urbanization and poverty reduction the role of rural diversification and secondary towns a rather unique panel tracking more than 3 300 individuals from households in rural kagera tanzania during 1991 4 2010 shows that about one in two individuals households who exited poverty did so by transitioning from agriculture into the rural nonfarm economy or secondary towns only one in seven exited poverty by migrating to a large city although those moving to a city experienced on average faster consumption growth further analysis of a much larger cross country panel of 51 developing countries cannot reject that rural diversification and secondary town development lead to more inclusive growth patterns than metropolitization indications are that this follows because more of the poor find their way to the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns than to distant cities the development discourse would benefit from shifting beyond the rural urban dichotomy and focusing instead more on how best to urbanize and develop the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns

benefit incidence public spending reforms and the timing of program capture assessments of the distributional effects of public spending reforms have generally been based on average rates of program participation by income or expenditure group this practice can be deceptive because the socioeconomic composition of participants can change as a social program expands or contracts the geographic variation found in 1993 94 household survey data for rural india is used to estimate the marginal odds of participating in schooling and antipoverty programs the results suggest early capture of these programs by the non poor it is shown that conventional methods for assessing benefit incidence underestimate the gains to the poor from higher public outlays and underestimate the losses from cuts

patent protection in developing countries and global welfare wto obligations versus flexibilities abstract this paper develops a north south model to evaluate the south s incentive for patent protection when a northern firm s investment in quality enhancing research and development r d is affected by its patent policy the model is used to a evaluate the impact of requiring the south to fulfill its key wto obligation of instituting patent protection and b to address the role of two major flexibilities that wto members enjoy with respect to their patent policies the freedom to implement exhaustion policies of their choosing and the right to use compulsory licensing cl subject to certain stipulations two forces drive the model how much the firm invests in r d and whether or not selling in the south maximizes its global profit cl improves consumer access in the south and can even raise innovation and global welfare provided the south implements patent protection innovation and welfare are higher if the north follows national as opposed to international exhaustion however the south s incentive for patent protection is not necessarily stronger under national exhaustion not only is cl more likely to be used under international exhaustion the welfare gain resulting from its application is also higher relative to that under national exhaustion

economic growth and poverty reduction measurement issues using income and non income indicators summary this paper first reviews the debate on the definition of pro poor growth and argues that a relative definition has merits when defining the state of pro poor growth while an absolute definition is most suitable when analyzing the rate of pro poor growth the second contribution is to extend the pro poor growth toolbox to non income indicators the analysis applied to bolivia shows that this extension greatly improves our understanding of the distribution of change in non income indicators of the linkages between progress in income and non income dimensions of poverty and on the incidence of progress in non income outcomes along the income distribution

has india s economic growth become more pro poor in the wake of economic reforms the extent to which india s poor have benefited from the country s economic growth has long been debated a new series of consumption based poverty measures spanning 50 years including a 15 year period after economic reforms began in earnest in the early 1990s is used to examine that issue growth has tended to reduce poverty including in the post reform period there is no robust evidence of more or less poverty responsiveness to growth since the reforms began although there are signs of rising inequality the impact of growth is higher when using poverty measures that reflects distribution below the poverty line and when using growth rates calculated from household surveys rather than national accounts the urban rural pattern of growth matters for the pace of poverty reduction however in marked contrast to the period before the reforms urban economic growth in the period after the reforms has brought significant gains to the rural poor as well as the urban poor

pathways out of poverty in lagging regions evidence from rural western china how to reduce poverty in lagging regions remains much debated and underserved with solid empirical evidence this study illustrates an empirical methodology to analyze the pathways households followed out of poverty and to explore their potential in the future using 20002004 rural household panel data from two lagging provinces of china inner mongolia and gansu it finds that rising labor productivity in agriculture has been key in understanding poverty reduction in rural lagging areas of these provinces and that it still holds much promise circular migration has also been important in gansu though less so in inner mongolia on average rural diversification has not proven to contribute much to poverty reduction and income transfers and agricultural tax abolishment have only helped at the margin the findings from these two case studies highlight that the scope for reducing poverty in rural lagging regions can still be substantial in agriculture also when nonagriculture drives national growth

when does growth trickle down to the poor the indian case a theoretical analysis and several econometric tests have been undertaken to examine whether the trickle down effect took place in rural india over a long time period we found little evidence to suggest that the trickle down effect had occurred at all our analysis suggests that the emergence of capital labour substitution was primarily responsible for preventing growth from reducing poverty the decline in poverty and a higher growth rate that took place during the late 1970s and 1980s were largely a result of government anti poverty measures teamed with the more equitable distribution of credit and inputs to smaller and marginal farmers

a multiplier decomposition method to analyze poverty alleviation abstract the objective of this paper is to present a multiplier decomposition method focusing on poverty alleviation the decomposition captures the various mechanisms and linkages through which a production sector s output contributes to poverty alleviation within a socioeconomic system represented by a social accounting matrix sam it is shown that a multiplier can be broken down into two multiplicative effects the distributional and interdependency effects the decomposition method is applied to the case of indonesia a key policy implication is that the human capital of the poor needs to be enhanced if they are not to be sealed off from the industrialization process

equilibrium parallel import policies and international market structure in a north south vertically differentiated duopoly the analysis in this paper derives equilibrium government policies towards parallel imports by incorporating strategic interaction at the policy setting stage and the product market the model sheds new light on i the effects of parallel import policies on pricing behavior of firms and ii the interdependence of national parallel import policies if demand asymmetry across countries is sufficiently large the north forbids parallel imports to ensure its firm sells in the south thereby generating international price discrimination the south s most preferred market outcome as the equilibrium when demand structures are relatively similar across countries the north permits parallel imports and uniform pricing its most preferred market outcome obtains

nonfarm diversification poverty economic mobility and income inequality a case study in village india this paper assembles data at the all india level and for the village of palanpur uttar pradesh to document the growing importance and influence of the non farm sector in the rural economy between the early 1980s and late 2000s the suggestion from the combined national sample survey and palanpur data is of a slow process of non farm diversification whose distributional incidence on the margin is increasingly pro poor the village level analysis documents that the non farm sector is not only increasing incomes and reducing poverty but appears as well to be breaking down long standing barriers to mobility among the poorest segments of rural society efforts by the government of india to accelerate the process of diversification could thus yield significant returns in terms of declining poverty and increased income mobility the evidence from palanpur also shows however that at the village level a significant increase in income inequality has accompanied diversification away from the farm a growing literature argues that such a rise in inequality could affect the fabric of village society the way in which village institutions function and evolve and the scope for collective action at the village level failure to keep such inequalities in check could thus undermine the pro poor impacts from the process of structural transformation currently underway in rural india

farm productivity and rural poverty in india armed with new data we return to an old question from the pages of this journal to what extent do india s rural poor share in agricultural growth combining data from 24 household sample surveys spanning 35 years with other sources we estimate a model of the joint determination of consumption poverty measures agricultural wages and food prices we find that higher farm productivity brought both absolute and relative gains to poor rural households a large share of the gains was via wages and prices though these effects took time the benefits to the poor were not confined to those near the poverty line

can high inequality developing countries escape absolute poverty do the poor face the same prospects for escaping poverty in high inequality developing countries as in low inequality countries is it possible for inequality to be so great as to stifle prospects of reducing absolute poverty even when other initial conditions and policies are favorable to growth household survey data for developing countries suggest that initial distribution does affect how much the poor share in rising average incomes higher initial inequality tends to reduce growth s impact on absolute poverty by the same token higher inequality diminishes the adverse impact on the poor of general economic contraction combining this evidence with that from recent investigations of inequality s effect on growth the author finds that if inequality is high enough countries that would have very good growth prospects at low levels of inequality may see little or no overall growth and little progress in reducing poverty or even a worsening on both counts the data the author uses suggest that such cases do occur the precision with which key parameters have been estimated makes it difficult to say with confidence how common such cases are but they appear to be in the minority what appear to be the best available estimates suggest that about one fifth of the spells between surveys he analyzed were cases in which poverty was rising yet positive growth in the mean and hence falling poverty is predicted at zero inequality inequality can be high enough to result in rising poverty despite good underlying growth prospects

poverty decline agricultural wages and non farm employment in rural india 1983 2004 the authors analyze five rounds of national sample survey data covering 1983 1987 8 1993 4 1999 0 and 2004 5 to explore the relationship between rural diversification and poverty poverty in rural india declined at a modest rate during this period the authors provide region level estimates that illustrate considerable geographic heterogeneity in this progress poverty estimates correlate well with region level data on changes in agricultural wage rates agricultural labor remains the preserve of the uneducated and also to a large extent of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes although agricultural labor grew as a share of total economic activity over the first four rounds it had fallen back to the levels observed at the beginning of the survey period by 2004 this all india trajectory masks widely varying trends across states during this period the rural non farm sector grew modestly mainly between the last two survey rounds regular non farm employment remains largely associated with education levels and social status that are rare among the poor however casual labor and self employment in the non farm sector reveal greater involvement by disadvantaged groups in 2004 than in the preceding rounds the implication for poverty is not immediately clear the poor may be pushed into low return casual non farm activities due to lack of opportunities in the agricultural sector rather than being pulled by high returns offered by the non farm sector econometric estimates reveal that expansion of the non farm sector is associated with falling poverty via two routes a direct impact on poverty that is likely due to a pro poor marginal incidence of non farm employment expansion and an indirect impact attributable to the positive effect of non farm employment growth on agricultural wages the analysis also confirms the important contribution to rural poverty reduction from agricultural productivity availability of land and consumption levels in proximate urban areas

parallel imports and the pricing of pharmaceutical products evidence from the european union we consider policy issues regarding parallel imports pis of brand name pharmaceuticals in the european union where such trade is permitted we develop a simple model in which an original manufacturer competes in its home market with pi firms the model suggests that for small trade costs the original manufacturer will accommodate the import decisions of parallel traders and that the price in the home market falls as the volume of parallel imports rises using data from sweden we find that the prices of drugs subject to competition from parallel imports fell relative to other drugs over the period 1994 1999 econometric analysis finds that parallel imports significantly reduced manufacturing prices by 12 19 there is evidence that this effect increases with multiple pi entrants

moving up or just surviving nonfarm self employment in india the classical economic development literature argues that growth is accompanied by a reduction in agriculture s share and an increase in nonagriculture s share of employment yet growth of the nonfarm sector does not necessarily signal increasing levels of development as the sector may serve as subsistence employment for many individuals this ambiguity is heightened by a surprising lack of microevidence regarding sectoral and occupational choice and especially how government policies impact these decisions in this article i make a simple observation regarding how nonfarm self employment reacts to market conditions households and individuals that enter into nonfarm self employment for subsistence reasons are more likely to exit the sector when wages increase or when more stable employment becomes available with this assumption as a starting point i examine the effects of the mahatma gandhi national rural employment guarantee act which increased prevailing wages in rural india the program significantly decreases days spent in nonfarm self employment in addition the implied labor elasticity is three times higher than economy wide estimates suggesting rural nonfarm self employment is a sector of last resort for many individuals additional analyses suggest this impact is driven primarily by two mechanisms higher wages and alternative options for risk management

caste female labor supply and the gender wage gap in india boserup revisited abstractthe gender wage gap is notable not just for its persistence and ubiquity but also for its variation across regions and countries a natural question is how greater workforce participation by women matters to female wages and the gender wage gap within india a seeming paradox is that gender differentials in agricultural wages are the largest in southern regions of india that are otherwise favorable to women ester boserup hypothesized that this is due to greater labor force participation by women in these regions this is not obvious as greater female labor supply could depress male wages as well other factors also need to be accounted for especially since women have fewer opportunities for nonfarm employment this article undertakes a formal test of the boserup proposition we find that differences in female labor supply are able to explain 55 of the gender wage gap between northern and southern states of india the article also finds that women gain from greater nonfarm employment even if

engel s what a response to gan and vernon gan and vernon s comment does not resolve the puzzle that we originally posed their description of the puzzle is unclear so we start by restating it the essence of the matter is this imagine two households one of which is larger than the other for example containing the same age and sex composition of people but with twice as many of everyone imagine too that both households have the same level of per capita total household expenditure so that in the example the household with twice as many people spends twice as much in total if there are economies of scale the second household is better off while it is possible for it to maintain exactly the same expenditure pattern as the smaller household with everyone having the same of everything it can also rearrange its purchases to take advantage of the differential economies of scale in different goods because food is a normal good we would expect the larger household to spend more per capita on food this is especially so in poor countries where there are few substitutes for food so that there is limited opportunity for substituting away from food toward goods with greater economies of scale the evidence contradicts this prediction we looked at household survey data from the united states the united kingdom france taiwan thailand pakistan and south africa in all cases and with per capita expenditures held constant larger households have lower per capita food consumption and the reduction with household size is greatest in the poorest countries what do gan and vernon do they show that for the united states russia and south africa when they increase household size holding constant per capita total expenditure the per capita demand for housing falls more rapidly than the per capita demand for food the same is also true for various combinations of housing and other goods compared with food alone or food combined with clothing this is correct and such results can be inferred from table 5 p 920 of our original paper but these findings do not address the central puzzle which is that larger households that are more than fully compensated for their

distributional implications of climate change in rural india a general equilibrium approach we develop a general equilibrium framework based on a specific factors trade model to quantify the medium term household welfare impacts of global warming in rural india using an hedonic approach grounded in the theory combined with detailed microdata we estimate that three decades of warming will reduce agricultural productivity in the range of 7 13 with the arid northwest of india especially hard hit our analysis shows that the proportional welfare cost of climate change is likely to be both modest and evenly distributed across percentiles of the per capita income distribution but this latter conclusion emerges only when the flexibility of rural wages is taken into account

agriculture for development new paradigm and options for success the role of agriculture as an instrument for industrialization had been rigorously conceptualized in the 1960s and 1970s under theclassicalparadigmofdevelopmenteconomics aftermanyimplementationfailuresunderimportsubstitutionindustrialization policies and protracted neglect of agriculture under the policies of the washington consensus that followed the debt crisis agriculture has gradually returned in the development agenda especially with the food crisis we argue in this article that a new paradigm has started to emerge as to how to use agriculture for development pursuing a broadened development agenda we explore the specifications of this paradigm and discuss conditions for successful implementation jel classifications b20 o13 q18

pharmaceutical price controls and entry strategies abstract this paper finds that the use of price controls has a statistically and quantitatively important effect on the extent and timing of the launch of new drugs firms headquartered in countries that regulate price reach fewer markets than those in countries without price controls companies avoid price controlled markets and are less likely to introduce products in additional markets after entering a price controlled country launches into low price european countries are further delayed following legalization of parallel imports the results suggest that price regulation in one country affects entry into other countries and may affect the strategies of domestic firms

compulsory licensing of pharmaceuticals by the developing south abstract compulsory licensing cl of medicines by a developing south unambiguously improves access to treatments by its population its impact on profits and thus innovation rates and welfare is a more controversial issue in the literature this paper proposes a north south model dealing with parallel trade price controls and compulsory license if the south is not served our results challenge the literature claiming that parallel trade leads to higher innovation and welfare moreover conditions apply for cl to be used in particular it should never be used for neglected diseases as malaria and tuberculosis when the south issues cls it is compensated for the welfare losses caused by the north allowing parallel trade and innovation and northern welfare do not decrease the best outcome however is market segmentation i e no parallel trade in the first place

food prices wages and welfare in rural india this paper considers the welfare and distributional consequences of higher relative food prices in rural india through the lens of a specific factors general equilibrium trade model applied at the district level the evidence shows that nominal wages for manual labor both within and outside agriculture respond elastically to increases in producer prices that is wages rose faster in rural districts growing more of those crops with large price run ups over 2004 09 accounting for such wage gains the analysis finds that rural households across the income spectrum benefit from higher agricultural commodity prices indeed rural wage adjustment appears to play a much greater role in protecting the welfare of the poor than the public distribution system india s giant food rationing scheme moreover policies like agricultural export bans which insulate producers as well as consumers from international price increases are particularly harmful to the poor of rural india conventional welfare analyses that assume fixed wages and focus on households net sales position lead to radically different conclusions

services trade protection and economic isolation poor connectivity is conventionally blamed on difficult geography and low income but economic isolation could also result from policy choices in key linking services such as air transportation and telecommunications a new database on applied services trade policies reveals that many countries restrict trade in the very services that connect them with the rest of the world we present evidence that restrictive policies lead to more concentrated market structures and limited access to services even after taking into account the influence of geography and income moving from an intermediate level of restrictiveness to an open regime could lead to a 20 percentage point increase in cellular teledensity in the telecommunications sector and to a 25 per cent increase in flight connections per airline in the aviation sector respectively

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

growth still is good for the poor incomes in the poorest two quintiles on average increase at the same rate as overall average incomes this is because in a global dataset spanning 118 countries over the past four decades changes in the share of income of the poorest quintiles are generally small and uncorrelated with changes in average income the variation in changes in quintile shares is also small relative to the variation in growth in average incomes implying that the latter accounts for most of the variation in income growth in the poorest quintiles these findings hold across most regions and time periods and when conditioning on a variety of country level factors that may matter for growth and inequality changes this evidence confirms the central importance of economic growth for poverty reduction and illustrates the difficulty of identifying specific macroeconomic policies that are significantly associated with the relative growth rates of those in the poorest quintiles

how access to credit affects self employment differences by gender during india s rural banking reform abstract household survey data for 1983 2000 from india s national sample survey organisation are used to examine the impact of credit on self employment among men and women in rural labour households results indicate that credit access encourages women s self employment as own account workers and employers while it discourages men s self employment as unpaid family workers ownership of land a key form of collateral also serves as a strong predictor of self employment among the lower castes in india self employment is less likely for scheduled castes prone to wage activity but more likely for scheduled tribes prone to entrepreneurial work

growth and inequality in india analysis of an extended social accounting matrix summary based on an extended social accounting matrix sam for 2002 03 this study shows how sectoral growth in india affects inequality a breakdown of the wage account into three educational levels and 10 sectors of employment improves the link between sectoral expansion and household income in the sam the results show that only agricultural growth reduces inequality while growth in heavy manufacturing and services sectors raises inequality given india s current growth pattern inequality is likely to increase further in an analysis of the standard sam growth in any sector would appear to reduce inequality which underlines the importance of our extension

from free entry to patent protection welfare implications for the indian pharmaceutical industry abstract there has been fierce debate over the imposition of stronger intellectual property rights laws for pharmaceutical products in developing countries this paper uses data from the indian pharmaceutical industry to develop a structural model of demand supply and entry the estimation yields demand and supply parameters that indicate significant heterogeneity among firms both within and across different therapeutic segments the estimated parameters are used to simulate patent enforcement and price deregulation for 43 drugs which predicts large losses for consumers and relatively small gains in profits for the global patent holders

is india s economic growth leaving the poor behind there has been much debate about how much india s poor have shared in the economic growth unleashed by economic reforms in the 1990s the authors argue that india has probably maintained its 1980s rate of poverty reduction in the 1990s however there is considerable diversity in performance across states this holds some important clues for understanding why economic growth has not done more for india s poor india s economic growth in the 1990s has not been occurring in the states where it would have the most impact on poverty nationally if not for the sectoral and geographic imbalance of growth the national rate of growth would have generated a rate of poverty reduction that was double india s historical trend rate states with relatively low levels of initial rural development and human capital development were not well suited to reduce poverty in response to economic growth the study s results are consistent with the view that achieving higher aggregate economic growth is only one element of an effective strategy for poverty reduction in india the sectoral and geographic composition of growth is also important as is the need to redress existing inequalities in human resource development and between rural and urban areas

international patent protection 1960 2005 abstract this note provides an update to the index of patent protection published in this journal in 1997 the original paper presented the index for 1960 1990 for 110 countries the index has now been updated to 2005 and extended to 122 countries the adoption of stronger patent laws and the composition of patent rights vary across countries by level of economic development

micro level welfare impacts of agricultural productivity evidence from rural malawi this article analyses the micro level welfare impacts of agricultural productivity using a two wave nationally representative panel data from rural malawi welfare is measured by various dimension

growth inequality and poverty looking beyond averages the evidence is compelling that the poor in developing countries do typically share in the gains from rising aggregate affluence and in the losses from aggregate contraction but how much do poor people share in growth do they gain more in some settings than others do some gain while others lose does pro poor growth mean more or less aggregate growth recent theories and evidence suggest some answers but deeper microeconomic empirical work is needed on growth and distributed change only then will we have a firm basis for identifying the specific policies and programs needed to complement and possibly modify growth oriented policies

compulsory licensing price controls and access to patented foreign products abstract we analyze how a price control and the threat of compulsory licensing cl affect consumer access in a developing country south to a patented foreign product in the model the southern government sets the level of the price control on a northern patent holder who chooses between entry and voluntary licensing vl while entry incurs a higher fixed cost licensed production is of lower quality if the patent holder does not work its patent locally the south is free to use cl the threat of cl ensures that consumers have access to a lower quality version of the patented good when the patent holder chooses not to work its patent locally improves the terms at which vl occurs can cause the patent holder to switch from vl to entry and can delay consumer access when cl replaces vl or entry we also show that a price control and cl are mutually reinforcing instruments

poverty dynamics in rural orissa transitions in assets and occupations over generations abstractwe investigate whether historic land distribution determines stagnation or development of indian villages the empirical analysis is motivated by the banerjee and newman 1993 model of occupational choice and economic development family histories are collected for a random sample of 800 households households are classified into economic categories according to the assets occupations mix at present and at grandfather s time transitions are described and for a remote district explained by the historic village land distribution we also investigate the role of social identity and find that scheduled tribes are more likely trapped in poverty than scheduled castes

differential pricing parallel trade and the incentive to invest abstract i consider the case for imposing uniform pricing on a monopolist in a setting where markets can be segmented according to differences in marginal costs and or consumer demand i also analyze the ex ante impact on incentives to invest in r d i show how two opposite trade offs arise when differential pricing is demand based uniform pricing has good ex post welfare properties but leads to lower investment ex ante conversely when differential pricing is cost based uniform pricing has bad ex post welfare properties but leads to higher investment ex ante

parallel imports demand dispersion and international price discrimination parallel imports goods imported by unauthorized resellers are advocated worldwide for undermining international price discrimination for a continuum of markets we find that uniform pricing by a monopolist yields lower global welfare than third degree discrimination if demand dispersion across markets is large though uniform pricing avoids output misallocation too many markets go unserved mixed systems permitting discrimination across but not within designated groups of markets yield significantly higher welfare than uniform pricing or unrestricted multimarket discrimination and can pareto dominate uniform pricing thus while parallel imports might benefit some countries our results weaken the multilateral case for allowing them

why has economic growth been more pro poor in some states of india than others abstract we use 20 household surveys for india s 15 major states spanning 1960 1994 to study how the sectoral composition of economic growth and initial conditions interact to influence how much growth reduced consumption poverty the elasticities of measured poverty to farm yields and development spending did not differ significantly across states but the elasticities of poverty to urban and rural non farm output varied appreciably and the differences were quantitatively important to the overall rate of poverty reduction states with higher elasticities did not experience higher rates of non farm growth the non farm growth process was more pro poor in states with initially higher literacy higher farm productivity higher rural living standards relative to urban areas lower landlessness and lower infant mortality

decent rural employment and farm production efficiency empirical evidence from tanzania and ethiopia promoting decent rural employment by creating new jobs in rural areas and upgrading the existing ones could be one of the most efficient pathways to reduce rural poverty this article systematically investigates the impact of decent rural employment on agricultural production efficiency in ethiopia and tanzania the analysis applies an output oriented distance function approach with an estimation procedure that accounts for different technological demographic socioeconomic institutional and decent rural employment indicators data of the 2011 round of living standards measurement study integrated surveys on agriculture for the two countries are used and a set of indicators is derived to proxy core dimensions of decent rural employment the findings of our analysis show that decent rural employment contributes to agricultural production efficiency

how do cross border mergers and acquisitions answer to deregulation in services whereas competition in the manufacturing sector was progressively ensured beginning with the end of the second world war services have been progressively opened to international competition only since the late 1980s and are still among the most regulated sectors in oecd countries in this paper we analyse the impact of deregulation in that sector on cross border mergers and acquisitions m as in services we find that deregulation favours inward m as in services this positive effect occurs through two channels a reduction in entry costs and an increase in investment opportunities on the other hand deregulation has an ambiguous impact on outward m as that depends on the initial level of regulation in the acquiring country in particular we provide some evidence of a u shaped relationship between deregulation and outward m as in the service sector in countries that are initially highly deregulated deregulation fosters outward m as conversely in situations in which government control is large privatisation and deregulation are likely to reduce the incentive for firms to engage in cross border m a deals

high rural population density africa what are the growth requirements and who participates abstract a large and increasing proportion of agricultural growth in africa must come from continuous gains in land productivity in areas of high population density and hence with already relatively high yields what that requires is analogous to the green revolution in asia several features differentiate the african situation those include greater diversity in cropping pattern including a historically larger and more widespread tropical commodity export sector the physical infrastructure in rural africa is far inferior to that of most asian countries while the greater diversity of agriculture calls for a larger and more diverse institutional structure the reality is that the research systems the ancillary education systems to spread innovation and the rural financial systems are generally greatly inferior to those of asia at the beginning of the green revolution ethiopia s record of a steady six to seven percent growth for agriculture and nearly halving of rural poverty demonstrates that with the right policies and investments a very poor country starting with poor physical and institutional infrastructure can bring a major contribution from agriculture growth to increased gdp and reduced poverty as in asia the bulk of accelerated agricultural growth will come from small commercial farmers they have sufficient farm income to reach or exceed the poverty level those are farms with depending on the country as little as 0 75 hectares to a few tens of hectares of land they comprise up to half the rural population and produce on the order of 70 80 percent of agricultural output they are in general not poor the poor have inadequate land to reach the poverty level initially with much underemployment and with substantial non farm employment the primary driver of poverty reduction is the small commercial farmer spending on the order of half of increased income on nontradable employment intensive goods and services from the rural non farm sector

estimates of ad valorem equivalents of barriers against foreign suppliers of services in eleven services sectors and 103 countries a new database on the barriers faced by foreign suppliers of services has been produced by the world bank data for 103 countries are available on 11 of the most important services sectors in international trade based on these data and building on the methodology and publications supported by the australian productivity commission this paper produces estimates of the ad valorem equivalents of the barriers for all these sectors and countries compared with estimates available in the literature that are based on assessments of country and sector specific barriers to services providers the estimates expand the set of sectors and more than triple the set of countries for which estimates of the ad valorem equivalents of the services barriers are available

compulsory licensing and patent protection a north south perspective in a stylized model involving a developing country called south and a foreign patent holder we analyze whether and how the incidence and social value of compulsory licensing cl depends upon the south s patent protection policy if south is free to deny patent protection cl fails to arise in equilibrium and the option to use it makes both parties worse off if south is obligated to offer patent protection cl can occur and even yield a pareto improvement the ability to control price increases the south s incentive for patent protection as well as the likelihood of cl this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

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

foreign investor reactions to risk and uncertainty in antitrust u s merger policy investigations and the deterrence of foreign acquirer presence motivated by the potential for antitrust and competition policies to be protectionist in effect we formulate the theoretical prior that merger policy deters foreign acquirer participation in local m a markets the policy risk and policy uncertainty characteristic of merger review may negatively affect foreign acquirers more so than domestic acquirers thereby disadvantaging foreign acquisitions of local firms and deterring future cross border investment activities we test this prior by employing sector level data on u s merger policy investigations and foreign acquirer presence in u s m a markets over the 2002 2017 period our panel data methodological approach indicates that the risk and uncertainty characteristic of u s merger policy disproportionately deters the acquisition activities of foreign investors the empirical results also suggest that the application of competition and merger policies in other national jurisdictions where there is less of a strong commitment to antitrust principles might also be effectively protectionist

why have some indian states done better than others at reducing rural poverty the unevenness of the rise in rural living standards in the various states of india since the 1950s allowed the authors to study the causes of poverty they modeled the evolution of average consumption and various poverty measures using pooled state level data for 1957 91 they found that poverty was reduced by higher agricultural yields above trend growth in nonfarm output and lower inflation rates but these factors only partly explain relative success and failure in reducing poverty initial conditions also mattered states that started the period with better infrastructure and human resources with more intense irrigation greater literacy and lower infant mortality rates had significantly greater long term rates of consumption growth and poverty reduction by and large the same variables that promoted growth in average consumption also helped reduce poverty the effects on poverty measures were partly redistributive in nature after controlling for inflation the authors found that some of the factors that helped reduce absolute poverty also improved distribution and none of the factors that reduced absolute poverty had adverse impacts on distribution in other words there was no sign of tradeoffs between growth and pro poor distribution

is there a metropolitan bias the relationship between poverty and city size in a selection of developing countries this paper provides evidence from eight developing countries of an inverse relationship between poverty and city size poverty is both more widespread and deeper in very small and small towns than in large or very large cities this basic pattern is generally robust to the choice of poverty line the paper shows further that for all eight countries a majority of the urban poor live in medium small or very small towns moreover it is shown that the greater incidence and severity of consumption poverty in smaller towns is generally compounded by similarly greater deprivation in terms of access to basic infrastructure services such as electricity heating gas sewerage and solid waste disposal we illustrate for one country morocco that inequality within large cities is not driven by a severe dichotomy between slum dwellers and others robustness checks are performed to assess whether the findings in the paper hinge on a specific definition of urban area are driven by differences in the cost of

openness to foreign direct investment in services an international comparative analysis this paper quantifies and analyses the extent of restrictions on inward foreign direct investment fdi in the service sector in developed and developing countries services account for an increasing share of global fdi recognition of the economic benefits of fdi clashes with nationalistic economic political and national security concerns about foreign takeover of strategic sectors such as telecommunications finance and transport consequently almost all countries impose restrictions on fdi in services several different types of restrictions are considered limitations on foreign ownership screening or notification procedures management restrictions and operational restrictions these restrictions on fdi are computed at the industry level and then aggregated into a single measure for the service sector as a whole for 23 developed and 50 developing countries notwithstanding the worldwide trend towards liberalisation of restrictions there remain substantial disparities between regions and individual countries in the severity of restrictions on inward fdi in services the lowest restriction scores are in europe and latin america whereas east asia south asia and the middle east have the highest levels of restrictions the evolution over time of fdi restrictions is also presented for developed countries over the period 1981 2005 showing liberalisation in all countries especially since the early 1990s although to varying extents across countries the severity of restrictions also differs considerably by sector with electricity telecommunications transport and finance most restricted the paper also finds a strong negative correlation of restrictiveness with inward stocks of fdi in services suggesting that restrictions impede fdi

agricultural productivity growth rural economic diversity and economic reforms india 1970 2000 a salient theme in d gale johnson s work is the importance of agricultural development for general prosperity and for economic diversification e g johnson 2000 johnson has also noted that most of the world s poor are engaged in farming so that a key focus of development policy is to raise the incomes of farmers from a global perspective increasing the productivity of agriculture given the fixity of land is necessary for both poverty reduction and the development of the nonagricultural sector at the level of the world agricultural productivity gains poverty reduction and the growth of the nonfarm sector are complements however the question remains whether these observations imply that every poor country should focus its public resources on agricultural development in order to raise the incomes of people now engaged in farming and whether such a policy is necessary for obtaining economic diversity in this article we use the experience of india over the past 30 years to address the issue of whether agricultural technical change actually leads to economic diversification and income growth within the rural sector in the context of an open economy country in which there are cross area trade and capital flows we focus in particular on the rural sector because this is the sector in which linkages between agricultural and nonagricultural sectors are thought to be the strongest we exploit the fact that india has maintained a policy of openness with respect to agricultural technology over this period permitting and actively supporting agricultural development and has moved to a reformed regime in which goods are traded and capital is more mobile in the 1990s evidence on the relationship between agricultural growth and nonfarm

poverty reduction during the rural urban transformation the role of the missing middle as countries develop they restructure away from agriculture and urbanize but structural transformation and urbanization patterns differ substantially with some countries fostering migration out of agriculture into rural off farm activities and secondary towns and others undergoing rapid agglomeration in mega cities using cross country panel data for developing countries spanning 1980 2004 the analysis in this paper finds that migration out of agriculture into the missing middle the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns yields more inclusive growth patterns and faster poverty reduction than agglomeration in mega cities this suggests that patterns of urbanization deserve much more attention when striving for faster poverty reduction

what can new survey data tell us about recent changes in distribution and poverty it has been claimed that in recent times the poor have lost ground both relatively and absolutely even when average levels of living have risen this article tests that claim using household surveys for 67 developing and transitional economies over 1981 94 it finds that changes in inequality and polarization were uncorrelated with changes in average living standards distribution improved as often as it worsened in growing economies and negative growth was often more detrimental to distribution than positive growth overall there was a small decrease in absolute poverty although with diverse experiences across regions and countries almost always poverty fell with growth in average living standards and rose with contraction

the kuznets process and the inequality development relationship abstract in his classic paper on economic growth and income inequality kuznets discussed the process of population shift from traditional to modern activities as the basis for a theory of distributional change during the course of development in this paper we present a formalization of the kuznets process conduct a general analysis of distributional change under this process and derive the functional forms of and conditions for a turning point in the inequality development relationship for six commonly used indices of inequality the functional form appropriate to each index is then estimated using cross section data on 60 developing and developed countries finally some extensions to the initial formalization of the kuznets process are considered

policy barriers to international trade in services evidence from a new database surprisingly little is known about policies that affect international trade in services previous analyses have focused on policy commitments made by countries in international agreements but in many cases these commitments do not reflect actual policy this paper describes a new initiative to collect comparable information on trade policies for services from 103 countries across a range of service sectors and relevant modes of service delivery the resulting database reveals interesting policy patterns although public monopolies are now rare and few services markets are completely closed the authors observe numerous second generation restrictions on entry ownership and operations even in instances in which there is little explicit discrimination against foreign providers market access is often unpredictable because the allocation of new licenses remains opaque and highly discretionary in many countries across regions some of the fastest growing countries in asia and the oil rich gulf states have restrictive policies in services whereas some of the poorest countries are remarkably open across sectors professional and transportation services are among the most protected industries in both industrial and developing countries whereas retail telecommunications and even finance tend to be more open

can public works increase equilibrium wages evidence from india s national rural employment guarantee abstract we estimate the impact of the world s largest public works program india s national rural employment guarantee scheme nregs on agricultural wages nregs was rolled out across india in three distinct phases and this phased introduction is used to identify difference in difference estimates of the program effect using monthly data on wage rates from the period 2000 2011 in 209 districts across 18 indian states we include district specific fixed effects and trends to control for differences in wage rates in the absence of the program we find that on average the program boosted the growth rate of real daily agricultural wages by 4 3 per year the effect of the scheme is more consistent with an increase in the growth rate of wages than with a discontinuous jump in wages the effect was concentrated in some states and in the agricultural peak season appears to have been gender neutral and was biased towards unskilled labor since many of the world s poorest depend on casual agricultural labor for their livelihood while at the same time minimum wage legislation is unlikely to be effective in many developing countries we argue that rural public employment programs constitute a potentially important anti poverty policy tool

jobs off the farm wealth human capital and social group in rural eastern india abstractthis study examines the effects of wealth human capital and social group on the occupational choice and income of farm households to gain an understanding of the mechanism underlying the

are there lessons for africa from china s success against poverty at the outset of china s reform period the country had a far higher poverty rate than for africa as a whole within five years that was no longer true this paper tries to explain how china escaped from a situation in which extreme poverty persisted due to failed and unpopular policies while acknowledging that africa faces constraints that china did not and that context matters two lessons stand out the first is the importance of productivity growth in smallholder agriculture which will require both market based incentives and public support the second is the role played by strong leadership and a capable public administration at all levels of government

rural nonfarm employment and farming household level linkages this article introduces the articles in agricultural economics vol 40 no 2 march 2009 first we introduce their objectives in a brief review of existing literature on developing country trends in rural income diversification in particular rural nonfarm employment rnfe and its impact on farm technology choice in crops and livestock and thus on agricultural modernization and diversification then we preview the key points of the articles which use distinctive primary datasets from albania bulgaria china india mexico nigeria the philippines senegal and vietnam to document the impacts of rnfe and their implications for farm technology and farm activity

international protection of intellectual property we study the incentives that governments have to protect intellectual property in a trading world economy we consider a world economy with ongoing innovation in two countries that differ in market size and in their capacities for innovation after describing the determination of national patent policies in a non cooperative regime of patent protection we ask why is intellectual property better protected in the north than in the south we also study international patent agreements by deriving the properties of an efficient global regime of patent protection and asking whether harmonization of patent policies is necessary or sufficient for global efficiency jel o34 f13 during the 1980 s and early 1990 s the united states and several european countries expressed strong dissatisfaction with what they deemed to be inadequate protection of intellectual property in many developing countries the developed countries made the upgrading of intellectual property rights iprs one of their highest priorities for the uruguay round of trade talks their efforts bore fruit in the agreement on traderelated aspects of intellectual property rights trips which was approved as part of the final act of the uruguay round trips establishes minimum standards of protection for several categories of intellectual property for example in the area of new technology it essentially harmonizes

non farm activity household expenditure and poverty reduction in rural vietnam 2002 2008 summary diversifying into non farm activities has been suggested as an effective way out of poverty for rural households in developing countries using the vietnamese household living standards surveys of 2002 2004 2006 and 2008 we test this claim and investigate the effect of non farm sector involvement on poverty and expenditure growth our endogeneity corrected estimates show that an additional household member involved with non farm activity reduces the probability of poverty by 7 12 and increases the household expenditure by 14 over a two year period our findings also indicate that non farm involvement reduces the hours worked on farm but not the household agricultural income

bringing income distribution in from the cold the title of this presidential address is chosen to highlight the way in which the subject of income distribution has in the past been marginalised for much of this century it has been very much out in the cold there are signs that in the 1990s it is being welcomed back and i shall be referring to recent research but i would like to use this occasion to give further impetus to the re incorporation of income distribution into the main body of economic analysis this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

food insecurity income inequality and the changing comparative advantage in world agriculture i would like to argue in this article that in the process of economic development in land poor countries in asia agriculture faces three distinctly different problems food insecurity sectoral income inequality and the declining food self sufficiency associated with the declining comparative advantage in agriculture at the high income stage massive imports of food grains to asia if they occur will aggravate the world food shortage which will have significant implications for the poverty incidence in the world i argue that in order to avoid such a tragedy asia should expand farm size to reduce labor cost by adopting large scale mechanization sub saharan africa should realize a green revolution in grain production and latin america should further expand its grain production capacity

explaining international and intertemporal variations in income inequality this paper explores the propositions that income inequality is relatively stable within countries and that it varies significantly among countries a new and expanded data set provides broad support for both propositions drawing on a political economy and capital market imperfection arguments to explain the intertemporal and international variation in inequality the empirical analysis shows that the predicted variables associated with the first argument a measure of civil liberties and the initial level of secondary schooling and the second argument a measure of financial depth and the initial distribution of land are indeed important determinants of inequality this paper explores two propositions regarding income inequality they are first income inequality is relatively stable within countries and second it varies significantly across countries to illustrate note that the gini coefficient in india remained almost constant for forty years 1951 92 with mean 32 6 and standard deviation 2 0 2 in contrast the variation in gini coefficients across countries is large 61 9 in honduras in 1968 compared with 17 8 in bulgaria in 1976 if substantiated these propositions have potentially significant implications for poverty the significance of the first is obvious barring any fundamental socio political change poverty reduction will depend crucially on the rate of economic growth given this the significance of the second is that in inegalitarian economies the poor will enjoy a smaller share of any national increment in income than in more egalitarian ones drawing on a new and expanded data set on inequality deininger and squire 1996a the first of the paper s three sections conducts standard statistical tests of the two propositions the sample comprises 573 observations on the most common measure of inequality the gini coefficient for 49 developed and developing countries covering the period 1947 94 the results broadly confirm our two propositions specifically analysis of variance anova shows that about 90 of the total variance in the gini coefficients

agricultural productivity hired labor wages and poverty evidence from bangladesh this paper provides evidence on the effects of agricultural productivity on wage rates labor supply to market oriented activities and labor allocation between own farming and wage labor in agriculture to guide the empirical work this paper develops a general equilibrium model that underscores the role of reallocation of family labor engaged in the production of non marketed services at home home production the model predicts positive effects of a favorable agricultural productivity shock on wages and income but the effect on hired labor is ambiguous it depends on the strength of reallocation of labor from home to market production by labor surplus and deficit households taking rainfall variations as a measure of shock to agricultural productivity and using subdistrict level panel data from bangladesh this paper finds significant positive effects of a favorable rainfall shock on agricultural wages labor supply to market work and per capita household expenditure the share of hired labor in contrast declines substantially in response to a favorable productivity shock which is consistent with a case where labor deficit households respond more than the labor surplus ones in reallocating labor from home production

patent protection southern innovation and welfare in a north south trade model in a north south trade model we analyse the implications of southern patent protection on southern innovation profits and welfare southern patent protection may make the northern firm worse off and the southern firm better off by increasing the southern firm s incentive for innovation and affecting the nature of competition in the world market the impact of southern patent protection on a country s welfare and on world welfare depends on the cost of southern innovation and the degree of product substitutability we provide important insights into the outcomes of international negotiations regarding patent enforcement in the southern countries