the ambivalent impact of coffee certification on farmers welfare a matched panel approach for cooperatives in central kenya certification is promoted to improve rural welfare through better market access and improved agricultural practices we compare net effects of fairtrade and utz certified coffee production in central kenya using a matched panel from 218 farm households that belong to three cooperatives and were visited twice in 2009 and 2013 we distinguish between effects at field farm household cooperative community and market levels both certification regimes improved coffee returns but fairtrade was more effective in coffee processing whereas utz contributed to productivity under stagnating coffee prices fairtrade farmers increased their coffee specialization while utz farmers reduced coffee areas but increased yield

the impact of fair trade certification for coffee farmers in peru smallholder farmers producing for fair trade market outlets are usually considered to benefit from better prices and stable market outlets however many empirical studies verifying this impact suffer from strong selection bias this study uses a balanced sample of fair trade farmers and likewise nonfair trade producers of organic and conventional coffee from peru to compare the net effects on production income and expenditures wealth and investments and attitudes and perceptions after careful matching we find only modest direct income and production effects but significant changes in organization input use wealth and assets and risk attitudes moreover important differences between farmers with early and more recent ft affiliation are registered

after chayanov and lenin new paths of agrarian capitalism abstract the theory of peasant economy is dominated by two classic authors of largely contradictory views a v chayanov and v i lenin this paper begins by setting forth their contrasting interpretations of differentiation among the russian peasantry at the end of the nineteenth century and the contrasting theoretical frameworks of marginalism and marxism which underlie those interpretations it then proceeds to set its debate against certain aspects of current transformations in the agrarian structures of latin america which call for a transcendence of this classic debate in particular it is pointed out in conclusion that family farms far from being a feature of peasant societies are more common and more dominant in countries and regions which have experienced a relatively dynamic process of capitalist development

agricultural performance and development strategy retrospect and prospect abstract the slow pace and inequitable pattern of past agricultural growth have been major factors in the continuing problems of poverty hunger and unemployment especially in the poorer regions of the third world past experience shows that agriculture has an important potential in economic development given appropriate structures and policies these historical lessons are of strategic significance for poor countries as they confront severe problems of adjustment this paper examines the main payoffs and obstacles to the pursuit of an agriculture led industrialization strategy together with proposals for appropriate policies that can support such a strategy

the agrarian barrier to industrial growth it is argued here that in transitional economies industrial growth depends not so much on the size of the agricultural surplus but rather on the rates of productivity growth and population growth in agriculture via their effects on the size of the home market for manufactures in developing this argument estimates of the agricultural surplus and inter sectoral market shares in post restoration japan and post independence india are compared a typology of agrarian systems is then suggested based on how alternative systems influence productivity and population trends in agriculture the typology is illustrated with historical comparisons from europe japan and india

agriculture in recent development theory abstract this paper is a critical review of recent contributions to the literature on agriculture in development theory it considers and compares the main lines of advance made within neoclassical neo marxian and structuralist approaches recent neo marxian and structuralist studies of agrarian development reveal that traditional agriculture is neither stationary nor efficient that resource allocation cannot be separated from wealth distribution or production organization that forms of surplus appropriation do not necessarily follow the dictates of efficiency that the social relations of production may inhibit accumulation and determine the forms of technological change that the state s role in primitive accumulation is more economic than explicitly coercive political and that political and macroeconomic constraints preclude a simple get the prices right view of the intersectoral terms of trade the thrust of these developments is to challenge both neoclassical and some orthodox marxian formulations of agrarian development issues and add to the insights to be gleaned from a political economy of development

recruiting smarter teachers in recent years many states have raised teacher salaries to attract more capable teachers since teacher labor markets are typically in a state of excess supply success of such policies is contingent on containing perverse feedbacks which arise among exit decisions vacancy rates and the willingness of prospective teachers to invest in occupation specific human capital using sat scores as a measure of ability we find that an across the board raise produces modest improvements in the work force at best indeed under plausible parameter values it is possible for mean ability to decline

how vouchers could change the market for education small probability that vouchers will in the foreseeable future be adopted on a large scale in any school district or state at the moment only three states have adopted publicly funded voucher programs and all of these programs are limited in scale nonetheless in recent years over 40 state legislatures have considered proposals to provide some type of voucher program or tuition tax credit for at least some families in a given state or school district and the children s scholarship fund see http www scholarshipfund org has helped create or expand privately funded voucher programs in numerous cities as vouchers become a more significant part of education policy debates the time is right to consider what we know and do not know about the likely effects of adopting various voucher schemes in the balance of this paper i describe both empirical and theoretical work on education that speaks to this topic i argue that we cannot confidently predict the outcomes that would result from various voucher schemes and i also stress that debates over vouchers per se are not informative details concerning funding targeting and discretion in the use of vouchers should greatly affect the outcomes associated with any particular voucher program still empirical evidence on the performance of public versus private schools as well as numerical results from existing simulation models suggest that policymakers should be able to design voucher programs that would be helpful to minority students in large cities public schools in large cities often perform poorly in minority neighborhoods and this is especially true in economically disadvantaged areas

measuring investment in education historic debates about the measurement of capital are even more complicated in the case of education and human capital as extensive research demonstrates education resources are not consistently related to student performance in existing elementary and secondary schools this inefficiency in public schools implies that spending and resource measures do not accurately capture variations in school quality this finding then has clear implications for both education policy and economic research because school inputs are poor policy instruments an alternative policy focus that appears much more productive is performance incentives related to student achievement

profit rent and the terms of trade a rejoinder abstract in response to my article in this issue gibson and mcleod argue that by ignoring a viability condition i incorrectly conclude that a positive profit rate is not necessary for the perverse profit response furthermore they argue that a positive profit rate not the technology parameters is the profoundly important social determinant of their original result it is shown here that the imposition of the viability condition does not contradict my conclusion the relevance ascribed by gibson and mcleod to their positive profit rate condition is disputed and an unexpected relationship between rural wages and profit rates is uncovered technology is again shown to be the modulator of the distributional struggle finally the empirical evidence presented by gibson and mcleod in support of a fixed profit equilibrium trap for u s agriculture is examined and its relevance questioned

characteristics of mexican economic growth empirical testing of some latin american structuralist hypotheses abstract this article examines a series of hypotheses about the latin american industrialization process put forward by the structuralist school of thought using mexico as a test case in particular it examines the relationship between the distribution of income and associated patterns of consumption and industrial structure and its implications on demand constraints growth constraints employment constraint and multinational control the results indicate that the modern traditional dichotomy based on durable versus non durable consumer goods is not the best way to examine this relationship since the consumption patterns for durable goods do not show a homogeneous behavior when distribution changes overall it was found that growth and employment constraints and multinational control seem to get more exacerbated under greater inequality with respect to the demand constraints no definite conclusion can be made because of the mentioned heterogeneity in the response of durable goods to changes in distribution and the lack of information on relative excess capacity and or dynamic linkages of the different sectors

would higher salaries keep teachers in high poverty schools evidence from a policy intervention in north carolina abstract for a three year time period beginning in 2001 north carolina awarded an annual bonus of 1800 to certified math science and special education teachers working in public secondary schools with either high poverty rates or low test scores using longitudinal data on teachers we estimate hazard models that identify the impact of this differential pay by comparing turnover patterns before and after the program s implementation across eligible and ineligible categories of teachers and across eligible and barely ineligible schools results suggest that this bonus payment was sufficient to reduce mean turnover rates of the targeted teachers by 17 experienced teachers exhibited the strongest response to the program finally the effect of the program may have been at least partly undermined by the state s failure to fully educate teachers regarding the eligibility criteria our estimates most likely underpredict the potential outcome of a program of permanent salary differentials operating under complete information

food supply and inflation abstract the paper presents an analytic version of the latin american structuralist theory of inflation it emphasizes the difference between the productive sectors of the economy and draws attention to the fact that the inflationary process is closely linked to inconsistent claims for shares in income it describes a keynesian economy with two three sectors real desired wages are rigid money is passive it is shown that the structuralist hypotheses are capable of generating disequilibria that can lead to constantly rising prices without any built in mechanism to offset them steady inflation can only persist if workers allow their real wage to be kept below target as the workers try to catch on the model will blow up an accelerating inflation can be observed in many latin american countries during periods when wage settlements aimed at restoring inflation losses escaped the government control the paper also explores the implications of foreign trade it shows that under structuralist hypotheses external disequilibria cannot be corrected through exchange rate devaluations alone and it examines the stagflationary impacts of an increase in the price of imported intermediates

terms of trade and domestic distribution export led growth with abundant labour abstract a general equilibrium macro model is constructed to explore effects of export led growth policies on the terms of trade and the domestic distribution of a developing region with abundant labour this region the south trades with another the north they have different technologies and supplies of factors it is shown that under certain conditions of dualism in the production of goods and of abundant labour supply in the south an increase in the volume of exports from the south may bring about a sustained worsening of the south s terms of trade with the north even if this increase in exports is due to a positive shift in demand from the north this change in the terms of trade is accompanied by a sustained loss of purchasing power of wages within the south these results take place in a walrasian stable market when technologies are more homogenous and labour less abundant the results are reversed increased exports will take place together with improvements in terms of trade and a tendency to equalise factor prices between the regions the results argue for coordination of domestic and international policies with special attention to technologies and labour markets

trade liberalisation and poverty what are the links this paper asks whether a developing country s own trade liberalisation could translate into increased poverty and what information would be required to identify whether it will do so it plots the channels through which such effects might operate identifying the static effects via four broad groups of institutions households distribution channels factor markets and government and the dynamic issues of volatility long term economic growth and short term adjustment stresses an increase in the price of something a household sells labour good service increases its welfare thus the paper first explores the likely effects of trade liberalisation on the prices of goods and services taking into account the distribution sector also critical is whether trade reform creates or destroys markets trade reform is also likely to affects factor prices of which the wages of the unskilled is the most important for poverty purposes if reform boosts the demand for labour intensive products it boosts the demand for labour and wages and or employment will increase however not all developing countries are relatively abundant in unskilled labour and trade can boost demand for semi skilled rather than unskilled labour hence poverty alleviation is not guaranteed trade reform can affect tariff revenue but much less frequently and adversely than is popularly imagined even if it does it is a political decision not a law of nature that the poor should suffer the resulting new taxes or cuts in government expenditure opening up the economy can reduce risk and variability because world markets are usually more stable than domestic ones but sometimes it will increase them because stabilisation schemes are undermined or because residents switch to riskier activities the non poor can generally tide themselves over adjustment shocks from a liberalisation so public policy should focus on whether the initially poor and near temporary setbacks the key to sustained poverty alleviation is economic growth there is little reason to fear that growth will not boost the incomes of the poor similarly while the argument that openness stimulates long run growth has still not been completely proven there is every presumption that it will

heterodox theories of economic growth and income distribution a partial survey heterodox theories of economic growth and income distribution are surveyed focusing on major theories and recent contributions first a general framework for examining growth and distribution is discussed in terms of which classical marxian and post keynesian kaleckian and other theories are presented since this framework examines how variables are determined in equilibrium second dynamics behind equilibria are examined focusing on goods market and labor market changes third the framework is extended in a variety of ways to examine additional models addressing productivity growth and technical change money and inflation finance and debt additional distributional considerations multisector issues open economy questions and the environment it is concluded that the literature on heterodox theories of growth and distribution is vibrant large and growing and addresses many issues that are ignored or neglected in orthodox theories including power unemployment and aggregate demand

interlocking transactions obstacles precursors or instruments of agrarian capitalism abstract rural labor arrangements often change rapidly and in ways that prevailing theories cannot explain explicit understanding of the exercise of power in rural society sheds considerable light on how and why rural labor arrangements change in the course of economic development this paper shows how different labor tying arrangements embody exclusionary mechanisms that can serve as instruments of both labor management and social control macro political and economic conditions shape the ways in which these mechanisms operate and are in turn influenced by them viewing labor arrangements in this way helps resolve problems confronted by the prevailing theories and allows for a broader understanding of dynamic processes

market failure and control of labour power towards an explanation of structure and change in indian agriculture part 1 1 although existing approaches do on occasion shed light on certain specific aspects of indian agriculture in general they run into problems of methodology or content or more frequently both in particular it is misleading to treat indian agri culture in peasant economy no markets or neoclassical perfect market terms and problematic to view it as semi feudal markets subordinate to extra economic factors 2 analysis of the relationships between farm size land productivity sharecropping and mechanisation suggest the need for an integrated model which emphasises both the unemployment and poverty of poor peasants and the problems of supervision and control of wage labour and tenants 3 proper appreciation of the interlinked role of these factors can help to explain the system s inability to combine the abundant labour of the poor with resources owned largely by the rich it can also go on to explain institutional responses like sharecropping as partial solutions to the problem of intensifying labour use and technological ones such as mechanisation as a means of delinking large farm growth from the need to intensify labour use 4 the tensions and choices between these responses underlie both the problem of stagnation and the phenomenon of switches from sharecropping to mechanisation 5 for associated reasons more rapid growth in indian agriculture is unlikely without major institutional changes to create much new employment and is likely to be more capital intensive than is usually assumed

terms of trade policy in a model with non produced means of production abstract terms of trade policies between agriculture and industry are analysed in a two sector sraffian model if both sectors use only produced means of production and labor it can be shown that an improvement in agriculture s terms of trade always leads to higher profits in agriculture however when non produced means of production are introduced an exogenous increase in the relative price of agricultural commodities may cause the rate of profit in agriculture to increase remain constant or even decrease two preconditions are identified for the case in which a favorable movement in agriculture s terms of trade decreases that sector s profit rate first at least one quality of competitively priced land must be scarce relative to the total output required second the initial economy wide rate of profit must be positive finally the effect of an input subsidy used in conjunction with terms of trade policy is considered it is shown that under certain conditions reducing the price of production inputs can also cause profits to fall and rents to rise in agriculture

stagnation income distribution and monopoly power the deceleration in the rate of industrial growth in the indian economy since the middlesixties initially interpreted by some as a temporary downward deviation from trend hasnow come to be generally accepted as reflecting long run tendencies towards stagnation several explanations for these tendencies have been offered bhagwati and desai 1970 and bhagwati and srinivasan 1975 have focused on inefficiencies and the misallocationof resources arising from industrial policies pursued by the government others chakravarty 1974 raj 1976 and vaidyanathan 1974 among them have emphasisedthe sluggishness of agricultural growth which is alleged to have retarded industrial growthby limiting markets and the supply of wage goods and raw materials a third view reflectedin srinivasan and narayana 1977 for example has put the blame on a slackening of invest ment demand due to lower public investment but does not explain why public investmentfell or why its fall restrained industrial growth finally there is the explanation put forthin bagchi 1970 1975 1982 in nayyar 1978 and in parts of mitra 1977 that inequali ties in income distribution have resulted in a limited demand for industrial goods reducedincentives for investment and therefore reduced growth this view seems to suggest apositive relation between growth and income equality which is opposed to the generallyaccepted idea derived from cambridge growth models that higher growth requires greaterinequality the purpose of this paper is to examine the last explanation by considering the inter action between growth and income distribution in an underdeveloped economy with thehelp of a simple macroeconomic model the model is a stylisation of the indian economy so that we will be able to use the model to assess the argument that a deceleration in therate of growth of the indian industrial economy could have been caused by an unequaldistribution of income the argument will not be made that this income distributional con straint is the binding constraint on industrial growth the model will merely examine theinternal consistency of the argument that a bad income distribution could explain stagnation in the sense of reduced growth and show that in the indian context as in other similarcontexts this argument can be put forward in explaining stagnation our argument is first presented with a highly simplified schematisation of the indianeconomy which we shall call the basic model the economy modelled produces only one

profit rent and the terms of trade a reply abstract andrews 1985 investigates the theoretical coherence and policy relevance of our 1982 model and concludes contrary to our own findings that a positive rate of profit is not necessary to obtain a two signed derivative of the profit rate with respect to agriculture s terms of trade she characterizes the model as neo ricardian on the grounds that the technology is the culprit and also questions the empirical relevance of our fixed profit equilibrium or land price treadmill we show here that if a viability condition stated in our original paper holds parameter values of the model must yield a positive rate of profit if the profit rate is to fall following an improvement in the terms of trade we then contrast our model with a more neoclassical one in which the sign of the derivative does strictly depend on the technology that is upon factor intensities finally we present empirical evidence from a detailed study of the u s economy based on our original model these data support the existence of a land price treadmill in agriculture especially for countries in which workers are successful in defending a given real wage

rent income distribution and growth in an underdeveloped agrarian economy abstract a model is constructed to examine the determination of income distribution in an underdeveloped agrarian economy such as the indian one in which both rich capitalist farmers and poor subsistence farmers rent in land from landlords it is used to analyse the growth and income distributional consequences of different kinds of institutional and technological changes the possibilities of the growth of capitalism and the impact of industrial expansion

organic agriculture and fair trade a happy marriage a case study of certified smallholder black pepper farmers in india summary this study examines whether the joint adoption of organic and fair trade systems adds additional benefits to smallholders in developing countries we use panel data collected from 300 smallholder rural black pepper growers in kerala india to assess household welfare impacts we apply a multinomial endogenous switching regression model along with a counterfactual analysis to estimate certification effects results show that both certification systems have a significant impact on income compared to conventional black pepper farming however membership in fair trade marketing systems does not increase income of organic farmers but has positive effects on asset accumulation of smallholder farmers

the economics of teacher quality abstract concern is often voiced about the quality of american schoolteachers this paper suggests that while the relative quality of teachers is declining this decline may be the result of technological changes that have raised the price of skilled workers outside teaching without affecting the productivity of skilled teachers growth in the price of skilled workers can cause schools to lower the relative quality of teachers and raise teacher quantity instead evidence from the national longitudinal survey of youth demonstrates that wage and schooling are good measures of teacher quality analysis of u s census microdata then reveals that the relative schooling and experience adjusted relative wages of u s schoolteachers have fallen significantly from 1940 to 1990 moreover class sizes have also fallen substantially the declines in class size and in relative quality seem correlated over time and space with growth in the relative price of skilled workers

on the dynamic instability of induced migration unemployment in a dual economy abstract previous attempts to integrate the todarian analysis of rural urban migration with the dual economy growth model have relied upon an essentially static version of the migration hypothesis inappropriate in a growth context in this paper it is shown that when a dynamic version of the hypothesis is used the steady state growth equilibrium whilst characterised by a positive unemployment rate typical of todarian models is unstable these results have policy implications which differ from those presented in the previous literature

terms of trade and class conflict in a computable general equilibrium model for mexico a computable general equilibrium model for mexico is constructed in which class conflict over the distribution of the surplus is the principal determinant of the terms of trade the model consists of seven social classes and eight productive sectors classes are distinguished as fundamental or subsumed according to whether their incomes are primarily determined by conscious class struggle or by the resulting system of relative prices flexible prices are assumed to clear markets for which non produced means of production such as agricultural land limit supply while output in the remaining sectors is determined by the level of effective demand for the latter sectors two theories of price formation are compared and are seen to differ radically in their implicit conception of the nature of class conflict a keynes kalecki closure is considered in which prices are determined by a fixed mark up on costs this enables capitalists to protect themselves from incursions on the rate of profit due to labou

growth distribution and inflation a centennial synthesis microeconomics at harvard a little more than a decade ago having become disenchanted with neoclassical economics i suggested to my students that the very neoclassical course i had just taught provided one way of characterising the workings of a capitalist economy but hardly the only way after a year of utility maximisation partial and general equili brium pareto optimality and the associated agonies of lagrangians hessians jacobians and fixed point theorems my students were able to contain their enthusiasm for this news they had expected not one way of looking at the world but at the very least a magical key to knowledge and wisdom it is probably accurate to say that my message was not received at all i shall always remember the incomprehension etched on their faces the next year the last i was to teach theory in that incarnation i decided to present at least a sketch of an alternative to the neoclassical orthodoxy i soon discovered there were at least two foundations on which to build one going back to marx who died one hundred years ago the other deriving from keynes whose birth centenary we celebrate this year these two approaches it was clear were as different from each other as from the neoclassical approach the analysis of neo keynesian neo marxian and neoclassical theories has been a major focus of my research ever since and provides the framework for these lectures 1

methodologies and perspectives in research on labour relations in global agricultural production networks a review the integration of global south actors into the global agricultural economy has attracted research on labour effects this is because global south actors are often integrated at the level of produc

agricultural terms of trade and distributional perversities in a neo ricardian model abstract the comparative static effects of a change in terms of trade for the agricultural sector are examined in a two sector neo ricardian model when wages are held constant and intensive rents are earned by owners of the non produced land resource it is possible for a favorable shift in agriculture s terms of trade to lead to a fall in the rate of profit on circulating capital or a decline in the rental rate on land the conditions causing these perverse profit and rental rate responses are shown to depend on the type of high yielding technology available the relevance of the analysis to policy making and investment in the agriculture sector is discussed

understanding the twentieth century growth in u s school spending persistent increases in spending on elementary and secondary schools have gone virtually undocumented real expenditure per student increased 3 percent per year over the period 1890 1990 decomposition of the spending growth shows that it resulted from a combination of falling pupil staff ratios increasing real wages to teachers and rising expenditure outside of the classroom although the expansion of education for the handicapped has had a disproportionate effect on spending most of the growth in expenditure during the 1980s came from other sources significant teacher salary increases particularly for females have failed to keep up with wages in other occupations

teacher quality in public and private schools under a voucher system the case of chile chile is unusual in having long term experience with nationwide school vouchers a key criticism of school voucher systems is that they make it easier for private schools to attract better teachers to the detriment of public schools this paper uses longitudinal data from chile to estimate a discrete choice dynamic programming dcdp model of teacher and nonteacher labor supply decisions and to explore how wage policies affect the composition of the teacher labor force in public and private schools in the model individuals first decide whether to get a teaching degree and then choose annually from among five work home sector alternatives empirical results show that private voucher schools attract better teachers than public schools however the existence of the private voucher sector also draws higher productivity individuals into the teaching profession

do alternative opportunities matter the role of female labor markets in the decline of teacher quality abstract this paper documents the widely perceived but little investigated notion that teachers today are less qualified than they once were evidence of a marked decline in the quality of young women going into teaching between 1960 and 1990 is presented using standardized test scores undergraduate institution selectivity and positive assortative mating characteristics as indicators of quality in contrast the quality of young women becoming professionals increased the roy model of self selection highlights how occupational differences in the returns to skill determine teacher quality estimates suggest the significance of increasing professional opportunities for women in affecting the decline in teacher quality

tenancy and family resources a model and some empirical analysis abstract in this paper we discuss with the help of a simple model the role of family resource endowments in determining the extent of land leased in or leased out by a household this becomes important when the market for some of these resources is either not functioning at all or is functioning imperfectly we focus on three such resources which have some relevance in indian agriculture these are 1 the family s managerial skill 2 its endowment of human labour and 3 its endowment of draft animal labour household level data from six villages of maharashtra and andhra pradesh are also utilized to test some of the hypotheses

credit and sharecropping in agrarian societies this paper considers a model of linkage between land labor and credit transactions in the context of sharecropping the paper s objectives are a to derive and characterize the equilibrium in a model of a land scarce labour abundant economy under sharecropping given an infinitely elastic supply of identical sharecroppers at a reservation utility and b to demonstrate that in an imperfect market a landlord may offer credit to his tenant sometimes even at a subsidized rate of interest without necessarily insisting that the sharecropper borrow only from him precluding an involuntary linkage between credit and land transations it has been demonstrated that regardless of the presence or absence of linkage or any other control by the landlord as long as he can vary the size of the plot given to a tenant and there are enough potential tenants in equilibrium contracts a tenants utility under sharecropping will be the same as that which he could have obtained as a full time wage laborer this result implies that policies other than land reform will not affect the welfare of tenants

teacher quality and earnings abstract the effect of cognitive ability as indicated by a vocabulary test score on earnings by teachers and selected other occupations is estimated although test scores increase earnings for non teacher occupations the effect of test scores on teacher earnings is zero

social articulation as a condition for equitable growth abstract a formal model is developed to establish the structural conditions that result in growth being progressive or regressive on the personal distribution of income these conditions include 1 intersectoral investment priorities between wage goods and luxuries and 2 the state of the levels and distribution of incomes which determines the social origin of demand for different sectors of the economy the particular combinations of investment and income structures that result in equalizing social articulation or unequalizing growth social disarticulation are derived we show empirically that the structural conditions that allowed rapid but unequalizing growth in brazil between 1968 and 1977 were those of social disarticulation

a note on social articulation abstract de janvry and sadoulet 1983 present a model of unequalizing growth and the closure rule of the model is discussed in this note it is shown that income distribution in the model is determined by the market clearing mechanism in the wage goods market and how the condition for social articulation is related to the excess demand function on the wage goods market

growth distribution and sectoral heterogeneity reading the kaleckians in latin america abstract the aim of this paper is to explore a parallelism between two episodes in the history of economic thought in order to suggest that the interaction between them can contribute to the research on kaleckian growth and distribution models first a brief summary of the theoretical development from steindl s stagnationist claims to the debate about demand regimes is offered then a more detailed account is provided of the latin american debate that began with furtado s stagnationist claims and resulted in the formulation of models of social articulation and disarticulation finally an analytical classification of kaleckian and latin american growth and distribution models is provided indicating the way in which sectoral heterogeneity and demand composition can act as a plausible link between growth and distribution

rural wages labor supply and land reform a theoretical and empirical analysis land reform is one of the most mentioned of the theoretical policy instruments discussed in the development literature yet relatively little attention has been paid to the wage rate consequences of such a program despite the fact that perhaps more than one half of rural families in a developing country receive a substantial proportion of their income from wage earnings in agriculture one reason for this lacuna may be that the determination of wages and family labor supply in the agricultural sector of ldcs has also been somewhat neglected particularly in the context of a heterogeneous labor force 2 the subsistence or institutional wage models of w arthur lewis john fei and gustav ranis and gerald rodgers for instance offer no theory of how rural wage levels or differentials are set and thus provide little guidance on how wage rates would be affected by changes in land ownership patterns more recently pranab bardhan and t n srinivasan david newbery and clive bell and pinhas zusman who formulate general equilibrium market or bargaining models determining endogenously the rental share paid by tenant sharecroppers have assumed that agricultural wage rates are exogenous or determined only by nonagricultural factors all of these models assume that rural labor is homogeneous another reason why the potential wage impact of a land reform program may have received little attention is that models of peasant family behavior such as those of a k sen dipak mazumdar and robert mabro typically embody two restrictive assumptions which would tend to make the equalization of landholdings appear wage augmenting although this implication has never been formally derived these assumptions are that 1 agriculture is dualistic with small farm families facing lower shadow prices of labor leisure than large farm landlords because of impediments to labor mobility and 2 agricultural households are dichotomous small farmers employ family labor and maximize utility while large farms only utilize wage labor and maximize profits data from a 1970 71 allindia survey of over 5 000 households collected by the national council of applied economic research3 indicate however that almost all cultivator households large and small participate actively in the labor market as either buyers or sellers of labor services with almost 88 percent of households cultivating a gross cropped area less than 1 5 acres utilizing some hired labor seventynine percent of these small farm households associate professor yale ujniversity the research embodied in this paper was supported in part by a grant from the ford and rockefeller foundations program in support of social science and legal research on population policy and with funds from the u s agency for international development under order no aid otr 1432 helpful suggestions and comments were provided by james l mccabe mark gersovitz an anonymous referee the managing editor and members of the economic growth center yale university i am also grateful to the members of the research program in development studies princeton university for the use of their facilities research assistance was provided by james devine anne morgan and roberta robson inotable exceptions are r albert berry mark gersovitz and m a rahman all of these authors however employ geometric analyses with differing assumptions leading to wholly different predictions regarding wage effects none consider the heterogeneity of agricultural labor pay attention to questions of stability or attempt to apply their models to data 2lnformation on the differential impact of alternative agricultural policies including land reform on sex or age specific wage rates is not only important in settling income distribution and equity issues but as suggested in an article by the author and robert evenson may have significant implications for population growth and schooling as well 3for a more detailed discussion of these data see the author

why do diplomas pay an expanded mincerian framework applied to mexico we compare four explanations for the value of diplomas each of which has implications for unemployment and wage variation amongst graduates most of which have not previously been tested for when seeking to explain the effects of diplomas we test for these implications using a refined econometric framework exploiting idiosyncrasies in mexican labour market and educational institutions premiums in mexico appear to result from diplomas tied to jobs with downwards rigid wages an uncommon but simple explanation the standard explanations including screening are not suggested by mexican data our results illuminate how labour markets segmented by diplomas clear this depends upon the nature of the labour market rigidities exactly as predicted by neoclassical theory

an east asian model of economic development japan taiwan and south korea the east asian model of economic development focuses on 5 shared characteristics that seem significant in the contemporary economic development of japan taiwan and korea they are economic characteristics and include 1 high investment ratios 2 small public sectors 3 competitive labor markets 4 export expansion and 5 government intervention in the economy large and efficient investments in human capital and well developed capacities to absorb new technology are 2 other economic features shared by the three one could add overcrowding high man land ratios and scarcity of natural resources though these are handicaps rather than sources of economic strength it is possible however that virtue springs from necessity and that ample arable land or abundant natural resources mainly permit governments to postpone the difficult decisions needed to promote development rather than provide the wherewithal needed to finance development other noneconomic characteristics of the three such as ethnic and linguistic homogeneity relatively compact geography manageable population size and the confucian tradition have not been considered in the model even though they have undoubtedly influenced labor productivity savings behavior and other aspects of economic performance whether the east asian model ought to be followed depends on whether current and foreseeable circumstances are sufficiently like those faced by the three to justify using the same policies that they used applicability of the east asian model should also depend on whether the strategy employed by the three has been responsible for their economic success 2 aspects of the east asian models policy features are noteworthy 1 the policies typically work by influencing rather than replacing private market decisions and 2 the public expects government to intervene to influence economic growth

fairtrade and labour markets in ethiopia and uganda abstractdrawing on four years of fieldwork in ethiopia and uganda this paper addresses gaps in knowledge about the mechanisms linking agricultural exports with poverty reduction the functioning of rural labour markets and the relevance to the lives of the poorest people of fairtrade statistical analysis of survey evidence complemented by qualitative research highlights the relatively poor payment and non pay working conditions of those employed in research sites dominated by fairtrade producer organisations we conclude that fairtrade is not an effective way to improve the welfare of the poorest rural people

sharecropping and the interlinking of agrarian markets one of the often noted features of less developed agrarian economies is the existence of interlinkages among the land labor credit and product markets the landlord is often the supplier of credit he frequently purchases and markets the output of the tenant farmers and often sells raw materials and even consumption goods to his tenant farmers how can this phenomenon be explained what are the welfare consequences of attempts to restrict these practices which often seem to constitute restraints on free trade these are the questions to which this paper is addressed a general set of arguments applicable to both competitive and noncompetitive environments are presented to situations where all the terms of the contract are determined in an optimal way as well as to situations where many of the terms are specified institutionally section i examines interlinked credit and tenancy contracts section ii examines interlinked marketing and tenancy contracts section iii points out the possible interlinking between labor contracts and consumption goods markets and section iv presents the different equilibrium frameworks discussed in the paper such as monopoly monopsony competition and equilibria with surplus labor

the neo ricardians focuses on the neoclassical theory of economics in great britain calculation for the standard commodity assumptions of piedro sraffa on the cycle of production functions of the rate of return ebsco

the dynamics of teacher quality abstract an extensive literature finds that while teachers vary considerably in initial quality there are limited teacher quality dynamics except for the first few years of teaching teacher quality does not improve over the course of a teacher s career this study evaluates the importance of various modeling restrictions to the key findings of this literature using data covering all 5th grade public school teachers from the state of north carolina i replicate the findings of the previous literature using their restrictive experience assumptions however using an unrestricted experience model i find that for mathematics achievement there are high returns to later career teaching experience about twice as much dispersion in initial teacher quality as previously estimated and a pattern of negative selection where high quality teachers are more likely to exit

productivity and distribution under cropsharing tenancy abstract this paper develops a model of sharecropping assuming tenant autonomy competitive behavior of landlords and laborers and endogenously determined wage and share rental rates the coexistence of wage labor and sharecropping is explained in terms of their incentive labor process and risk sharing characteristics sharecropping serves as a surrogate for the direct supervision of the labor process its incidence is shown to rise in the presence of unemployment at a subsistence wage the model implies that the abolition of tenancy will raise output raise labor income and reduce land income

food standards certification and poverty among coffee farmers in uganda summary voluntary standards are gaining in importance in global markets for high value foods we analyze and compare impacts of three sustainability oriented standards fairtrade organic and utz on the livelihoods of smallholder coffee farmers in uganda using survey data and propensity score matching with multiple treatments we find that fairtrade certification increases household living standards by 30 and reduces the prevalence and depth of poverty for the other two certification schemes no significant impacts are found several factors that can explain differential impacts are discussed overly general statements about the effects of sustainability standards on smallholder livelihoods may be misleading

sectoral balance in development a survey abstract this paper surveys the literature on sectoral balance to see how sectoral imbalances can retard economic development it examines definitions of sectors and balance provides background facts theories and planning tools reviews the debate on balanced growth and surveys two sector models of agriculture industry consumption investment and luxury basics interaction the open economy and the role of service nonmarket and unproductive sectors it argues that the examination of important development issues requires multisectoral analysis incorporating the insights of several of these models and that alternative models with different structural characteristics deserve attention

recruiting and retaining teachers in the uk an analysis of graduate occupation choice from the 1960s to the 1990s this paper examines the market for teachers in the uk from 1960 to 2002 using six graduate cohort data sets we find that while there is no strong evidence that teachers are underpaid the relative wages in teaching compared with alternative professions have a significant impact on the likelihood of graduates choosing to teach this wage effect is strongest at times of low relative teachers wages or following a period of decline in those wages it is also strongest for those individuals who have more recently graduated and for men

increasing returns and the foundations of unemployment theory current approaches to macroeconomic theory divide roughly into two basic schools of thought one approach typically associated with rational expectations views the economy as basically at or near walrasian market clearing equilibrium in which case it becomes very difficult to explain away convincingly the undeniable persistence at times of involuntary unemployment another approach views the underemployed economy as being in a state of temporary fixed price disequilibrium in which case aside from having to repress suspicions that the essence of effective demand failure might not have to do with prices fixed at wrong values there is a lot of rationalising to be done about why profitable adjustments are so slow this paper argues that something like an internally consistent theory of steady state involuntary unemployment is possible and even plausible the cornerstone of this third approach is increasing returns to scale which blocks unemployed agents from breaking out of a low level equilibrium trap unless there is overall coordination or stimulation a simple model is presented which contains the basic ideas

food policy and class transformation in revolutionary nicaragua 1979 1986 abstract state grain policy in nicaragua has represented both a short run intervention in food production and a longer run strategy of class transformation the emphasis given peasant production of corn and beans has depended on both considerations and has varied over the seven years of the revolutionary process a class analysis of this policy reveals changing responses by the fsln to external and internal political and economic conditions recent measures point to an acceptance of petty commodity grain production which may or may not be compatible with socialist agricultural development

non produced means of production in sraffa s system basics non basics and quasi basics all value land and other non produced means of production can make no contribution to the value of commodities rent is consequently a deduction from the total surplus produced by labour although the labour theory of value has been the subject of extensive criticism for more than a century the associated issues of non produced means of production1 have been largely ignored indeed steedman 1977 who argues that the entire apparatus be abandoned and replaced with sraffa s 1960 theory of production prices makes no refer ence to the problem of rent this paper investigates the extent to which the classical intuition regarding non produced means of production is consistent with sraffa s system in production of commodities by means of commodities sraffa provides a rigorous refor mulation of the classical theories of intensive and extensive rent noting that land and natural resources occupy among means of production a position equivalent to that of non basics among products in single product systems non basics are typically interpreted as luxury goods and it can be shown inter alia that technical progress in non basic industries does not affect the system of relative prices and the economy wide rate of profit if it is true that land is always non basic then we might conclude that the classical view is broadly confirmed by sraffa s modernisation of the theory of value unfortunately both the extensive and intensive systems are formally multiple product process economies for which the definition of non basics is considerably more subtle and complex than in single product industries 2 important properties of single product non basics do not always survive the transition to multiple product economies prices and profits may respond in unexpected ways to technical change taxes and class conflict over the distribution of the surplus the source of the perverse behaviour is traced to a class of commodities characterised here as quasi basics the paper is organised as follows in section 2 we show that in systems with extensive

does raising the principal s wage improve the school s outcomes quasi experimental evidence from an unusual policy experiment in israel this paper reports estimates of the causal effects of a 50 percent increase in the salary of headmasters of high schools in israel the results suggest that the program led to significant improvements in twelfth grade students academic achievements however the effect was relatively modest comprising increases of about 5 10 percent in the school mean matriculation rate average score and number of subjects and credit units taken in matriculation programs based on these results and the lack of evidence regarding the effect of increasing teachers salary it seems that priority should be given to paying higher wages to school principals

uncertainty entrepreneurship and sharecropping in india this study attempts to explain the coexistence of different farm lease arrangements in terms of the varying significance of entrepreneurial functions in india crop sharing arrangements are common in areas of relative economic certainty with very little scope for decision making for example for product and factor substitution and where the entrepreneurial profit is low fixed cash rents are common in situations of high uncertainty where the scope for decision making is significant or where the crops are highly profitable efficiency considerations predominate in areas of sharecropping favoring a smaller farm size whereas under high uncertainty large size is favored for reducing risk

penny capitalism efficient but poor or inefficient and less than second best abstract a re examination of sol tax s classic research from guatemala reveals that the data actually portray a real world example of the theory of second best early empirical evidence of an inverse relation between farm size and the labor land and output land ratios and case in which concentrated resource ownership in a setting of information and monitoring problems combined with missing or imperfect asset markets generates a pareto inefficient outcome the contemporary revelance of this finding is that it contributes to an understanding not only of persistent allocative inefficiency in guatemalan agriculture but also of the relative failure of the green revolution in latin america as compared with asia

do public schools hire the best applicants despite a surplus of candidates for most teaching jobs a strong academic record does little for an applicants job prospects this does not appear to result from lukewarm interest on the part of such applicants or choosiness about the positions they accept administrators lack of interest in these candidates may reflect the weakness of competitive pressures in public education policies intended to improve teacher quality need to consider incentives on both the demand and supply sides of the market

cleaning house new perspectives on households and economic development abstract this paper provides a critical review of the recent literature on households and economic development three related points are developed 1 household activities can be analyzed in economic terms particularly if these terms are broadly defined to encompass such factors as risk and uncertainty 2 significant differences between the economic position of men women and children within the patriarchal household mean that it cannot be treated as an undifferentiated unit of analysis 3 microeconomic analysis of the household must be situated within a larger structural analysis of gender and age based inequalities and their interaction with class structure and national position within the world capitalist system

cash crops in developing countries the issues the facts the policies the issue of cash crops is profoundly controversial the debate uses different definitions of the term and slides across levels of analysis from the household to the international economy it also cuts across arguments crops countries and time periods this paper sets out to order the debate it deals first with definitions and taxonomy and then reviews issues connected with cash crops and a growth b distribution c food security d dependency and e the environment the paper concludes that with appropriate policies cash crops can offer a route to equitable growth