what determines female autonomy evidence from bangladesh abstract this paper examines the determinants of female autonomy within households in a developing country in particular we investigate the relative contributions of earned versus unearned income in enhancing women s autonomy and the role of employment outside of their husband s farm in a simple theoretical model it is demonstrated that earned income could be more important than unearned income in empowering women using data from rural bangladesh empirical estimations confirm this prediction and also reveal the surprising fact that it is not employment per se but employment outside their husbands farms that contributes to women s autonomy the data also point to the importance of choosing the correct threat point in theoretical analyses of female autonomy

how does land fragmentation affect off farm labor supply panel data evidence from china abstract this article provides a deeper theoretical understanding of the linkages between land fragmentation and off farm labor supply in china andinvestigates this relationship empirically in a more direct way than does the existing literature drawing upon a rural household panel data setcollected in zhejiang hubei and yunnan provinces from 1995 to 2002 we estimate the effects in two steps first we estimate the effect of landfragmentation on labor productivity second we estimate the effect of land fragmentation on off farm labor supply the production function resultsshow that land fragmentation indeed leads to lower agricultural labor productivity implying that land consolidation will make on farm work moreattractive and thus decrease off farm labor supply however the effect of land consolidation on off farm labor supply is not signi cant one likelyexplanation for this result may be the potentially imperfect labor markets jel classi cations j22 q15 q24 r23 keywords

the politics of liberalizing zambia s maize markets abstract this paper discusses the process of agricultural liberalization in zambia the central argument is that maize markets have been more quickly and fully liberalized than maize input markets because the perceived political risks of liberalizing input markets are greater than those of liberalizing maize markets and because economic interest groups benefited from maize liberalization while similar interests benefited from continued government interventions in input markets these finding imply that in order to understand the prospects for economic liberalization in new democracies we must disaggregate both civil society and markets

green revolution in sub saharan africa implications of imposed innovation for the wellbeing of rural smallholders green revolution policies are again being pursued to drive agricultural growth and reduce poverty in sub saharan africa however conditions have changed since the well documented successes of the 1960s and 1970s benefitted smallholders in southern asia and beyond we argue that under contemporary constraints the mechanisms for achieving improvements in the lives of smallholder farmers through such policies are unclear and that both policy rationale and means of governing agricultural innovation are crucial for pro poor impacts to critically analyze rwanda s green revolution policies and impacts from a local perspective a mixed methods multidimensional wellbeing approach is applied in rural areas in mountainous western rwanda here malthusian policy framing has been used to justify imposed rather than induced innovation the policies involve a substantial transformation for rural farmers from a traditional polyculture system supporting subsistence and local trade to the adoption of modern seed varieties inputs and credit in order to specialize in marketable crops and achieve increased production and income although policies have been deemed successful in raising yields and conventionally measured poverty rates have fallen over the same period such trends were found to be quite incongruous with local experiences disaggregated results reveal that only a relatively wealthy minority were able to adhere to the enforced modernization and policies appear to be exacerbating landlessness and inequality for poorer rural inhabitants negative impacts were evident for the majority of households as subsistence practices were disrupted poverty exacerbated local systems of knowledge trade and labor were impaired and land tenure security and autonomy were curtailed in order to mitigate the effects we recommend that inventive pro poor forms of tenure and cooperation none of which preclude improvements to input availability market linkages and infrastructure may provide positive outcomes for rural people and importantly in rwanda for those who have become landless in recent years we conclude that policies promoting a green revolution in sub saharan africa should not all be considered to be pro poor or even to be of a similar type but rather should be the subject of rigorous impact assessment such assessment should be based not only on consistent objective indicators but pay attention to localized impacts on land tenure agricultural practices and the wellbeing of socially differentiated people

investment subsidies and pro poor growth in rural india this article reviews the trends in government subsidies and investments in and for indian agriculture develops a conceptual framework and a model to assess the impact of various subsidies and investments on agricultural growth and poverty reduction and presents reform options with regard to re prioritizing government spending subsidies in credit fertilizer and irrigation have been crucial for small farmers to adopt new technologies particularly during the initial stage of the green revolution in the late 1960s and 1970s but it is now investments in agricultural research education and rural roads that are the three most effective public spending items in promoting agricultural growth and reducing poverty

economic development institutional change and the political economy of agricultural protection an econometric study of belgium since the 19th century this empirical study uses 100 years of annual data on 11 agricultural commodities from belgium to measure the impact of structural changes coinciding with economic development and changes in political institutions on agricultural protection the analysis shows that changes in agricultural protection are caused by a combination of factors governments have increased protection and support to farmers when world market prices for their commodities fell and vice versa offsetting market effects on producer incomes other economic determinants were the share of the commodities in total consumer expenditures negative effect and in total output of the economy positive effect with belgium a small economy there was no impact of the trade position changes in political institutions have affected agricultural protection democratic reforms which induced a significant shift in the political balance towards agricultural interests such as the introduction of the one man one vote system led to an increase in agricultural protection the integration of belgian agricultural policies in the common agricultural policy in 1968 coincided with an increase in protection ceteris paribus both institutional factors related to changes in access to and information about the decision making at the eu level and structural changes in the agricultural and food economy may explain this effect

food policy food aid and structural adjustment programmes the context of agricultural development abstract there are two troubling aspects to structural adjustment programmes currently underway in developing countries first in the urgency to achieve short term objectives adjustment programmes often neglect long term concerns of sustained growth second the immediate impact of adjustments can lead to a deterioration in the income and nutritional status of the poor this article emphasizes the need for structural adjustment programmes that help set the stage for renewed economic growth and are sensitive to the well being of the poor it recommends a strategy of agricultural development to return developing countries to their comparative advantage in the production of labour intensive goods and to encourage overall growth furthermore it argues for the use of food aid to support that strategy and as a means to protect the poor from the hardships inflicted by adjustment programmes

the political economy of stabilization commitment capacity and public response abstract political pressures are generally recognized as important in determining success or failure of economic stabilization and adjustment programs but there has been little comparative analysis of the politics of stabilization this study examines the factors affecting i political leaders commitment to stabilization measures often called political will ii governmental ability to implement stabilization measures and iii the responses of key interest groups and the public at large to those measures the study also discusses political implications of the design of programs and the attempted speed of stabilization and sketches the tactics available to governments to manage political risk including partial compensation persuasion diversion or obfuscation and containment of protest the discussion is based on case studies of stabilization efforts in five fairly poor small highly trade dependent countries ghana in the late 1960s and early 1970s and zambia kenya sri lanka and jamaica in the late 1970s and early 1980s a subsidiary theme within the broader discussion is the ways in which the political economy of stabilization may differ in such countries as compared to larger semi industrialized economies

land reforms poverty reduction and economic growth evidence from india recognition of the importance of institutions that provide security of property rights and relatively equal access to economic resources to a broad cross section of society has renewed interest in the potential of asset redistribution including land reforms empirical analysis of the impact of such policies is however scant and often contradictory this paper uses panel household data from india together with state level variation in the implementation of land reform to address some of the deficiencies of earlier studies the results suggest that land reform had a significant and positive impact on income growth and accumulation of human and physical capital the paper draws policy implications especially from the fact that the observed impact of land reform seems to have declined over time

new estimates of the elasticity of marginal utility for the uk this paper provides novel empirical evidence on the value of the elasticity of marginal utility eta for the united kingdom eta is a crucial component of the social discount rate sdr which determines the inter temporal trade offs that are acceptable to society using contemporaneous and historical data new estimates are obtained using four revealed preference techniques the equal sacrifice income tax approach the euler equation approach the frisch additive preferences approach and risk aversion in insurance markets a meta analysis indicates parameter homogeneity across approaches and a central estimate of 1 5 for eta the confidence interval excludes unity the value used in official guidance by the uk government the term structure of the sdr is then estimated the result is a short run sdr of 4 5 declining to 4 2 in the very long run this is higher and flatter than the uk official guidance the difference stems from incorrect calibration of social welfare and estimation of the diffusion of growth other things equal the results suggest that current uk guidance might need to be updated

efficiency and equity impacts of rural land rental restrictions evidence from india recognition of the potentially deleterious implications of inequality in opportunity originating in a skewed asset distribution has spawned considerable interest in land reforms however little attention has been devoted to fact that in the longer term the measures used to implement land reforms could negatively affect productivity use of state level data on rental restrictions together with a nationally representative survey from india suggests that contrary to original intentions rental restrictions negatively affect productivity and equity the restrictions reduce the scope for efficiency enhancing rental transactions that benefit poor producers simulations suggest that by doubling the number of producers with access to land through rental from about 15 million currently liberalization of rental markets could have far reaching impacts

costs and benefits of land fragmentation evidence from rwanda this paper disentangles different aspects of land fragmentation and its impact on the efficiency of resource use the paper uses information on the incidence of crop shocks to assess whether fragmentation provides benefits in reducing risk and parcel coordinates and terrain adjusted travel times between parcels to more precisely account for the associated costs in 2010 11 data from rwanda while fragmentation increases the time required to move between a household s parcels this does not appear to affect overall technical efficiency on the farm fragmentation rather reduces the incidence of crop shocks and increases yields and productive efficiency in rwanda s setting interventions to reduce fragmentation may therefore be ineffective or counterproductive

u turns and full circles two decades of agricultural reform in malawi 1981 2000 abstract this paper traces the evolution of malawi s agricultural policy over the past two decades during this period the world bank has played a key role in shaping policy reform through its adjustment loans three distinct reform phases can be identified 1981 87 when policy was dominated by the dogmatism of the world bank s pricist and state minimalist policies 1988 94 when a more flexible position was taken by both the bank and the malawi government both of whom acknowledged the structuralist critique of earlier policies and 1994 to the present when the reform process in agriculture became more politicized and a schism developed between the bank and the government this latter period is used to illustrate some of the unresolved policy issues pertaining to similar low income agrarian economies

lobbying incentives and the pattern of protection in rich and poor countries in seeking to explain why poor countries tend to choose policies that tax agriculture relative to manufacturing while rich countries do the opposite archetypical parameters for a poor agrarian economy and a rich industrial one are inserted in a computable general equilibrium model to simulate the medium term effects on income distribution of policies that distort the relative prices of tradables the model includes a non tradables sector and intermediate inputs realistic features that ensure even greater skewness in the distributional effects of protection than simpler models suggest the magnitude of the results helps explain the tendency for countries to change gradually from taxing to subsidizing agriculture relative to manufacturing as their economies develop the paper draws out the implications of the analysis for agricultural and trade policy reform in the 1990s this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

a comparative political economic analysis of maize sector policies in eastern and southern africa abstract maize sector policies in eastern and southern africa are characterized by a large and often growing presence of the state yet the scope scale and modalities of state activities vary substantially across countries drawing on data from malawi zambia kenya and mozambique this article compares the relative degree of state intervention in the maize sector we show that relative preferences for output market subsidies input market subsidies trade restrictions or non interventionist approaches reflect the interplay of interest group lobbying patronage networks and ethnic and regional political affiliations these relationships have deep historical roots and have often been intensified in the context of the emergence of multiparty politics we show that interventionist orientations in output markets and trade do not translate into better performance or welfare outcomes input subsidy preferences produce more ambiguous welfare results when the opportunity costs are not fully accounted for

relative risk aversion around the world abstract in this letter the hypothesis of constant relative risk aversion is examined for 15 countries using property liability insurance data for more than half the cases it is shown that crra can not be rejected following that the degree of relative risk aversion is estimated and found to usually lie between one and two

political resources and the growth of welfare in affluent capitalist democracies 1960 1982 explanations of welfare effort in affluent postwar democracies are partially integrated within a political resource framework political resource models of welfare effort fare well when tested with pooled time series data for 1960 82 use of governmental authority by the left use of disruption by the working class and the petty burgeois and use of lobbying voting and or entitlement rights by the elderly and the unemployed constitute means of political action among more diffusely available infraresources state revenue expansion economic growth and inflation appear to buoy welfre expansion as do left corporatism and bureaucratic paternalism some mediating effects of economic epoch and state structure are explored

should governments stop subsidies to private goods evidence from rural latin america abstract this paper empirically documents the effects of subsidizing private goods to the detriment of the government s supply of public goods we use a new data set from the rural sector in fifteen latin american countries over the period 1985 2001 collected using a methodology that allows us to separate government subsidies to private goods from expenditures in the provision of public goods the econometric evidence shows that the government s decision to subsidize either private or public goods has dramatic consequences for economic development reducing the share of subsidies to private goods or equivalently increasing the share of public goods in the government s budget has ceteris paribus a large and significant positive impact on rural per capita income reduces certain undesirable environmental effects associated with output expansion and contributes to poverty reduction

growth and energy nexus in europe revisited evidence from a fixed effects political economy model this is an empirical study on the causal relationship between economic growth and energy for 26 european countries in a multivariate panel framework over the period 1975 2009 using a two way fixed effects model and including greenhouse gas emissions capital fossil energy consumption herfindahl index political competition and number of years the government chief executive stays in office political stability as independent variables in the model empirical results confirm bidirectional causality between growth and political stability capital and political stability capital and fossil energy consumption whether political stability favors the implementation of growth or leads to corruption demands further research

the political economy of policies for smallholder agriculture summary as the experience of the 20th century has shown implementing policies that increase agricultural productivity among smallholders is a particularly promising strategy to achieve pro poor growth however history also reveals major political challenges to adopting this strategy the paper compares the experience of asian countries that were able to launch a smallholder based green revolution with the experience of african countries that are still struggling with this goal it then reviews the political economy literature to identify the factors that account for these divergent experiences finally the paper develops a conceptual framework to guide empirical research to close the knowledge gaps identified by the review

effects of land fragmentation and returns to scale in the chinese farming sector using household survey data from rural china economies of scale as measured by returns to scale and the effects of land fragmentation on crop outputs are examined while these effects are found to be detrimental statistically significant and substantial existing economies of scale appear to be too small to suggest radical land policy changes in china

a time of agric rethinking the failure of agricultural programs in 1970s ghana summary recent interest in a new green revolution in africa has revived debate about state intervention in agricultural markets and biotechnology these debates take for granted that the first wave of green revolution interventions in africa failed to influence small scale food farmers this essay uses oral historical and documentary evidence from ghana s northern region to revisit the evidentiary basis of this assessment tracing how the production of aggregate data and changing interpretive frameworks in the 1970s and 1980s allowed policymakers to ignore the experiences of farmers the essay advocates for the role of micro historical analysis in assessing africa s recent agricultural past

land inheritance rules theory and cross cultural analysis abstract this paper develops a general theory of land inheritance rules that distinguishes between two classes of rules those allowing a testator discretion in disposing of his land e g a best qualified rule and those constraining his choice e g primogeniture the primary benefit of the latter is to prevent rent seeking by heirs but the cost is that the testator cannot use information about the relative abilities of his heirs to manage the land we also account for the impact of scale economies in land use and discuss the impact of the presence of a land market on the form of the inheritance rule we conclude by offering some empirical tests of the model using a cross cultural sample of societies

false promise or false premise the experience of food and input market reform in eastern and southern africa abstract the literature on the effects of agricultural market reform in africa is sharply divided and inconsistent this article attempts to reconcile opposing viewpoints on the effects of food and input market policy reform in eastern and southern africa drawing from studies of ethiopia kenya malawi zambia and zimbabwe we argue that a major source of the controversy stems from assumptions that countries have actually moved to a liberalized market environment we find that many of the most fundamental elements of the reform programs either remain unimplemented were reversed within several years or were implemented in such a way as to negate private sector investment incentives a framework is developed for explaining why some countries have been able to liberalize their food and fertilizer markets while others have not these findings have implications for how donor assistance and policy oriented research can more constructively contribute to an improved policy environment

african re agrarianization accumulation or pro poor agricultural growth recent signs of increasing agricultural production in a number of countries in sub saharan africa are by some commentators connected to local level differentiation this paper discusses such interpretations using household level longitudinal data from smallholder households in eight african countries for the period between 2002 and 2008 the use of a mixed methods social science approach complements traditional economic approaches through adding a spatial perspective pro poor agricultural growth so far is concentrated to particular villages where it is highly inclusive the policy challenge remains to devise strategies that can enhance growth also in marginal areas

policy reform and reform myopia abstract recent decades witnessed major efforts on the part of many developingcountry government to alter existing economic policies and undo constraints on agricultural growth this article compares the dynamics of agricultural policy reform initiatives of the 1970s with those of the 1980s the authors argue that when the definition of what is needed in terms of policy to get agriculture moving changes the political economy of policy making and implementation also shifts such shifts are often accompanied by a myopic focus on new crisis definitions and new policy solutions to the detriment of more integrated approaches to agricultural development

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

is there a farm size productivity relationship in african agriculture evidence from rwanda whether the negative relationship between farm size and productivity that is confirmed in a large global literature holds in africa is of considerable policy relevance this paper revisits this issue and examines potential causes of the inverse productivity relationship in rwanda where policy makers consider land fragmentation and small farm sizes to be key bottlenecks for the growth of the agricultural sector nationwide plot level data from rwanda point toward a constant returns to scale crop production function and a strong negative relationship between farm size and output per hectare as well as intensity of labor use that is robust across specifications the inverse relationship continues to hold if profits with family labor valued at shadow wages are used but disappears if family labor is rather valued at village level market wage rates these findings imply that in rwanda labor market imperfections rather than other unobserved factors seem to be a key reason for the inverse farm size productivity relationship

political institutions and international patterns of agricultural protection this paper analyzes the influence of political systems and rights in patterns of agricultural protection across commodities countries and over time four political systems and a qualitative index of political rights account for differences in political institutions the analysis incorporates the effects of development of constraints on tax collection feasibility and of comparative advantages and terms of trade pluralistic systems are associated with higher agricultural protection levels although in a nonlinear fashion access to pluralism appears to be important although further democratization partly dissipates protection copyright 1994 by mit press

donors and domestic policy makers two worlds in agricultural policy making in recent decades many developing countries have moved from taxing their agricultural sector to subsidizing it a phenomenon referred to as overshooting using ghana and uganda as case study countries this study aims to contribute to explaining this phenomenon by examining the role of policy beliefs the study is based on the advocacy coalition framework and relies on discourse analysis as analytical method in depth interviews with policy actors in both countries served as empirical basis a quantitative analysis of the transcripts was used to identify different discourse coalitions and a qualitative analysis was conducted to examine the discourses and identify their underlying policy beliefs the paper identified far reaching differences in the agricultural policy beliefs between domestic policy makers and donors regarding the question what does it actually take to develop small holder agriculture the evidence from this analysis highlights the role that divergent policy beliefs can play in influencing agricultural policy choices

after the decision implementing policy reforms in developing countries abstract implicit in many reform proposals is a model of the policy process that is roughly linear a proposed reform gets on the agenda for government action a decision is made on the proposal and the new policy or institutional arangement is implemented either successfully or unsuccessfully this article presents an alternative interactive model of implementation that focuses on the conflict and reactions that are evoked by efforts to bring about changed policy or institutional contexts for development and the resources that policy makers and managers are likely to require to sustain a reform in the face of such reactions central to the analysis is the assertion that characteristics of the reform being implemented will largely determine the kind of conflict it engenders where such reaction is likely to become manifest and what resources are needed for sustainability the analysis suggests a framework for the strategic management of reform initiatives

green gold burley tobacco smallholder agriculture and poverty alleviation in malawi abstract the abolition in 1990 of the estate monopoly on cultivation of burley tobacco is expected to play an important role in reducing poverty among smallholders in malawi a nationwide survey in 1993 shows that smallholder households cultivating burley also grow more hybrid maize use more fertilizer and are more food secure but resource poor households particularly those headed by women face land and labor constraints on burley adoption burley and hybrid maize increase the demand for hired labor but not enough to absorb the growth in the rural labor force broad based poverty alleviation requires technology and programs targeted at the majority of smallholders with holdings of 0 5 hectares or less

gender differences in land inheritance schooling and lifetime income evidence from the rural philippines this article examines the difference in lifetime incomes arising from parental preferences in the allocation of land inheritance and investments in schooling between sons and daughters in the rural philippines sons are preferred with respect to land inheritance receiving 0 15 additional hectares of land while daughters are treated more favourably in schooling investments receiving 1 5 more years of schooling however differences in both current and life cycle incomes between sons and daughters are insignificant this suggests that filipino parents allocate intergenerational transfers to equalise incomes among their children without sacrificing efficiency

does land fragmentation increase the cost of cultivation evidence from india although a large literature discusses the productivity effects of land fragmentation measurement and potential endogeneity issues are often overlooked this paper uses several measures of fragmentation and controls for endogeneity and crop choice by looking at inherited paddy and wheat plots to show that these issues matter empirically while crop choice can mitigate effects fragmentation as measured by the simpson index increases production cost and fosters substitution of labor for machinery especially for small and medium farmers greater distances between fragments have a smaller effect creating opportunities for market based consolidation could be one step to limit fragmentation induced cost increases

does decentralization increase government responsiveness to local needs evidence from bolivia this paper examines whether decentralization increases the responsiveness of public investment to local needs using a unique database from bolivia empirical tests show that investment patterns in human capital and social services changed significantly after decentralization these changes are strongly and positively related to objective indicators of need nationally these changes were driven by the smallest poorest municipalities investing devolved funds in their highest priority projects the findings contradict common claims that local government is too corrupt institutionally weak or prone to interest group capture to improve upon central government s allocation of public resources d 2002 published by elsevier b v

explaining agricultural and agrarian policies in developing countries the paper describes and as far as possible explains variations in policies programs and institutions that influence agricultural growth agrarian relations and rural welfare across developing countries and over time it evaluates the impact of distorted policy patterns on agricultural production and rural poverty and identifies conditions under which policy reforms meant to bring about greater efficiency and equity are likely to be initiated and sustained it draws upon a broad range of literature to show how material conditions missing markets and government policies affect static welfare outcomes patterns of accumulation state formation and the establishment of political institutions it suggests ways to improve policy advice and proposes directions for future research

land reform and agricultural productivity in india a review of the evidence in this paper we review as well as contribute to the empirical literature on the impact of land reform on agricultural productivity in india we find that overall for all states land reform legislation had a negative and significant effect on agricultural productivity however this hides considerable variation across types of land reform as well as variation across states decomposing by type of land reform the main driver for this negative effect seems to be land ceiling legislation in contrast the effect of tenancy reform averaged across all states is insignificant there seems to be a wide range of state specific effects which suggests that focusing on average treatment effects can hide a considerable amount of heterogeneity in particular allowing a separate slope for west bengal one of the few states that implemented tenancy laws rigorously we find that land reform had a marginal positive effect relative to the rest of india

inheritance patterns in migration prone communities of the peruvian highlands abstract on the basis of detailed information on inheritance practices collected in the course of an in depth survey of three andean communities of peru and unlike most empirical studies which rely on remittance functions we have been able to estimate an inheritance function with a view to identifying the main factors associated with particular patterns of land bequests a central result is that the positive relationship between caring and a favourable access to land bequest indeed exists yet is only observed for migrant children whether urban or rural long distance or short distance migrants combined with other findings and observations this result strengthens the case for an interpretation based on an active role of potential heirs in the determination of inheritance outcomes it therefore calls into question the strategic bequest theory which presumes that parents are the ultimate decision makers in this matter in addition our study shows that inheritance patterns are complex besides migration and caring behavior personal characteristics of potential heirs such as gender birth order and family status having children or not do appear to influence division of parental land