access to markets and rural poverty evidence from household consumption in china abstract this paper presents evidence on the effects of access to domestic and international markets on per capita consumption of households using data from rural china the econometric analysis uses alternative identification schemes to address the potential endogeneity of access to markets we use straight line distances to coastline and navigable river along with the topography of the intervening counties as sources of exogeneous variations we also use identification through heteroskedasticity which does not rely on standard exclusion restrictions the results from alternative identification schemes show that better access to both domestic and international markets has positive effects on per capita consumption the domestic market effect is significantly larger in magnitude and there is complementarity between the access to domestic and international markets

the impact of survey characteristics on the measurement of food consumption abstract survey characteristics affect the quality of the measurement of food consumption within households thus it is important to identify best practices for designing surveys that collect food data this paper analyses the impact of survey characteristics on the measurement of food consumption from a sample of 81 national surveys results highlight regularities that can inform best practices in designing surveys and promoting the use of the data for multiple purposes surveys focused on food acquisition collect higher food quantities compared to those that target food consumption surveys based on recall interviews collect higher food quantities compared to those based on diaries but the difference decreases with long reference periods the use of standard units of measurement as well as the consideration of partakers in meals and of seasonality generates significant differences in the survey results the impact of the different survey characteristics carries substantive implications when food consumption data are employed for assessing food security conditions the results are part of a wider work program aimed at improving the quality of household survey data more evidence is needed ideally through coordinated sets of analyses and experiments in different contexts additionally survey characteristics must be complemented by effective field work in order to generate high quality data towards this end statistical capacity development is crucial to promote better data and more evidence based decision making

supermarket shopping and nutritional outcomes a panel data analysis for urban kenya summary overweight and obesity are growing health problems in many developing countries rising obesity rates are the result of changes in people s diets and lifestyles income growth and urbanization are factors that contribute to these changes modernizing food retail environments may also play a certain role for instance the rapid spread of supermarkets in many developing countries could affect consumer food choices and thus nutritional outcomes however concrete evidence about the effects of supermarkets on consumer diets and nutrition is thin a few existing studies have analyzed related linkages with cross sectional survey data we add to this literature by using panel data from households and individuals in urban kenya employing panel regression models with individual fixed effects and controlling for other factors we show that shopping in supermarkets significantly increases body mass index bmi we also analyze impact pathways shopping in supermarkets contributes to higher consumption of processed and highly processed foods and lower consumption of unprocessed foods these results confirm that the retail environment affects people s food choices and nutrition however the effects depend on the types of foods offered rather than thwarting modernization in the retail sector policies that incentivize the sale of more healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables in supermarkets may be more promising to promote desirable nutritional outcomes

analyzing nutritional impacts of policies an empirical study for malawi summary widespread malnutrition in developing countries calls for appropriate strategies presupposing good knowledge about nutritional impacts of policies little previous work has been carried out in this direction especially with respect to micronutrients we use representative household data from malawi and develop a demand systems approach to estimate income and price elasticities of food demand and nutrient consumption these estimates are applied for policy simulations given multiple nutritional deficiencies income related policies are better suited than price policies to improve nutrition while consumer price subsidies for maize improve calorie and mineral consumption they can worsen vitamin consumption in urban areas

evidence on growth increasing returns and the extent of the market if economic growth relies upon the extent of the market then openness will decrease the connection between initial income and later growth alternatively learning by doing models suggest that wealth will be more positively correlated with growth in open economies because trade causes advanced economies to specialize in products with more opportunities for learning we examine twentieth century less developed countries and nineteenth century u s states in both data sets there is a much stronger correlation between growth and initial wealth among closed economies these findings support the importance of the extent of the market and aggregate demand in fostering growth

does survey recall error explain the deaton paxson puzzle using recall and diary food expenditure data from canada we compare estimates of the household size elasticity of per capita food expenditure in contrast to gibson 2002 we find negative elasticities in both recall and diary data this in turn means we find evidence of the deaton paxson puzzle in both diary and recall data recall error cannot be the sole explanation of the puzzle

the food retail revolution in poor countries is it coming or is it over abstract global retail chains are becoming increasingly dominant in the global food trade and their rise leads to dramatic impacts on agricultural supply chains and on small producers however the prospects and impacts of a food retail revolution in poor countries are not yet well understood here i examine this question in madagascar a poor but stable country in which global retailers have been present for over a decade the survey and analysis find that while global retail chains sell better quality food their prices are 40 90 higher ceteris paribus than those seen in traditional retail markets in poor settings characterized by high food price elasticities a lack of willingness to pay for quality and small retail margins supermarkets appear to set prices with an eye toward maximizing profits on the basis of price inelastic demands for quality products from a small middle class interested in one stop shopping it seems unlikely that global retail chains will further increase their food reta

the part time premium enigma an assessment of the chilean case proquest denotes formulae omitted working part time has been seen by some researchers public policy advisers and politicians as a way for women to find a balance between home and paid work gregory and connolly 2008 bardasi and gornick 2008 however there is no agreement on the optimal balance indeed there are contrasting views on the subject those in favor suggest that in the absence of part time jobs female labor force participation would be substantially lower sundstrom 1991 dekker 2008 according to this belief women confronted with the choice between working full time and not working at all would opt for the latter on the other hand detractors in european countries assert that part time jobs imply a waste of resources and of investments in human capital since the many part time working women who are highly educated generally make a downward occupational move when they switch from full time to part time work gregory and connolly 2008 manning and petrongolo 2008 furthermore part time jobs have adverse repercussions for the economic well being of part time working women given that public social welfare benefits wage increases and professional development might be scarce for these women leiva 2000 warren 2008 fernandez kranz and others 2011 fernandez kranz and rodriguez planas 2011 in addition in mem ber countries of the organization for economic cooperation and develop ment oecd hourly earnings are lower manning and petrongolo 2008 and employer provided training less common gregory and connolly 2008 connolly and gregory 2009 in part time jobs than in full time jobs further more in those countries though the hourly earnings gap between women and men in full time work has been narrowing the same is not the case for female part time workers and males in full time jobs manning and petrongolo 2008 part time work among women after the birth of their first child is currently responsible for some of the pay gap between men and women kanji 2011 chile s rate of female labor force participation is one of the lowest in latin american countries cepal un eclac 2011 despite female educational attainment that is similar to or higher than that of other latin american countries carrillo gandelman and robano 2013 to increase female labor force partici pation the chilean government is promoting part time and home based work for women although part time work is not as extensive as in other countries the proportion of chilean women working part time has tripled in the past ten years and part time workers now represent more than 20 percent of the female work force national socio economic characterization survey casen 2009 contreras puentes and bravo 2005 show that in chile the female labor force participation rate is positively correlated with education it is not appar ent why female labor force participation is so low discrimination in the labor market or more generally the existent gender wage gap favorable to males nopo 2012 carrillo gandelman and robano 2013 might partially explain the low female participation rate as might cultural factors contreras and plaza 2010 find that women who have internalized machista values are less likely to participate in the labor market despite concerns of endogeneity owing to data limitations contreras and plaza 2010 find a negative rela tionship between female labor force participation and conservative values puentes and ruiz tagle 2011 using the voz de mujer survey analyze the same phenomenon while controlling for possible endogenous relationships 1 they find that cultural factors are not endogenously determined by a woman s labor participation decision on the contrary it seems that whether women work has little effect on cultural factors in the short term according to their study values develop in early childhood rather than during a woman s work ing life interestingly the same 2002 survey that contreras and plaza 2010 used was reapplied by the centro de estudios publicos and released in april 2012

on the statistical origins of the learning curve abstract this paper presents a statistical rationale for the existence of the learning curve phenomenon we consider a firm which allocates a fixed amount of input into several activities under uncertainty concerning the values of the parameters of the production function it is shown under fairly reasonable assumptions that if the firm learns about the parameters of the production function from previous observations of allocations and outputs then a learning curve phenomenon will emerge this result occurs since the estimates of the parameters become more precise over time and thus the allocation of the production factor into the various activities becomes more efficient i e closer to the optimum allocation that would have been determined if the parameters were known with certainty output therefore increases and inputs per unit of output decrease as a function of time and cumulative output and a learning curve emerges plateauing of the learning curve is discussed as are the conditions sufficient for the existence of this phenomenon for which the model presented herein is offered as a possible explanation

economic development and the division of production between households and markets a model is presented in which scale economies give market production a cost advantage over household production but in which market production is limited by the extent of the market the production process is viewed as a series of stages each further refining and specializing the product of the previous stage as processing proceeds the number of intermediate goods increases and markets thin out firms specialize in the early stages of production and house holds in the later stages as an economy grows production shifts out of households and into the market several other changes associated with economic development are also accounted for

the rise of supermarkets and changing expenditure patterns of poor rural households case study in the transkei area south africa abstract since the late 1990s the number of supermarkets in south africa has been steadily growing due to a more effective and efficient management and procurement system the supermarkets can benefit from economics of scale and sell food at a relative low price in this paper we present a case study of two villages in the transkei area of south africa in these poor rural communities the majority of households now buy their main food items from supermarkets rather than from local shops and farmers while presenting an important step towards livelihood development and food security these supermarkets form also a strong competitor for local agricultural sales the supermarkets provide many food items at lower prices with an increase in income the households look for variety and exotism in their food products and will most likely find this in the supermarkets rather than the local stores we argue therefore that development programs should focus on the local growers access to the supermarket procurement systems

decomposing response errors in food consumption measurement implications for survey design from a survey experiment in tanzania there is wide variation in how consumption is measured in household surveys both across countries and over time this variation may confound welfare comparisons in part because these alternative survey designs produce consumption estimates that are differentially influenced by contrasting types of survey response error although previous studies have documented the extent of net error in alternative survey designs little is known about the relative influence of the different response errors that underpin a survey estimate this study leverages a recent randomized food consumption survey experiment in tanzania to shed light on the relative influence of these various error types the observed deviation of measured household consumption from a benchmark is decomposed into item specific consumption incidence and consumption value so as to investigate effects related to a the omission of any consumption and then b the error in value reporting conditional on positive consumption the results show that various survey designs exhibit widely differing error decompositions and hence a simple summary comparison of the total recorded consumption across surveys will obscure specific error patterns and inhibit the lessons for improved consumption survey design in light of these findings the relative performance of common survey designs is discussed and design lessons are drawn to enhance the accuracy of item specific consumption reporting and consequently the measures of total household food consumption

household food demand in burkina faso implications for food policy abstract chronic food production deficits since the early 1970s have prompted policymakers of burkina faso to emphasize technological research with the goal of increasing the production of the most consumed locally grown cereals sorghum millet and maize meanwhile urban consumers have been developing preferences for rice and wheat cereals that are primarily imported this study estimates demand relationships among food items in ouagadougou burkina the results of the estimation suggest that prices income household composition education marital status and urbanization were jointly important in explaining household expenditure allocations both local and imported cereal consumption responded positively to an income increase however incremental income changes would lead to relatively greater consumption of locally produced cereals by low income households whereas high income households would consume relatively more wheat and rice the household model is then used to demonstrate its relevance in addressing food policy issues by forecasting the levels of urban grain demand under alternative income and demographic scenarios with increased production due to advances in technology the urban demand levels do not exhaust the rural surplus of local cereals but deficits persist in the rice wheat sector the results underscore the importance of technological research since burkina could become self sufficient in at least the production of sorghum millet and maize

engel s what a response to gan and vernon gan and vernon s comment does not resolve the puzzle that we originally posed their description of the puzzle is unclear so we start by restating it the essence of the matter is this imagine two households one of which is larger than the other for example containing the same age and sex composition of people but with twice as many of everyone imagine too that both households have the same level of per capita total household expenditure so that in the example the household with twice as many people spends twice as much in total if there are economies of scale the second household is better off while it is possible for it to maintain exactly the same expenditure pattern as the smaller household with everyone having the same of everything it can also rearrange its purchases to take advantage of the differential economies of scale in different goods because food is a normal good we would expect the larger household to spend more per capita on food this is especially so in poor countries where there are few substitutes for food so that there is limited opportunity for substituting away from food toward goods with greater economies of scale the evidence contradicts this prediction we looked at household survey data from the united states the united kingdom france taiwan thailand pakistan and south africa in all cases and with per capita expenditures held constant larger households have lower per capita food consumption and the reduction with household size is greatest in the poorest countries what do gan and vernon do they show that for the united states russia and south africa when they increase household size holding constant per capita total expenditure the per capita demand for housing falls more rapidly than the per capita demand for food the same is also true for various combinations of housing and other goods compared with food alone or food combined with clothing this is correct and such results can be inferred from table 5 p 920 of our original paper but these findings do not address the central puzzle which is that larger households that are more than fully compensated for their

poverty and household size the widely held view that larger families tend to be poorer in developing countries has influenced research and policy the scope for size economies in consumption cautions against this view we find that the correlation between poverty and size vanishes in pakistan when the size elasticity of the cost of living is about 0 6 this turns out to be the elasticity implied by a modified version of the food share method of setting scales by contrast some measures of child nutritional status indicate an elasticity of unity consideration of the weight attached to child versus adult welfare may help resolve the non robustness of demographic profiles of poverty excerpt

a cross section analysis of household demand for food and nutrients in tanzania abstract undernutrition and malnutrition are still problems of unacceptable proportions in many developing countries however the debate on the roles of income and other socio economic variables such as women s education and household size on food and nutrient demand continues this study examines the demand for food and nutrients amongst households in tanzania using recent survey data a quadratic almost ideal demand system quaids is employed to estimate price and expenditure elasticities as well as the impact of socio economic variables on food demand patterns a moment based instrumental variable approach is then used to analyse the determinants of nutrient demand the results show that income and other socio economic variables exert significant effects on the demand for food and nutrients the estimated expenditure elasticities for the nutrients range from 0 307 for iron to 1 26 for vitamin b12 the elasticities are higher for those micronutrients that are consumed through animal products and lower for those micronutrients that are mainly obtained through staple foods these results reflect the higher expenditure elasticities for meat fish eggs milk and milk products as well as fruits and vegetables relative to cereals and pulses reinforcing the assertion that the demand for vitamins a and b12 as well as calcium and zinc will increase with rising income

social integration and subjective wellbeing using data from the uk community life survey we examine the relationship between social integration and subjective wellbeing we measure social integration along various dimensions including freq

measuring consumer expenditures with payment diaries payment diaries measure consumer expenditures by tracking authorization of payments by instrument cash check debit or credit card etc three notable results emerge from comparing the 2012 diary of consumer payment choice dcpc to other estimates of consumer expenditures 1 dcpc payments are 75 higher than consumer expenditure survey estimates 2 dcpc consumption estimates are 17 higher than comparable personal consumption expenditure estimates and 3 dcpc payments roughly equal comparably adjusted national income and product accounts personal disposable income the dcpc s relative success stems from measuring expenditures aggregated into lumpy payments shopping baskets relatively low respondent burden and effective random sampling jel e21 d12 d14

the impact of ethnic diversity on microenterprise start ups until recently factors determining the decisions made by microfinance institutions mfis to extend loans to business start ups had not been explored recent evidence shows that mfi performance wi

examining the relationship between the use of supermarkets and over nutrition in indonesia this study examines the relationship between the use of modern food retailers and health outcomes using data from a survey of 1 180 urban households in indonesia the dependent variables include adult and child body mass index and the share of individuals overweight and obese after controlling for individual and household characteristics and using standard and lewbel instrumental variable approaches to control for unobservable characteristics we do not find a statistically significant relationship between use of supermarkets and adult nutrition measures on the other hand there is mixed evidence for a negative effect of supermarkets on child nutrition particularly for those in high income households

effects of household size and composition on consumption in rural households in matabeleland south zimbabwe abstract this study using a survey of rural households in zimbabwe in 1990 91 focuses on the effects of changing household composition on patterns of expenditures and provides estimates of the cost of a child as well as of family members in other age groups in addition to age differences in the size and direction of responses to changing family composition the paper highlights significant differences across product groups these effects are more muted in larger households

assessing the frontiers of ultrapoverty reduction evidence from challenging the frontiers of poverty reduction targeting the ultra poor an innovative program in bangladesh abstractthis article uses household panel data to provide robust evidence on the effects of brac s building resources across countries targeting the ultra poor tup program in bangladesh we use alternative treatment comparison pairs in addition to brac s own classification we exploit type 1 errors in assignment in brac s selection process to create a second treatment comparison pair this allows us to estimate the program effects on the target group not contaminated by mistargeting to address selection on unobservables we implement heteroskedasticity based identification and two recent estimators based on matching and propensity score reweighting the results show that participation had significant positive effects on food security clothing shoes livestock and cash savings but there is weak or no evidence of an impact on the number of household durables and assets and indicators of health and women s empowerment the effects on the poorest of the poor the target group may be different from

traditional food traders in developing countries and competition from supermarkets evidence from indonesia indonesia s urban centers recently underwent an explosion of supermarkets with cheaper higher quality commodities and better services supermarkets have the potential to drive traders in traditional markets out of business in this paper we evaluate whether this is indeed the case we find that traditional traders experienced declines in their business however both qualitative and quantitative findings indicate that the main cause of decline is not supermarkets instead traditional markets are plagued with internal problems and face increasingly bitter competition from street vendors therefore the policy recommendations include strengthening traditional traders and seriously tackling the problem of street vendors

structural change and economic growth this paper presents a model in which a country s measured average propensity to save endogenously rises when its economy industrializes the model has agricultural and manufacturing sectors only agriculture uses land if at early dates income per capita is low agricultural consumption is important land is valuable and capital gains on land may constitute most wealth accumulation leaving the country s nipa aps low if exogenous technological progress raises incomes over time engel s law shifts demand to manufactured goods then land s portfolio importance relative to reproducible capital diminishes and the national income and products account saving rate can rise this paper presents a model illustrating that structural change due to the operation of engel s law can systematically affect an economy s measured saving rate according to the model a country s national income and product account average propensity to save will rise naturally if and when technological progress sufficiently lifts its income per capita this suggests a new interpretation of time series evidence while saving rates historically tend to be higher after industrialization than before one cannot automatically infer that changing wealth accumulation behaviour led to modernization rather structural change accompanying growth may have caused the rise in saving rates this paper also warns that international trade could lead to a contrasting pattern in cross sectional data highincome nations might contemporaneously have lower measured saving rates than poor countries recent work by mankiw romer and weil 1992 islam 1995 mankiw 1995 and others investigates long run patterns the analyses assume that each economy has attained or is moving toward a steady state equilibrium as in solow 1956 a country s steady state level of per capita gdp depends on its average propensity to save aps its rate of population growth the efficiency of its production sector etc regression outcomes seem consistent with the solow model s prediction that a higher aps will ceteris paribus lead to a higher level of income per capita the idea is that heterogeneity of exogenous preferences leads to international differences in aps s and in turn to long run differences

the effects of the value added tax on revenue and inequality this paper examines the impact of the introduction of the value added tax on inequality and government revenues using newly released macro data we present both conventional country fixed effect re

multiperiod resource allocation with variable technology planning the allocation of scarce resources to competing activities over multiple time periods is one of the most important problems facing decision makers in modern organizations much of the previous research in this area has concentrated on the use of linear programming procedures and has assumed that the technology through which scarce resource inputs are transformed into competing activity outputs is fixed a more realistic assumption in many situations is that certain technology coefficients are likely to vary over the planning horizon as a function of activity levels in previous periods in this paper a multiperiod resource allocation model with variable technology is formulated enriching a more traditional fixed technology model to include variable technology results in a nonlinear model which is more realistic but is also more difficult to solve a heuristic procedure that is both straightforward and intuitively appealing is developed for obtaining good feasible solutions to the variable technology model the solution procedure requires little additional computational effort beyond solving the associated less realistic fixed technology model

household survey data from developing countries progress and prospects assessing the adequacy of household surveys from developing countries can only be done with reference to the purpose s the data are meant to serve we assume that the objective of data collection is to support analysis of a wide range of issues concerning household welfare and behavior especially the prevalence causes and effects of poverty in its multiple dimensions analyses that address these issues can be arrayed in two dimensions methodological complexity which ranges from simple crosstabulations to sophisticated econometric techniques and specificity of the contribution to knowledge which ranges from analysis that addresses a specific policy decision in a particular country to general contributions to knowledge on economic development or research methods a few examples illustrate this typology descriptive statistics on participation in a government program by consumption quintile region or year are methodologically simple and country policy specific compilation of such work across many countries to obtain stylized facts is also methodologically simple but contributes to general knowledge of development using a specific model of household behavior to estimate the impact of charging higher prices for publicly provided services in a particular country is methodologically complex yet countryand policy specific rigorous econometric tests of alternative models of household behavior are methodologically complex and contribute to general knowledge beyond application of the method to a particular data set we discuss the adequacy of household survey data with respect to seven criteria for some criteria the threshold for adequacy varies within the two dimensional methodologyspecificity space

cost trajectories of low carbon electricity generation technologies in the uk a study of cost uncertainty cost uncertainty has latterly come to be presented in the uk s department of energy and climate change decc levelised cost of electricity lcoe estimates using sensitivities high and low figures are presented alongside central estimates this presentation of uncertainty is limited in its provision of context and as an overall picture of how costs and uncertainty vary over time this study aims to address these two shortcomings two analyses are performed using reported decc lcoe estimates for three important electricity generation technologies for the uk nuclear offshore wind and coal with carbon capture and storage the first analysis composes lcoe estimate trajectories from previous years decc estimates and presents them alongside contextual data including some out turn costs the second quantifies the variability presented in the lcoe estimate trajectories for commissioning dates in the decade 2020 2030 nuclear costs are presented as both the most consistent and lowest in magnitude an imminently forecast steep fall in the lcoe of offshore wind raises questions about the timing of investment and deployment in most cases estimate variability decreases over the estimation horizon strangely suggesting greater levels of certainty for further flung commissioning dates further observations and implications for policy stemming from the analyses are discussed

reliability of recall in agricultural data despite the importance of agriculture to economic development and a vast accompanying literature on the subject little research has been done on the quality of the underlying data due to survey logistics agricultural data are usually collected by asking respondents to recall the details of events occurring during past agricultural seasons that took place a number of months prior to the interview this gap can lead to recall bias in reported data on agricultural activities the problem is further complicated when interviews are conducted over the course of several months thus leading to recall of variable length to test for such recall bias the length of time between harvest and interview is examined for three african countries with respect to several common agricultural input and harvest measures the analysis shows little evidence of recall bias impacting data quality there is some indication that more salient events are less subject to recall decay overall the results allay some concerns about the quality of some types of agricultural data collected through recall over lengthy periods

ethnic diversity and poverty we examine the relationship between ethnic diversity and poverty for a cross sectional sample of developing countries we measure diversity using indices of ethnic and linguistic fractionalization and measure poverty using the multidimensional poverty index mpi multidimensional poverty headcount mph intensity of deprivation poverty gap and poverty headcount ratio we find that ethnic and linguistic fractionalization contributes to poverty levels specifically after controlling for endogeneity we find that a standard deviation increase in ethnic fractionalization is associated with a 0 32 0 44 and 0 53 standard deviation increase in the mpi mph and the intensity of deprivation respectively moreover a standard deviation increase in ethnic fractionalization is associated with between a 0 34 and 0 63 standard deviation increase in the population living below 1 90 and 3 10 the poverty gap at 1 90 and 3 10 a day and the headcount ratio at 1 90 and 3 10 a day similar results are also observed for linguistic fractionalization with standardized coefficients between 0 53 and 0 93 we find that our results are robust to alternative ways to measure poverty and ethnic diversity including ethnic polarization as well as alternative approaches to address endogeneity

nuclear reactors construction costs the role of lead time standardization and technological progress this paper provides the first comparative analysis of nuclear reactor construction costs in france and the united states studying the cost of nuclear power has often been a challenge owing to the lack of reliable data sources and heterogeneity between countries as well as the long time horizon which requires controlling for input prices and structural changes we build a simultaneous system of equations for overnight costs and construction time lead time to control for endogeneity using expected demand variation as an instrument we argue that benefits from nuclear reactor program standardization can arise through short term coordination gains when the diversity of nuclear reactors technologies under construction is low or through long term benefits from learning spillovers from past reactor construction experience if those spillovers are limited to similar reactors we find that overnight construction costs benefit directly from learning spillovers but that these spillovers are only significant for nuclear models built by the same architect engineer a e in addition we show that the standardization of nuclear reactors under construction has an indirect and positive effect on construction costs through a reduction in lead time the latter being one of the main drivers of construction costs conversely we also explore the possibility of learning by searching and find that contrary to other energy technologies innovation leads to construction costs increases

demand for cereal grains in asia the effect of urbanization abstract this paper analyzes the effects of urbanization on demand for cereal grains rice wheat and coarse grains in nine asian countries a complete demand system almost ideal demand system in linear form is estimated in two stages based on aggregate time series data from 1960 to 1988 in the high income countries i e japan and south korea urbanization was observed to significantly reduce demand for cereal grains in the lower income countries demand for cereal grains either increased or remained the same with urbanization among cereal grains urbanization has had negative effects on demand for rice and coarse grains but consistently positive effects on demand for wheat only japan and thailand among the countries studied have negative income elasticities of demand for total cereal grains and for rice in particular hence rice remains a necessity and a normal good in most asian countries previous estimates of income elasticities of rice based on time series aggregate data tend to be lower than those based on cross section household level data when urbanization is explicitly specified in the demand model the estimates of income elasticities from time series data turn out to be consistent with those from cross section data

the stochastic learning curve optimal production in the presence of learning curve uncertainty theoretical analyses incorporating production learning are typically deterministic costs are posited to decrease in a known deterministic fashion as cumulative production increases this paper introduces a stochastic 1earning curve model that incorporates random variation in the decreasing cost function we first consider a discrete time infinite horizon dynamic programming formulation of monopolistic production planning when costs follow a learning curve this basic formulation is then extended to allow for random variation in the learning process we also explore properties of the resulting optimal policies for example in some of the stochastic models we analyze optimal production is shown to exceed myopic production echoing a key result from the deterministic learning curve literature in other of the stochastic models however this result does not hold underscoring the need for extended analysis in the stochastic setting we also provide new insights in the deterministic setting for example

aggregation flexible forms and estimation of food consumption parameters reply grouping schemes commodity aggregation and the choice of functional specification significantly influence the results of empirical demand studies this article assesses the importance of these factors for estimating aggregate food consumption parameters a flexible food demand model that nests alternative specifications is estimated using u s data foods are aggregated based on a new grouping scheme adopted from the dietary guidelines for americans nutrient intake elasticities with respect to food prices and expenditure are calculated the influence of socioeconomic variables on consumption and nutrient intake is analyzed price income and demographic effects are found to be highly significant our findings are invariant to the choice of functional form

stages of diversification this paper studies the evolution of sectoral concentration in relation to the level of per capita income we show that various measures of sectoral concentration follow a u shaped pattern across a wide variety of data sources countries first diversify in the sense that economic activity is spread more equally across sectors but there exists relatively late in the development process a point at which they start specializing again we discuss this finding in light of existing theories of trade and growth which generally predict a monotonic relationship between income and diversification

beyond dualism agricultural productivity small towns and structural change in bangladesh this paper uses a framework that goes beyond rural urban dualism and highlights the role of small town economy in understanding structural change in a developing country it provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the role of agricultural productivity in structural transformation in the labor market the empirical work is based on a general equilibrium model that formalizes the demand and labor market linkages the small town draws labor away from the rural areas to produce goods and services whose demand may depend largely on rural income the theory clarifies the role played by the income elasticity of demand and the wage elasticity with respect to productivity increase in agriculture for productivity growth to lead to a demand effect the wage elasticity has to be lower than a threshold when the demand for goods and services produced in small towns comes mainly from the adjacent rural areas the demand effect can outweigh the negative wage effect and lead to higher employment in the town goods sector using rainfall as an instrument the empirical analysis finds a significant positive effect of agricultural productivity on rice yield and agricultural wages productivity shock increases wages more in the rural sample compared with the small town economy sample but structural change in employment is more pronounced in the small town economy in the rural sample it increases employment only in small scale manufacturing and services in contrast a positive productivity shock has large and positive impacts on employment in construction and transport education health and other services and manufacturing employment in larger scale enterprises located in small towns and cities agricultural productivity growth induces structural transformation within the services sector in small towns with employment in skilled services growing at a faster pace than that of low skilled services

is variety the spice of life implications for calorie intake the income elasticity of calories generally is substantially smaller than the income elasticity of food expenditure one reason may be an increasing concern for food variety as incomes increase food variety can be linked with two characteristics of food indifference curves 1 curvature and 2 location of the curves relative to the axes estimates suggest increasing taste for variety as food budgets increase therefore such taste for variety apparently underlies in part the low income elasticities for calorie demand which in turn cast doubt on the world bank assertion that the nutrient intakes of poor populations will improve rapidly with income copyright 1989 by mit press

cost estimates for nuclear power in the uk abstract current uk government support for nuclear power has in part been informed by cost estimates that suggest that electricity from new nuclear power stations will be competitive with alternative low carbon generation options the evidence and analysis presented in this paper suggests that the capital cost estimates for nuclear power that are being used to inform these projections rely on costs escalating over the pre construction and construction phase of the new build programme at a level significantly below those that have been experienced by past us and european programmes this paper applies observed construction time and cost escalation rates to the published estimates of capital costs for new nuclear plant in the uk and calculates the potential impact on levelised cost per unit of electricity produced the results suggest that levelised cost may turn out to be significantly higher than expected which in turn has important implications for policy both in general terms of the potential costs to consumers and more specifically for negotiations around the level of policy support and contractual arrangements offered to individual projects through the proposed contract for difference strike price

will developing country nutrition improve with income a case study for rural south india aggregate estimates of food expenditure are consistent with such a possibility implying income expenditure elasticities close to one however the high degree of aggregation at which such estimates are made means that the considerable increase in price per nutrient as income increases is ignored and the nutrient elasticities are therefore overstated estimates for a rural south indian sample indicate that this bias is considerable and that the true nutrient elasticities with respect to income may be close to zero

job creation or destruction labor market effects of wal mart expansion this paper estimates the effect of wal mart expansion on retail employment at the county level using an instrumental variables approach to correct for both measurement error in entry dates and endogeneity of the timing of entry i find that wal mart entry increases retail employment by 100 jobs in the year of entry half of this gain disappears over the next five years as other retail establishments exit and contract leaving a long run statistically significant net gain of 50 jobs wholesale employment declines by approximately 20 jobs due to wal mart s vertical integration no spillover effect is detected in retail sectors in which wal mart does not compete directly suggesting wal mart does not create agglomeration economies in retail trade at the county level

economies of scale household size and the demand for food household scale economies are plausibly attributed to shared household public goods that make larger households better off at the same level of per capita resources larger households should therefore have higher per capita consumption of private goods such as food provided that they do not substitute too much toward the effectively cheaper public goods the evidence shows exactly the opposite data from rich and poor countries indicate that at constant per capita total expenditure the per capita demand for food decreases with household size and that it does so most in the poorest countries where substitution should be the least

the power of the vegetable patch how home grown food helps large rural households achieve economies of scale escape poverty this paper explores how the household s capacity to grow food impacts their ability to achieve economies of scale in food consumption and how this impacts the geographic distribution of poverty across rural and urban areas an accurate understanding of consumption economies of scale is vital for comparing poverty levels across households of varying size using sri lankan data on home grown food consumption we empirically confirm that such economies of scale exist and that large households tend to consume relatively more home grown food than smaller households the magnitude of these scale economies are found to be larger than those in market purchased food but smaller than those found in housing expenditure consuming more home grown food is also found to be positively correlated with per capita calories consumed taking these effects into account in poverty estimates leads to a 15 per cent decline in the number of household who fall below the poverty line in rural regions

critical issues suggested by trends in food population and the environment to the year 2020 this article reviews the emerging trends in global food supply and demand up to 2020 and discusses policy challenges and obstacles to meeting this demand data were obtained from the international food policy research institutes international model for policy analysis of commodities and trade rosegrant et al the country specific data pertains to 37 countries and regions and 17 food commodities and prices in the world market cereal prices are expected to decline by about 11 by 2020 meat prices may decline by 6 after 2010 cereal prices are expected to dramatically decline cereal demand will change with changes in income and urbanization maize and coarse grains will be replaced by wheat and rice life style changes may lead to a switch from rice to wheat growth in food consumption in developed countries will slow a projected 82 of growth in global cereal consumption and almost 90 of increased global meat demand will occur in developing countries during 1993 2020 asia alone will account for 48 of increased cereal consumption and 61 of increased meat consumption 88 of food production growth will occur in developing countries through increased yields and 94 in developed countries world trade in cereals will increase from an estimated 185 million metric tons annually to 328 million during 1993 2020 food security for the poor and child malnutrition will remain unimproved yield growth is affected by agricultural research fertilizer and energy use land degradation water scarcity and bad policy water scarcity is the most limiting on yield growth malnutrition problems present multiple challenges

health and hunger nutrient response to income depending on caloric availability in nepal using data from nlss iii we estimate nutrient income elasticities for macronutrients vitamins and minerals we further allow for differential nutrient demand response to income depending on where a household is in the caloric availability distribution we find that some nutrients are income inelastic indicating that they are necessity goods while others are relatively income elastic we further test and reject equivalent nutrient income elasticities across the caloric availability distribution households in the lowest calorie quintile have highly income elastic nutrient demand leaving them vulnerable to income fluctuations moreover as households meet their first order caloric needs they substitute away from cheap calorie dense staples toward more expensive nutrient dense foods finally for most nutrients households in the highest calorie quintile exhibit more elastic nutrient demand similar to households in the lowest quintile our results suggest that policies aimed at improving income will likely also improve household nutrient availability particularly for the most calorie poor households they further suggest that policies aimed at protecting poor households from negative income shocks will also likely yield nutritional benefits

food demand studies in sub saharan africa a survey of empirical evidence abstract the recent empirical food demand studies on sub saharan africa show significant advances in demand specification and methodology especially in the application of less restrictive and theoretically consistent flexible functional forms the findings to date establish some broad patterns on effect of income household demography and life cycle location and prices on food demand patterns however the numerical values of the demand estimates are less generalizable because of an insufficient number of data points to separate the true demand component from other confounding factors which are linked to differences in modeling and estimation of demand relations the priority for future research is to generate sufficiently detailed demand estimates that have a high utility for disaggregated policy analysis but are based on a theoretically consistent and comparable methodology

the extent of the market and stages of agricultural specialization this paper provides empirical evidence of nonlinearity in the relationship between crop specialization in a village economy and the extent of the market size of the urban market relevant for the village the results suggest that the portfolio of crops in a village economy becomes more diversified initially as the extent of the market increases however after the market size reaches a threshold the production structure becomes specialized again this evidence on the stages of agricultural diversification is consistent with the stages of diversification identified in the recent literature for the economy as a whole and also for the manufacturing sector the evidence highlights the importance of improving farmers access to markets through investment in transport infrastructure and removal of barriers to trading

shipping the good fish out an empirical study on the eu seafood imports under the eu s generalized system of preferences abstractthe impact of the eu european union generalized system of preference gsp on the relative eu s demand for seafood quality was evaluated in the study we first explored the theoretical alchian allen result of change in ad valorem tariffs in an n good world and then tested this result in the empirical study the theoretical analysis suggests that whether a reduced ad valorem tariff in an n good case raises the relative demand for high value goods depends not only on the substitutability between high value and low value goods but also on the substitutability between these similar goods with their weak substitutes in the empirical sections we first estimated the elasticities of the substitutions and then used these elasticities to evaluate the quality composition of the eu s seafood imports from the beneficiary countries the empirical results in general confirm the occurrence of shipping the good fish out due to the reduced tariff rates under the eu s gsp arrangements

westernization of asian diets and the transformation of food systems implications for research and policy abstract rapid economic and income growth urbanization and globalization are leading to a dramatic shift of asian diets away from staples and increasingly towards livestock and dairy products vegetables and fruit and fats and oils while the diversification of diets away from the traditional dominance of rice with rising incomes is expected and observed current food consumption patterns are showing signs of convergence towards a western diet the diet transition is characterized by increased consumption of wheat temperate fruit and vegetables and high protein and energy dense food globalization and the consequent global interconnectedness of the urban middle class is the driving force behind the convergence of diets the rapid spread of global supermarket chains and fast food restaurants is reinforcing the above trends the growing demand for diet diversity cannot be met solely by the traditional food supply chain it requires the modernisation of the food retail sector and the vertical integration of the food supply chain in effect linking the consumers plate to the farmers plow as a consequence asian agriculture is on an irreversible path leading away from its traditional pre occupation with cereal crop production especially rice towards a production system that is becoming increasingly commercialized and diversified this paper describes the determinants and trends in the diversification and westernization of asian diets implications of the evolving demand trends for food supply and retail systems are presented the paper discusses the prospects for small farmer participation in the emerging food supply system with a particular emphasis on asian rice production systems finally the paper considers emerging challenges for food policy small holder welfare and agricultural research and development priorities

the role of ethnic diversity in sustainable environmental growth new evidence across different income regions we examine the relationship between ethnic diversity and environmental quality proxied by carbon dioxide formula presented emissions ethnic diversity is captured using indices of ethnic fractionalization adopting a supply demand framework which introduces a model for economic growth we find that ethnic fractionalization reduces formula presented emissions the negative effect of ethnic diversity on formula presented emissions is also consistent across middle and low income countries as well as high income countries however results suggest that ethnic diversity has a negative effect on growth in middle and low income countries but a positive effect on growth in high income countries our findings prove robust to alternative estimation methods

testing the barten model of economies of scale in household consumption toward resolving a paradox of deaton and paxson households enhance the welfare of constituents by sharing shelter and appliances and economizing in services such as maintenance child care and food preparation resources so conserved can be applied to more personal goods such as food clothing or beauty care economizing by households is an important factor to consider when measuring poverty and inequality in 1895 ernst engel observed that the share of food consumption in total consumption can be used to measure economic welfare across households of different sizes and incomes larger or richer households spend a smaller share of their total expenditure on food although more elaborate methods have been developed see e g a survey by browning 1992 the use of food share or the budget share of other bundles of necessities as a proxy for welfare remains a viable method for measuring poverty and studying equivalence scales see e g deaton and muellbauer 1986 lanjouw and ravallion 1995 engel s method is popular for its simplicity it has only one demand equation to be estimated with the food share of total expenditure as a dependent variable a single cross sectional survey usually provides sufficient data for the analysis and no information on prices is required

measurement error in recall surveys and the relationship between household size and food demand variation in household survey design and implementation is used to obtain evidence of nonrandom measurement error in recall surveys of household expenditure these surveys which are used especially in developing countries appear to have measurement errors in food expenditures and in food budget shares that are correlated with household size these correlated errors may be part of the explanation for a puzzling pattern of falling food demand with rising household size in poorer countries

supermarkets and food consumption patterns the case of small towns in kenya abstract this paper investigates the effect of supermarkets on food consumption patterns in urban kenya using cross sectional household survey data collected in 2012 to establish causality we selected study sites that differ in their supermarket access and employ instrumental variable techniques to allow for endogeneity of supermarket purchases we find that supermarket purchases increase the consumption of processed foods at the expense of unprocessed foods supermarket purchases increase per capita calorie availability which is linked to lower prices paid per calorie particularly for processed foods our results imply that supermarkets contribute to dietary changes commonly associated with the nutrition transition the effects on nutrient adequacy are less clear

the second engel law is it a paradox abstract the second engel law says that the engel curve for food moves out as family size increases thus showing a decrease in welfare what is puzzling though is that this regularity does not hold for equivalent income functions expressed in per capita terms deaton and paxon 1998 economies of scale household size and the demand for food journal of political economy 106 5 897 930 show that holding per capita total household expenditure constant per capita expenditure on food falls with the number of heads deaton and paxson s empirical evidence from developed and less developed countries seems to invalidate the claim of the second engel s law the main objective of this paper is to understand such paradoxical relationship between food consumption and household size our nonparametric empirical evidence drawn from the colombian 1985 urban survey shows that the food share is negatively related to total household per capita expenditure in line with deaton and paxson s claim but equivalent incomes shift to the right as theory predicts the regularity of our nonparametric results is an indication of a problem in the parametric specification of the engel curve modified by family size in fact using also the surveys of italy nepal djibouti and bangladesh we show that a theoretically plausible modified engel curve is coherent with the claim of the second engel law and explains deaton and paxson s paradox

the theory and econometrics of health information in cross sectional nutrient demand analysis understanding the role of health information in food and nutrient demand has become an important issue over the last decade endogeneity and measurement error are two empirical problems that are inherent in this type of analysis while some type of instrumental variables estimation would appear the obvious solution this article provides several theoretical and empirical reasons why this is not the case in cross sectional analysis an alternative estimation strategy is pursued an empirical example is given and the implications are discussed copyright 2001 oxford university press

agricultural commercialization and diversification processes and policies abstract agricultural commercialization and diversification involve the gradual replacement of integrated farming systems by specialized enterprises for crop livestock poultry and aquaculture products changes in product mix and input uses are determined largely by the market forces during this transition commercialization of agricultural production is an endogenous process and is accompanied by economic growth urbanization and withdrawal of labor from the agricultural sector this paper provides a selective overview and synthesis of the issues involved in the commercialization and diversification process of agriculture drawing in significant part from the papers in this volume based on an assessment of the process observed in selected countries we show that the commercialization process should not be expected to be a frictionless process and significant equity and environmental consequences may occur at least in the short to medium term particularly when inappropriate policies are followed however we highlight that appropriate government policies including investment in rural infrastructure and crop improvement research and extension establishment of secure rights to land and water and development and liberalization of capital markets can help alleviate many of the possible adverse transitional consequences

economies of scale in the household puzzles and patterns from the american past i introduction in one example of economies of scale households with multiple members are able to achieve the same standard of living at lower per capita expenditures on public goods than smaller households for example if two adults unite to form one household the couple will be better off as they can share public goods such as housing lowering per capita expenditure on them the couple can funnel these savings into increased consumption of public goods more spacious housing than either could afford separately making each member better off than they were when they lived by themselves the basic idea has strong intuitive appeal living standards for households of different sizes could be equated with lower per capita expenditures for larger households who are able to economize on public goods household economies of scale are therefore fundamental to the measurement of living standards measuring the distribution of income the costs of children the extent of poverty and poverty thresholds necessitates an accounting for these economies of scale one difficulty with household economies of scale is that it can be difficult to estimate the size of the scale economy and household economies of scale are not as well defined as scale economies in production while economies of scale are a function of the size of the household the demand for goods and services generally derives from both household size and composition when researchers turned their attention to economies of scale in the household they overcame the problem of detection and measurement by concentrating on adult only households as in nelson 1988 measuring economies of scale for households where all members are the same type have identical tastes and are treated equally will not aid in the measurement of poverty the distribution of income and the costs of children where compositional heterogeneity matters a second difficulty lies in the income and substitution effects that scale economies have on private goods while both the income and substitution effects imply increased consumption of public goods the income and substitution effects work in opposite directions for private goods and it is not possible to know which effect will dominate unless we know more about the private good private goods that have low own and cross price elasticities and sizable income elasticities are goods whose consumption is likely to increase with household size the increased consumption of those private goods could be taken as a measure of household economies of scale where larger households are better off in terms of private consumption due to scale economies in public consumption using this insight deaton and paxson 1998 suggested that food would be a good choice for a private good where the income effect will dominate because food has few substitutes and they argue that substitution away from food will be less likely for households close to subsistence this implies that food expenditures should increase with household size the savings realized on public goods would be funneled to food a necessity that has few substitutes rather than increasing with household size deaton and paxson found that food expenditure per capita decreases with household size after considering and dismissing a number of possible explanations they conclude that their empirical results are a puzzle a literature analyzing this food puzzle has developed deaton and paxson 2003 gan and vernon 2003 gardes and starzec 2000 gibson 2002 gibson and kim 2007 horowitz 2002 perali 2001 vernon 2005 but research on household scale economies has yet to look at how or if scale economies change over time just as knowledge about scale economies at a point in time allows us to estimate the extent of poverty and inequality knowledge about changes in scale economies are useful for analyzing changes in living standards over time even more knowledge about changes in scale economies is important since average household size has changed over time

hybrid renewable energy support policy in the power sector the contracts for difference and capacity market case study abstract the article employs qualitative methods in contextualizing and conceptualizing the hybrid renewable energy support policy it claims that hybrid policies may combine distinct mechanisms to drive desirable objectives better than traditional policies a policy cycle helps to frame the united kingdom s contracts for difference and capacity market cfd cm scheme as a case study the cfd cm policy emerged to address environmental and energy challenges through the deployment of renewable energy re in a low carbon economy employing liberalization environmental protection is foremost in this scheme the policy combines and improves on the elements of feed in tariff fit and quota obligation qo and strives to solve the problems of these traditional policies it addresses regulatory uncertainty under fit by employing private law mechanics to guarantee above loss reward for low carbon generation and addresses market uncertainty under qo by incentivizing the capacity to supply future low carbon energy based on projected demand hence creating a predictable and stable market it also accommodates other important commitments overall the cfd cm scheme is a hybrid policy that engages the energy market mainly for advancing the end goal of environmental protection to thrive however it needs to meet private sector interests substantially

welfare measurement and measurement error the approximate effects of measurement error on a variety of measures of inequality and poverty are derived they are shown to depend on the measurement error variance and functionals of the error contaminated income distribution but not on the form of the measurement error distribution and to be accurate within a rich class of error free income distributions and measurement error distributions the functionals of the error contaminated income distribution that approximate the measurement error induced distortions can be estimated so it is possible to investigate the sensitivity of welfare measures to alternative amounts of measurement error and when an estimate of the measurement error variance is available to calculate corrected welfare measures the methods are illustrated in an application using indonesian household expenditure data

parallel realities exploring poverty dynamics using mixed methods in rural bangladesh this paper explores the implications of using two methodological approaches to study poverty dynamics in rural bangladesh using data from a unique longitudinal study we show how different methods lead to very different assessments of socio economic mobility we suggest five ways of reconciling these differences considering assets in addition to expenditures proximity to the poverty line other aspects of well being household division and qualitative recall errors considering assets and proximity to the poverty line along with expenditures resolves three fifths of the qualitative and quantitative differences use of such integrated mixed methods can therefore improve the reliability of poverty dynamics research

rice demand in tanzania an empirical analysis we investigate the consumer side of the tanzania rice market with the primary objective of estimating price elasticities of imported and domestically produced rice previous studies of the rice market in tanzania claim that domestic rice is implicitly protected by consumer preference of its perceived better quality however rice producers increasingly complain that imported rice adversely impacts the price of domestic rice using household consumer survey data we estimate price and expenditure elasticities of imported rice domestic rice and maize to assess their substitutability in the tanzanian diet our results show that tanzanian consumers have a preference for domestic rice varieties with weak substitutability between domestic and imported rice varieties

food stamps and food spending an engel function approach estimation of food stamp program fsp effects has been complicated by self selection and by a contradiction between observed spending patterns and the economic theory of consumer choice we developed a modified version of the traditional theory in which participant households may be partly extramarginal even if they have some cash spending on at home food using current population survey cps data for 2001 2005 we estimated engel functions for at home and away from home food spending for fsp participants and nonparticipants compared to nonparticipants with the same level of total income participants had higher at home food spending and lower away from home food spending copyright 2007 oxford university press

the macroeconomy and microfinance outreach a panel data analysis this study examines the effects of macroeconomic and institutional factors on microfinance institution mfi outreach to capture the performance of the macroeconomy we include proxies for institutional quality economic growth fdi inflow unemployment rate inflation and the prevalence of wage earning jobs further we examine effects on outreach along the dimensions of outreach depth and outreach breadth using data on 1526 mfis from 99 countries over the period 2000 to 2015 our results suggest that environments characterised by high levels of economic performance and good institutions tend to hinder outreach performance these results suggest that mfis depend on a poor economy to thrive given the informal nature of microfinance

the demand for food and calories we investigate nutrition and expenditure in rural maharashtra in india we estimate that the elasticity of calorie consumption with respect to total expenditure is 0 3 0 5 a range that is in accord with conventional wisdom the elasticity declines only slowly with levels of living and is far from the value of zero suggested by a recent revisionist literature in these indian data the calories necessary for a day s activity cost less than 5 percent of the daily wage which makes it implausible that income is constrained by nutrition rather than the other way around

impacts of world prices transmission to domestic rice markets in rural iran abstract this paper attempts to assess the degree to which iranian rural households have responded to the change in price of imported rice due to exchange rate unification and to examine the extent to which the policy has affected the economic welfare of various household income groups particularly the poor utilizing samples of 2472 households selected from national expenditure survey data of 2002 and 2003 armington and pass through elasticities were calculated as two measures of substitutability and are discussed separately for each household group in these areas the findings of this study indicate that domestic rice prices are associated differently with imported rice prices among the households however a price increase in imported rice that is mainly consumed by the poor worsens their position much more severely than for the rich people who mainly prefer domestic rice the findings contribute to the understanding of how price changes resulting from trade liberalization may affect various groups of households and the ways they respond to such changes in prices

improving the efficiency targeting of malawi s farm input subsidy programme big pain small gain abstract the farm input subsidy programme fisp in malawi was introduced in the 2005 2006 season against a background of bad weather affecting production and prolonged food shortages vouchers are distributed empowering eligible farmers to exchange them for fixed quantities of inputs at subsidized prices since its inception there has been a debate at national level about whether the fisp s potential has been fully exploited with policy makers exploring options to improve the programme proposals include targeting efficient and productive farmers to maximize returns in this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of these proposed changes to the existing fisp design by utilizing two waves of the lsms isa survey merged with climatic data we estimate how the national demand for agricultural inputs varies according to a variation in the targeting criteria by means of a two stage demand system then we identify more efficient farmers by means of a stochastic frontier approach we observe a mismatch between voucher recipients and efficiency with approximately 60 of vouchers being allocated to the three bottom quintiles of efficiency this mismatch is observed also at the spatial level with more vouchers going to districts characterized by less efficient production while concerns on the distributional impacts of the new criteria are discussed together with some suggestions for spatially diversifying the structuring of the policy and incentivizing crop diversification our results highlight a high substitutability of commercial with subsidized inputs by new eligible farmers consequently simulating the targeting policy variation we obtain an outcome that would lead only to a limited increases in predicted food expenditure ranging from 0 27 to 0 8 and maize production from 0 2 to 1 3 scope for analysing different adjustments in the functioning of fisp are thus proposed to policy makers

risk sharing and industrial specialization regional and international evidence the authors provide empirical evidence that risk sharing enhances specialization in production to the best of their knowledge this well established and important theoretical proposition has not been tested before the empirical procedure is summarized as follows first the authors construct a measure of specialization in production and calculate an index of specialization for each of the european community ec and non ec oecd countries u s states canadian provinces japanese prefectures latin american countries and regions of italy spain and the united kingdom then they estimate the degree of capital market integration a measure of risk sharing within each of these groups of regions the ec countries the non ec oecd countries the united states canada japan italy spain and the united kingdom and rely on another author s estimate for latin america finally they perform a regression of the specialization index on the degree of risk sharing controlling for relevant economic variables they find a positive and significant relation between the degree of specialization of individual members of a group of countries provinces states or prefectures and the amount of risk that is shared within the group the authors perform regressions using variables such as shareholder rights and the size of the financial sector relative to gdp as instruments for the amount of inter regional risk sharing these regressions confirm that risk sharing facilitated by a favorable legal environment and a developed financial system is a direct causal determinant of industrial specialization this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

price and income elasticities of demand for passenger transport fuels in spain implications for public policies abstract the significant increase in passenger transport activity cars experienced by spain and its associated increase in energy consumption have several associated negative aspects including a greater dependence on foreign energy sources and higher ghg emissions therefore reducing the level of transport activity would bring important socioeconomic and environmental benefits the aim of this paper which focuses on energy consumption in the passenger transport is fourfold 1 to provide a diagnostic of energy consumption in the spanish passenger transport system and the related problems 2 to develop a model to calculate price and income elasticities of demand for transport fuel 3 to apply this model to the spanish passenger transport sector 4 to infer policy recommendations derived from the results of the diagnostic and the model it is claimed that in view of those low price elasticities and high income elasticities and if a reduction in the scale of transport activity is deemed socially desirable a combination of instruments is necessary fuel taxes play an important role within this combination apart from their long term effects the low price elasticity of demand for transport fuel would allow the collection of a significant amount of revenues which could eventually be earmarked to encourage reductions in private transport demand and modal shifts with other instruments

what do we learn about consumer demand patterns from micro data the aim of this paper is to assess the importance of using micro level data in the econometric analysis of consumer demand to do this we utilize a time series of repeated cross sections covering some 4 000 households in each of 15 years employing a number of different aggregation procedures we conclude that aggregate data alone are unlikely to produce reliable estimates of structural price and income coefficients however once certain aggregation factors as well as trend and seasonal components are included an aggregate model is not necessarily outperformed across all demand equations in terms of forecasting ability jel d12 c52 c31 the purpose of this paper is to develop a complete consumer demand system based on a time series of individual household data and to use it to measure the biases introduced into the study of consumer de mand behavior when aggregate data are used in place of the appropriate microeco nomic data we assess the suitability of ag gregate data through the impact on income and price elasticities and by evaluating the ability of both micro and aggregate based models to forecast aggregate consumer de mand the biases introduced by the use of aggregate data depend upon the way that household characteristics interact with in come and price effects and on departures of demand systems from linearity we explore the structure of microeconomic demand sys tems and the role of household characteris tics in the behavior of consumer demand both for the light this may shed on the pattern of future demands and for the im plications this behavior has for issues of aggregation consumer demand patterns typically found in micro data sets vary considerably across households with different household characteristics and with different levels of income we model this variability by making intercept and slope parameters in the budget share equations of our demand sys tem depend on household characteristics and by allowing for nonlinear total log expenditure terms in fact in theory consistent demand systems it is total ex penditure rather than disposable income that is allocated across goods we find that this general framework leads to a well specified data coherent demand system which is a quadratic extension of the popu lar almost ideal model of angus s deaton and john muellbauer 1980 the micro level estimates are shown to be sensitive to the treatment of endogeneity of total expen diture and to the specification of interaction terms with household characteristics in ad dition this specification is also shown to possess many attractive features for the evaluation of aggregate models

estimation of complete demand systems from household budget data the linear and quadratic expenditure systems in this paper we explore two issues in empirical demand analysis the estimation of complete systems of demand equations using household budget data section i and the incorporation of demographic characteristics into such systems section ii although there are numerous studies which use time series data to estimate complete demand systems and many which estimate engel curves from household budget data there are virtually none which combine budget data from different periods to estimate complete systems since each budget study corresponds to a single price situation one might conjecture that estimation of complete systems would not be possible unless budget studies were available from a large number of periods this is incorrect in section i we argue that interesting complete demand systems can be estimated from a small number of budget studies despite the limited price variability represented in such data to demonstrate this we use budget study data for two periods to estimate a pair of related demand systems the familiar linear expenditure system les and a quadratic expenditure system qes a generalization of les in which the demand equations are quadratic in total expenditure the inclusion of demographic variables in the analysis of household consumption patterns is desirable because there are likely to be systematic differences in the consumption behavior of households with different demographic characteristics but the effects of demographic characteristics have seldom been studied within the framework of complete demand systems in section ii we propose translating as a general method for incorporating demographic variables into complete systems of demand equations this method has not previously been discussed as a general technique for bringing demographic variables into demand systems although it has been employed in several studies to improve the estimates of the les and the qes presented in section i we reestimate these two systems using translating to incorporate family size

explaining agricultural and agrarian policies in developing countries the paper describes and as far as possible explains variations in policies programs and institutions that influence agricultural growth agrarian relations and rural welfare across developing countries and over time it evaluates the impact of distorted policy patterns on agricultural production and rural poverty and identifies conditions under which policy reforms meant to bring about greater efficiency and equity are likely to be initiated and sustained it draws upon a broad range of literature to show how material conditions missing markets and government policies affect static welfare outcomes patterns of accumulation state formation and the establishment of political institutions it suggests ways to improve policy advice and proposes directions for future research

the impact of microcredit borrowing on household consumption in bangladesh the rapid expansion of microcredit in recent years renders knowledge of its impact on poverty critical unfortunately empirical investigations have been limited by endogeneity issues and randomiz

quadratic engel curves and consumer demand this paper presents a model of consumer demand that is consistent with the observed expenditure patterns of individual consumers in a long time series of expenditure surveys and is also able to provide a detailed welfare analysis of shifts in relative prices a nonparametric analysis of consumer expenditure patterns suggests that engel curves require quadratic terms in the logarithm of expenditure while popular models of demand such as the translog or the almost ideal demand systems do allow flexible price responses within a theoretically coherent structure they have expenditure share engel curves that are linear in the logarithm of total expenditure we derive the complete class of integrable quadratic logarithmic expenditure share systems a specification from this class is estimated on a large pooled data set of u k households models that fail to account for engel curvature are found ro generate important distortions in the patterns of welfare losses associated with a tax increase

monopolistic pricing and the learning curve an algorithmic approach this paper analyzes a multiperiod production planning model which incorporates pricing decisions and learning effects we provide a partial characterization of the optimal policy this result combined with a simple algorithm is used to find the optimal solution in special cases and near optimal solutions for the general case

more evidence on nutrition demand income seems overrated and women s schooling underemphasized abstract malnutrition is widespread in the developing world controversy continues concerning the roles of income household size and women s schooling on nutrient demand empirical estimates for nicaragua suggest that income elasticities are small and inversely associated with income levels there are some economies of scale in household size the elasticity for women s schooling is higher than those for income or household size and women s backgrounds are important the results cast doubt on the strong emphasis the world bank and others have placed on income and suggest that schooling may be working through tastes not only through productivity