women s discrimination in developing countries a new data set for better policies summary based on a new data set this paper develops two innovative indicators to measure gender inequalities in developing countries the indicators measure different aspects of constraints imposed on women by social institutions that is laws norms traditions and codes of conduct that exist in societies for centuries the paper finds that social institutions are the most important single factor determining women s participation in economic activities outside the household

bailouts in federations is a hard budget constraint always best this article analyses hard and soft budget constraints in a federation where there is a moral hazard problem between the central and the regional governments regional governments can avoid a bailout from the center by exerting costly effort in this setting a hard budget constraint is not always optimal because it can provide excessive incentives for high effort and thus discourage investment that is socially efficient thus a hard budget constraint can imply the opposite kind of inefficiency that emerges under a soft budget constraint where the common pool problem can give rise to inefficiently low effort and overinvestment

a re examination of the relationship between industry structure and economic performance the objective of this study is to develop a simultaneous equations model of profitability concentration advertising expenditures and research and development outlays the data used in the estimation are subjected to regression diagnostics in an effort to determine the importance to the estimation results of a subset of the data that can have a disproportionate influence the estimation results especially for the advertising expenditures relationship and the research and development outlays equation do change when a truncated data sample based on the omission of the outliers is used this serves partly to explain why there is some disagreement in the literature on market structure and economic performance with regard to the impact of several economic factors

intergovernmental transfers and fiscal behavior insurance versus aggregate discipline abstract this paper evaluates the trade off between the advantages of risk sharing and the perils of common pool problems in federal fiscal arrangements under the assumption of asymmetric information we evaluate two alternative regimes of intergovernmental transfers in one regime the central government pre commits to a certain level of transfers that compensate vertical fiscal imbalances and provide some limited ex ante insurance in the other regime it accommodates ex post the fiscal needs of the different provinces in this second case full insurance results but the economy is subject to a tragedy of the fiscal commons with excessive subnational spending insufficient local taxation and reduced production of federal public goods we find the range of parameters for which one or the other institutional regime will be preferable the result is a fiscal federalism version of the usual trade off between rules and discretion

nash equilibria in models of fiscal competition abstract this paper analyzes nash equilibria in a simple model of an economy with jurisdictions engaging in fiscal competition small number nash equilibria in which tax rates are the strategic variables are shown not to coincide with nash equilibria in which public expenditure levels are the strategic variables

decentralisation and accountability in infrastructure delivery in developing countries many developing countries are experimenting with decentralisation of public service delivery to elected local governments instead of bureaucrats appointed by a central government we study the resulting implications in a theoretical model in which the central government is uninformed about local need and unable to monitor service allocations bureaucrats charge bribes for services as monopoly providers resulting in underprovision of services especially for the poor local governments are directly responsive to their citizens needs but may be subject to capture by elites effects of decentralisation on service volumes efficiency and equity are analysed under different financing arrangements for local governments the theme of the 2004 world development report is summarised by its opening paragraph too often services fail poor people in access in quantity in quality but the fact that there are strong examples where services do work means governments and citizens can do better how by putting poor people at the center of service provision by enabling them to monitor and discipline service providers by amplifying their voice in policymaking and by strengthening the incentives for providers to serve the poor problems of accountability associated with traditional modes of delivery involving centralised bureaucracies include cost padding service diversion limited responsiveness to local needs limited access and high prices charged especially to the poor 1 many developing countries have thus begun to experiment with initiatives to increase accountability of service providers by providing greater control rights to citizen groups these include decentralisation of service delivery to local governments community participation direct transfers to households and contracting out delivery to private providers and ngos the programmes include a wide range of infrastructure services water sanitation electricity telecommunications roads and social services education health and welfare programmes countries where such trends have gathered

the costs of missing the millennium development goal on gender equity abstract at the millennium summit the world community pledged to promote gender equality and chose as a specific target the achievement of gender equity in primary and secondary education by the year 2005 in every country of the world based on the findings from a growing empirical literature that suggests that gender equity in education promotes economic growth reduced fertility child mortality and undernutrition we estimate what the costs in terms of growth and forgone fertility mortality and undernutrition reduction will be for the 45 countries that are on current projections unlikely to meet the target our estimates suggest that by 2005 the countries that are off track are likely to suffer 0 1 0 3 percentage points lower per capita growth rates as a result will have 0 1 0 4 more children per woman and by 2015 an average of 15 per 1 000 higher rates of under five mortality and 2 5 percentage points higher prevalence of underweight children under five sensitivity analyses suggest that the results are quite robust to using different specifications and approaches to estimating these losses

a theory of interregional tax competition a general equilibrium model is constructed to study tax competition where local governments compete for capital by holding down property tax rates and public expenditure levels an exact definition of tax competition is provided and both the existence and nonexistence of tax competition are shown to be theoretically possible it is argued however that tax competition must occur under empirically reasonable conditions inefficiency in public production is also explicitly modeled the amount of capital used to produce a given level of public service output is shown to be greater than that which is required to minimize costs evaluated at the prices facing private firms

regional state capacity and the optimal degree of fiscal decentralization abstract we study the optimal degree of fiscal decentralization in a federation regional governments are characterized by their abilities to deliver public goods administrative capacity and to raise tax revenues fiscal capacity two regimes are compared on efficiency grounds under partial decentralization regional governments rely on central bailouts to complete local projects in financing needs under full decentralization marginal financing is achieved via local capital taxes we show that the presence of sufficiently low levels of administrative capacity is a necessary condition for full decentralization dominance this condition may also be sufficient depending on the projects characteristics some extensions are presented

undp s gender related indices a critical review abstract this paper critically reviews the two gender related indices proposed by undp in the 1995 human development report the gender related development index gdi and the gender empowerment measure gem while supporting the need to develop indicators that reliably track women s empowerment gem as well as the impact of gender inequality on overall human development gdi we argue that the particular ways in which these indices were constructed and the assumptions made to overcome data gaps severely limit their usefulness and result in very misleading international comparisons wherever appropriate we suggest remedies for some of the shortcomings identified

an empirical analysis of process and product patenting a simultaneous equation framework the results of this study support the hypothesis that research activity is not a homogeneous activity and that important differences exist between the determinants of process patenting and product patenting further the effects on concentration and advertising of research depend on the type of research carried on by firms concentration and process patenting are positively related and concentration and product patenting are not there is some weak evidence linking advertising and product patenting further process patenting tends to generate greater industrial concentration

a political economy theory of partial decentralization we revisit the classic problem of tax competition in the context of federal nations and derive a positive theory of partial decentralization a capital poor median voter chooses to use redistributive capital taxes to provide public goods the expectation of high capital taxes however results in a small capital stock which lowers returns to redistribution the median voter therefore wants to commit to a lower level of capital taxes she does so by setting a partial degree of decentralization in the constitution the equilibrium degree of decentralization balances the positive effect of tax competition on capital taxes with the loss in redistribution that results we show that the degree of decentralization is nonmonotonic in inequality increasing in the redistributive efficiency of public good provision and decreasing in capital productivity when public goods are heterogeneous in their capacity to transfer funds all voters agree that goods with high redistributive capacity should be decentralized

globalisation women s economic rights and forced labour economy s penetration by foreign direct investment by and large has no sta tistically significant impact globalisation might weaken the general bargaining position of labour such that outcome related la bour standards might suffer however being more open toward trade is likely to promote rather than hinder the realisation of t wo labour rights considered as core or fundamental by the international labour organisation namely the elimination of economic discrimination and of forced labour

optimal fiscal federalism in the presence of tax competition abstract this paper models the optimal division of public goods provision between central and regional governments in an economy with interregional tax competition regional provision is inefficient because governments compete for scarce capital by lowering their capital taxes and public good levels to inefficiently low levels on the other hand central provision is inefficient because it is determined by the minimum winning coalition within a legislature the optimal degree to which public good provision should be decentralized depends on a tradeoff between these inefficiencies in our main model complete centralization is never optimal regional governments should supply some public goods

investment in local public services nash equilibrium and social optimum within a two community setting we study the optimal provision of a local public good which is indivisible and generates interjurisdictional spillovers each community has to decide whether or not to invest in this public good the resulting nash equilibrium is compared with an optimal solution based on a benthamian welfare function we then analyze to what extent conditional grants are able to restore optimality when needed c 1997 elsevier science s a

too big or too small a synthetic view of the commitment problem of interregional transfers abstract there is a growing body of literature on the commitment problem of interregional transfers the problem occurs because of an ex post bailout by a central government leading to ex ante adverse incentive consequences for a local government however different models have yielded different economic consequences the local government may be too large overspending and or overborrowing or it may be too small raising less of its own revenue in the presence of interregional spillovers the equilibrium may yield a pareto efficient outcome the present paper aims to synthesize these models developing a simple decentralized leadership model a critical question concerns what decision is made ex ante by the local government namely public expenditure or tax collection with the remaining policy instrument being residual adjusted by ex post transfers we discuss how different scenarios affect the equilibrium outcome

low schooling for girls slower growth for all cross country evidence on the effect of gender inequality in education on economic development using cross country and panel regressions this article investigates how gender inequality in education affects long term economic growth such inequality is found to have an effect on economic growth that is robust to changes in specifications and controls for potential endogeneities the results suggest that gender inequality in education directly affects economic growth by lowering the average level of human capital in addition growth is indirectly affected through the impact of gender inequality on investment and population growth some 0 4 0 9 percentage points of differences in annual per capita growth rates between east asia and sub saharan africa south asia and the middle east can be accounted for by differences in gender gaps in education between these regions

determinants of innovation in energy intensive industry and implications for energy policy abstracts the korean government adopted green growth in 2008 as an environmentally friendly growth strategy the energy efficiency of korea however is still relatively low due to the large portion of energy intensive industry eii in its manufacturing sector to improve energy efficiency in korea from an eii perspective a new approach has to be taken because restructuring entire industries would take too much time and be too costly this study aims to emphasize the importance of innovation and analyze the effects of r d on product and process innovations in eii in korea the probit model is adopted to estimate the effects of eight determinants in the korea innovation survey 2008 data the results of this study demonstrate that one of the most important determinants the r d personnel ratio has a strong positive effect on both product and process innovation while another determinant r d intensity only has a strong and positive effect on process innovation in eii because of the resulting innovation energy policies should be enacted to enhance energy efficiency thus the korean government should keep providing incentives for firms in eii to invest more financial and human resources in their r d activities

gender inequality and economic growth a cross country analysis abstract this paper investigates empirically the determinants of economic growth for a set of semi industrialized export oriented economies in which women provide the bulk of labor in the export sector the primary hypothesis tested is that gender inequality which contributes to women s relatively lower wages was a stimulus to growth via the effect on exports during 1975 95 empirical analysis shows that gdp growth is positively related to gender wage inequality in contrast to recent work which suggests that income inequality slows growth evidence also indicates that part of the impact of gender wage inequality on growth is transmitted through its positive effect on investment as a share of gdp

decentralization of governance and development all around the world in matters of governance decentralization is the rage even apart from the widely debated issues of subsidiarity and devolution in the european union and states rights in the united states decentralization has been at the center stage of policy experiments in the last two decades in a large number of developing and transition economies in latin america africa and asia the world bank for example has embraced it as one of the major governance reforms on its agenda for example world bank 2000 burki perry and dillinger 1999 take also the examples of the two largest countries of the world china and india decentralization has been regarded as the major institutional framework for the phenomenal industrial growth in the last two decades in china taking place largely in the nonstate nonprivate sector india ushered in a landmark constitutional reform in favor of decentralization around the same time it launched a major program of economic reform in the early 1990s on account of its many failures the centralized state everywhere has lost a great deal of legitimacy and decentralization is widely believed to promise a range of benee ts it is often suggested as a way of reducing the role of the state in general by fragmenting central authority and introducing more intergovernmental competition and checks and balances it is viewed as a way to make government more responsive and efe cient technological changes have also made it somewhat easier than before to provide public services like electricity and water supply relatively efe ciently in smaller market areas and the lower levels of government have now a greater ability to handle certain tasks in a world of rampant ethnic cone icts and separatist movements decentralization is also regarded as a way of diffusing social and political tensions and ensuring local cultural and political autonomy these potential benee ts of decentralization have attracted a very diverse range

why the gender gap in wages narrowed in the 1980s since 1976 the gender gap in wages on average declined by about 1 per year this article focuses on identifying the factors underlying this trend three data sets are analyzed the current population survey the panel study of income dynamics and the national longitudinal survey we find that convergence in measurable work related characteristics schooling and work experience explains one third to one half the narrowing the remainder is attributable to a relative increase in women s returns to experience as well as to declining wages in blue collar work and other factors

an empirical analysis of firm process and product patenting this paper presents an empriical study of the determinants of firm patenting since industrial research and development r d encompasses a variety of activities this study distinguishes between patents on process innovations and patents on product innovations the property rights provided by a patent may differ between process and product patents which suggests that the determinants of process innovations and product innovations may difer as well several recent studies have distinguished between research directed toward process innovations and research directed toward product innovations scherer 1983a included measures of process r d spending and product r d spending in regressions for inter industry differences in productivity growth link and lunn 1984 found that the returns to process related r d activity exceed the returns to product related r d activity link 1982 found inter firm differences in the allocation of r d spending for process innovations and product innovations lunn 1986 fou

buyer market structure and r d effort a simultaneous equations model the theoretical and empirical investigations of the relationship between market structure and the firm s incentive to invent and innovate have concentrated on the effects of the structure of the supply side of the market this focus on the supply side originated in schumpeter s controversial hypothesis that current market power provided the necessary conditions and future market power provided the incentive for technical change schumpeter 1950 this hypothesis stimulated a vast number of theoretical refinements and empirical tests of relations between research and development activity r d and supply side characteristics such as concentration firm size and diversification this literature has been well summarized by kamien and schwartz 1975 and scherer 1980 the analysis of the effects of the buyer market structure on the selling industry conduct and performance has been limited both theoretically and empirically stigler 1964 modeled the effects of the size distribution of buyers on price competition in oligopoly telser 1964 devel oped a theory of advertising messages in which he suggested that advertising would increase when buyers were many and small lustgarten 1975 tested the effects of buyer market structure on price cost margins and advertising and found the relations suggested by stigler and telser invention and innovation are forms of competition which like price and advertising will be affected by both buyer market structure and seller market structure however unlike price and advertising competition there have not been explicit attempts to establish theoretical and empirical relations between buyer market structure and inventive and innovative activity the effects of buyer market structure on the selling industry s incentive to invent and innovate is relevant to interpreting the effects of seller market structure on this effort a number of previous studies of the effects of seller market structure on technical change have found that seller concentration may have a slight positive impact on inventive and innovative effort kamien and schwartz 1975 p 20 even this weak relation may be due to not controlling for buyer market structure if galbraith s 1952 countervailing power hypothesis is correct lustgarten 1975 p 128 concentration in the buyer and seller markets may be positively correlated if buyer market concentration is positively related to inventive and innovative effort in the selling industry the empirical estimate of the partial effect of seller concentration will be biased upward this paper investigates the effect of buyer market structure on r d effort section ii draws together the literature that is relevant to the issue of the relation between buyer market structure and seller inventive and innovative activity section iii develops a simultaneous equation model of r d activity where r d advertising and concentration are endogenous variables section iv uses data on scientific and engineering inputs to test this model section v summarizes these results

pure public goods and income redistribution in a federation with decentralized leadership and imperfect labor mobility abstract we examine the non cooperative provision of a pure public good by regional governments in a federation similar to the european union where regional governments are stackelberg leaders and the central government is a stackelberg follower a federation with decentralized leadership the center makes interregional income transfers after it observes the contributions to the pure public good imperfectly mobile workers react to regional and central governments policies by establishing residence in their most preferred region despite the degree of labor mobility we show that the pure public good and interregional transfers are generally allocated efficiently in a federation with decentralized leadership

understanding the soft budget constraint we propose a clarification of the notion of a soft budget constraint a concept widely used in the analysis of socialist transitional and market economies our interpretation is broad enough to embrace most existing approaches to soft budget constraint phenomena and provides a classification of their causes and consequences in light of this interpretation we then review the theoretical literature on the subject and compare it with those on other dynamic commitment problems in economics

a distributional analysis of the gender wage gap in bangladesh this article empirically investigates the gender wage gap in bangladesh during the period 2005 2009 applying unconditional quantile regression models the article demonstrates that women are paid less than men throughout the wage distribution and the gap is higher at the lower end of the distribution discrimination against women is the primary determinant of the wage gap the article also demonstrates that the observed gender wage gap is likely to be underestimated if we ignore selection in full time employment a number of policy implications are discussed

asymmetric tax competition abstract the paper analyzes nash equilibrium when two jurisdictions set tax rates on a tax base which is mobile between them population differences imply tax differences the smaller jurisdiction levies a lower tax rate in equilibrium and its residents are better off than those in the larger jurisdiction the nash equilibrium is inefficient if the two jurisdictions merged the resulting allocation would be efficient however if differences in population are great enough residents of the small jurisdiction would be made worse off by such a merger

microfinance and gender empowerment in this paper we develop a theoretical model of household production bargaining and credit to analyse how access to microcredit affects intra household decision making and welfare and identify conditions under which female household members are most likely to benefit we show that consistent with ethnographic accounts of the impact of microcredit programmes on poor households access to loans can lead to a variety of outcomes for intra household decision making and welfare depending on initial conditions and that in some instances women borrowers may experience a decline in welfare we identify two instances in which a woman is most likely to benefit when there is scope for investing the loan profitably in a joint activity and when a large share of the household budget is devoted to household public goods

shared accountability and partial decentralization in local public good provision abstract recent decentralization reforms in developing countries have often lead to the coexistence of multiple tiers of government in given policy areas triggering new accountability issues this paper provides a novel theoretical treatment of the efficiency consequences of such partial expenditure decentralization it develops a political agency model in which two levels of government are involved in the provision of a local public good with voters imperfectly informed about each government s contribution to the public good a central result of the model is that partial decentralization is desirable only if the benefits of vertical complementarity in public good provision outweigh the costs of reduced accountability which result from detrimental vertical strategic interactions operating through the electoral process through variants of the model the interplay between decentralization and democratization is analyzed from a positive point of view the model predicts a relationship between electoral incentives and equilibrium decentralization

south south migration and discrimination against women in social institutions a two way relationship summary using the social institutions and gender index sigi from the oecd development centre this paper provides evidence on the two way relationship between discrimination against women in social institutions and south south migration on the one hand discriminatory social institutions in both origin and destination countries are an additional determinant of female migration on the other hand migration implies changes in discrimination against women according to the level of gender inequalities at destination specifically migration toward countries with low levels of discrimination promotes gender equality in social institutions at home while migration toward destinations with high levels of discrimination has the reverse effect

how do local governments decide on public policy in fiscal federalism tax vs expenditure optimization previous literature widely assumes that taxes are optimized in local public flnance while expenditures adjust residually this paper endogenizes the choice of the optimization variable in particular it analyzes how federal policy toward local governments in uences the way local governments decide on public policy unlike the presumption the paper shows that local governments may choose to optimize over expenditures the result most notably prevails when federal policy subsidizes local flscal efiort the results ofier a new perspective of the e ciency implications of federal policy toward local governments and thereby enable a more precise characterization of local government behavior in flscal federalism

pigou tiebout property taxation and the underprovision of local public goods abstract pigou s proposition that the use of distorting taxes rather than neutral head taxes reduces public service levels is examined in this paper a simple model with a national system of competing local governments is utilized to demonstrate that the use of a distorting property tax on mobile capital decreases the level of residential public services the case where public services are an intermediate producer good is also considered

determinants of the adoption of information technology a case study of electrical and electronic goods manufacturing firms in india abstract this study measures the intensity of adoption of information technology it and identifies its determinants in this paper it is argued that the degree of it adoption will be determined by the variables such as entrepreneurship skill intensity government policy openness of economy competitive environment and other firm specific factors the results of ordered probit model suggest that the qualification and information base of entrepreneurs and their attitude towards innovative activities and market share are significant determinants of the degree of it adoption the results also indicate that size of operations and skill intensity of the firms influenced the extent of it use

market structure and innovation a survey economics we all recite deals with allocation of limited resources towards satisfaction of unlimited wants resources are typically identified as land labor and capital plus a technology that determines their transformation into consumer goods disparity between the available goods and services and the desired gives rise to scarcity and the question of what how and for whom to produce the focus then shifts to description and evaluation of alternative resource allocation mechanisms for making the choices the pareto criterion by which an allocation of resources is deemed efficient if any reallocation improving the position of some individual worsens the position of others is a commonly employed gauge of a mechanism s performance in the absence of externalities increasing returns to scale and uncertainty a perfectly competitive market system yields a pareto optimal allocation of resources this underlies the view that individual self interest is compatible with society s interest the further conclusion that pareto optimality may not be achieved via the market system in the presence of monopoly elements provides an economic rationale for antitrust laws the objective of a resource allocation mechanism appears to be according to the analysis described above to make the best of available resources the alternative objective of relaxing constraints through expanding the resource base or developing new technology seems to be beyond its scope thus until rather recently technical advance had been regarded in the mainstream of economic theory as unmotivated by the quest for profits and substantially unaffected by resource allocation instead as j schmookler observed technology had been viewed as a parameter like the weather affecting the outcome of resource allocations but itself unaffected by them 84 1965 evidence that technological progress has significantly contributed to growth in productivity together with a substantial increase in research and development activity largely financed by government and carried out by industry see f machlup 51 1962 may have spurred reconsideration of this view once technical advance is regarded as an economic variable it is natural to in

tax competition in a fiscal union with decentralized leadership this paper examines capital tax competition in the presence of an interstate transfer policy without federal commitment lack of commitment implies that local tax policy is chosen prior to federal transfers the paper s main result is that ex post federal policy neutralizes horizontal fiscal externalities insulating tax policy from capital mobility federal policy however introduces a new source of inefficiency unrelated to tax competition specifically ex post transfer payments prove to be equivalent to an interstate revenue sharing system which may render federal intervention in the presence of fiscal externalities welfare deteriorating relative to tax competition

gender inequality endogenous cultural norms and economic development this research focuses on the role played by cultural norms in the long run persistence of gender inequalities cultural norms about gender roles are considered to be endogenous and can generate gender inequality and low development traps indeed when the gender gap is internalized it leads to inegalitarian views about gender roles due to these inegalitarian beliefs boys receive more education and the initial gender gap is reinforced the existence of gender inequality traps is pointed out by the world bank as a major obstacle for economic development wdr 2006 the present article allows for a better understanding of the persistence of such traps and the means to escape

globalization and the empowerment of women an analysis of spatial dependence via trade and foreign direct investment summary this article tests the hypothesis that higher women s economic and social rights in foreign countries with which a country is connected via trade and foreign direct investment fdi spill over into higher rights among the laggards a phenomenon known as spatial dependence analyzing women s rights over the period 1981 2007 in a global sample and samples of countries at different stages of economic development we find consistent evidence for spill over effects via trade links with the exception of a sample of low income countries we also find some evidence for similar effects via fdi but only for economic rights and only in middle income countries

distributive politics and the costs of centralization this paper studies the choice between centralization and decentralization of fiscal policy in a political economy setting with centralization regional delegates vote over agendas comprising sets of region specific projects the outcome is inefficient because the choice of projects is insufficiently sensitive to within region benefits the number of projects funded may be non monotonic in the strength of project externalities the efficiency gains from decentralization and the performance of constitutional rules such as majority voting which may be used to choose between decentralization and centralization are then discussed in this framework weaker externalities and more heterogeneity between regions need not increase the efficiency gain from decentralization

help or hindrance religion s impact on gender inequality in attitudes and outcomes summary this paper investigates the effect of religiosity on attitudes toward gender equality using world values survey data results indicate that religiosity is strongly correlated with gender inequitable attitudes across countries further ols tsls and 3sls regression estimates reveal that gender inequitable attitudes are associated with negative effects on seven measures of gender equality of well being and public policy no single religion stands out as more gender inequitable than others the impact of religiosity is likely transmitted via stealth effects on everyday behavior in economic transactions in labor markets household resource allocation and government spending