price of high quality daycare and female employment using local variation between municipalities i analyze the degree to which the price of high quality publicly subsidized childcare affects female employment following maternity leave importantly prices are income dependent and thus likely endogenous yet by exploiting information on minimum income compensation during non employment i bypass this problem the results show that the price negatively affects employment a price increase of 1 per month decreases employment by 0 08 which corresponds to a price elasticity of 0 17 these effects prevail during the first 12 months after childbirth i also find that availability of childcare increases employment

the econometrics of kinked budget constraints in the last several years a branch of applied econometrics has developed which is devoted to the development of techniques for the estimation of demand and other functions when the budget constraint is piecewise linear or kinky that is when the constraint consists of a number of segments joined together at kink points such constraints most frequently arise from government tax and transfer programs for example the federal income tax imposes a piecewise linear schedule by the use of constant marginal tax rates within brackets a problem analyzed by hausman 1981 the payroll tax in the social security system likewise generates a kinked schedule inasmuch as the marginal tax rate on earnings is zero above a certain earnings maximum federal and state transfer programs for the poor result in piecewise linear constraints because transfer benefits are taxed in the sense of a negative income tax as income rises and because that tax rate falls to zero at the kink point where an individual or family loses eligibility for the benefit altogether many government transfer programs impose additional nonlinearities by altering this tax rate by discrete amounts over the range of positive benefits as well but kinked constraints sometimes arise in nongovernment contexts a well known example being the block pricing schedule commonly set by utilities and volume discounting in general kinked budget constraints create two difficulties that have several interesting facets one difficulty is that changes in tax and transfer schedules can have unexpected effects that can be exactly the opposite in sign to those expected from economic theory examples of this phenomenon are given below the second difficulty that with which this paper is mostly concerned relates to the implications of kinked budget

farm size land yields and the agricultural production function an analysis for fifteen developing countries abstract the paper analyzes the relationship between factor inputs land yields and labor productivity for farms of different size on the basis of fao farm management data for 15 developing countries for all but three countries a strong negative correlation is found between farm size on the one side and factor inputs and yields per hectare on the other the fitting of unconstrained production functions to the above data suggests that in only few cases the decline in yields for increasing farm size can be attributed to decreasing returns to scale the higher yields observed in small farms are mainly to be ascribed to higher factor inputs and to a more intensive use of land therefore where conspicuous labor surpluses exist the superiority of small farming provides solid arguments in favor of land redistribution such an agrarian reform would determine higher output higher labor absorption and a more equitable income distribution thus contributing in a decisive manner to the alleviation of rural poverty the paper also provides estimates of cross sectional production functions for the 15 countries analyzed empirical relations are found between the output elasticities of land labor and intermediate inputs and physical indicators of their scarcity the paper concludes by proposing a simple method for deriving a long term production function for agriculture

an economic approach to influence activities in organizations members of organizations spend considerable time effort and ingenuity attempting to influence decision makers such influence activities may bring benefits to the organization but they also involve real costs this essay offers an economic rationale for such influence activity as representing rational self interested behavior in the presence of informational asymmetries and an analysis of how the design of the organization s structure and policies should respond to the incentives for attempting influence it is posited that information valuable for the organization s decision making is directly available only to members of the organization who have some personal stake in the decisions these individuals may then have an incentive to try to manipulate the information they develop and provide in order to influence the resulting decisions to their benefits this can be costly both in degrading the quality of decision making and in diverting the attention and effort of the organization s members from more productive activities the organization has three different methods it can employ to discourage excessive influence activities and to encourage more directly productive uses of time and effort it can limit access to decision makers and participation in decision making it can alter its decision making criteria to favor those performing well in productive activities and it can provide direct financial incentives to encourage the desired allocation of effort it is shown that an efficiently designed organization will use such financial incentives only as a last resort instead it will always first alter its decision participation policies and decisionmaking criteria

anomalies in intertemporal choice evidence and an interpretation research on decision making under uncertainly has been strongly influenced by the documentation of numerous expected utility eu anomalies behaviors that violate the expected utility axioms the relative lack of progress on the closely related topic of intertemporal choice is partly due to the absence of an analogous set of discounted utility du anomalies we enumerate a set of du anomalies analogous to the eu anomalies and propose a model that accounts for the anomalies as well as other intertemporal choice phenomena incompatible with du we discuss implications for savings behavior estimation of discount rates and choice framing effects

modelling time inconsistent preferences abstract the paper reviews some recent theoretical contributions on the modelization of time inconsistent preferences as well as implications for individual behavior the focus is on the interpretation of the concepts and the link with concepts in psychology

a policy agenda for pro poor agricultural growth abstract sub saharan africa and parts of south asia are likely to hold large numbers of very poor rural people into the foreseeable future although both history and theory suggest a pre eminent role for agricultural growth in poverty reduction in poor agrarian economies such growth today faces new difficulties many of these difficulties are endogenous to today s poor rural areas others result from broader processes of global change but some are due to changes in the dominant policy environment emphasizing liberalization and state withdrawal examination of 20th century green revolutions suggests that active state interventions were important in supporting critical stages of agricultural market development unfortunately such interventions benefits in institutional development are easily overlooked whereas their high costs are much more visible policy implications are discussed

the supply of child care labor this article presents estimates of the elasticity of supply of labor to child care this parameter is an important determinant of the effects of child care subsidies and regulations on the cost of child care using data from the current population survey there is evidence of an elasticity in the range of 1 2 1 9 this implies that the majority of the benefits of child care subsidies accrue to consumers of child care it is also consistent with the fact that child care workers wages remained flat in real terms in recent years despite rapid growth in the demand for child care

present biased preferences self awareness and shirking abstract we model a mechanism design problem in which the principal owns a project that requires work effort by an agent but agents may have time inconsistent present biased preferences and lack complete self awareness of these preferences the self control problem and naivete of an agent may lead him to agree to a contract but later shirk or slack off even though doing so is observable when the principal cannot severely punish shirking and agents are completely naive the second best solution entails allowing a present biased agent to slack off in order to avoid a greater loss due to shirking with greater self awareness among present biased agents the principal may do better by screening some from accepting the contract furthermore when shirking can be severely punished this does not lead to contracts that eliminate effects of the self control problem instead the principal may exploit present biased agents by offering a contract that allows them to slack off which agents fail to foresee they will choose to do but at the expense of foregoing much compensation

women s labour force participation and child care in romania abstract this paper models household demand for childcare and mothers labour force participation in romania the model estimates the effects of the price of childcare mothers wages and household characteristics on household behaviour with respect to childcare and maternal employment we find that both the maternal decision to become employed and the decision to use out of home care are sensitive to the price of childcare a decrease in the price of care can increase the number of working mothers and thus can reduce poverty in some households we also find that the potential market wage of the mother has a significant positive effect on the decision to purchase market care and on the decision to engage in paid employment the level of household non wage income has little effect on maternal employment and on the demand for childcare

a theory of haste abstract we consider a hyperbolic discounting agent at each period he can undertake an irreversible consumption decision that yields an uncertain current benefit and a delayed cost if he decides to defer consumption for the future some information exogenously flows in we show that the agent may rationally decide to consume with negative expected net present value npv only to prevent himself from consuming in the future which could be profitable from a future perspective but highly detrimental from the current viewpoint comparative statics reveal that the value of information is u shaped

the rise of large farms in land abundant countries do they have a future increased levels and volatility of food prices has led to a surge of interest in large scale agriculture and land acquisition this creates challenges for policy makers aiming to establish a policy environment conducive to an agrarian structure to contribute to broad based development in the long term based on a historical review of episodes of growth of large farms and their impact this paper identifies factors underlying the dominance of owner operated farm structures and ways in which these may change with development the amount of land that could potentially be available for expansion and the level of productivity in exploiting available land resources are used to establish a country level typology the authors highlight that an assessment of the advantages of large operations together with information on endowments can provide input into strategy formulation at the country level a review of recent cases of land acquisition reinforces the importance of the policy framework in determining outcomes it suggests that transparency and contract enforcement recognition of local land rights and ways in which they can be exercised attention to employment effects and technical viability and mechanisms to re allocate land from unsuccessful ventures to more productive entrepreneurs are key areas warranting the attention of policy makers

structural estimation of family labor supply with taxes estimating a continuous hours model using a direct utility specification this paper proposes a new method for estimating family labor supply in the presence of taxes this method accounts for continuous hours choices measurement error unobserved heterogeneity in tastes for work the nonlinear form of the tax code and fixed costs of work in one comprehensive specification estimated on data from the 2001 psid the resulting elasticities for married males are consistent with those found elsewhere in the literature but female wage elasticities are substantially smaller than those found in most of the literature simulations of recent tax acts predict small effects on the labor supply of married couples

agricultural labour productivity food prices and sustainable development impacts and indicators in the last few years high and unstable food and agricultural commodity prices and concerns about population growth increasing per capita food demands and environmental constraints have pushed agriculture and food production up national and international political policy and research agendas drawing on both theory and empirical evidence this paper argues that fundamental impacts of links between agricultural productivity sustainability and real food price changes are often overlooked in current policy analysis this is exacerbated by a lack of relevant and accessible indicators for monitoring agricultural productivity sustainability and real food prices two relatively simple and widely applicable sets of indicators are proposed for use in policy development and monitoring historical series of these indices are estimated for selected countries regions and the world their strengths weaknesses and potential value are then discussed in the context of the need for better sustainable agricultural development and food security indicators in any post 2015 successors to the current mdgs

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

the effect of child care costs on the employment and welfare recipiency of single mothers 1 introduction for all mothers of young children entering the labor market is strongly linked with the need for child care opportunities for caring for children while in the labor market are few in a developed economy in many cases the husband or another family member serves as caregiver but approximately 50 ic of preschoolers with a working mother are cared for by nonrelatives casper 1997 some of these arrangements involve a substantial amount of money in 1993 the average weekly cost of care was 59 for home based care 68 for center based care and 48 for care provided by a relative this can represent one fourth of earnings for single mothers working full time at the minimum wage kimmel 1994 such substantial money expenditures coupled with transportation needs both to work and to day care as well as the uncertainty of many child care arrangements are expected to keep many mothers of young children out of the labor market thus the relationship between employment and child care for these mothers is thought to play a strong role in the link between welfare recipiency and child care welfare programs before and after welfare reform have targeted child care as a barrier to employment 1 before welfare reform child care subsidies were available to some recipients through federal title iv a funding sources for child care afdc jobs at risk transitional child care and through the child care development block grant these funds often came with matching requirements from the states the personal responsibility and work opportunity reconciliation act of 1996 prwora consolidated all these funds into state block grants thereby permitting the states to design their own child care assistance schemes states may supplement federal child care block grants with state dollars but there is no longer a required state match thus while the total federal dollar amount allocated to child care in temporary assistance for needy families tanf exceeds former federal aid to families with dependent children afdc child care commitments because tanf requires less in state matching expenditures it is unclear what will happen to total child care expenditures as welfare reform evolves early postreform evidence suggests that while overall child care spending at the state level has increased the increase is less than would have occurred had the matching requirements been retained a recent study of welfare leavers reports that few are receiving subsidies schumacher and greenberg 1999 and only 1 24 million of the approximately 10 million children eligible for federally funded support received assistance in 1997 u s department of health and human services 1999 underlying states expenditures on child care subsidies are their subsidy eligibility guidelines participation in such subsidy programs by the eligible population and availability of subsidized slots or funds for those families applying for such funds only a small percentage of families eligible for subsidies based on the federal maximum income limits receive such support federal guidelines as outlined in prwora stipulate that federally financed child care subsidies can be made available to families with incomes up to 85 of the state s median income however as of july 1999 only five states had set their eligibility guidelines at the federal maximum in addition participation by the state defined eligible group is quite low partially because of a lack of information city officials in san francisco have used an innovative peer outreach program to increase participation by the eligible population and by the start of 2000 the city was enrolling 50 of the estimated eligible population an enrollment rate twice the statewide average heymann 2000b extensive data on post tanf behavior are not yet available nor will they be for some time however there is some evidence that workers continue to report that availability and cost of child care are barriers to self sufficiency

commercialization of the small farm sector and multidimensional poverty abstract global poverty rates have declined considerably but the number of people living in extreme poverty remains high many of the world s poor are smallholder farmers agricultural commercialization meaning a shift from subsistence to more market oriented farming can play a central role in improving smallholder welfare previous studies evaluated the impact of agricultural commercialization on income poverty but whether income gains from commercialization are really used for satisfying basic needs was hardly analyzed up till now here we evaluate the effect of commercialization on income poverty as well as on the multidimensional poverty index that looks at deprivations in terms of education nutrition health and other dimensions of living standard using data from 805 farm households in kenya we estimate average treatment effects and also analyze impact heterogeneity with quantile regressions results show that commercialization reduces both income poverty and multidimensional poverty the magnitude of the income gains is positively correlated with income level meaning that market linkage support for marginalized farms may be needed to avoid rising inequality however the effect in terms of reducing basic needs deprivations is stronger for the poorest households suggesting that agricultural commercialization contributes effectively to achieving the sustainable development goals

level playing fields and laissez faire postliberal development strategy in inegalitarian agrarian economies focusing on the rural sector in latin america this paper explores the microeconomic linkages between distribution and growth which drive the possible reproduction of rural poverty over time the result of this exploration is a neostructuralist perspective which argues that actually existing laissez faire agrarian economies do not present a level playing field and that low wealth farms face disadvantages which tend to reproduce or even deepen sectoral inequality the paper then tries to identify the sorts of public policy and collective action which might modify the nature of growth and distribution in post liberalization agrarian market economy

employment and child care choices in canada and the united states in this paper we examine employment and child care choices of two parent families with young children in the united states and canada using a pooled data set based on recent national surveys in each country we find that the employment and child care choices of canadian families are similar to those of u s families estimates of a model of employment and child care choices indicate significant effects of child care subsidies child care prices and wage rates on employment and child care choices however none of these factors helps to explain the differences in employment and child care choices between the two countries ce memoire examine le choix de l emploi et du soin des enfants dans les familles ou il y deux parents aux etats unis et au canada en utilisant des donnees d etudes recentes dans les deux pays il appert que les choix des familles canadiennes sont semblables a ceux des familles americaines les calibrations d un modele de ces choix montrent les effets significatifs des subventions au soin des enfants du prix des soins des enfants et des taux de salaires sur ces choix cependant aucun de ces facteurs n explique les diffrences dans les patterns de choix entre les deux pays

a structural explanation of recent changes in life cycle labor supply and fertility behavior of married women in the united states abstract this study documents and explains important changes in the life cycle labor supply and fertility behavior of married women in the united states from the 1950s to more recent cohorts the younger cohorts relative to the 1950s supply more labor at earlier stages of the life cycle delay motherhood to later stages without reducing the fertility rate and upon childbearing show a greater tendency to stay out of the labor force in a life cycle model for married couples in which a household makes decisions on fertility as well as labor supply consumption and savings all the behavioral changes are jointly and quantitatively explained by a combination of changes in various labor supply fertility determinants with the increased returns penalties to work non work experience being the dominant contributor the results survive a series of robustness tests including endogenizing education choice and assortative marriage

beyond agriculture versus non agriculture decomposing sectoral growth poverty linkages in five african countries summary africa s development debate is often cast as agriculture versus non agriculture with agriculture s proponents arguing that agricultural growth is more effective at reducing poverty this dual economy perspective overlooks the heterogeneity within and synergies between these two broad sectors recent studies decompose agriculture into subsectors and find that agricultural growth led by smallholder farmers is even more effective at reducing poverty than larger scale estate farms in contrast few studies estimate subsectoral growth poverty linkages for non agriculture yet we strongly expect for example that growth led by informal traders or foreign owned mining companies will have quite different implications for poverty reduction different perspectives on what constitutes non agriculture might therefore explain divergent views on its relative importance for poverty reduction to address this gap in our understanding we estimate sectoral poverty growth elasticities using economy wide models for five african countries while our estimated elasticities are higher for agriculture than for non agriculture as a whole the extent to which this is true varies considerably across nonagricultural subsectors and across countries we find that the poverty growth elasticities for trade and transport services and manufacturing especially agro processing are often close to and sometimes exceed agriculture s this means that growth led by these nonagricultural subsectors might be as effective as agriculture at reaching the poor this confirms the need for a more nuanced treatment of non agriculture in africa s policy debate and may explain conflicting perspectives on agriculture s role vis a vis non agriculture

rural market imperfections and the farm size productivity relationship evidence from pakistan the subject of this article is the relationships between farm size and productivity and between farm size and profitability in the developing countries the recent controversies over the inverse size output relationship are reviewed and a framework is provided that explains the inverse relationship based on plausible assumptions about imperfections in the markets for labor land credit and risk from this framework a set of testable hypotheses are derived the hypotheses are tested on recent farm level panel data from pakistan a strong inverse relationship between farm size and yield is present in the sample even when household fixed effects are used to account for unobserved heterogeneity moreover the suggested market imperfections framework is consistent with the data

an economic theory of self control the concept of self control is incorporated in a theory of individual intertemporal choice by modeling the individual as an organization the individual at a point in time is assumed to be both a farsighted planner and a myopic doer the resulting conflict is seen to be fundamentally similar to the agency conflict between the owners and managers of a firm both individuals and firms use the same techniques to mitigate the problems which the conflicts create this paper stresses the implications of this agency model and discusses as applications the effect of pensions on saving saving and the timing of income flows and individual discount rates

the effectiveness of child care subsidies in encouraging the welfare to work transition of low income single mothers in recent years public attitudes toward single mothers have changed dramatically and policymakers are being pressed to devise reforms that will reduce their welfare dependency in the summer of 1994 at least 11 separate welfare reform proposals were being debated by congressional committees because child care is relatively expensive compared to potential earnings for single mothers extensions to current child care assistance programs will be an integral component of any welfare reform package very little evidence exists regarding child care utilization patterns and links to employment for low income mothers exceptions include mark berger and dan black 1992 and the recent congressional testimony given by jane ross 1994 of the gao contributing to the changing attitudes toward welfare recipients is the change in the demographic makeup of the labor force overall female labor force participation rates have grown dramatically in the past 30 years from 45 percent in the mid 1960 s to 75 percent in the early 1990 s as a result subsidizing poor single mothers so that they can stay at home with their children while more and more married mothers are working for pay has become less popular this has led to the encouragement of work particularly full time work as a means of poverty reduction for single mothers unfortunately child care costs represent a significant employment barrier on average child care costs 63 per week overall and 44 per week for care by a relative for the typical single mother child care costs range between 15 percent and 30 percent of earned income depending on the mode of care and hourly wage 2

child care prices and maternal employment a meta analysis the literature estimates for labor force participation elasticity with regard to child care prices are extensive and varying while some estimates imply substantial gains from child care subsidies others find insignificant effects to determine the causes of the variance this paper reviews and analyzes the elasticity sizes using estimates from 36 peer reviewed articles and working papers in the literature we start by reviewing the theoretical and empirical aspects related to participation elasticity with regard to child care costs paying special attention to sample characteristics methodological aspects and macro level factors we conclude by providing a meta regression using control variables based on our review of the literature to explain some of the differences between the estimates as research builds on and improves the methods and assumptions in prior works elasticity estimates have become smaller over time this decline might also be partially explained by changes in labor market characteristics in countries with high rates of part time work and very high or very low rates of female labor force participation we find elasticity rates to be smaller

slippage in rebate programs and present biased preferences present biased preferences capture the idea that individuals may find immediate payoffs significantly more salient than any future payoffs rather than simply discounting the future in a time consistent manner in this paper we show that consumers present biased preferences can generate slippage and we explore whether this can explain firms use of mail in rebates we assume that the consumer population comprises members who have various degrees of present bias the model demonstrates that if consumers have homogeneous willingness to pay for a product and thus rebates do not serve as a mechanism for traditional price discrimination rebates may still profitably exploit slippage but to do so they must generate very high slippage rates this is because the rebate must greatly exceed the price markup because the rebate must compensate consumers for the cost of redemption and the delay in receiving the rebate the ability of rebate programs to take advantage of present biased consumers is quite limited in settings where there is significant variance in the degree of present bias within the population unless the extent of consumers present bias is highly correlated with their rebate redemption costs

can cities or towns drive african development economy wide analysis for ethiopia and uganda rapid urbanization is an important characteristic of african development and yet the structural transformation debate focuses on agriculture s relative merits without also considering the benefits from urban agglomeration as a result african governments are often provided conflicting recommendations on the importance of rural agriculture or urban industry we develop dynamic economy wide models for ethiopia and uganda that capture both traditional aspects of the debate growth linkages and foreign trade and benefits from urbanization internal migration and agglomeration effects simulations suggest that urban agglomeration is an important source of long term growth and structural transformation but that investing in cities does not greatly reduce national poverty over the short term in this regard agricultural growth is more effective albeit with slower national growth given these trade offs we conclude that

explaining the decline in the u s employment to population ratio a review of the evidence this paper first documents trends in employment rates and then reviews what is known about the various factors that have been proposed to explain the decline in the overall employment to population ratio between 1999 and 2018 population aging has had a large effect on the overall employment rate over this period but within age group declines in employment among young and prime age adults also have played a central role among the factors with effects that we can quantify based on existing evidence labor demand factors in particular increased import competition from china and the penetration of robots into the labor market are the most important drivers of observed within group declines in employment labor supply factors most notably increased participation in disability insurance programs have played a less important but not inconsequential role increases in the real value of state minimum wages and in the share of individuals with prison records also have contributed modestly to the decline in the aggregate employment rate in addition to the factors whose effects we roughly quantify we identify a set of potentially important factors about which the evidence does not yet allow us to draw clear conclusions these include the challenges associated with arranging child care improvements in leisure technology changing social norms increased use of opioids the growth in occupational licensing and declining labor market fluidity our evidence driven ranking of factors should be useful for guiding future discussions about the sources of decline in the aggregate employment to population ratio and consequently the likely efficacy of alternative policy approaches to increasing employment rates

inefficiency of male and female labor supply in agricultural households evidence from uganda this article analyzes the efficiency of the intra household allocation of female and male labor inputs in agricultural production in a collective household model spouses optimal on farm labor supply is such that the marginal rate of technical substitution between male and female labor is equated over different crops using the uganda national household survey 2005 06 we test whether this condition holds by estimating production functions and controlling for endogeneity using a method proposed by gandhi navarro and rivers 2009 we find that women are less productive than men that there is more female labor input on low productivity parcels and that men are relatively more productive on female controlled plots compared with male controlled plots total farm output could be higher and pareto improvements could be possible if male labor was reallocated to female controlled plots and or female labor was reallocated to male controlled plots

the econometrics of piecewise linear budget constraints a survey and exposition of the maximum likelihood method in this article maximum likelihood techniques for estimating consumer demand functions when budget constraints are piecewise linear are exposited and surveyed consumer demand functions are formally derived under such constraints and it is shown that the functions are themselves nonlinear as a result the econometric problems in estimating such functions are exposited and the importance of the stochastic specification is stressed in particular the specification of both unobserved heterogeneity of preferences and measurement error econometric issues in estimation and testing are discussed and the results of the studies that have been conducted to date are surveyed

an analysis of women s return to work decisions following first birth women s labor force participation has increased sharply over the last two decades particularly for married women with young children this suggests women are spending less time out of the labor force for child bearing and rearing using the detailed information available in the nlsy i explore women s decisions to return to work within one year of their first child s birth focusing on the effect of child care costs consistent with economic theory women facing lower child care costs are more likely to return to work as are women with higher potential wages and lower family income from other sources jel j0

the future of small farms trajectories and policy priorities summary while smallholder development has in the past led to reductions in poverty and hunger does this still apply in today s more globalized world this paper reviews the debates on the contemporary role of agriculture in development and the case for small farms in light of the rise of supermarkets lower commodity prices and liberalized trade agricultural research funding environmental change hiv aids and changing policy ideas although the answers vary greatly by context for many low income countries smallholder development remains a key option the policy agenda however has changed in addition to providing public goods the growing challenge is to overcome market failures which is largely a matter of institutional innovation

producer relationships and local development in fresh fruit commodity chains an analysis of blueberry production in entre rios argentina craviotti c producer relationships and local development in fresh fruit commodity chains an analysis of blueberry production in entre rios argentina regional studies in current regional perspectives intangible capitals are considered critical assets of regional economies the aim of this article is to analyse the role of networks in the development of blueberry production in the province of entre rios nowadays the most important productive area of argentina it argues that although horizontal networks either private or public private were not particularly important for the emergence of blueberry production in the area they are needed in a situation where a redefinition of the agri food chain is at stake coordination and cooperation networks could help to sustain the continuity of production at the local level and to make local small scale producers viable in a global context craviotti c

the econometrics of nonlinear budget sets traditional empirical analysis of consumer demand has usually made the assumption of linear budget sets that is the consumer is assumed to purchase any desired quantity at a constant price subject to a budget constraint the major exception to this framework is the analysis of demand when some goods are rationed 2 in the rationed case the price is constant up to a quantity limit in contrast to the rationed case here i consider the situation where the price varies with the amount of the good purchased empirical situations with nonconstant prices come readily to mind and of course they have received much recent attention from theorists since mirrlees 44 paper on optimal nonlinear taxation the following examples are meant to give a partial listing of cases when nonlinear budget sets occur i electricity prices many electric utilities engage in declining block pricing that is the marginal price of successive kwh s of electricity decrease at a given number of points determined by total demand thus the budget set is piecewise linear houthakker 36 was the first to propose an approach to this problem taylor 51 analyzes the problem at length and hausman kinnucin and mcfadden 31 use an instrumental variables estimator to provide consistent estimates of the demand function

agricultural growth linkages in guatemala new insights from a value chain approach the agricultural growth linkage debate substantiates that agriculture contributes to economic growth through its linkages to other sectors this paper contributes to the debate by combining a value chain approach with input output analysis results for guatemala show that the sectors linked to agriculture are predominantly informal sectors and that these sectors create less value added but more employment than formal sectors it is also demonstrated that forward linkages are more important than backward linkages in conclusion agricultural linkages to forward sectors have a high potential to generate employment and value added and therefore should be supported by development policies

women s employment and child care choices in urban china during the economic transition abstractchina s transition from a centrally planned to a market economy has substantially eroded governmental support for child care raising the concern about how the change of child care provision may affect women s labor market participation this article examines the impact of child care availability and affordability on the employment and child care choices of urban chinese women with preschool children during the transition the analysis shows that the presence of day care in the community is positively associated with a mother s labor force participation and labor hour supply and that the rising costs of hired caregivers reduce the mother s labor hour supply the analysis also finds that both the costs of hired caregivers and family income have important effects on the use of out of home care services simulations indicate that the decline in day care presence would account for 46 of the decrease in mothers labor force participation during the public sector restructuring between 1997 and 2000

marital status and full time part time work status in child care choices using recent sipp data this study estimates two econometric models to study the differences in the effect of child care costs on employment status and differences in the mode of child care used controlling for employment status for both married and single women full time employment is more elastic with respect to changes in the price of child care than part time employment and employment elasticities are larger for single than married mothers in the model of child care modal choice we find that an increased probability of full time employment is associated with an increase in the use of centre care for both married and single mothers and that price elasticities of modal choice are larger for single than married mothers

childcare subsidies wages and employment of single mothers this paper develops and estimates a model for the choice of part time and full time employment and the decision to pay for childcare among single mothers the results indicate that a lower childcare price and a higher full time wage rate both lead to an increase in overall employment and the use of paid childcare the part time wage effects are found to be too small to have significant behavioral implications an analysis of cost effectiveness indicates that the additional hours of work generated per dollar of government expenditure is larger for a childcare subsidy than a wage subsidy

two birds with one stone female labor supply fertility and market childcare abstract the correlation between the female labor force participation rate fpr and the total fertility rate tfr has switched from negative to positive in some developed countries in this paper we show how increasing the substitutability between maternal time and market childcare can raise both fpr and tfr and provide an explanation for the change in the tfr fpr correlation simulations of a life cycle model of married women s work and fertility decisions indicate that the fpr increases whereas the tfr is u shaped with regard to substitutability the dynamic relationship depends on the relative strength of behavioral and composition effects greater substitutability allows working women to have more children but it also attracts less productive women to enter the labor force who trade childbirths for labor supply the findings imply that raising substitutability to a sufficiently high level can achieve the two seemingly conflicting goals increasing female labor force participation and fertility rates

changing locus of agricultural research will the poor benefit from biotechnology and privatization trends over the past decade the locus of agricultural research and development has shifted dramatically from the public to the private multinational sector three interrelated forces are transforming the system for supplying improved agricultural technologies to the world s farmers the first is the strengthened and evolving environment for protecting intellectual property in plant innovations the second is the rapid pace of discovery and growth in importance of molecular biology and genetic engineering finally agricultural input and output trade is becoming more open in nearly all countries these developments have created a powerful new set of incentives for private research investment altering the structure of the public private agricultural research endeavor particularly with respect to crop improvement

child care costs and family labor supply this paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of the effects of child care costs on family labor supply and the demand for market child care the model is a framework for cross section estimation of the effects of child care costs on labor supply and child care use it applies to households having young children requiring continuous care and in which both the mother and 1 other potential child care provider are present the 3 potential sources of child care are the mother the potential informal provider and the market using data from the 1980 baseline household survey of the employment opportunity pilot projects this empirical analysis uses a subsample of 6170 households in which there is a married woman under age 45 with her spouse present at the time of the survey at least 1 child under age 14 and nonmissing data on key variables results show that 1 higher market child care costs discourage women from working even when an informal source of care is available indicating that such informal care is an imperfect substitute for market care 2 a higher wage rate for the mother encourages her to work thus a higher wage rate increases the probability of using market child care 3 the number of children requiring care has a negative impact on the probability of the women working with the largest impact caused by younger children 4 nonwage income has a negative impact on the probability of the woman working and 5 black women are more likely to work than whites and are statistically more likely than whites to use market child care if they do work this family labor supply model predicts that the cost of market child care will affect household decisions on labor supply and child care use estimates of a qualitative choice model provide strong confirmation that child care costs affect such decisions the responsiveness of the labor supply of mothers to child care costs demonstrated in this study indicate that such subsidies do have their intended effect of encouraging labor supply the fact that a large proportion of current child care subsidies benefit primarily middle and upper income families via the income tax credit suggests that the labor supply effets of such subsidies may in practice be stronger for less needy families than for low income families employer subsidized child care may become an increasingly popular tool for attracting mothers into the labor force

new ways of looking at old issues inequality and growth abstract the paper uses new cross country data on income and asset land distribution to show that i there is a strong negative relationship between initial inequality in the asset distribution and long term growth ii inequality reduces income growth for the poor but not for the rich and iii available longitudinal data provide little support for the kuznets hypothesis policies that increase aggregate investment and facilitate acquisition of assets by the poor might thus be doubly beneficial for growth and poverty reduction

work costs and nonconvex preferences in the estimation of labor supply models abstract works costs have not been adequately handled in labor supply estimation likely due to their complexity we show that if work costs are not accounted for in the budget and time constraints in a structural labor supply model they will be subsumed into the data generating preferences even if underlying preferences over consumption and leisure are convex the presence of unobservable work costs can make these preferences appear nonconvex however we show that under plausible conditions policy relevant calculations such as estimates of the effect of tax changes on labor supply and deadweight loss measures are not affected by the fact that estimated preferences incorporate work costs

to be consumed with moderation abstract we study the optimal behavior of a hyperbolic discounting agent who has incomplete information about his own preferences and can only learn them through consumption we show that even if moderate current consumption and moderate future consumption always dominates abstinence the agent may optimally decide not to consume as a commitment device against inefficient learning that would lead to future excesses this provides a rationale for why smokers gamblers or compulsive buyers stick to second best personal rules of behavior such as abstinence without invoking standard habit formation arguments we also study how urges modify the strategy of the individual

why new crop technology is not scale neutral a critique of the expectations for a crop based african green revolution poverty reduction during the asian green revolution has been attributed to the inherent scale neutrality of new crop varieties making them equally beneficial to small scale and large scale farmers the term scale neutral is now reappearing in debates on agricultural development in africa with claims that crop technology is inherently scale neutral and that african smallholders will significantly benefit from new crop varieties not specifically developed for their contexts using a social shaping of technology sst perspective and the concept of biological embeddedness this paper critically examines whether it is helpful to describe crop technology as scale neutral when drawing lessons from the asian green revolution about how new crop technology can be of benefit to african smallholders the paper describes how political commitment rather than inherently scale neutral crops was central for the outcome of the asian green revolution it also highlights that while the effects of crop biology are often disregarded in adoption studies biology significantly affected the ability of green revolution crop technology to benefit smallholders and continues to do so today using maize and gm crops as examples this paper suggests that gm crops in their current form have reinforced a technological trajectory established with hybrid technology and directed it away from smallholder practices and agroecologies consequently describing crop technology as inherently scale neutral is not helpful for understanding how crop technology works in africa today and prevents important lessons being learned from the asian green revolution

maquiladoras and market mamas women s work and childcare in guatemala city and accra abstract this paper analyses work childcare and earnings of mothers in the slums of guatemala city and accra similar factors affect decisions to work and to use formal daycare but the importance of childcare varies with the role of the formal labour sector in guatemala where formal sector work is important higher prices for informal care increase formal daycare use however daycare prices and proximity to daycare centers do not significantly affect earnings in guatemala city and accra respectively providing formal daycare may be more important to mothers decision to work in cities where formal sector work dominates

a theory of rational addiction we develop a theory of rational addiction in which rationality means a consistent plan to maximize utility over time strong addiction to a good requires a big effect of past consumption of the good on current consumption such powerful complementarities cause some steady states to be unstable they are an important part of our analysis because even small deviations from the consumption at an unstable steady state can lead to large cumulative rises over time in addictive consumption or to rapid falls in consumption to abstention our theory also implies that cold turkey is used to end strong addictions that addicts often go on binges that addicts respond more to permanent than to temporary changes in prices of addictive goods and that anxiety and tensions can precipitate an addiction

six characters and a few more in search of an author how to rescue rural development before it s too late rural development has not received the priority and attention warranted by the present and future concentration of poverty in rural areas is this perhaps because rural development agencies present conflicting narratives a framework is presented within which to answer that question and is then applied to the recent policy statements of the european union eu food and agriculture organization fao international fund for agricultural deveopment ifad and the world bank each policy statement is compelling in its own way but the strategies are not consistent a narrative is needed which recognizes the rapid pace of change in rural areas acknowledges the need for diversification out of agriculture builds market institutions for growth and works effectively within the current international consensus on poverty reduction emphasising opportunity empowerment and security

procrastination and obedience in this lecture i shall focus on situations involving repeated decisions with time inconsistent behavior although each choice may be close to maximizing and therefore result in only small losses the cumulative effect of a series of repeated errors may be quite large thus in my examples decision makers are quite close to the intelligent well informed individuals usually assumed in economic analysis but cumulatively they make seriously wrong decisions that do not occur in standard textbook economics this lecture discusses and illustrates several pathological modes of individual and group behavior procrastination in decision making undue obedience to authority membership of seemingly normal individuals in deviant cult groups and escalation of commitment to courses of action that are clearly unwise in each case individuals choose a series of current actions without fully appreciating how those actions will affect future perceptions and behavior the standard assumption of rational forwardlooking utility maximizing is violated the nonindependence of errors in decision making in the series of decisions can be explained with the concept from cognitive psychology of undue salience or vividness for example present benefits and costs may have undue salience relative to future costs

child care costs as a barrier to employment for single and married mothers because women typically serve as primary care providers for their children female labor force participation behavior is likely to be affected significantly by the costs associated with replacing maternal care with nonmaternal care while some evidence of this phenomenon exists in the economics literature discrepancies across studies make it difficult to provide conclusive evidence of the employment effects of these child care costs this paper uses an improved sipp survey design to present new evidence regarding the degree to which child care prices impede mothers employment behavior with additional evidence of the difference in these elasticities across marital status empirical technique and equation specification this permits linking this paper to the existing evidence drawing the conclusion that child care prices impede mothers employment behavior significantly with single mothers exhibiting less responsiveness in their labor force participation behavior to child care price changes than marri

land reform as commenced business the evidence against stopping abstract in the new paradigm institutions are long term endogenous thus the aims of land reform must be compatible with replace or substitute for initial incentives and power structures many reforms e g compulsory collectives are not redefinition of land reform is therefore needed yet the case for private land redistribution with ceilings remains the inverse relationship rests firmly on lower cost labor transactions in small farms though large but competitive transport or processing firms which enjoy lower cost capital transactions may be needed crucial is the impact of the postreform structure on livelihoods especially for the growing rural majority near landless workers new style market based reforms have potential probably best combined with old style ceilings substantial compensation with urban taxpayers sharing costs alternative off farm prospects and progressive taxes on large landholdings or bequests

reconsideration proofness a refinement for infinite horizon time inconsistency this paper examines a game in which an infinitely lived decision maker with inconsistent preferences makes choices over time there are typically many subgame perfect equilibria to this game i describe a refinement of subgame perfection that i term reconsideration proofness there is always a reconsideration proof equilibrium and all reconsideration proof equilibrium paths provide the same utility to the decision maker i show that reconsideration proofness is relevant for macroeconomic policy games by proving an equivalence result between sustainable equilibria in policy games as defined by chari and kehoe 1990 and subgame perfect equilibria in intertemporally inconsistent choice problems journal of economic literatureclassification numbers c73 d91 e61

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

part time versus full time work and child care costs evidence for married mothers this paper contributes to the analysis of female labour supply by accounting for both child care costs and differences in part time and full time work an ordered probit model is used to examine the impact of child care costs on the work status of married mothers data are drawn from the canadian national child care survey and the labour market activity survey the results from this paper show the degree to which child care subsidies may have differential impacts on part time and full time work decisions by mothers the child care cost elasticities for part time and full time employment are reported to be 0 21 and 0 71 respectively

the demand for quality in child care we estimate a model of demand for quality related attributes of child care group size staff child ratio and provider training the model is estimated jointly with equations for mode expenditure on and hours of care and the mother s labor supply the results show that a lower price of child care in a particular mode leads to substitution toward that mode and an increase in the use of paid child care a decrease in the price of care causes an increase in hours of care demanded and a decrease in the demand for qualityrelated attributes income effects on demand for quality are small

incentives for procrastinators we examine how principals should design incentives to induce time inconsistent procrastinating agents to complete tasks efficiently delay is costly to the principal but the agent faces stochastic costs of completing the task and efficiency requires waiting when costs are high if the principal knows the task cost distribution she can always achieve first best efficiency if the agent has private information the principal can induce first best efficiency for time consistent agents but often cannot for procrastinators we show that second best optimal incentives for procrastinators typically involve an increasing punishment for delay as time passes

behavioural and material determinants of production relations in agriculture in this essay we develop a framework for analysing the major institutions governing the production and exchange of output and the primary factors of production in rural areas the analysis incorporates general considerations of risk and information constraints jointly with the principal material attributes of agriculture and of agricultural production factors the framework is used to analyse barriers to the existence of the major intertemporal and factor markets it is applied specifically to land scarce environments for which it provides an internally consistent explanation for many of the well documented institutional features of such settings in addition the analysis provides new implications for among other phenomena the inter relationships among ownership holdings operational scale family size and factor productivity for the scarcity of animal rental markets and use of animals as collateral for the renting out of land by small landowners and for the existence of plantations for certain crops

food insecurity income inequality and the changing comparative advantage in world agriculture i would like to argue in this article that in the process of economic development in land poor countries in asia agriculture faces three distinctly different problems food insecurity sectoral income inequality and the declining food self sufficiency associated with the declining comparative advantage in agriculture at the high income stage massive imports of food grains to asia if they occur will aggravate the world food shortage which will have significant implications for the poverty incidence in the world i argue that in order to avoid such a tragedy asia should expand farm size to reduce labor cost by adopting large scale mechanization sub saharan africa should realize a green revolution in grain production and latin america should further expand its grain production capacity

the future of small farms new directions for services institutions and intermediation summary efficient pre and post harvest services are essential if small farms in high potential areas are to intensify production contribute to economic growth and reduce poverty they also matter if small farms in marginal areas are to manage their natural resource base in the face of growing population pressure and climate change difficulties that smallholders face in accessing services are reviewed showing how incentives for commercial delivery of services to smallholders differ between staple food traditional cash crop and high value product supply chains the major challenge in service delivery to smallholders in much of africa concerns coordination of service development and delivery different forms of intermediary institution for achieving such coordination are examined

the political economy of agriculture for development today the small versus large scale debate revisited the role of agriculture in economic development and the development politics of promoting smallholder versus large scale agriculture have both been at the center of a long lasting and controversial debate using an innovative methodology which combines a value chain approach with input output analysis the growth multipliers and productivity of both farm types in guatemala are analyzed results show that smallholder agriculture has the same potential to stimulate output growth as large scale agriculture smallholder value chains include mainly informal sectors and create more jobs than commercial agriculture therefore a reorientation of agricultural and land policies toward small scale food producers and within a comprehensive policy of integrated rural development is not only necessary in terms of social equity but also for boosting economic development

rational demand and expenditures patterns under habit formation abstract this paper proposes a model in which habit formation is present in a relatively general but tractable way the consumer s problem is transformed into a sequence of two period fisherian problems by introducing a reduced utility function to ensure full dynamic rationality of the consumer by making preferences dependent on past real expenditure levels rather than past consumption bundles it is possible to characterize the long run behavior of the consumer stability analysis is performed the cases of immediate habit formation and delayed habit formation are discussed

temptation and commitment in the laboratory temptation and self control in intertemporal choice environments are receiving increasing attention in the theoretical economics literature nevertheless there remains a scarcity of empirical evidence from controlled environments informing behavior under repeated temptations this is unfortunate in light of the fact that in many natural environments the same temptation must be repeatedly resisted this paper fills that gap by reporting data from a novel laboratory study of economic decisions under repeat temptations subjects are repeatedly offered an option with instantaneous benefit that also entails a substantial reduction to overall earnings we show that this option is tempting in the sense that a substantial fraction of our subjects incur pecuniary costs to eliminate the choice and thus commit to not choosing the tempting alternative we compare the timing and price elasticity of these commitment decisions to predictions from existing theoretical models of decision under temptation our data are broadly consistent with theory with the notable exception that commitment often occurs with delay rather than at the first opportunity moreover the timing of commitment is significantly impacted by the cost of the commitment device the patterns we report have direct implications for economic theory and are a first step toward designing mechanisms that promote prudent economic decisions under temptation

the globalization of organic agro food networks summary this article analyzes the booming world trade in organic agro foods such as tropical products counterseasonal fresh produce and processed foods research focuses on expanding south north networks linking major us and european markets with major production regions particularly in latin america employing a commodity network approach i analyze organic production distribution and consumption patterns and the roles of social political and economic actors in consolidating international trade organic certification proves central to network governance shaping product specifications production parameters and enterprise participation my analysis identifies key contradictions between mainstream agro industrial and alternative movement conventions in global organic networks 2004 published by elsevier ltd

child care and the labor supply of married women reduced form evidence this paper empirically analyzes family demands for market and nonmarket child care services and the impact of these demands on the work effort of married women the paperfirst develops a general model of child care and labor force participation the model predicts that higher wages increase the likelihood of labor force participation and that higher costs decrease the likelihood of child care utilization the paper then develops a threeequation reduced form econometric specification of the general model the equations in the specification are estimated simultaneously using 1985 data from the survey of income program participation the estimates reveal that the cost of market child care has a strong negative effect on the labor supply of married women

state intervention for food price stabilisation in africa can it work abstract although its arguments may have more general applicability this paper discusses the desirability and options for the stabilisation of staple food prices principally in eastern and southern africa it addresses three broad questions i why is stabilisation of food grain prices desirable ii what is technically feasible and iii can the governance and trade issues thrown up by suggested mechanisms be solved it considers a number of options for price stabilisation assessing the strengths and weaknesses of each and suggesting situations in which each may be appropriate

evaluating the effects of childcare policies on children s cognitive development and maternal labor supply to explore the role of childcare policies in the development of early cognitive skills this paper jointly estimates a cognitive achievement production function and a dynamic discrete choice model of maternal labor supply and childcare decisions using counter actuals from the model i investigate how the designs of two childcare programs head start and childcare subsidies affect the formation of cognitive skills through maternal work and childcare decisions the results suggest large impacts on cognitive skills from expanding head start to current noneligibles and negligible impacts of subsidies on cognitive skills of current eligibles abstract from author

maternal labor supply and the availability of public pre k evidence from the introduction of prekindergarten into american public schools in the 1980s and 1990s many states began to provide funding for prekindergarten programs for the first time this paper takes advantage of the staggered timing in program funding to investigate the effect that increased availability of prekindergarten programs has on the labor supply of mothers with four year olds i find that mothers with a four year old and no younger children were significantly more likely to be in the labor force and employed once prekindergarten became available and that these effects were largest for single low educated mothers and married college educated mothers mothers with a four year old and other younger children were also significantly more likely to be in the labor force and employed although these effects were smaller in magnitude and not significant for specific subpopulations

structural transformation and smallholder agriculture an information theoretic analysis of the nicaraguan case in light of continued debate regarding the capacity of small scale agricultural producers to compete amidst globalization and or liberalization we examine recent trends in the distribution and use of agricultural landholdings in developing nations via refined exploration of the nicaraguan case with nationally representative living standards measurement survey type data for the years 1998 2001 and 2005 we employ markov chain methods within an information theoretic framework in an attempt to advance the analysis of structural transformation in developing countries beyond the examination of trends in mean farm sizes or gini coefficients approaches ill suited to the detection of the apparent complexities of structural change further while markov chain analysis has witnessed relatively widespread application in the investigation of structural transformation in developed nations we offer a novel methodological extension by allowing for the simultaneous exploration of structural transformation across multiple dimensions namely structural change in both the distribution and use of agricultural landholdings as well as the incorporation of microlevel determinants of farm size and land use change the results of the inquiry above all suggest that nicaragua s agricultural and livestock sector is characterized by a definitive persistence of smallholders while a moderate tendency toward bifurcation in the distribution of landholdings would appear to obscure any immediate relationship between operational landholdings and land productivity we contend that such trends are in fact consistent with the often observed inverse farm size productivity relationship

individual and collective time consistency this paper reconsiders the strotz pollak problem of consistent planning and argues that a solution to this problem requires a refinement of subgame perfectness such a refinement is offered through an analysis based on greenberg s theory of social situations the properties of this refinement are investigated and illustrated a unifying framework is presented whereby consistent one person planning as a problem of individual time consistency and renegotiation proofness as a problem of collective time consistency are captured through the same general concept

the effect of child care costs on married women s labor force participation the effect of child care costs on the probability that married women with children will participate in the labor market is examined child care costs are estimated using a generalized tobit specification corrected for selection estimates of a structural probit model of labor force participation provide evidence to support the prediction that increased child care costs lower the probability of participation it is also shown that the lower rate of labor force participation among mothers of preschoolers is entirely the result of the higher child care costs faced by these women and endogeneity of the number of young children in the participation equation copyright 1992 by mit press

child care subsidies quality of care and the labor supply of low income single mothers the authors examine the effects of child care subsidies on the labor supply decisions of low income mothers and o n the quality of care their children receive using newly gathered data on two programs that subsidize the child care expenditures of families in kentucky they find that single mothers who receive child care subsidies are more likely to be employed and are generally more satisfied with the care their children receive but subsidies have little effect on hours worked copyright 1992 by mit press

should african rural development strategies depend on smallholder farms an exploration of the inverse productivity hypothesis in africa most development strategies include efforts to improve the productivity of staple crops grown on smallholder farms an underlying premise is that small farms are productive in the african context and that smallholders do not forgo economies of scale a premise supported by the often observed phenomenon that staple cereal yields decline as the scale of production increases this paper explores a research design conundrum that encourages researchers who study the relationship between productivity and scale to use surveys with a narrow geographic reach when policy would be better served with studies based on wide and heterogeneous settings using a model of endogenous technology choice the authors explore the relationship between maize yields and scale using alternative data since rich descriptions of the decision environments that farmers face are needed to identify the applied technologies that generate the data improvements in the location specificity of the data should reduce the likelihood of identification errors and biased estimates however the analysis finds that the inverse productivity hypothesis holds up well across a broad platform of data despite obvious shortcomings with some components it also finds surprising consistency in the estimated scale elasticities

tax credits labor supply and child care we explore the impact of the child care tax credit in the u s income tax system on the labor supply decisions of married women with young children by incorporating the cost of child care into a st

the brain as a hierarchical organization based on recent neuroscience evidence we model the brain as a dual system organization subject to three conflicts asymmetric information temporal hori zon and incentive salience under the first and second conflicts we show that the uninformed system imposes a positive link between consumption and labor at every period furthermore decreasing impatience endogenously emerges as a consequence of these two conflicts under the first and third conflicts it becomes optimal to set a consumption cap finally we discuss the behavioral implications of these rules for choice bracketing and expense tracking and for consumption over the life cycle jel dil d74 d82 d87 d91

child care costs and the employment decision of women canadian evidence the authors estimate the joint decision for women with preschool children to engage in paid employment and to purchase market forms of child care the results confirm those found in most u s studies indicating that child care costs exert a significant negative effect on the labor supply of women with children and on their decision to purchase child care as well the expected wage of the mother exerts a significant positive impact on both the decision to purchase market forms of child care and the decision to engage in paid unemployment

african re agrarianization accumulation or pro poor agricultural growth recent signs of increasing agricultural production in a number of countries in sub saharan africa are by some commentators connected to local level differentiation this paper discusses such interpretations using household level longitudinal data from smallholder households in eight african countries for the period between 2002 and 2008 the use of a mixed methods social science approach complements traditional economic approaches through adding a spatial perspective pro poor agricultural growth so far is concentrated to particular villages where it is highly inclusive the policy challenge remains to devise strategies that can enhance growth also in marginal areas

should day care be subsidized in the presence of distortionary taxes on labor can subsidies on childcare flnanced by a further increase in taxes raise welfare by encouraging women with small children to work we approach this question in two difierent ways first we consider a set of stylized models where we prove analytically that under some conditions the ramsey optimal policy consists in making childcare expenses tax deductible then we construct a calibrated stochastic dynamic life cycle model of household decision making designed to capture some facts about labor supply in germany we flnd that the welfare gains associated with subsidizing childcare are considerable and that the maximum gains are realized when childcare is subsidized to an even greater extent than what tax deductibility implies