rural income dynamics and poverty reduction in thai villages from 1987 to 2004 this article aims to examine the factors contributing to the increase in household income and the corresponding reduction in poverty in rural thai villages from 1987 to 2004 by employing household panel data it is found that there has been a significant structural shift of household income away from farm to nonfarm income sources as well as a reduction in the income gap and the difference in poverty incidence between favorable and unfavorable regions such decreases in poverty and its regional gap have been associated with the declining importance of income accrued to farm land measured by farm size and the availability of irrigation and with the increasing importance of human capital measured by the proportion of working members who have graduated from post lower secondary schools such findings indicate that the success in rural poverty reduction in thailand has resulted from the development of the rural nonfarm sector coupled with the improvement of the schooling levels of the rural population

effect sizes and the interpretation of research results in international business journal editors and academy presidents are increasingly calling on researchers to evaluate the substantive as opposed to the statistical significance of their results to measure the extent to which these calls have been heeded i aggregated the meta analytically derived effect size estimates obtained from 965 individual samples i then surveyed 204 studies published in the journal of international business studies i found that the average effect size in international business research is small and that most published studies lack the statistical power to detect such effects reliably i also found that many authors confuse statistical with substantive significance when interpreting their research results these practices have likely led to unacceptably high type ii error rates and invalid inferences regarding real world effects by emphasizing p values over their effect size estimates researchers are under selling their results and settling for contributions that are less than what they really have to offer in view of this i offer four recommendations for improving research and reporting practices

green revolution land reform and household income distribution in the philippines income of agricultural households consists of returns to labor capital and land from farming supplemented mainly by labor earnings from nonfarm sources agricultural technology affects farmers income through its effect on factor demands and factor prices which in turn induce changes in the allocation of farmers own resources to different uses income from farming is also affected by village institutions such as land tenure which governs the distribution of income between landlords and tenants as well as resource allocations

tests of a rational theory of the size of government in many countries the political party holding power changes more frequently than the trend growth rates in government spending and taxes shifts of political power are often preceded by rhetoric about meeting needs or cutting taxes which post election performances rarely match yet changes in the size of government up and down occur on average the size of government measured by the share of taxes or spending to output has increased in many countries during the past century but changes in size occur at diffrent rates and at times the relative size of government declines

are women really more risk averse than men a re analysis of the literature using expanded methods while a substantial literature in economics and finance has concluded that women are more risk averse than men this conclusion merits investigation after briefly clarifying the difference between making generalizations about groups on the one hand and making valid inferences from samples on the other this essay suggests improvements to how economists communicate our research results supplementing findings of statistical significance with quantitative measures of both substantive difference cohen s d a measure in common use in non economics literatures and of substantive overlap the index of similarity newly proposed here adds important nuance to the discussion of sex differences these measures are computed from the data on men women and risk used in 35 scholarly works from economics finance and decision science the results are considerably more mixed and overlapping than would commonly be inferred from the broad claims made in the literature with standardized differences in means mostly amounting to considerably less than one standard deviation and the degree of overlap between male and female distributions generally exceeding 80 in addition studies that look at contextual influences suggest that these contribute importantly to observations of differences both between and within the sexes

relying on the private sector the income distribution and public investments in the poor abstract what drives governments with similar revenues to provide very different amounts of goods with private sector substitutes education is a prime example i use exogenous shocks to brazilian municipalities revenue during 1995 2008 generated by non linearities in federal transfer laws to demonstrate two things first municipalities with higher income inequality or higher median income allocate less of a revenue shock to education and are less likely to expand public school enrollment they are more likely to invest in public infrastructure that is broadly enjoyed like parks and roads or to save the shock second i find no evidence that the quality of public education suffers as a result if anything unequal and high income areas are more likely to improve public school inputs and test scores following a revenue shock given their heavy use of private education i further provide evidence that an increase in public sector revenue lowers private school enrollment

determinants and consequences of land reform implementation in the philippines abstract unlike the experience of other developing countries land reform in the philippines has been successful in converting many of share tenants to land reform beneficiaries this study indicates that the implementation of land reform is positively associated with yield growth made possible by the adoption of modern seed fertilizer technology a major reason underlying such association is considered to be an increased economic interest of tenants in land reform arising from divergence of rental value of land from leasehold rent and amortization fees prescribed by law

the impact of seed vouchers on poverty reduction among smallholder rice farmers in nigeria in response to the global food crisis of 2008 the united states agency for international development usaid funded an emergency rice initiative eri program to boost rice production in nigeria the supplementary seed voucher program implemented alongside the eri adopted a randomized control trial to grant randomly selected farmers access to subsidized certified improved rice seed using the seed voucher system svs in this study we provide a consistent estimate of the impact of the svs on poverty reduction using mixed methodologies such as inverse propensity score weighing ipsw and the local average treatment effect late estimation techniques results show that the svs has a positive and statistically significant impact on annual household income and per capita consumption expenditure this study shows that availability of good quality seed at an affordable price can raise agricultural productivity increase household income and contribute to poverty reduction

the effect of the expansion of the voting franchise on the size of government this paper examines the claim that expansion of the voting franchise has been an important factor in the growth of government state government spending and state and local spending are explained using a panel of 46 states for 1950 88 elimination of poll taxes and literacy tests led to higher turnout particularly among the poor and a poorer pivotal voter as predicted we find that these changes a fall in the income of voters relative to state income and the ouster of republicans from state government led to a sharp rise in welfare spending but no change in other spending

the green revolution development of labor markets and poverty reduction in the rural philippines 1985 2004 using a long term household panel data set collected in three rural villages in the philippines in 1985 and 2004 this article explores how the green revolution and development of the labor markets have affected household income and poverty situation the initial rise in income associated with the green revolution and a stronger credit access has enabled the households to allocate funds for investing in children s schooling with the increased integration of the rural with the urban labor market these children are able to explore labor opportunities in the nonfarm sector that resulted in a decline in poverty by about one half the landless households who are less educated benefited too from the expansion of the nonfarm labor market because of the rise in rural wages associated with the rise in demand for the unskilled labor which is by far their most important asset

the changing determinants of schooling investments evidence from villages in the philippines 1985 89 and 2002 04 abstract this paper aims to explore the changing determinants of child progress through school over the last two decades using unique long term household panel data from four villages in the philippines in a regime of low income in the late 1980s income from farming is the most important source of funds to finance child schooling as households shift away from farm to non farm activities and their children pursue higher education non farm income and revenues from pawning of land have emerged as main sources of schooling funds in the early 2000s in this process farm income has lost its prime importance as a determinant of schooling investments among rural households

the effect of pre primary education on primary school performance although the theoretical case for universal pre primary education is strong the empirical foundation is weak in this paper we contribute to the empirical case by investigating the effect of a large expansion of universal pre primary education on subsequent primary school performance in argentina we estimate that one year of preprimary school increases average third grade test scores by 8 percent of a mean or by 23 percent of the standard deviation of the distribution of test scores we also find that preprimary school attendance positively affects student s self control in the third grade as measured by behaviors such as attention effort class participation and discipline

beyond ecolabels what green marketing can learn from conventional marketing ecolabels have emerged as one of the main tools of green marketing although a great deal of effort has been invested in making them more effective and efficient the market share of ecolabelled products is still low partly because they have been addressed mainly to green consumers in a theoretical exposition of marketing theory we find that green marketing could learn from conventional marketing in discovering other means than labelling to promote green products examples include addressing a wider range of consumers working with the positioning strategies of price place and promotion and actively engaging in market creation

local inequality and project choice theory and evidence from ecuador this paper provides evidence consistent with elite capture of social fund investment projects in ecuador exploiting a unique combination of data sets on village level income distributions social fund project administration and province level electoral results we test a simple model of project choice when local political power is unequally distributed in accordance with the predictions of the model poorer villages are more likely to receive projects that provide excludable private goods to the poor such as latrines controlling for poverty more unequal communities are less likely to receive such projects consistent with the hypothesis of elite capture these results are sensitive to the specific measures of inequality and elite power used in the empirical analysis and are strongest for expenditure shares at the top of the distribution

can mandated political representation increase policy influence for disadvantaged minorities theory and evidence from india accountable governments often fail to reflect the interests of disadvantaged minorities this paper exploits the institutional features of political reservation as practiced in indian states to examine the role of mandated political representation in providing disadvantaged groups influence over policy making ifind that political reservation has increased transfers to groups which benefit from the mandate this finding also suggests that complete policy commitment may be absent in democracies as is found in this case jel d72 d78 hl 1 h50

logging conflicts in southern cameroon a feminist ecological economics perspective abstract growing attention has been paid to gender in ecological economics political ecology and development studies but a focus on gender in resource extraction conflicts is still rare this article explores women led resistance movements to commercial logging in south eastern cameroon focusing on the moabi tree baillonella toxisperma the latter provides oil medicine and other non timber products and use values to local forest societies and particularly to women resistances arise because most socio environmental costs of the international logging trade are imposed on the rural populations and especially on women of the extractive regions the aim of this paper is to analyze the root causes of the gender structure of such mobilisations as well as the impacts on gender relations induced by such resource extraction conflicts after proposing a typology of different environmental currents and their gender counterparts this paper focuses on the gender construction of local bantu societies taking as a point of departure paola tabet s thesis that masculine control over production tools is the objective factor revealing the sexual division of work in our case study we found that the men s control over technology not only highlights the sexual work division but also the gendered division of access rights to natural resources thereby we argue that the sexual division of access rights and work revealed through differentiated control over technology are two key institutions explaining the gendered structure of local mobilizations we then discuss the empowerment allowed by the new forms of women s organizations with a particular focus on the appropriation of new production tools by women this highlights a non western form of environmental feminism

will women lead the way differences in demand for corporate social responsibility information for investment decisions recent years have featured a leap in academic and public interest in corporate social responsibility csr activities and related corporate reporting two main themes in this literature are the exploration of management incentives to engage in and disclose this information and of the use and value of this information to market participants we extend the second theme by examining the interest that specific investor classes have in the use of csr information we rely on feminist intersectionality which suggests that gender intersects with other identities to yield different values experiences and opportunities that can lead to gender based preferences for csr information based upon a survey of 750 us based retail investors we find that female retail investors have a greater interest in the use of csr information relative to male retail investors women express greater anticipated future demand for this information than do men further the magnitude of the increase from current use to anticipated future demand is greater for women than men age is a significant modifying factor in that the discrepancy between women of any age and older men is greater than that between women and younger men finally women also exhibit greater demand for streamlining of the information flow consistent with pressures induced by time poverty it appears that current disclosure practices provide a less than optimal match with the needs of the information consumers that are primarily interested in using this information this mismatch may result in a systematic disenfranchisement of female investing classes which suggests an ethical need to level the playing field

potential of and constraints to the rice green revolution in mozambique a case study of the chokwe irrigation scheme abstract this paper investigates the potential of and constraints to a lowland rice green revolution in mozambique using data from an agro climatically favorable area the chokwe irrigation scheme our data show that although the potential is high the insufficient supply of irrigation water excessively expensive chemical fertilizer and moderately costly labor hinder the scheme from achieving that potential first of all an improvement in irrigation is crucial as it increases yield not only directly but also indirectly through its complementary relationship to chemical fertilizer we also find that an improvement in credit access is important as it can increase the application of chemical fertilizer and labor by making the acquisition of these expensive inputs through markets possible the unavailability of hired and exchange labor during peak seasons is another constraint to the intensive use of labor the introduction of rice varieties with a shorter maturity duration would relax the timing of transplanting and thus spread out the peak seasons labor demand

optimal investment for agricultural growth and poverty reduction in the democratic republic of congo a two sector economic growth model abstractwe propose a two sector economic growth model and solve it numerically using the relaxation algorithm to determine the optimal levels of investment for sustainable agricultural growth and p

the collapse of a european bank in the financial crisis an analysis from stakeholder and ethical perspectives fortis the leading benelux financial group had been a success story of successive mergers of bank and insurance companies with leadership in corporate social responsibility csr one year after the acquisition of the major dutch financial conglomerate abn amro the global financial crisis caused the collapse of the fortis group the purpose of this article is to use the case study of fortis s recent fall as a basis for reflective considerations on the financial crisis from stakeholder and ethical perspectives a selected number of key events of the history of the dramatic crisis at fortis will be analysed from different ethical frameworks special consideration will be given to fairness of communication shareholder activism and conflicts of interests of ceo s mergers opportunities a confrontation between the csr policy and the reality raises the fundamental questions why the powerful csr guidelines and ethical principles did not help in the assessment of the risks

one dollar one vote this paper revisits the relationship between inequality and redistribution in a panel of advanced oecd countries using panel data methods that hold constant a variety of determinants of redistributive spending i find a non monotonic relationship between pre tax and transfer distribution of income and redistribution relative to mean income a more affluent rich and middle class are associated with less redistribution and a richer poor class is associated with more redistribution these results are consistent with a one dollar one vote politico economic equilibrium when the income of a group of citizens increases aggregate redistributive policies tilt towards this group s most preferred policies

a retrospective view of technological and other changes in philippine rice farming 1965 1982 much has been written about the impact of changes brought about through the introduction of semidwarf fertilizer responsive rice and wheat in asia the terms green revolution and miracle varieties suggest the dramatic effect anticipated from the new biological technology by both its supporters and detractors a great volume of literature has been generated describing the impact of these changes much of that literature is speculative some is theoretical and it would be fair to say much is cast in a tone with negative implications for new technology theoretical analyses necessarily balance simplifying assumptions with the richness of detail needed to capture the effects of technical and other changes while empirical analysis often shows what has happened but sheds little light on why it may have happened a recent review of the empirical literature shows that adoption of modern rice varieties in asia results in increased output has occurred quite evenly among farmers of all size groups and has resulted in modest increases in the use of labor per hectare of rice produced some empirical studies contrast areas that have adopted the technology with areas that have not thereby making the often false implicit assumption that all factors other than those specifically studied were similar other empirical studies concentrate on high adoption areas and use recall to infer how the introduction of technology may have changed variables of interest 2 there are a few pioneer studies available that contrast areas before and after the general adoption of specified technologies 3 this paper is a summary of ongoing research that provides data of the latter type researchers at the international rice research institute irri have monitored two sets of philippine rice producers for over 15 years during that period new rice technology was introduced and was

ends against the middle determining public service provision when there are private alternatives abstract public provision of a service coexists with private market provision the quality of public provision is determined by majority vote preferences are not single peaked owing to the presence of private alternatives we identify two cases in one majority voting equilibrium always exists and the median income voter is pivotal in the other a necessary condition for equilibrium indentifies the pivotal voter who must have income below the median when equilibrium exists a coalition of middle income households who consume the public alternative will be opposed by a coalition of rich and poor households with the rich choosing private consumption

rural nonfarm employment and income diversification in colombia abstract using data for rural households from colombia we find that off farm employment contributes a significant share 45 on average to household income but that the importance of off farm income and returns to household labor vary over the income distribution analysis reveals significant gains from specialization but for households able to specialize no systematic differences in returns to labor between farm and nonfarm sources we conclude that in colombia there is no conflict between development of the farm and the nonfarm sector but that to maximize gains from nonfarm development and reduce the scope for undesirable distributional consequences policies enabling households to specialize might be called for

is agriculture the engine of growth we seek to address formally the question raised by gardner 2003 in his elmhirst lecture as to the direction of causality between agricultural value added per worker and gross domestic product gdp per capita using the granger causality test in the panel data analyzed by gardner for 85 countries we find overwhelming evidence that supports the conclusion that agricultural value added is the causal variable in developing countries while the direction of causality in developed countries is unclear we also examine further the use of the granger causality test in integrated data and provide evidence that the performance of the test can be increased in small samples through the use of the bootstrap

the increasing importance of nonfarm income and the changing use of labor and capital in rice farming the case of central luzon 1979 2003 there have been sharp increases in nonfarm income among farm households in central luzon for the last few decades this study attempts to identify the effects of the increasing nonfarm income on the use of tractors and threshers and on the employment of hired labor as a substitute for family labor we found that while the increased nonfarm income positively affects the ownership of tractors it has no significant impact on the use of agricultural machines due presumably to the development of efficient machine rental markets we also found that the increased nonfarm income leads to the increased use of hired labor thereby releasing family labor to nonfarm jobs

land inheritance and schooling in matrilineal societies evidence from sumatra abstract this paper explores statistically the implications of the shift from communal to individualized tenure on the distribution of land and schooling between sons and daughters in matrilineal societies based on a sumatra case study the inheritance system is evolving from a strictly matrilineal system to a more egalitarian system in which sons and daughters inherit the type of land which is more intensive in their respective work effort while gender bias is either non existent or small in land inheritance daughters tend to be disadvantaged with respect to schooling the gender gap in schooling however appears to be closing for the generation of younger children

growth inequality and politics revisited a developing country case abstract key issues in the empirical study on growth are addressed using provincial data in the philippines we find a high rate of absolute convergence a positive relationship between inequality and growth and a positive relationship between political competitiveness and growth

new rice technology and comparative advantage in rice production in the philippines the aim of this study is to assess the comparative advantage in rice production in the philippines for the past three decades since 1966 we have found that the country gained sharp improvement in comparative advantage in rice production in 1979 when yield rose remarkably due to the diffusion of pest and disease resistant modern rice beginning in 1986 however the country appears to have slowly lost its comparative advantage due to the decline in rice prices stagnation in rice yield and rising cost of domestic factors by 1990 the country completely lost its comparative advantage in rice production

introduction to the special issue on the role of nonfarm income in poverty reduction evidence from asia and east africa in this special issue we present seven studies that collectively attempt to investigate the role of non farm income in long term and short term poverty reduction in asia and africa the first four studies out of the seven use long term panel data over two decades in the philippines thailand bangladesh and india these studies show drastic increases in non farm income shares and corresponding declines in poverty levels over time especially in the philippines and thailand education levels of household members and returns to education also increased significantly in these countries the remaining three studies use cross sectional and short term panel data from ethiopia kenya and uganda these african studies show high proportions of poor households and low shares of non farm income that are somewhat comparable to the situation in the 1980s described in the asian studies without the green revolution that provided stable farm income and potential financial resources to invest in children education in asia it is not clear if african farm households can follow the asian examples

to segregate or to integrate education politics and democracy how is the quality of public education affected by the presence of private schools for the rich theory and evidence suggest that the link depends crucially on the political system we develop a theory that integrates private education and fertility decisions with voting on public schooling expenditures we find that the presence of a large private education sector benefits public schools in a broad based democracy where politicians are responsive to low income families but crowds out public education spending in a society that is politically dominated by the rich the main predictions of the theory are consistent with state level data and micro data from the u s as well as cross country evidence from the programme for international student assessment study

do federal grants boost school spending evidence from title i abstract one of the federal government s main elementary and secondary education programs is title i which allocates money for compensatory education to school districts based on child poverty i use sharp changes in per pupil grant amounts surrounding the release of decennial census data to identify effects of title i on state and local education revenue and how much the program ultimately increases spending by recipient school districts i find that state and local revenue efforts initially are unaffected by title i changes but that local governments substantially and significantly crowd out changes in title i within in a 3 year period

role of agricultural research in poverty reduction lessons from the asian experience abstract the poor spend much of their income on food depend primarily on labour earnings and tend to reside in marginal agricultural areas to reduce poverty agricultural research should aim to ensure adequate food supplies by developing yield increasing technologies to increase labour demand by developing labour using technologies and to develop technologies suitable for marginal areas this article seeks to identify appropriate technologies that agricultural research should generate for poverty reduction the identification is based on a review of the experience of the green revolution in rice production in asia and an assessment of the changing structure of income sources among rural households in the philippines

individual dynamic managerial capabilities influence over environmental and social commitment under a gender perspective abstract the current business market is characterized by rapid and continuous changes companies should adapt to new situations to guarantee sustainable development managers need to have capabilities to understand the new environment s requirements managers individual dynamic capabilities idc help them face these unpredictable changes in the market however few authors have analysed individual dynamic capabilities to ensure business sustainability this study aims to shed light on the relationship between a manager s idc and business sustainability from a gender perspective a survey of 339 managers was conducted and structural equation modelling sem was applied to study the impact of the relationship the results show that managers individual dynamic capabilities help them detect changes in the market earlier and promote a greater social and environmental commitment from those managers in addition significant differences in the environmental and social commitment between men and women were found therefore this paper first provides advice for developing business sustainability to provide an advantage for organizations second individual dynamic managerial capabilities appear to be important for promoting sustainability finally another step in the construction of gender and sustainability is provided thus this paper provides useful empirical evidence for managerial practice from a strategic management viewpoint

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

income distribution in rice growing villages during the post green revolution periods the philippine case 1985 and 1998 this paper aims to examine changes in household income sources and its impact on household income distribution in the post green revolution periods in 1985 and 1998 in the rural philippines we found that there has been a structural shift of household income away from farm in favor of nonfarm labor income sources this finding indicates that rural development is being led by nonfarm sectors such a shift has resulted in an increase in household income inequality as the distribution of nonfarm income has become less equal over time and was markedly more unequal than that of farm income in 1998

heterogeneity stratification and growth macroeconomic implications of community structure and school finance this paper examines how socioeconomic stratification and alternative systems of education finance affect inequality and growth agents interact through local public goods or externalities school funding neighborhood effects and economywide linkages complementary skills knowledge spillovers sorting families into homogeneous communities often minimizes the costs of existing heterogeneity but mixing reduces heterogeneity faster integration therefore tends to slow down growth in the short run yet raise it in the long run a move to state funding of education presents society with a similar intertemporal trade off local and global complementarities play major roles in determining the efficient social and educational structures copyright 1996 by american economic association

gender differences in customer expectations and perceptions of corporate social responsibility abstract the literature on business ethics corporate social responsibility and sustainability includes many studies on gender differences however the results are often contrasting in particular there has not yet been full agreement on the role and significance of gender differences in customer expectations and perceptions of responsible corporate conduct an extensive review of the research on the subject reveals that the published studies have not dealt with the substantive significance of gender differences and as a result the size of such differences is unknown the current study analyses both the statistical and the substantive significance of gender differences in customer expectations and perceptions of corporate responsibility also examining the influence of age and education the analysis is carried out on a remarkably large sample of 908 clients pertaining to 12 of the largest italian banks the overall results show that there is a small substantive difference between women s and men s average expectations with women showing higher average values than men this result holds generally true with variation of education levels and age groups young females show the highest average values of expectations and the significance of gender differences decreases with age in contrast the perception of corporate social responsibility does not show significant gender differences either at the general level or when the analyses are repeated by education levels and age groups the paper introduces the use of a standardized measure of effect size for analysing the substantive significance of gender differences in customer expectations and perceptions of corporate social responsibility this novel approach increases results reliability and accordingly the effectiveness of company or policy maker strategies in designing planning implementing and assessing sustainability initiatives

assessing the impact of nerica on income and poverty in central and western uganda persistent food shortage and poverty in sub saharan africa ssa are major development issues new rice for africa nerica was developed to boost crop yield and income of rural households in ssa although its high yielding traits have become fairly well known there is no empirical analysis of its impact on income and poverty by taking the case of uganda where a nerica promoting program was initiated as one of the major poverty eradication measures this study attempts to compare actual income with the hypothetical income without nerica we found that introduction of nerica decreases poverty to a significant extent without deteriorating income distribution