changes in labor force composition and male earnings a production approach models of aggregate production are estimated and used to investigate the effects of changes in labor force composition on the recently observed decline in the earnings of college graduates relative to other workers and on the fall in the earnings of younger workers relative to older workers changes in labor force composition explain substantial proportions of these observed earnings changes the most important compositional change appears to have been the rapid increase in the number of young male college graduates projections outside the sample are consistent with depressed earnings throughout the lifetimes of the large baby boom cohorts especially among college graduates but do not suggest that depressed college graduate earnings are a permanent phenomenon for all birth cohorts

earnings inequality among males in the united states trends and the effect of labor force growth we analyze the variance of log earnings within labor force cohorts of u s males with particular attention to the influence of labor force growth rates estimates with data from the 1968 79 current population surveys reveal increases in earnings inequality within labor force cohorts even after we control for the level of education experience and unemployment a model of human capital investment is used to analyze differences among cohorts in the life cycle profile of the variance of log earnings it is shown that a pattern of sharply increasing and then declining labor force growth rates will tend to raise the return on human capital investment and thereby increase the variance of postschooling investment and log earnings early in the life cycle this positive effect on relative earnings inequality should decline with experience and possibly become negative because of the post world war ii baby boom and baby bust recent labor force entrants have faced just such a pattern of actual and projected labor

the political economy of rural property rights and the persistence of the dual economy abstract rural areas often have more than one regime of property rights and production large private property farms owned by powerful landowners coexist with subsistence peasants who farm small plots with limited property rights at the same time there is broad consensus that individual well specified and secure property rights over land improve economic outcomes if property rights in land are so beneficial why are they not adopted more widely i put forward a theory according to which politically powerful landowners choose weak property rights to impoverish peasants and force them to work for low wages moreover because weak property rights force peasants to stay in the rural sector protecting their property the incentives to establish poor property rights are especially salient when peasants can migrate to an alternative sector such as when urban wages increase with industrialization

membership desertion as an adjustment process on honduran agrarian reform enterprises thus incapable of improving rural productivity or solving serious distributional problems in the honduran debate pervasive membership desertion from agrarian reform enterprises is frequently cited by reform critics as empirical evidence of inefficiency and decline within the reform program enterprises this desertion is generally blamed on various collective action problems of cooperative organization such as organizational infighting labor shirking and corruption 2 even the agrarian reform proponents within honduras seem to accept membership desertion as evidence of reform sector inefficiency and retreat to arguments about the social and political benefits of reducing rural tensions or the efficiency prospects of dividing reformsector lands into individual parcels these tactics are understandable given the compelling logic behind membership desertion as an indicator of enterprise inefficiency in essence the argument is that if the rural landless who are the poorest of the rural poor struggle long and hard for access to land only to abandon these cooperative enterprises in large numbers then the viability of these enterprises as production units must be highly suspect 3 the only task that remains for reform critics then is to cite recent estimates by the honduran national agrarian institute and the u s agency for international development usaid of the 20 40 membership decline in the 2 400 agrarian reform enterprises incorporated in honduras between 1968 and 1984 4 and a key argument about the efficiency and equity failure of the honduran agrarian reform is complete

labor market competition among youths white women and others we estimate substitution possibilities among a set of age race sex groups in the labor force the estimates are based on cross section data from smsas in 1969 and they allow us to consider how substitutable adult women are for young women or young men the estimates are used along with assumptions about the extent of wage rigidity and elasticities of labor supply to simulate the direct and indirect effects of the growth of the female labor force on job opportunities for youth assuming rigid wages for young workers and on the wage rates of adult males assuming these wages are flexible this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

schooling choices and demographic cycles this paper examines the effect of demographic cycles on schooling choices and the timing of school completion utilizing data from the u s national longitudinal surveys of labor market experience and from the panel study of income dynamics we find that men and women born during the upswing of a demographic cycle obtain more schooling and take longer to finish a year of schooling than comparable individuals born during the downswing of a demographic cycle the patterns that we document are more complex than would be predicted by any of the theoretical models of educational responses to demographic cycles that have been presented in the literature excerpt

systematic variation in yield spreads for tax exempt general obligation bonds in recent years much research has centered upon whether yield differentials between bonds which differ in default risk vary systematically over the business cycle theory suggests that during a cyclical upswing the yield differential or risk premium narrows while during a downswing the differential widens the cyclical behavior of yield spreads is well documented in the corporate bond market 4 8 12 16 this effect has only recently been given attention in the tax exempt bond market 1 11 in addition the municipal bond market may be segmented if tax exempt borrowers and investors are unable to substitute between tax exempt securities of varying default risk changes in the relative supply of and demand for these classes of securities could produce systematic fluctuations in tax exempt yield differentials these effects could be produced by regulatory statutes which require that banks purchase high grade securities and the fixed nature of bond ratings

theories of share tenancy a critical survey for the past 2 decades the problems of agricultural tenancy have attracted a great deal of attention not only from agricultural economists but also from economists in general as a typical example of agencyprincipal contract relations despite the prolific growth of literature both theoretical and empirical there has been little convergence in opinions on tenancy contracts the divergence has been especially great on the understanding of the causes and the effects of sharecropping tenancy much confusion underlying the widely divergent perspectives has stemmed from partial treatments of contractual choice which unduly limit the optimizing behavior of contracting parties and the options of contract forms this essay aims at clarifying the sources of the confusion by reviewing the past literature in light of the more general theory of agency principal relations the agency theory in order to examine the problems of various theoretical models in a unified framework in section ii we first develop the basic framework of a general model of tenancy contract in section iii we clarify in terms of the general model contradictions latent in the traditional marshallian theory which asserts that share tenancy is inefficient because of the disincentive effect of cropsharing on the tenant s work effort in section iv we attempt to show that recent efforts to reconstruct the theory based on the traditional assumption have not yet been quite successful section v draws implications and testable hypotheses from more general theories incorporating the aspects of risk and uncertainty section vi tests allocational and distributional implications of those alternative hypotheses based on the summary of evidence col

barriers to participation of the poor in south africa s land redistribution abstract land redistribution is being characterized as poverty alleviation for rural south africa this paper argues that the poor have less inclination to move the distances demanded by the redistribution have less labor available for farming are less able to afford the program s up front costs have fewer farming specific skills and have less capacity to cope with agricultural risk therefore the poor are likely to be rationed out of participation in the program and the land redistribution will have little effect on rural poverty unless demand led targeting is dropped and ancillary programs are employed to make land redistribution attractive for the poor

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

contagion effects in the electric utility industry following the fukushima nuclear accident this article examines intra industry information transfers in the european and japanese electric industry in the wake of the fukushima nuclear accident for european conventional utilities the downward price drift is relatively small and transient in nature yet we find positive and lingering effects of the accident on the shares of alternative electric utilities japanese utilities were hit the hardest and the shock seems to be long lasting an interesting finding of this article is the abrupt increase decrease in the systematic risk of conventional alternative electric utilities following the event in europe we could only document a decrease in the idiosyncratic risk of conventional utilities pointing to enhanced return synchronicity in the conventional power industry in turn total risk seems to be stationary around the accident in rebuttal idiosyncratic and systematic risks and consequently total risk have substantially risen in japan since the event finally intercept values related to

cohort size and the earnings growth of young workers this study used data from the 1968 75 current population surveys cps and the national longitudinal survey of young men nls to examine the effect of cohort size on earnings profiles in the us the elasticity of earnings growth with respect to cohort size was negative in each of the regressions analyzed indicating flatter earnings profiles and slower earnings growth for large cohorts a larger proportion of workers in large cohorts appear to choose occupations with less training content and flatter earnings profiles than workers in small cohorts in addition workers in large cohorts may find it advantageous to reduce their investments in training the negative effect of cohort size generally carried over to other schooling and gender groups only for the 2 lowest male schooling groups in the cps samples were the cohort size elasticities positive the cohort size elasticity displayed a larger negative effect for college graduates than for high school graduates or those with some college education the predicted earnings growth of college graduates is 11 6 less than that of high school graduates using the male cps parameter estimates 25 3 less with the female cps estimates and 6 less with the nls estimates these estimates are consistent with freemans finding that the longitudinal earnings profiles of college graduates have flattened relative to those of high school graduates in recent years since the initial earnings depression caused by cohort size widens with age as larger cohorts move along flatter earnings profiles the baby boom cohorts earnings levels may remain depressed throughout their careers on the other hand the smaller cohorts entering the labor market during the 1980s are likely to experience more favorable labor market conditions and faster earnings growth

the demographic cycle and optimal schooling choices a model is developed that enables the authors to estimate the effects of demographic cycles on both earnings and schooling the model is tested using data from the 1991 korean occupational wage survey the results indicate that cohorts following large birth cohorts in the cycle choose relatively less formal schooling compared to pre peak cohorts and that post peak cohorts also have lower incomes this result concerning south korea is consistent with findings from previous studies concerning the united states annotation

the production tax credit for wind turbine powerplants is an ineffective incentive abstract the us energy policy act epact of 1992 created a production tax credit of 1 5 kwh available for 10 years to promote certain renewable energy technologies including wind turbines this paper argues that the impact of the wind turbine production tax credit will be minimal the argument depends entirely on the nature of the project finance structure used by the private power industry for wind turbine development we show that tax credits can only be absorbed by equity investors if there is a large fraction of equity in the project capital structure this raises the financing cost of wind turbine projects compared to conventional power technology which relies on a large fraction of low cost debt if the tax credit were paid as a cash subsidy the capital structure could be shifted to low cost debt and financing costs could be significantly reduced

market failure and control of labour power towards an explanation of structure and change in indian agriculture part 1 1 although existing approaches do on occasion shed light on certain specific aspects of indian agriculture in general they run into problems of methodology or content or more frequently both in particular it is misleading to treat indian agri culture in peasant economy no markets or neoclassical perfect market terms and problematic to view it as semi feudal markets subordinate to extra economic factors 2 analysis of the relationships between farm size land productivity sharecropping and mechanisation suggest the need for an integrated model which emphasises both the unemployment and poverty of poor peasants and the problems of supervision and control of wage labour and tenants 3 proper appreciation of the interlinked role of these factors can help to explain the system s inability to combine the abundant labour of the poor with resources owned largely by the rich it can also go on to explain institutional responses like sharecropping as partial solutions to the problem of intensifying labour use and technological ones such as mechanisation as a means of delinking large farm growth from the need to intensify labour use 4 the tensions and choices between these responses underlie both the problem of stagnation and the phenomenon of switches from sharecropping to mechanisation 5 for associated reasons more rapid growth in indian agriculture is unlikely without major institutional changes to create much new employment and is likely to be more capital intensive than is usually assumed

household entrepreneurship and social networks panel data evidence from vietnam en utilisant un panel de microentreprises familiales au vietnam cet article met en relation le reseau social des entrepreneurs et de leur menage avec la performance de la microentreprise familiale nous abordons deux questions connexes la premiere examine la possibilite d effets differencies de l emploi des membres de la famille par rapport a des travailleurs recrutes sur le marche du travail sur la performance de la microentreprise une deuxieme question aborde les effets respectifs des differentes dimensions des reseaux sociaux sur l efficience technique de la microentreprise l hypothese testee est que au dela du canal de la productivite du travail les entrepreneurs qui sont confrontes a un environnement social defavorable pourraient produire moins efficacement et realiser une valeur ajoutee plus faible que ce qui pourrait etre possible avec la meme quantite de ressources nous montrons qu il existe en effet un differentiel de productivite entre le travail familial et le travail recrute sur le marche et nos resultats attestent de la presence d effets defavorables du reseau social pour certains menages gerant une microentreprise nous soulignons aussi l importance des reseaux professionnels pour la reussite de l entreprenariat familial

money planning and rural transformation in mozambique this article argues that the transformation of the rural economy should proceed on a broad front which links the development of the state sector with the need to transform family agriculture through co operatisation in actual fact planning became concentrated on the state sector which received the bulk of the investible resources disequilibria between the planned needs of resources and their real availability destabilised the exchange between the state sector and peasant production and consequently blocked the possibilities of transforming family agriculture this contradition expresses itself in the form of monetary disequilibrium but it cannot be solved by monetary policy only rather it requires rethinking the nature of planning itself

the effects of demographic change on the distribution of wages 1967 1990 a multiple skills model was used to examine the impact of changes in labor force composition on the wage distribution of workers by age sex education and race in the us from 1967 through 1990 the model provided for a higher level of specification than previous studies of wage distribution changes in previous investigations workers were grouped into arbitrary and a priori categories and workers in each category were assumed to be perfectly interchangeable in contrast the multiple skills model assumed that each worker had multiple skills that each skill had a productive value and that each skill was an imperfect substitute for other skills the model further assumed that changes in labor force composition would alter the distribution of skills in the labor force which in turn would produce changes in relative wages analysis revealed that wages of young college educated white and nonwhite males relative to the wages of older college educated white and nonwhite males declined since 1967 and were expected to decline throughout the 1980s in contrast the wages of young high school educated white and nonwhite males relative to the wages of older high school educated white and nonwhite males did not decline since 1967 and were not expected to decline during the 1980s the wages of white females of all ages and of all educational levels relative to the wages of males of all ages and of all educational levels declined throughout the period and were expected to decline in the future nonwhite workers made greater gains in wages since 1967 than white males and this trend was expected to continue through the 1980s however the wages of nonwhite males remained absolutely lower than those of white males by 1985 the wages of nonwhite females were expected to surpass those of white females these findings were similar to those observed in other studies except that other studies failed to detect the differential impact on the wages of high school and college educated males

protecting fragile lands new reasons to tackle old problems abstract increasing peasant access to arable land can have a positive environmental impact past efforts to expand the peasantry s land base through redistributive land reform and colonization generally lacked an environmental dimension and often intensified resource degradation most agrarian reform interventions were limited to properties with marginal agricultural potential while colonization directed and spontaneous triggered extensive deforestation and resource degradation programs to increase the peasantry s access to arable land can be targeted to draw peasant farmers away from steep slopes in critical watersheds and to reduce their migration to specified lowland forests the programs reviewed here depend on strategic interventions to supersede current market imperfections limiting peasant access to large arable properties

dollars and dreams a reduced middle class alternative explanations we decompose annual earnings into hours of work and hourly earnings and analyze male female differences in earnings inequality using canadian data our results indicate that the larger female inequality in earnings is due to a greater inequality in the

the overeducated canadian changes in the relationship among earnings education and age for canadian men 1971 81 individual data from six surveys of consumer finances are used to assess recent changes in the earnings profiles of canadian males with particular emphasis upon the role of cohort size the data reveal a marked compression of earnings differences across levels of education at most ages the slope of age earnings profiles did not change systematically regression analysis confirms that cohort size has a negative impact on earnings that diminishes with age however the estimated effects of cohort size do not explain the observed decline in earnings differences across levels of education le canadien trop instruit a propos des changements dans les rapports entre gains age et niveau d instruction pour les hommes canadiens 1971 81 l auteur analyse les changements recents dans les profils de revenus des hommes canadiens en s attachant en particulier a examiner l impact de la taille de la cohorte a l aide des donnees individuelles tirees de six enqu es sur les finances des consommateurs les donnees revelent une compression marquee de la fourchette de revenus pour divers niveaux d instruction et ce pour la plupart des ages la pente du profil age revenus ne change pas systematiquement l analyse de regression montre que la taille de la cohorte a un impact negatif sur le revenu mais un impact qui diminue avec l age cependant les effets calibres de la taille de la cohorte n expliquent pas la chute observee dans les differentiels de revenus pour des canadiens ayant des niveaux d instruction differents

alternative duration specifications and the measurement of basis risk empirical tests dramatic increases in interest rate levels and volatility since the early 1970s have renewed interest in fixed income securities and have motivated much study of the appropriate measure of risk for bonds many authors have expanded on macaulay s 1938 concept of duration as a surrogate for risk measurement and have developed a variety of new measures of duration numerous commercial duration based immunization programs are now available purporting to explain returns to provide good measures of risk and to protect fixed income portfolios from volatile interest rates e g leibowitz 1979 leibowitz and weinberger 1981 this paper tests the explanatory power of a number of recently proposed duration measures we show that despite the flood of articles and commercial programs claiming superiority for particular measures of duration the measures studied were virtually indistinguishable empirically in fact none of them did much better than this paper empirically investigates seven duration measures and their role in explaining price volatility caused by interest rate movements that is basis risk the data analysis does not support the important testable implications of the various durations as measures of basis risk all seven durations fail linearity and single risk factor tests from which their advantages are supposed to derive fixed income performance comparisons and immunization strategies based on these durations have not been worthwhile

a hierarchy model of associative farming abstract acceptance of the need for complementary services when agrarian reform is introduced such as credit and technical assistance has led many countries in latin america to organize land reform projects into collectives or production cooperatives but the disincentives to effort inherent in group farming have been a continual source of underproduction and disappointment with cooperative farming experiments the paper suggests an intermediate farming structure currently successful in the dominican republic in the framework of an agency contract incorporating the hierarchical relations between beneficiary administrator and governing agency the advantages of the associative over either individual or collective farming are illustrated

educational attainment and cohort size we argue that the postwar baby boom caused substantial fluctuations in both the economic rewards to education and educational attainment over the last 3 decades if substitutability between young and old workers diminishes with education the present value of lifetime earnings for a boom cohort is depressed more for highly educated workers reducing incentives for educational attainment the opposite is true for pre and postboom cohorts the diminishing substitutability hypothesis explains the declines in both the returns to college and college completion rates in the 1970s and predicts a substantial increase in educational attainment for postboomers

bilateral free trade agreements and customs unions the impact of the eu republic of south africa free trade agreement on botswana the eu has indicated that after 2008 its trade relationships with developing countries will be dominated by the development of preferential trade agreements although not a consequence of the cotonou agreement the free trade agreement between the eu and the republic of south africa eu rsa fta is clearly one of the first fruits of this approach to trade relationships however there is no evidence that the design of the eu rsa fta incorporated a comprehensive general equilibrium evaluation of the agreement for either the signatories or the other southern african nations the analyses reported here indicate that while the eu rsa fta may substantially benefit the signatories there are appreciable negative impacts for other states especially the rsa s immediate neighbours moreover the reluctance of the eu to fully liberalise trade in food and agriculture commodities results in a major reduction in the benefits for the rsa without ameliorating substantively the adverse implications for other nations

the food in security impact of land redistribution in south africa microeconometric evidence from national data summary the south african land reform program has been widely criticized for its slow pace as well as its apparent lack of contribution to poverty reduction no econometric evidence of the impact of land transfers has been provided to date and this paper attempts to fill this gap by considering the impact of receiving a land grant on households food insecurity propensity score matching and univariate probit estimates using two national household surveys indicate that on average land grant recipients are more food insecure than comparable non participants recursive bivariate probit estimates suggest that selection bias is not driving this result

south african land policy the legacy of history and current options abstract the highly dualistic farm structure of south africa and the low productivity of native african farmers have been the result of systematic distortions in land allocation output markets the provision of infrastructure agricultural credit and services the dualistic structure did not emerge because of genuine economies of scale in the large commercial sector other countries in latin america and africa that once supported a dualistic farm size structure through similar distortions have either implemented large scale land reforms or have experienced decades of peasant revolts and civil war the paper compares these international experiences to south africa and outlines judicial and market assisted approaches to south african land reform

zimbabwe s maize based green revolution preconditions for replication abstract the green revolution was launched in 1960 in zimbabwe five years before it got underway in india since zimbabwe s green revolution was spearheaded by white commercial farmers however it was ignored by africa s new leaders in the 1960s as they experimented with state farms from moscow communal farms from china and land settlement schemes from israel at zimbabwe s independence in 1980 the new majority ruled government introduced a number of programs to help smallholders increase food and cash crop production drawing on a backlog of hybrid maize varieties expanded access to credit higher guaranteed government maize prices and marketing subsidies smallholders doubled maize production during 1980 1986 zimbabwe s maize based green revolution challenges those who allege that hybrid maize cannot compete with sorghum in low rainfall areas and that it is unsuitable for resource poor farmers because of the need to purchase new seed each year today virtually 100 of zimbabwe s maize area is under hybrids and short season hybrids are outcompeting other foodgrains in many low rainfall areas zimbabwe s biggest challenge is to develop cost effective marketing policies and institutions to sustain its maize based green revolution countries trying to replicate zimbabwe s success story should focus on fulfilling four interrelated preconditions political technological economic and institutional

transforming feudal agriculture agrarian change in ethiopia since 1974 this article seeks to examine the nature and consequences of agrarian change in ethiopia since the revolution of 1974 it argues that while the reforms implemented since 1975 have effectively destroyed the age old feudal framework of agriculture they have not yet created a coherent new framework even though the government s proclaimed objective is to develop a co operative framework not much progress in that direction has so far been made in fact state policies in the past few years were dictated by the need to cope with short term problems arising from a decline in production and marketed surplus of food in the immediate aftermath of the reforms the analysis in this article shows that the basic problem of peasant agriculture is that it currently produces only a meagre economic surplus at this stage therefore agricultural growth is to be achieved primarily through the promotion of labour investment this is the principal argument for co operativisation this view suggests state policies which are

a study in resistance to institutional change the lost game of latin american land reform abstract this paper seeks an explanation of the limited success of land reforms in redistributing land in latin america during the 1960s and 1970s in spite of their widespread implementation a rational choice model of farmer behavior incorporating transaction costs on labor and credit and a game theoretical approach between landlords and the state are used for that purpose we show that land reform failed to be redistributive because it sought to first modernize large farms which allowed landlords to reinforce their power over the state this in turn enabled them either to obtain credible commitments of nonexpropriation if they would modernize or to successfully use rent seeking to externalize the cost of modernization and make expropriation with compensation no longer feasible

a framework for analyzing the impact of cohort size on education and labor earning the paper analyzes three models of labor demand solving for the change in wages of a given labor group due to a change in the size of a birth cohort when the production function includes age schooling groups as separate factors an increase in the size of one birth cohort changes the size of several labor market groups also in this case the demand effect of changing factor size is joined by a supply effect of changing schooling proportions ignoring the supply effect may cause us to overestimate the effect of a large birth cohort on wages of young skilled workers

the effect of three mile island on electric utility stock prices a note the impact of events on the time series properties of common stock returns has been the subject of numerous articles in the finance literature most studies have shown that capital markets are highly efficient in the sense that prices quickly adjust to publicly available information as investors act to receive a return commensurate with the level of perceived risk this note examines the effect on the stock returns of public utility firms of the three mile island tmi nuclear accident in stock valuation models based on investor rationality permanent price declines are brought about either by a decline in expected cash flows or by an increase in the rate used to discount future cash flows such a nuclear accident may directly affect investors perceptions of both the expected cash flows of utilities and their risk these future cash flows are affected because a nuclear accident may cause additional costs due to extended shutdowns or abandonment of nuclear plants expenses of responding to a nuclear accident and costs of purchasing replacement power the response of utility returns to tmi is analyzed at three levels first the risk adjusted returns for the utility experiencing the nuclear accident general public utilities gpu are measured over monthly time periods surrounding tmi the same analysis is performed on an aggregate sample of electric utility firms to assess the direction and magnitude of tmi s impact on other firms in the industry lastly the sample is divided into utilities with significant nuclear generating capacity at the time of tmi and utilities with no nuclear generating capacity so that the differential impact of the nuclear accident on nuclear and non nuclear public utilities may be assessed both a single and two index market model are used to estimate risk adjusted returns the latter index model includes an interest rate index as well as an equity market index

the behavior of the interest rate differential between tax exempt revenue and general obligation bonds a test of risk preferences and market segmentation this paper presents evidence that the yield differential between revenue bonds and similar general obligation bonds varies contracyclically with the level of economic activity the evidence also indicates that significant investor borrower induced market segmentation exists in the municipal bond market an increase in the relative demand by commercial banks for tax exempt securities and or an increase in the supply of revenue bonds relative to the supply of general obligation bonds increase the yield spread between the two classes of debt these findings were the result of a series of empirical tests with both macroeconomic and microeconomic data it is well documented that yield differentials between bonds which differ only in default risk vary systematically over the business cycle 1 8 10 13 evidence suggests that yield differentials widen during economic downturns and narrow during periods of economic prosperity a similar situation should exist with the interest rate differentials between tax exempt revenue bonds and comparable general obligation bonds it is generally believed that revenue bonds as a class are inherently more risky than general obligation bonds and as a result carry relatively higher interest rates 4 7 11 12 13 if this is true we would expect the interest rate differentials between these two classes of debt also to vary systematically over time in a study especially relevant to this question swenson 12 concluded that even though revenue bonds carried higher interest rates than did similar general obligation bonds their interest rate differential showed no evidence of cyclical variation we find this result surprising given the above cited studies we believe that in the tax exempt bond market two underlying factors should cause cyclical variation in the interest rate differential between revenue and similar general obligation bonds first interest rate differentials should vary inversely with the level of economic activity as the actual and perceived default risk underlying each type of bond changes second because investors and borrowers do not view revenue and general obligation bonds as close substitutes in their portfolios interest rate differentials should vary with changes in the supply of or demand for both types of debt thus the market for tax exempt securities may be

prospects for the socialist transition of agriculture in zimbabwe abstract in zimbabwe where a land reform programme is the chief socialist oriented domestic policy pursued by the government the issue of land is likely to remain the central political issue the government s resettlement and co operative programmes are likely to be jeopardized by the inherited agrarian legacy and fears of provoking white commercial farmers unless the state can intervene and acquire the unused and underutilized commercial farms any land available is likely to be poor and require high investment to facilitate resettlement to meet the needs and demands of the peasantry will require a political will and foresight which in the immediate future is likely to be constrained by a number of external and internal economic and political factors

characteristics and performance of resettlement programs a review abstract this review suggests that settlement programs are too often designed with the assumption that all settlers will succeed this has led to centralized administration and rigid designs rather than decentralized approaches flexibility in implementation support for spontaneous settlement and reliance on settlers own investment capacity collective farms have failed cropland is best allocated to individual families and their land rights must be clearly defined as ownership or long term leases farm sizes have to be flexibly adjusted to skills availability of family labor and the capital assets of the families settlers should therefore be allowed to sell or rent their land to other beneficiaries if poor settlers are to succeed settlement cannot be based solely on credit finance and provision must be made for grant elements paternalistic constraints on crop choice technology marketing or labor market participation have usually not been enforceable or have had adverse effects

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

the effect of three mile island on utility bond risk premia a note could be expected to react to the possibility of losses related to nuclear accidents and to the prospect of larger marginal costs associated with compliance with stricter regulation by public utility commissions this study tests for the effects of the tmi accident on bond risk premia in the public utility industry the following four null hypotheses are tested 1 bond risk premia did not increase in the industry as a whole because of the accident at tmi 2 bond risk premia were not affected by a firm s commitment to generate nuclear power 3 bond risk premia were not affected by the extent of the firm s commitment to nuclear power generation 4 bond risk premia were not influenced by the brand of reactor operated section i of the study briefly reviews the research that documents the effects of tmi on utility equities and considers previous models of bond risk premia based on those findings section ii specifies the null hypotheses in a testable form using a model of the risk premium that is consistent with the previous bond risk literature and is designed to control for bond specific factors and for the state of the economy results of the hypothesis testing appear in section iii section iv contains the study s conclusions

making negotiated land reform work initial experience from colombia brazil and south africa abstract the paper describes background initial experience and future challenges associated with a new negotiated approach to land reform this approach has emerged as following the end of the cold war and broad macroeconomic adjustment many countries face a second generation of reforms to address deep rooted structural problems and provide the basis for sustainable poverty reduction and economic growth it reviews possible theoretical links through credit market or political channels between asset ownership and economic performance program characteristics in each country as well as lessons for implementation and implications for monitoring and impact assessment are discussed

household returns to land transfers in south africa a q squared analysis abstract the south african land reform programme has been widely criticised for its slow pace as well as its apparent lack of contribution to poverty reduction however there is little systematic evidence of the impact of land transfers on their beneficiaries due to data scarcity this paper combines econometric evidence based on official household surveys with qualitative data collected specifically to triangulate and complement the econometric analysis the qualitative data analysis confirms the plausibility of the econometric finding that on average beneficiaries do not gain from participation and suggests that the main reason for the disappointing impact of participation is the incompatibility of consultant led land use plans to land grantees skills

the substitutability of occupational groups using firm level data abstract labor demand elasticity estimates are presented for a model in which labor groups are defined by occupation while most studies construct labor groups according to non productive characteristics such as race or gender the results corroborate much of the existing research