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

energy price shocks input price changes and developmental implications a translog model applied to puerto rico the energy shocks of the 1970s that altered the relative price relationships between factor inputs and induced structural changes are analysed with the use of a translogarithmic cost function that incorporates the inputs capital labour and energy the developmental implications of these structural changes on a small open and energy capital importing region are emphasized taking the case of puerto rico as an example in terms of the partial elasticities of substitution the capital labour relationship moved from highly substitutable in the pre 1973 period to weakly complementary thereafter the energy labour association was transformed from high to low substitutability and that of energy capital from highly complementary to substitute

economies of scope and the cash crop food crop debate in senegal abstract the government of senegal plans to achieve national food self sufficiency by inducing farmers to switch away from cash crops toward food crop production this paper examines selected economic consequences of the planned substitution using empirical data recently collected in southeastern senegal cost function estimates suggest that farmers are currently producing too much food crop and too little cash crop output given existing technology and observed relative prices moreover economies of scope in producing both food crops and cash crops on the same farm result in a 22 cost saving relative to growing both types of crops on separate specialized farms

imports and the supply of winter tomatoes an application of rational expectations a model of the florida tomato industry is formulated under the hypothesis that growers make production decisions as rational economic agents this assumption implies that anticipated mexican tomato imports as well as other economic variables are taken into account when the planting decision is made maximum likelihood estimation methods are used to solve the simultaneous equations model and the implications of the model s reduced form are analyzed the empirical findings are consistent with the rational expectations hypothesis that producers respond to market information in its entirety when making acreage decisions key vwords expectations imports mexico rational expectations supply response tomatoes florida produces about 90 of u s tomatoes harvested for fresh use during the november to mid june season since the cuban trade embargo of february 1962 mexico has become the major foreign supplier of fresh winter tomatoes the total fresh winter tomato market in the united states has been almost equally shared by florida and mexico in recent years the rivalry for this market reached the point in 1978 that florida growers charged that mexican producers were dumping their product on the u s market schmitz firch hillman many florida growers suggest that unless mexican tomato imports are limited the florida tomato industry will effectively disappear primary attention in this paper is focused on domestic tomato acreage allocations in light of the mexican influence on the winter tomato market the paper does not attempt to evaluate the welfare effects of mexican imports on the florida tomato industry in addition to the emphasis on acreage response the domestic quantity and price effects are also considered most efforts to explain acreage devoted to agricultural crops have utilized some variant of a cobweb model because the ultimate price of the crop cannot be ascertained until the completion of the production cycle nevertheless if the supply and demand framework is truly representative of the way the market works an alternative to lagged price for representing the anticipated price for the crop is the price prediction of the supply and demand model itself thus acreage would be dependent on the expected price of the crop and expected price would result from the solution of the supply and demand model for price on the basis of information available at planting time the underlying hypothesis is that producers are acting in accordance with the information available to them at planting time and in a way represented by the interaction in the supply and demand model viewed in this way planted acreage decisions would be based on such factors as anticipated mexican imports and their attendant effect on the price of tomatoes one distinction between this and the traditional cobweb framework is that in the latter case lagged imports may influence planted acreage via their effect on lagged prices but any impact expected imports might have on current price is ignored in the acreage

rotating savings and credit associations credit markets and efficiency this paper examines the allocative performance of rotating savings and credit associations roscas a financial institution which is observed world wide we develop a model in which individuals save for an indivisible good and study roscas which distribute funds using random allocation and bidding the allocations achieved by the two types of rosca are compared with that achieved by a credit market and with efficient allocations more generally we find that neither type of rosca is efficient and that individuals are better off with a credit market than a bidding rosca nonetheless a random rosca may sometimes yield a higher level of ex ante expected utility to prospective participants than would a credit market i introduction rotating savings and credit associations roscas are a widely observed institution for financial intermediation they are found all over the world particularly in developing countries and have heretofore received scant attention from economists this paper and its companion piece besley coate and loury 1993 constitute a first attempt to analyse their economic role and performance roscas come in two main forms the first type allocates funds randomly in a random rosca members commit to putting a fixed sum of money into a pot for each period of the rosca s life lots are drawn and the pot is randomly allocated to one of the members in the next period the process repeats itself with each previous winner excluded from the draw the process continues until each rosca member has received the pot once at this point the rosca is either disbanded or begins over again individuals may also form a bidding rosca in which the pot is allocated via a bidding procedure the individual who

implications of immigration policies for the u s farm sector and workforce i background in 1942 the united states and mexico signed the bracero program a formal agreement to draw seasonal labor to work in u s agriculture which provided employment opportunities to poor rural mexicans 1 however this program was abolished in 1964 ending the legal seasonal labor supply to u s agriculture in the southwestern states concurrently the united states passed the immigration act of 1965 establishing a quota of 120 000 legal immigrants per year the abandonment of the bracero program the new legal immigrants quota limits and economic inequality between the united states and mexico paved the way for steady entry of illegal laborers and led to eventual insurmountable illegal immigration population in the united states because illegal immigration was not a serious problem in the 1960s and 1970s legislation addressed only the number of legal immigrants allowed to enter the united states but in the 1980s illegal immigration began to emerge as a national problem and extensive debates entrenched around issues such as preventing the entry of unauthorized workers providing public services to illegal immigrants and even legalizing these workers consequently the u s congress attempted to address the immigration problems by enacting the 1986 immigration reform and control act irca the goals of irca were to eliminate the stock of undocumented workers through amnesty 2 and domestic enforcement of employer sanctions and curb the influx of illegal immigrants by increasing the border surveillance amnesty failed to eliminate the stock of illegal immigrants because only about half of the illegal immigrants filed for citizenship and it created future expectation of amnesty and more illegal unauthorized entry furthermore domestic sanctions on employers of undocumented workers and deportation of these workers were scantly enforced to stop the influx of immigrants irca focused heavily on tightening border control the irca also legislated the h 2a program which allowed agricultural employers to bring in guest workers during seasonal operations ers 2007 however farmers complained that the cumbersome paperwork of h 2a and bureaucratic delay were not conducive to procure seasonal laborers at the time of peak farm operations such as vegetable and fruit picking 3 in spite of irca s amnesty provision and strengthened control measures illegal immigration continued to rise about 12 million unauthorized immigrants resided in the united states in 2007 martin 2007 which is reaffirmed by many popular press reports leading to an extended congressional debate that began at the start of this decade to solve the illegal immigration problem several bills were proposed by the house of representatives the senate and the white house addressing issues related to increased domestic and border enforcements 4 paths to citizenship and guest worker programs montgomery 2006 these bills were not passed because of major disagreements among lawmakers over providing citizenship and guest worker programs as a result of the failed legislations and the september 11 attack the government primarily focused on border security accordingly funding for border enforcement has steadily increased 5 and resources were diverted from domestic to border enforcement however boucher and taylor 2007 documented that increased funding to secure the border did not deter undocumented workers from crossing the border because determined immigrants eventually find a way to enter the country by repeated attempts following september 11 2001 the u s immigration and customs enforcement ice further decreased the number of human hours devoted to worksite inspection because monitoring critical infrastructure took priority gao 2005 for example from 1999 to 2003 the number of human hours for domestic enforcement decreased from 480 000 to 18 000 6 7 but by late 2005 the u

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

informal microfinance institutions and development led tourism entrepreneurship this paper explores how informal microfinance institutions imfis support development led tourism entrepreneurship through providing microcredit and development opportunities to small tourism firms stfs as well as undertaking communitarian projects and outreach activities that promote the business activities of stfs drawing on resilience and social capital as central concepts the paper argues that the form of collective action found in imfis can be examined to understand their impact on development led tourism entrepreneurship using cameroon as a case study important policy challenges in destinations where regulatory constrains cause many stfs to become dependent on imfis as opposed to formal regulated financial institutions in development led tourism are highlighted

multiproduct technology and market structure a recent line of research has exposed some technological determinants of the structure of industries that produce more than one good the analyses of both multiproduct perfect competition and natural monopoly require a generalized notion of average cost and in addition several newly identified technological characteristics pertinent only to joint production this paper provides an overview of these new results and suggests a unifying framework in which the theory can be further developed

shadow economies at times of banking crises empirics and theory this paper investigates the response of the shadow economy to banking crises our empirical analysis based on a large sample of countries suggests that the informal sector is a powerful buffer which expands at times of banking crises and absorbs a large proportion of the fall in official output to rationalise our evidence we build a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model which accounts for financial and labour market frictions and for nominal rigidities in line with the empirical literature on the shadow economy we assume that in the informal sector access to external finance is limited and the production technology is relatively more labour intensive following a banking shock in the official sector the model predicts a large negative transmission to the unofficial economy that substantially dampens the overall effect of the shock

cash crops in developing countries the issues the facts the policies the issue of cash crops is profoundly controversial the debate uses different definitions of the term and slides across levels of analysis from the household to the international economy it also cuts across arguments crops countries and time periods this paper sets out to order the debate it deals first with definitions and taxonomy and then reviews issues connected with cash crops and a growth b distribution c food security d dependency and e the environment the paper concludes that with appropriate policies cash crops can offer a route to equitable growth

roscas as financial agreements to cope with self control problems abstract we consider a model in which people with limited self control can sign binding financial agreements among themselves thereby forming coalitions we show that these financial agreements may help them to alleviate their self control problems we then demonstrate that there exists a stable structure of coalitions in which people form rotating savings and credit associations roscas we therefore provide a behavioral rationale for one of the most prevalent and puzzling financial institutions in developing countries finally we derive and discuss some empirical predictions

roscas in urban ethiopia are the characteristics of the institutions more important than those of members abstract using household data from urban ethiopia we provide an empirical test of the economic theory of rotating savings and credit associations roscas and identify the impact of roscas and member characteristics on participation and volume of saving unlike other studies we account for the endogeneity of all rosca variables muslims individuals who live in richer households the self employed private sector employees and households with large numbers of women are more likely to join roscas a robust finding is that the savings are significantly affected by the characteristics of the members but not that of the informal saving institution some policy implications are discussed

migration to the united states and mexican rural development a case study an analysis of the impact of migration to the united states on the sending community and on the labor market in the receiving country is presented based on a case study of las animas mexico as the community becomes increasingly involved in migration tendencies can be identified regarding changing migration patterns class differentiation among villagers impact of migration on village economy and the changing role of mexican workers in california labor markets results indicate the importance of social networks in determining the outcome of migration while migration is individually rational it is a factor of stagnation for village economy and it helps reproduce segmented california labor markets excerpt

u s mexican trade in winter vegetables and illegal immigration this paper presents an integrated approach to u s mexican trade in a labor intensive commodity fresh winter tomatoes and illegal immigration of agricultural labor a seven equation econometric model is developed that includes excess demand u s import and supply mexican export equations for fresh winter tomatoes u s demand and mexican supply equations for apprehensible individuals intercountry price and wage relationship equations and a u s border patrol apprehension effort equation the empirical results indicate that both u s and mexico economic conditions affect the number of apprehended illegal mexican aliens the results also indicate that immigration and trade policies affect apprehensions

agricultural export dumping the case of mexican winter vegetables in the u s market this paper examines the 1978 agricultural dumping charge brought by florida winter vegetable producers against mexican growers it discusses fair value in the context of three antidumping criteria prices at home and abroad selling below cost of production and third market test the u s department of commerce found in favor of the mexican producers by using the third market test a test which leads to ambiguous results it is the authors contention that the law should be changed so that future cases can be decided on a normal business practice concept accounting for production and costing decisions unique to highly perishable products

the producer welfare effects of trade liberalization when goods are perishable and habit forming the case of asparagus asparagus is a perishable highly seasonal crop we find that out of season imports of asparagus caused habit formation that increased demand in the u s growing seasons we find that habit effects offset about 64 of the welfare losses to u s asparagus producers from increased mexican imports under nafta and all of the u s producer welfare losses from increased peruvian imports under the andean trade preference act we estimate that the u s producer welfare losses from nafta are less than the annualized value of market loss assistance provided them in the 2008 farm bill jel classifications d12 f130 q17 q18

informing food security decisions in africa empirical analysis and policy dialogue discussions of economic and agricultural development in africa have focused heavily in recent years on structural adjustment i e basic policy changes aimed at allowing international and domestic markets to play a greater role in coordinating national economic activities often these structural adjustments and accompanying policies aimed at improving economic performance have been based on several implicit assumptions about how african food systems operate yet for many countries little empirical information has been available to test these assumptions hence designing policies too often becomes an exercise in planning without facts this paper argues that not only is there a need to base food security and structural adjustment policies more firmly on empirical information but that the process by which the information is obtained is as important as the information itself agricultural economists and other social scientists can and increasingly should design policy research in africa in ways that simultaneously increase effective demand for empirical information as an input into the ongoing policy process and augment african capacity continually to inform policy deliberations we illustrate the payoffs to such an approach by drawing on selected experience in several african countries weber

the role of informal finance in household capital accumulation evidence from taiwan economies that experience rapid growth also experience major changes in their consumption patterns particularly for consumer durables this paper studies the diffusion of durables in taiwan between 1977 and 1991 we focus on the link between household accumulation of durables and participation in informal financial institutions while growth in per capita income in taiwan had been great many households still reply on traditional forms of finance we test the idea that rotating savings and credit associations which are found worldwide exist to lower the cost of saving for durables our analysis finds evidence of that link

do consumers respond to future income shocks evidence from social security reform in taiwan abstract a prediction of the basic permanent income hypothesis life cycle model is that an unexpected increase in future income produces an immediate increase in current consumption this paper tests that prediction using data from taiwan the 1985 labor standards law granted all employees in covered industries a windfall retirement severance benefit my results indicate that consumption did not increase immediately for those who were granted the windfall relative to those who received no windfall moreover consumption for those receiving a greater windfall did not increase relative to those who were granted less

informal capital sources and household investment evidence from taiwan abstract the purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of informal financial channels in capital accumulation by household investors the focus is on the link between borrowing from informal financial institutions and households investment in capital stock the empirical evidence is drawn from micro data from taiwan for the period 1977 1992 during this period taiwan emerged rapidly as an industrialized economy despite of its relatively underdeveloped formal financial sector the data show that informal financial channels were heavily relied on by small business entrepreneurs in taiwan it is found that informal financial institutions as a source of funds are important for small investors capital accumulation

cash crops food crops and sustainability the case of indonesia abstract recent evidence suggests that the main obstacle to sustainable agricultural development is the failure of any economic policy whether promoting food crops or exports to address adequately problems of natural resource management policies to achieve food self sufficiency may therefore by neither inherently more nor inherently less environmentally sustainable than export oriented agricultural development indonesia serves as a useful illustration as the country s pursuit of both food self sufficiency and export crop promotion strategies has encountered many problems of environmental and resource degradation overcoming these problems will require the explicit integration of natural resource management concerns within the economic policy framework for indonesian agriculture

the economics of rotating savings and credit associations supported by the center for energy policy studies m i t and the japanese corporate associates program at the kennedy school of government

finance and growth for microenterprises evidence from rural china using a survey dataset of chinese rural households we find that access to external finance is positively associated with the decision to become entrepreneur and the initial investment for microenterprises also we find that use of informal finance especially financing from friends and family is positively associated with sales growth of microenterprises with employees but not of self employed we do not find any significant relationship between the use of formal finance and firm growth our findings underline the importance of finance for entrepreneurship and microenterprise growth and the role of informal finance in the absence of efficient formal financial institutions

the financial repression liberalization debate taking stock looking for a synthesis financial repression and liberalization became the object of fierce debates between academics and policy makers since the early 1970s as of the late 1980s financial liberalization became also part of the structural adjustment programs sponsored by the international monetary fund and the world bank however the literature on financial repression and liberalization remains controversial on its theoretical conclusions and policy implications given its importance for both the theory and policy of economic development and growth this paper looks for a possible synthesis after reviewing the theoretical contributions and empirical studies under the headings of the mckinnon shaw and new structuralists models the survey concludes that a new synthesis might be found in the post keynesian attempt to take an institutional perspective within a globalised financial and economic environment

agricultural price policy employment and migration in a diversified rural economy a village town cge analysis from mexico using the village town computable general equilibrium cge model this paper explores the implications of resource mobility across farm and non farm activities and alternative model closure rules in shaping agricultural policy impacts two sets of agricultural policy experiments on three alternative model closure scenarios were conducted using data from a 1993 survey of 196 households in michoacan mexico including 53 in a town or county seat and 143 in the surrounding villages experiment 1 simulates the village town economy wide impact of a 10 decrease in the support price for staples experiment 2 combines this support price decrease with a compensating lump sum income transfer to staple producers similar to what actually occurred under mexicos procampo program results show that the prediction made by the aggregate cge model that mexicos agricultural price liberalization reduces rural employment and incomes and stimulates migration was not materialized the decline in staple production has been relatively small and it has concentrated on large commercial farms rather than in small farm sector in which most producers are found and from which most migrants originate however with the use of village town model and microsurvey data the authors demonstrated that under plausible market closure conditions mexicos staple price liberalization has a minimal effect on rural wagers and migration this is contrary to the predictions of the aggregated cge model

multiproduct cost relationships for retail fertilizer plants volume cost relationships developed from the statistical analysis of accounting data have long provided useful information for evaluating firm efficiency french previous descriptive and statistical analyses of accounting data as well as economic engineering cost studies of retail fertilizer firms have focused on a single product line anderson and miller raikes and heubrock williams foster and simpson service o rourke or have simply summarized industry accounting data akridge and downey problems associated with using accounting data to estimate statistical cost functions include a the failure to handle satisfactorily multiproduct firm cost relationships

the anatomy of an informal financial market rosca participation in taiwan abstract little is known about informal financial markets in developing countries this paper analyzes participation in rotating savings and credit associations using a national household survey from taiwan we find that participation is highest among high income households there is some evidence that income stability may play a role as well life cycle differences suggest a role in funding durables purchases our evidence indicates that roscas may be an alternative savings device to the formal financial sector

financial liberalization and aggregate consumption the evidence from taiwan this paper considers the effect of financial liberalization on aggregate consumption with a special focus on taiwan which has sustained a high savings rate and a rapid rate of economic growth under financial dualism but has undertaken financial liberalization since the 1980s leading to an expansion of the formal financial sector the paper finds that because of an active informal financial sector consumers in taiwan are less credit constrained than in other developing countries however the expansion of the formal financial sector has contributed to some relaxation of consumer credit constraints and thereby changes in the income and interest elasticities of consumption it also has brought about a higher consumption growth rate offsetting at least partially the positive growth effect of financial liberalization which helps improve the efficiency in finanacial intermediation

inequality in sub saharan africa new data and new insights from anthropometric estimates reliable information on inequality within countries is highly scarce especially for less developed countries ldcs using anthropometric measures we extend the inequality database for sub saharan africa to no less than 28 countries over six five year periods from 1950 to 1980 and to some 200 regions within those countries in this process we also test in depth the validity of objections against the derivation of inequality measures from height data in a second step we test the determinants of inequality within and between the 200 regions under study our set of explanatory variables includes protein supply cash cropping industrial structure mineral resources distance to the countries capital urbanization education population density and ethnic fractionalization we find that monoculture cash cropping increases inequality whereas diversified cash cropping has the opposite effect

the impact of formal financial inclusion on informal financial intermediation and cash preference evidence from africa this paper examines the effect of formal financial intermediation inclusion on informal financial intermediation and the use of cash for economic activities using data from the global findex 201

the structure of technology in a multioutput branch banking firm we formulate and estimate a multioutput bank s cost function amenable for distinguishing between economies of scale and economies of network density we find significant returns to network density especially for smaller banks diseconomies of scale are found for the larger banks whereas the hypothesis of constant returns to scale could not be rejected for the smaller banks

consumption over the life cycle and over the business cycle the main aim of this paper is to assess the validity of the life cycle model of consumption in particular we address an issue that has recently received much attention especially in the macroeconomic literature that of excess sensitivity of consumption growth to income growth we do this using a time series of cross sections and a novel and flexible parameterization of preferences the former allows us to address aggregation issues directly while with the latter we can allow both the discount factor and the elasticity of intertemporal substitution eis to be affected by various observable variables and lifetime wealth the main findings can be summarized as follows i the excess sensitivity of consumption growth to labor income disappears when we control for demographic variables this is true both at life cycle and business cycle frequencies ii estimation of a flexible specification of preferences indicates that the elasticity of intertemporal substitution is a function of several variables including the level of consumption the eis increases with the level of consumption as expected iii the variables that change the eis are also important in explaining why we observe excess sensitivity over the business cycle iv we are able to reconcile our results with those reported both in the macro and micro literature v in our specification the elasticity of intertemporal substitution is not very well determined this result however should be taken with care as we have not made an effort to construct a preferred specification which would probably include additional controls for labor supply behavior the evidence presented shows that the life cycle model cannot be easily dismissed indeed we believe that the model does a good job at representing consumption behavior both over the life cycle and over the business cycle