adoption of improved maize varieties in southern ethiopia factors and strategy options abstract this paper identifies factors that influence the decision behavior of farmers in southern ethiopia in adopting improved maize varieties by estimating a logistic regression data for this study came from 222 farmers interviewed as part of a national adoption survey conducted in three selected maize growing administrative zones of southern ethiopia in 1998 the paper also assesses the impact of pure and mixed strategy options on the probability of adoption of improved maize varieties through simulation under different scenarios as far as pure strategies are concerned the credit strategy is more powerful than the others in terms of raising the probability of adoption however results from the analysis of pure versus mixed strategies imply that mixed strategies are no necessarily much better than pure strategies

social networks and technology adoption in northern mozambique despite their potentially strong impact on poverty agricultural innovations are often adopted slowly using a unique household dataset on sunflower adoption in mozambique we analyse whether and how individual adoption decisions depend upon the choices of others in the same social networks since farmers anticipate that they will share information with others we expect farmers to be more likely to adopt when they know many other adopters dynamic considerations however suggest that farmers who know many adopters might strategically delay adoption to free ride on the information gathered by others we present empirical evidence that shows that the relationship between the probability of adoption and the number of known adopters is shaped as an inverse u in line with information sharing the network effect is stronger for farmers who report discussing agriculture with others the data contains information which is needed to ameliorate the identification issues that commonly arise in this context in particular social networks are precisely identified and in addition we can control for village heterogeneity and endogenous group formation

the economics of poverty traps and persistent poverty an asset based approach abstract longitudinal data on household living standards open the way to a deeper analysis of the nature and extent of poverty while a number of studies have exploited this type of data to distinguish transitory from more chronic forms of income or expenditure poverty this paper develops an asset based approach to poverty analysis that makes it possible to distinguish deep rooted persistent structural poverty from poverty that passes naturally with time due to systemic growth processes drawing on the economic theory of poverty traps and bifurcated accumulation strategies this paper briefly discusses some feasible estimation strategies for empirically identifying poverty traps and long term persistent structural poverty as well as relevant extensions of the popular foster greer thorbecke class of poverty measures the paper closes with reflections on how asset based poverty can be used to underwrite the design of persistent poverty reduction strategies

corporate control of investments and management styles this article describes how corporate managers of major swedish groups in different industries exert control over investment requests and the direction of the investments of their groups the study

the role of education on the adoption of chemical fertiliser under different socioeconomic environments in ethiopia studies on input adoption consider education as one of the most important factors that affect adoption decisions however very little is known about the spill over effect of intra household education on the adoption process and about the impact of education on adoption decisions under different socioeconomic conditions we investigate these two issues using a discrete choice model the results indicate that the decision making process is a decentralised one in which educated adult members of the household actively participate in the decision making process this casts doubt on the traditional assumption that the household head is the sole decision maker the results reveal that there is a substantial and statistically significant intra household spill over effect of education on the adoption decision of households the results of the study also show that the coefficient of the education and the environment interaction variable is negative and statistically significant this demonstrates that education and socioeconomic environments could be substitutes in modern environments and complementary in traditional ones this implies that the expansion of education in traditional areas may be more attractive than in modern areas since education is usually the only means to enhance the ability of farmers to acquire synthesise and respond to innovations such as chemical fertiliser

choosing tax rates and public expenditure levels using majority rule abstract a sufficient condition is presented for a policy to be a condorcet winner when voters differ only in a single characteristic the condition is that all voters utility gradients with respect to the n different policy dimensions lie in the same plane in r n if the policy is a set of commodity tax rates then the condition is implied by the linearity of voters common engel curves if the policy includes levels of public good provision then the vectors of marginal willingness to pay for the various public goods of the different voters must all lie on the same line

promoting high input maize technologies in africa the sasakawa global 2000 experience in ethiopia and mozambique abstract critics argue that high external input technologies heit are too costly for african farmers and that programs to promote them are economically unsustainable this paper assesses sasakawa global 2000 programs in ethiopia and mozambique using financial and economic analysis yield models and subsector analysis the sg 2000 technology was much more profitable in ethiopia than in mozambique but varied depending on production location fertilizer and transport costs domestic and international prices regional surplus or deficit conditions and production as import substitute or export the case studies provide further evidence that high input technologies can be successfully introduced through well funded high profile programs but not conclusive evidence that such programs can be scaled up and sustained five major implications are discussed concerning 1 prospects for scaling up and sustaining heit adoption 2 the need for expanded profitability analysis 3 the role of trade prospects and policies 4 institution building requirements and 5 infrastructure investments to reduce marketing costs

learning by doing and learning from others human capital and technical change in agriculture household level panel data from a nationally representative sample of rural indian households describing the adoption and profitability of high yielding seed varieties hyvs associated with the green revolution are used to test the implications of a model incorporating learning by doing and learning spillovers the estimates indicate that i imperfect knowledge about the management of the new seeds was a significant barrier to adoption ii this barrier diminished as farmer experience with the new technologies increased iii own experience and neighbors experience with hyvs significantly increased hyv profitability and iv farmers do not fully incorporate the village returns to learning in making adoption decisions

fertilizer market development a comparative analysis of ethiopia kenya and zambia abstract this article synthesizes case studies from kenya zambia and ethiopia to assess how differences in the implementation of fertilizer marketing policies have affected the costs and risks borne by marketing actors the investment response by private traders and fertilizer consumption financial cost accounting techniques indicate that domestic marketing costs account for 50 or more of farm gate prices the sum of importer wholesaler and retailer profit margins generally account for less than 10 there are opportunities to reduce domestic marketing costs through the following reducing port fees coordinating the timing of fertilizer clearance from the port with up country transport reducing transport costs through port rail and road improvements reducing high fuel taxes and reducing the uncertainty associated with government input distribution programs that impose additional marketing costs on traders estimated reductions in the farm gate price of fertilizer from implementing the full range of options identified in each country range from 11 to 18 price reductions of this magnitude if passed along to farmers would increase farmers effective demand for fertilizer investments in selected publically provided goods often considered outside the scope of fertilizer marketing policy per se strongly affect the costs of fertilizer farmers willingness to pay for it and hence the performance of markets

simple normative rules imply simple positive rules abstract when n policy instruments must be chosen the set of pareto optima is defined as simple if it can be spanned by two vectors an example would be a head tax and a uniform sales tax it is shown that majority rule must result in a condorcet winner the preferred policy of the median voter if the set of pareto optima is simple

redistribution tax under non benevolent governments i analyze redistribution policies of majority governments in one kind of representative voting system i employ these assumptions members gain special benefits in the majority parties act strategically by using redistribution transfers the member s utility function is given in a quasi linear function the government s objective functions are the weighted summation of utilities and i classify governments according to the weight the four main results are a stable majority dose not support myopic government the stable redistribution policy of benevolent government is expressed by a scope of transfers the stable transfer of non benevolent governments depends on private utilities of the majority and opportunity costs of the minority and the altruistic government is not displayed by any other majority because it offers the total welfare of the majority to the minority as a subsidy

popular support for progressive taxation abstract the popular support obtained by two parties who propose two qualitatively different tax schemes is analyzed we show that if the median voter is below the mean then any progressive proposal wins over a regressive one

optimally uniform commodity taxes taste differences and lump sum grants abstract optimal commodity taxes for an economy with many households should be at a uniform proportional rate under certain conditions these include i linear and parallel engel curves with intercepts dependent on household composition ii separability between goods and labour and iii optimal demogrants

income taxation uncertainty and stability abstract this paper develops a political model to analyze the stability of income tax schedules it is assumed that agents perceive any proposed alternative tax policy as more uncertain than the status quo a tax policy is stable if it is a condorcet winner it is well known that in a model without uncertainty the existence of such a policy is very rare we show however that in real cases this might not be a serious problem since small amounts of uncertainty can bring stability to the status quo it is also shown that linear tax functions can only be stable in economies with very egalitarian income distributions and high taxation levels

the relationship between credit and productivity in chinese agriculture a microeconomic model of disequilibrium credit is an important element in agricultural production systems it allows producers to satisfy the cash needs induced by the production cycle which characterizes agriculture preparation planting cultivation and harvesting of the crops are typically done over a period of several months in which very little cash revenue is earned while expenditures on materials purchased inputs and consumption must be made in cash cash income is received a short time after the harvest in the absence of credit markets farmers would have to maintain cash reserves so as to facilitate production and consumption in the next cycle the availability of credit allows both greater consumption and greater purchased input use and thus increases welfare of the farmers

exploring poverty traps and social exclusion in south africa using qualitative and quantitative data abstract recent theoretical work hypothesises that a polarised society like south africa will suffer a legacy of ineffective social capital and blocked pathways of upward mobility that leaves large numbers of people trapped in poverty to explore these ideas this paper employs a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods novel econometric analysis of asset dynamics over the 1993 98 period identifies a dynamic asset poverty threshold that signals that large numbers of south africans are indeed trapped without a pathway out of poverty qualitative analysis of this period and the period 1998 2001 more deeply examines patterns of mobility and confirms the continuation of this pattern of limited upward mobility and a low level poverty trap in addition the qualitative data permit a closer look at the specific role played by social relationships while finding ample evidence of active social capital and networks these are more helpful for non poor households for the poor social capital at best helps sta

poverty status and the impact of formal credit on technology use and wellbeing among ethiopian smallholders summary this paper examines the impact of formal credit largely microfinance on the use of improved technology and on consumption and asset growth across households in different degrees of asset poverty using data from rural ethiopia the analysis finds no relationship between participation in microfinance programs and the use of technologies or consumption growth among the poorest households even though the use of certain technologies like fertilizer contributes to their asset accumulation over time for other households microfinance has positive effects on both consumption and asset growth as well as on the use of improved technology the findings imply variation in constraints faced by different classes of poor households and suggest the value of asset based poverty classifications in identifying target groups for poverty interventions

majority choice of tax systems in single and multi jurisdictional economies abstract we examine majority choice of tax instruments in an economy with heterogeneous households in our framework majority voting equilibrium exists despite the multidimensional policy choice set we examine single and multi jurisdictional economies we identify five competing incentives that influence choice of tax instruments equilibria generally entail a mixture of tax types with multiple jurisdictions strong reliance on head taxation in rich communities arises to deter poorer households from immigrating in spite of local incentives to use alternative tax instruments to redistribute wealth if relocation costs preclude inter community mobility the equilibrium tax system is fundamentally affected with redistribution incentives then dominating choice of instruments and tax rates limiting or eliminating head taxation fundamentally alters stratification public good provision levels and tax systems

endogenous timing in the presence of non monotonicities the aim of this paper is to generalize the endogenous timing game proposed by hamilton and slutsky games and economic behavior 1990 2 pp 29 46 by allowing the payoff or the marginal payoff of a player to become non monotonic with respect to the strategy of the opponent we propose a taxonomy of the subgame perfect nash equilibria based on the characteristics of the payoff functions proposed by eaton canadian journal of economics 2004 37 pp 805 29 we determine under which conditions of the initial payoff functions commitment has a social value and when the simultaneous move nash equilibrium is commitment robust and discuss its pareto efficiency

independence of allocative efficiency from distribution in the theory of public goods when is the pareto optimal amount of public goods independent of income distribution subject to some regularity conditions the answer is when preferences of every individual i can be represented by a utility function of the form u x i y a y x i b i y where x i is i s consumption of private goods and y is the amount of public goods

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