china s regional rebound effect based on modelling multi regional cge improving energy efficiency has been regarded as an important measure to reduce energy consumption yet the rebound effect has greatly shrunken the energy saving consequences of this measure to in

labour migration and social networks participation in southern mozambique this paper investigates how social networks in poor developing settings are affected by migration using a unique household survey from southern mozambique we test the role of labour mobility in shaping participation in groups and interhousehold cooperation by migrant sending households in village economies at origin we find that migration cum remittances boosts household engagement in community based social networks our findings are robust to alternative definitions of social interaction and to endogeneity concerns suggesting that stable migration ties and higher income stability through remittances may decrease participation constraints and increase household commitment in cooperative arrangements in migrant sending communities

gift giving and the evolution of cooperation gift giving is a practice common to many societies in an evolutionary model the social custom of giving gifts at the beginning of a relationship can lead to trust and cooperation the evolutionary approach makes predictions about the character of the goods that can be used as gifts for example gift goods may have little use value even at low levels of consumption although the gifts themselves are useless the institution is not

the impact of a broad based energy tax on the us economy abstract this paper investigates the impact of a broad based energy tax on the us economy particularly the agricultural sectors the analytical approach used consists of a general equilibrium model composed of 12 producing sectors 13 consuming sectors six household categories classified by income and a government the effects of a 10 cents btu 10 6 tax on energy on prices and quantities are examined the results are revealing

a bootstrapped double hurdle analysis consumption of home produced food this article deals with home made food the consumption of such specific goods involves an important null consumption issue a two step procedure is used to estimate whether the decision to consume is distinct from the decision on the amount of consumption data from the 1991 french food consumption survey show the relevance of double hurdle models finally the estimation of cragg s model is improved with a new undersampling procedure numerous and sometimes opposite effects of household characteristics on the probability of consuming home produced food and on the amount consumed are obtained

does industrialization build or destroy social networks abstract this article estimates the relationship between changes in industrialization and changes in social networks measures in indonesia during 1985 97 using repeated cross sections of nationally representative surveys we analyze a rich set of social interaction measures including various measures of voluntary associational activity levels of trust and informal cooperation districts that experienced rapid industrialization showed significant increases in most measures of social interaction however districts that neighbor rapidly industrializing areas exhibited high rates of out migration significantly fewer community credit cooperatives and a reduction in mutual cooperation as assessed by village elders manufacturing growth can be thought of as a proxy for income growth here the findings are contrary to several recent claims regarding the role of social capital in economic development

comment on social capital and growth routledge and von amsberg 2003 have made an insightful contribution to the burgeoning literature on social capital and economic development the underlying idea in the existing literature is that societies characterized by higher levels of social capital commonly defined as norms of trust or cooperation that improve economic productivity experience more rapid economic development and better institutional performance as well putnam 1993 more recently one branch of this literature has explored the correlation of social capital with a range of important economic financial and political outcomes as surveyed in routledge and von amsberg 2003 while another has examined the underlying social factors that affect social capital formation including social and ethnic divisions for instance easterly and levine 1997 alesina et al 1999 and miguel and gugerty 2002 this paper makes a sharp break with most of the existing literature and offers a different perspective on how we should think about the relationship between social capital and economic growth instead of viewing social capital as a crucial input into economic growth and development the authors consider the effect of economic growth on social capital their central theoretical idea is simple but powerful rapidly growing societies periodically experience large technological shocks that generate pressure for labor mobility to take up new factory jobs in growing urban areas for example the resulting residential mobility increases labor productivity by matching up workers with particular skills to the employers who need those skills yet this mobility also

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

cash crops and food security evidence from ethiopian smallholder coffee producers one of the central questions in food policy debates has been the role of cash cropping for achieving food security in low income countries we revisit this question in the context of smallholder co

the effect of oil price increases on four oil poor developing countries a comparative analysis abstract computable general equilibrium models are used to compare for four oil poor developing countries ivory coast kenya south korea turkey the short and medium run adjustment pressures arising from the second oil price shock the results emphasize the extent of expenditure switching and expenditure and wage reduction needed to accomodate the shock in each country cross country variations in the extent of required adjustment are traced to key structural differences between the four economies

the role of land certification in reducing gaps in productivity between male and female owned farms in rural ethiopia this paper analyses the impact of a low cost land certification programme on the productivity of female headed households the hypotheses tested in the paper emphasise on the interaction between the constraints that female headed households face in terms of insecure land tenure lack of productive resources and suboptimal land market participation on the one hand and the tenure security benefits of certification on the other our findings show that land certification has a positive effect on land market participation and productivity our analysis also suggests higher marginal effects of certification on female headed households productivity compared to the male ones

endogenous growth decline in social capital and expansion of market activities abstract we model in an endogenous growth set up the hypotheses that the expansion of market activities weakens social capital formation and that firms can invest in formal mechanisms of control and enforcement to substitute for social capital trust work ethics honesty the model shows that the economy tends to grow faster when it is relatively poorer in social capital and that perpetual growth can be consistent with the progressive erosion of social capital these results may help to reconcile putnam s claim that social capital has declined in the u s with the satisfactory growth performance of the u s over the same period

the effects of an increase in energy efficiency on the kenya economy abstract there are reasons to believe that improved energy efficiency still is an important energy development policy despite stable oil prices abundant oil supplies and end of the cold war the political reasons are uncertainty of the current gulf situation and prevalent wars in the former eastern bloc countries increasing concern over global environmental problems the existence of imperfect energy markets and the desire for rapid economic growth in developing countries are the other reasons this paper analyses the effects of energy management policies on the kenyan economy using a computable general equilibrium model simulations show that an increase in energy efficiency leads to reduced dependence on foreign energy sources promotion of reliable domestic energy sources promotion of conservation of all forms of energy saves scarce foreign currency and preserves the environment

the myths and facts of energy efficiency abstract the debate about how much energy efficiency is socially desirable and what is the best way to finance and implement energy conservation measures has reached a critical junction in many countries the arguments have passed the stage of whether more energy efficiency is possible or desirable and are centred around how much and how best to implement them this is a survey article which attempts to shed some light on several critical issues in this debate first it distinguishes between what is technically possible v what is economically desirable in energy efficiency improvements second it looks at some of the alleged causes of social under investment in energy efficiency and identifies ways to reduce or eliminate them third it addresses the question of who is best equipped to implement energy efficiency improvements and how one may go about promoting it finally the paper addresses critical financing and equity questions

third world energy policies demand management and conservation increasing energy costs underline the need for more efficient management of energy supply and demand to maintain economic growth especially in the developing countries where resources are scarce combining policy tools for demand management and conservation including pricing physical controls technical methods and education yields the best results pricing policy takes into account the efficiency costs of energy supply required to meet economic objectives this is then adjusted to satisfy other objectives of pricing such as social subsidy considerations financial viability conservation price stability etc energy conservation programmes should be implemented only after determining whether their economic benefits exceed the corresponding costs

reducing dependence on oil imports abstract the legacy of higher oil prices left by the 1970s has the oil importing economies reeling with another unexpected oil supply interruption threatening a knockout during the 1980s policies designed to reduce the level of oil imports have been the subject of intensive study but disagreements over their desirability has led to policymaking paralysis on the part of the major oil importing nations these disagreements have often resulted from differing views about how the world oil market works this paper considers a number of oil import reduction measures within a common framework that allows the effects of alternative assumptions about the world oil market to be investigated results from that framework suggest that there are many things that can be done to reduce dependence on oil imports with little cost and significant potential benefits under all but the most pessimistic world oil market assumptions

social capital access and entrepreneurship we investigate the effect of social capital access on entrepreneurship social capital helps entrepreneurs to overcome resource constraints this is especially important in small communities where we often see a lack of market oriented institutions such as venture capital firms entrepreneurs gain access to social capital via club memberships combining differences in the number of individual club memberships with differences in the importance of social capital across communities we identify a causal small community mark up effect of individual club memberships on entrepreneurship assuming that unobserved heterogeneity that might influence both the individual s selection into clubs and the occupational choice to be an entrepreneur is independent of community size we find that the effect of club membership on the propensity to be an entrepreneur is 2 6 percentage points larger in small communities than in large communities robustness tests support the validity of our identifying assumption and results

the economic role of a work ethic abstract this paper explores the extent to which a cultural work ethic can improve the performance of an economy it argues that a variety of technological and institutional features of labor markets tend to cause pareto sub optimal amounts of labor to be supplied to the economic nexus as a consequence a proper work ethic can improve economic efficiency as well as material well being a man does not by nature wish to earn more and more money but simply to live as he is accustomed to live and to earn as much as is necessary for that purpose wherever modern capitalism has begun its work of increasing the productivity of human labor by increasing its intensity it has encountered this leading trait of pre capitalistic labor max weber the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism 1904 1984 p 60 sacred to the city however is the work ethic office workers think nothing of leaving for work at 6a m and staying on to 9 or 10 at night that rather than economic management is the explanation for the brazilian miracle of the past 40 years the economist april 25 1987 p 22 1

exploring the rebound effect from the perspective of household an analysis of china s provincial level abstract the existence of the energy rebound effect may partially even totally offset the expected energy savings in order to explore the status of the household rebound effect in china we manually compiled the provincial energy input output table of china then combining econometric methods input output analysis and the re spending model we conduct a detailed analysis of both the direct and indirect energy rebound effect from the household perspective in china under a unified research framework the results show there are significant differences in risk vulnerability regarding energy rebound effect among different regions qinghai is the most vulnerable province as 69 23 of its economic sectors could lead to a backfire effect two economic sectors have the potential to cause a backfire effect in thirteen provinces in addition the chinese government and its provincial government should take full account of the regional differences when formulating energy policies to alleviate the pressure on energy conservation and carbon emission reduction

energy efficiency and economic growth a retrospective cge analysis for canada from 2002 to 2012 abstract the efficiency with which energy is used by firms and households has widespread impacts on economic activity which in turn has implications for environmental quality and energy security using a novel method that could be used for other jurisdictions we estimate the impact of energy efficiency improvements on canadian gdp employment economic structure and welfare from 2002 to 2012 we use a counterfactual back casting method with a sectorally and regionally disaggregated dynamic recursive computable general equilibrium model in effect reverse calibrating the model from observed data to isolate the effects of energy efficiency we estimate that total energy efficiency improvements in canada during this period increased gdp by 2 0 0 19 yr employment by 2 5 0 24 yr and household welfare by about 1 5 0 15 yr additionally energy efficiency improvements reoriented economic structure from capital intense energy supply sectors to relatively labour intense manufacturing and services we find evidence of widespread rebound on an energy expenditure basis across most sectors and backfire where energy efficiency leads to absolute energy use increases in oil sands in situ extraction bitumen upgrading shale gas extraction lime production pulp paper and metal smelting but overall energy use is reduced by energy efficiency improvements over this period

alternative definitions of headship and the feminisation of income poverty in post apartheid south africa abstract in measuring gender differences in the risk of income poverty many studies use female headship as a proxy for gender however a number of well documented concerns with the use of self reported headship as an analytical category have suggested that headship is often a relatively blunt unit of analysis against the backdrop of a large and growing difference in income poverty rates between self reported female and male headed households in post apartheid south africa this study considers several alternative definitions of headship that have been proposed in the development literature the findings suggest that there is an association between self reported female headship and a female household member being identified as the main breadwinner however the conventional definition of headship is likely to underestimate the growing risk of income poverty in female headed households relative to male headed households compared with several alternative definitions the findings also suggest that alte

women heading households some more equal than others abstract this paper explores the validity of the statement that one third of the world s households are headed by women it examines the implications of using economic criteria to define household headship and of recent interest in woman maintained households and concealed woman headed households there is a danger of underplaying the diversity of woman headed households and of marginalizing older women by identifying woman headed households with single mothers of dependent children ultimately too narrow a focus on particular household types undermines our ability to further a truly gendered analysis of the household in development research and practice

from tradition to modernity economic growth in a small world this paper introduces the small world model watts and strogatz nature 1998 into the theory of economic growth and investigates how increasing economic inte gration aects rm size and eciency norm enforcement and aggregate economic perfor mance when economic integration is low and local connectivity is high informal norms control entrepreneurial behavior and more integration mainly improves search for ecient investment opportunities at a higher level of economic integration neighborhood enforce ment deteriorates and formal institutions are needed to keep entrepreneurs in check a gradual take o to perpetual growth is explained by a feedback eect

knowledge sharing and the dynamics of social capital abstract mutual aid often entails the sharing of knowledge we investigate how in turn knowledge sharing affects the long run dynamics of mutual aid in our economy agents with specific knowledge are held up by their principals inside communities agents aid each other by sharing their specific knowledge this process generates a new type of knowledge which exacerbates the specificity of the existing types and induces more agents to engage in mutual aid however since the knowledge generated is shared it progressively renders agents inside communities more flexible and thus less dependent on mutual aid we characterize conditions under which in the long run mutual aid spreads or is abandoned

renegotiation proof equilibria in repeated prisoners dilemma abstract in this note it is shown that the requirement of weak renegatiation proofness does not eliminate any subgame perfect equilibrium outcome of the repeated prisoner s dilemma specifically it is demonstrated that when players are sufficiently patient any feasible and individually rational outcome can be sustained by means of an equilibrium in which the punishing player always profits by carrying out the punishment

improved energy efficiency in the industrialized countries past achievements co2 emission prospects abstract this paper explores the contribution which energy efficiency might make to future reductions in co 2 emissions trends in key energy use sectors and recent changes that may signal a slowdown in the rate of improvement of energy efficiency are examined the oecd countries reduced their energy use through greater efficiency by nearly 32 ej or 16 million bbl day oil equivalent between 1972 and 1985 but the pace of these improvements in energy use has begun to slow prospects for increased efficiency in each sector and the barriers to achieving those increases are discussed

the role of social capital in financial development to identify the effect of social capital on financial development we exploit social capital differences within italy in high social capital areas households are more likely to use checks invest less in cash and more in stock have higher access to institutional credit and make less use of informal credit the effect of social capital is stronger where legal enforcement is weaker and among less educated people these results are not driven by omitted environmental variables since we show that the behavior of movers is still affected by the level of social capital of the province where they were born

negative rebound and disinvestment effects in response to an improvement in energy efficiency in the uk economy this paper uses a computable general equilibrium cge framework to investigate the conditions under which rebound effects may occur in response to increases in energy efficiency in the uk national economy previous work for the uk has suggested that rebound effects will occur even where key elasticities of substitution in production are set close to zero the research reported in this paper involves carrying out a systematic sensitivity analysis where relative price sensitivity is gradually introduced into the system focusing specifically on elasticities of substitution in production and trade parameters in order to determine conditions under which rebound effects become a likely outcome the main result is that while there is positive pressure for rebound effects even where direct and indirect demands for energy are very price inelastic this may be partially or wholly offset by negative income competitiveness and disinvestment effects which also occur in response to falling energy prices the occurrence of disinvestment effects is of particular interest these occur where falling energy prices reduce profitability in domestic energy supply sectors leading to a contraction in capital stock in these sectors which may in turn lead to rebound effects that are smaller in the long run than in the short run a result that runs contrary to the predictions of previous theoretical work in this area

rebound effect of improved energy efficiency for different energy types a general equilibrium analysis for china abstract this paper explores the rebound effect of different energy types in china based on a static computable general equilibrium model a one off 5 energy efficiency improvement is imposed on five different types of energy respectively in all the 135 production sectors in china the rebound effect is measured both on the production level and on the economy wide level for each type of energy the results show that improving energy efficiency of using electricity has the largest positive impact on gdp among the five energy types inter fuel substitutability does not affect the macroeconomic results significantly but long run impact is usually greater than the short run impact for the exports oriented sectors those that are capital intensive get big negative shock in the short run while those that are labour intensive get hurt in the long run there is no backfire effect however improving efficiency of using electricity can cause negative rebound which implies that improving the energy efficiency of using electricity might be a good policy choice under china s current energy structure in general macro level rebound is larger than production level rebound primary energy goods show larger rebound effect than secondary energy goods in addition the paper points out that the policy makers in china should look at the rebound effect in the long term rather than in the short term the energy efficiency policy would be a good and effective policy choice for energy conservation in china when it still has small inter fuel substitution

social capital and growth we define and characterize social capital in a simple growth model we capture social capital in a model where individuals in a community maximize their lifetime gains to trade each trade between two members of a community has the structure of the prisoners dilemma trades are repeated indefinitely but not necessarily each period social capital is defined as the social structure which facilitates cooperative trade as an equilibrium the trading model is incorporated into a growth model to explore the connections between growth labor mobility and social capital the key assumption is that technological innovation which drives growth involves a reallocation of labor that affects social capital modifying the responsiveness of labor to a technological shock has implications for both labor efficiency and social capital

the proof of the pudding making energy efficiency work abstract if western industrialized market economies are to realize a substantial proportion of the potential benefits of increased energy efficiency there is a need to move beyond engineering and economic estimates of efficiency potential and to consider seriously the implications of the behavioural and programme evaluation literature on energy efficiency that literature suggests that reliance upon market mechanisms alone will not permit realization of economically efficient levels of energy efficiency however if points the way toward designing energy efficiency programmes that show real promise of significantly achieving their potential in industrialized market economies

household food security and child nutrition the interaction of income and gender of household head abstract data from kenya and malawi suggest that food security and preschooler nutritional status are influenced by the interaction of income and gender of the head of household rather than simply one or the other not only is household food security influenced by total household income but the proportion of income controlled by women has a positive and significant influence on household caloric intake households were disaggregated not simply in male and female headed households but female headed households were further disaggregated into de jure legal head of household is a woman and de facto female headed households male head of household is absent more than 50 of the time in both kenya and malawi the de facto female headed households had the lowest income despite this low income preschoolers nutritional status was significantly better than in the higher income male headed and de jure female headed households the ability to improve nutritional status in a low income environment in the de facto female headed households is related to a combination of child feeding practices and other nurturing behavior the findings suggest that interventions that exploit incentives to invest in children can provide more immediate improvements in child health and nutrition where sustained income growth is possible only in the long term

privatizing pastoral lands economic and normative outcomes in kenya summary this article presents empirical data from household level studies and anthropological field research regarding the economic and normative outcomes of privatization of pastoral land among a samburu community in kenya the privatization of land in samburu fits neither the optimistic scenario of property rights theorists nor the gloomy forecasts of those who favor communal ownership in pastoral areas while many households experienced gains from privatization this was due to the particular ways in which the process of land tenure change proceeded and how agriculture was integrated into their pastoral livelihood local level norms have emerged that reinforce the value of land ownership for residents and discourage land sales effectively preserving the pastoral way of life

collective action and the group size paradox according to the olson paradox larger groups may be less successful than smaller groups in furthering their interests we address the issue in a model with three distinctive features explicit intergroup interaction collective prizes with a varying mix of public and private characteristics and nonlinear lobbying costs the interplay of these features leads to new results when the cost of lobbying has the elasticity of a quadratic function or higher larger groups are more effective no matter how private the prize with smaller elasticities a threshold degree of publicness is enough to overturn the olson argument and this threshold tends to zero as the elasticity approaches the value for a quadratic function we also demonstrate that these results are true irrespective of whether we examine group sizes over the cross section in some given equilibrium or changes in the size of a given group over different equilibria

gender headship and intrahousehold resource allocation abstract household head as reported in household surveys may not always identify the main economic provider and decision maker within the household research based on this definition of headship may lead to misleading conclusions on the link between gender and poverty treating female headed households as a homogenous group can also be inappropriate results from jamaica show that it is not female headedness per se that is associated with child welfare but the absence of a potential female decision maker within the household

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

social capital conflict and welfare abstract this paper analyzes the role of external conflict as a force that can create social capital hostile inter group interactions can help to resolve intra group social dilemmas but these potential gains must be weighed against the insecurity of hostile relations with an out group our central result is that the presence of an outside threat can induce higher levels of social capital either because a protective aspect of social capital comes into play and or as a reallocation of investments from private to social capital given that social capital is potentially subject to free riding the threat by promoting a greater level of social capital can be welfare improving when the threat is severe social capital and welfare are more likely to fall this effect of an external threat on social capital is stronger in poor economies these results can shed light on the sometimes contradicting empirical evidence on the relationship between conflict and social capital

the man of the house how the use of household head characteristics may lead to omitted variable bias abstract household heads are defined in many micro data sets and are usually male this paper illustrates potential consequences of the common practice of using only the household head s characteristics in empirical research

migrant labor and farm technical efficiency in lesotho abstract the rural economy of lesotho is characterized by dependence on circular labor migration to south african mines and declining agricultural output per capita this paper attempts to improve the understanding of the relationship between circular labor migration and agricultural production by comparing the technical efficiency of farms that supply migrant laborers with that of farms that do not through analysis of the relative technical efficiency of these two farm categories conclusions are drawn concerning the likely impact of changing migration patterns on the agricultural sector

economy wide rebound effects for non energetic raw materials material efficiency is increasingly being seen as a means to save resources and achieve greater security of supply whether these aims can be achieved to the desired extent depends among other things on the presence of rebound effects this article estimates economy wide rebound effects for non energetic raw materials in the context of a set of material efficiency projects carried out in germany under the assumption that the efficiency technologies developed in these projects are scaled up to the national level input output analysis is used to calculate changed material requirements and corresponding rebound effects reduced material flows in monetary terms together with economic data are aggregated to an economy wide impulse which can cause re increases in the demand for the considered raw materials depending on the project specific framework conditions and subject to the modeling assumptions our estimates suggest that individual materials display a wide range of rebound effects ranging from close to zero to low double digit percentages these results point towards the conclusion that economy wide rebound effects do not make these efficiency measures obsolete however they also suggest that rebound effects should not be ignored in the assessment of the role of efficiency in future resource consumption

why governments should invest more to educate girls abstract women and men often receive the same percentage increase in their wage rates with advances in schooling because these returns decline with more schooling the marginal returns for women will tend to exceed those for men especially in countries where women are much less educated the health and schooling of children are more closely related to their mother s education than father s more educated women work more hours in the market labor force broadening the tax base and thereby potentially reducing tax distortions these three conditions it is argued justify the disproportionate allocation of public expenditures toward women s education

rebound and disinvestment effects in refined oil consumption and supply resulting from an increase in energy efficiency in the scottish commercial transport sector in this paper we use an energy economy environment computable general equilibrium cge model of the scottish economy to examine the impacts of an exogenous increase in energy augmenting technological progress in the domestic commercial transport sector on the supply and use of energy we focus our analysis on scottish refined oil as the main type of energy input used in commercial transport activity we find that a 5 increase in energy efficiency in the commercial transport sector leads to rebound effects in the use of oil based energy commodities in all time periods in the target sector and at the economy wide level however our results also suggest that such an efficiency improvement may cause a contraction in capacity in the scottish refined oil supply sector this disinvestment effect acts as a constraint on the size of rebound effects however the magnitude of rebound effects and presence of the disinvestment effect in the simulations conducted here are sensitive to the specification of key elasticities of substitution in the nested production function for the target sector particularly the substitutability of energy for non energy intermediate inputs to production

institutions transaction costs and economic growth this essay develops a theoretical framework which explores the historical obstacles to economic growth these obstacles are examined in the context of the political economic institutional framework of economies in history and consequent transaction costs that determine economic performance and growth the essay concludes with specific suggestions for the study of economic growth

alternative definitions of female headship in the dominican republic abstract different definitions of female household headship have different implications for the economic status and welfare of members of female headed households fhh using data from the dominican republic this study compares four definitions of fhh self definition no adult males 18 60 present female earns over 50 of earned or of total income the definitions are associated but each defines a different group half of self defined fhh contain adult males half of those in which the woman is the major earner are self defined fhh in the dominican republic female headship by any definition is not associated with lower income per capita but sources of income are quite different fhh are more dependent on transfers and gifts than wages fhh defined by earnings are of higher income on average demographic composition of fhh is significantly different from male headed households mhh

money is memory abstract this paper examines the sets of feasible allocations in a large class of economic environments in which commitment is impossible following myerson 8 the standard definition of feasibility is adapted to take account of the lack of commitment the environments feature either memory or money memory is defined as knowledge on the part of an agent of the full histories of all agents with whom he has had direct or indirect contact in the past money is defined as an object that does not enter utility or production functions and is available in fixed supply the main proposition is that any allocation that is feasible in an environment with money is also feasible in the same environment with memory depending on the environment the converse may or may not be true hence from a technological point of view money is equivalent to a primitive form of memory journal of economic literature classification numbers e40 c73 d82

women food security and development in less industrialized societies contributions and challenges for the new century summary in this paper i examine the links between women food security and development from a crossnational perspective i find that the proximity to gender equality constructed from the united nations human development and gender related development indices improves development in the form of both child hunger and child mortality extending these results other forms of female empowerment including female contraceptive prevalence significantly improve development outcomes in less industrialized societies findings are net of theoretical controls for economic development population pressure globalization democratization and region further strengthening the importance of gender considerations countries that incorporate gender into policy and program considerations benefit from such inclusion in the form of social and economic development outcomes findings are an important crossnational extension of existing research utilizing new measures that capture the important development dynamic

expenditure behavior and children s welfare an analysis of female headed households in jamaica abstract evidence from jamaica shows that the sex and union status of the household head can have a significant influence on household expenditure behavior with implications for individual household members while the presence of a female decision maker generally increases the share of the household budget allocated to child and family goods female headed households fhhs also spend more on adult wear and less on health lower health expenditures are partially offset by the differential use of other health inputs in fhhs these differences in resource allocation may explain why poorer fhhs do not necessarily have lower children s outcomes in developing countries

working women in an urban setting traders vendors and food security in accra abstract data collected from a 1997 household survey carried out in accra ghana are used to look at the crucial role that women play as income earners and securing access to food in urban areas one third of the households surveyed are headed by women for all households women s labor force participation is high with 75 of all households having at least one working woman the high number of female headed households and the large percentage of working women in the sample provide a good backdrop for looking at how women earn and spend income differently than men in an urban area livelihood strategies for both men and women are predominantly labor based and dependent on social networks for all households in the sample food is still the single most important item in the total budget yet important and striking differences between men s and women s livelihoods and expenditure patterns exist compared to men women are less likely to be employed as wage earners and more likely to work as street food vendors or petty traders women earn lower incomes but tend to allocate more of their budget to basic goods for themselves and their children while men spend more on entertainment for themselves only despite lower incomes and additional demands on their time as housewives and mothers female headed households petty traders and street food vendors have the largest percentage of food secure households women may be achieving household food security but at what cost this paper explores differences in income expenditure and consumption patterns in an effort to answer this question and suggests ways that urban planners and policy makers can address special concerns to working women in urban areas

female land ownership and fertility in nepal this paper examines the association between female land ownership and fertility in nepal using propensity score methods a female land owner is found to have an average of 0 26 0 47 fewer children than her non owner counterpart such negative female land fertility trends are observed for women in different age groups evidence indicates that female land ownership promotes women s wealth and decision making authority which could be the pathways through which their fertility is influenced these findings imply that female land ownership could have substantial welfare benefits for women and population implications for countries

gender and property formalization conventional and alternative approaches securing property rights in both rural landholdings and urban housing is a much debated feature of current development policy providing title for the household does not guarantee security for women and legal equality may fail to prevent gender differences in property ownership a pro active approach to women s property rights is needed disenchantment with state programs delivering individual titles has led to calls for alternative strategies emphasizing local or customary authorities and procedures this paper questions the ability of either approach to address gender inequalities effectively without affirmative action but suggests that informal responses within state institutions can help c 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved