cash transfer programs with income multipliers procampo in mexico abstract cash transfer programs create multiplier effects when recipients put the money they receive to work to generate further incomes when this is the case the ultimate income effects are multiples of the amounts transferred we analyze the procampo program in mexico that was introduced to compensate farmers for the anticipated negative effect of nafta on the prices of basic crops the transfer rules and the timing of the panel data collected allow unique control of biases in this impact analysis we find that the multiplier among ejido sector recipients is in the range 1 5 2 6 multipliers are higher for households with medium and large farms low numbers of adults in the household nonindigenous backgrounds and located in the center and gulf regions high multipliers reflect income opportunities that had remained unrealized due to liquidity constraints that are relaxed by the transfers opportunities come from the asset endowments that these households received through the land reform particularly irrigated land and they are enhanced by access to technical assistance

international direct real estate investment a review of the literature this paper provides a critical review of research on international direct real estate investment issues to date no review article has explored the various findings of studies completed on the benefits of international real estate diversification in the past 10 years the quantity and variety of work have increased dramatically the paper is organised by how investing in a real estate asset is analysed in a mixed asset portfolio context or a real estate only portfolio context a fourth section focuses on research that has explored currency risk one of the prevailing risks associated with international investing the last section provides conclusions about the research and offers ideas for future research in this growing area of real estate investment

the spatial and temporal diffusion of house prices in the uk abstract this paper provides a method for the analysis of the spatial and temporal diffusion of shocks in a dynamic system we use changes in real house prices within the uk economy at the level of regions to illustrate its use adjustment to shocks involves both a region specific and a spatial effect shocks to a dominant region london are propagated contemporaneously and spatially to other regions they in turn impact on other regions with a delay we allow for lagged effects to echo back to the dominant region london in turn is influenced by international developments through its link to new york and other financial centers it is shown that new york house prices have a direct effect on london house prices we analyse the effect of shocks using generalised spatio temporal impulse responses these highlight the diffusion of shocks both over time as with the conventional impulse responses and over space

economic mobility and poverty dynamics in developing countries this study provides an introduction to this special issue of the journal of development studies on economic mobility and poverty dynamics in developing countries in addition to providing a conceptual framework it outlines how the contributions fit into the extant literature a series of regularities emerge across these studies the poor consist of those who are always poor poor at all dates and those who move in and out of poverty with the latter group tending to be strikingly large such movements in and out of poverty are apparent when looking at poverty in either absolute or relative terms changes in returns to endowments can be a potent source of increased incomes finally seemingly transitory shocks can have long term consequences the study concludes by drawing out the policy implications of these regularities

agricultural productivity and structural transformation evidence from brazil we study the eects of the adoption of new agricultural technologies on structural transfor mation to guide empirical work we present a simple model where the eect of agricultural productivity on industrial development depends on the factor bias of technical change we test the predictions of the model by studying the introduction of genetically engineered soybean seeds in brazil which had heterogeneous eects on agricultural productivity across areas with dierent soil and weather characteristics we nd that technical change in soy production was strongly labor saving and lead to industrial growth as predicted by the model

institutions infrastructure and economic growth abstract this paper develops a structural model of infrastructure and output growth that takes account of institutional and economic factors that mediate in the infrastructure gdp interactions cross country estimates of the model indicate that the contribution of infrastructure services to gdp is substantial and in general exceeds the cost of provision of those services the results also shed light on the factors that shape a country s response to its infrastructure needs and offer policy implications for facilitating the removal of infrastructure inadequacies

moving off the farm and intensifying agricultural production in shandong a case study of rural labor market linkages in china this study examines linkages between off farm labor markets and the labor allocated by farmers to on farm production of fruit crops using a stratified random sample of rural households in shandong province we find that young and educated members of the labor force tend to work more frequently in the off farm labor market and that off farm employment reduces the likelihood and intensity of fruit production fruit production is associated with lower levels of off farm employment households and individuals who are less likely or able to find off farm employment can benefit from shifting into fruit production although off farm employment is an important avenue out of poverty fruit production provides ways for the less educated and older households to raise their income

generating skilled self employment in developing countries experimental evidence from uganda we study a government program in uganda designed to help the poor and unemployed become self employed artisans increase incomes and thus promote social stability young adults in uganda s conflict affected north were invited to form groups and submit grant proposals for vocational training and business start up funding was randomly assigned among screened and eligible groups treatment groups received unsupervised grants of 382 per member grant recipients invest some in skills training but most in tools and materials after four years half practice a skilled trade relative to the control group the program increases business assets by 57 work hours by 17 and earnings by 38 many also formalize their enterprises and hire labor we see no effect however on social cohesion antisocial behavior or protest effects are similar by gender but are qualitatively different for women because they begin poorer meaning the impact is larger relative to their starting point and because women s work and earnings stagnate without the program but take off with it the patterns we observe are consistent with credit constraints

empowering change the effects of energy provision on individual aspirations in slum communities this paper discusses the role of energy provision in influencing the social aspirations of people living in slums we examine factors that influence the shift in aspirations in five slum settlements using data from 500 interviews conducted in serviced and non serviced slums from the state of gujarat in india the non serviced slums did not have access to basic services namely water sanitation energy roads solid waste and rainwater management we find empirical evidence which suggests that when basic infrastructure provisions are met slum dwellers shift their focus from lower order aspirations to the higher order aspirations like health education housing and land ownership we argue that energy provision enhances productivity and enables slum dwellers to shift their aspirations upwards furthermore we test the effect of work days lost due to illness on the relationship between higher order aspirations and aspirations for energy provision when provision of energy is low higher work day loss dampens higher order aspirations for policy makers this study highlights the critical link between the infrastructure services preferred by slum dwellers and their social aspirations for growth

food security gender and occupational choice among urban low income households this paper examines an adaptive strategy using occupational choice that can be undertaken by household members in urban poor areas to help ensure their access to food our investigation focuses on self employed women and men in 14 predominantly slum communities in bolivia ecuador philippines and thailand results of our empirical analysis show that choice of business is associated with household vulnerability to food insecurity with women in vulnerable households likely to engage in food enterprises the findings suggest that urban low income households can mitigate the risk of food shortage through the selection of an enterprise activity that earns money income and is a direct source of food for consumption

combining quantitative and qualitative methods in assessing chronic poverty the case of rwanda this paper addresses the issue of chronic poverty in rwanda an issue which has not been addressed specifically in the policy debate despite the fact that it is likely to be widespread in part this has reflected lack of available evidence in that the conventional sources used to analyze chronic poverty are not available we argue in this paper that by judicious combination of existing qualitative a high quality nationwide participatory poverty assessment and quantitative sources a household survey it is possible to identify and characterize a clearly distinct group of chronically poor households whose characteristics are different from the poor as a whole

vector autoregressions and reduced form representations of dsge models abstract the performance of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models is often tested against estimated vars this requires that the data generating process consistent with the dsge theoretical model has a finite order var representation this paper discusses the assumptions needed for a finite order var p representation of a dsge model to exist when a var p is only an approximation to the exact infinite order var the truncated var p may return largely incorrect estimates of the impulse response function the results do not hinge on small sample bias or on incorrect identification assumptions but the bias introduced by truncation can lead to bias in the identification of the structural shocks identification strategies that work in the exact var representation perform poorly in the truncated var

calculating the value of time spent collecting water some estimates for ukunda kenya abstract this article presents two procedures for estimating the value of time spent hauling water in developing countries both approaches are used to derive estimates of the value of time for households in ukunda kenya the results indicate that households in this village place a surprisingly high value on the time they spend collecting water a value approximately equivalent to the wage rate for unskilled labor these findings suggest that the economic benefits of improved water services in developing countries may be much greater than is commonly realized

simulating the impact of policy upon chronic and transitory poverty in rural pakistan anti poverty programmes often seek to improve their impact by targeting households for assistance according to welfare measures in a single time period however a growing literature shows the importance to poor households of fluctuations in their welfare from month to month and year to year this study uses a five year panel of 686 households from rural pakistan to investigate the magnitude of chronic or transitory poverty making an explicit adjustment for measurement error the impact of two types of policies those designed to smooth incomes and those designed to promote income growth on the severity of chronic and transitory poverty is examined since the largest part of the squared poverty gap in our sample is transitory large reductions in poverty can be achieved by interventions designed to smooth incomes but reducing chronic poverty in the long term requires large and sustained growth in household incomes the level and variability of incomes is then modelled as a function of household char

a var approach to the economics of fdi in china using a vector autoregression var approach this study re examines several hypotheses suggested by the economic literature on the economics of fdi applying quarterly time series data from china a country which has recently become the second largest host country for fdi innovation accounting variance decomposition and impulse response function analysis is applied to analyse the various interrelationships between fdi and other economic variables of interest in a var system the empirical research using this method in the case of china is limited the study therefore provides an interesting advance in the literature on the economics of fdi in china

regional housing price dependency in the uk a dynamic network approach the cross regional dependency in the uk housing market is analysed using regional house price indices in this article a network approach based on partial correlations is proposed along with roll

consumption versus asset smoothing testing the implications of poverty trap theory in burkina faso abstract despite solid theoretical foundations for the notion that poor borrowing constrained households will intertemporally manage assets to smooth consumption the consumption smoothing hypothesis has not always withstood empirical scrutiny this paper reassesses the intertemporal asset management problem with a poverty trap model and shows that we would expect to see asset smoothing not consumption smoothing in the neighborhood of critical asset levels at which optimal accumulation behavior bifurcates we then employ threshold estimation techniques to empirically confirm the co existence of consumption and asset smoothing regimes using a household panel data set from west africa households above the estimated threshold almost completely insulate their consumption from weather shocks whereas those below the threshold do not these results not only indirectly provide evidence of the existence of poverty traps but also speak to the level and incidence of the costs of uninsured risk

the household responsibility system reform and the adoption of hybrid rice in china abstract this paper studies the diffusion of hybrid rice before and after the recent institutional change from the collective team system to the household based farming system in rural china a simple model which treats the adoption of hybrid rice as a portfolio selection problem is presented the model is tested against time series cross county data collected from hunan province in south china the empirical evidence suggests that 1 adoption behavior in the collective system was not consistent with the predictions of the theoretical model this evidence indicates the existence of administrative intervention in influencing production decisions in the collective system 2 there was a significant change in the structure of the adoption function following the transition from the collective system to the household based system and 3 adoption behavior in the household system is consistent with the predictions of the theoretical model

government policies and private housing prices in singapore regression models are used to show that interest rates income growth rates and the supply of housing have not played a statistically significant role in the determination of private housing prices in singapore between 1975 and 1994 instead private housing prices in singapore were highly correlated with the prices for public sector built housing moreover the timing of government policies relating to the use of compulsory savings for private housing finance purposes the liberalisation of rules on public housing ownership criterion as well as for housing finance had a significant impact on private housing prices

implications of alternate policies on welfare of slum dwellers evidence from pune india abstract in this paper we examine how slum dwellers value location based amenities in most developing country cities residents living in slums have poor quality dwellings and limited access to basic public services and amenities using data from pune india we estimate the residential location choices of slum dwellers which are conditional on housing quality neighborhood amenities and community structure we use these estimates to simulate the impact of alternate interventions on household welfare we find that households derive benefits from housing quality and neighborhood amenities while relocating households to the periphery has adverse consequences for household welfare we show that households could be adequately compensated out of the increased tax revenue accruing from alternative uses of the vacated central land

the impact of ethiopia s productive safety net programme and its linkages abstract this paper assesses the impact of ethiopia s productive safety nets programme psnp the largest social protection programme in sub saharan africa outside of south africa using propensity score matching techniques we find that the programme has little impact on participants on average due in part to transfer levels that fell far below programme targets participants with access to both the psnp and packages of agricultural support are more likely to be food secure to borrow for productive purposes use improved agricultural technologies and operate non farm own business activities however beneficiaries did not experience faster asset growth

infrastructure provision gender and poverty in indian slums we examine the relationship between infrastructure provision and poverty alleviation by analyzing 500 interviews conducted in serviced and non serviced slums in india using a mixed method approach of qualitative analysis and regression modeling we find that infrastructure was associated with a 66 increase in education among females service provision increased literacy by 62 enhanced income by 36 and reduced health costs by 26 evidence suggests that a gender sensitive consideration of infrastructure is necessary and that a one size fits all approach will not suffice we provide evidence that infrastructure investment is critical for well being of slum dwellers and women in particular

slum real estate the low quality high price puzzle in nairobi s slum rental market and its implications for theory and practice summary this study of 1755 households in nairobi s slums challenges the conventional belief that slums offer low quality low cost shelter to a population that cannot afford better standards in nairobi slums provide low quality but high cost shelter although slum residents pay millions of dollars in rents annually and better quality units command higher rents very little is being re invested to upgrade quality to resolve the challenge that the nairobi puzzle poses for theory and practice we develop a new analytical framework for understanding quality of living conditions improving conditions in nairobi s slums requires we argue two simultaneous interventions alteration of the tenure mix to enhance owner occupancy and infrastructure investment

rural reforms and agricultural growth in china this paper employs province level panel data to assess the contributions of decollectivization price adjustments and other reforms to china s agricultural growth in the reform period decollectivization is found to improve total factor productivity and to account for about half of the output growth during 1978 84 the adjustment in state procurement prices also contributed positively to output growth its impact came mainly from the responses in input use the effect of other market related reforms on productivity and output growth was very small reasons for slowdown in agricultural growth after 1984 are also analyzed copyright 1992 by american economic association

an alternative explanation of the price puzzle abstract this paper proposes an explanation for the frequent appearance of a price puzzle in vars designed for monetary policy analysis it assumes that the data are generated by a model in which output and output gap are not equivalent while an econometrician follows the common practice of including only output in the var the omission of the output gap is shown to spuriously produce a price puzzle and several other incorrect conclusions in a class of commonly used models this can happen even if the model admits a triangular identification and if the forecasts produced by the misspecified var are optimal when the model is tested on us data all predictions are supported a commodity price index is not needed to solve the puzzle

the impact of positive agricultural income shocks on rural chinese households in the post collectivization period rural chinese households were required to sell part of their grain output to the state at a below market price however increases in this quota price beginning in 1993 generated substantial positive income shocks these income shocks also varied cross sectionally in accordance with crop composition given that quotas were systematically larger for rice producing households generating a quasi random source of variation in the size of the shock driven by climatic variation in suitability for rice cultivation households induced to experience relatively larger income shocks show evidence of decreased agricultural investment increased investment in non agricultural businesses and increased migration as households gain increased income consistent with the hypothesis that credit constraints may have constrained some households from entering non agricultural production ex ante in addition there is evidence that these households were concentrated among households who had not previously diversified out of agriculture

combining quantitative and qualitative data in welfare policy evaluations in the united states summary researchers have made significant efforts to combine quantitative and qualitative methods in welfare reform policy research in the united states this paper draws on several examples arising from the american experience to argue that mixed methods research particularly but not exclusively with integrated sampling data collection and data analysis can yield important and unexpected insights that neither method alone could generate we caution that each method has strengths and weaknesses that must be borne in mind so as not to oversell the promise of mixed methods research

the dynamic connectedness of uk regional property returns in this study we examine the network topology of uk regional property returns over the period 1973q4 2014q4 using a dynamic measure of connectedness developed by diebold and yilmaz 2014 overall

social background cooperative behavior and norm enforcement studies have shown that there are differences in cooperative behavior across countries furthermore differences in the use and the reaction on the introduction of a norm enforcement mechanism have been documented in cross cultural studies recently we present data which prove that stark differences in both dimensions can exist even within the same town for this end a unique data set was created based on public goods experiments conducted in cape town south africa most of the differences in behavior can however be explained by variables accounting for social capital and social environment such as trust or household violence

agricultural productivity growth rural economic diversity and economic reforms india 1970 2000 a salient theme in d gale johnson s work is the importance of agricultural development for general prosperity and for economic diversification e g johnson 2000 johnson has also noted that most of the world s poor are engaged in farming so that a key focus of development policy is to raise the incomes of farmers from a global perspective increasing the productivity of agriculture given the fixity of land is necessary for both poverty reduction and the development of the nonagricultural sector at the level of the world agricultural productivity gains poverty reduction and the growth of the nonfarm sector are complements however the question remains whether these observations imply that every poor country should focus its public resources on agricultural development in order to raise the incomes of people now engaged in farming and whether such a policy is necessary for obtaining economic diversity in this article we use the experience of india over the past 30 years to address the issue of whether agricultural technical change actually leads to economic diversification and income growth within the rural sector in the context of an open economy country in which there are cross area trade and capital flows we focus in particular on the rural sector because this is the sector in which linkages between agricultural and nonagricultural sectors are thought to be the strongest we exploit the fact that india has maintained a policy of openness with respect to agricultural technology over this period permitting and actively supporting agricultural development and has moved to a reformed regime in which goods are traded and capital is more mobile in the 1990s evidence on the relationship between agricultural growth and nonfarm

heterogeneity in neighborhood level price growth in the united states 1993 2009 examination of detailed geographical information on u s housing transactions from 1993 to 2009 find much heterogeneity at the neighborhood level in when the recent boom began how big the initial jumps in price growth were how long the booms lasted and what types of neighborhoods boomed first there is less neighborhood level heterogeneity in when the bust began and in aggregate price appreciation during the boom this heterogeneity suggests that there was no one dominant cause of the boom we also comment on how very local data may help understand the role of contagion among other housing market phenomena

shocks and their consequences across and within households in rural zimbabwe abstract increasing attention is now being paid to poverty dynamics in developing countries this work links the extent to which households smooth consumption or smooth assets given income shocks the empirical evidence on the churning of households in and out of poverty and the possibility that temporary shocks can have permanent consequences using longitudinal data from rural zimbabwe this paper extends the discussion of these issues by disaggregating the impact of shocks by levels of asset holdings by disaggregating the impact of shocks on individual level welfare and by assessing the extent to which such shocks have permanent consequences by doing so it assesses the validity of distinguishing between asset and consumption smoothing and provides insights into whether poverty dynamics assessed at the household level provide an adequate picture of dynamics at the individual level

exclusionary policies in urban development under servicing migrant households in brazilian cities localities in developed countries often enact regulations to deter low income households from moving in in developing countries such restrictions lead to the emergence of informal housing sectors to deter low income migrants localities in developing countries withhold public services to the informal housing sector using a large sample of brazilian localities we examine migration and exclusion focusing on the public provision of water to small houses where low income migrants are likely to live withholding water connections reduces the locality growth rate particularly of low education households in terms of service provision during dictatorship in brazil we find evidence of strategic exclusion where localities appear to withhold services to deter in migration we also find evidence of strategic interactions among localities within metro areas in their setting of service levels if one locality provides more services to migrant households other localities respond by withholding service

an integrated framework for rural electrification adopting a user centric approach to business model development rural electrification re has gained prominence over the past two decades as an effective means for improving living conditions this growth has largely been driven by socio economic and political imperatives to improve rural livelihood and by technological innovation based on a content analysis of 232 scholarly articles the literature is categorized into four focal lenses technology institutional viability and user centric we find that the first two dominate the re debate the viability lens has been used less frequently whilst the user centric lens began to engage scholars as late as 2007 we provide an overview of the technological institutional and viability lenses and elaborate upon the user centric lens in greater detail for energy policy and practice we combine the four lenses to develop a business model framework that policy makers practitioners and investors could use to assess re projects or to design future rural electrification strategies

giffen behavior and subsistence consumption this paper provides the first real world evidence of giffen behavior i e upward sloping demand subsidizing the prices of dietary staples for extremely poor households in two provinces of china we find strong evidence of giffen behavior for rice in hunan and weaker evidence for wheat in gansu the data provide new insight into the consumption behavior of the poor who act as though maximizing utility subject to subsistence concerns we find that their elasticity of demand depends significantly and nonlinearly on the severity of their poverty understanding this heterogeneity is important for the effective design of welfare programs for the poor jel d12 012

tests of intrahousehold resource allocation using a cv framework a comparison of husbands and wives separate and joint wtp in the slums of navi mumbai india summary husbands and wives from 422 households in the slums of navi mumbai india were interviewed separately first and jointly thereafter in a contingent valuation framework to assess their individual and joint household willingness to pay wtp for malaria vaccines husbands and wives demand differed significantly when they were interviewed separately but not when they were interviewed jointly the author rejects the common preference model and unified bargaining model of intrahousehold resource allocation researchers should consider the complexity of intrahousehold decision making when they conduct stated preference surveys even in patriarchal societies

welfare dynamics in pakistan and ethiopia does the estimation method matter identifying household level welfare dynamics and associated dynamic poverty trap thresholds can have important implications for the targeting of poverty reduction policies the small existing empirical microeconomic literature has found evidence both for and against poverty traps using household panel data from rural pakistan and ethiopia this article examines whether these different results are likely driven by differences in estimation methods or whether they reflect actual differences across settings it applies the estimation methods from the existing literature to the same two datasets and also proposes a novel semiparametric panel data estimator that combines the advantages of the previous fully parametric and nonparametric approaches the results suggest that absent any dynamic poverty trap thresholds the effect of using different estimation methods is secondary having a small influence on the estimated long term level of household well being but not the identification of multiple dynamic welfar

regional agricultural endowments and shifts of poverty trap equilibria evidence from ethiopian panel data we examine changes in patterns of equilibria over time and across regions applied to the ethiopia rural household survey we revisit incidence of multiple equilibria using new nonparametric techniques and examine single equilibria that remain stagnant below the poverty line using quantile regressions we identify differences across the income distribution we introduce the empirical analysis of sequences of equilibria we identify a single equilibrium in 1994 1999 but find a second higher equilibrium emerging in 1999 2004 evidencing a shift from unimodal toward a bimodal asset distribution the most deprived region exhibits a low level stagnant equilibrium despite significant rural income growth nationwide

price discovery between private and public housing markets public and private housing markets are usually differentiated in terms of price regulations and policies but they are not necessarily segmented any integration as opposed to segmentation between private and public markets implies that the prices of private housing are interrelated with the prices of public housing determined in the open market if so information revealed in one market will be pertinent for making inferences on prices in the other market this paper addresses the price discovery or relation between public and private housing in view of singapore s substantial public housing programme that has an actively traded secondary market implications for the direction of price causality and upward mobility for households between housing price strata are examined

the effect of foreign investment on the real estate industry in china this paper discusses the development of real estate industry in china in recent years it argues that hayek s theory of economic fluctuations can help to explain the contraction of the real estate market in 1994 in china as a whole however as a theory of the closed economy hayek s theory is found to be no longer robust when applied to cities where there is heavy foreign direct investment such as shanghai we believe that it is the foreign direct investment that is making the real estate industry in shanghai perform well despite the government s tight monetary policy and the contraction of the industry in other parts of the country over the same period the paper also argues that while most foreign investment in real estate is classified as direct investment it is very different from typical foreign direct investment except in form and in fact shares most of the characteristics of portfolio investment foreign direct investment in real estate reflects the imperfections of china s capital markets

income diversification poverty traps and policy shocks in cote d ivoire and kenya abstract this paper presents evidence on the effects of two different sorts of policy shocks on observed income diversification patterns in rural africa in cote d ivoire households with poor endowments were less able to respond to attractive emerging on farm and non farm opportunities due to entry barriers to superior livelihood strategies the benefits of exchange rate reform accrued disproportionately to households that were richer prior to devaluation by contrast food for work transfers to households in kenya significantly reduced liquidity constraints enabling project participants to pursue more lucrative livelihood strategies in non farm activities and higher return agricultural production patterns jointly these two shocks underscore the importance of liquidity market access and skill constraints to skilled non farm income sources to dynamic poverty traps in rural africa

foreign liquidity to real estate market ripple effect and housing price dynamics globalisation enables foreign liquidity to access local property markets this paper depicts a strong connection between foreigners property acquisitions and regional housing price movements in singapore testing structure breaks also illustrates a ripple effect of prices from the central city to suburbs a structural vector autoregression incorporates these two observations impulse response function and forecast error variance decomposition show that central region s foreign liquidity shocks can greatly impact housing price growth in not only the central region but also the non central region where foreign buyers are inactive the ripple effect of prices plays an important role non central region s foreign liquidity shocks in contrast have small effects on both regions impacts of foreign liquidity shocks can reach the public housing market where foreigners participation is prohibited the findings are useful to policy makers who consider regulations of foreign home buyers as an instrument to stabilise housing markets

assets and poverty traps in rural bangladesh using longitudinal survey from rural bangladesh this article examines the determinants of land and asset accumulation over time and explores why some households may be trapped in asset poverty non parametric and parametric methods are used to discern the shape of the asset accumulation path and whether unique or multiple equilibria exist we find evidence for concavity of the dynamic asset frontier but no evidence for multiple equilibria it is suggested that the existence of well functioning factor markets in rural bangladesh and elsewhere in south asia explain the contrasts between our results and those for several african countries