increasingly led to calls for investments in renewable energy one line of argument is that deployment of these resources may lead to reductions in the demand for and price of natural gas many recent us based modeling studies have demonstrated that this effect could provide significant consumer savings in this article we evaluate these studies and benchmark their findings against economic theory other modeling results and a limited empirical literature we find that many uncertainties remain regarding the absolute magnitude of this effect and that the reduction in natural gas prices may not represent an increase in aggregate economic wealth nonetheless we conclude that many of the studies of the impact of renewable energy on natural gas prices appear to have represented this effect within reason given current knowledge these studies specifically suggest that a 1 reduction in us natural gas demand could lead to long term average wellhead price reductions of 0 8 2 and that each megawatt hour of renewable energy may benefit natural gas consumers to the tune of at least 7 5 20

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

rural livelihood diversification in sub saharan africa a literature review abstractthis article provides a comprehensive review of the literature on the nature and evolution of rural livelihood diversification in sub saharan africa and the situation regarding smallholders it reveals mixed findings about the causes and consequences of livelihood diversification on rural smallholders adopting this strategy a lot of evidence from the literature suggests that it is relatively better off smallholders with sufficient assets who achieve successful livelihood diversification mainly by exploiting opportunities and synergies between farm and nonfarm activities because of asset constraints increase in incomes and wealth based on livelihood diversification has not yet benefitted the large majority of smallholders

interfuel substitution a meta analysis interfuel substitutability has been of longstanding interest to the energy economics and policy community however no quantitative meta analysis has yet been carried out of this literature this paper fills this gap by analyzing a broad sample of studies of interfuel substitution in the industrial sector manufacturing industry or subindustries or macro economy of a variety of developed and developing economies publication bias is controlled for by including the primary study sample size in the meta regression results for the shadow elasticities of substitution between coal oil gas and electricity for forty six primary studies show that at the level of the industrial sector there are easy substitution possibilities between all the fuel pairs with the exception of gas electricity and coal electricity substitution possibilities seem more constrained at the macro level and less constrained in sub industries estimates also vary across countries publication bias does not seem to be present but model and data specification issues very significantly affect the estimates derived by each individual study estimates from cross section regressions are generally largest fixed effects panel estimates intermediate in magnitude and time series estimates are mostly much smaller econometric research suggests that the fixed effects estimates are likely the best among the existing studies though biased downwards

rural nonfarm employment and incomes in the himalayas abstract nonfarm activities generate on average about 60 of rural households incomes in the himalayas this article analyzes the determinants of participation in nonfarm activities and of nonfarm incomes across rural households a unique data set collected in the himalayan region of india allows us to deal with the heterogeneity of rural nonfarm activities by using aggregations into categories that are useful both analytically and for policy purposes we conduct an empirical inquiry that reveals that education plays a major role in accessing more remunerative nonfarm employment other household assets and characteristics such as land social status and geographical location also play a role

education spending in an aging america abstract in this paper we use a national panel of public school districts to study the impact of an aging population on public education spending in contrast to previous analyses that use state level data we find that the elderly have only a modest overall negative effect on education spending at the district level our results confirm however that a growing share of elderly at the state level tends to depress state spending on education these results are consistent with the hypothesis that the elderly believe only higher local spending is capitalized into house values

agricultural transformation in africa assessing the evidence in ethiopia summary despite significant efforts africa has struggled to imitate the rapid agricultural growth that took place in asia in the 1960s and 1970s as a rare but important exception ethiopia s agriculture sector recorded remarkable rapid growth during 2004 14 this paper explores this rapid change in the agriculture sector of this important country the second most populous in africa we review the evidence on agricultural growth and decompose the contributions of modern inputs to growth using an adjusted solow decomposition model we also highlight the key pathways ethiopia followed to achieve its agricultural growth we find that land and labor use expanded significantly and total factor productivity grew by about 2 3 per year over the study period moreover modern input use more than doubled explaining some of this growth the expansion in modern input use appears to have been driven by high government expenditures on the agriculture sector including agricultural extension but also by an improved road network higher rural education levels and favorable international and local price incentives

persistence of innovation in dutch manufacturing is it spurious this paper studies the persistence of innovation and the dynamics of innovation output in dutch manufacturing using firm data from three waves of the community innovation surveys cis pertaining to the periods 1994 1996 1996 1998 and 1998 2000 we estimate by maximum likelihood a dynamic panel data type 2 tobit model accounting for individual effects and handling the initial conditions problem we find that there is no evidence of true persistence in achieving technological product or process innovations while past shares of innovative sales condition albeit to a small extent current shares of innovative sales

returns to investment in less favored areas in developing countries a synthesis of evidence and implications for africa abstract a large proportion of world s population lives in marginal or less favored areas these areas are of home to the poorest segment of the population particularly in rural areas in the past government has targeted their resources mostly to the high potential or irrigated areas these investments have generated rapid growth in agricultural production for example the so called green revolution in south and southeast asia in the 1970s and 1980s which in turn has helped to alleviate rural and urban poverty however as investments continue to increase in these favored areas their marginal returns have begun to decline and environmental problems are emerging evidence shows that it is in the marginal areas or less favored areas where many investments may have higher returns today these investments may have even larger impacts on poverty reduction and environmental protection as poor people are increasingly concentrated in the marginal areas where natural resources have already been severely degraded this study synthesizes some recent studies from india and china on the relative returns to investments in favored and less favored areas and presents some preliminary evidence from uganda and offers some policy implications for africa on how governments and international donors can reprioritize their investment portfolio in order to achieve multiple goals of growth poverty reduction and environmental protection

wealth weather risk and the composition and profitability of agricultural investments despite the growing evidence that farmers in low income environments are risk averse there has been little empirical evidence on the importance of risk in shaping the actual allocation of production resources among farmers differentiated by wealth the authors use panel data on investments in rural india to examine how the composition of productive and nonproductive asset holdings varies across farmers with different levels of total wealth and across farmers facing different degrees of weather risk income variability is a prominent feature of the experience of rural agents in low income countries the authors report evidence based on measures of rainfall variability that the agricultural investment portfolio behavior of farmers in such settings reflects risk aversion due evidently to limitations on consumption soothing mechanisms such as crop insurance or credit markets the authors results suggest that uninsured weather risk is a significant cause of lower efficiency and lower average incomes a one standard deviation decrease in weather risk measured by the standard deviation of the timing of the rainy season would raise average profits by up to 35 percent among farmers in the lowest wealth quartile moreover rainfall variability induces a more unequal distribution of average incomes for a given distribution of wealth wealthier farmers are willing to absorb significant risk without giving up profits to reduce production risk smaller farmers have to invest their limited wealth in ways that reduce their exposure to risk at the cost of lower profit rates the authors found that at high levels of rainfall variability differences in rates of profit per unit of agricultural assets were similar across classes of wealth but over the sample range of rainfall variability these rates of profit were always higher for the poorer farmers than for the wealthier ones suggesting that the disadvantages of small farmers in risk diffusion are more than offset by their labor cost advantage

intergenerational conflict and the political economy of school spending abstract in this paper we use survey data to examine support among voters from different age cohorts for public school spending the survey asked potential voters in california how they intended to vote on two initiatives one a statewide initiative that would increase spending on public schools throughout the state and the other a local initiative that would increase spending only in the respondent s local school district we find that support for school spending generally declines with age but that older voters are more willing to support local spending on schools than state spending we examine two explanations for this voting pattern the capitalization of local spending into housing values and intergenerational altruism our results do not strongly favor one explanation over the other suggesting that both factors probably play important roles in sustaining support among older voters for local school spending

determinants and effects of income diversification amongst farm households in burkina faso using four years of household data from three agroecological zones in burkina faso sahelian sudanian and guinean the article examines the determinants and effects of household income diversification harvest shortfalls and terms of trade are found to drive diversification but land constraints do not income diversification is associated with higher incomes and food consumption and more stable income and consumption over years

isolation and agricultural productivity this article examines the mechanisms that transmit isolation into productivity in particular we study the effect of isolation and transport infrastructure on welfare and agricultural productivity in the case of madagascar madagascar is a good case study given the bad shape of its infrastructure and therefore the significant variation in isolation based on comprehensive household survey data combined with a census of communes we discover a strong poverty isolation relationship further we find the inverse relationship between agricultural productivity and isolation to be surprisingly strong we isolate the following reasons why productivity might decline with isolation i transportation induced transaction costs ii the inverse relationship between plot size and productivity iii increasing price variability and extensification onto less fertile land and iv insecurity

the impact of agricultural extension and roads on poverty and consumption growth in fifteen ethiopian villages this article investigates whether public investments that led to improvements in road quality and increased access to agricultural extension services led to faster consumption growth and lower rates of poverty in rural ethiopia estimating an instrumental variables model using generalized methods of moments and controlling for household fixed effects we find evidence of positive impacts with meaningful magnitudes receiving at least one extension visit reduces headcount poverty by 9 8 percentage points and increases consumption growth by 7 1 percentage points access to all weather roads reduces poverty by 6 9 percentage points and increases consumption growth by 16 3 percentage points these results are robust to changes in model specification and estimation methods

determinants of income diversification amongst rural households in southern mali abstract household level panel data from a representative sample of rural households in southern mali describing the different sources of household income are used to examine the determinants of income diversification a conditional fixed effects logit model is employed in the analysis to control for household specific effects we find evidence that poorer households have fewer opportunities in non cropping activities such as livestock rearing and non farm work and hence less diversified incomes this appears to reflect their relative lack of capital which makes it difficult for them to diversify away from subsistence agriculture the results also indicate that households in remote areas are less likely to participate in the non cropping sector than their counterparts closer to local markets while households with educated heads are more likely to participate in the non farm sector than those with illiterate heads the significance of entry constraints in explaining portfolio diversification suggests that the role of government in making assets as well as improved infrastructure available to poorer households is still essential in promoting income diversification

transport costs and smallholder cropping choices an application to siaya district kenya smallholders regularly devote shares of resources to low yielding food crops than they do to cash crops that have higher market returns in this paper costly exchange is incorporated into an agricultural household model and a numerical nonseparable version of the model is used to show that seemingly inefficient cropping choices of this type in siaya district kenya can be explained as rational food import substitution given high transport costs in product markets improved rural road networks that reduce these costs could abate motives to meet food needs through domestic production and promote specialization that raises farm incomes

the global bio economy throughout history agriculture and natural resources have been used for the production of food feed fibre fuel and environmental goods recent developments in demand both in terms of quantity and quality technology and traditional energy and chemistry markets have reinforced the demand for nonfood applications these developments in combination with increased consumer demands for various food characteristics have led to a rapidly growing and globally integrated bio economy this article introduces and summarizes the plenary papers on the opportunities and challenges for the bio economy that were presented at the 28th triennial conference of the international association of agricultural economists iaae in brazil the following aspects of the bio economy are covered finance volatility poverty conflict productivity investment resource constraints and governance

livelihood strategies and dynamics in rural cambodia summary this paper addresses one of the major challenges in rural livelihood analysis to quantitatively examine the dynamics of household livelihood strategies it investigates the interactions between livelihood assets activities and outcomes and captures the dynamics of long term changes and their underlying factors the study aims to identify the classification of rural livelihood strategies their transitions and factors influencing these processes and changes we employ the dynamic livelihood strategy framework and use panel data for 2008 and 2012 covering 464 households in 15 villages in cambodia for latent class cluster analysis and regression estimation in this paper livelihood strategies are quantified based on allocation of available resources which overcomes the limitations of income based analysis our study identifies five household livelihood strategies pursued in the study areas and the results show that over 70 of households change livelihood strategies over time in response to evolving pressures incentives and opportunities the study identifies covariates that shape the choices of livelihood strategies and affects the households access to more remunerative strategies such as education ownership of physical assets and access to infrastructure these findings suggest policy implications for improving the range of livelihood choices available to lower income groups to move out of poverty trap

neighbors and extension agents in ethiopia who matters more for technology adoption improving agricultural productivity is seen as vital to economic growth in poor countries particularly in sub saharan africa where productivity growth has lagged behind that of other continents the focus has therefore been on new technologies particularly the adoption and diffusion of improved seed varieties and the increased use of fertiliser supported by investments in effective extension services it is important to understand how these new technologies spread and the effectiveness of extension services in this process

income portfolios in rural ethiopia and tanzania choices and constraints the article analyses the different income portfolios of households using survey data from rural ethiopia and rural tanzania it suggests that the different portfolios held by households cannot be e

nonfarm employment and rural welfare evidence from the himalayas the potential importance of nonfarm employment for the welfare of rural households has long been recognized but whether the nonfarm sector offers prospects for improving the welfare of the rural poor remains a contentious issue we examine distributional and well being effects of nonfarm employment of rural households in the himalayas we account for heterogeneity of nonfarm employment and estimate a system of structural equations to better understand the causal linkages between nonfarm employment and household well being the results confirm that disaggregating nonfarm employment activities matters for understanding the relationship between nonfarm employment and rural welfare while low return nonfarm employment is associated with lower income inequality high return nonfarm activities have a disequalizing effect on the distribution of household incomes we also find that the ability to engage in high return nonfarm activities is associated with higher economic well being poor households on the other hand tend to rely on low return activities that do not contribute to improved well being

supermodularity and complementarity in economics an elementary survey the literature on supermodular optimization and games is surveyed from the perspective of potential users in economics this methodology provides a new approach for comparative statics based only on critical assumptions and allows a general analysis of games with strategic complementarities the results are presented in a simplified yet rigourous manner without reference to lattice theory for the special case of one dimensional parameter and actions sets with the emphasis being on wide accessibility detailed applications are presented for well known models of consumer behavior monopoly pass through bertrand and cournot competition strategic r d search and matching wherever appropriate useful tricks for applications and comparative comments are inserted

public policy influence on renewable energy investments a panel data study across oecd countries this paper examines the impact of public policy measures on renewable energy re investments in electricity generating capacity made by institutional investors using a novel combination of datasets and a longitudinal research design we investigate the influence of different policy measures in a sample of oecd countries to suggest an effective policy mix which could tackle failures in the market for clean energy the results call for technology specific policies which take into account actual market conditions and technology maturity to improve the conditions for institutional investments advisable policy instruments include economic and fiscal incentives such as feed in tariffs fit especially for less mature technologies additionally market based instruments such as greenhouse gas ghg emission trading systems for mature technologies should be included these policy measures directly impact the risk and return structure of re projects supplementing these with regulatory measures such as codes and standards e g rps and long term strategic planning could further strengthen the context for re investments

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

wind power development in the united states abstract this paper analyzes the drivers of wind power development in the united states focusing on government renewable energy incentives and access to the electricity grid the effects of wind capacity electricity transmission line coverage and grid regulation as well as state and federal subsidies from 1998 to 2007 are estimated via random effects tobit probit and ordinary least squares instrumental variables regression the results indicate that the federal production tax credit state level sales tax credit and production incentives play an important role in promoting wind power in addition higher wind power penetration levels can be achieved by bringing more parts of the electricity transmission grid under independent system operator regulation this paper concludes that state and federal government policies play a significant role in wind power development both by providing financial support and by improving physical and procedural access to the electricity grid

intergenerational conflict and the political economy of higher education funding abstract we examine how a population s age distribution and a growing divide between the ethnic composition of older and young generations is likely to affect support for higher education funding using detailed survey data on voter preferences for higher education funding and precinct level vote returns from locally funded community college bond referenda in california we find that older voters are significantly less supportive of higher education funding than younger voters and that support among older non hispanic white voters is particularly weak when those voters reside in a jurisdiction where the college age population is more heavily hispanic

smuggling and supply response coffee in ethiopia abstract during the 1980s substantial smuggling of coffee has been taking place in ethiopia the recent devaluation has raised hopes that substantial quantities of coffee will flow back to the official channels in this study data on the incentives to supply to the different channels are collated a model of official supplies is formulated which nests an empirical test between the smuggling models by bhagwati and hansen 1973 and by pitt 1981 the econometric results favor the latter and show a small but significant effect of the premium in the black market and a positive total supply response relative to the main competing crop chat the results imply that the increases in export earnings from the devaluation will be quite limited

has rural infrastructure rehabilitation in georgia helped the poor this article proposes a research strategy to deal with the scarcity of data on beneficiaries for conducting impact assessments of community level projects community level panel data from a regular household survey augmented with a special community module are used to measure the impact of projects propensity score matched difference in difference comparisons are used to control for time invariant unobservable factors this methodology takes into consideration the purposeful placement of projects and their interactions at the community level this empirical approach is applied to infrastructure rehabilitation projects for schools roads and water supply systems in rural georgia between 1998 and 2001 the analysis produces plausible results regarding the size of welfare gains from a particular project at the village level and allows for differentiation of benefits between the poor and the non poor the findings of this study can contribute to evaluations of the impact of infrastructure interventions on poverty by bringing new empirical evidence to bear on the welfare and equity implications

diet transformation in africa the case of ethiopia africa s food systems are changing fast amid rapid economic growth emerging urbanization and structural transformation in this study we use four rounds of nationally representative data from ethiopia to document changes in household food consumption patterns over a period of unprecedented economic growth we find that while the share of food in the total consumption basket is declining food quantities and calorie intakes have considerably increased between 1996 and 2011 a decomposition analysis suggests that this was mostly driven by improvements in household incomes a finding that is consistent across the calorie distribution also the content of the food basket is changing with a gradual shift toward high value foods such as animal products fruits and vegetables and processed foods overall this diet transformation has important implications for the food security debate and for agricultural and food policy in the country

investment and abandonment behavior of rural households an empirical investigation this article uses models of irreversible investment under uncertainty to examine the investment and abandonment behavior of poor rural households it considers the decision of ugandan coffee farming households to invest in or abandon coffee trees the observed levels of investment and abandonment are found to be consistent with models of investment that allow for irreversibility uncertainty fixed costs and liquidity constraints the findings highlight the importance of addressing volatility irreversibility fixed costs and liquidity constraints in order to increase households responsiveness to changes in the fundamentals and to enable households to recover from shocks to their capital stock