the effect of income on child development this study presents estimates of the effect of parental income on children s cognitive social and emotional development the effect of current income is small especially when income is treated as endogenous the effect of permanent income is substantially larger but relatively small when compared to the magnitude of recent policy induced changes in income family background characteristics play a more important role than income in determining child outcomes policies that affect family income will have little direct impact on child development unless they result in very large and permanent changes in income

movements towards free trade and domestic market performance with imperfect competition this paper studies the response of a dominant domestic oligopoly to the reduction in the rate of a protective tariff the issue here is whether domestic market performance is improved through a movement toward free trade alone put another way is free trade always a substitute for competition policy we find that the lower tariff may lead to inferior domestic market performance the direction of the change and its magnitude are functions of the shape of the import supply function the degree of competition between oligopolists and whether or not entry is possible thus there is reason to believe that a strong competition policy may in some markets be complementary to freer trade

booms busts and babies health we study the relationship between the unemployment rate at the time of a baby s conception and parental characteristics parental behaviors and babies health babies conceived in times of high unemployment have a reduced incidence of low and very low birth weight fewer congenital malformations and lower post neonatal mortality these health improvements are attributable both to selection changes in the type of mothers that conceive during recessions and to improvements in health behavior during recessions black mothers tend to be higher socio economic status as measured by education and marital status in times of high unemployment whereas white mothers are less educated

commodity price shocks and civil conflict evidence from colombia how do income shocks aect armed con ict theory suggests two op posite eects if labor is used to appropriate resources violently higher wages may lower con ict by reducing labor supplied to appropriation this is the opportunity cost eect alternatively a rise in contestable income may increase violence by raising gains from appropriation this is the rapacity eect our paper exploits exogenous price shocks in inter national commodity markets and a rich dataset on civil war in colombia to assess how dierent income shocks aect con ict we examine changes in the price of agricultural goods which are labor intensive and natural resources which are capital intensive we focus on coee and oil the two largest exports we nd that a sharp fall in coee prices in the 1990s increased violence dierentially in regions growing more coee by lower ing wages and the opportunity cost of joining armed groups in contrast a rise in oil prices increased violence dierentially in the oil region by in creasing municipal revenue siphoned through rapacity this pattern holds in several other agricultural and natural resource sectors providing robust evidence that price shocks aect con ict in opposite directions depending on the factor intensity of the commodity

women s suffrage political responsiveness and child survival in american history women s choices appear to emphasize child welfare more than those of men this paper presents new evidence on how suffrage rights for american women helped children to benefit from the scientific breakthroughs of the bacteriological revolution consistent with standard models of electoral competition suffrage laws were followed by immediate shifts in legislative behavior and large sudden increases in local public health spending this growth in public health spending fueled large scale door to door hygiene campaigns and child mortality declined by 8 15 or 20 000 annual child deaths nationwide as cause specific reductions occurred exclusively among infectious childhood killers sensitive to hygienic conditions

aggregate income shocks and infant mortality in the developing world health and income are strongly correlated both within and across countries yet the extent to which improvements in income have a causal effect on health status remains controversial the authors investigate whether short term fluctuations in aggregate income affect infant mortality using an unusually large data set of 1 7 million births in 59 developing countries the authors show a large negative association between per capita gdp and infant mortality female infant mortality is more sensitive than male infant mortality to negative economic shocks suggesting that policies that protect the health status of female infants may be especially important during economic downturns

early life circumstance and adult mental health we show that psychological well being in adulthood varies with circumstance in early life combining a time series of real producer prices of cocoa with a nationally representative household survey

competition and unilateral dumping this paper presents an analysis of the effects of market structure on the propensity of firms to dump goods the analysis of brander and krugman is extended to show that in the presence of transportation costs bilateral intra industry trade is not possible without dumping contrary to the conventional wisdom this paper finds that firms in markets with a large number of domestic competitors are more prone to dump unilaterally than firms in less competitive markets this dumping is not predatory but may result in export prices being below average cost

egalitarianism and the returns to education during the great transformation of american education secondary school education greatly expanded in the united states from 1910 to 1940 setting its schooling attainment apart from that of all other countries barely 10 percent of youth were high school graduates in 1910 but by the mid 1930s the median youth had a high school diploma in some regions by the 1930s enrollment and graduation rates rose to levels that were as high as they would be two decades later the issue addressed here concerns the economic impact of the large increase in the supply of educated labor evidence is presented concerning the sharp decline in the wage premium to ordinary white collar workers with the expansion of the high school large numbers of americans competed for positions in the coveted white collar sector although the return to a year of high school remained considerable on the eve of world war ii egalitarianism had evened the playing field for a substantial segment of americans

cyclicality mortality and the value of time the case of coffee price fluctuations and child survival in colombia recent studies demonstrate procyclical mortality in wealthy countries but there are reasons to expect a countercyclical relationship in developing nations we investigate how child survival in colombia responds to fluctuations in world arabica coffee prices and document starkly procyclical child deaths in studying this result s behavioral underpinnings we highlight that 1 the leading determinants of child health are inexpensive but require considerable time and 2 as the value of time declines with falling coffee prices so does the relative price of health we find a variety of direct evidence consistent with the primacy of time in child health production

stabilization and redistribution of coffee revenues a political economy model of commodity marketing boards abstract domestic prices of export crops are important macroeconomic variables in primary exporting countries not only are they key determinants of the business cycle but also play a pivotal role in the resolution of distributive conflicts using a model where producers delegate pricing decisions in a fully optimizing environment this paper explores the relationship between the redistribution and stabilization functions of marketing boards the results of the model as well as the empirical evidence suggest that different institutional arrangements are helpful in explaining differences in macroeconomic performance across countries the analysis is carried out for coffee in colombia costa rica cote d ivoire and kenya

fatal fluctuations cyclicality in infant mortality in india this paper investigates the impact of aggregate income shocks on infant mortality in india and investigates likely mechanisms a recent oecd dominated literature reports the provocative finding that mortality at most ages is pro cyclical similar analyses for poorer countries are scarce and both income risk and mortality risk are greater in poor countries this paper uses data and methods designed to avoid some of the specification problems in previous studies and it explores mechanisms and extensions that have not been previously considered it uses individual data on infant mortality for about 150 000 children born in 1970 1997 merged by cohort and state of birth with a state panel containing information on aggregate income identification rests upon comparing the effects of annual deviations in income from trend on the mortality risks of children born at different times to the same mother conditional upon a number of state time varying covariates including rainshocks and state social expenditure rural infant mortality is counter cyclical the elasticity being about 0 33 this is despite the finding that relatively high risk women avert birth or suffer fetal loss in recessions it seems in part related to recessions stimulating distress labor amongst mothers in contrast to the case in richer countries where they discourage labor market participation health care seeking declines in recessions and this appears to be related to the opportunity cost of maternal time disaggregation reveals that the average results are driven by rural households in which the mother is uneducated or had her first birth in teenage and that it is only girls that are at risk boys are protected from income shocks exposure to poor conditions in the fetal and neonatal period appears to have a larger effect on infant mortality than similar exposure in the postneonatal period

comparative advantage under oligopoly we analyze the principle of comparative advantage when agents in the world market are aware of the influence their individual supply exerts on the equilibrium exchange rate of goods we show that specialization following comparative disadvantage can be an oligopoly equilibrium in a ricardian economy moreover for a wide class of economies it is the only one nonetheless when the number of agents in each country increases without limit the equilibrium in which specialization follows comparative advantage again obtains

tariffs versus quotas with strategic investment the relative efficiency of tariffs versus quotas is analyzed in a cournot oligopoly with strategic investment introducing quota licence fees to neutralize the international distributional effect when such licence fees remove quota rents from foreign firms then for the case of constrained entry with a sufficiently large number of firms quotas frequently hold a welfare advantage since tariffs relatively aggravate the inefficiency from overinvestment in the case of free entry and exit however tariffs hold a welfare advantage since there is greater benefit of increasing returns to scale to the economy by avoidance of excessive entry of firms

oligopoly and trade what how much and for whom abstract this paper integrates the cournot oligopoly model with the ricardian comparative advantage model the ricardian trade pattern is robust and only can be reversed in extreme conditions trade volume increases substantially with increases in competition in world export industries in a symmetrical world a threshold level of competition determines whether capitalists as a group usually gain or lose from trade under all circumstances workers never lose even if a country has a comparative disadvantage in a perfectly competitive world industry but workers gain less in that country than they do in the rest of the world

is the wto passe the wto has delivered policy outcomes that are very different from those likely to emerge out of the recent wave of preferential trade agreements ptas should economists see this as an efficient institutional hand off where the wto has carried trade liberalization as far as it can manage and is now passing the baton to ptas to finish the job this paper surveys a growing economics literature on international trade agreements and argues on this basis that the wto is not passe rather and subject to some caveats this survey of research to date suggests that the wto warrants strong support while a more cautious view of ptas seems appropriate

the effect of commodity price shocks on public lands distribution evidence from colombia abstract how do commodity shocks impact the privatization of public lands this paper examines this question through the lens of the establishment of private property rights over public lands in colombia which has had one of the western hemisphere s largest public land distribution programs during the last century using data on exogenous international coffee price shocks along with data on land suitability for coffee production as determined by agro climatic conditions and roughly 250 000 public land grants i find that coffee price increases generate more public land grants in municipalities where land is more suited to coffee production additional tests suggest that the findings are driven by the power of organized cultivators to steer the land grant process in their favor the findings shed light on the role of organized actors in the countryside extending private extension of control over public territory a phenomenon that has drastically diminished public lands and natural spaces in numerous countries over the last two centuries

the distribution of talent and the pattern and consequences of international trade i study the interaction between imperfect labor contracts and international trade in a setting in which workers have private information about their own abilities when an individual s contribution to firm output can be measured accurately in some activities but not in others the most able workers select occupations in which their pay most closely reflects their own performance in a world economy with two otherwise similar countries that have different distributions of talent the country with the more heterogeneous labor force exports the good that is produced by the most talented individuals in this country trade exacerbates the polarization of the labor force and often worsens the distribution of income

trade and trade policy with imperfect competition the case of identical products and free entry abstract this paper analyses intra industry trade between economies containing an imperfectly competitive industry in which firms produce a homogeneous output production is subject to increasing returns to scale and there is free entry and exit of firms trade is shown to unambiguously increase welfare by reducing the degree of monopoly in each market and increasing firm size the effects of differences in technology and endowments on the pattern of trade and welfare are examined import tariffs are shown to raise welfare in the country employing the tariff and the welfare implications of various types of industry subsidy are examined

sorting it out international trade with heterogeneous workers each worker brings a bundle of skills to the workplace for example quantitative and communication skills since employers must take this bundle as a package deal they choose workers with just the right mix of skills we show that international differences in the distribution of worker skill bundles for example japan s abundance of workers with a modest mix of both quantitative and teamwork skills have important implications for international trade industrial structure and domestic income distribution formally we model two dimensional worker heterogeneity and show that the second moments of the distribution of skills are critical as in the roy model

financial crisis health outcomes and aging mexico in the 1980s and 1990s abstract we study the impact of economic crisis on health in mexico there have been four wide scale economic crises in mexico in the past two decades the most recent in 1995 96 we find that mortality rates for the very young and the elderly increase or decline less rapidly in crisis years as compared with non crisis years in the 1995 96 crisis mortality rates were about 5 to 7 percent higher in the crisis years compared to the years just prior to the crisis this translates into a 0 4 percent increase in mortality for the elderly and a 0 06 percent increase in mortality for the very young we find tentative evidence that economic crises affect mortality by reducing incomes and possibly by placing a greater burden on the medical sector but not by forcing less healthy members of the population to work or by forcing primary caregivers to go to work

russian voting and the initial economic shock of hyperinflation this paper addresses the issue of economicvoting in transitional democracies using data from the russianfederal elections it argues that the shock of inflation thatfollowed the fundamental economic reform has a lastinginfluence on voters specifically it shows that in russia where inflationary policy led to hyperinflation and thewidespread loss of personal savings the magnitude of savingslost at that time continues to explain a significant portionof the variation in the regional support for the communistparty in parliamentary and presidential elections

blessing and curse the gold boom and local development in colombia abstract i provide a microeconomic channel for the resource curse using the boom in colombian gold mining as a case study identification strategies exploit trend changes in international gold prices after 2002 and regional gold production capabilities as measured by water supply the majority of gold mining in colombia is placer mining and water is important for industrial gold production i find that the gold boom decreases local unemployment in the short term by 3 5 however given the lack of capacity to effectively ban child labor these economic opportunities are also available for children my results indicate that because of the gold boom the probability that a child works increases by 9 3 and school attendance decreases by 23 9 capital accumulation seems to be permanently hurt since the probability that a child is lagging three or more grades behind increases by 9 these effects are only discernible after 2002 the human capital results can be retrieved from different databases furthermore results are robust to a series of robustness checks restricting the sample to gold producers and their neighbors using alternative sets of controls and restricting the sample to non migrants resources are a blessing in the short term but a curse for long term economic growth if human capital is productive

the determinants of mortality mortality rates have fallen dramatically over time starting in a few countries in the 18th century and continuing to fall today in just the past century life expectancy has increased by over 30 years at the same time mortality rates remain much higher in poor countries with a difference in life expectancy between rich and poor countries of also about 30 years this difference persists despite the remarkable progress in health improvement in the last half century at least until the hiv aids pandemic in both the time series and the cross section data there is a strong correlation between income per capita and mortality rates a correlation that also exists within countries where richer better educated people live longer we review the determinants of these patterns over history over countries and across groups within countries while there is no consensus about the causal mechanisms we tentatively identify the application of scientific advance and technical progress some of which is induced by income and facilitated by education as the ultimate determinant of health such an explanation allows a consistent interpretation of the historical cross country and within country evidence we downplay direct causal mechanisms running from income to health

rent shifting and rent sharing a re examination of the strategic industrial policy problem this paper reexamines the market structure problem in the strategic trade policy literature it is shown that rent sharing between the home union and the home firms raises total home industry rents regardless of whether the international duopoly is cournot or bertrand furthermore home welfare also rises with cooperation if the international industry consists of more than two firms if the industry is faced with entry and if there is domestic consumption this paper shows that rent sharing can be a robust strategic industrial policy and can be interpreted as a solution to the market structure dilemma

transitory shocks and birth weights evidence from a blackout in zanzibar abstract do transitory economic shocks affect neonatal outcomes i show that an unexpected month long blackout in tanzania caused a sharp but temporary drop in work hours and earnings for workers in electricity dependent jobs using records from a maternity ward i document a reduction in birth weights for children exposed in utero to the blackout and an increase in the probability of low birth weight the reduction is correlated with measures of maternal exposure to the blackout the blackout also increased fertility for teenage and first time mothers but selection into pregnancy cannot fully explain the drop in weights

the first review of european union antidumping reviews the literature on antidumping ad has documented various aspects of this protectionist tool however a peculiar feature of ad has not received much attention these measures are endogenous to the behaviour of the exporting firms which can adjust the dumping margin by changing their export price and ask the authority to amend the ad measures accordingly the objective of this paper is to fill part of this gap in the literature by analysing the ad reviews conducted by the european union for affirmative petitions initiated in 1980 2009 to this end a novel data set of all such reviews has been assembled summary statistics reveal that more than a third of all petitions concluded with the imposition of ad measures are reviewed at least once before their expiration and most reviews lead to lower ad duties although almost 20 per cent of the firms investigated through interim reviews see their duties increase there are significant differences in the outcome of the reviews depending on the party requesting them i e reviews lodged by european producers are less likely to lead to lower duties these conclusions are confirmed by the econometric analysis which also shows that chinese firms see their duties reduced significantly less than those of firms from other countries

economic impacts of el nino southern oscillation evidence from the colombian coffee market el nino southern oscillation enso is a naturally occurring phenomenon that affects weather around the world past enso episodes have had severe impacts on the economy of colombia we study the influence of enso on colombian coffee production exports and price our structural econometric specification is consistent with an economic model of the market for colombian coffee which in the short run is characterized by a downward sloping demand curve and by a vertical supply curve we show that el nino i e positive shocks to enso is beneficial for colombian production and exports and decreases the real price of colombian coffee on the contrary la nina i e negative shocks to enso depresses colombian coffee production and exports and increases price however the overall impact of enso shocks is small both in the short run and in the long run shocks to international demand for colombian coffee are more relevant than supply side shocks in colombia in explaining the dynamics of the price of colombian coffee our results suggest that a given coffee price shock can have beneficial detrimental or negligible effects on the colombian economy depending on its underlying cause as a consequence policy responses to coffee price shocks should be designed by looking at the causes of the shocks

competitive versus comparative advantage i explore the interactions between comparative competitive and absolute advantage in a two country model of oligopoly in general equilibrium comparative advantage always determines the direction of trade but both competitive and absolute advantage affect resource allocation trade patterns and trade volumes competitive advantage in the sense of more home firms drives foreign firms out of marginal sectors but also makes some marginal home sectors uncompetitive absolute advantage in the sense of a uniform fall in home costs tends to raise home output in all sectors but also leads both countries to specialise less in accordance with comparative advantage

factor intensities and factor substitution in general equilibrium abstract this article examines how factor intensity rankings between industries and the economy wide asymmetry in the degree of factor substitution combine to influence the manner in which changes in relative commodity prices affect the factoral distribution of income the reciprocal influence of factor endowment changes on the composition of outputs is also discussed the analysis is undertaken in a general three factor two commodity framework the minimal sized model that allows both influences to affect factor prices and admits of the possibility of complementarity between factors factors which are good substitutes find their returns behave somewhat similarly when commodity prices change while factors which are complements experience strongly asymmetrical fortunes a crucial role is played by a comparison of the share of the middle factor in each sector

infant health during the 1980s peruvian crisis and long term economic outcomes summary in 1988 peru entered a severe economic crisis as a corollary of unfavorable external economic conditions high levels of debt and heterodox policies the so called debt crisis of 1980s this paper investigates the short term health shock experienced by infants during the crisis and its long term impact on human capital accumulation because no longitudinal data are available the estimation of causal effects is performed using multiple cross section surveys that are representative of the same population over time the short term and the long term effects are estimated exploiting the heterogeneous impact of the crisis across and within birth cohorts results indicate that the peruvian crisis significantly affected the health of infants particularly that of children born to low educated mothers from 1988 to 1990 vaccination declined 12 percentage points and infant mortality increased 2 3 percentage points among children born to low educated mothers in the long run the children who suffered the most severe health shocks during the economic downturn of the 1980s performed worse in school they had 0 12 fewer years of formal education and their probability of completing primary education by age 15 was three percentage points lower in relation to similar children born after the crisis the results have strong policy implications children in developing countries should be safeguarded against health shocks during economic crises to avoid a decline in the accumulation of human capital in the long run

wealthier is healthier we estimate the effect of income on health using cross country timeseries data on health infant and child mortality and life expectancy and income per capita we use instrumental variables estimates using exogenous determinants of income growth to identify the pure income effect on health isolated from reverse causation or incidental association the long run income elasticity of infant and child mortality in developing countries lies between 0 2 and 0 4 using these estimates we calculate that over a half a million child deaths in the developing world in 1990 alone can be attributed to the poor economic performance in the 1980s

aggregation and the estimated effects of economic conditions on health this paper considers the relationship between economic conditions and health with a focus on different approaches to geographic aggregation after reviewing the tradeoffs associated with more and less disaggregated analyses i update earlier state level analyses of mortality and infant health and then consider how the estimated effects vary when the analysis is conducted at differing levels of geographic aggregation this analysis reveals that the results are sensitive to the level of geographic aggregation with more disaggregated analyses particularly county level analyses routinely producing estimates that are smaller in magnitude further analyses suggest this is due to spillover effects of economic conditions on health outcomes across counties

drought of opportunities contemporaneous and long term impacts of rainfall shocks on human capital higher wages are generally thought to increase human capital production particularly in the developing world we introduce a simple model of human capital production in which investments and time allocation differ by age using data on test scores and schooling from rural india we show that higher wages increase human capital investment in early life in utero to age 2 but decrease human capital from age 5 to 16 children switch out of school into productive work when rainfall is higher the opportunity cost of schooling even for fairly young children is an important factor in determining overall human capital investment

tariff limit pricing relative plant scale and the eastman stykolt hypothesis this paper provides a formal basis for the widely held proposition sometimes called the eastman stykolt effect that the interaction of tariff protection and small domestic market size prevents canadian firms from achieving scale efficiency it considers a free entry cournot nash equilibrium in a homogeneous goods industry protected by tariffs the model demonstrates that the tariff limit pricing effect can arise without appeal to collusion or product differentiation moreover it is not appropriate to test for the eastman stykolt effect by simply including the interaction of market size and tariffs in a regression explaining relative plant scale

the missing link the ricardian approach to the factor endowments theory of trade this paper views all interpersonal trade as ricardian while all international trade reflects each country s factor endowment the model provides the logical link betwe en heckscher ohlin and ricardo the strength of the model is that it allows simpler and more robust theorems about trade welfare and fac tor payments factor price equalization holds universally and stolper samuelson is not tied to the number of goods or factors a key resul t is that the old mill theorem that the small country gains all from trade is incorrect trade patterns with three factors and two goods a re completely characterized copyright 1988 by american economic association

aggregate economic shocks and infant mortality new evidence for middle income countries abstract we provide country specific estimates of the effect of macroeconomic shocks on infant mortality for a sample of mainly middle income countries in most countries infant mortality appears to be pro cyclical or acyclical only when shocks to gdp are very deep 15 or larger are they consistently associated with higher mortality

economic conditions early in life and individual mortality this paper analyzes the effect of economic conditions early in life on the individual mortality rate later in life using business cycle conditions early in life as an exogenous indicator we have individual data records from dutch registers of birth marriage and death certificates covering an observation window of unprecedented size 1812 2000 these are merged with historical data on macro economic and health indicators we correct for secular changes over time and other mortality determinants we nonparametrically compare those born in a recession to those born in the preceding boom and we estimate duration models where the individual s mortality rate depends on current conditions conditions early in life age individual characteristics including individual socio economic indicators and interaction terms the results indicate a significant negative effect of economic conditions early in life on individual mortality rates at all ages

poverty and famines an essay on entitlement and deprivation this book focuses on the causes of starvation in general and famines in particular the traditional analysis of famines is shown to be fundamentally defective and the author develops an alternative analysis

long run commodity prices economic growth and interest rates 17th century to the present day a significant proportion of the trade basket of many developing countries is comprised of primary commodities this implies relative price movements in commodities may have important consequences for economic growth and poverty reduction taking a long run perspective we examine the historical relation between a new aggregate index of commodity prices economic activity and interest rates initial empirical tests show that commodity prices present a downward trend with breaks over the entire industrial age providing clear support for the prebisch singer hypothesis it would also appear that this trend has declined at a faster rate since the 1870s conversely several gdp series such as world chile china uk and us trend upwards with breaks such trending behaviour in both commodity prices and economic activity suggests a latent common factor like technological innovation to assess the relationships between economic series we apply a stationary var vector autoregression to model movements around trends strikingly there is evidence that commodity prices granger cause income and interest rates whilst interest rates granger cause commodity prices from these results and the related impulse response function analysis the historical perspective provides some useful information for contemporary policy makers for example loose monetary policy has tended to support higher commodity prices more over commodity price movements have an asymmetric country effect on economic activity periods of falling commodity prices will support gdp growth for com modity importers like the us but depress growth for commodity exporters such as chile

poverty and survival a recent literature highlights the uncertainty concerning whether economic growth has any causal protective effect on health and survival but equal rates of growth often deliver unequal rates of poverty reduction and absolute deprivation is more clearly relevant using state level panel data for india we contribute the first estimates of the impact of changes in poverty on infant survival we identify a significant within state relationship which persists conditional upon state income indicating the size of survival gains from redistribution in favour of households below the poverty line the poverty elasticity declines over time after 1981 it is invariant to controlling for income inequality but diminished upon controlling for education fertility and state health expenditure and eliminated once we introduce controls for omitted trends

the impact of natural culture and economic ideology on managerial work values a study of the united states russia japan and china this study assesses the impact of economic ideology and national culture on the individual work values of managers in the united states russia japan and china the convergence divergence crossvergence cdc framework was used as theoretical framework for the study while the schwartz value survey svs was used to operationalize over investigation of managerial work values across these four countries the findings largely support the crossvergence prospective while also confirming the role of national culture implications from the findings are drawn for the convergence divergence crossvergence of values as well as for the feasibility of multidomestic or global strategies for a corporate culture

anti dumping and countervailing duties under oligopoly abstract this paper constructs a conjectural variations model of international oligopoly in which the home country s optimal policy responses to the foreign government s subsidies and foreign firms dumping can be calculated some theoretical support is found for tariffs that countervail part of the foreign export subsidy the optimal fraction depends on the size of own and cross effects in demand and on the extent of market competition however no normative case is found for anti dumping duties

income and health in tanzania an instrumental variable approach there is a substantial debate over the direction of the causal relation between income and health this is important for our understanding of the health production process and for the policy debate over improving healthcare we instrument income with rainfall measurements by matching satellite information on timing and positioning of 21 rainfall stations to longitudinal data 1991 94 of over 4 000 individuals in 51 villages in tanzania a 10 increase in income reduces the number of illnesses by 0 02 we also find that a 10 increase in income implies an increase of about 0 1 vaccinations of children under six

power to the people evidence from a randomized field experiment on community based monitoring in uganda this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled power to the people evidence from a randomized field experiment on community based monitoring in uganda intervention started in 2004 and consisted of a training and a six month follow up in uganda the study observed that localized nongovernmental organizations encouraged communities to be more involved with the state of health service provision and strengthened their capacity to hold their local health providers to account for performance the community based monitoring project increased the quality and quantity of primary health care provision the program led to a significant increase in the weight of infants by 14 z scores and a significant decrease in child mortality by 33 utilization of outpatient services was significantly higher 20 percent in the treatment group and the overall effect across utilization measures is large and significant funding for the study derived from bank netherlands partnership program world bank research committee world bank africa region division swedish international development agency department for research cooperation

does inflation kill exposure to food inflation and child mortality abstract unlike extreme malnutrition shocks such as famine and drought which grab the attention of the media international aid organizations and policymakers malnutrition due to food price hikes are often neglected and their impacts on children are not well known it is well established that malnutrition during the critical periods of early life between conception and the first 1000 days after birth has lasting consequences on health and mortality in this paper using a uniquely constructed data from ethiopia that takes advantage of high frequency local retail food prices we examine the impact of early life exposure to food price inflation on child mortality following survival events since conception we estimate the causal impact of exposure to inflation during in utero and infancy the results show that exposure to a 10 percent inflation in staple food prices during in utero decreases the survival of children under the age of five by about 5 4 percent we also find that the impacts are non linear depending on the specific month of exposure and substantially vary by observable characteristics and the type of staple food

fertility at work children and women s labor market outcomes in urban ghana abstract while it is commonly assumed that fertility decreases female labor supply i show theoretically that fertility can increase female labor supply if returns to financial inputs in children are sufficiently high compared to returns to time investments using six rounds of a panel survey from urban ghana i find evidence of countervailing effects behind a net zero effect of young children on women s hours of work labor supply on the extensive margin drops but women who remain in the labor force increase their hours in response to a child women s labor supply particularly increases in response to a young child if there are older siblings or other adults in the household by contrast men s labor supply does not change in response to young children

on the evolution of comparative advantage in matching models abstract this paper examines whether comparative advantage is the long run outcome of an evolutionary process in the open economy it formalizes the notion that natural selection eliminates inefficient firms and thus leads to stable and perhaps efficient patterns of world trade instead of assuming the existence of a walrasian auctioneer we study two simple matching processes that coordinate trade between firms our central result is that specialization according to comparative advantage with the larger country possibly incompletely specialized is the unique evolutionarily stable state of the world economy

estimating a household production function heterogeneity the demand for health inputs and their effects on birth weight the household production literature emphasizes that technical or biological processes condition input selection by households in their production activities along with prices and income exogenous variations in health to the extent that they are perceived by individuals heterogeneity lead to correlations between inputs and health outcomes that cannot be used to derive causal conclusions therefore estimates of health technology must be obtained from a behavioral model in which health inputs are themselves choices consistent estimates are reported of the effect of endogenous inputs such as medical care smoking and fertility on birth weight and fetal growth in the presence of health heterogeneity

the distributional effect of investment in early childhood nutrition a panel quantile approach abstract this article examines the distributional effects of early nutritional investments on child health outcomes depending on the difference between a child s actual and potential health status the effects of investment in early childhood nutrition can differ across child health status distributions to establish a causal inference i merge village level rainfall data with a child level longitudinal survey the ethiopian rural household survey and apply a correlated random effect quantile regression for panel data model the findings suggest that a standard deviation increase in a village level precipitation z score has heterogeneous effects across the weight for height and weight for age z score distributions and gender the positive effects are more pronounced at the lower end of health status distributions and on girls to the extent that the increase in a village level precipitation z score increases investment in child nutrition its stronger effect on girls and at the lower end of the health status distribution implies that policy interventions that aim to promote nutritional investment reduces the health inequality gap across health status and gender

income and population growth do populations grow as countries become richer in this study we estimate the effects on population growth of shocks to national income that are plausibly exogenous and unlikely to be driven by technological change for a panel of over 139 countries spanning the period 1960 2007 we interact changes in international oil prices with countries average net export shares of oil in gdp controlling for country and time fixed effects we find that this measure of oil price induced income growth is positively associated with population growth the iv estimates indicate that a 1 percentage point increase in gdp per capita growth over a 10 year period increases countries population growth by around 0 1 percentage points furthermore we find that this population effect results from both a positive effect on fertility and a negative effect on infant and child mortality

international competition downsizing and wage inequality a country with cournot competition and free entry experiences an increase of its market size either due to economic growth or international integration of its goods markets this implied increase in competition leads to shrinking mark ups and forces firms to reduce overhead costs relative to output this implies a reallocation at the aggregate level from administrative to productive activities relative factor rewards change and wage inequality increases the factor which loses in relative terms can even lose in real terms from a quantitative perspective international competition is demonstrated to be the more plausible cause of rising wage inequality c 2007 published by elsevier b v

changing world prices women s wages and the fertility transition sweden 1860 1910 this time series analysis examines during 1860 1910 the impact of changes in local prices of agricultural commodities on wages among men and women in sweden and the impact of changes in wages on fertility decline child mortality urbanization and improved social conditions linear ordinary least squares models are set up to determine whether demand induced increases in womens wages relative to mens are significant factors in explaining swedish total fertility rates data are obtained from 25 counties and the city of stockholm among pooled observations for six time periods during 1860 64 and 1910 14 this period is marked by a total fertility decline of 28 a marital fertility decline of 26 and a child mortality decline of 52 explanatory variables are the relative prices of main agricultural outputs employment outside of agriculture the proportion of urban population and the child mortality rate findings indicate a significant relationship between child mortality and total fertility and specific fertility rates among women aged 20 39 years a doubling of the male real wage rate was significantly associated with earlier marriage higher birth rates among women aged 15 29 years and lower birth rates among women aged 35 49 years the ratio of male wages to female wages was associated with a decline in birth rates at all ages with the exception of teenagers 66 of fertility increase was due to declines in child mortality but this increase was counterbalanced by fertility decline among older women child mortality and urbanization depressed marital fertility male wages increased the proportion married a 10 increase in the male female wage rate was associated with a 25 reduction in the total fertility rate another 25 increase in the male female wage rate was associated with a 50 reduction in child mortality it is concluded that the value of womens time had a key impact on the swedish fertility transition

the gains from specialization and population size abstract this note combines three ideas the association of more people with new goods the comparative advantages of individuals and economic happiness people may not be happier in a larger knowledge economy but the gains from specialization are necessarily larger

do macroeconomic crises always slow human capital accumulation the impact of macroeconomic crises on the investments made by parents in the human capital of their children is a question of considerable policy importance analysis of the effects of the profound 1988 92 macroeconomic crisis in peru on the schooling and employment decisions of school age children in urban areas finds no effect on attendance rates but a significant decline in the fraction of children who are both employed and attend school it also finds significantly higher mean educational attainment for children exposed to the crisis than for those who were not these findings may be related children who are not employed have more time available and may therefore put more effort into school

escaping malthus economic growth and fertility change in the developing world following mid twentieth century predictions of malthusian catastrophe fertility in the developing world more than halved while living standards more than doubled we analyze how fertility change related to economic growth during this episode using data on 2 3 million women from 255 household surveys we find different responses to fluctuations and long run growth both heterogeneous over the life cycle fertility was procyclical but declined and delayed with long run growth fluctuations late but not early in the reproductive period affected lifetime fertility the results are consistent with models of the escape from the malthusian trap extended with a life cycle and liquidity constraints

commodity prices and intra household labor allocation volatility in commodity markets poses a distinct risk to farmers in developing countries who rely on cash crop agriculture we combine a time series of international coffee prices with a long running panel on coffee growing households in vietnam to investigate coping mechanisms employed by farmers in a transitioning economy we find that households cope with lower coffee prices by increasing wage labor of adults with children and adolescents substituting for adults on the farm heterogeneity analysis indicates a stronger substitution pattern among women ethnic minorities and households with fewer assets a variety of robustness checks corroborate these findings account of this finding should be taken in formulating and implementing social protection and inclusive growth policies

the markup and inflation evidence in oecd countries in this paper we evaluate the dynamic inconsistency argument put forth by kydland and prescott 1977 and barro and gordon 1983 as an explanation for differences in the average inflation experience across oecd countries the focus is on the empirical evidence relating the overall degree of competition among firms as measured by the markup of price over marginal cost and inflation over the 1973 88 period the prediction is that higher markups raise the monetary authority s incentive to increase output leading to higher equilibrium rates of inflation we find that the markup does well in explaining cross country differences in average inflation jel classification e31 e58 d43 l ecart du prix par rapport au cout marginal et l inflation resultats pour les pays de l ocde ce memoire examine l argument mis de l avant par kydland et prescott 1977 et barro et gordon 1983 pour expliquer les differences dans le taux moyen d inflation entre les pays de l ocde on porte une attention speciale aux resultats empiriques qui relient le degre general de concurrence entre les entreprises mesure par l ecart du prix par rapport au cout marginal et le niveau d inflation entre 1973 et 1988 la prediction est que des ecarts prix cout marginal plus eleves augmentent l incitation des autorites monetaires a accroitre le niveau de production ce qui entraine des taux d inflation d equilibre plus eleves il s avere que l ecart du prix par rapport au cout marginal tend a expliquer bien les differences dans le niveau moyen d inflation entre pays

tax competition in imperfectly competitive markets abstract the literature on strategic trade policy has shown that in imperfectly competitive markets governments have an incentive to subsidize exports of their own firms yet the consequence of the departure from laissez faire is a wasteful subsidy race in contrast this paper shows that even in imperfectly competitive markets there is a strong tendency for laissez faire to prevail the driving force is the firms willingness to exploit tax or subsidy differentials by relocating production a small tax differential induces firms to change their place of production the change in market structure has a negligible effect on the oligopoly equilibrium but a non negligible impact on government revenues when tax policy is non discriminatory governments gain lose by attracting all firms when production is taxed subsidized hence laissez faire is the only equilibrium since from the point of view of the two producing countries laissez faire nondiscrimination pareto dominates the intervention equilibrium discrimination nondiscrimination is a simple device to result in a mutual beneficial outcome

international r d rivalry and industrial strategy this paper presents a theory of government intervention which provides an explanation for industrial strategy policies such as r d or export subsidies in imperfectly competitive international markets domestic net welfare is improved by the capture of a greater share of the output of rent earning industries although the subsidy ridden noncooperative international equilibrium is jointly suboptimal behaviour of governments and firms is modelled as a three stage subgame perfect nash equilibrium the assumption that the government is the first player in this game allows it to influence equilibrium outcomes by altering the set of credible actions open to firms

entry and entry deterrence in penetrable markets this paper presents a game theoretic model of entry a potential entrant into a given market is postulated to be a currently produci ng firm whose product is a substitute on the production side for the good being sold in the market an entrant is capable of switching pr oduction between markets faster than firms in general can adjust thei r total outputs to some extent a market faced with entry as such wi ll resemble a contestable market and limit pricing behavior will occ ur copyright 1988 by the london school of economics and political science

commodity price shocks and child outcomes the 1990 cocoa crisis in cote d ivoire abstract we look at the drastic cut of the administered cocoa producer price in 1990 cote d ivoire and study to which extent cocoa producers children suffered from this severe aggregate shock in terms of school enrollment labor height stature and morbidity using precrisis 1985 88 and postcrisis 1993 data we propose a difference in difference strategy to identify the causal effect of the cocoa shock on child outcomes whereby we compare children of cocoa producing households and children of other farmers living in the same district or the same village this causal effect is shown to be rather strong for the four child outcomes we examine hence human capital investments are definitely procyclical in this context we also provide evidence of gender bias against young girls with respect to education and health care we finally argue that the difference in difference variations can be interpreted as private income effects likely to derive from tight liquidity constraints

effects of the customs union with the european union on the market structure and pricing behaviour of the turkish manufacturing industry turkey established a customs union with the european union in 1996 this study aims to analyse the effect of that customs union on the market structure and the pricing behaviour of the turkish manufacturing industry for the period 1994 to 2000 to that end the price cost mark up equation of 12 manufacturing industry sectors is estimated using the import and export ratios with european union countries together with control variables a second equation is also estimated for the concentration ratio index taking the trade ratios with european union countries as explanatory variables the estimation method is panel data covering eight years and 12 cross section units estimation outcomes indicate that the export and import ratios of trade with european union countries have a negative relation with the price cost mark up in the manufacturing sector it is concluded that increased imports with union countries have created a positive wealth and efficiency effect upon the turkish manufacturing industry due to f