how general are time preferences eliciting good specific discount rates abstract this paper tests the commonly used assumption that people apply a single discount rate to the utility from different sources of consumption using survey data from uganda with both hypothetical and incentivized choices over different goods we elicit time preferences from about 2400 subjects we reject the null of equal discount rates across goods the average person in our sample is more impatient about sugar meat and starchy plantains than about money and a list of other goods we review the assumptions to recover discount rates from experimental choices for the case of good specific discounting consistently with the theoretical framework we find convergence in discount rates across goods for two groups expected to engage in or think about arbitraging the rewards traders and individuals with large quantities of the good at home as an application we evaluate empirically the conditions under which good specific discounting could predict a low asset poverty trap

you can t save alone commitment in rotating savings and credit associations in kenya abstract this article examines one reason why individuals develop and maintain local level financial savings organizations known as rotating savings and credit organizations or roscas economic theories suggest that individuals form roscas to finance the purchase of a lumpy durable good in response to intrahousehold conflict over savings or to provide themselves with insurance the article proposes an additional hypothesis for rosca participation saving requires discipline and some roscas may be formed to provide a collective mechanism for commitment in the presence of time inconsistent preferences data from 70 roscas located in western kenya indicate that the commitment hypothesis is plausible and broadly consistent with the design and patterns of participation in these roscas as many rosca participants put it you can t save alone

the impacts of tourism energy consumption and political instability on economic growth in the mena countries using panel data of 24 countries in the middle east and north african mena region from 2001 to 2009 the purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of tourism energy consumption and political instability on economic growth within the neoclassical growth framework to address the objective of this study we utilise both the static panel data approach as well as the dynamic generalised method of moments gmm estimator to examine the impact of candidate variables our results show that energy consumption and tourism significantly contribute to the economic growth of countries in the mena region hence our study lends some support to the existence of the tourism led growth and energy led growth hypotheses in the region in line with our expectation our estimation results also reveal that political instability impedes the process of economic growth and development in the mena region therefore macroeconomic policies to promote expansion in tourism and energy consumption will directly stimulate economic growth additionally efforts to help the region overcome its history of political instability would attract more international tourist arrivals and further invigorate economic growth

tourism as a long run economic growth factor the spanish case this paper examines the role of tourism in the spanish long run economic development the tourism led growth hypothesis is confirmed through cointegration and causality testing the results indicate that at least during the last three decades economic growth in spain has been sensible to persistent expansion of international tourism the increase of this activity has produced multiplier effects over time external competitivity has also been proved in the model to be a fundamental variable for spanish economic growth from the empirical analysis it can be inferred the positive effects on income that government policy in the adequacy of supply as well as in the promotion of tourist activity may bring about

the contribution of tourism development to economic growth in the korean economy abstract this study investigates the causal relations between tourism growth and economic expansion for the korean economy by using engle and granger two stage approach and a bivariate vector autoregression var model two principle results emerge from this study first the results of a cointegration test indicate that there is no long run equilibrium relation between two series second the outcomes of granger causality test imply the one way causal relationship of economic driven tourism growth the hypothesis of tourism led economic growth is not held in the korean economy this consequence is supported by testing the sensitivity of causality test under different lag selections along with the optimal lag

behavioural development economics lessons from field labs in the developing world abstract explanations of poverty growth and development depend on the assumptions made about individual preferences and the willingness to engage in strategic behaviour economic experiments especially those conducted in the field have begun to paint a picture of economic agents in developing communities that is at variance with the traditional portrait we review this growing literature with an eye towards preference related experiments conducted in the field we also offer lessons on what development economists might learn from experiments we conclude by sharing our thoughts on how to conduct experiments in the field and then offer a few ideas for future research

revisiting the tourism led growth hypothesis for turkey using the bounds test and johansen approach for cointegration abstract this paper empirically revisits and investigates the tourism led growth tlg hypothesis in the case of turkey by employing the bounds test and johansen approach for cointegration using annual data from 1960 2006 although gunduz and hatemi j 2005 is the tourism led growth hypothesis valid for turkey applied economics letters 12 499 504 support the tlg hypothesis for turkey suggesting unidirectional causation from tourism to economic growth by making use of the leveraged bootstrap causality tests and ongan and demiroz 2005 the contribution of tourism to the long run turkish economic growth ekonomick casopis journal of economics 53 9 880 894 suggest bidirectional causality between international tourism and economic growth in turkey this study does not find any cointegration between international tourism and economic growth in turkey therefore unlike the findings of gunduz and hatemi j 2005 and ongan and demiroz 2005 this study rejects the tlg hypothesis for the turkish economy since no cointegration was found and error correction mechanisms plus causality tests cannot be run for further steps in the long term

discount rates and credit markets theory and evidence from rural india three models of credit markets 1 the permanent income model 2 upward sloping credit supply to individual borrowers and 3 constrained credit due to imperfect enforcement are tested using credit market data and an experimental study of individuals discount rates in south india the permanent income model is rejected by both the discount rate and the credit market data the discount rate data are consistent with either of the other two models while the credit market data are consistent with a combination of these two models other explanations are found to be insufficient to explain the results of this study

working over time dynamic inconsistency in real effort tasks experimental tests of dynamically inconsistent time preferences have largely relied on choices over time dated monetary rewards several recent studies have failed to nd the standard patterns of present bias however such monetary studies contain oftendiscussed confounds in this paper we sidestep these confounds and investigate choices over consumption real eort in a longitudinal experiment we pair this eort study with a companion monetary discounting study we conrm very limited time inconsistency in monetary choices however subjects show considerably more present bias in eort furthermore present bias in the allocation of work has predictive power for demand of a meaningfully binding commitment device therefore our ndings validate a key implication of models of dynamic inconsistency with corresponding policy implications

electricity supply employment and real gdp in india evidence from cointegration and granger causality tests abstract this study probes nexus between electricity supply employment and real gdp for india within a multivariate framework using autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing approach of cointegration long run equilibrium relationship has been established among these variables for the time span 1970 71 to 2005 06 the study further establishes long and short run granger causality running from real gdp and electricity supply to employment without any feedback effect thus growth in real gdp and electricity supply are responsible for the high level of employment in india the absence of causality running from electricity supply to real gdp implies that electricity demand and supply side measures can be adopted to reduce the wastage of electricity which would not affect future economic growth of india

linking risk aversion time preference and fertilizer use in burkina faso this paper investigates whether burkinabe maize farmers fertilizer use decisionsare correlated with their risk and time preferences we conducted a survey and a se ries of hypothetical experiments on a sample of 1 500 farmers we find that morepatient farmers do use more fertilizer but it is only because they plant more maize afertilizer intensive crop rather than because they use more fertilizer per hectare ofmaize planted conversely we find no statistically significant link between risk aver sion and fertilizer use we use a simple two period model which suggests that riskaversion may indeed have an ambiguous effect on fertilizer use

agricultural household models extensions applications and policy this book presents the basic model of an agricultural household that underlies most of the case studies undertaken so far the model assumes that households are price takers and is therefore recursive the decisions modeled include those affecting production and the demand for inputs and those affecting consumption and the supply of labor comparative results on selected elasticities are presented for a number of economies the empirical significance of the approach is demonstrated in a comparison of models that treat production and consumption decisions separately and those in which the decisionmaking process is recursive the book summarizes the implications of agricultural pricing policy for the welfare of farm households marketed surplus the demand for nonagricultural goods and services the rural labor market budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings in addition it is shown that the basic model can be extended in order to explore the effects of government policy on crop composition nutritional status health saving and investment and to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the effects on budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings methodological topics primarily the data requirements of the basic model and its extensions along with aggregation market interaction uncertainty and market imperfections are discussed the most important methodological issues the question of the recursive property of these models is also discussed

why don t the poor save more evidence from health savings experiments using data from a field experiment in kenya we document that providing individuals with simple informal savings technologies can substantially increase investment in preventative health and reduce vulnerability to health shocks simply providing a safe place to keep money was sufficient to increase health savings by 66 percent adding an earmarking feature was only helpful when funds were put toward emergencies or for individuals that are frequently taxed by friends and relatives group based savings and credit schemes had very large effects

the economics of roscas and intrahousehold resource allocation this paper investigates individual motives to participate in rotating savings and credit associations roscas detailed evidence from roscas in a kenyan slum nairobi suggests that most roscas are predominantly composed of women particularly those living in a couple and earning an independent income to explain this phenomenon we propose an argument based on conflictual interactions within the household participation in a rosca is a strategy a wife employs to protect her savings against claims by her husband for immediate consumption the empirical implications of the model are then tested using the data collected in kenya

can group incentives alleviate moral hazard the role of pro social preferences abstract incentivizing unobservable effort in risky environments such as in insurance credit and labor markets is vital as moral hazard may otherwise cause significant welfare losses including the outright failure of markets ensuring incentive compatibility through state contingent contracts between principal and agent however is undesirable for risk averse agents we provide a theoretical intuition on how pro social preferences between agents in a joint liability group contract can ensure incentive compatibility two independent large scale behavioral experiments framed in an insurance context support the hypotheses derived from our theory in particular effort decreases when making agents payoff less state dependent but this effect is mitigated with joint liability in a group scheme where agents are additionally motivated by pro social concerns activating strategic motives slightly increases effort further particularly in non anonymous groups with high network strength the results support existing evidence on joint liability groups and further suggest that even if peer pressure to ensure effort provision is absent such group policies can improve efficiency when agents are pro social

does tourism effectively stimulate malaysia s economic growth abstract this study attempts to further verify the validity of the tourism led growth hypothesis in malaysia using a multivariate model derived from the solow growth theory it employs annual data from 1975 to 2011 we find that economic growth tourism and other determinants are cointegrated specifically tourism has a positive impact on malaysia s economic growth both in the short run and in the long run the granger causality test indicates that tourism granger causes economic growth all this provides the empirical support for the tourism led growth hypothesis in malaysia in light of this any policy initiative that promotes tourism could contribute to malaysia s economic growth

an empirical study of outbound tourism demand in the uk a general to specific methodology is used to construct uk demand for outbound tourism models to twelve destinations a tourism destination preference index is introduced to take into account social cultural and psychological influences on tourists decisions concerning their overseas holiday destinations the tests support the existence of a cointegration relationship for each of 11 uk overseas holiday destinations the corresponding error correction models are estimated the empirical results show that the long run income elasticities for all destinations range from 1 70 to 3 90 with an average of 2 367 the lowest and highest short run income elasticities are 1 05 and 3 78 respectively with an average of 2 216 the estimates of the income elasticities imply that overseas holidays are highly income elastic while the own price elasticities suggest that the demand for uk outbound tourism is relatively own price inelastic in terms of the significance of substitution prices in the regression equations ir

time varying linkages between tourism receipts and economic growth in south africa the causal link between tourism receipts and gdp has recently become a major focus in the tourism economics literature results obtained in recent studies about the causal link appear to be sensitive with respect to the countries analysed sample period and methodology employed considering the sensitivity of the causal link we use rolling window and time varying coefficient estimation methods to analyse the parameter stability and granger causality based on a vector error correction model vecm when applied to south africa for the period 1960 2011 the findings are as follows results from the full sample vecm indicate that there is no granger causality between tourism receipts and gdp while the findings from the time varying coefficients model based on the state space representation show that tourism receipts have positive predictive content for gdp for the entire period with the exception of the period between 1985 and 1990 full sample time varying causality tests show bidirectional strong causal

microenterprise growth and the flypaper effect evidence from a randomized experiment in ghana standard models of investment predict that credit constrained firms should grow rapidly when given additional capital and that how this capital is provided should not affect decisions to invest in the business or consume the capital we randomly gave cash and in kind grants to male and female owned microenterprises in urban ghana for women running subsistence enterprises we find no gain in profits from either treatment for women with larger businesses we strongly reject equality of the cash and in kind grants only in kind grants cause growth in profits suggesting a flypaper effect whereby capital coming directly into the business sticks there but cash does not the results for men also suggest a lower impact of cash but differences between cash and in kind grants are less robust there is suggestive evidence that the difference in the effects of cash and in kind grants is associated more with lack of self control than with external pressure

does urbanization lead to more direct and indirect household carbon dioxide emissions evidence from china during 1996 2012 china is experiencing a stage of rapid urban development the energy consumption and related carbon dioxide emissions of households continue to increase this paper calculates direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions of households based on the input output method in china from 1996 to 2012 the results reveal that there were more total carbon dioxide emissions from urban households than from rural households far more indirect emissions from urban households than from rural households slightly more direct emissions from urban households than from rural households and differences in direct carbon dioxide emissions from various fuels and in indirect emissions from various sectors between urban and rural households to examine the causal relationship between urbanization and the carbon dioxide emissions of households cointegration and granger causality tests are applied a unidirectional causal relation was found running from urbanization to both direct and indirect household carbon dioxide emissions and the direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions of households would increase 2 9 and 1 1 respectively for every increase of one percent in urbanization we discuss the reasons of why the development of urbanization will lead to more household direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions and suggest certain policy implications for urbanization and carbon dioxide emissions based on the results of this study

tourism led growth hypothesis in the top ten tourist destinations new evidence using the quantile on quantile approach this paper examines the empirical validity of the tourism led growth hypothesis in the top ten tourist destinations in the world china france germany italy mexico russia spain turkey the united kingdom and the united states using the quantile on quantile qq approach and a new index of tourism activity that combines the most commonly used tourism indicators this methodology recently introduced by sim and zhou 2015 provides an ideal framework with which to capture the overall dependence structure between tourism development and economic growth the empirical results primarily show a positive relation between tourism and economic growth for the ten countries considered with substantial variations across countries and across quantiles within each country the weakest links are noted for china and germany possibly because of the limited importance of the tourism sector relative to other major economic activities in those countries important country specific policy implications may be drawn from these findings

price limits and stock market volatility abstract we examine the relationship between price limits and stock market volatility we find when price limits are made more less restrictive stock market volatility is usually not lower higher this finding contradicts conventional wisdom and the view of most regulators

volume volatility and new york stock exchange trading halts trading halts increase rather than reduce both volume and volatility volume volatility in the first full trading day after a trading halt is 230 percent 50 to 115 percent higher than following pseudohalts nonhalt control periods matched on time of day duration and absolute net of market returns these results are robust over different halt types and news categories higher posthalt volume is observed into the third day while higher posthalt volatility decays within hours the extent of media coverage is a partial determinant of volume and volatility following both halts and pseudohalts but a separate halt effect remains after controlling for the media effect in the wake of the 1987 market break a number of commentators including the presidential task force on market mechanisms recommended the establishment of circuit breaker mechanisms the primary argument supporting circuit breakers both price limits and trading halts is that nontrading periods provide an opportunity for normal information transmission in times of market duress proponents of circuit breakers claim that during major price changes there can be a breakdown in the transmission of information between the trading floor and market participants therefore the primary function of a circuit breaker should be to reinform participants greenwald and stein 1988 p 17 by lowering informational asymmetries between traders halts could permit the orderly emergence of a new consensus price but would informative trading halts succeed many academics are openly suspicious of any kind of market interference and assume that trading halts are guilty until proven innocent grossman 1990 p 3 for example argues that the closing of markets merely prevents consenting adults from carrying out their desires on the floor of the stock exchange not only do halts impose a liquidity cost on traders but studies suggest that information will not be as

natural gas consumption and economic growth are we ready to natural gas price liberalization in iran this paper examines the relationship between natural gas consumption and economic growth in iran within a multivariate production model we also investigate the effects of natural gas price on its consumption and economic growth using a demand side model the paper employs bounds test approach to level relationship over the period of 1972 007 we find evidence of bidirectional positive relationship between natural gas consumption and economic growth in short run and long run based on the production model the findings also suggest that real gdp growth and natural gas have positive and negative impacts on gross fixed capital formation respectively employment however was found to have negative but insignificant impact on gross fixed capital formation moreover the estimation results of demand side model suggest that natural gas price has negative and significant impact on natural gas consumption only in the long run though there is insignificant impact on economic growth these results imply that the iranian government s decision for natural gas price liberalization has the adverse effects on economic growth and policy makers should be cautious in doing this policy

recovering individual preferences for non market goods a collective travel cost model traditional recreation demand models do not make a distinction between a household and an individual as the reference decision making unit thus assuming that a family maximizes a single utility function even if the family consists of different individuals such models ignore the possibility of family members divergent preferences for non market goods this study proposes a novel approach the collective travel cost model ctcm to eliciting individual preferences for a non market good such as a recreation site by using revealed preference data this approach accounts for the intra household resource allocation and the role of each household member s preferences we show that the collective travel cost model can be applied to estimating a recreation demand model that yields individual welfare estimates appropriate for policy analysis of non market goods such as the willingness to pay to access a recreation site we find that how resources are distributed within the household reflects significant differences in welfare measures

saving more in groups field experimental evidence from chile abstract we test the impact of a peer group program on savings in a sample of microcredit clients we conduct two randomized trials among these 2687 microcredit clients the first finds that a savings group treatment which combines public goal setting monitoring in the group and non financial rewards increases savings in a new savings account significantly the number of deposits grows 3 7 fold and the average balance almost doubles in contrast a more classical measure a substantially increased interest rate has no effect for most participants and raises the savings balance only for the very top of the distribution a second experiment conducted a year later tests an alternative delivery mechanism and shows that effects of similar size can be achieved through feedback text messages without meetings rewards or peer pressure given that participants are borrowing at 90 apr we discuss how and when saving more could be harmful or beneficial

assessing the importance of international tourism for the turkish economy a social accounting matrix analysis abstract the international tourism sector has grown rapidly in turkey since the 1980s and turkey ranks among the top ten countries in terms of tourist arrivals and receipts previous studies on international tourism in turkey are partial equilibrium studies which emphasized the importance of the sector for foreign exchange earnings employment creation and economic growth the social accounting matrix sam modeling approach is superior to partial equilibrium analysis as it takes into account intersectoral linkages this paper analyzes the contribution of international tourism to the turkish economy using two sams for 1996 and 2002 respectively two analyses are conducted using the sam impact model i sectoral comparison of gdp elasticities and ii sam impact analysis of international tourism on output value added and employment the results show that the gdp elasticity of international tourism is relatively low and the impact of foreign tourist expenditures on domestic production value added gdp and employment in turkey are modest the results imply the possibility of leakage of foreign tourist expenditures out of the economy

interactions between energy and imports in singapore empirical evidence from conditional error correction models this study empirically tests for long run equilibrium relationship and the direction of causality between imports and energy consumption in singapore the results of the present study reveal that a long run equilibrium relationship exists between import growth and energy consumption growth in singapore by using bivariate systems imports of singapore converge to long term equilibrium levels by 79 9 percent speed of adjustment through the channel of energy growth furthermore the major finding of this study is that there are long and short term undirectional causalities that run from energy growth to import growth in singapore which denote that energy consumption in singapore is a catalyst for importing

are risk aversion and impatience related to cognitive ability is the way that people make risky choices or tradeoffs over time related to cognitive ability this paper investigates whether there is a link between cognitive ability risk aversion and impatience using a representative sample of the population and incentive compatible measures we conduct choice experiments measuring risk aversion and impatience over an annual time horizon for a randomly drawn sample of roughly 1 000 german adults subjects also take part in two different tests of cognitive ability which correspond to sub modules of one of the most widely used iq tests interviews are conducted in subjects own homes we find that lower cognitive ability is associated with greater risk aversion and more pronounced impatience these relationships are significant and robust to controlling for personal characteristics educational attainment income and measures of credit constraints we perform a series of additional robustness checks which help rule out other possible confounds

modernization and time preferences in tanzania evidence from a large scale elicitation exercise abstract assumptions about individual time preferences are important for explanations of poverty and development data from a large scale elicitation exercise in tanzania show significantly higher levels of impatience in urban areas than in rural areas this result remains robust to adding controls for socio economic differences between rural and urban areas which possibly correlate with time preferences we attribute this to differences in modernisation between urban and rural areas with modernisation leading to increased impatience this is corroborated by the observed positive correlation between impatience and education the latter being an important vehicle of modernisation for traditional societies in tanzania

quality and endogenous tourism an empirical approach abstract we propose a theoretical model and an empirical study that highlight the role of quality of tourism services and endogenous tourism in long run economic growth we study a theoretical growth model of international trade where tourism is the growth engine and quality of tourism services has a positive impact on long term growth we also provide an empirical analysis to test the relation between tourism quality and economic growth in spain over the period 1970 2010 our results show that in the long run tourist arrivals quality of tourism accommodations and foreign gdp have a positive effect on spanish gdp in the short term changes in economic growth appear to lead to growth in tourist arrivals our findings support a two way causal relationship between real gdp growth and tourism growth in spain

good intentions pave the way to the local moneylender abstract access to microfinance entails a risk of over indebtedness a naive present biased micro borrower may roll over debt after failure of an investment project financed with an mfi loan even though she planned not to do so and would not have taken the mfi loan if she had been aware of the time inconsistency of her plan similarly she may use a new loan to repay and end up over indebted if she discounts the future too strongly relative to her true preferences

revisiting the convergence hypothesis for tourism markets evidence from turkey using the pairwise approach abstract this paper empirically revisits the tourism markets convergence hypothesis narayan 2006 for the case of turkey by employing the newly developed pairwise approach to the analysis of stochastic convergence pesaran 2007 pesaran et al 2009 this new approach allows for unit root tests to be conducted on all possible pairs of tourist arrival differentials across turkey s 20 major tourist source markets thus avoiding the need to choose a base source market or total tourist arrivals figure as the benchmark using monthly data over the period january 1996 to december 2009 the main finding is that despite considerable co movement of international tourist arrivals in turkey there is no evidence of long run convergence among turkey s major tourism markets cluster based club convergence analyses alongside bivariate pairwise estimations confirm the lack of convergence and highlight specific tourist source markets with considerable untapped potential these findings have profound policy implications for turkey s inbound tourism planning and promotion

measuring self control problems we develop a survey instrument to measure self control problems in a sample of highly educated adults this measure relates in the manner that theory predicts to liquid wealth accumulation and personality measures yet while self control problems are typically seen as resulting in overconsumption and low wealth we identify a significant group who underconsume and thereby accumulate high levels of wealth in addition self control problems are smaller in scale for older than for younger respondents those who put money aside in retirement accounts may be delaying access to a point at which self control problems are no longer important jel d12 d14

the impact of education on subjective discount rate in ugandan villages abstract heterogeneity in time discounting may reinforce the existing barriers to save and invest faced by rural populations in developing countries we elicit a subjective discount rate for a varied sample of ugandan villagers in accordance with other studies we have found the discount rate to decrease with education we examine this correlation further by testing the causal effect of education and exploit two different sources of its variation school frequency across villages and the number of the respondents school going years that overlap with the era of the dictator idi amin s rule for men we find that education has a significant impact on their discount rate similar in magnitude for both types of instruments and robust to observable characteristics this finding highlights the importance of education in development

is the tourism economic growth nexus time varying bootstrap rolling window causality analysis for the top 10 tourist destinations this article explores the time varying causal nexus between tourism development and economic growth for the top 10 tourist destinations in the world namely china france germany italy mexico t

international tourism higher education and economic growth the case of north cyprus this study investigates the long run equilibrium relationship between international tourism higher education growth real income growth and the direction of causality among these variables for the turkish republic of northern cyprus which is not recognised by any country other than turkey results reveal that international tourism and higher education are in a long run equilibrium relationship with real income growth international tourism and higher education have an inelastic yet positively significant impact on real income growth in the long run period finally the results of the present study reveal that both the tourism led growth and the higher education led growth hypotheses are confirmed for north cyprus

examining carbon emissions economic growth nexus for india a multivariate cointegration approach abstract the study probes cointegration and causality between carbon emissions and economic growth for india using ardl bounds testing approach complemented by johansen juselius maximum likelihood procedure in a multivariate framework by incorporating energy supply investment and employment for time span 1971 2006 the study fails to establish long run equilibrium relationship and long term causality between carbon emissions and economic growth however there exists a bi directional short run causality between the two hence in the short run any effort to reduce carbon emissions could lead to a fall in the national income this study also establishes unidirectional short run causality running from economic growth to energy supply and energy supply to carbon emissions the absence of causality running from energy supply to economic growth implies that in india energy conservation and energy efficiency measures can be implemented to minimize the wastage of energy across value chain such measures would narrow energy demand supply gap absence of long run causality between carbon emissions and economic growth implies that in the long run focus should be given on harnessing energy from clean sources to curb carbon emissions which would not affect the country s economic growth

oil prices tourism income and economic growth a structural var approach for european mediterranean countries abstract in this study a structural var model is employed to investigate the relationship among oil price shocks tourism variables and economic indicators in four european mediterranean countries in contrast with the current tourism literature we distinguish between three oil price shocks namely supply side aggregate demand and oil specific demand shocks overall our results indicate that oil specific demand shocks contemporaneously affect inflation and the tourism sector equity index whereas these shocks do not seem to have any lagged effects by contrast aggregate demand oil price shocks exercise a lagged effect either directly or indirectly to tourism generated income and economic growth the paper does not provide any evidence that supply side shocks trigger any responses from the remaining variables results are important for tourism agents and policy makers should they need to create hedging strategies against future oil price movements or plan for economic policy developments

international tourism energy consumption and environmental pollution the case of turkey abstract this study investigates the long run equilibrium relationship between tourism energy consumption and environmental degradation as proxied by carbon dioxide co 2 emissions in turkey which attracts more than 30 million tourists per year making it the sixth most visited country in the world the study results reveal that tourism and energy consumption are in a long term equilibrium relationship with co 2 emissions in the tourism induced model co 2 emissions converge to the long term equilibrium path by a 91 01 percent speed of adjustment every year through the channels of tourism energy consumption and aggregate income further the results of the impulse response and variance decompositions reveal that the reaction of energy consumption and therefore co 2 emissions to changes in tourism development is positive and gains strength in the longer periods this implies that tourism development in turkey has resulted not only in considerable increases in energy use but also considerable increases in climate change as demonstrated by the econometric analysis of this study

effects of tourism on regional asymmetries empirical evidence for portugal abstract this study uses a vector autoregressive approach to estimate the regional effects of tourism in portugal with the ultimate objective of assessing tourism s role in reducing regional asymmetries we identify the locations where tourism generates higher effects for each region as well as the regions where tourism generates the strongest effects on the country s economic performance this issue is of particular interest from the side of the country s authorities since tourism is a strategic sector to promote national and regional convergence the study s findings suggest that tourism has contributed to the concentration of economic activity in the largest region of the country and to reduce the gap between the second and the third largest regions some regions benefit more from tourism located in other regions than tourism located in each region and tourism in all regions generate positive effects on the country s economic performance

margin requirements and stock market volatility abstract it has long been recognized that margin requirements through leverage affect the volume of speculative activity controlling speculative behavior is one approach to inhibiting overvaluation in stocks and reducing the potential for a precipitate price decline fueled by the involuntary selling that stems for example from margin calls

determinants of food consumption in rural sierra leone abstract this paper reports the application of a quadratic expenditure system with demographic variables to the household consumption leisure choice component of a household firm model a system of seven commodities is estimated including five foods non food and leisure appropriate for such a level of disaggregation a demand system is used the quadratic expenditure system which allows for a flexible relationship between full income and commodity expenditures without sacrificing parsimony in parameters demographic data on households are explicitly incorporated into the model allowing for a richer specification than can be achieved by using per capita variables the data are from a cross section survey of households in rural sierra leone price variation exists by region permitting estimation of a complete demand system engel curves are found to be significantly non linear with marginal expenditure on rice the major staple declining with higher income most foods are found to be reasonably price responsive with sizeable own price substitution effects declining with higher income aggregate labor supply is found to be price inelastic

behavioral foundations of microcredit experimental and survey evidence from rural india microcredit is an innovative financial tool designed to reduce poverty and fix credit market imperfections we use experimental measures of time discounting and risk aversion for villagers in south india to highlight behavioral features of microcredit conditional on borrowing from any source women with present biased preferences are more likely than others to borrow through microcredit institutions microcredit contracts require loan repayments in regular fixed installments and they harness peer pressure to encourage discipline these innovations mirror mechanisms highlighted in behavioral approaches to saving suggesting that microcredit s popularity stems partly from modes of encouragement and self discipline absent in typical lending mechanisms

risk sharing commitment and information an experimental analysis this paper describes and analyzes the results of a unique field experiment especially designed to test the eects of the level of commitment and information available to individuals when sharing risk we find that limiting exogenously provided commitment is associated with less risk sharing while limiting information on defections can be associated with more risk sharing these results can be understood by distinguishing between intrinsic and extrinsic incentives and by recognizing that social sanctions are costly to inflict or that individuals suer from time inconsistent preferences comparing the groups formed within our experiment with the real life risk sharing networks in a few villages allows us to test the external validity of our experiment and suggests that the results are salient to our understanding of risk sharing arrangements observed in developing countries jel classification numbers c93 d71 d81 o12

repayment frequency and default in microfinance evidence from india in stark contrast to bank debt contracts most micro finance contracts require that repayments start nearly immediately after loan disbursement and occur weekly thereafter even though economic theory suggests that a more flexible repayment schedule would benefit clients and potentially improve their repayment capacity micro finance practitioners argue that the fiscal discipline imposed by frequent repayment is critical to preventing loan default in this paper we use data from a field experiment which randomized client assignment to a weekly or monthly repayment schedule and find no significant effect of type of repayment schedule on client delinquency or default our findings suggest that among micro finance clients who are willing to borrow at either weekly or monthly repayment schedules a more flexible schedule can significantly lower transaction costs without increasing client default jel 012 016 022

prompting microfinance borrowers to save a field experiment from guatemala abstractcan microfinance borrowers use the discipline of regular loan repayments in order to accumulate savings if prompted to do so in an experiment we offered commercial savings products to the microfinance borrowers of guatemala s largest public sector bank we find that giving these borrowers the opportunity to develop a savings plan and be reminded of saving at the time of loan repayment caused no increase in the opening of savings accounts but led to balances among savers that were two and a half times those in the control a second treatment arm that proposed a default savings contribution of 10 of the loan payment caused the fraction of clients using linked savings accounts to double as well as elevated deposits among savers leading to final savings balances that were more than five times the control the savings treatments also generate faster pay down of debt and weakly better overall repayment performance suggesting that simultaneous saving and borrowing can be complementary activities a

price limit performance evidence from the tokyo stock exchange price limit advocates claim that price limits decrease stock price volatility counter overreaction and do not interfere with trading activity conversely price limit critics claim that price limits cause higher volatility levels on subsequent days volatility spillover hypothesis prevent prices from efficiently reaching their equilibrium level delayed price discovery hypothesis and interfere with trading due to limitations imposed by price limits trading interference hypothesis empirical research does not provide conclusive support for either positions we examine the tokyo stock exchange price limit system to test these hypotheses our evidence supports all three hypotheses suggesting that price limits may be ineffective

preference heterogeneity power and intrahousehold decision making in rural malaysia abstract this paper examines conjugal household responsibilities roles preference heterogeneity and intrahousehold power relations in rural malay families its three major contributions are to provide an effective initial indicator of separate spheres within the family develop and implement a method for measuring the extent of conjugal preference heterogeneity and illustrate the value of combining this direct measure of preference heterogeneity with a measure of power in estimating household expenditure patterns for three major items food schooling and housing improvement these three measurement innovations applied to the rural malaysia context demonstrate the potential for more direct efforts to model and measure intrahousehold decisions

two sides of the same rupee comparing demand for microcredit and microsaving in a framed field experiment in rural pakistan standard models often predict that people should either demand to save or demand to borrow but not both we hypothesise instead that saving and borrowing among microfinance clients are substitutes satisfying the same underlying demand for a regular schedule of deposits and a lump sum withdrawal we test this using a framed field experiment among women participating in group lending arrangements in rural pakistan the experiment inspired by the rotating structure of a rosca involves randomly offering credit products and savings products to the same subject pool we find high demand both for credit products and for savings products with the same individuals often accepting both a credit product and a savings product over the three experiment waves this behavior can be rationalised by a model in which individuals prefer lump sum payments for example to finance a lumpy investment and in which individuals struggle to hold savings over time we complement our experimental estimates with a structural analysis in which different types of participants face different kinds of constraints our structural framework rationalises the behaviour of 75 of participants of these rationalised participants we estimate that two thirds have high demand for lump sum payments coupled with savings difficulties these results imply that the distinction between microlending and microsaving may be largely illusory participants value a mechanism for regular deposits and lump sum payments whether that is structured in the credit or the debt domain

is tourism an engine for economic recovery theory and empirical evidence abstract the purpose of this study is to examine the causal relationships between tourism development and economic growth for this purpose the dumitrescu and hurlin 2012 technique was employed to analyze the casual link between tourism development and economic growth in seven european countries the results showed that there is bidirectional causality between growth in tourism receipts and economic growth suggesting that economic growth and tourism development are interdependent and that tourism development stimulates economic growth and vice versa in these countries theoretical and practical implications are discussed within the realms of growth conservation feedback and neutrality hypotheses

speculative markets and the effectiveness of price limits abstract the aim of this paper is to study the effectiveness of price limits in speculative markets we construct a nonlinear stochastic asset pricing model in which traders rely on technical and fundamental analysis to determine their orders the dynamics of the model mimic stylized facts such as the emergence of bubbles excess volatility fat tails for returns or volatility clustering quite well using this model as a laboratory we find that price limits have the potential to reduce both volatility and deviations from fundamentals the more traders lend themselves to trend extrapolating behavior the better price limits work

liquidity constraints and imperfect information in subprime lending ditions for precisely the population that is most likely to have a difficult time obtaining credit those with low incomes and poor credit histories these consumers who typically cannot qualify for regular bank loans comprise the so called subprime market because the company we study originates subprime loans its loan applications and transaction records provide an unusual win dow into the consumption and borrowing behavior of households that are rationed in primary credit markets moreover we track loan repayments allowing us to analyze the difficulties in lending to the subprime population we begin by documenting the importance of short term liquidity constraints for individuals in our sample we present two pieces of evidence both are based on purchasing behavior and indicate a high sensitivity to cash on hand first we document a dramatic degree of demand seasonality associated with tax rebates overall demand is almost 50 percent higher during tax rebate season than during other parts of the year this seasonal effect varies with household

nudging farmers to use fertilizer theory and experimental evidence from kenya we model farmers as facing small fixed costs of purchasing fertil izer and assume some are stochastically present biased and not fully sophisticated about this bias such farmers may procrastinate post poning fertilizer purchases until later periods when they may be too impatient to purchase fertilizer consistent with the model many farmers in western kenya fail to take advantage of apparently profit able fertilizer investments but they do invest in response to small time limited discounts on the cost of acquiring fertilizer free deliv ery just after harvest calibration suggests that this policy can yield higher welfare than either laissez faire policies or heavy subsidies

time to change what to sow risk preferences and technology adoption decisions of cotton farmers in china this paper examines the role of individual risk attitudes in the decision to adopt a new form of agricultural biotechnology in china i conducted a survey and a field experiment to elicit the risk preferences of chinese farmers who faced the decision of whether to adopt genetically modified bt cotton a decade ago in my analysis i expand the measurement of risk preferences beyond expected utility theory to incorporate prospect theory i find that farmers who are more risk averse or more loss averse adopt bt cotton later farmers who overweight small probabilities adopt bt cotton earlier

intra household resource allocation an inferential approach if household income is pooled and then allocated to maximize welfare then income under the control of mothers and fathers should have the same impact on demand with survey data on family health and nutrition in brazil the equality of parental income effects is rejected unearned income in the hands of a mother has a bigger effect on her family s health than income under the control of a father for child survival probabilities the effect is almost twenty times bigger the common preference or neoclassical model of the household is rejected if unearned income is measured with error and income is pooled then the ratio of maternal to paternal income effects should be the same equality of the ratios cannot be rejected there is also evidence for gender preference mothers prefer to devote resources to improving the nutritional status of their daughters fathers to sons

commitment savings in informal banking markets abstract i study the provision of commitment savings by informal banks to sophisticated hyperbolic discounters since a consumer is subject to temptation in the period that he signs a contract banks might exploit his desire for instant gratification even as they help him to commit for the future without banking savings decisions and welfare are not monotonic in the degree of time inconsistency consequently commitment savings will lower welfare for moderately time inconsistent agents if loan contracts are enforceable pure commitment savings will disappear this will further lower welfare if the lender is a profit maximizing bank but raise welfare if the lender is a welfare maximizing ngo finally i consider the coexistence of a bank and ngo there will be zero takeup of ngo provided commitment savings if there is competition from a moneylender but the ngo s offer will raise the agent s reservation utility thus reducing the surplus that can be extracted by the moneylender

follow the money not the cash comparing methods for identifying consumption and investment responses to a liquidity shock abstract measuring the impacts of liquidity shocks on spending is difficult methodologically but important for theory practice and policy we compare three approaches for tackling this question directly asking borrowers how they spend proceeds from a loan direct elicitation asking borrowers using a list randomization technique indirect elicitation that allows them to answer discretely in cases where loan uses are at odds with lender policies or social norms and a counterfactual analysis in which we compare household and enterprise cash outflows for those in a treatment group randomly assigned to receive credit to a control group the counterfactual analysis yields an estimate that about 100 of loan financed spending is on business inventory for the direct and indirect elicitations we find evidence of both strategic misreporting and following the cash borrowers likely report what they physically did with cash proceeds rather than counterfactual spending

the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior in households whose allocation decisions can be represented as nash bargained household decisions extrahousehold environmental parameters eeps serve as pure shifters of the threat points the comparative statics of changes in demands due to changes in these eeps are given these are incorporated into a comprehensive statement of the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior including a nash generalization of barten s 1966 fundamental matrix equation of the theory of consumer demand estimation and data requirements are discussed along with nested testing of the following structure the neoclassical model is nested in the nash bargained model which in turn is nested in an unrestricted model of household demands emphasized throughout is the enriched menu of explanatory variables for demand analysis provided by the nash model as well as the model s ability to jointly analyze i household formation and ii intrahousehold allocation decisions

violent crime does social capital matter this paper examines empirically the effect of some commonly used indicators of social capital such as the prevalence of trust on community members and the participation in voluntary secular and religious organizations on the incidence of violent crimes this is a cross country study whose basic sample consists of 39 developed and developing countries and whose dependent variable is the national intentional homicide rate the paper identifies and deals with three challenges in the empirical estimation of the effect of social capital on the incidence of violent crimes the omittedvariable problem is dealt with by including income inequality and economic growth as additional determinants of a country s violent crime rate the joint endogeneity or reverse causation problem is accounted for by using instrumental variables for social capital in the crime regression the specificity problem that is the potentially opposite effects of group specific and society wide social capital is noted and addressed only indirectly by emphasizing the results applied to the social capital indicators that have application for society as a whole the main result of the paper is that only the component of social capital measured by trust on community members has the effect of reducing the incidence of violent crimes the results regarding measures of other indicators of social capital are rather unclear this may be due to a combination of limited samples inability to fully control for reverse causation and most likely the opposite effects that society wide and group specific social capital may have on violent crime lederman and menendez are economists with the office of the chief economist for latin america and the caribbean of the world bank loayza is a senior economist with the research department of the central bank of chile and he is currently on leave from the development economics research group of the world bank the opinions expressed herein should not be attributed to the world bank the authors are grateful to ed glaeser jeff grogger gale johnson sanjay marwah steve messner nicholas sambanis and an anonymous referee for invaluable comments and suggestions the authors are responsible for any remaining errors

revising commitments field evidence on the adjustment of prior choices the very poor in developing countries often make intertemporal choices that seem at odds with their individual self interest there are many possible reasons why this paper investigates several of these reasons with a lab in the field experiment in rural malawi involving large stakes it makes two contributions first it constructs a new dependent variable revisions of prior choices regarding the allocation of future income this allows us to directly examine intertemporal choice revision and its determinants in particular this dependent variable permits a novel test for the existence of self control problems it turns out revisions of money allocations toward the present are positively associated with measures of present bias from an earlier baseline survey as well as the randomly assigned closeness in time to the first possible date of money disbursement second the paper investigates other potential determinants of revision aside from self control problems it finds little evidence that revisions of money allocations toward the present are associated with spousal preferences for such revision household shocks or the financial sophistication of respondents

estimating individual discount rates in denmark a field experiment we estimate individual discount rates with respect to time streams of money using controlled laboratory experiments these discount rates are elicited by means of field experiments involving real monetary rewards the experiments were carried out across denmark using a representative sample of 268 people between 19 and 75 years of age individual discount rates are estimated for various households differentiated by socio demographic characteristics such as income and age our conclusions are that discount rates are constant over the 12 month to 3 year horizons used in these experiments and that discount rates vary substantially with respect to several socio demographic variables hence we conclude that it would be reasonable to assume constant discount rates for specific household types but not the same rates across all households

tying odysseus to the mast evidence from a commitment savings product in the philippines we designed a commitment savings product for a philippine bank and implemented it using a randomized control methodology the savings product was intended for individuals who want to commit now to restrict access to their savings and who were sophisticated enough to engage in such a mechanism we conducted a baseline survey on 1777 existing or former clients of a bank one month later we offered the commitment product to a randomly chosen subset of 710 clients 202 28 4 percent accepted the offer and opened the account in the baseline survey we asked hypothetical time discounting questions women who exhibited a lower discount rate for future relative to current trade offs and hence potentially have a preference for commitment were indeed significantly more likely to open the commitment savings account after twelve months average savings balances increased by 81 percentage points for those clients assigned to the treatment group relative to those assigned to the control group we conclude that the savings response represents a lasting change in savings and not merely a short term response to a new product

human and financial capital for microenterprise development evidence from a field and lab experiment microenterprises constitute an important source of employment and developing such enterprises is a key policy concern in most countries but what is the most efficient tool for microenterprise development we study this question in a developing country context tanzania where microenterprises are the source of employment for more than half of the labor force and we report from a field experiment that jointly investigated the importance of a human capital intervention business training and a financial capital intervention business grant using data from three survey rounds a lab experiment and administrative records of the microfinance institution we present evidence on business performance management practices happiness business knowledge and noncognitive abilities our study demonstrates strong effects of the combination of the two interventions on male entrepreneurs while the effects on female entrepreneurs are much more muted the results suggest that long term finance is an important constraint for microfinance entrepreneurs but that business training is essential to transform financial capital into productive investments our study also points to the need for more comprehensive measures to promote the businesses of female entrepreneurs data as supplemental material are available at http dx doi org 10 1287 mnsc 2014 1933 this paper was accepted by john list behavioral economics

the power of tv cable television and women s status in india cable and satellite television have grown rapidly throughout the developing world the availability of cable and satellite television exposes viewers to new information about the outside world which may affect individual attitudes and behaviors this paper explores the effect of the introduction of cable television on gender attitudes in rural india using a three year individual level panel dataset we find that the introduction of cable television is associated with improvements in womens status we find significant increases in reported autonomy decreases in the reported acceptability of beating and decreases in reported son preference we also find increases in female school enrollment and decreases in fertility primarily via increased birth spacing the effects are large equivalent in some cases to about five years of education in the cross section and move gender attitudes of individuals in rural areas much closer to those in urban areas we argue that the results are not driven by pre existing differential trends these results have important policy implications as india and other countries attempt to decrease bias against women authors

repayment flexibility in microfinance contracts theory and experimental evidence on take up and selection abstract this paper studies the impact of introducing repayment flexibility in microfinance contracts i build an adverse selection model that predicts the existence of a separating equilibrium where lenders are able to achieve higher profits by simultaneously offering a rigid and a flexible repayment schedule instead of just a rigid contract lab in the field games with indian microentrepreneurs confirm the model predictions i offer subjects both a flexible and a rigid repayment schedule and exogenously vary the price of the flexible schedule i find that high revenues borrowers are more likely to take up the flexible schedule than low revenues ones and even more so when the flexible schedule is more expensive than the rigid one risk averse borrowers on the contrary are more likely to stick to the rigid contract when this is cheaper than the flexible contract the paper thus indicates that lenders should offer a menu of contracts where the flexible and the rigid contract are provided simultaneously at different prices back of the envelope calculations indeed suggest that this mixed contract is more profitable than the standard rigid microfinance contract

growth effects of leisure tourism and the level of economic development abstractthis study examines 1 whether leisure tourism can contribute to economic growth and 2 if it does whether its growth effects are constant across levels of economic development leisure tourism differs from business tourism in the causal relation with economic growth in addition the natural and heritage related resources for leisure tourism are limited and not reproducible this notion has a significant implication for the relationship between the growth effects of leisure tourism and the level of economic development thus the current study focuses on leisure tourism and controls for the effects of business tourism as an economy grows the growth effects of leisure tourism are expected to diminish due to a lack of continued productivity improvement in the tourism industry the empirical findings in this research reveal that leisure tourism contributes to economic growth at an early stage of economic development but its contribution becomes weaker as the economy develops

tourism demand and economic growth in spain new insights based on the yield curve abstract this study examines for the first time the dynamic relationship between tourism growth and expected macroeconomic conditions of the destination country using a dcc garch model the focus is on the spanish economy in which monthly tourist arrivals data from 1998 to 2017 were collected for five key origin countries and around the world to capture expected macroeconomic conditions the spanish term structure of interest rates is used the results suggest that the tourism expected economic growth relationship is time varying without any country specific differences in the behaviour of the correlations importantly positive correlations reportedly coincides with a regime shift in the spanish economy whereas negative correlations are evident when expected economic conditions are stable it is also shown that the aforementioned relationship is influenced by key geopolitical and economic events the 9 11 terrorist attacks global financial crisis and the ecb s quantitative easing programme finally policy implications derived from the main findings are discussed