eradicating diseases the effect of conditional cash transfers on vaccination coverage in rural nicaragua despite significant global efforts to improve vaccination coverage against major childhood diseases vaccination rates are below 90 to eradicate diseases such as measles however vaccination rates close to 95 are needed we use a randomized experiment to investigate the effect of a demand incentive a conditional cash transfer program in improving vaccination coverage in rural nicaragua double difference estimates show the program led to large increases in vaccination coverage and these resulted in vaccination levels greater than 95 for some vaccines effects were especially large for children who are typically harder to reach with traditional supply side interventions

workfare wellbeing and consumption evidence from a field experiment with kenya s urban poor abstract restrictions like work requirements and constraints on voucher transfers are often used in social welfare systems but little empirical evidence exists on their impact on wellbeing we conducted a 10 day randomized experiment with 432 individuals living below the poverty line in the kawangware settlement of nairobi kenya testing two elements of social welfare design workfare versus welfare and restricted versus unrestricted vouchers participants were randomly assigned to a work condition involving daily work for unrestricted vouchers or one of two wait conditions involving daily waiting for vouchers that were either unrestricted or partially restricted to staple foods we find that working improved psychological wellbeing relative to waiting suggesting that the means of implementing welfare programs may have important effects on individuals beyond the impact of monetary benefit alone furthermore although the restrictions were inframarginal partially restricted vouchers crowded in spending on staple foods suggesting the existence of a flypaper effect in spending from restricted vouchers

activity choice labor allocation and forest use in malawi this article examines the determinants of activity choice affecting forest use among low income households in malawi data from three villages are used to estimate a system of household labor share equations for maize production forest employment and non forest employment a system estimation approach is used to identify factors influencing the competing and synergistic livelihood strategies which households undertake at the forest margin results from constrained maximum likelihood estimation indicate heightened incentives to degrade forests when returns to forest use are high factors reducing forest pressure include favorable returns to non forest employment secondary education of the household head and wealth

indirect effects of an aid program how do cash transfers affect ineligibles consumption cash transfers to eligible households indirectly increase the consumption of ineligible households living in the same villages this effect operates through insurance and credit markets ineligible households benefit from the transfers by receiving more gifts and loans and by reducing their savings thus the transfers benefit the local economy at large looking only at the effect on the treated underestimates the impact one should analyze the effects of this class of programs on the entire local economy rather than on the treated only and use a village level randomization rather than selecting treatment and control subjects from the same community

the impact of progresa on food consumption abstract in this article we used data from the mexican poverty alleviation program called progresa programa de educacion salud y alimentacion to examine whether eligibility for a cash transfer provided by the program conditional on children s regular school attendance and regular visits to health centers is also associated with increased consumption of food we used a longitudinal sample of approximately 24 000 households from 506 communities a distinguishing characteristic of this sample was that some of the communities were randomly selected for participation in progresa while the rest were introduced into the program at later phases exploiting this feature in our analysis we found that eligible households in the villages covered by progresa increased caloric acquisition compared with eligible households not receiving these benefits by november 1999 median beneficiary households in treatment localities obtained 6 4 more calories than did comparable households in control localities perhaps eve

institutions and the environmental kuznets curve for deforestation a crosscountry analysis for latin america africa and asia abstract the relationship between deforestation and income across 66 countries of latin america africa and asia is examined institutional characteristics as well as macroeconomic policies of each country are hypothesized to impact deforestation results show strong evidence of an environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship between income and deforestation for all three continents institutional structure and macroeconomic policy significantly affect the tropical deforestation process improvements in political institutions and governance significantly reduce deforestation the factors leading to deforestation differ across regions however and there is no one size fits all global policy recommendation for restraining the tropical deforestation process

the welfare effects of energy price changes due to energy market reform in mexico abstract despite being a large energy producer and exporter mexico may soon become a net total energy importer due to a decline in oil reserves and increasing domestic consumption to increase efficiency in the energy market mexican authorities approved a constitutional amendment aiming to open the state run energy markets to competition in 2013 the reform is expected to raise efficiency and to lower energy prices in the long run however it will take some time for the new institutional arrangements to settle and the reform objectives to materialize the removal of subsidies which is expected to take place after the reform will also raise prices particularly in the short run in this paper we analyze the effect of likely energy price changes due to energy market reform on household consumption and welfare in different income groups we estimate the quaids model using the nonlinear sure method and the mexican household budget surveys for the period 2002 2012 to obtain elasticities the results show great heterogeneity in elasticities across energy types and income groups specifically energy demand is elastic with respect to income but changes in prices have mixed effects among energy types the welfare effect of the price changes on low income households will be 9 times stronger than that on the mid income households and 18 times on and the high income households this warrants a compensation package to make the reform socially acceptable

household production and environmental kuznets curves examining the desirability and feasibility of substitution this paper provides a theoretical explanation for the widely debatedempirical finding of environmental kuznets curves i e u shaped relationships between per capita income and indicators of environmentalquality we present a household production model in which the degradationof environmental quality is a by product of household activities householdscan not directly purchase environmental quality but can reduce degradation by substituting more expensive cleaner inputs to production for less costlydirty inputs if environmental quality is a normal good one expectssubstitution towards the less polluting inputs so that increases in incomewill increase the quality of the environment it is shown that this onlyholds for middle income households poorer households spend all income on dirty inputs when they buy more as income rises the pollution also rises they do not want to substitute as this would reduce consumption ofnon environmental services for environmental amenities that are alreadyabundant thus as income rises from low to middle levels a u shape can result yet an n shape might eventually result as richer households spend all income on clean inputs further substitution possibilities are exhausted thus as income rises again pollution rises and environmental quality falls

social interactions and schooling decisions abstract the aim of this paper is to study whether a child s schooling choices are affected by the schooling choices of other children identification is based on a randomized targeted intervention that grants a cash subsidy conditional on school attendance to a subgroup of eligible children within small rural villages in mexico progresa this policy change spills over to ineligible children if social interactions are relevant results indicate that the eligible children tend to attend school more frequently and the ineligible children acquire more schooling when the subsidy is introduced in their local village moreover the overall effect of progresa on eligible children is the sum of a direct effect due to cash transfers and an indirect effect due to changes in peer group schooling interestingly the social interactions effect is almost as important as the direct effect

learning by doing and the introduction of new goods a dynamic general equilibrium model is developed in which goods are valued according to the characteristics they contain the set of goods produced in any period is endogenously determined and learning by doing is the force behind sustained growth it is shown that the set of produced goods changes in a systematic way over time with goods of higher quality entering each period and those of lower quality dropping out the model is then used to study the effect of introducing a traditional sector in which there is no learning

assessing the case for social experiments rs ecent academic debates pit two alternative approaches to policy evaluation against one another the first is the experimental approach based on the random assignment of accepted program applicants to a recipient or treatment group and a non recipient or control group the second is the nonexperimental or econometric approach that uses a variety of microdata sources statistical methods and behavioral models to compare the outcomes of participants in social programs with those of nonparticipants the central question addressed in this paper is whether or not randomized social experiments aid in securing answers to basic questions about the evaluation of social programs there are many distinct and complementary approaches to the study of the impact of public policy including full general equilibrium analysis of policy impacts tinbergen 1956 auerbach and kotlikoff 1987 shoven and whalley 1992 kydland and prescott 1991 and less ambitious partial equilibrium microeconomic structural research programs such as those designed to estimate the impact of taxes on labor supply both approaches offer answers to many interesting counterfactual policy questions but their credibility rests critically on the quality of the empirical input used to generate their answers

decomposing learning by doing in new plants the paper examines learning by doing in the context of a production function in which the other arguments are labor human capital physical capital and vintage as a proxy for embodied technical c

a healthier start the effect of conditional cash transfers on neonatal and infant mortality in rural mexico abstract conditional cash transfer programs seek to break the intergenerational transmission of poverty by building the human capital of poor children despite their popularity throughout the developing world relatively little is known about their effect on children s health outcomes this paper evaluates the impact of the mexican conditional cash transfer program progresa on two important health outcomes infant and neonatal mortality it exploits the phasing in of progresa over time throughout rural mexico to identify the impact of the program the paper shows that progresa led to a large 17 decline in rural infant mortality among the treated but did not reduce neonatal mortality on average the benefit cost ratio is between 1 3 and 3 6 tests for heterogeneity show larger declines for some groups including those municipalities whose pre program levels of mortality were above the median and those that prior to the program had higher illiteracy rates and less access to electricity

intra household behavioral responses to cash transfer programs evidence from a regression discontinuity design summary considering two parent households with children this study investigates the behavioral responses of men and women to a cash transfer program in uruguay asignaciones familiares plan de equidad afam pe we examine its effect on labor market responses marital dissolution and the decision making process regarding the use of money the assignment mechanism to the afam pe exogenously alters the distribution of non labor income across applicant households by targeting the monetary transfer usually to the female spouse our identification strategy exploits both the female targeting and a discontinuity in eligibility for enrollment into the program based on a regression discontinuity design and on a follow up survey matched with program s administrative records this study finds that the program has significant negative effects on the formality choice of women at the eligibility cut off these responses seem to be associated with a lower rate of moving from unregistered jobs to formality we also find suggestive evidence that the program results in women taking greater perceived responsibility for decisions in specific spheres of household expenditures this study represents one of the first efforts to analyze the distributional effects of cct programs on different couples members behavioral responses it offers relevant considerations for the ongoing debate about the impacts of these kind of programs on women s agency in developing countries suggesting the need to discuss new designs for social assistance that reduce discouraging effects on formality

nutrition information and household behavior experimental evidence from malawi incorrect knowledge of the health production function may lead to inefficient household choices and thereby to the production of suboptimal levels of health this paper studies the effects of a randomized intervention in rural malawi that over a six month period provided mothers of young infants with information on child nutrition without supplying any monetary or in kind resources a simple model first investigates theoretically how nutrition and other household choices including labor supply may change in response to the improved nutrition knowledge observed in the intervention areas we then show empirically that the intervention improved child nutrition household food consumption and consequently health we find evidence that labor supply increased which might have contributed to partially fund the increase in food consumption this paper is the first to study whether non health choices particularly parental labor supply might be affected by parents knowledge of the child health production function

environmental externalities in traditional agriculture and the impact of trade liberalization the case of ghana abstract this paper provides a framework for the evaluation of trade policies that explicitly considers the effects of such policies on the environmental resources biomass in doing this we estimate the effects of biomass as a factor of agricultural production and test the hypothesis that farmers efficiently exploit biomass a resource held in common property the main findings are i biomass is an important factor of production in ghanian agriculture ii the biomass resource is exploited beyond the socially optimal level iii a deepening of trade liberalization is likely to induce further losses of biomass and deforestation and iv national income is likely to fall in response to further trade liberalization

brazilian policies that encourage deforestation in the amazon this paper shows that general tax policies special tax incentives the rules of land allocation and the agricultural credit system all accelerate deforestation in the amazon these policies increase the size of land holdings and reduce the chances of the poor to become farmers the following are the key provisions i the virtual exemption of agricultural income from income taxation makes agriculture a tax shelter ii rules of public land allocation provide incentives for deforestation because the rules used in determining the security of a claim and its land area encourage land clearing iii the progressive land tax contains provisions that encourage the conversion of forest to crop land or pasture iv the tax credit scheme aimed toward corporate livestock ranches subsidizes inefficient ranches established on cleared forest land and v subsidized credit is available for sudam approved ranches

confronting the environmental kuznets curve t he environmental kuznets curve posits an inverted u relationship between pollution and economic development kuznets s name was apparently attached to the curve by grossman and krueger 1993 who noted its resemblance to kuznets s inverted u relationship between income inequality and development in the first stage of industrialization pollution in the environmental kuznets curve world grows rapidly because people are more interested in jobs and income than clean air and water communities are too poor to pay for abatement and environmental regulation is correspondingly weak the balance shifts as income rises leading industrial sectors become cleaner people value the environment more highly and regulatory institutions become more effective along the curve pollution levels off in the middle income range and then falls toward pre industrial levels in wealthy societies the environmental kuznets curve model has elicited conflicting reactions from researchers and policymakers applied econometricians have generally accepted the basic tenets of the model and focused on measuring its parameters their regressions typically fitted to cross sectional observations across countries or regions suggest that air and water pollution increase with development until per capita income reaches a range of 5000 to 8000 when income rises beyond that level pollution starts to decline as shown in the conventional ekc line in figure 1 in developing countries some policymakers have interpreted such results as conveying a message about priorities grow first then clean up numerous critics have challenged the conventional environmental kuznets curve both as a representation of what actually happens in the development process and as a policy prescription some pessimistic critics argue that crosssectional evidence for the environmental kuznets curve is nothing more than a

matching the gold standard comparing experimental and nonexperimental evaluation techniques for a geographically targeted program abstract we compare nonexperimental impact estimates based on matching methods with those from a randomized evaluation to determine whether the nonexperimental approach can match the so called gold standard the social experiment we use was carried out to evaluate a geographically targeted conditional cash transfer antipoverty program in nicaragua the outcomes we assess include several components of household expenditure and a variety of children s health outcomes including breast feeding vaccinations and morbidity we find that using each of the following improves performance of matching for these outcomes 1 geographically proximate comparison samples 2 stringent common support requirements and 3 both geographic and household level matching variables even for a geographically targeted program in which the selection is at the geographic rather than at the individual or household level and in which it is not possible to find comparison individuals or households in the program locales m

selective trials a principal agent approach to randomized controlled experiments we study the design of randomized controlled experiments when outcomes are significantly affected by experimental subjects unobserved effort expenditure while standard randomized controlled trials rcts are internally consistent the unobservability of effort compromises external validity we approach trial design as a principal agent problem and show that natural extensions of rcts which we call selective trials can help improve external validity in particular selective trials can disentangle the effects of treatment effort and the interaction of treatment and effort moreover they can help identify when treatment effects are affected by erroneous beliefs and inappropriate effort expenditure

modelling land use deforestation and policy a hybrid optimisation heterogeneous agent model with application to the bolivian amazon abstract we introduce a hybrid simulation model simpachamama designed to explore the complex socio environmental trade offs of alternative policy bundles and policy sequencing options for stemming deforestation and reducing poverty in tropical countries designed and calibrated to the initial conditions of a small forest village in rural bolivia the model consists of a an optimising agricultural household module of heterogeneous agents that make individually optimal land use decisions based on factor endowments and market conditions b an encompassing general equilibrium shell module that endogenously determines wages and links the agricultural labour market and rural urban migration rates and c a novel user controlled policy maker module that allows the user to make real time choices over a variety of public and environmental policies that in turn impact land use welfare and migration over a 20 year simulation period the results highlight trade offs between reductions in deforestation and improvements in household welfare that can only be overcome either when international redd payments are offered or when decentralized deforestation taxes are implemented the sequencing of policies plays a critical role in the determination of these results

a complete characterization of optimal growth paths in an aggregated model with a non concave production function the convexity of technology has played a crucial role in economic analyses of optimal one sector growth problems for example two of the key results on the traditional model of ramsey 1928 that have relied on the convexity of the technology are that optimal intertemporal growth involves moving monotonically towards a unique steady state as in cass 1965 koopmans 1965 and that the value function is a concave differentiable function of the initial capital stock as in benveniste and scheinkman 1979

expanding credit access using randomized supply decisions to estimate the impacts expanding access to commercial credit is a key ingredient of financial development strategies there is less consensus on whether expanding access to consumer credit helps borrowers particularly when loans are extended at high interest rates popular skepticism about unproductive usurious lending is fueled by research highlighting behavioral biases that may induce overborrowing we estimate the impacts of expanding access to consumer credit at a 200 annual percentage rate apr using a field experiment and follow up data collection the randomly assigned marginal loans produced significant net benefits for borrowers across a wide range of outcomes there is also some evidence that the loans were profitable the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

reexamining the empirical evidence for an environmental kuznets curve this paper uses an updated and revised panel data set on ambient air pollution in cities worldwide to examine the robustness of the evidence for the existence of an inverted u shaped relationship between national income and pollution we test the sensitivity of the pollution income relationship to functional forms to additional covariates and to changes in the nations cities and years sampled we find that the results are highly sensitive to these changes and conclude that there is little empirical support for an inverted u shaped relationship between several important air pollutants and national income in these data

the impact of conditional cash transfers on marriage and divorce abstracta growing number of less developed countries have introduced conditional cash transfer programs in which funds are targeted to women economic models of the family suggest that these transfer programs may lead to marital turnover among program beneficiaries data from the experimental evaluation of the progresa program in mexico is used to provide new evidence on the short run impacts of targeted transfers on couples union dissolution and individuals new union formation decisions we find that although the overall share of women in union does not change as a result of the program marital turnover increases intact families eligible for the transfers experienced a modest 0 32 percentage points increase in separation rates with most of the effect concentrated among young and relatively educated women households in contrast young single women with low educational attainment levels experienced a substantial increase in new union formation rates the marital transition patterns are consistent

pasture conversion and competitive cattle rents in the amazon the economic incentives for conversion to pasture in mato grosso brazil are investigated using pastureland rents pastureland rents are estimated from physical and geographic determinants and verified by predicting the location of conversion to pasture between 2001 and 2004 results indicate that a one hundred dollar increase in mean cattle rent increases the probability of conversion to pasture from 8 6 to 11 1 the use of economic rent allows the direct study of fiscal policy levers on land conversion behavior expanding policy discussions beyond the role of roads and road improvement towards the use of excise and conversion taxes or conservation subsidies

the credibility revolution in empirical economics how better research design is taking the con out of econometrics since edward leamer s memorable 1983 paper let s take the con out of econometrics empirical microeconomics has experienced a credibility revolution while leamer s suggested remedy sensitivity analysis has played a role in this we argue that the primary engine driving improvement has been a focus on the quality of empirical research designs the advantages of a good research design are perhaps most easily apparent in research using random assignment we begin with an overview of leamer s 1983 critique and his proposed remedies we then turn to the key factors we see contributing to improved empirical work including the availability of more and better data along with advances in theoretical econometric understanding but especially the fact that research design has moved front and center in much of empirical micro we offer a brief digression into macroeconomics and industrial organization where progress by our lights is less dramatic although there is work in both fields that we find encouraging finally we discuss the view that the design pendulum has swung too far critics of design driven studies argue that in pursuit of clean and credible research designs researchers seek good answers instead of good questions we briefly respond to this concern which worries us little

can the west save africa in the new millennium the western aid effort toward africa has surged due to writ ings by well known economists a celebrity mass advocacy campaign and decisions by western leaders to make africa a major foreign policy priority this survey contrasts the predominant transformational approach west comprehensively saves africa to occasional swings to a marginal approach west takes one small step at a time to help individual africans evaluation of one step at a time initiatives is generally easier than that of transformational ones either through controlled experiments although these have been oversold or simple case studies where it is easier to attribute outcomes to actions we see two themes emerge from the literature survey 1 escalation as each successive western transformational effort has yielded disappointing results as judged at least by stylized facts since again the econometrics are shaky the response has been to try an even more ambitious effort and 2 the cycle of ideas rather than a progressive testing and discarding of failed ideas we see a cycle in aid ideas in many areas in africa with ideas going out of fashion only to come back again later after some lapse long enough to forget the previous disappointing experience both escalation and cyclicality of ideas are symptomatic of the lack of learning that seems to be characteristic of the transfor mational approach in contrast the marginal approach has had some successes in improving the well being of individual africans such as the dramatic fall in mortality

is there an environmental kuznets curve for deforestation abstract this paper examines the relationship between deforestation and gross domestic product gdp per capita in particular whether an inverted u relationship indicative of worsening then improving deforestation exists between them we note that previous work has used models with restrictive assumptions and recommend a more flexible random coefficients specification which allows for a greater degree of cross country heterogeneity empirical results using data for 76 developing countries between 1961 1992 suggest that the inverted u shaped relationship observed in other studies does not appear to be an empirical regularity with our less restrictive specification statistical tests indicate that this specification is supported by the data we argue that such results are not surprising in view of the wide diversity of physical and social characteristics that exist across countries

the interaction of population growth and environmental quality an important question for policy is whether holding constant per capita income and other relevant factors population pressures have a significant effect upon environmental degradation the authors examine the effect of population pressures upon deforestation in 64 developing countries in an attempt to provide relevant empirical findings data on deforestation were drawn from the food and agriculture organizations production yearbook results suggest that a relationship exists between per capita income and deforestation and that for africa rural population density shifts the relationship upward the increase in the rate of deforestation levels off as income increases the rate of growth in per capita income also has a significant negative impact upon deforestation although the magnitude of the effect is small the authors close in stressing that reducing the rate of population growth is not necessarily the best way to reduce the rate of deforestation deforestation in developing countries is really a problem of market failure since property rights are often neither defined nor enforced there is essentially no private cost of deforestation with no long term stake in the land people have no incentive to use land efficiently this situation must be addressed in conjunction with the problems of poverty and population growth

deforestation and seigniorage in developing countries a tradeoff abstract most of countries covered by natural forests are developing countries with limited ability to levy taxes and restrained access to international credit markets consequently they are amenable to draw heavily on two sources of government financing namely seigniorage and deforestation revenues first we develop a theoretical model emphasizing a substitution effect between seigniorage and deforestation revenues second a panel data econometric analysis over the 1990 2010 period confirms our findings consequently a tighter monetary policy hastens deforestation third we extend the theoretical model and show that international transfers dedicated to forest protection can upturn the positive link between tighter monetary policies and deforestation and then discuss the relevance of this finding with respect to recent institutional arrangements

does an intra household flypaper effect exist evidence from the educational fee reduction reform in rural china abstract we test for evidence of an intra household flypaper effect by evaluating the impact of an educational fee reduction reform in rural china on different categories of household expenditure including spending on individual children using pre and post reform data this study exploits cohort comparisons variation in the extent of school fee reductions across different villages and variation in the subsidies received by children enrolled in different grades within the same family to identify the impact of the reform the results show that educational fee reductions are matched by increased voluntary educational spending on the same children who receive the fee reductions providing strong evidence of an intra household flypaper effect

conditional cash transfers and payments for environmental services a conceptual framework for explaining and judging differences in outcomes we develop a conceptual framework elucidating the main determinants of the impact of conditional cash transfer cct and payments for environmental services pes programs using a simple multi agent model and evaluations of existing programs we show that 1 the share of the population who would meet the program s conditions in the absence of payments is a powerful predictor of program efficiency and that 2 program efficiency is eroded by selection bias people who already meet conditions self select into the programs at higher rates than others we then discuss possibilities for increasing efficiency and criteria for evaluating and choosing between ccts pes or other policy instruments

financial incentives in health new evidence from india s janani suraksha yojana this paper studies the health effects of one of the world s largest demand side financial incentive programmes india s janani suraksha yojana our difference in difference estimates exploit heterogeneity in the implementation of the financial incentive programme across districts we find that cash incentives to women were associated with increased uptake of maternity services but there is no strong evidence that the jsy was associated with a reduction in neonatal or early neonatal mortality the positive effects on utilisation are larger for less educated and poorer women and in places where the cash payment was most generous we also find evidence of unintended consequences the financial incentive programme was associated with a substitution away from private health providers an increase in breastfeeding and more pregnancies these findings demonstrate the potential for financial incentives to have unanticipated effects that may in the case of fertility undermine the programme s own objective of reducing mortality

environment and development theory and international evidence the environmental effects of economic development have significant implications for a wide array of policy questions facing both low and high income countries today internationally agricultural research centers are considering how to incorporate sustainability issues into their research agendas while international lending institutions are taking a close look at the environmental consequences of industrial projects domestically the north american free trade agreement has brought the relationship between economic development and environmental quality to the forefront of u s public policy debate it is surprising that despite the postwar growth of development economics the genesis of environmental economics and the fusion of ideas from both fields into the theme of sustainable development economists have not made much progress in describing the impacts of long term economic growth on environmental quality yet a vigorous public debate has arisen between individuals who maintain that environmental degradation is a necessary outcome of economic growth and those who believe that economic growth and environmental quality go hand in hand this debate was highlighted at the 1992 united nations conference on environment and development in rio de janeiro in part this debate hinges on the properties of the aggregate demand for and supply of environmental quality if the income elasticity of demand for environmental quality or amenities is high then the increased prosperity engendered by economic growth could lead to significantly higher demand for environmental quality proponents of economic growth believe this demand will translate into a higher realized level of quality as both public and private institutions and organi

changing political regimes and tropical deforestation expansion of agriculture is a main cause of tropical deforestation government policies and weak property rights contribute to this process by encouraging landowners and landless to accelerate land clearing using panel data common to previous studies we add the dimension of new political regimes democratic and non democratic and investigate how the rate of agricultural land expansion in tropical countries depends on the nature and persistence of each regime we find that both new autocratic and democratic regimes have accelerated the expansion of agricultural land thus yielding support to some of the findings in the earlier literature interesting differences emerge between regions with the impact being most pronounced in latin america we interpret these results mainly in the context of increasing tenure and ownership insecurity which in turn is driven by the tendency of new regimes to implement land reforms as a form of social and economic policy or voter payback the argument is developed more formally using a simple competitive land use model that incorporates political regime dependent confiscation risk and agricultural subsidy policy

boys cognitive skill formation and physical growth long term experimental evidence on critical ages for early childhood interventions the effects of early life circumstances on cognitive skill formation are important for later human capital development labor market outcomes and well being in this paper we test the hypothesis that the first 1 000 days are the critical window for both cognitive skill formation and physical development by exploiting a randomized conditional cash transfer cct program in nicaragua we find that boys exposed in utero and during the first 2 years of life have better cognitive but not physical outcomes when they are 10 years old compared to those also exposed but in their second year of life or later these results confirm that interventions that improve nutrition and or health during the first 1 000 days of life can have lasting positive impacts on cognitive development for children the finding that the results differ for cognitive functioning and anthropometrics highlights the importance of explicitly considering cognitive tests in addition to anthropometrics when analyzing impacts on early childhood development

the economics of tropical forest land use options tropical deforestation is generally characterized as conversion of forest land to alternative uses notably agriculture this would suggest the need for rational decision making concerning the optimal allocation of tropical forest land between competing uses the following paper explores this problem by devising rules for determining optimal land use allocation between timber and agriculture at the stand and forest levels a complementary intertemporal model for optimal allocation of forest land to agricultural conversion at the forest level is also developed and used to derive a demand relationship for agricultural conversion which is then approximated through empirical estimation

does money matter the effects of cash transfers on child development in rural ecuador abstract a large body of research indicates that child development is sensitive to early life environments so that poor children are at higher risk for poor cognitive and behavioral outcomes these developmental outcomes are important determinants of success in adulthood yet remarkably little is known about whether poverty alleviation programs improve children s developmental outcomes we examine how a government run cash transfer program for poor mothers in rural ecuador influenced the development of young children random assignment at the parish level is used to identify program effects our data include a set of measures of cognitive ability that are not typically included in experimental or quasi experimental studies of the impact of cash transfers on child well being as well as a set of physical health measures that may be related to developmental outcomes the cash transfer program had positive although modest effects on the physical cognitive and socioemotional development of the poorest c

the impact of the bolsa escola familia conditional cash transfer program on enrollment dropout rates and grade promotion in brazil this paper examines the impact of brazil s bolsa escola later renamed bolsa familia program on children s progress in school in brazil the bolsa program which started in the 1990s and expanded rapidly in 2001 and 2002 provides monthly cash payments to poor households if their children between the ages of 6 and 15 are enrolled in school using eight years of school census data from 1998 to 2005 our estimation method compares changes in enrollment and in dropout and grade advancement rates across schools that adopted the bolsa program at different times we estimate that after accounting for cumulative effects the bolsa program has increased enrollment in brazil by about 5 5 percent in grades 1 4 and by about 6 5 percent in grades 5 8 we also estimate that the program has lowered dropout rates by about 0 5 percentage points and raised grade promotion rates by about 0 9 percentage points for children in grades 1 4 and has reduced dropout rates by about 0 4 percentage points and increased grade promotion rates by about 0 3 percentage points for children in grades 5 8 only about one third of brazil s children participate in the bolsa program so the assumption that these results are due only to the impact of the program on participants with no spillover effects onto non participants implies that the impact of participating in the bolsa program is about three times higher than these estimates while these impacts cast a favorable light on the program simple calculations based on the enrollment impacts suggest that the likely benefits in terms of increased wages may not exceed the costs of the program

the integration of natural capital into development policies in response to the united nations sustainable development goals there has been a rising awareness of the need to address simultaneously the preservation of natural capital stocks and poverty alleviation at multiple scales focusing on tropical forest rich developing countries the article overviews the extent to which natural capital considerations are integrated into existing development policies and interventions the review finds that the explicit consideration of natural resources is left out of many commonly applied development interventions leading to suboptimal and unsustainable outcomes the interventions that do tackle both development and conservation goals are often not coordinated and are implemented at a site by site basis without providing the socially efficient levels of natural capital stocks or ensuring the long term sustainability of the development and conservation impacts bringing in perspectives from development economics environmental economics and applied conservation this article makes the case for a better integration of development and conservation goals in interventions in developing countries and outlines the emerging frontiers for research and policy

the effects of government spending on deforestation due to agricultural land expansion and co2 related emissions this paper examines the effect of changes in government spending level and composition on deforestation due to agricultural land expansion and related carbon dioxide emissions our theoretical model shows an unintended consequence from increased government spending and widening social safety nets in developing countries where agricultural land expansion significantly affects forest cover there is an increase in deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions from land use change our empirical tests show that an increase in total government spending significantly increases forest land clearing for agricultural production in the short run leading to more carbon dioxide emissions however there is no long run statistically significant effect on the steady state forest cover and carbon dioxide emissions

deception and misreporting in a social program we investigate empirically the extent of misreporting in a poverty alleviation program in which self reported information followed by a household visit is used to determine eligibility in the model we propose and estimate underreporting may be due to a deception motive and overreporting to an embarrassment motive we find that underreporting of goods and desirable home characteristics is widespread and that overreporting is common with respect to goods linked to social status larger program benefits encourage underreporting and discourage overreporting we also estimate the costs of lying and embarrassment for different goods and show that the embarrassment cost for lacking a good is proportional to the percentage of households who own the good jel d01 i32 i38 c25

determinants of deforestation and the economics of protection an application to mexico we estimate the probability of deforestation at the plot level for chiapas and oaxaca two poor mexican states with high levels of biodiversity results highlight the importance of physio geographic endowments as well as policy variables and allow to test explicitly for aggregation bias they also suggest that if combined with information on the biodiversity value of specific plots such models could be of great relevance for policy by allowing to identify the ex ante risk of deforestation copyright 2002 oxford university press

making conditional cash transfer programs more efficient designing for maximum effect of the conditionality conditional cash transfer programs are now used extensively to encourage poor parents to increase investments in their children s human capital these programs can be large and expensive motivating a quest for greater efficiency through increased impact of the programs imposed conditions on human capital formation this requires designing the programs targeting and calibration rules specifically to achieve this result using data from the progresa randomized experiment in mexico this article shows that large efficiency gains can be achieved by taking into account how much the probability of a child s enrollment is affected by a conditional transfer rules for targeting and calibration can be made easy to implement by selecting indicators that are simple observable and verifiable and that cannot be manipulated by beneficiaries the mexico case shows that these efficiency gains can be achieved without increasing inequality among poor households

school subsidies for the poor evaluating the mexican progresa poverty program abstract this paper evaluates how the progresa program which provides poor mothers in rural mexico with education grants has affected enrollment poor children who reside in communities randomly selected to participate in the initial phase of the progresa are compared to those who reside in other control communities pre program comparisons check the randomized design and double difference estimators of the program s effect on the treated are calculated by grade and sex probit models are also estimated for the probability that a child is enrolled controlling for additional characteristics of the child their parents local schools and community and for sample attrition to evaluate the sensitivity of the program estimates these estimates of program short run effects on enrollment are extrapolated to the lifetime schooling and the earnings of adults to approximate the internal rate of return on the public schooling subsidies as they increase expected private wages

can drought increase total calorie availability the impact of drought on food consumption and the mitigating effects of a conditional cash transfer program abstract this study uses the panel data of a randomized experiment from the mexican progresa program to evaluate the impact of drought on total calorie availability and the mitigating effects of progresa on food consumption in periods of drought drought reduced total expenditures and total food expenditures but increased the total availability of calories this paradox can be explained by the impact of drought on the composition of calories that is it reduced the consumption of expensive calories in such foods as vegetables fruits and animal products but increased calories consumed from cheaper sources such as grains this study finds that progresa can completely mitigate the negative effects of drought on calorie availability from vegetables fruits and other sources however progresa cannot mitigate the impact of drought on calories available from grains the analysis also shows that during drought households who increase their consumption of grains get them mainly from purchased sources rathe

catch up in turn in a multi country international trade model with learning by doing and invention abstract we consider how the world income distribution evolves over time when both learning by doing and invention are the engines of economic growth and when countries interact with each other through international trade the main findings are i catch up is possible ii in the three country model transitional dynamics are much richer than in the two country model in particular catch up may occur in turn there may be a first stage in which the middle income country grows fastest closing the gap with the richest country but increasing the income difference with the poorest followed by a second stage where the poorest country catches up

the environmental impact of poverty evidence from firewood collection in rural nepal abstract we investigate determinants of household firewood collection in rural nepal using 1995 96 and 2002 3 world bank living standards measurement survey lsms data we incorporate village fixed effects endogenous censoring measurement error in living standards and heterogeneous effects of different household assets we find no evidence in favor of the poverty environment hypothesis the evidence for the environmental kuznets curve depends on the precise measure of living standards and time period studied firewood collections fall with a transition to modern occupations and rise with increasing population and household division the local interhousehold collection externality is negligible indicating that policy interventions are justified only by ecological considerations or nonlocal spillovers

poverty policies and deforestation the case of mexico this study examines the determinants and policy implications of deforestation in mexico and includes a brief review of the relevant empirical literature and a description of the theoretical model land use patterns and socioeconomic and physiogeographic factors are determinants data were obtained from digital maps of land use and soils and the 1990 population and 1991 agricultural censuses a simple 2 period equation formalizes the relationship between deforestation and poverty government policies and local land tenure in period 1 representative producers in municipalities have 4 options in allocating labor time wage generation agricultural production deforestation on land without clear property rights and investment in technology during period 2 the options are to farm on available land and deforested areas or work in the wage sector findings reveal that 1 communal land tenure ownership by the ejido did not increase deforestation 2 pricing that favors maize production which is very land intensive increased deforestation and technical assistance reduced deforestation and 3 poverty was related to higher rates of deforestation prices were the most important immediate factor in unsustainable resource use but other factors had an impact the government policy mix did not support sustainable development reduced subsidies would benefit the environment the government should provide safety nets to increase the level of rural investment and reduce poverty and should improve land productivity with technical inputs trade liberalization and elimination of subsidies should be sensitive to the poors need for real wages

the long run impact of cash transfers to poor families lleras muney we estimate the long run impact of cash transfers to poor families on children s longevity educational attainment nutritional status and income in adulthood to do so we collected individual level administrative records of applicants to the mothers pension program the first government sponsored welfare program in the united states 1911 1935 and matched them to census wwii and death records male children of accepted applicants lived one year longer than those of rejected mothers they also obtained onethird more years of schooling were less likely to be underweight and had higher income in adulthood than children of rejected mothers jel i12 i14 i18 i32 i38 j16 n32

cash transfer programs and child health in brazil abstract this note presents evidence from brazil that children who benefit from cash transfer programs have better health indicators than those who live in a nonbenefited household and than nonbenefited children who live in a household that receives cash transfers

the ecological footprint of poverty alleviation evidence from mexico s oportunidades program abstract we study the consequences of poverty alleviation programs for environmental degradation we exploit the community level eligibility discontinuity for a conditional cash transfer program in mexico to identify the impacts of income increases on deforestation and use the program s initial randomized rollout to explore household responses we find that additional income raises consumption of land intensive goods and increases deforestation the observed production response and deforestation increase are larger in communities with poor road infrastructure this suggests that better access to markets disperses environmental harm and that the full effects of poverty alleviation on the environment can be observed only where poor infrastructure localizes them

the mercantilist index of trade policy we introduce an index of trade policy restrictiveness defined as the uniform tariff that maintains the same trade volume as a given tariff quota structure our index overcomes the problems of the trade weighted average tariff it avoids substitution bias correctly accounts for general equilibrium transfers and takes import volume instead of welfare as benchmark empirical applications to international cross section and time series comparisons of trade policy confirm our theoretical results trade weighted average tariffs generally underestimate the true height of tariffs as measured by the trade volume equivalent index this in turn always underestimates the welfare equivalent index

child schooling and child work in the presence of a partial education subsidy could a partial subsidy for child education increase children s participation in paid work in contrast to much of the theoretical and empirical child labor literature this paper shows that child work and school participation can be complements under certain conditions using data from the randomized evaluation of a conditional cash transfer program in the philippines the analysis finds that some children who were in neither school nor work before the program increased participation in school and work for pay after the program earlier cash transfer programs notably those in mexico brazil and ecuador increased school attendance while reducing child labor those programs fully offset schooling costs while the transfers under the philippine transfers fall short of the full costs of schooling for a typical child as a result some beneficiary children from poor philippine households increased work to support their schooling the additional earnings from this work represent a substantive share of the shortfall in the schooling costs net of transfer the paper rules out several potential alternative explanations for the increase in child labor including changes in household productive activities adult labor supply and household expenditure patterns that in principle can arise after a cash transfer and may also affect the supply of or demand for child labor

international timber markets and tropical deforestation the evidence from prices some scholars suggest that global timber markets especially those involving high value species are a leading cause of tropical deforestation despite limited empirical evidence this hypothesis rests on the assumption that global timber markets respond to a common equilibrating mechanism that provides strong enough incentives for loggers in the tropical regions of the world this article develops a simple model and taps into a unique data set on timber prices of hardwood and softwood in leading markets to test the global timber markets hypothesis while we find evidence of a global equilibrating mechanism with potentially significant economic incentives to affect tropical deforestation our results do not endorse the common conjecture in the literature that timber price shocks in developed countries lead to a homogeneous response in terms of deforestation everywhere in the tropical world instead they invite further development of structural global timber market models to assess the linkages between ma

trade policies economic growth and the direct causes of deforestation by ramon lopez gregmar i galinato please send correspondence to ramon lopez 2200 symons hall university of maryland college park md 20742 email rlopez arec umd edu tel 301 405 1281 fax 301 314 9091 gregmar i galinato 2200 symons hall university of maryland college park md 20742 email ggalinato arec umd edu tel 301 405 0477 fax 301 314 9091

poverty alleviation and tropical forests what scope for synergies abstract this paper explores the state of the art of the two way causal links between poverty alleviation and natural tropical forests microimpacts of rising poverty can increase or slow forest loss at the macrolevel poverty also has an ambiguous effect but it is probable that higher income stimulates forest loss by raising demand for agricultural land the second question is what potential forest led development has to alleviate a country s poverty in terms of producer benefits consumer benefits and economy wide employment natural forests widely serve as safety nets for the rural poor but it proves difficult to raise producer benefits significantly urban consumer benefits from forest an important target for pro poor agricultural innovation are limited and seldom favor the poor absorption of poor unskilled labor is low in forestry which tends to be capital intensive natural forests may thus lack comparative advantage for poverty alleviation there are few win win synergies between natural forests and national poverty reduction which may help to explain why the loss of tropical forests is ongoing this may have important implications for our understanding of sustainable forest development and for the design of both conservation and poverty alleviation strategies

does poverty constrain deforestation econometric evidence from peru this paper examines the relationship between income and land clearing for households living in tropical forest regions a simple model of the agricultural household that clears land for agriculture is developed to investigate the relationship between lagged income and cleared land holdings analysis of panel data from peru suggests that lagged income is positively correlated with clearing though at a decreasing rate and because of labor market constraints clearing is positively correlated with household labor availability this work suggests that small increases in the incomes of the poorest are unlikely to reduce deforestation in this context

how effective are cash transfers at improving nutritional status summary cash transfer programs have not always affected children s nutritional status we reviewed 30 000 articles relating cash transfer programs and height for age finding 21 papers on 17 programs applying meta analysis we examine the overarching relationship finding that the programs average impact on height for age is positive but small and not statistically significant we evaluate many programs child and local characteristics correlation with estimated outcome conditional programs statistically accomplish the same as unconditional however conditionalities not related to health or education strongly inhibit child growth we see girls benefiting more than boys and more disadvantaged areas benefiting more

heterogeneous impact of the seguro popular program on the utilization of obstetrical services in mexico 2001 2006 a multinomial probit model with a discrete endogenous variable objective we evaluated the impact of seguro popular sp a program introduced in 2001 in mexico primarily to finance health care for the poor we focused on the effect of household enrollment in sp on pregnant women s access to obstetrical services an important outcome measure of both maternal and infant health

economic growth and the rise of forests although forests have diminished globally over the past 400 years forest cover has increased in some areas including india in the last two decades aggregate time series evidence on forest growth rates and income growth across countries and within india and a newly assembled data set that combines national household survey data census data and satellite images of land use in rural india at the village level over a 29 year period are used to explore the hypothesis that increases in the demand for forest products associated with income and population growth lead to forest growth the evidence is consistent with this hypothesis which also shows that neither the expansion of agricultural productivity nor rising wages in india increased local forest cover

consumption patterns and their effects on land required for food abstract vast amounts of land are required for the production of food but the area suitable for growing crops is limited in this paper attention is paid to the relationship between food consumption patterns and agricultural land requirements land requirements per food item that were determined in a previous study are combined with data on the per capita food consumption of various food packages varying from subsistence to affluent leading to information on land requirements for food large differences could be shown in per capita food consumption and related land requirements while food consumption expenditure and the physical consumption of specific foods change rapidly over time a difference of a factor of two was found between the requirements for existing european food patterns while the land requirement for a hypothetical diet based on wheat was six times less than that for an existing affluent diet with meat it is argued that in the near future changes in consumption patterns rather than population growth will form the most important variable for total land requirements for food trends towards the consumption of foods associated with affluent lifestyles will bring with them a need for more land lifestyle changes changes in consumer behavior on a household level can be considered as powerful options to reduce the use of natural resources such as agricultural land

control of resources bargaining power and the demand of food evidence from progresa abstract i use a structural model of households to recover how much resources each individual controls in the context of the mexican progresa program i find that the eligibility to receive the cash transfers induces a redistribution of resources from the father to both the mother and children although the mother is the one benefiting the most with these information i compute individual poverty rates and quantify to what extent the program reduces within household inequality i also combine these measures to construct a proxy for women s bargaining power and using causal identification techniques i estimate its direct effects on household demand for food exploiting random assignment of the cash transfers as an instrumental variable for the treatment of interest i show that mothers having majority control of household resources relative to fathers increase food consumption as a share of the household budget by 6 5 8 3 i use these estimates to argue that by knowing i the distribution of pre program resources inside the household and ii how much influence each decision maker can have on the desired policy outcome a policymaker can improve the cost effectiveness of a cash transfer program by targeting the cash to resource shares in addition to gender

conditional cash transfers the case of progresa oportunidades conditional cash transfer cct programs innovate by conditioning transfers to poor families on investments in the human capital of children and other family members the mexican cct program progresa oportunidades began in 1997 and has served as a model for many of the now over sixty countries with ccts around the world in large part due to its initial evaluation with an experimental design and numerous follow up studies this article reviews the literature on the development evaluation and findings of progresa oportunidades summarizing what is known about program effects taking into account corrections for multiple hypothesis testing

heterogeneous impacts of conditional cash transfers evidence from nicaragua abstract in the last decade the most popular policy tool used to increase human capital in developing countries has been the conditional cash transfer program a large literature has shown significant mean impacts on schooling health and child labor this paper examines heterogeneous effects using random assignment data from the red de proteccion social in rural nicaragua using interactions between the targeting criteria and the treatment indicator estimates suggest that children located in more impoverished localities experienced a larger impact of the program on schooling in 2001 but this finding is reversed in 2002 estimated quantile treatment effects indicate that there is considerable heterogeneity in the impacts of the program on the distribution of food expenditures as well as total expenditures in particular households at the lower end of the expenditure distribution experienced a smaller increase in expenditures this study also presents evidence of the rank invariance assumption to hel

the economics of tropical deforestation this paper provides a survey of first wave economic studies of tropical deforestation and land use these studies of tropical forest land conversion are generally at the cross country level we also conduct a synthesis cross country analysis of tropical agricultural land expansion the results show that agricultural development is the main factor determining land expansion but institutional factors have an important influence income effects tend to vary from region to region and do not always display an environmental kuznets curve relationship copyright 2001 by blackwell publishers ltd

does raising family income cause better child health evidence from china abstractfew studies have attempted to identify a causal link between family income and child health especially in developing countries this article takes advantage of an exogenous income shock created by china s rural tax reform between 2000 and 2003 to study the causal impact of household income on child health the analysis finds that an increase in family income significantly raises children s height for age z scores these effects are robust to alternative specifications and a comprehensive set of controls the article also investigates possible mechanisms generating this result we find that with a higher income level better nutritional intake partially accounts for the improvement in child health

do voters affect or elect policies evidence from the u s house there are two fundamentally different views of the role of elections in policy formation in one view voters can affect candidates policy choices competition for votes induces politicians to move toward the center in this view elections have the effect of bringing about some degree of policy compromise in the alternative view voters merely elect policies politicians cannot make credible promises to moderate their policies and elections are merely a means to decide which one of two opposing policy views will be implemented we assess which of these contrasting perspectives is more empirically relevant for the u s house focusing on elections decided by a narrow margin allows us to generate quasi experimental estimates of the impact of a randomized change in electoral strength on subsequent representatives roll call voting records we find that voters merely elect policies the degree of electoral strength has no effect on a legislator s voting behavior for example a large exogenous increase in electoral strength for the democratic party in a district does not result in shifting both parties nominees to the left politicians inability to credibly commit to a compromise appears to dominate any competition induced convergence in policy

diet and the distribution of environmental impact abstract this paper examines the relationship between scale and distribution issues it is argued that since achieving a sustainable scale requires economic activity to stay within biophysical limits considerations of equity should not be limited to the distribution of monetary measures such as income but should include the distribution of scarce environmental services as well in order to make this point this paper examines how differences in diet across populations lead to inequality in the distribution of environmental impact first the distribution of food consumption across the world s population is examined using national data next ecological footprints are estimated in order to ascertain how differences in diet affect the distribution of environmental impact the results show that the meat intensive diet enjoyed by many in the industrialized world leads to a greater degree of inequality in the use of environmental services than is apparent from examination of the distribution of food consumption across countries

crop diversification and child health empirical evidence from tanzania malnutrition is recognized as a major issue among low income households in developing countries with long term implications for economic development recently crop diversification has been considered as a strategy to improve nutrition and health however there is no systematic empirical evidence on the role played by crop diversification in improving human health we use three waves of the tanzania national panel survey to test the effect of crop diversification on child health we implement two instrumental variable approaches and perform several robustness checks to address potential endogeneity concerns we find a positive but small effect of an increase in crop diversification on child height for age z score through greater dietary diversity the effect is larger for subsistence households and children living in households with limited market access