smallholder market participation concepts and evidence from eastern and southern africa abstract this paper reviews the evidence on smallholder market participation with a focus on staple foodgrains i e cereals in eastern and southern africa in an effort to help better identify what interventions are most likely to break smallholders out of the semi subsistence poverty trap that appears to ensnare much of rural africa the conceptual and empirical evidence suggests that interventions aimed at facilitating smallholder organization at reducing the costs of intermarket commerce and perhaps especially at improving poorer households access to improved technologies and productive assets are central to stimulating smallholder market participation and escape from semi subsistence poverty traps macroeconomic and trade policy tools appear less useful in inducing market participation by poor smallholders in the region

technology adoption under production uncertainty theory and application to irrigation technology we propose a theoretical framework to analyze the conditions under which a farmer facing production uncertainty due to a possible water shortage and incomplete information will adopt a more efficient irrigation technology a reduced form of this model is empirically estimated using a sample of 265 farms located in crete greece the empirical results suggest that farmers choose to adopt the new technology in order to hedge against production risk in addition we show that the farmer s human capital also plays a significant role in the decision to adopt modern more efficient irrigation equipment

credit market constraints consumption smoothing and the accumulation of durable production assets in low income countries investments in bullocks in india in this paper we formulate and estimate a finite horizon structural dynamic model of agricultural investment behavior that incorporates the major features of low income agricultural environments income uncertainty constraints on borrowing and rental markets and the use of investment assets to generate income and smooth consumption the model is fit to longitudinal indian household data on farm profits bullock stocks and pump sets the estimated structural parameters are used to assess the effects on the life cycle accumulation of bullocks agricultural profits and welfare associated with complete markets and bullock liquidity and with second best policies that provide assured sources of income to farmers and weather insurance

linear learning in changing environments abstract the decision maker receives signals imperfectly correlated with an unobservable state variable and must take actions whose payoffs depend on the state the state randomly changes over time in this environment we examine the performance of simple linear updating rules relative to bayesian learning we show that a range of parameters exists for which linear learning results in exactly the same decisions as bayesian learning although not in the same beliefs outside this parameter range we use simulations to demonstrate that the consumption level attainable under the optimal linear rule is virtually indistinguishable from the one attainable under bayes rule although the respective decisions will not always be identical these results suggest that simple rules of thumb can have an advantage over bayesian updating when more complex calculations are more costly to perform than less complex ones we demonstrate the implications of such an advantage in an evolutionary model where agents learn to learn

energy intensive lifestyles time use the activity patterns of consumers and related energy demands in finland time use survey data has been used to model household activities beyond market transactions accordingly measures such as the goods intensity of household activities and the energy and carbon intensity of household activities have been derived in this paper we build on this approach by using time use data to model the direct and indirect energy use of households from this we present a decomposition analysis of the changes in the embedded and direct energy consumption of finnish households from 1987 to 2009 relevant questions that arise include that of whether increases in total energy consumption are due to changes in activity patterns changes in the energy intensity of activities or due to demographic changes beyond the empirical work we suggest that time use approaches require a more explicit theorization of time

informal insurance arrangements with limited commitment theory and evidence from village economies recent work on consumption allocations in village economies finds that idiosyncratic variation in consumption is systematically related to idiosyncratic variation in income thus rejecting the hypothesis of full risk pooling we attempt to explain these observations by adding limited commitment as an impediment to risk pooling we provide a general dynamic model and completely characterise efficient informal insurance arrangements constrained by limited commitment and test the model using data from three indian villages we find that the model can fully explain the dynamic response of consumption to income but that it fails to explain the distribution of consumption across households

adoption of agricultural innovations in developing countries a survey this paper reviews various studies which have provided a description and possible explanation to patterns of innovation adoption in the agricultural sector the survey points out that the tendency of many studies to consider innovation adoption in dichotomous terms adoption nonadoption may not be appropriate in many cases where the actual decisions are defined over a more continuous range more attention needs to be given to the socio cultural and institutional environment in area studies so that their interrelation with economic factors affecting adoption can be inferred the presence of several interrelated innovations is another aspect that needs to be considered more carefully in future research since a number of simultaneous decisions may be involved furthermore the possibility of regular sequential patterns in adopting components of a new technological package should be specifically addressed in future studies finally the impact of differential adoption rates on land holding distribution merits attention in future research

residential energy expenditures and the relevance of changes in household circumstances this paper analyses the impact that dwelling characteristics and characteristics and behaviours of household members have on per capita energy expenditures it also analyses whether changes in household socio economic circumstances translate in changes in energy expenditures socio economic characteristics have a moderate impact while dwelling characteristics and especially household size have much larger impacts the largest changes in energy expenditures are due to changes in household size the recent socio demographic trends will make it harder to design policies to effectively reduce the carbon footprint of a country while policies influencing cohabitation and family size may have positive indirect effects

switch off the light please energy use aging population and consumption habits abstract in parallel with worldwide population growth europe is experiencing a fast demographic shift widely studied but generally undervalued by policymakers population aging may imply smaller household sizes and more home based energy consumption which will change the energy mix consumer preference shifts and different attitudes towards environment among the generations determine additional effects study of the link between an aging population and energy demand is even more important for italy because its energy dependence is almost complete and its population is aging quickly this paper aims to assess the role of changing generational preferences in the energy expenditure trend in italy by distinguishing between a pure age effect and a cohort effect the decomposition shows significant differences in the shape of age and cohort effects thus confirming that beside an aging effect we must consider that recent generations have a higher residential energy expenditure indeed the energy culture of post war italian generations seems more linked to thermal comfort heating and air conditioning than to environmental attitudes

understanding carbon lock in abstract this paper narrative argues that industrial economies have been locked into fossil fuel based energy systems through a process of technological and institutional co evolution driven by path dependent increasing returns to scale it is asserted that this condition termed carbon lock in creates persistent market and policy failures that can inhibit the diffusion of carbon saving technologies despite their apparent environmental and economic advantages the notion of a techno institutional complex is introduced to capture the idea that lock in occurs through combined interactions among technological systems and governing institutions while carbon lock in provides a conceptual basis for understanding macro level barriers to the diffusion of carbon saving technologies it also generates questions for standard economic modeling approaches that abstract away technological and institutional evolution in their elaboration the question of escaping carbon lock in is left for a future paper

energy saving in swedish households the relative importance of environmental attitudes the objectives for energy saving in the housing sector set by recent swedish energy and climate policies are quite demanding this article uses nation wide swedish survey data from 2004 to 2007 to explore the potential for achieving those targets earlier findings that socio economic characteristics such as age housing type and income are strongly linked to higher propensities to save on heating and hot water usage are confirmed by ordered logistic regression models however general environmental attitudes are also found to play a crucial role when assessing the relative importance of socioeconomic factors and environmental attitudes the effect on energy saving is generally greater for the former than the latter in addition important interaction effects are identified in relative terms the effect of environmental attitudes is clearly stronger among households in apartment blocks than among those in detached housing and stronger among households with higher income than among those with lower income we end by discussing the implications for the selection and targeting of policy measures to tap the energy savings potential in the population

consumption and income seasonality in thailand many households in developing countries rely on seasonal agriculture for their incomes this paper investigates whether household consumption expenditure tracks income across seasons using data from thailand i contrast the seasonal consumption patterns of households with different seasonal income patterns and estimate the responsiveness of seasonal consumption to seasonal income i find little evidence that consumption tracks income over the course of the year the findings suggest that observed seasonal consumption patterns are the result of seasonal variations in preferences or prices common to all households rather than an inability of households to use savings behavior to smooth consumption

willing consumers or locked in policies for a sustainable consumption postmodern explanations of consumer behaviour stress social and psychological factors to the neglect of explanations based on structural issues such as the working life conditions which favour a work and spend lifestyle the conditions of urban living or the effects of pervasive marketing this paper argues that consumers may not be so keen and willing but are rather locked in by circumstances some of these circumstances are deliberately created by other interests and a policy to limit consumption must look for adequate means over a large and varied field in the end shorter working hours may be an important key to a more sustainable future 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

towards a contemporary approach for understanding consumer behaviour in the context of domestic energy use domestic sector energy use is increasing in the uk and currently accounts for 30 of total use policies of liberalised energy markets have allowed greater consumer choice but have not sought to reduce carbon emissions overall sales of energy efficiency products are rising but uk housing stock standards are poor and do not facilitate improved efficiency and further the sales of such products are influenced by their price thus the higher capital costs of products such as boilers and solar systems make them initially unattractive to consumers previous market based research into the adoption of energy efficiency products has often focused on single factors for example demographics this has limited the ability of policy makers to make informed decisions that address a broader range of factors such as individuals cognitive abilities values and attitudes as well as external factors such as social networks marketing and products and services this paper provides a wider critique of the theoretical base related to consumer behaviour product attributes and socio environmental theories that relate to energy use the aim of the paper is to draw together theories relevant to energy use in order to aid policy making in the broader context and to develop the discussion around integrated theories of consumer behaviour

risks and farmers investment in productive assets in nigeria the majority of farmers in sub saharan africa ssa lack the means to mitigate the impact of risks associated with rainfall and commodity prices due to capital constraints and the imperfect insurance market in these countries because most ssa farmers are risk averse they may be willing to invest in productive assets that can mitigate the impacts of such risks if their capital constraints are relaxed through external financial assistance we test this hypothesis by using panel data on investment behavior of nigerian farmers who received financial assistance on productive assets the empirical results show that farmers facing higher rainfall risks are more likely to invest in irrigation pumps that can mitigate the impact of rainfall risks while those facing higher risks of white gari price are more likely to invest in milling machines that enable them to process cassava into flour instead of gari which supports our hypothesis

look at me saving the planet the imitation of visible green behavior and its impact on the climate value action gap abstract examining the regional distribution of 15 different greenhouse gas mitigation practices mps across australia we study the tendency for consumers to imitate visible pro environmental behavior in their local region while there is a great deal of variation in the specific type of mps adopted by consumers located in the same region anova results suggest that they tend to adopt a similar number of mps as their neighbours using discrete choice modelling our results suggest that this is due to the peer adoption of certain visible mps such as using public transport or car pooling encouraging agents to adopt other types of visible mps however the character of this spillover is limited in that visible pro environmental behavior does not appear to influence the adoption of non visible mps we also find that social imitation patterns help individuals overcome the observed gap between their stated concern about climate change and their propensity to act on this concern known as the climate value action gap policy implications for designing effective green nudges are discussed

not irrational but habitual the importance of behavioural lock in in energy consumption abstract a substantial body of literature has shown that our behaviour is often guided by habits the existence of habits not fully conscious forms of behaviour is important as it contradicts rational choice theory their presence thus calls for the setting of new instruments as they make it unlikely that consumers be capable of exercising control over their energy consumption in reaction to given incentives this is further increased in the evolutionary perspective where the current carbon based socio technical system constrains and shapes consumers choices through structural forces habits being potentially counterintentional they may explain the efficiency paradox in energy as well as the continued increase of energy consumption despite the rising environmental awareness among the population policies aiming at reducing energy consumption should thus specifically address the performance context of habits for instance targeting new residents has proven to be more effective given that their preceding habits have been disturbed the results of our empirical analysis confirm this idea by showing how a change of context makes people more receptive to a proposed measure our analysis of the role played by habits also suggests that individuals do not consider the need to change existing habits as an obstacle even though this is contradicted implicitly in the answers they provided to open questions this unconsciousness is one of the most delicate features of habits and it should thus be accounted for when designing measures given the other characteristics of habits the joint use of feedbacks and commitment strategies appears promising

degrowth energy descent and low tech living potential pathways for increased resilience in times of crisis the use or misuse of advanced technology is a key factor driving global environmental degradation but advanced technology is also widely assumed to be the solution to many environmental problems in contrast to that dominant approach this paper outlines a variety of what the authors call low tech options such as solar shower bags washing lines alternative heating and cooling methods and cycling and raises questions about the extent to which these types of simple living practices could help increase household resilience in conditions of economic disruption instability or crisis the analysis is framed by an energy descent scenario in which an individual household or community either chooses a reduced energy way of life motivated by climate change mitigation or has such a way of life imposed upon them due to declining fossil fuel availability or economic disruption the authors see such a future as plausible and in some contexts has already arrived or has always been the case hence the relevance of this analysis which has both quantitative and qualitative dimensions furthermore while the focus herein is on low tech living at the household level it is argued that prefiguring a simpler way to live has deeper significance too in that it could help create the cultural conditions needed for a politics and macroeconomics of degrowth to emerge which the authors maintain is a necessary part of any decarbonisation project challenges facing low tech options are also acknowledged including the ever present risk of rebound effects and other indirect impacts

transactions costs and agricultural household supply response we develop and estimate a model of supply response when transactions costs create a situation where some producers buy others sell and others do not participate in markets we present two rationales for why producing households may have different relationships to the market proportional and fixed transactions costs using data on mexican corn producers we estimate an empirical model that allows for separate tests of the significance of both types of transactions costs revealing that both fixed and proportional transactions costs matter for the estimation the results provide consistent estimates of supply elasticity and measures of the relative importance of factors determining both proportional and fixed transactions costs

an ordered tobit model of market participation evidence from kenya and ethiopia do rural households in developing countries make market participation and volume decisions simultaneously or sequentially this article develops a two stage econometric method to test between these two competing hypotheses regarding household level marketing behavior the first stage models the household s choice of whether to be a net buyer autarkic or a net seller in the market the second stage models the quantity bought sold for net buyers sellers based on observable household characteristics using household data from kenyan and ethiopian livestock markets we find evidence in favor of sequential decision making the welfare implications of which we discuss

on crop biodiversity risk exposure and food security in the highlands of ethiopia this paper investigates the effects of crop genetic diversity on farm productivity and production risk in the highlands of ethiopia using a moment based approach the analysis uses a stochastic production function capturing mean variance and skewness effects welfare implications of diversity are evaluated using a certainty equivalent measured as expected income minus a risk premium reflecting the cost of risk we find that the effect of diversity on skewness dominates its effect on variance meaning that diversity reduces the cost of risk the analysis also shows that the beneficial effects of diversity

estimation of limited dependent variable models with dummy endogenous regressors applied economists have long struggled with the question of how to accommodate binary endogenous regressors in models with binary and nonnegative outcomes i argue here that much of the difculty with limited dependent variables comes from a focus on structural parameters such as index coefcients instead of causal effects once the object of estimation is taken to be the causal effect of treatment several simple strategies are available these include conventional two stage least squares multiplicative models for conditional means linear approximation of nonlinear causal models models for distribution effects and quantile regression with an endogenous binary regressor the estimation strategies discussed in the article are illustrated by using multiple births to estimate the effect of childbearing on employment status and hours of work

does environmental information overcome practice compartmentalisation and change consumers behaviours this paper questions the long held paradigm of consumers rationality as well as its corresponding policy tool the supply of information theoretical considerations as well as empirical evidence from a research on residential energy consumption in belgium show that both environmental information namely on climate change and customised advice to save energy at home are neither just taken in as such by consumers nor translated into corresponding practices in consumerist societies practice compartmentalisation and moods are indeed normalised mechanisms for not adopting green lifestyles that would threaten social normality as defined in valued networks c 2007 published by elsevier ltd

further toward a theory of agricultural insurance the economic theory of contracts is applied to agricultural insurance to show that given full information pareto optimal insurance contracts are actuarially fair provide full coverage and differ for each individual the information problems of moral hazard and adverse selection prevent pareto optimality from being attained several second best solutions to these problems are applied to agricultural insurance it is shown that information collection and the application of contract design principles are second best solutions which may achieve the benefits of insurance at less cost than the current practice of public subsidies in theory agricultural insurance is an efficient risk sharing mechanism in practice however agricultural insurance has been a costly means of transferring risk from farmers to governments and or other insurers to induce farmers to participate in agricultural insurance governments have borne significant subsidy costs hazell pomareda and valdes p 295 in a recent study ahsan ali and kurian aak concluded that public subsidies are necessary to make agricultural insurance viable they also showed that insurance will increase output relative to a case with no insurance thus insurance is beneficial particularly in less developed countries where increasing food supplies is a policy goal for this reason they concluded that public subsidization of insurance also is desirable their conclusions are derived from a simplified model of production with one output and one input in this article we consider a more general production model with multiple inputs and outputs we show that aak s conclusion about the benefits of insurance may not hold depending on the nature of the inputs and outputs as defined by the production function carl h nelson is an assistant professor of agricultural economics

heterogeneous returns to chemical fertilizer at the intensive margins insights from nepal increased fertilizer use is considered important for agricultural development in low income countries promoting increased use of chemical fertilizer by lowering its price may be ineffective if demand is price inelastic in theory the price elasticity of demand depends on the returns to its use but the evidence is scarce furthermore while returns are often estimated for small changes in chemical fertilizer use returns to larger changes in its use intensive margins are less understood through the inter zonal comparisons in nepal we provide indicative evidence that greater returns to chemical fertilizer are associated with greater price elasticities of demand moreover the evidence suggests that returns at the intensive margins rather than returns to small changes may largely account for inter zonal differences in returns to chemical fertilizer within nepal the results suggest that better understanding the returns at the intensive margins is critical for effective agricultural inputs policies in developing countries

risk sharing and information in village economies arrangements for achieving efficient risk sharing vary depending on the information available to agents in the economy the usual euler equation restricts efficient allocations in an economy which obeys the permanent income hypothesis while efficient allocations in an economy with private information and long term contracts satisfy a symmetric restriction but not the euler equation full insurance arrangements are unique in that they satisfy both restrictions we look at an environment in which it seems likely that long term contracts play a role in mitigating the effects of private information three village economies in south india the evidence that consumption allocations satisfy the private information restriction is quite strong for households in two of the three villages the evidence for the third village suggests that while consumption for some households satisfies the private information restrictions other households consumption obey the permanent income hypothesis

consumption smoothing migration and marriage evidence from rural india a significant proportion of migration in low income countries particularly in rural areas is composed of moves by women for the purpose of marriage we seek to explain these mobility patterns by examining marital arrangements among indian households in particular we hypothesize that the marriage of daughters to locationally distant dispersed yet kinship related households is a manifestation of implicit interhousehold contractual arrangements aimed at mitigating income risks and facilitating consumption smoothing in an environment characterized by information costs and spatially covariant risks analysis of longitudinal south indian village data lends support to the hypothesis marriage cum migration contributes significantly to a reduction in the variability of household food consumption farm households afflicted with more variable profits tend to engage in longer distance marriage cum migration the hypothesized and observed marriage cum migration patterns are in dissonance with standard models of marriage or migration that are concerned primarily with search costs and static income gains

market access by smallholder farmers in malawi implications for technology adoption agricultural productivity and crop income abstract in malawi maize is the major crop and food staple given limited off farm employment opportunities much needed increases in household income for improving food security must come from gains in agricultural productivity through better technology and more profitable crops in the past hybrid maize and more recently tobacco were promoted by policy for increasing smallholder income an analysis of determinants of adoption of these two crops and related income effects is presented apart from factor endowment and exposure to agroecological risks differences in the household s access to financial and commodity markets significantly influence its cropping shares and farm income