global risk investment and emotions we investigate a novel dynamic choice problem in an experiment where emotions are measured through self reports the choice problem concerns the investment of an amount of money in a safe option and a risky option when there is a global risk of losing all earnings from both options including any return from the risky option our key finding is that global risk can reduce the amount invested in the risky option this result cannot be explained by expected utility or by its main contenders rank dependent utility and cumulative prospect theory an explanation is offered by taking account of emotions using the emotion data from the experiment and recent psychological findings

the impacts of tourism energy consumption and political instability on economic growth in the mena countries using panel data of 24 countries in the middle east and north african mena region from 2001 to 2009 the purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of tourism energy consumption and political instability on economic growth within the neoclassical growth framework to address the objective of this study we utilise both the static panel data approach as well as the dynamic generalised method of moments gmm estimator to examine the impact of candidate variables our results show that energy consumption and tourism significantly contribute to the economic growth of countries in the mena region hence our study lends some support to the existence of the tourism led growth and energy led growth hypotheses in the region in line with our expectation our estimation results also reveal that political instability impedes the process of economic growth and development in the mena region therefore macroeconomic policies to promote expansion in tourism and energy consumption will directly stimulate economic growth additionally efforts to help the region overcome its history of political instability would attract more international tourist arrivals and further invigorate economic growth

a large scale mapping of territorial development dynamics in latin america summary this paper summarizes a study of changes in per capita income monetary poverty and income distribution in 9 045 subnational administrative units of nine latin american countries between the mid 1990s and mid 2000s the results largely support spatial convergence of mean household incomes although the estimates indicate it has been slow territorial inequality is found to be persistent and reduces the pro poor effect of local income growth although national context specific the estimates also indicate that territorial development dynamics are influenced by the structural features of the territories in view of the evidence territorial development policies in latin america seem well warranted

political instability corruption and policy formation the case of environmental policy abstract this paper develops a theory of environmental policy formation taking into consideration the degree of corruptibility and political turbulence the predictions that emerge are that the interaction between the two variables is important political instability has a negative effect on the stringency of environmental regulations if the level of corruption is low but a positive effect when the degree of corruption is high corruption reduces the stringency of environmental regulations but the effect disappears as political instability increases the empirical findings are fully consistent with the predictions of the model

tradeoffs and complementarities in the adoption of improved seeds fertilizer and natural resource management technologies in kenya there is widespread consensus that agricultural technology has an important role to play for poverty reduction and sustainable development there is no consensus however about the types of technologies that are best suited for smallholder farmers in africa while some consider natural resource management nrm technologies as most appropriate others propagate input intensification with a stronger role of the private sector in the public debate these two strategies are often perceived as incompatible environmental non governmental organizations in particular consider low external input strategies as the only sustainable form of agriculture a view that has considerable influence on policymakers and the international donor community most existing research studies on smallholder innovation focus on the adoption of individual technologies so that comparisons between different types of technologies in the same context are not easily possible we use representative data from maize producing households in kenya and a multivariate probit model to analyze the adoption of different types of technologies simultaneously results indicate that nrm technologies and strategies that build on external inputs are not incompatible interesting complementarities exist which are not yet sufficiently exploited because many organizations promote either one type of technology or the other but rarely a combination of both

impact of modern agricultural technologies on smallholder welfare evidence from tanzania and ethiopia this paper evaluates the potential impact of adoption of improved legume technologies on rural household welfare measured by consumption expenditure in rural ethiopia and tanzania the study utilizes cross sectional farm household level data collected in 2008 from a randomly selected sample of 1313 households 700 in ethiopia and 613 in tanzania the causal impact of technology adoption is estimated by utilizing endogenous switching regression this helps us estimate the true welfare effect of technology adoption by controlling for the role of selection problem on production and adoption decisions our analysis reveals that adoption of improved agricultural technologies has a significant positive impact consumption expenditure in per adult equivalent terms in rural ethiopia and tanzania this confirms the potential role of technology adoption in improving rural household welfare as higher consumption expenditure from improved technologies translate into lower poverty higher food security and greater ability to withstand risk an analysis of the determinants of adoption highlighted inadequate local supply of seed access to information and perception about the new cultivars as key constraints for technology adoption

world poverty and the role of agricultural technology direct and indirect effects agricultural technology can help reduce poverty through direct and indirect effects direct effects are gains for the adopters while indirect effects are gains derived from adoption by others leading to lower food prices employment creation and growth linkage effects conceptualising and measuring these effects is highly complex yet is needed for each region if technology is to be used as an effective instrument for poverty reduction we propose a methodology for doing this in the context of computable general equilibrium modelling and apply it to archetype models for africa asia and latin america results show that the dominant effect of technology on poverty is through direct effects in africa indirect agricultural employment effects in asia and linkage effects through the rest of the economy in latin america in each case increasing the poverty reduction effect through the targeting of technology across crops and through complementary rural development programmes is also explored

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

household welfare effects of agricultural productivity a multidimensional perspective from ghana abstractalthough poverty reduction policies in developing countries hinge on the link between smallholder productivity and welfare micro level empirical evidence on this is limited in sub saharan africa and neglects the multidimensionality of welfare this article contributes through investigating the productivity poverty relationship using a number of welfare measures with a three period panel dataset for ghana the findings are that welfare is increasing with labour productivity irrespective of the measure used but that dramatic increases in productivity would be required to achieve meaningful poverty reduction

inequality fairness and social capital we study the impact of unjust inequality on social trust and trustworthiness and its separate effect on the economically successful and the unsuccessful in a controlled economic experiment we find evidence for a negative effect of unfair economic inequality on social interactions probing the boundaries of this effect we document that this erosion of social capital critically depends on the context if a well off person is not directly responsible for the outcome of the worse off person then we observe no negative effects on trust and trustworthiness in the aggregate moreover our data do not support the view that higher status or wealth leads to an erosion of pro social attitudes the successful are always more generous groups of unsuccessful persons are least efficient and least generous in the trust game

earthquake fatalities the interaction of nature and political economy to say that the level of fatalities resulting from an earthquake is inversely related to a country s per capita level of income is hardly novel what makes our approach novel is that we relate fatalities to both per capita income and the level of inequality that exists within a country through their joint impact on the likelihood of collective action being taken to mitigate the destructive potential of quakes we first develop a theoretical model which offers an explanation as to why in some environments different segments of society prove incapable of arriving at what all parties perceive to be an agreeable distribution of the burden of the necessary collective action causing the relatively wealthy simply to self insure against the disaster while leaving the relatively poor to its mercy following this we test our theoretical model by evaluating 269 large earthquakes occurring worldwide between 1960 and 2002 taking into account other factors that influence a quake s destructiveness such as its magnitude depth and proximity to population centers using a negative binomial estimation strategy with both random and fixed estimators we find strong evidence of the theoretical model s predictions that is while earthquakes themselves are natural phenomena beyond the reach of humankind our collective inaction with respect to items like the creation and enforcement of building codes failure to retrofit structures and to enact quake sensitive zoning clearly plays a part in determining the actual toll that a given quake takes and it is through these and other examples of collective inaction that limited per capita income and inequality couple together with a given quake s natural destructive power in determining the actual fatalities resulting from a quake

the rise of supermarkets and changing expenditure patterns of poor rural households case study in the transkei area south africa abstract since the late 1990s the number of supermarkets in south africa has been steadily growing due to a more effective and efficient management and procurement system the supermarkets can benefit from economics of scale and sell food at a relative low price in this paper we present a case study of two villages in the transkei area of south africa in these poor rural communities the majority of households now buy their main food items from supermarkets rather than from local shops and farmers while presenting an important step towards livelihood development and food security these supermarkets form also a strong competitor for local agricultural sales the supermarkets provide many food items at lower prices with an increase in income the households look for variety and exotism in their food products and will most likely find this in the supermarkets rather than the local stores we argue therefore that development programs should focus on the local growers access to the supermarket procurement systems

income distribution political instability and investment abstract this paper successfully tests on a sample of 71 countries for the period 1960 85 the following hypotheses income inequality by fuelling social discontent increases sociopolitical instability the latter by creating uncertainty in the politico economic environment reduces investment as a consequence income inequality and investment are inversely related since investment is a primary engine of growth this paper identifies a channel for an inverse relationship between income inequality and growth we measure socio political instability with indices which capture the occurrence of more or less violent phenomena of political unrest and we test our hypotheses by estimating a two equation model in which the endogenous variables are investment and an index of socio political instability our results are robust to sensitivity analysis on the specification of the model and the measure of political instability and are unchanged when the model is estimated using robust regression techniques

modeling agricultural growth multipliers agriculture s potential as an engine of third world growth depends in large part on the size of the production and consumption linkages it stimulates in rural regions current estimates of agricultural growth multipliers within rural regions vary widely not only because economic structures differ across regions but also because the array of fixed price models most commonly used embody widely differing basic assumptions among fixed price models the semi input output formulation projects the most plausible multipliers but even they overstate the magnitude of growth multipliers by 10 to 25 according to the price endogenous model developed here

the impact of bt cotton on poor households in rural india the impact of genetically modified gm crops on the poor in developing countries is still the subject of controversy while previous studies have examined direct productivity effects of bacillus thuringiensis bt cotton and other gm crops little is known about wider socioeconomic outcomes we use a microeconomic modelling approach and comprehensive survey data from india to analyse welfare and distribution effects in a typical village economy bt cotton adoption increases returns to labour especially for hired female workers likewise aggregate household incomes rise including for poor and vulnerable farmers hence bt cotton contributes to poverty reduction and rural development

ex post impacts of improved maize varieties on poverty in rural ethiopia public agricultural research has been conducted in africa for decades while many studies have examined its aggregate impacts few have investigated how it affects the poor this paper helps fill this gap by applying a new procedure to explore the ex post impacts of improved maize varieties on poverty in rural ethiopia plot level yield and cost changes due to adoption are first estimated using instrumental variable and marginal treatment effect techniques where possible heterogeneity is carefully accounted for a backward derivation procedure is then developed to link treatment effect estimates with an economic surplus model to identify the counterfactual household income that would have existed without improved maize varieties poverty impacts are finally estimated by exploiting the differences between observed and counterfactual income distributions improved maize varieties have led to a 0 8 1 3 percentage drop of poverty headcount ratio and relative reductions of poverty depth and severity however poor producers benefit the least from adoption due to the smallness of their land holdings

potato led growth the macroeconomic effects of technological innovations in bolivian agriculture through the use of a computable general equilibrium model we measure the economy wide effects of improving the production technology of relatively non traded staples potatoes maize import crops wheat and export crops soybeans in bolivia the results of the analysis suggest that technological innovations in the production technology of potatoes would benefit the bolivian economy most we discuss the reasons for the limited effects of technological innovations in tradeable crops

income distribution and macroeconomics this paper analyzes the role of wealth distribution in macroeconomics through investment in human capital it is shown that in the presence of credit markets imperfections and indivisibilities in investment in human capital the initial distribution of wealth affects aggregate output and investment both in the short and in the long run as there are multiple steady states this paper therefore provides an additional explanation for the persistent differences in per capita output across countries furthermore the paper shows that cross country differences in macroeconomic adjustment to aggregate shocks can be attributed among other factors to differences in wealth and income distribution across countries

regime uncertainty and optimal investment timing abstract we construct a real options model in which a regime change is expected at a pre determined future time and study the effects of regime uncertainty on a firm s strategic investment decision taking into consideration the remaining time to the regime change and the probability of each regime state we show that just before the time of a regime change firms should act as if the worst case scenario was about to happen even if a good state is highly possible

does food aid have disincentive effects on local production a general equilibrium perspective on food aid in ethiopia this paper examined impacts of food aid on domestic food production employing a computable general equilibrium modelling technique and using data from ethiopia the simulation experiments have shown that food aid has unambiguous disincentive effects on domestic food production the removal of food aid caused a modest increase in food prices but this stimulated food production employment and income generation effects of the latter outweighed the adverse effect of the former consequently the removal of food aid led to improvements in aggregate household welfare contrary to some concerns in the food aid literature that any reduction in food aid would hurt the poor the simulation experiments suggested that actually poor rural households and urban wage earners are the ones who benefit most in absence of food aid but entrepreneurs are more likely to encounter a marginal welfare decline we have distinguished between in kind food aid and cash equivalent transfers in order to isolate the disincentives that in kind transfers would make to domestic production from those that are related to household purchasing power problem the expansionary effect of removing food aid becomes significantly larger when it is accompanied by cash equivalent payments because the latter would provide demand side stimulus to agriculture while the removal of in kind transfers would stimulate supply side with the supply and demand side effects reinforcing each other in our modelling framework the only adverse effect would be a modest deterioration in the external current account because the expansionary effects of food aid would cause imports to rise but exports to fall

revealing the political decision toward chinese carbon abatement based on equity and efficiency criteria abstract china s economic reform over the past 30 years has allowed the free market to drive economic development however government still plays a key role in the energy sector by allocating energy conservation and emissions abatement how does the government make an equity decision as a tradeoff to market efficiency this is an unanswered question the purpose of this paper is to illustrate the government s preference toward equity and efficiency using the provincial level co 2 intensity allocation data we investigate the political decision that the government made based on the equity and efficiency criteria we find that the equity index plays a more important role than the efficiency index in determining the co 2 intensity target in addition political factors such as social stability are found to be important factors

political equilibrium income distribution and growth this paper analyzes the impact of income distribution on growth when investment in human capital is the source of growth and individuals vote over the degree of redistribution in the economy the model has three main features first very different patterns of income distribution are conducive to high growth at different levels of per capita income second growth is associated with an externality whereby investment in human capital by one group increases the productivity of other groups thus potentially enabling them to invest in human capital third the initial pattern of income distribution and the resulting political equilibrium are crucial in determining whether the transmission of this externality is promoted in which case growth is enhanced or prevented in which case growth is stopped using a non overlapping generations model with voting i derive several empirical implications in particular the model implies an inverted u relation between levels of inequality and levels of income in cross sections but not necessarily in time series a result that seems consistent with a number of empirical studies

efficiency equity tradeoffs and the scope for resource reallocation in agricultural research evidence from nigeria on the basis of projected economic and poverty impacts of alternative commodity research programs this article assessed efficiency and equity tradeoffs and the scope for research resource reallocation in nigeria given the importance of major food staples to both poor and nonpoor households in production and consumption introducing a poverty dimension revealed no significant shift in priorities compared with those implied by efficiency the results showed that neither the additional benefits to the poor nor the foregone benefits to society are significant from prioritizing research according to equity relative to efficiency criteria as current priorities are supported by neither efficiency nor equity criteria however there is considerable scope for maximizing research benefits to the poor through informed reallocation of research resources the article concludes with a discussion of the patterns of resource reallocations implied by efficiency and equity criteria

a note on time preference and the tobin effect abstract this paper proposes an alternative time preference specification to uzawa preferences time preference is modeled as an increasing function of real wealth so that the tobin effect and stability rest on optimizing behavior as opposed to counterintuitive preference assumptions

transformation of the rural economy in the philippines 1988 2006 abstract this research explores the changing structure of the rural economy in the philippines from 1988 to 2006 we found that the expansion and upgrade of infrastructure such as electricity and roads and investment in secondary and tertiary education are important factors that induced the economic transformation of the rural economy the importance of higher education as an entry requirement to the nonfarm labor market has declined over time indicating that the rural nonfarm sector has been increasingly providing employment opportunities to the unskilled and the uneducated who form the bulk of the rural poor

the economic and poverty impacts of maize research in west and central africa this article assembles the results of three multicountry surveys on variety performance and adoption patterns to measure the impacts of maize research in west and central africa from 1981 to 2005 and uses cost data since 1971 to compute social rates of return on public investments in maize research in the region adoption of modern varieties increased from less than 5 of the maize area in the 1970s to about 60 in 2005 yielding an aggregate rate of return on research and development r d investment of 43 the estimated number of people moved out of poverty through adoption of new maize varieties rose gradually in the 1980s to more than one million people per year since the mid 1990s over half of these impacts can be attributed to international maize research at iita and cimmyt the article concludes with a discussion of strategic options to enhance the impacts of maize research in the region

modeling the impact of agricultural growth and government policy on income distribution in india this article uses a limited general equilibrium model to investigate the growth and equity effects of a variety of economic and technical changes and selected agricultural policies in india it explores how changes in food prices rural wages and farm profits associated with the green revolution period affected income distribution between net buyers and sellers of food the model shows that income gains from the green revolution initially accrued to the wealthier rural groups but that after 1972 73 they were transferred to urban consumers and that by 1980 81 the per capita incomes of poor and wealthier rural groups alike were barely above their respective 1960 61 levels the model is also used in counterfactual analysis of the impact of changes in technological demographic investment taxation and income redistribution variables its findings indicate the importance of trade policies for the nature of the equity outcomes from agricultural growth and suggest that a reduction in population growth and an increase in nonagricultural employment and income are required to convert agricultural growth into reduced rural poverty

the role of agriculture in economic development visible and invisible surplus transfers the financial surplus of agriculture has been central to theories of the role of agriculture in economic development morrisson and thorbecke mt have used a constant price social accounting matrix sam framework to measure rigorously the financial surplus of agriculture and decompose the mechanisms of surplus extraction history and theory have however stressed the role of prices as an invisible transfer mechanism in addition to the visible transfers identified in the sam framework we extend the mt approach by defining and measuring the real surplus of agriculture and decomposing the mechanisms of surplus extraction between visible and invisible financial transfers using an archetype computable general equilibrium model for poor african nations we trace the generation transfer and use of an agricultural surplus created by a productivity gain in agriculture this shows that prices indeed play an overwhelmingly important role in transferring a surplus from agriculture to the benefit of the rest of

seigniorage and political instability the importance of seigniorage relative to other sources of government revenue differs markedly across countries this paper tries to explain this regularity by studying a political model of tax reform the model implies that countries with a more unstable and polarized political system will have more inefficient tax structures and thus will rely more heavily on seigniorage this prediction of the model is tested on cross sectional data for seventy countries the authors find that after controlling for other variables political instability is positively associated with seigniorage copyright 1992 by american economic association

agricultural technology crop income and poverty alleviation in uganda summary this paper evaluates the ex post impact of adopting improved groundnut varieties on crop income and poverty in rural uganda the study utilizes cross sectional data of 927 households collected in 2006 from seven districts in uganda using propensity score matching methods we find that adopting improved groundnut varieties technology significantly increases crop income and reduces poverty the positive and significant impact on crop income is consistent with the perceived role of new agricultural technologies in reducing rural poverty through increased farm household income this study supports broader investment in agriculture research to address vital development challenges reaching the poor with better technologies however requires policy support for improving extension efforts access to seeds and market outlets that simulate adoption

agricultural technology adoption and poverty reduction a propensity score matching analysis for rural bangladesh this study aims at shedding some light on the potential impact of agricultural technology adoption on poverty alleviation strategies it does so through an empirical investigation of the relationship between technological change of the green revolution type and wellbeing of smallholder farm households in two rural bangladeshi regions as technology adoption is not randomly assigned but there is self selection into treatment the paper tackles a methodological issue in assessing the causal effect of technology on farm household wellbeing through the non parametric p score matching analysis it pursues a targeted evaluation of whether adopting a modern seed technology causes resource poor farmers to improve their income and decrease the propensity to fall below the poverty line it finds a robust and positive effect of agricultural technology adoption on farm household wellbeing suggesting that there is a large scope for enhancing the role of agricultural technology in directly contributing to poverty alleviation 2006 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

household behaviour in times of political change evidence from egypt abstract using representative household survey data we study the short term effects of the 2011 egyptian uprisings on household behaviour in terms of education and health expenditure as well as savings we construct a measure of political instability by analysing the number of fatalities during political protests throughout the country difference in difference estimations show that affected households increased spending on education especially on their sons higher education the increase in education expenditure is particularly prominent in areas where households were in favour of a regime change we argue that after the fall of mubarak those households had a positive outlook towards the future with better labour market prospects and therefore invested more in their sons education at the same time households decreased spending on health and increased savings which can be interpreted as precautionary behaviour our results are robust to placebo tests excluding cairo spillovers and alternative ways of measuring political instability

the impact of improved maize varieties on poverty in mexico a propensity score matching approach summary this study examines the adoption of improved maize germplasm in oaxaca and chiapas in mexico it employs a propensity score matching approach to analyze the impact of the adoption of improved maize varieties on household income and poverty reduction using cross sectional data of 325 farmers from the two regions the findings reveal a robust positive and significant impact of improved maize variety adoption on farm household welfare measured by per capita expenditure and poverty reduction specifically the empirical results suggest that adoption of improved maize varieties helped raise household per capita expenditure by an average of 136 173 mexican pesos thereby reducing their probability of falling below the poverty line by roughly 19 31

agricultural economics and distributional effects the paper examines the main issues surrounding distributional effects in the domains of natural resource management and land policies agricultural technology and research policies agricultural market and trade policies and consumer oriented policies including standards subsidies and labeling agriculture is drifting into an ever more drastic bifurcation at a global level and within many countries correcting that bifurcation will require large investments in rural areas and rural people in institutions and in information and biological technologies accessible by the poor in the world s smallholder sector large and growing national and international inequalities related to agriculture and rural areas threaten peace growth and sustainable development

the poverty impacts of improved cowpea varieties in nigeria a counterfactual analysis adoption of improved agricultural technologies has long been recognized as critical for reducing poverty through increased productivity incomes and asset accumulation using a nationally representative survey data from a sample of over 1500 households in nigeria this paper evaluates the impacts of adoption of improved cowpea varieties on income and asset poverty reduction using an endogenous switching regression model the results showed that adoption of improved cowpea varieties increased per capita household income and asset ownership by 17 and 24 percentage points respectively the results based on the observed and counterfactual income and asset distributions further showed that adoption reduced both income poverty and asset poverty by 5 percentage points the paper concludes with a discussion of the policy options for increasing adoption and impacts of improved cowpea varieties in nigeria

inequality and growth uncovering the main conclusions from the empirics abstractthis paper is a critical survey of the empirical literature on the effects of inequality on economic growth we conclude that it is most likely that the disparities found in the results are due to differences in the type of countries and time periods included in the samples the variable used to measure inequality the structure of the data and the estimation techniques these findings suggest that the mechanisms that link inequality to growth are likely to operate differently in different circumstances an element that may offer important guidelines for both policy makers and researchers

welfare impacts of maize pigeonpea intensification in tanzania this article examines the driving forces behind farmers decisions to adopt improved pigeonpea and maize and estimates the causal impact of technology adoption on household welfare using data obtained from a random cross section sample of 613 small scale farmers in tanzania we use seemingly unrelated and recursive bivariate probit regressions to test the endogeneity and joint decision making of pigeonpea maize production a double hurdle model is used to analyze the determinants of the intensity of technology adoption conditional on overcoming seed access constraints to address the impact of adoption on welfare the article employs both propensity score matching and switching regression techniques results from bivariate probit models show that unobservable factors cause both decisions to be correlated but the finding does not support the conjecture that both decisions are made jointly overall the analysis of the determinants of adoption identifies inadequate local supply of seed access to information human capital and access to private productive asset as key constraints for pigeonpea technology adoption the causal impact estimation from both the propensity score matching and switching regression suggests that maize pigeonpea adoption has a positive and significant impact on income and consumption expenditure among sample households

shadow prices of social capital in rural india a nonparametric approach this article studies the role of social capital on cotton production efficiency and productivity for a sample of small farms in maharashtra india using data envelopment analysis input shadow prices are computed as an indicator of the importance of social capital relative to other inputs results suggest social capital to be the input with the highest contribution to production efficiency after land the luenberger indicator is used to assess the productivity improvement associated to an investment in social capital which is found to be on the order of 12 undertaking collective production activities is found to play an important role in improving productivity this is especially relevant to agricultural households facing important economic and institutional restrictions that make it difficult to increase conventional expensive inputs

the future of small farms summary interest in agriculture for growth and poverty reduction reawakened in the early 2000s made all the keener by the sudden rise in cereals prices on world markets in 2007 08 but is it still possible to drive agricultural growth through small farms as happened in the green revolution whether small farms have a future was debated at a workshop held in wye united kingdom in june 2005 it concluded that small farm development is not just desirable for poverty reduction but also feasible even in changing circumstances and particularly those of more concentrated supply chains with more demanding buyers that said while much that needs to be done is straightforward such as provision of public goods fostering the institutional innovations to allow small farmers to deal with the emerging supply chains will require patient work tailored to specific circumstances the future of all smallholders may well not lie in farming but the measures to stimulate the rural nonfarm economy and provide jobs for those leaving farming a favorable rural investment climate provision of public goods institutional development are largely the same as those for agricultural development as well

the short run relationship between inequality and growth evidence from oecd regions during the great recession abstractthis paper provides evidence on the relationship between income inequality and economic growth in organisation for economic co operation and development oecd regions during the decade 2003 13 it combines household survey data and macroeconomic databases covering over 200 comparable regions in 15 oecd countries the econometric results based on two alternative sets of instruments highlight a general negative association between inequalities and economic growth since the start of the economic crisis this relationship is sensitive to the type of urban structure higher inequalities seem to be more detrimental for growth in regions characterized by medium to large sized cities while regions characterized by small cities and rural areas are less affected

does income inequality raise aggregate saving this paper reviews analytically and empirically the links between income distribution and aggregate saving consumption theory brings out a number of direct channels through which income inequality can affect overall household saving positively in most cases however recent political economy theory points toward indirect negative effects of inequality through firm investment and public saving on aggregate saving on theoretical grounds the sign of the saving inequality link is therefore ambiguous this paper presents new empirical evidence on the relationship between income distribution and aggregate saving based on a new and improved income distribution database for both industrial and developing countries the empirical results using alternative inequality and saving measures and various econometric specifications on both cross section and panel data provide no support for the notion that income inequality has any systematic effect on aggregate saving these findings are consistent with the theoretical ambiguity q 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

poverty reduction effects of agricultural technology adoption a micro evidence from rural tanzania abstract this article evaluates the impact of adoption of improved pigeonpea technologies on consumption expenditure and poverty status using cross sectional data of 613 households from rural tanzania using multiple econometric techniques we found that adopting improved pigeonpea significantly increases consumption expenditure and reduces poverty this confirms the potential role of technology adoption in improving household welfare as higher incomes translate into lower poverty this study supports broader investment in agriculture research to address vital development challenges reaching the poor with better technologies however requires policy support for improving extension efforts access to seeds and market outlets that stimulate adoption

the debt crisis structural explanations of country performance abstract this paper develops a cross country statistical model of debt rescheduling and the secondary market valuation of ldc debt which links these variables to key structural characteristics of developing countries such as the trade regime the degree of income inequality and the share of agriculture in gnp our most striking finding is that higher income inequality is a significant predictor of a higher probability of debt rescheduling in a cross section of middle income countries we attribute this correlation to various difficulties of political management in economies with extreme inequality we also find that outward orientation of the trade regime is a significant predictor of a reduced probability of debt rescheduling

promoting intersectoral growth linkages in rural africa through agricultural technology and policy reform this paper addresses how increased rural incomes in select african cases are spent on consumption items the implications of these patterns for stimulating rural growth and areas of intervention necessary to sustain demand led growth from improved agricultural technology and economic reforms the country studies utilize panel data collected by the international food policy research institute ifpri in collaboration with african institutions and re

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

sociopolitical and economic dimensions of development a cross section model 1 of the most important requisites of development is to cultivate those conditions which are appropriate for the generation of a surplus the distribution of which in turn usually generates friction among the various social classes and factions that advance claims to it thus modernization being a process of change has economic social political and institutional dimensions and the changes can result in sociopolitical instability which affects the continuation of the ability of the economy to grow and of the society to develop the objective of this paper is to test for a feedback mechanism that links all the dimensions of modernization together and the introduction of variables that can reflect it in a model and to present some results of an econometric investigation that recognizes this interaction estimation for the model is based on a sample of 104 noncommunist countries for the year 1967 that includes economic and noneconomic variables the model is used to predict the values of the per capita income and gross capital formation both within and outside of the sample period its predictive ability is remarkable as the statistics represented in the tables and charts demonstrate the model is also used in a number of simulations reflecting a variety of social and political conditions and scenarios in this relation it is found for example that the social and political atmosphere has profound effects on the economic evolution of a society the sociopolitical gap defined as the difference between actual sociopolitical envirnoments characterized by various degrees of instability and the sociopolitically stable environment characterized by no sociopolitical violence retards the development process the presence and the magnitude of this gap as well as the various trade offs lead the author to a conclusion of guarded pessimism in relation to the choices and future of developing countries an appendix lists the types of political violence identified as variables

effects of technological change and institutional reform on production growth in chinese agriculture recent rapid agricultural production growth in chinese agriculture could be attributed to an increase in inputs technological change and institutional reform an accounting approach was used to separate the relative contribution of these three factors institutional change like the introduction of the household production responsibility system has contributed to past growth in production however technological change is crucial to furthering production growth because of the limited potential for significant increase in the use of conventional inputs in particular land continued institutional change must accompany corresponding technological changes

agricultural trade liberalization and low income countries a general equilibrium multimarket approach integrated multimarket general equilibrium models are constructed to analyze the impact on poor cereal importers of rising world prices following oecd trade liberalization archetypes contrast african countries in which cereal imports are not competitive with domestic production africa i to african and asian countries where they are competitive results show rising food import bills and exchange rate depreciation in africa i and the opposite in the other two regions policy implications include promoting agricultural exports from africa i and promoting food crops for import substitution in the other regions food aid needed to shelter the poor during the transition period is calculated

the impact of agricultural research on productivity and poverty in sub saharan africa while it is widely recognized that agricultural research is a key driver of broad based technological change in agriculture that benefits the poor in many different ways little is known about its aggregate impacts on productivity growth and poverty reduction in sub saharan africa ssa using a polynomial distributed lag structure for agricultural research within a simultaneous system of equations framework this paper first demonstrates that agricultural research contributes significantly to productivity growth in ssa productivity growth is again shown to raise per capita incomes with income increases finally having significant poverty reducing effects with an aggregate rate of return of 55 the payoffs to agricultural research are also impressive agricultural research currently reduces the number of poor by 2 3 million or 0 8 annually while the actual impacts are not large enough to more than offset the poverty increasing effects of population growth and environmental degradation the potential impacts of agricultural research are far greater apart from low research investments ssa faces several constraints outside the research system that hinder realization of potential research benefits the results show that doubling research investments in ssa would reduce poverty by 9 annually however this would not be realized without more efficient extension credit and input supply systems

income distribution and sociopolitical instability as determinants of savings a cross sectional model the purpose of this cross national study is twofold first it introduces income distribution and sociopolitical instability as arguments in the savings function second it presents some empirical evidence in relation to their quantitative effects on savings it is shown that sociopolitical instability has profound effects on the savings ratio it is also shown that the bulk of savings is produced by the middle income class as a result a redistribution of income at the expense of the upper income class yields a constant or an increased savings ratio developing on whether such a redistribution includes the lower income class or not

foreign direct investment and income inequality in mexico 1990 2000 in this article we explore the relationship between the investments of multinational corporations foreign direct investment and income inequality in mexico we argue that mexico s liberalization of foreign direct investment fdi inflows in the 1990s provides a natural experiment to test how fdi affects income inequality in a middle income country we use an instrumental variables approach as our identification strategy to mitigate problems of endogeneity and omitted variable bias in an empirical test of the determinants of changes in income inequality from 1990 to 2000 we find that increased fdi inflows are associated with a decrease in income inequality within mexico s thirty two states the authors would like to thank lawrence broz john freeman matt gabel geoff garrett quan li eddy malesky layna mosley katie ridgeway pablo pinto john stringer and andy sobel for comments and suggestions jacob gerber and mariana medina provided excellent research assistance thanks also to patricio aroca gonzalez for generously providing us with his data we acknowledge the financial support of the weidenbaum center on the economy government and public policy nate jensen s contribution to this article was written as a global fellow at ucla s international institute

factor shares and savings in endogenous growth in models of steady investment driven growth an individual s propensity to save depends on how much of his income is drawn from accumulated factors of production capital rather than from nonaccumulated factors when agents are heterogeneous in this respect growth oriented policies have distributional consequences and in the absence of lump sum redistribution their implementation faces political constraints if the median voter is capital poor relative to the economy s representative agent political interactions tend to slow down growth when policy acts on capital s income share and tend to accelerate it when investment subsidies are the policy instrument of choice copyright 1993 by american economic association

distributive politics and economic growth a crude distinction between economics and politics would be that economics is concerned with expanding the pie while politics is about distributing it in this paper we analyze the relationship between the two we focus on how an economy s initial configuration of resources shapes the political struggle for income and wealth distribution and how that in turn affects long run growth our main conclusion is that inequality is conducive to the adoption of growth retarding policies we derive this result from a simple political economy model of growth and present cross country evidence consistent with it the key feature of our model is that individuals differ in their relative factor endowments we distinguish between two types of factors an accumulated factor called capital and a nonaccumulated factor called labor growth is driven by the expansion of the capital stock which is in turn determined by individual saving decisions long run growth is endogenous as the aggregate production function is taken to be linearly homogeneous in capital and productive government services taken together the provision of government services is financed by a tax on capital because government services are productive a small tax on

targeting poverty alleviation in priority setting for agricultural research abstract this paper provides a brief overview of research priority setting methods at various levels in national research systems noting the changing emphasis from supply to demand driven approaches at both macro and micro levels of priority setting the scope for incorporating a poverty dimension into priority setting is then reviewed within a general framework that recognises the complexity of the link between research investments and poverty alleviation the effectiveness of this targeting is likely to be very situation specific a case study of macro priority setting in pakistan shows the limited scope to target benefits to the poor through re allocation of research resources among commodities relative to a ranking based on the efficiency objective given present knowledge enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of research systems in promoting broad based technical change should be emphasised more than major efforts to target poverty directly this will involve a combination of supply and demand driven approaches to priority setting at different levels in the research system that will enhance both the efficiency and poverty alleviation impacts of research

a selectivity model of household food marketing behavior in sub saharan africa the agricultural household s discrete decision of whether to participate in coarse grain markets is separated here from the continuous decision of how much to sell or buy conditional on participation failure to participate in markets results from high fixed transactions costs a selectivity model endogenously switches households into alternative market participation states correcting for bias caused by the exclusion of unobservable variables affecting both discrete and continuous decisions improved market information increases the probability of participation by sellers while access to cereals processing technology increases quantities transacted by both sellers and buyers conditional on participation

why are rich countries more politically cohesive we document empirically that rich countries are more politically cohesive than poorer countries in order to explain this regularity we provide a model where political cohesion is linked to the emergence of a fully functioning market economy without market exchange the welfare of inherently selfish individuals will be mutually independent whoever has greater bargaining power will be willing to make decisions that enhance the productivity of their supporters at the expense of other groups in society if the gains from specialization are sufficiently large however a market economy will emerge from being essentially non cohesive under self sufficiency the political decision making process becomes cohesive in the market economy because the welfare of individuals will be mutually interdependent as a result of the exchange of goods

how ethnic diversity affects economic growth summary this paper investigates the empirical relationship between ethnic diversity polarization and economic growth ethnicity is assumed to affect economic growth through a number of possible transmission channels that are generally included in cross country growth regressions this paper provides an extensive empirical analysis shedding light on the various sources through which ethnic diversity and polarization affects economic growth indirectly it advances and empirically establishes the hypothesis that ethnic diversity has a strong direct negative impact on economic growth whereas ethnic polarization has non negligible indirect economic effects through the specified channel variables

agricultural technology productivity and poverty in madagascar summary this paper uses a unique spatially explicit dataset to study the link between agricultural performance and rural poverty in madagascar we show that controlling for geographical and physical characteristics communes that have higher rates of adoption of improved agricultural technologies and consequently higher crop yields enjoy lower food prices higher real wages for unskilled workers and better welfare indicators the empirical evidence strongly favors support for improved agricultural production as an important part of any strategy to reduce the high poverty and food insecurity rates currently prevalent in rural madagascar

risk bearing and the theory of income distribution this paper develops the stochastic theory of distribution with a dynamic model which focuses on the role of incomplete insurance in generating inequality unlike previous work our approach takes explicit account of the reason for market incompleteness in modeling agents behaviour in particular the amount of risk borne is endogenous using a model of growth with altruism in which agents are risk averse and there is moral hazard we show that lineage wealth follows a markov process which converges globally to an ergodic distribution this also represents the long run population distribution of wealth we discuss the role of particular assumptions such as availability of production loans and unboundedness of utility in yielding the qualitative properties of the distribution of wealth the choice of occupation and the prevention of poverty traps

is aquaculture pro poor empirical evidence of impacts on fish consumption in bangladesh summary aquaculture is widely held to contribute to poverty reduction and food security in the global south but robust evidence is limited using nationally representative data from bangladesh this study analyses changes in fish consumption from 2000 to 2010 rapid expansion of commercial aquaculture pegged down fish prices resulting in increased fish consumption by extreme poor and moderate poor consumers and those in rural areas these outcomes are closely linked to the pro poor nature of national economic growth during this period these findings contribute to a broadening of the debate on whether the growth of aquaculture in bangladesh has been pro poor