socially responsible products what motivates consumers to pay a premium abstractthe motivation to pay a premium for socially responsible products is partly an expression of consumer concern for the well being of those involved in the production process buying a product with a socially responsible label and donating to a charity are similarly motivated actions while there is an extensive literature on the economics of charitable giving that examines motivations to donate as well as on the impacts of labelling on consumer demand there is little overlap between the two literatures we bridge these two literatures by investigating whether consumers have heterogeneous motivations for paying a premium through a laboratory experiment that auctions coffee with hypothetical socially responsible labels that put different weights on in kind versus cash transfers we find that those consumers who prefer an in kind transfer paternalistic altruists are willing to pay a 52 5 price premium over standard coffee those who prefer that most of the premium is paid as cash strong altruis

where has all the bias gone detecting gender bias in the intrahousehold allocation of educational expenditure abstract the reliability of the household consumption based engel curve methodology in detecting gender bias has been called into question because it has generally failed to confirm bias even where it exists this article seeks to find explanations for this failure by exploiting a data set that has educational expenditure information at the individual level and also by aggregation at the household level i find that in the basic education age groups the discriminatory mechanism in education is via differential enrollment rates for boys and girls education expenditure conditional on enrollment is equal for boys and girls the engel curve method fails for two reasons first it models a single equation for the two stage process second even when we make individual and household level expenditure equations as similar as possible the household level equation still fails to pick up gender bias in about one third of the cases where the individual level equation shows significant bias this article

conformity and the demand for environmental goods the existing literature on eco labeling and green consumerism has been framed within a classical market context where price and quality are the drivers of consumer choice however it seems possible that consumers are also concerned about the choices made by other consumers in fact it is unclear that people s consumption decisions are made independently of social context for instance under the desire to conform to certain social norms or in the presence of status concerns some individuals may be willing to pay a higher price premium for green products the more widespread green consumerism is in society we test this hypothesis using a choice experiment where the respondents were asked to choose among coffee products varying with respect to their share of ecological beans share of fair trade beans and price three treatments were used differing only in the information given about the choices made by other consumers we find different responses to the treatments across individuals and we can only confirm our hypothesis of conformity for women although men appear to have stronger preferences for ecological coffee than women have

day of the week effects and asset returns the number of empirical studies using daily stock returns is rapidly increasing researchers generally assume that the distribution of stock returns is identical for all days of the week a convenient statistical assumption but not a necessary condition of market equilibrium nevertheless there are reasons to suspect that the distribution of returns may vary according to the day of the week the most obvious is the impact of weekends on monday s return since monday s return is calculated over three instead of one calender day the mean and variance may well be higher on monday compared with any other daily return perhaps three times as large previous research has examined the daily distribution of stock returns for a monday effect while fama 1965 does not compare daily mean returns he does report that monday s variance is about 20o greater than other daily returns with a traditional distributional assumption regarding the returns on a financial asset specifies that the expected returns are identical for all days of the week contrary to this plausible assumption this paper discovers that the expected returns on common stocks and treasury bills are not constant across days of the week the most notable evidence is for monday s returns where the mean is unusually low or even negative several explanations of the results are investigated but none proves satisfactory aside from documenting significant day of the week effects the implications of the results for tests of market efficiency are examined while market adjusted returns continue to exhibit day of the week effects these effects are no longer concentrated on monday during the last year we have had many conversations with our colleagues throughout the professions we are particularly thankful to the participants at sessions of the western and american finance associations where preliminary versions of this paper were presented special thanks are due to gene fama gailen hite jon ingersoll robert jarrow merton miller clifford smith and rex thompson the expert research assistance of frank rabinovitch and youngsup yun is gratefully acknowledged 1 the list of papers using daily stock returns is too long to name recent examples include charest 1978 dodd 1980 banz 1981 and reinganum 1981

information disclosure policies evidence from the electricity industry i introduction developed nations environmental policies have evolved substantially in the past several decades early pollution control programs involved command and control approaches policies then frequently included pollution charges tradable permits and other market based instruments most recently a third wave of environmental policy has emerged that emphasizes information provision as an integral part of the risk mitigation strategy here government regulation is replaced or augmented by publicly provided information presumed to assist more cost effective private market and legal forces common examples include the toxics release inventory lead paint disclosures drinking water quality notices and eco labels the empirical effects of such programs however remain largely undetermined this paper examines the impact of a prominent mandatory disclosure program on the fuel mix percentages of large electric utility corporations the prominence of mandatory information policies is not restricted to environmental arenas for example developed countries equity markets generally require firm level financial information provision in many countries agricultural goods require country of origin and other health labels domestic colleges and universities are required by law to inform current and prospective students of crime statistics equity data and performance metrics even significant medical errors must now be disclosed to the community there are several potential advantages of information provision policies and theory suggests that disclosure programs may effectively achieve their goals healy and palepu 2001 provided a survey of the evidence in capital markets brouhle and khanna 2007 demonstrated that information provision can improve product quality in the environmental area kennedy laplante and maxwell 1994 arora and gangopadhyay 1995 maxwell lyon and hackett 2000 kirchhoff 2000 and khanna 2001 showed that the provision of information about pollution may correct a market failure improve performance and enhance welfare despite the literature s theoretical findings the empirical effects of disclosure programs remain inconclusive early studies of securities regulation found mixed results see stigler 1964 robbins and werner 1964 and benston 1973 a more recent literature suggested that disclosure programs in financial markets can achieve their desired effects la porta and lopez de silanes 2006 and greenstone oyer and vissing jorensen 2006 found that both market size and market returns were positively influenced by mandatory disclosure programs in product quality settings chipty and witte 1998 established that resource and referral agencies significantly influenced childcare prices but had no impact on the quality of care in contrast jin and leslie 2003 found that mandatory hygiene grade cards positively affected restaurant quality and health outcomes studies of environmental performance yielded similarly mixed results desvousges smith and rink 1992 found that information based programs influenced attitudes favorable to radon testing but testing itself only increased when mass media dissemination was coupled with community based implementation programs konar and cohen 1997 and khanna quimio and bojilova 1998 found that stock movements associated with toxics release inventory tri announcements led to increased abatement and reduced emissions however bui 2005 found that the declines in emissions after tri reporting events may have been attributable to regulation rather than investor pressure bennear and olmstead 2006 found that drinking water quality notices lowered violations for some systems but not others this paper is the first empirical economic study of the impacts of mandatory information provision in the electric utility industry the disclosure programs considered here differ significantly from the tri information programs examined previously

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

salomon brothers and the may 1991 treasury auction analysis of a market corner abstract in may 1991 the treasury sold 12 29 billion in two year notes through improper bidding salomon brothers gained control of at least 86 percent of the issue this study investigates the impact of salomon s attempted corner by examining the postauction price behaviour of the two year note based on a no arbitrage relation the results show that the two year note was substantially overpriced for approximately six weeks following the auction the typical mispricing during this period is estimated at 0 16 to 0 25 percent of par in dollar terms the aggregate misvaluation averaged 20 30 million and by controlling the supply of the issue salomon stood to gain substantially from the squeeze

income dynamics in tamil nadu india from 1971 to 2003 changing roles of land and human capital this article examines the changing role of physical and human capital in income dynamics in tamil nadu india using detailed daily records of farming households from 1971 to 2003 we find that income growth until the early 1990s is attributed to the rice green revolution and the associated development of nonrice farm sector further growth after the 1990s became possible due to the rapid nonfarm sector development that has been stimulated by the liberalization of indian economy since 1991 in accordance with this change in income structure the importance of physical and human capital has changed human capital was important in the early 1970s to take advantage of the rice green revolution technology once the new technology became standard among farmers human capital became an insignificant factor the importance of human capital has revived in a different manner in recent years firstly because it has increased farmers access to nonfarm job opportunities and secondly because farm management has become more knowledge intensive in the face of increasing scarcity of labor and water the contribution of physical capital increased during the green revolution period while it started declining after that the changing mechanism is characterized as the shifting importance from physical to human capital in accordance with the changing engines of income growth from the green revolution to the development of nonfarm sector

farm productivity and rural poverty in india armed with new data we return to an old question from the pages of this journal to what extent do india s rural poor share in agricultural growth combining data from 24 household sample surveys spanning 35 years with other sources we estimate a model of the joint determination of consumption poverty measures agricultural wages and food prices we find that higher farm productivity brought both absolute and relative gains to poor rural households a large share of the gains was via wages and prices though these effects took time the benefits to the poor were not confined to those near the poverty line

is biodiversity friendly coffee financially viable an analysis of five different coffee production systems in western el salvador abstract the current trend for reducing shade cover in coffee plantations in northern latin america has prompted concern among conservationists because of its potential implications for the loss of biodiversity to help reverse such a trend a project has been launched to promote biodiversity friendly cultural practices in coffee plantations and the marketing of certified biodiversity friendly coffee this paper examines the financial feasibility of investing in the certification criteria for a biodiversity friendly coffee in farms with different production systems in western el salvador models were developed to estimate net present values and risks associated with the investment for five hypothetical but typical coffee farms 1 traditional polyculture 2 commercial polyculture 3 technified shade less than 1200 m elevation 4 technified shade greater than 1200 m elevation and 5 unshaded monoculture to invest in the biodiversity friendly certification criteria was financially viable in all farms the unshaded monoculture farm type was the most profitable case and the farm under traditional polyculture was the only risk free capital requirements for the investment are low though they increase as shade cover in the farm becomes reduced small cash poor farmers will need assistance to make the up front expenditures required to have the farm certified incentives for certified biodiversity friendly coffee plantations such as tax relief payment for environmental services and soft credits could help make the investment more attractive

willingness to pay for sustainability labelled chocolate an experimental auction approach this study evaluates young consumers attitudes to sustainable food and analyzes the determinants of their willingness to pay wtp for chocolate bars with different sustainability labels data were collected through experimental auctions in italy assessing respondents n 80 aged between 18 and 35 wtp for chocolate bars with three selected labels i e fair trade rainforest alliance and carbon footprint econometric outcomes reveal that several socio demographic factors exert a positive and statistically significant effect on wtp for all the selected chocolate bars namely age cohort older gender female and household income high respondents lifestyles and food consumption habits also had an effect on final bids this study offers valuable insights to policy makers and practitioners for efficiently targeting young consumers in campaigns to increase sustainability labelled food consumption

poverty decline agricultural wages and non farm employment in rural india 1983 2004 the authors analyze five rounds of national sample survey data covering 1983 1987 8 1993 4 1999 0 and 2004 5 to explore the relationship between rural diversification and poverty poverty in rural india declined at a modest rate during this period the authors provide region level estimates that illustrate considerable geographic heterogeneity in this progress poverty estimates correlate well with region level data on changes in agricultural wage rates agricultural labor remains the preserve of the uneducated and also to a large extent of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes although agricultural labor grew as a share of total economic activity over the first four rounds it had fallen back to the levels observed at the beginning of the survey period by 2004 this all india trajectory masks widely varying trends across states during this period the rural non farm sector grew modestly mainly between the last two survey rounds regular non farm employment remains largely associated with education levels and social status that are rare among the poor however casual labor and self employment in the non farm sector reveal greater involvement by disadvantaged groups in 2004 than in the preceding rounds the implication for poverty is not immediately clear the poor may be pushed into low return casual non farm activities due to lack of opportunities in the agricultural sector rather than being pulled by high returns offered by the non farm sector econometric estimates reveal that expansion of the non farm sector is associated with falling poverty via two routes a direct impact on poverty that is likely due to a pro poor marginal incidence of non farm employment expansion and an indirect impact attributable to the positive effect of non farm employment growth on agricultural wages the analysis also confirms the important contribution to rural poverty reduction from agricultural productivity availability of land and consumption levels in proximate urban areas

the implicit price for fair trade coffee does social capital matter abstract this study aims to ascertain whether the implicit price paid for fair trade coffee in regular supermarkets is influenced by the stock of social capital in the territory where consumers live a hedonic regression set up is adopted based on italian scanner data taken at nuts3 level regressors include attributes described on the label which include separate certifications for fair trade and organic eco label status plus various indicators of social capital and their interactions with the fair trade and organic eco label attributes the implicit consumer price paid for the fair trade attribute is significantly and positively affected by a social capital proxy the ratio of co op members to total employment

competitive inventory management in treasury markets abstract we decompose us treasury bid ask spreads into inventory adverse selection and order processing costs by using the fact that inventory trades have different effects on spreads than do proprietary trades we exploit this asymmetry and develop a technique to identify the three components of the spread in order to test three hypotheses dealers make larger changes to inventory 1 following macroeconomic announcements 2 at the start and toward the end of the new york trading hours and 3 when transaction sizes are relatively large we test these predictions using govpx data for on the run 2 year and 10 year treasury notes all three predictions are supported we also assess how primary dealers react to the federal reserve s open market operations omos our findings reveal interesting intraday patterns in the inventory component for both securities

greenwash vs brownwash exaggeration and undue modesty in corporate sustainability disclosure corporate greenwashing has accelerated in recent years bringing in its wake growing skepticism about corporate green claims although a theory of the drivers and deterrents of greenwashing has begun to emerge it is static in nature and does not incorporate the full range of ways in which firms can misrepresent their environmental performance our contribution is threefold first we extend the theory of organizational information disclosure to incorporate the possibility of undue modesty about a firm s environmental social and governance practices second we hypothesize about the drivers of exaggeration and undue modesty based on which of a firm s stakeholders are salient at a given point in time to do so we place the firm within a dynamic context that has largely been missing in the prior literature third we test our hypotheses using a data set that allows us to directly compare corporate green claims against actual performance results reveal that corporate output growth deregulation and low profits under deregulation significantly affect the choice between greenwashing and brownwashing the effects of growth and profits are mitigated by external scrutiny

through thick and thin how fair trade consumers have reacted to the global economic recession research on fair trade has flourished over the past decade as fair trade food products have gained popularity amongst consumers in many developed economies this study examines the effects of recessionary economic conditions on fair trade consumers purchasing behaviour an online survey was administered to 306 fair trade consumers from canada the united kingdom and the united states of america the results reveal a discrepancy among fair trade consumers as only consumers that purchase fair trade on an occasional basis adhered to established consumer behaviour norms i e decreasing their purchases of fair trade products and becoming significantly more price aware respondents who actively consume fair trade generally remained loyal to their purchase while some active consumers altered their purchasing behaviour this phenomenon was not common amongst this group as no statistically significant changes were observed differences were also noted among the three countries as the canadian and us fair trade consumers significantly decreased their consumption of fair trade as a result of the recession whereas the uk consumers did not in addition to the research results theoretical and managerial implications will be discussed along with future research directions

the turn of the year in money markets tests of the risk shifting window dressing and preferred habitat hypotheses musto 1997 identifies a turn of the year effect in the commercial paper market and offers risk shifting window dressing as an explanation we revisit this market with different methods and find strong evidence rejecting the risk shifting hypothesis we extend our analysis to other private issue money market instruments and find similar results we find further corroborating evidence in the 1 month t bill market and aggregate demand deposit data our results are consistent with a year end preferred habitat for liquidity associated with year end cash flow obligations

nudging and corporate environmental responsibility a natural field experiment abstract we devise a nudging natural field experiment to test the impact of a simple form of advertising on environmentally responsible products with without the increase of the responsible product price we find that the simple use of a small shelf poster explaining the importance of buying a green product with without a concurring price increase generates significant changes in market shares for some of the product classes for both food and non food products part of the effect is generated by the reduced price elasticity of consumers to the poster plus price increase treatment

are urban poverty and undernutrition growing some newly assembled evidence abstract the population of the developing world is becoming more urban are poverty and undernutrition beginning to relocate to urban areas as well we use survey data on poverty from eight countries and on child undernutrition from 14 countries to address this question using data from the past 15 20 years we find that in a majority of countries the absolute number of poor and undernourished individuals living in urban areas has increased as has the share of overall poverty and undernourishment coming from urban areas given these trends and the current stock of knowledge as to the levels determinants and solutions to urban poverty and undernutrition we argue for more research on these issues

income dynamics and pathways out of rural poverty in bangladesh 1988 2004 bangladesh has made considerable progress in alleviating poverty in the recent past using data from a nationally representative longitudinal survey of rural households in bangladesh conducted in three waves in 1988 2000 and 2004 this article relates the dynamics of rural poverty reduction to the structural shift in income generation mechanism from farm to nonfarm activities changing household factor endowments and the adoption of improved agricultural technologies over time 1 the findings show that the occupational shift from the farm to the nonfarm sector such as trade business and services as well as the expansion of cultivated areas through tenancy enhance income growth geographic mobility overseas migration in particular makes a significant contribution to income growth as well the reduction in poverty appears to be vitally dependent on the enhancement of the endowment of human and physical capital that augments the poor households capability to better exploit income generating opportunities and place the households on a sustainable route out of poverty

are stated preferences confirmed by purchasing behaviours the case of fair trade certified bananas in switzerland as the market share of fair trade food products in countries of the north grows understanding consumer preferences with regard to this recent label is becoming increasingly important this article reports on a test of the consistency of consumers stated preferences for which a survey was conducted at the place and time of actual purchase decisions the aim of the survey was to further improve the understanding of consumers stated motivations for buying fair trade and organic fair trade bananas in switzerland hypothetical questions with double dichotomous choices were used to compare two types of bananas conventional and labelled and to assess the average stated willingness to pay wtp for fair trade labelled bananas the results show that fair trade is largely accepted in switzerland and that the premium for purchasing such products is influenced by age the number of young children and the perception of the fair trade label i then used a comparative test of field observations and stated preferences for bananas to measure inconsistency in choices this comparison reveals that less than one fifth of the answers are in principle inconsistent these results point to the importance of confidence in the fair trade labels if consumers purchases are to increase

growth and poverty revisited from a multidimensional perspective the actual impact of economic growth on poverty reduction is of fundamental importance to the development agenda this paper offers new empirical evidence on growth and poverty measured from a mult

impact of infrastructure expenses in strategic sectors for brazilian poverty abstract this paper analyzes the impact of infrastructure investments in the reduction of poverty in brazil controlled through other determinants such as economic growth income inequality average schooling years unemployment rate and state budgets from 1995 to 2011 a model for a dynamic panel data estimated by the generalized method of moments gmm in two steps as developed by arellano bond 1991 and blundell bond 1998 found among other conclusions a significant inverse relation between public investment in infrastructure and poverty the granger causality test for panel data proposed by hurlin and venet 2001 2004 and hurlin 2004 2005 reinforced results validation

the irrelevance of national strategies rural poverty dynamics in states and regions of india 1993 2005 summary examining panel data for more than 13 000 rural indian households over the 12 year period 1993 94 to 2004 05 shows that two parallel and opposite flows regularly reconfigure the national stock of poverty some formerly poor people have escaped poverty concurrently some formerly non poor people have fallen into poverty these simultaneous inward and outward flows are asymmetric in terms of reasons one set of reasons is associated with the flow into poverty but a different set of reasons is associated with the flow out of poverty both sets of reasons vary considerably across and within states no factor matters consistently across all states of india standardized national policies do not represent the best use of available resources diverse threats and different opportunities must be identified and tackled at the sub national level

does local labeling complement or compete with other sustainable labels a conjoint analysis of direct and joint values for fresh produce claim as a way to explore the increasing use of sustainability labels in the marketplace this study analyzes the differential values and interactive effects of sustainable production claims organic fair trade and carbon footprint and location claims through a conjoint choice experiment included in a 2008 u s survey locally grown is the highest valued claim and its value is further enhanced with fair trade certification but carbon intensive local products are discounted more severely than those sourced from other locations some negatively valued claims imports and carbon footprint can be mitigated by combining them with other claims organic and fair trade copyright 2011 oxford university press

the economics of corporate social responsibility a firm level perspective survey this paper analyzes the economics of corporate social responsibility csr as a private response to market imperfections in order to satisfy social preferences depending on whether they affect regulation competition or contracts market imperfections driving csr decisions are classified in three categories public goods and bads and altruism imperfect competition and incomplete contracts we successively present these drivers of csr decisions and highlight the nature of incentives external or internal at work and the testable and tested hypotheses in the reviewed studies we finally review the link between csr and financial performance as well as between csr and social and environmental performance a twofold discrepancy appears in the literature opening future research paths a disconnection between our understanding of csr drivers and csr impacts and a knowledge gap between csr financial and social consequences the latter having received little attention

agricultural growth poverty reduction and agro ecological zones in india an ecological fallacy abstract in an article in this journal that is part of an oevre that has been widely cited shenggen fan peter hazel and t haque 2000a present evidence that government investments in india now have greater effects on poverty in rainfed than irrigated regions this note suggests that parts of the methodology on which this claim is based are unclear and possibly suffer from an ecological fallacy even after clarification of their method by the authors some doubts remain as to whether the results quoted support the original claim

does willingness to pay increase with the number and strictness of sustainability labels labels signaling sustainable product attributes are gaining importance although uncertainty concerning the environmental micro and macroeconomic benefits of such labels persist one of the questions still incompletely answered is whether willingness to pay wtp varies with a gradually increasing number of labels on a food product in order to answer this question we conducted a laboratory experiment with 191 student respondents testing consumer valuations of different labeling strategies using the becker degroot marschak mechanism wtp for 15 food products was measured the products were endowed with up to six different sustainability labels such that each grocery item was available in eight product versions for perishable nonperishable and plant based products the results indicate that participants are prone to allocating wtp premiums to labeled products more than to unlabeled products for animal products however labels do not influence wtp significantly furthermore the premiums do not vary with an increasing number of labels irrespective of whether the labels signal substitute or complementary sustainability information the results are not entirely in line with normative notions of magnitude variation but rather with the behavioral economic concept of embedding effects

ethical value added fair trade and the case of cafe femenino this article engages various critiques of fair trade from its participation in commodification to providing a cover for fair washing corporations and argues that fair trade has the potential to answer the challenges contained within them if and when it initiates an ongoing process of developing the ethical valued added content of the label this argument is made in a number of ways first by distinguishing between economic and human development impacts and ethics this article argues that these impacts are necessary but not sufficient conditions for ethical trade second it engages the question of the possibility of ethical practice in economics generally developing the idea that when economics is concerned with securing the material basis of a broad range of life capacities it becomes ethical third fair trade practice itself is examined from this standpoint and is conceived of as both comprising a promising ethical value added practice as well as posing a problem in its current formulation that the framework of ethical value added can help understand and resolve finally an examination of these theoretical ideas in practice is undertaken through a case study of cafe femenino a fair trade coffee produced in peru in conclusion it is argued that for fair trade to build upon its economic and human impacts and therefore remain a meaningful ethical and economic alternative to corporate capitalism and globalization it must distinguish itself clearly in ethics from those market relations it wishes explicitly or implicitly to challenge

fair trade managerial practices strategy organisation and engagement the number of distributors selling fair trade products is constantly increasing what are their motivations to distribute fair trade products how do they organise this distribution do they apply and communicate the fair trade values this research based on five case studies in switzerland aims at understanding and structuring the strategies and the managerial practices related to fair trade product distribution as well as analysing if they denote an engagement with fair trade principles the results show a high heterogeneity of strategies and engagement in general strategies implemented by mainstream actors contribute to increase fair trade global sales but do not convey the transformative message of fair trade through their engagement the latter is rather communicated through alternative channels problems and potential solutions to this issue are discussed

how do consumers in developed countries value the environment and workers social rights in developing countries this paper uses a lab experiment to investigate developed countries consumer valuations of characteristics linked to the environment and workers social rights in developing countries it focuses on seafood products and distinguishes between regular environmentally friendly and fair trade varieties consumer valuations are elicited with a multiple price list results show that environmental and social labels have similar effects on participant willingness to pay when they are first presented using welfare variation coming from the labels we also show that the absence of negative information linked to the regular variety may lead to an underestimation of the value of information associated with the label

prices wages and poverty in rural india what lessons do the time series data hold for policy abstract looking back over 40 years or so one finds that higher relative prices of food in india have typically been associated with higher poverty incidence and lower real agricultural wages this has not gone unnoticed by critics of agricultural policy reform in india who have argued that reform could permanently increase poverty by permanently raising food prices relative to non food prices however a number of other observations about the time series evidence cast doubt on this interpretation the correlation with poverty as it is being measured is not a distributional effect yet it is very unlikely that the rural sector as a whole could be worse off from a higher relative price of food instead the correlation with poverty can be explained by shocks to aggregate food output the correlation between food prices and real wages can be explained by changes in farm yields and inflation critics of reform appear to have misread the lessons for policy but these data cannot be used to support the view that higher food prices due to policy reform will on their own reduce rural poverty

agricultural transformation in africa assessing the evidence in ethiopia summary despite significant efforts africa has struggled to imitate the rapid agricultural growth that took place in asia in the 1960s and 1970s as a rare but important exception ethiopia s agriculture sector recorded remarkable rapid growth during 2004 14 this paper explores this rapid change in the agriculture sector of this important country the second most populous in africa we review the evidence on agricultural growth and decompose the contributions of modern inputs to growth using an adjusted solow decomposition model we also highlight the key pathways ethiopia followed to achieve its agricultural growth we find that land and labor use expanded significantly and total factor productivity grew by about 2 3 per year over the study period moreover modern input use more than doubled explaining some of this growth the expansion in modern input use appears to have been driven by high government expenditures on the agriculture sector including agricultural extension but also by an improved road network higher rural education levels and favorable international and local price incentives

productivity growth in indian agriculture is there evidence of convergence across states this paper explores the question of convergence in total factor productivity tfp in agriculture across fourteen major agricultural states of india using a tornqvist theil index for tfp growth for the period 1973 1993 we find no evidence to support convergence to a single tfp level convergence after grouping the various states on the basis of their productivity performance we find that the high performing states show a gradual movement towards the trend whereas the low performing states generally show more volatility testing for long run convergence in levels of agricultural productivity we find evidence of conditional beta convergence after controlling for state specific factors and idiosyncratic year specific volatility the results are robust to alternative specifications of tests of unit root in panel data developed recently

cash crop choice and income dynamics in rural areas evidence for post crisis indonesia in this article we investigate the factors affecting levels and growth of incomes in rural indonesia following the crisis of 1997 1998 in particular we investigate the relative roles of nonfarm incomes and productivity improvements achieved via changes in crops versus improvements on the same crops on income dynamics framing the article in the context of an optimal labor allocation model relying on unique household panel data from central sulawesi and using advanced panel econometric methods we find that local innovations related to the adoption and intensification of new cash crop varieties more specifically the shift from coffee to cocoa production can explain a substantial part of the observed post crisis developments causal estimates of the effect of growing cocoa suggest that households were on average able to achieve about 14 higher income levels during the post crisis period compared to the planting of other crops most notably coffee also our results demonstrate the importance of engagement in nonfarm activities for household income growth comparative analyses using a nationally representative survey suggest that similar processes are at play in other parts of indonesia

is india s economic growth leaving the poor behind there has been much debate about how much india s poor have shared in the economic growth unleashed by economic reforms in the 1990s the authors argue that india has probably maintained its 1980s rate of poverty reduction in the 1990s however there is considerable diversity in performance across states this holds some important clues for understanding why economic growth has not done more for india s poor india s economic growth in the 1990s has not been occurring in the states where it would have the most impact on poverty nationally if not for the sectoral and geographic imbalance of growth the national rate of growth would have generated a rate of poverty reduction that was double india s historical trend rate states with relatively low levels of initial rural development and human capital development were not well suited to reduce poverty in response to economic growth the study s results are consistent with the view that achieving higher aggregate economic growth is only one element of an effective strategy for poverty reduction in india the sectoral and geographic composition of growth is also important as is the need to redress existing inequalities in human resource development and between rural and urban areas

market making costs in treasury bills a benchmark for the cost of liquidity abstract we focus on market making costs by examining the daily bid ask spreads for off the run one month treasury bills around two liquidity changing events event one salomon brothers supply shock results in a roughly 2 5 basis point increase in the spread because of an increase in ask prices and event two the long term capital management demand shock results in a doubling of the spread because of a decrease in bid prices our results provide a benchmark for researchers examining bid ask spreads of securities that include a liquidity premium a risk premium and an asymmetric information premium

eco labels as a multidimensional research topic trends and opportunities abstract this study analyzes the importance of ecolabels as an eco innovation tool that can contribute to the sustainable design production and consumption of products our research has a dual objective the first is to build a theoretical framework that explains the relationship between ecolabels and eco innovation their determinants demand supply and institutional and political influences and the dimensions that arise from them second according to this framework a systematic literature review was carried out to identify the trends and opportunities in ecolabeling as a multidimensional topic from empirical geographical and sectorial perspective the main contributions of this paper are a proposal for cyclical ecolabeling innovation process an understanding of the ecolabeling dimensions according to the studies analyzed and ecolabel performance in the market additionally the systematic literature review revealed that ecolabels have been mainly explored in food sectors and developed countries and researchers tend to assess their performance from the dimension of market dynamics

do coffee roasters benefit from high prices of green coffee abstract the german coffee industry has repeatedly made the puzzling statement that it would prefer higher prices of green coffee its main input likewise it supported the maintenance of the coffee tax in this paper an oligopoly model with differentiated products is used to illustrate the possibility of profit raising cost increases the relationship between prices and costs of roasted coffee in germany is estimated and the hypothesis of overshifting is tested in addition the demand for coffee is studied however the empirical analysis does not confirm that increasing costs lead to higher profits alternative explanations for the coffee industry s statements based on long term considerations are also discussed

production prices and poverty in rural india this paper challenges the view that increases in agricultural production have reduced poverty in rural india rural poverty is related directly to the consumer price index number for agricultural labourers and inversely to agricultural production the underlying time trend term indicates a residual rising trend in rural poverty after accounting for the influence of these two factors there are plausible though conjectural reasons for believing that to a significant extent the price factor as well as the variables implicit in the time trend term both derive their strength if not their existence from the nature of the growth processes which have generated the observed growth in agricultural production these results contradict ahluwalia s earlier conclusions even though they are themselves based on essentially the same data set

going beyond crosscountry averages growth inequality and poverty reduction in the philippines summary this paper analyzes the processes of growth and poverty reduction simultaneously under a neoclassical growth model framework using provincial data from the philippines we obtain a high rate of provincial income convergence and a tradeoff between equity and growth the lack of political competition inhibits growth land reform is positively associated with growth and poverty reduction while higher agricultural terms of trade facilitate poverty reduction the growth elasticity of poverty reduction is low by international standards but is sensitive to sectoral income composition and initial conditions in poverty incidence mortality rate and irrigation coverage

the effects of location and sectoral components of economic growth on poverty evidence from indonesia abstract in this paper we investigate the relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction by differentiating growth and poverty into their sectoral composition and urban rural location using data from indonesia we find that rural services growth reduces poverty in all sectors and locations however urban services growth has the largest effect on poverty in most sectors finally we also find that rural agriculture growth strongly reduces poverty in rural areas the largest contributor to poverty in indonesia this implies that while agriculture growth in rural areas still plays a major role in reducing poverty policies that enable strong growth in the services sector in both urban and rural areas would expedite poverty reduction

macroeconomic performance and poverty in brazil abstract drawing on brazilian time series data this study finds an inelastic link between poverty and wages over the macroeconomic cycle that is devoid of the asymmetric effects that characterise the phenomenon s response to changes in the rate of unemployment deepening of structural reforms in the second half of the 1990s had no effect on the aforementioned relationships which also varied little by regional level of development finally the connection between poverty and long term income changes was more elastic suggesting an association between the economy s recent disappointing performance in alleviating poverty and its lacklustre growth record over the past two decades

sustainability labels on coffee consumer preferences willingness to pay and visual attention to attributes abstract sustainability labels are important tools that help consumers assess the sustainability aspects of food while past studies have focused on visual attention to nutrition information no study has investigated the visual attention paid by consumers to the sustainability information on food our study contributes to the need to better understand consumers attention to sustainability information when making food choices the objective was to explore the importance that consumers attach to sustainability attributes and investigate how this relates to the visual attention paid to these attributes during the choice decision and to willingness to pay wtp visual attention during the decision making process was measured in terms of fixation time and fixation count which were then analyzed in relation to the stated attribute importance our results suggest that consumer segments with differences in stated attribute importance visually attend differently to these attributes higher valued attributes also exhibited higher visual attention our results suggest that consumers who spend more time attending to and fixate more on sustainability attributes value them more

the puzzling price behavior of treasury bills that mature at the turn of calendar months abstract this paper documents the unusual price behavior of treasury bills that mature at the turn of calendar months there is a kink in the yield curve as it crosses calendar months and this kink is most pronounced as the yield curve crosses between calendar years potential seasonality in the spot rate of interest could not explain these results nor could they be explained by the mispricing of either the last bill or first bill in a month the exceptionally large premium on the first bill in a month tended to be earned throughout the lifetime of the bill

why has economic growth been more pro poor in some states of india than others abstract we use 20 household surveys for india s 15 major states spanning 1960 1994 to study how the sectoral composition of economic growth and initial conditions interact to influence how much growth reduced consumption poverty the elasticities of measured poverty to farm yields and development spending did not differ significantly across states but the elasticities of poverty to urban and rural non farm output varied appreciably and the differences were quantitatively important to the overall rate of poverty reduction states with higher elasticities did not experience higher rates of non farm growth the non farm growth process was more pro poor in states with initially higher literacy higher farm productivity higher rural living standards relative to urban areas lower landlessness and lower infant mortality

what does corporate strong sustainability actually mean in the real market world a response to bjorn and ropke abstract in a recent issue of the journal of cleaner production bjorn and ropke 2018 publish an article titled what does it really mean to be a strongly sustainable company a response to nikolaou and tsalis through which they express their concerns over the methodological framework developed by nikolaou and tsalis 2018 bjorn and ropke point out some weaknesses of this methodology suggesting some possible amendments to improve it specifically they raise doubts over the selection of environmental indicators and the definition of thresholds taking into consideration the points discussed by bjorn and ropke this paper aims to analyze the relevant theoretical background on which our framework was built by clarifying the concepts of corporate strong sustainability it also underlines some misconceptions of bjorn and ropke in relation to our framework and their proposed approach as well as making some suggestions for a possible new framework for corporate strong sustainability business oriented approach which encompasses the united nation un 2030 agenda for sustainable development and the corporate strong sustainability principles

too much of a good thing why altruism can harm the environment success of eco labeling schemes broadly defined varies among products and across countries based on a simple theoretical framework we show that the nature of environmental attributes among products i e private versus public and the consumer type i e egoist versus altruist shape the overall performance of such schemes in addition we demonstrate that altruistic consumers exhibiting a too high willingness to pay for the eco labeled product can inadvertently prevent egoistic consumers from purchasing it leading to a sub optimal outcome in terms of environmental performance several policy and managerial implications are drawn

finance and inequality the case of india although theory emphasizes the role of financial market frictions in explaining income inequality there is little empirical research exploring how financial development and financial sector reforms influence the evolution of income inequality this article examines how finance impacts income inequality in india using annual time series data for over half a century the results indicate that while financial development helps reduce income inequality financial liberalization seems to exacerbate it the results are robust to the use of different measures for financial development and financial liberalization although the relationship between financial development and economic growth has been extensively studied in the literature see for example king and levine 1993 demetriades and hussein 1996 arestis and demetriades 1997 levine loayza and beck 2000 bell and rousseau 2001 ang and mckibbin 2007 little is known about how finance impacts income inequality the importance of the finance inequality relationship has recently been highlighted in an insightful survey article by claessens and perotti 2007 they indicate that while financial development can help reduce income inequality financial liberalization captured by established interests may do the opposite the theoretical predictions of the effects of finance on income inequality are controversial rajan and zingales 2003b argue that improvements in the formal financial sector primarily benefit the rich greenwood and jovanovic 1990 predict a nonlinear relationship between financial development and income inequality where it is hypothesized that income inequality first increases with the degree of sophistication in the financial systems then stabilizes and eventually declines others propose that the presence of financial market imperfections deters the poor from borrowing adequately to invest in human and physical capital implying that financial development helps alleviate income inequality banerjee and newman 1993 galor and zeira 1993 aghion and bolton 1997 mookherjee and ray 2003 2006 given that theories provide ambiguous predictions regarding the effects of finance on the distribution of income it is useful to approach the issue at the empirical level this could facilitate our understanding of the relationship between finance and inequality and help us to assess the validity of each theoretical model despite the important role of financial market frictions in the theories of poverty and income inequality researchers so far have not adequately addressed whether financial

economic growth a panacea for child labor summary in this paper we test whether economic growth decreases child labor by bringing together data from the national sample survey of india and state level macrodata to estimate a bivariate probit model of schooling and labor our results lead us to conclude that contrary to popular wisdom growth actually increases rather than decreases child labor because it increases the demand for child workers the level of state ndp village wages and household incomes are seen as the conduits through which growth influences the supply side of the child labor market

portfolio disclosures and year end price shifts commercial paper sells at an extra discount if it matures in the next calendar year but treasury bills do not the discount is apparent in downward price shifts before the year end and upward price shifts at the turn of the year that are significantly correlated with the simultaneous returns to small stocks and that cannot reflect tax loss selling cross sectional and time series tests on prices as well as flow of funds evidence on trades by institutional investors indicate that both the debt and equity patterns reflect agency problems related to portfolio disclosures financial research has brought considerable analysis to bear on the turn of the year in the equity market but not the money market extant literature starting with keim and stambaugh 1986 reports similarities between equity market and money market price shifts in january but has not examined time series and cross sections of money market prices at the high resolution common in studies of the equity market repeating tests from the equity literature on money market prices this article finds a more precise and robust characterization of the price shifts this characterization combined with observations of year end shifts in money market holdings supports the view that intermediaries move prices with strategic responses to portfolio disclosures the main empirical result is that commercial paper pays a higher yield if it matures across the end of the year that is it imputes a forward premium for the holding period from the last trading day of one year to the first trading day of the next this premium is even higher for issues with more default risk and longer maturity as measured at the end of the year and has a substantial impact on yield spreads i argue that the forward premium reflects an abnormally high market price for bearing risk across the year end and that this high price reflects the disutility to intermediaries of showing risky portfolios to claimholders or regulators the connection between portfolio disclosures and price shifts was proposed by haugen and lakonishok hl 1988 as an explanation of the equity market january effect as originally documented by keim 1983 with monthly data

the impact of changes in human fertility on poverty household survey data for developing and transitional economies are used to estimate the effect of fertility crude birth rate net of infant deaths on private consumption poverty cross national regressions indicate that higher fertility increases poverty both by retarding economic growth and by skewing distribution against the poor our median country in 1980 had dollar a day poverty incidence of 18 9 per cent had it reduced its fertility by four per 1 000 throughout the 1980s the sample median fall it is estimated that incidence would have been reduced to 13 9 per cent the growth and distribution effects being roughly equally responsible for this reduction

output prices and the distribution of consumption in rural india this article analyzes the relation among agricultural output inflation and the distribution of consumption in rural india using both the singh maddala and dagum families to model the entire distribution parametrically employing a benchmark case in which growth is distributionally neutral and idiosyncratic shocks are completely smoothed and using a gmm estimator to deal with potential simultaneity between output and consumption we conclude that i growth was not distributionally neutral ii good harvests relative to trend yielded improvements according to first order stochastic dominance iii slow growth before 1980 went with decreasing inequality iv accelerated growth thereafter tended to increase inequality though yielding improvements according to first order stochastic dominance v consumption smoothing was incomplete

estimating the relative benefits of agricultural growth on the distribution of expenditures does the sectoral composition of aggregate economic growth affect poverty we ask whether agricultural growth in developing countries increases the expenditures of poorer households more than growth in other sectors while some reduced form analyses have tackled this question using either country level time series data regional panel data for one country or cross sectional country data this paper is unusual in using panel data for many countries we improve on much of the existing literature by devising an instrumental variables strategy to correct for the endogeneity of sectoral gdp growth involving averaging over sectoral income growth rates for neighboring countries our principal finding from our instrumental variable estimator is that the estimated elasticities associated with growth in agricultural income are significantly greater than for non agricultural income for all but the extreme top and bottom deciles in the middle range of the income distribution the effect of a given gdp growth due to agriculture is 3 4 times larger than if it was due to non agricultural activities having established that on average growth in gdp originating in agriculture is more beneficial for poorer deciles we finally explore whether this is a pattern which holds across different groupings of countries a second important finding is that there is heterogeneity across some groupings most particularly we find that it is the poorest people in the poorest countries for whom agricultural income growth is the most beneficial

inflation and the poor using polling data for 31 869 households in 38 countries and allowing for country effects the authors show that the poor are more likely than the rich to mention inflation as a top national concern this result survives several robustness checks also direct measures of improvements in well being for the poor the change in their share of national income the percentage decline in poverty and the percentage change in the real minimum wage are negatively correlated with inflation in pooled cross country samples high inflation tends to lower the share of the bottom quintile and the real minimum wage and tends to increase poverty

what has luck got to do with it a regional analysis of poverty and agricultural growth in rural india this article explores the role of agro ecological factors associated with agricultural growth and poverty outcomes in india using a new operationalisation of agro ecological factors and incorporating within state variations in poverty and other variables we show that agricultural growth and poverty reduction appear to depend on underlying agro ecological conditions which are favourable to the spread of irrigation and hence agricultural development which in turn in associated with poverty reduction promotion of agriculture in less favoured areas in unlikely to have similar effects on agriculture in less favoured areas is unlikely to have similar effects on agricultural growth even if the effects of agricultural growth on poverty remain similar unless conditions for irrigation are favourable or rainfall is sufficiently abundant and reliable this suggests that considerable caution may be needed in drawing policy conclusions from empirical analysis by state alone and without regard to their underlying f

why have some indian states done better than others at reducing rural poverty the unevenness of the rise in rural living standards in the various states of india since the 1950s allowed the authors to study the causes of poverty they modeled the evolution of average consumption and various poverty measures using pooled state level data for 1957 91 they found that poverty was reduced by higher agricultural yields above trend growth in nonfarm output and lower inflation rates but these factors only partly explain relative success and failure in reducing poverty initial conditions also mattered states that started the period with better infrastructure and human resources with more intense irrigation greater literacy and lower infant mortality rates had significantly greater long term rates of consumption growth and poverty reduction by and large the same variables that promoted growth in average consumption also helped reduce poverty the effects on poverty measures were partly redistributive in nature after controlling for inflation the authors found that some of the factors that helped reduce absolute poverty also improved distribution and none of the factors that reduced absolute poverty had adverse impacts on distribution in other words there was no sign of tradeoffs between growth and pro poor distribution

do fair trade and eco labels in coffee wake up the consumer conscience abstract in this study a face to face survey was conducted in order to reveal consumer preferences for ethical and environmentally sound labeling programs in coffee valuation questions regarding the fair trade shade grown and organic coffee labels were asked using a payment card format after consumers were previously informed about each of the labeling programs results suggest that consumers are very receptive toward both fair trade and shade grown coffee labels and consequently are willing to pay higher premiums for these labeling programs than for the organic coffee

relationships between household consumption and inequality in the indian states current evidence on the relationships between growth and inequality is predominantly based on cross country data sets or panel data sets covering a small number of time periods but these relationships being fundamentally dynamic in nature need to be considered over a much longer time horizon available state level results from the national sample surveys in india provide such an opportunity this article uses this unique data set to examine the interrelationships between average consumption and inequality within states and test for causality distributional patterns of growth vary but there is strong evidence in many instances of a strong negative effect of initial inequality on subsequent growth

divergence in india income differentials at the state level 1970 97 abstract we examine india s regional disparities in economic performance between 1970 97 our preliminary analysis shows that in absolute terms initially poorer states grew at slower rates than initially wealthier ones and that there is also evidence of increasing dispersion of income levels across the states our econometric analysis investigates the possibility of club convergence and conditional convergence although we do not find evidence of the former we can suggest some of the factors associated in the latter our research also indicates that the onset of economic policy reform in 1991 significantly intensified growth differentials between the states

farm animal welfare and food policy abstract legislation has been the main policy approach for protecting the welfare of farm animals the use of legislation raises issues such as whose preferences the legislation reflects and whether the preferences of some people in society should constrain the food consumption choices of others the paper outlines a survey in great britain which sought to measure people s willingness to pay to support legislation to ban the use of battery cages for egg production in the european union eu it discusses the implications of the survey findings for animal welfare and food policy it concludes that legislation which constrains food consumption choices may be justified where there are significant negative animal welfare externalities as a result of livestock product consumption however the combination of legislation and producer subsidies may provide an appropriate policy which improves animal welfare without directly constraining food consumption choice and could help to achieve other policy aims regarding agriculture in the eu

a cross national investigation on how ethical consumers build loyalty toward fair trade brands although fair trade has recently experienced rapid growth around the world there is lack of consumer research that investigates what determines consumers loyalty toward fair trade brands in this research we investigate how ethical consumption values ecv and two mediating variables fair trade product beliefs ftpb and fair trade corporate evaluation ftce determine fair trade brand loyalty ftbl on the basis of two empirical studies that use samples from the u s and korea we provide evidence demonstrating that the manner in which ecv influence ftbl differs in the u s and korea in the u s ecv determine ftbl only indirectly via ftpb whereas in korea they determine ftbl directly as well as indirectly via ftce we discuss theoretical and managerial implications of these findings

engel curves for fair trade consumption and development perspectives for producers evidence from data on real fairtrade purchases while fairtrade sales have exhibited two digit growth rates over recent decades their capacity to become large enough to generate substantial gains for producers is still uncertain estimating fai

do consumers care about ethical luxury this article explores the extent to which consumers consider ethics in luxury goods consumption in particular it explores whether there is a significant difference between consumers propensity to consider ethics in luxury versus commodity purchase and whether consumers are ready to purchase ethical luxury prior research in ethical consumption focuses on low value commoditized product categories such as food cosmetics and high street apparel it is debatable if consumers follow similar ethical consumption patterns in luxury purchases findings indicate that consumers propensity to consider ethics is significantly lower in luxury purchases when compared to commoditized purchases and explores some of the potential reasons for this reduced propensity to identify or act upon ethical issues in luxury consumption

are fair trade goods credence goods a new proposal with french illustrations in the literature fair trade ft goods are usually associated with other products differentiated by process attributes such as organic food genetically modified gm food or child labour free clothing all of these products are regarded as credence goods this classification refers to the simplified definition of credence goods which describes product attributes which consumers cannot evaluate even after having consumed the good focusing on the characteristics of ft goods this article proposes a reassessment of the link between ft goods and credence properties as defined by darby and karni we first demonstrate that 1 the usual classification masks important particularities of ft goods compared to other goods with process attributes and 2 the full definition of credence goods may even provide a better description of the quality of ft goods however and this is our second theoretical contribution the lack of consensus among experts concerning ft standards and their level of efficiency encourage us to consider ft goods as indeterminate goods as defined by lupton this result leads us to suggest a new typology of product attributes summarized in an innovative diagram it sheds light on how competition between the different ft approaches works and why the ft market is still confined to a niche if not threatened with collapse we mainly illustrate our theoretical analysis with observations relating to the french ft market and institutions

determinants of participation versus consumption in the nordic swan eco labeled market abstract this paper analyzes the determinants of demand for nordic swan eco labeled paper products and whether the factors determining the discrete decision to buy a swan labeled product are different from those that determine the quantity purchased using observed consumer purchase data from denmark we find that prices and socio demographic characteristics have a strong impact on the decision to purchase a swan labeled good the quantity consumed of swan labeled goods on the other hand is strongly affected by the availability of swan goods discounts and household size

the role of personal values in fair trade consumption research in the u s on fair trade consumption is sparse therefore little is known as to what motivates u s consumers to buy fair trade products this study sought to determine which values are salient to american fair trade consumption the data were gathered via a web based version of the schwartz value survey svs and were gleaned from actual consumers who purchase fair trade products from a range of internet based fair trade retailers this study established that indeed there are significant interactions between personal values and fair trade consumption and that demographics proved to be useless in creating a profile of the american fair trade consumer

unveiling ethical product features the importance of an elaborated information presentation abstract despite growing consumer awareness of ethical consumption market sales are not growing accordingly because the presentation of appropriate ethical product information may influence consumers to choose ethical products this paper analyses the requirements necessary for the successful communication of ethical product features based on mcguire s 1976 information processing model and a review of current literature the information s comprehensibility meaningfulness and credibility are investigated in an online survey of us american citizens n 595 for two product categories representing fast moving consumer goods and durable goods a generalized mixed logit model revealed that all three communication factors affect consumers choices the more concerns about or expertise in organic production and fair trade purchase the consumers expressed the less important their price sensibility and the more they preferred a comprehensive addendum and credible sources e g government certificate or traceability the results strongly suggest that advertisers and marketers can customize product communications in order to better engage both the mass market and ethically oriented consumers

how access to irrigation influences poverty and livelihoods a case study from sri lanka abstractthis study combines a livelihoods approach with a regression approach to quantify the effectiveness of irrigation infrastructure investment on improving people s livelihood strategies using a unique dataset based on households in southern sri lanka and a natural experimental setting we estimate from a two stage income regression model to show that irrigation access has a positive effect on income through livelihood choices we also show through qualitative approaches that factors not linked to irrigation infrastructure may contribute to changes in livelihood portfolios in addition we highlight factors that result in certain households being unable to move out of poverty despite access to the improved irrigation infrastructure

who cares about social image this paper experimentally investigates how concerns for social approval relate to intrinsic motivations to purchase ethically participants state their willingness to pay for both a fair trade and a conventional chocolate bar in private or publicly a standard model of social image predicts that all participants increase their fair trade premium when facing an audience we find that the premium is indeed higher in public than in private this effect however is driven by participants who preferred a conventional chocolate bar over a fair trade one in a pre lab choice for those who chose the fair trade chocolate bar public exposure does not change the fair trade premium this is captured by a generalized model where intrinsic preferences and the concern for social approval are negatively correlated

on endogenizing long run growth this assessment of recent theoretical work on endogenous growth identifies three different engines of long run growth i the asymptotic average product of capital is positive ii labor productivity increases as an external effect of capital accumulation iii there are feedback effects on the cost of accumulating knowledge or innovating a general model encompassing all three is considered and then used to review different proposed determinants of long run growth rates the contribution of endogenous growth theory has been to create a framework in which to explain why economic institutions and policies can have long run effects on growth rates

offshoring with endogenous ngo activism the process of globalization is characterized by an impressive growth of global value chains as well as the proliferation of non governmental organizations ngos interacting with multinational firms this paper presents a model of offshoring and ngo firm interactions in which offshoring to a low regulation country allows a monopolist to implement a dirty technology undesired by consumers consumers can reduce the incentive for dirty production by financing an ngo monitoring the firm ngo emergence and offshoring can arise as joint and interacting outcomes for a range of trade costs ngo emergence allows firms to capture gains from globalization which would otherwise be unattainable somewhat paradoxically ngo emergence can be at the expense of consumers possibly leading to welfare losses through offshoring

explaining demand for green electricity using data from all u s utilities abstract green electricity programs enable households to voluntarily contribute to the development of renewable electricity by purchasing green electricity through their local utility using a dataset of all utilities in the united states this paper explores the utility consumer and program characteristics that influence participation levels in green electricity as well as whether a utility chooses to offer a program among other results we find that the key determinants of program participation are the education of the consumer base and the affordability of the green electricity program our results enhance understanding of private provision of environmental public goods and could aid in ex ante evaluations of whether a green electricity program is likely to cover its administrative costs or be a cost effective way of improving environmental quality

growth growth accelerations and the poor lessons from indonesia we study the impact of growth and growth accelerations on poverty and inequality in indonesia using a new panel dataset covering 26 provinces over the period 1977 132010 this dataset allows us to distinguish between mining and non mining in indonesia growth in non mining significantly reduces poverty and inequality in contrast overall growth and growth in mining appears to have no effect on the same growth acceleration in non mining reduces poverty and inequality whereas the same in mining increases poverty we expect that the degree of forward and backward linkages of mining and non mining sectors explains the asymmetric result

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

faith and fair trade the moderating role of contextual religious salience normative and historical arguments support the idea that religion potentially shapes decisions to support fair trade products that said the question of how religion influences organizational decision makers to purchase fair trade products in a business to business context has remained largely unaddressed this research examines the interactive effect of individual religious commitment and contextual religious salience on an individual s willingness to pay a price premium for a fair trade product when buying on behalf of an organization findings from two experimental studies involving 75 and 87 working individuals respectively reveal that the effect of a decision maker s religious commitment on his or her willingness to pay a price premium for the purchase of a fair trade product on behalf of an organization is moderated by the contextual salience of religion specifically when religion is highly salient in the organizational context religious commitment is positively related to the decision maker s willingness to pay a premium for the fair trade product when contextual religious salience is low religious commitment and willingness to pay a premium are unrelated implications for theory and practice are presented