introduction imperfect information and rural credit markets puzzles and policy perspectives rural credit markets have been at the center of policy intervention in developing countries over the past forty years many governments supported by multilateral and bilateral aid agencies have devoted considerable resources to supplying cheap credit to farmers in a myriad of institutional settings the results of many of these interventions have been disappointing and one explanation for this must be that they were based on an inadequate understanding of the workings of rural credit markets the articles in this symposium issue are devoted to empirical and theoretical investigations of rural credit markets in the framework of the imperfect information paradigm the authors show how this framework is useful not only in explaining puzzling features of these markets but also in providing a policy perspective to assess the successes and failures of specific interventions

does microcredit increase household welfare in the absence of microinsurance summary this study answers the question does a combination of microcredit and microinsurance improve the wellbeing of low income households we examine this challenge through heckman sample selection instrumental variable and treatment effect models the findings indicate that households using microcredit in combination with microinsurance derive significant gains in terms of welfare improvement microcredit may be good but its benefit to the poor is enhanced and sustained if the poverty trapping risks are covered with microinsurance to this extent combining microcredit with microinsurance will empower the poor to make a sustainable exit from poverty

hearing the voices of the poor assigning poverty lines on the basis of local perceptions of poverty a quantitative analysis of qualitative data from participatory wealth ranking in rural south africa summary we applied a mixed methods approach to participatory wealth ranking pwr to identify the number of poor households in eight villages of rural south africa and describe how poor they are we generated a household wealth index on the basis of the ranking process and statements made on standard of living descriptions from pwr identified households as very poor poor but a bit better off or doing ok of 9 671 households 3 113 32 2 could be considered very poor or poor the paper presents a novel approach to wealth ranking that generates a rich appraisal of poverty

does microfinance reduce poverty in bangladesh new evidence from household panel data abstract the study examines whether loans from microfinance institutions mfi reduce poverty in bangladesh drawing upon the nationally representative household panel with four rounds from 1997 to 2004 the effects of general microfinance loans and loans for productive purposes on income food consumption and women s body mass index are estimated overall effects of mfi loans on income and food consumption were positive and the purpose of the loan is important in predicting which household welfare indicator is improved alternative estimation methods confirm a positive impact of mfi loans on food consumption growth which supports the poverty reducing effects of microfinance in bangladesh

enhancing market power by reducing switching costs a proportional decrease in switching costs increases competition and social welfare however a lump sum decrease in switching costs softens competition and does not invariably increase social welfare

microfinance and poverty evidence using panel data from bangladesh micro finance supports mainly informal activities that often have low market demand it may be thus hypothesized that the aggregate poverty impact of micro finance in an economy with low economic growth is modest or nonexistent the observed borrower level poverty impact is then a result of income redistribution or short run income generation the author addresses these questions using household level panel data from bangladesh the findings confirm that micro finance benefits the poorest and has sustained impact in reducing poverty among program participants it also has positive spillover impact reducing poverty at the village level but the effect is more pronounced in reducing extreme rather than moderate poverty

female headed households and female maintained families are they worth targeting to reduce poverty in developing countries controversy exists over whether to target public and private sector programs to female headed households in developing countries in the attempt to combat poverty and social disadvantage the issues related to the definition and measurement of female headship and the importance of the concept for development policy are discussed a systematic review is then presented of the empirical evidence on the relation between female headship and poverty if female headed households tend to be poorer on average than other households headship should seriously be considered as a potentially useful criterion for targeting antipoverty interventions especially in developing countries where means testing is not feasible the authors examine the potential costs and benefits of targeting female headship and review the experience of chile one of the few countries which has targeted female headship through government intervention and the only one which has evaluation data available the analysis of the project experience is used along with a review of the empirical evidence to answer the question of the desirability and efficiency of targeting female headship in order to reduce poverty in developing countries

on measuring child costs with applications to poor countries the theoretical basis for measuring child costs is discussed and detailed consideration is given to two straightforward procedures for calculation engel s food share method and rothbarth s adult good method each of these methods embodies different definitions of child costs so that the same empirical evidence can generate quite different estimates depending on the method used it is shown that true costs are generally overstated by engel s method and understated by rothbarth s procedure although the latter unlike the former can provide a sensible starting point for cost measurement our estimates from sri lankan and indonesian data suggest that children cost their parents about 30 40 percent of what they spend on themselves

collective action initiatives to improve marketing performance lessons from farmer groups in tanzania this study aims to examine the extent to which certain characteristics and asset endowments of smallholder farmer groups facilitate collective action initiatives to improve group marketing performance this is approached through an evaluation of a government led programme in tanzania which is attempting to increase smallholder farmers incomes and food security through a market oriented intervention findings suggest that more mature groups with strong internal institutions functioning group activities and a good asset base of natural capital are more likely to improve their market situation gender composition of groups also affects group marketing performance as an enabling factor for male dominated groups structural social capital in the form of membership in other groups and ties to external service providers and cognitive social capital in the form of intra group trust and altruistic behaviour are not significant factors in a group s ability to improve its market situation

microfinance and poverty a macro perspective we test the hypothesis that microfinance reduces poverty at the macro level using cross country and panel data which are constructed by the microfinance information exchange data on microfinance institutions mfis and the world bank data taking account of the endogeneity associated with mfis loans we show that a country with higher mfis gross loan portfolio per capita tends to have lower levels of poverty indices contrary to recent micro evidence our results suggest that microfinance significantly reduces poverty at macro level and thus reinforce the case for channeling funds from development finance institutions and governments of developing countries into mfis

measuring poverty using qualitative perceptions of consumption adequacy we show that subjective poverty lines can be derived using simple qualitative assessments of perceived consumption adequacy based on a household survey we implement the method using survey data for jamaica and nepal respondents were asked whether their consumptions of food housing and clothing were adequate for their family s needs the implied poverty lines are robust to alternative methods of dealing with other components of expenditure the aggregate poverty rates accord quite closely with those based on independent objective poverty lines however there are notable differences in the geographic and demographic poverty profiles

microfinance and poverty in bolivia both in its institutional range and in its penetration of financial markets the microfinance sector in bolivia rivals any in the world and has played a major part in extracting the macro economy from meltdown since the mid 1980s we seek specifically to assess its impact on poverty and do this through small sample surveys on four microfinance institutions two urban and two rural using a range of poverty concepts income generated both through the borrower s enterprise and through the labour market asset holdings and diversity and various measures of vulnerability all the institutions studied had on balance positive impacts on income and asset levels with income impacts correlating negatively with income on account of poor households choosing to invest in low risk low return assets microfinance may however augment vulnerability average debt service ratios of microfinance clients are disturbingly high and if the coping mechanisms used by borrowers fail borrowers may be forced out of the

how well do static indicators identify the chronically poor abstract we investigate how well the most widely used static welfare indicators perform in identifying the chronically poor we propose a normative measure of performance the cost of a given impact on chronic poverty when transfers are contingent upon a purely static indicator using longitudinal household data from rural india we find that current consumption is not always a better indicator of chronic poverty than current income both however perform much better than other common indicators such as food share and access to land

common property institutions and sustainable governance of resources abstract the literature on common property based resource management comprises many important studies that seek to specify the conditions under which groups of users will self organize and sustainably govern resources upon which they depend using three of the more comprehensive such studies and with an extensive review of writings on the commons this paper demonstrates that the enterprise of generating lists of conditions under which commons are governed sustainably is a flawed and impossibly costly research task for a way out the paper examines the relative merits of statistical comparative and case study approaches to studying the commons it ends with a plea for careful research design and sample selection construction of causal mechanisms and a shift toward comparative and statistical rather than single case analyses such steps are necessary for a coherent empirically relevant theory of the commons

socioeconomic stratification by wealth ranking is it valid abstract this paper validates a rapid rural appraisal wealth ranking technique using standard socioeconomic indicators from a household survey in rural bangladesh key informants stratified 1 637 households into three wealth groups according to a number of broad criteria and a questionnaire was subsequently administered to each household health demographic and economic variables derived from the questionnaire were found to differ significantly according to wealth group analysis supports the construct validity and empirical validity of the wealth ranking technique as a means of stratifying households by socioeconomic status the requirements for external validity as assessed through the comparison of findings with similar studies elsewhere in south asia are also satisfied

a policy agenda for pro poor agricultural growth abstract sub saharan africa and parts of south asia are likely to hold large numbers of very poor rural people into the foreseeable future although both history and theory suggest a pre eminent role for agricultural growth in poverty reduction in poor agrarian economies such growth today faces new difficulties many of these difficulties are endogenous to today s poor rural areas others result from broader processes of global change but some are due to changes in the dominant policy environment emphasizing liberalization and state withdrawal examination of 20th century green revolutions suggests that active state interventions were important in supporting critical stages of agricultural market development unfortunately such interventions benefits in institutional development are easily overlooked whereas their high costs are much more visible policy implications are discussed

reaching the poor cash transfer program targeting in cameroon identifying and selecting poor households with efficient targeting methods is essential for effective poverty alleviation programs this paper assesses the ex post performance of two popular targeting mechanisms proxy means testing pmt and community based targeting cbt in a pilot cash transfer program in cameroon several indicators and metrics to measure each method s performance in terms of inclusion of poor households and exclusion of non poor households are employed results consistently show that cbt performs poorly in terms of selecting households with low per capita consumption when compared to pmt cbt appears to select households with low physical and human capital regardless of actual consumption level however cbt also shows more variability in the selection decision than pmt even when alternative poverty definitions are used as robustness tests the pmt method used in the pilot slightly outperforms other targeting methods hybrid alternative pmt and universal targeting with equal budget but errors remain high when selecting 35 of the population for program participation the results suggest caution is needed in employing cbt methods to select households with low per capita consumption in an environment where poverty levels are high and administrative capacities are limited cbt performance may be improved through more uniform and consistent guidance on program selection criteria and process including explicit criteria that enable cbt monitoring as well as a better integration between pmt and cbt

the empire strikes back the evolution of the eastern bloc from a soviet asset to a soviet liability the structure of the soviet bloc would appear to be ideal for the maximization of soviet domestic and foreign interests the actual ledger of soviet gains and losses from control over eastern europe however reveals a different picture over the postwar period eastern european contributions to soviet national security economic growth and domestic stability have declined this decline in the value of empire to the soviets is a function of three factors the first is growing regime society tensions in eastern europe as a result of east europe s dependence on the soviet union and the derivative structures of its stalinist political economies the second is the soviet role within the bloc as a political and economic monopoly and monopsony and the third is the unexpected costs both to the soviet union and to eastern europe that attended the bloc s reunion in the early 1970s with a global capitalist system in crisis

moving from the stock of social capital to the flow of benefits the role of agency abstract comparing results for 60 villages in rajasthan india it is seen that having a high level of social capital does not always help to achieve high development performance stocks of social capital need to be drawn upon actively and capable agency is necessary in addition to high social capital locally relevant scales of development performance and social capital are devised for making this comparison variables corresponding to other bodies of explanation including extent of commercialization relative stratification and relative need are also examined but a combination of high social capital and capable agency is found to be associated most closely with high development performance

wealth based trust and the development of collective action interpersonal trust is one possible mechanism by which wealth inequality affects the success of efforts in cooperation specifically the presence of perceived economic differences between members of small agricultural cooperatives in northwest ecuador s agricultural frontier encourages trust in the wealthy thus facilitating co op development during the initial stage of cooperative formation but such inequality and exclusive trust may later negatively affect co op success these generalizations are only possible through refinement of frameworks currently used in the study of heterogeneity and common pool resource management this refinement is made possible by paying closer attention to the operationalization of variables and by synthesizing already existing hypotheses

testing a social safety net abstract standard benefit incidence analysis does not distinguish policy impacts on persistent poverty from transient poverty we offer an alternative approach based on actual and simulated joint distributions of consumption over time which allows us to distinguish the extent of protection against poverty from promotion out of poverty the approach is illustrated by an analysis of the distributional impact of changes in cash benefits introduced to compensate for other policy reforms in hungary cash benefits protected many from poverty but promoted few out of poverty the safety net s impact on poverty was largely due to higher average outlays rather than improved targeting

gender poverty and deprivation evidence from the republic of guinea the article examines the relationship between gender and consumption poverty and between gender and deprivation in the republic of guinea national household survey data reveal that women are not more likely than men to be consumption poor or to suffer greater consumption poverty participatory poverty assessment data from the village of kamatiguia reveal that women are worse off than men when deprivation includes inter alia excessive work load and reduced decision making authority when consumption poverty poorly correlates with other dimensions of deprivation it should not be the sole guide for equity based policy intervention

identifying the poor in developing countries do different definitions matter abstract this paper compares several commonly used definitions of poverty household survey data from cote d ivoire are examined to see whether different definitions choose the same people as poor we find that they often do not choose the same people even though we a priori set all the definitions so that 30 of the population is classified as poor this implies that different definitions of poverty may lead to different policy recommendations which suggests that more attention should be given to the choice of a particular definition of poverty when analyzing the effects of economic policies on the poor

cmea effective but cumbersome political economy the council for mutual economic assistance is primarily a forum for bilateral bargaining between the soviet union and each of the other cmea countries the bilateral negotiations are conducted with tremendous concern for soviet long term preferences and for the short term economic political stability of east european countries the cmea provides the soviet union with an effective but cumbersome politico economic policy making apparatus that is becoming less effective and increasingly cumbersome over time from the east european perspective the cmea tends to solidify the positions of the east european leaders yet generate long term economic costs what are the preferences upon which the cmea is constructed how are cmea characteristics related to these preferences what are the economic costs and benefits to member countries in static and dynamic terms why have costs for all member countries risen over time how is intra cmea trade likely to change during the next decade

high noon for microfinance impact evaluations re investigating the evidence from bangladesh recently microfinance has come under increasing criticism raising questions of the validity of iconic studies which have justified it such as pitt and khandker chemin applied propensity score matching to the pitt and khandker data finding different impacts but does not disaggregate by gender of borrower we first replicate chemin and extend his analysis in two ways we test the robustness of propensity score matching results to selection on unobservables using sensitivity analysis and we investigate propensity score matching estimates of impacts by gender of borrowers the mainly insignificant impacts of microfinance differ greatly by gender of borrower but are all vulnerable to selection on unobservables we are therefore not convinced that the relationships between microfinance and outcomes are causal with these data

defense spending economic structure and growth evidence among countries and over time there is no way of telling from economic theory whether a greater military effort will slow down or accelerate output growth the results of a single empirical study have been used to support the widely held belief that in poor countries a high share of defense in gdp is associated with a high growth rate this paper shows that as is often the case such conventional wisdom is wrong across countries a greater defense burden is associated with slower growth in a regression equation estimated for 69 countries over some or all of the period 1952 70 an increase of 10 percentage points in the defense burden share of defense in gdp leads to a reduction of annual growth by 0 13 a nontrivial loss as we discuss in detail below growth retardation to approximately the same extent also is recorded in regional regression estimates though precise coefficients differ from area to area besides slowing the growth rate a changing defense burden has other macroeconomic effects for the same sample of countries and time period increases in military spending are associated with lower saving and investment shares in gdp a greater tax burden and a shift in economic activity from agriculture including food production toward the manufacturing sector when estimated econometrically the extent to which defense spending replaces investment is consistent in magnitude with the growth rate reductions mentioned above in describing these results more thoroughly in section i we review informally the channels through which arms spending can affect the growth rate and present a simple formal model in section ii the resulting reduced form equation is estimated empirically in section iii with the findings summarized above to measure other effects of military outlays on the economic structure we go on in section iv to incorporate the defense burden into the regression equations and data

interpreting changes from the 1970s to the 1990s in african agriculture through village studies abstract assessments of the performance of agriculture in sub saharan africa are typically based on official production statistics at national level between the early 1970s and the mid 1990s these often show alarmingly poor rates of growth but there are good reasons to doubt the statistics and their interpretation an alternative is to examine the record from the village level upward this paper looks at the evidence from 26 case studies of change between the mid 1970s and the mid 1980s at the district or village level these suggest less cause for alarm than the national statistics they confirm that access to markets is essential for agricultural development the single biggest idea in the policy reforms of the 1980s but they also underline the importance of the detail of policy in remedying failures in product capital and insurance markets and in public investment in technology

microfinance and household poverty reduction new evidence from india the objective of the present study is to examine whether household access to microfinance reduces poverty using national household data from india treatment effects model is employed to estimate the poverty reducing effects of micro finance institutions mfis loans for productive purposes such as investment in agriculture or non farm businesses on household poverty levels these models take into account the endogenous binary treatment effects and sample selection bias associated with access to mfis despite some limitations such as those arising from potential unobservable important determinants of access to mfis significant positive effect of mfi productive loans on multidimensional welfare indicator has been confirmed the significance of treatment effects coefficients has been verified by both tobit and propensity score matching psm models in addition we found that loans for productive purposes were more important for poverty reduction in rural than in urban areas however in urban areas simple access to mfis has larger average poverty reducing effects than the access to loans from mfis for productive purposes this leads to exploring service delivery opportunities that provide an additional avenue to monitor the usage of loans to enhance the outreach

are the welfare losses from imperfect targeting important we quantify and compare the size of the welfare losses arising from the use of alternative imperfect welfare indicators as substitutes for the conventionally preferred consumption indicator we find that the size of the welfare losses associated with different indicators varies considerably an asset based index and the share of food as targeting indicators were found to have the highest welfare losses relative to all other targeting indicators examined our preferred welfare index implies that the losses from the two best targeting indicators i e reported expenditures and reported income are statistically significant but very low less than 5

a poverty oriented cost benefit approach to the analysis of development projects abstract this essay presents a form of cost benefit analysis where benefits are defined in terms of contributions to basic human capabilities this capabilities approach to project analysis is contrasted with the us agency for international development s logical framework approach the world bank s economic cost benefit approach and distributionally sensitive economic cost benefit analysis i argue that international development agencies concessional resource transfers could contribute more to the well being of the world s poor if guided by this cost benefit approach than they do under current arrangements the notion of capabilities as fundamental requirements for well being has been developed by amartya sen

external ambition and economic performance realist approaches to international politics raise the possibility that external policies based on expanding military power may undermine the economic bases of that power the links between external strategy and economic performance can be classified as fiscal macroeconomic effects structural microeconomic and structural effects and protectionist effects on foreign economic policy the case of prewar japan suggests that for countries at an intermediate position in the international power hierarchy and in the international division of labor the positive effects of external ambition on economic performance may dominate other cases national socialist germany contemporary developing countries and the postwar superpowers seem to confirm that international position is a principal determinant of these effects

a little at a time the use of regularly scheduled repayments in microfinance programs abstract informal lenders appear to be thriving even in regions where microfinance institutions mfis such as the grameen bank have established lending programs we suggest that an explanation for this well documented observation lies in the ubiquitous use of regularly scheduled repayments by mfis borrowers are typically required to repay their loans in tightly structured installments beginning soon after loan disbursement this little remarked aspect of the repayment schedule is usually explained as inculcating fiscal discipline among borrowers we argue that an alternative rationale for this loan repayment structure lies in the difficulty of monitoring borrowers actions the potential for moral hazard leads mfis to use innovative mechanisms such as regularly scheduled repayments which indirectly coopt the better informed informal lenders conversely this installment repayment structure allows informal lenders to survive further we show that this linkage can not only expand the volume of informal lending but may also raise the interest rate in the informal sector

traditional wealth modern goods and demographic behavior in rural senegal summary the study investigates the relationships of demographic indicators fertility mortality marriage education with modern and traditional wealth in rural senegal data were based on rural households interviewed in the 2011 dhs survey an absolute wealth index was computed from a list of 15 modern goods a traditional wealth index was computed from data on land and livestock per capita modern wealth was always associated with modern demographic behavior lower fertility lower mortality higher age at marriage higher level of education whereas traditional wealth was not associated with fertility and mortality and was negatively associated with marriage and education

the impact of agricultural extension on farm production in resettlement areas of zimbabwe in this paper we revisit the contested issue of the impact of agricultural extension on farm production we exploit two features of the data available to us its longitudinal nature and explicit measures of farmer ability we find that after controlling for innate productivity characteristics and farmer ability either using household fixed effects estimation or by including a measure of farmer ability and village fixed effects access to agricultural extension services defined as receiving one or two visits per agricultural year raises the value of crop production by about 15 per cent this parameter estimate is statistically significant however we also find variability in these parameter estimates across individual crop years with the impact being markedly different in drought and non drought years collectively these results suggest that although access to farm level extension visits does increase productivity even after controlling for innate productivity characteristics and farmer ability results from single year cross sectional studies should be treated with caution

revisiting forever gained income dynamics in the resettlement areas of zimbabwe 1983 96 this study examines income dynamics for a panel of households resettled on former white owned farms in the aftermath of zimbabwe s independence there are four core findings i over a 13 year period 1983 96 there has been an impressive accumulation of assets and a dramatic increase of crop incomes ii the rise of crop incomes is partly due to asset accumulation but largely to increased asset returns hi differences between households in initial conditions such as previous farming experience have few persistent effects and iv income growth has been widely shared income inequality has fallen sharply and the largest percentage increases in incomes are recorded by households that initially had the lowest incomes

private investment in higher education comparing alternative funding schemes this paper uses an overlapping generations framework to analyse the implications of different financing regimes in the education sector for human capital formation and economic welfare agents privately invest in education after they have received a noisy information signal about their abilities the incentives of individuals to invest in education are determined by the financing regime under which the economy operates we analyse and compare three financing regimes under each regime the payback obligation of an educational loan is contingent to some extent on an individual s future income

social welfare orderings a life cycle perspective life cycle theories emphasize the fact that consumption is allocated intertemporally on the basis of a long term concept of resources that differs from household income because life cycle income is unobserved the distribution of this variable cannot be recovered it is shown that within a suitably defined class a predictor of life cycle income based on household income and expenditure entails a distribution dominated in a social welfare sense by the distribution of life cycle incomes a predictor constructed from socio demographic variables induces a distribution that welfare dominates the distribution of life cycle incomes

ex ante actions and ex post public responses to drought shocks evidence and simulations from zimbabwe abstract the study examines the consequences of alternative public responses to drought shocks it does so by drawing on household data from resettlement areas of rural zimbabwe from 1992 93 to 1995 96 and the estimation of four behavioral relations the determinants of crop income the determinants of investment in livestock the determinants of investment in agricultural capital stock and the determinants of private transfers this information is used to construct a series of simulations in which drought relief received in the aftermath of the 1994 95 the ex post response is made available to households in the form of agricultural capital stock and extension advice an ex ante action doing so is found to raise household welfare in nondrought years but provides only limited protection in the aftermath of drought

external support during the transition phase roles for humanitarian aid and development assistance from a village perspective summary development orthodoxy based on macroeconomic theory stresses the importance of physical and human capital accumulation as necessary elements for economic growth growing concern among development practitioners that textbook economic theory and results from formal questionnaires may not converge with the perceptions of the recipients of aid however has lead to an increase in the use of participatory appraisals and related approaches to explore resettled villagers perceptions of aid and its role in reducing poverty the research followed two techniques described in the literature on participatory rural appraisal a a wealth ranking exercise to examine villagers concepts of poverty and the determinants of growth and b semi structured group discussions to explore villagers thoughts on the role of aid what is reassuring from this exercise is the convergence between villagers perceptions of poverty and the role of aid with the implications of the economics literature and the results from administration of a formal household questionnaire

credit and land contracting a test of the theory of sharecropping author s das n de janvry a sadoulet e abstract 2019 the author s 2019 published by oxford university press on behalf of the agricultural and applied economics association all rights reserved for permissions please email journals permissions oup com choice of a share vs fixed rent land rental contract has figured prominently in the theory of industrial organization this theory tells us that while a share contract is inefficient in a first best world it may be the preferred option under second best conditions it has thus predicted the existence of sharecropping as the potentially preferred contract under conditions of liquidity constraint rigorous empirical evidence is however still lacking on this basic contribution of theory we use a randomized experiment in a credit program for landless workers and marginal farmers organized by brac in bangladesh to show that increased access to credit has a large positive effect on the choice of fixed rent over share rent contracts both in terms of number of contracts and area contracted as predicted by theory the magnitude of this shift away from sharecropping is enhanced when the tenant is less exposed to risk development programs that facilitate access to credit to potential tenants can thus help them take more efficient land rental contracts

ten years of q squared implications for understanding and explaining poverty summary over the past decade there have been a number of initiatives to promote a more systematic integration of quantitative and qualitative or q squared approaches to poverty analysis in the global south and a large body of literature had emerged the objective of the article is to present a selective review of this empirical work with a view to demonstrate the value it has added for understanding and explaining poverty the evidence strongly suggests that q squared approaches have aided our understanding of the characteristics of the poor and the causes of poverty

another look at growth and defense in less developed countries lim challenges evidence showing that defense spending encouraged the economic growth of 44 less developed countries ldcs over the 1950 65 periods by reexamining the relationship between defense and growth for 54 ldcs over the 1965 73 period regional analyses cover 21 african 13 western hemisphere 11 asian and 9 middle eastern and southern european ldcs the results show that defense spending was detrimental to economic growth although adverse effects that were marked in africa and the western hemisphere were absent in asia the middle east and southern eurpoe 4 references 2 tables

a quick and easy method for estimating switching costs abstract i develop and test a method for a quick and easy calculation of consumer switching costs among brands in a given industry the theory developed and tested here maps observed brands prices and market shares onto the switching costs which deter a consumer of a specific brand from switching to any other competing brand then i demonstrate how users switching costs can be directly calculated in two different industries a the israeli cellular phone market and b the finnish market for bank deposits this calculation method can be used to calculate switching costs in a wide variety of other industries such as airlines health services computers software telecommunications and more

demystifying nonparticipation in microcredit a population based analysis abstract given the current popularity of microcredit schemes as a means of poverty alleviation their accessibility to the poorest is of obvious concern this paper examines a targeted microcredit program in bangladesh to assess its coverage among the poor and to identify program and client related barriers impeding participation a population survey of over 24 000 households reveals that although three quarters are eligible for microcredit less than one quarter participate rates of participation in microcredit are higher among poorer households multivariate analysis identifies lack of female education small household size and landlessness as risk factors for nonparticipation based on a 7 random sample of this population the implications of these findings for poverty alleviation policies and programs are discussed

technological incompatibility endogenous switching costs and lock in systems are goods comprising of durables that are sequentially updated with complements with sequential purchases if suppliers produce incompatible brands consumers who upgrade systems with complements of a different brand must replace the durables they own thus the price of these durables is an endogenous switching cost the paper deals with the concern that firms may use incompatibility to create consumer s switching costs to reduce competition in aftermarkets however it shows that with homogenous durables and small costs of reaching compatibility endogenous switching costs increase intertemporal price competition to the extent that producers prefer to have compatible technologies

rethinking the effects of microcredit on household welfare in cambodia abstractthis article analyses the effects of microcredit on household welfare in terms of household expenditure per capita in cambodia with data from the cambodia socio economic survey carried out in 2014 the analysis describes the effects via formal and informal lending sectors accounting for endogenous selection bias arising from unobserved factors and for structural differences between borrowers and non borrowers in terms of expenditure functions the findings suggest that microcredit in both sectors reduces household expenditure

politics and the effectiveness of foreign aid abstract critics of foreign aid programs have long argued that poverty reflects government failure in this paper i test predictions for aid effectiveness based on an analytical framework that relates aid effectiveness to political regimes i find that aid does not significantly increase investment nor benefit the poor as measured by improvements in human development indicators but it does increase the size of government the impact of aid does not vary according to whether recipient governments are liberal democratic or highly repressive but liberal political regimes and democracies ceteris paribus have on average 30 lower infant mortality than the least free regimes this may be due to greater empowerment of the poor under liberal regimes even though the political elite continues to receive the benefits of aid programs an implication is that short term aid targeted to support new liberal regimes may be a more successful means of reducing poverty than current programs

generating disaggregated poverty maps an application to vietnam abstract previous research shows that geographic targeting in poverty programs is not accurate unless the geographic units are small household surveys however can rarely estimate poverty rates for more than 5 10 regions this study uses data from vietnam to illustrate a method for generating disaggregated poverty maps first the relationship between poverty and household indicators is estimated using survey data then census data on those same indicators are used to estimate poverty rates for each of the 543 rural districts the results indicate that vietnamese poverty is concentrated in the north and in districts furthest from the coast and cities

can microfinance reach the poorest evidence from a community managed microfinance intervention summary reaching the poorest is an important objective in many development interventions and microfinance is no exception we review performance indicators for effectiveness of targeting described in the literature and suggest a new metric in order to account for extent and severity of poverty as well as the income distribution among the poor when applying this to a panel dataset from a community managed microfinance intervention in northern malawi we find regressive targeting participants are less poor than the general population in the area in addition we provide suggestions as to when and why the poor exit the project

household strategies and rural livelihood diversification this article reviews the recent literature on diversification as a livelihood strategy of rural households in developing countries with particular reference to sub saharan africa livelihood diversification is defined as the process by which rural families construct a diverse portfolio of activities and social support capabilities in order to survive and to improve their standards of living the determinants and effects of diversification in the areas of poverty income distribution farm output and gender are examined some policy inferences are summarised the conclusion is reached that removal of constraints to and expansion of opportunities for diversification are desirable policy objectives because they give individuals and households more capabilities to improve livelihood security and to raise living standards

the illusion of choice defense and welfare in advanced industrial democracies 1948 1978 research on the tendency of governments to trade off welfare spending for defense has generated diverse and often contradictory findings this study attempts to clarify the issue of trade offs by examining expenditure patterns since 1948 for the four major na to allies united states united kingdom federal republic of germany and france when viewed from the perspective of long term trends in shares of outlays trade offs are evident when short term changes in expenditure which are more germane to the potential for one spending category to benefit at the expense of the other are studied no pattern of trade off can be detected a three equation model is estimated to control for the variety of possible determining factors of public resource allocation in none of the four nations does a pattern of trade off emerge except in periods of wartime or postwar reconstruction these findings are consistent with the ability of governments to finance new spending through either increased taxes or larger budget deficits the growing disinclination to use these methods however suggests that the potential for trade offs has perhaps reappeared in the 1980s

involving communities in the targeting of cash transfer programs for vulnerable children opportunities and challenges we used baseline data collected in july september 2009 from a randomized controlled trial of a cash transfer program for vulnerable children in eastern zimbabwe to investigate the effectiveness coverage and efficiency of census and community based targeting methods for reaching vulnerable children focus group discussions and in depth interviews with beneficiaries and other stakeholders were used to explore community perspectives on targeting community members reported that their participation improved ownership and reduced conflict and jealousy however all the methods failed to target a large proportion of vulnerable children and there was poor agreement between the community and census based methods

the role of microcredit in older children s nutrition quasi experimental evidence from rural china abstract this article evaluates the causal impact of rural households borrowing through formal microcredit on child nutrition in poor northwest china the analysis exploits the panel data in rural gansu between 2000 and 2004 unobserved differences between borrowers and non borrowers are controlled for in a dynamic fuzzy regression discontinuity design creating a quasi experimental environment for causal inference both anthropometric and micronutrient measures of child nutrition are investigated borrowing formal microcredit improves parent reported health status and weight and alleviates anemia and zinc deficiency all effects nevertheless appear to exist in the short term only

breaking with orthodoxy the politics of economic policy responses to the depression of the 1930s under the same systemic shock the collapse of the international economy in 1929 different countries formulated different policy responses britain germany the united states france and sweden all began by attempting the orthodoxy of deflation soon after they abandoned deflation devalued their currencies erected tariff barriers and set up corporatistic production and marketing arrangements a few countries went further and began experimenting with demand stimulus fiscal policy the most successful was nazi germany the swedish and u s efforts were much more limited and less effective the french attempt crumbled in less than a year and britain never tried demand stimulus why this divergence in policy the politics of policy response the societal basis of different policy coalitions and the way in which they were expressed through different political formulations suggests an answer in all countries labor agriculture and certain elements of business became available for revolts against policy orthodoxy what differed across countries was the specific balance of forces among these interest groups and the political factors that shaped their combinations the effect of political leadership institutions and other variables on outcomes depended critically on the way specific social forces in each society used and worked through them

the impact of microcredit on child education quasi experimental evidence from rural china abstractthis article assesses causal effects of formal microcredit on children s educational outcomes by using household panel data 2000 and 2004 in north west rural china the unobservables between borrowers and non borrowers are controlled in static and dynamic regression discontinuity designs the static analysis reveals significant positive impact of microcredit on schooling years in 2000 only and no influence on academic performance for either wave the dynamic analysis shows progressive treatment effects on both longer schooling years and higher average scores formal microcredit improves education in the longer term compared to the short term and hence may help relaxing the grip of educational poverty traps