occupational choice and the process of development this paper models economic development as a process of institutional transformation by focusing on the interplay between agents occupational decisions and the distribution of wealth because of capital market imperfections poor agents choose working for a wage over self employment and wealthy agents become entrepreneurs who monitor workers only with sufficient inequality however will there be employment contracts otherwise there is either subsistence or self employment thus in static equilibrium the occupational structure depends on distribution since the latter is itself endogenous we demonstrate the robustness of this result by extending the model dynamically and studying examples in which initial wealth distributions have long run effects in one case the economy develops either widespread cottage industry self employment or factory production employment contracts depending on the initial distribution in the other example it develops into prosperity or stagnation

innovation and imitation in a duopoly in a duopoly where one firm has the idea for a non patentable innovation the expected profits from the innovation will not be a monotonic function of the cost of innovating furthermore a costly innovation may be undertaken where an inexpensive one would not have been all other things being equal

impact of access to credit on labor allocation patterns in malawi summary this paper uses data from the malawi financial markets and household food security survey to examine the impact of gendered access to credit on labor allocation patterns within the household the paper corrects for potential endogeneity of access to credit in the estimations access to credit relies on the credit limit concept thus an individual has access to credit from a particular source if he she is able to borrow a positive amount from that source results suggest that the impact of access to credit depends upon both the gender of the recipient and whether it is formal or informal credit

women s access to credit does it matter for household efficiency studies that assess the impact of credit constraints on farm households efficiency have largely used the household as the unit of analysis this can be problematic when there are gender based market imperfections and asymmetries in how rights resources and responsibilities are distributed within the household constraints on women matter in addition to the efficiency loss associated with the husbands credit constraints when women are unable to meet their needs for capital their households experienced an additional 11 drop in efficiency this suggests that there are efficiency based arguments for enhancing women s access to capital and that studies based only on the household s head may significantly underestimate the true economic impact of credit constraints copyright 2008 oxford university press

financial inclusion measurement spatial effects and influencing factors abstractusing the index of financial inclusion and the world bank global findex database this study measures the level of financial inclusion across countries the results reveal a geographical spatial aggregation distribution in which developed european and north american countries enjoy higher levels of financial inclusion than the less developed countries of africa and most of asia accordingly our spatial analysis proves our hypothesis and reveals dependence and aggregation effects among countries then we employ spatial econometric research to identify those factors significantly associated with financial inclusion the results show that an individual s income education and use of communications equipment are important factors that explain the level of financial inclusion while financial depth and banking health status are the main determinants building an inclusive financial system is an important means for most countries to achieve the millennium development goals

remittance and financial inclusion in refugee migrants inverse probability of treatment weighting using the propensity score abstractthis paper investigates the impact on remittances on financial inclusion of refugee migrants while financial inclusion is gaining traction in the humanitarian and development literature t

growth deforestation and the efficiency of the redd mechanism this paper assesses the long term impacts of an international transfer called the reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation redd mechanism which aims at preserving tropical forests of the recipient economy this two sector economy faces a dilemma between economic growth and deforestation the rural sector can substitute reproducible capital for agricultural land whereas the manufacturing sector only requires capital the model shows that the redd mechanism has a non monotonic effect on steady state welfares for low transfer schemes the agricultural output increases with the transfer even though less land is under cultivation for high transfer schemes the increase in the transfer may not offset the decrease in the agricultural output the open loop symmetric nash equilibrium in a dynamic deforestation game predicts that redistributing the transfer among a finite number of producers is less efficient in reducing deforestation than in the social optimum

global warming irreversibility and learning a number of economists have argued that the literature on the irreversibility effect implies that current abatement of greenhouse gas emissions should be greater when there is the possibility of obtaining better information in the future about the potential damages from global warming than when there is no possibility of obtaining better information in this paper we show that even the simplest model of global warming does not satisfy either of epstein s 1980 sufficient conditions so it is not possible to use epstein s analysis to tell whether the irreversibility effect applies to models of global warming we derive an alternative sufficient condition for the irreversibility effect to hold

financial inclusion and poverty a tale of forty five thousand households abstractusing a new nationally representative survey data covering approximately 45 000 indian households we examine the effects of financial inclusion on poverty we construct a multidimensional

uncertainty and markets for renewable resources abstract the market allocation of renewable resources is examined when growth rates are affected by random disturbances given free access to a renewable resource environmental disturbances are shown to affect the biological survival of the resource the optimal solution is then examined and it is shown to be achieved by a competitive allocation when property rights are clearly defined given rational expectations or a complete set of contingent futures markets the stochastic dynamics are shown in each case to differ considerably from the deterministic model

low profile or entrepreneurial gender class and cultural adaptation in the global microfinance industry summary this study examines how discourses of entrepreneurial womanhood filtered through a chain of hierarchically positioned actors in global microfinance translate into interactions with borrowers drawing from ethnography interviews and document analysis on a set of entrepreneurial trainings delivered to nonentrepreneurial borrowers in urban india this study argues that parallel conflicting processes of cultural adaptation within the organization and tensions between various actors create an environment in which there is no incentive to cater to the interests of working class clients commercialized microfinance thus may not necessarily produce accountability to client interests

stackelberg and marshall this paper advocates a generalized n firm stackelberg model as a plausible testable alternative description of oligopoly a pure strategy equilibrium must exist for this model the main result is that efficiency obtains in the limit as the scale of each firm is shrunk relative to demand this is demonstrated for the case of u shaped average cost and also for that of natural monopoly copyright 1990 by american economic association

microfinance and poverty in bolivia both in its institutional range and in its penetration of financial markets the microfinance sector in bolivia rivals any in the world and has played a major part in extracting the macro economy from meltdown since the mid 1980s we seek specifically to assess its impact on poverty and do this through small sample surveys on four microfinance institutions two urban and two rural using a range of poverty concepts income generated both through the borrower s enterprise and through the labour market asset holdings and diversity and various measures of vulnerability all the institutions studied had on balance positive impacts on income and asset levels with income impacts correlating negatively with income on account of poor households choosing to invest in low risk low return assets microfinance may however augment vulnerability average debt service ratios of microfinance clients are disturbingly high and if the coping mechanisms used by borrowers fail borrowers may be forced out of the

cross country variation in household access to financial services abstract this paper presents estimates for more than 160 countries of the fraction of the adult population using formal financial intermediaries the estimates are constructed by combining information on account numbers at banks and microfinance institutions together with banking depth and gdp data with estimates from household surveys for a smaller set of countries an illustrative application of the data compares them with information on poverty there is a correlation but it is not clearly causal

microcredit and the poorest of the poor theory and evidence from bolivia abstract we construct a theoretical framework that describes the social worth of a microfinance organization in terms of the depth worth to users cost to users breadth length and scope of its output we then analyze evidence of depth of outreach for five microfinance organizations in bolivia most of the poor households reached by the microfinance organizations were near the poverty line they were the richest of the poor group lenders had more depth of outreach than individual lenders the urban poorest were more likely to be borrowers but rural borrowers were more likely to be among the poorest

strategic information manipulation in duopolies abstract this paper studies a duopoly market in which firms can draw inferences concerning uncertain market demand from observations of their outputs and market price firms may adjust their outputs away from myopically optimal levels to affect the informativeness of the market price because firms quantities are observed firms can manipulate the extent to which belief revision occurs rather than the direction in which beliefs are revised as in signal jamming models we develop conditions and present examples under which the value of information is positive and negative and under which firms will increase or decrease quantity to manipulate information journal of economic literature classification numbers d80 l13

innovation imitation and social welfare this paper focuses on the impact of competition by imitation more specifically copying for innovative activity and social welfare in part it is a response to recent empirical work 10 12 that has tried to measure the relationship between innovation and imitation costs these papers include a direct call for theoretical modeling that takes explicit account of such cost relationships and we try to answer this challenge specifically we examine the implications for product quality and social welfare when innovators anticipate that a successful product will be copied by rivals obviously previous empirical research is not the only source of interest in these issues the potential effects of imitation on innovative activity have long been both a theoretical and practical concern in recent years a variety of authors have addressed the appropriability issue raised by imitation and its implications for innovative activity 4 7 2 there has also been work on explicit copying i e photocopying 8 11 in the policy arena the protection of product design and intellectual property rights is the focus of much recent actual and proposed u s legislation and a major issue in the uruguay round of trade talks 1 21 our analysis of this topic differs from that of previous work in a number of important respects first we focus explicitly on product as opposed to process innovations second and perhaps even more important we do not restrict the firm s choice to be to innovate or not to innovate instead we allow the innovator to choose what kind or quality of new good to introduce into the market the higher the quality the higher is the development cost third when the innovating firm decides what kind of new product to market it does so under uncertainty about demand the popularity of the new product is not known until after the innovator has chosen the level of quality and sunk its product development costs fourth at the initial time at which the innovator chooses the quality of product to develop it does so with the knowledge that its innovation if it is popular will be copied by later rival entrants finally in direct response to the empirical work mentioned above we explicitly focus on the ratio of imitation to innovation costs our approach yields a number of insights not the least of which is a more precise identification of the potential gains and losses from imitative competition indeed using a quadratic development cost function we explicitly calculate the impact of copying on social welfare this explicit welfare analysis further distinguishes our analysis from most previous work

income distribution and macroeconomics this paper analyzes the role of wealth distribution in macroeconomics through investment in human capital it is shown that in the presence of credit markets imperfections and indivisibilities in investment in human capital the initial distribution of wealth affects aggregate output and investment both in the short and in the long run as there are multiple steady states this paper therefore provides an additional explanation for the persistent differences in per capita output across countries furthermore the paper shows that cross country differences in macroeconomic adjustment to aggregate shocks can be attributed among other factors to differences in wealth and income distribution across countries

new ways of looking at old issues inequality and growth abstract the paper uses new cross country data on income and asset land distribution to show that i there is a strong negative relationship between initial inequality in the asset distribution and long term growth ii inequality reduces income growth for the poor but not for the rich and iii available longitudinal data provide little support for the kuznets hypothesis policies that increase aggregate investment and facilitate acquisition of assets by the poor might thus be doubly beneficial for growth and poverty reduction

can commercially oriented microfinance help meet the millennium development goals evidence from pakistan summary the current emphasis in the microfinance industry is a shift from donor funded to commercially sustainable operations this article evaluates the impact of access to microloans from the khushhali bank pakistan s first and largest microfinance bank which operates on commercial principles using primary data from a detailed household survey of nearly 3 000 borrower and non borrower households a difference in difference approach is used to test for the impact of access to loans once the results are disaggregated between rural and urban areas there is a positive impact in rural areas on food expenditure and on some social indicators such as the health of children and female empowerment these impacts are observed even in very poor households these findings suggest that commercially oriented microfinance and the millennium development goals are not incompatible given a supportive environment

quality in contestable markets a historical problem the theory of contestable markets has made notable inroads into the traditional way of looking at markets with only a few producers but its relationship to the theory of monopolistic competition in general and the quality of goods in particular has not been explored in depth such a connection is suggested by a feature of contestable markets emphasized by william baumol in his presidential address baumol emphasizes the fact that an incumbent is always vulnerable to hit and run entry if he ever tries to exert his potential monopoly power 1

the problem of the commons still unsettled after 100 years the problem of the commons is more important to our lives and thus more central to economics than a century ago when katharine coman led off the first issue of the american economic review as the us and other economies have grown the carrying capacity of the planet in regard to natural resources and environmental quality has become a greater concern particularly for commonproperty and open access resources the focus of this article is on some important unsettled problems of the commons within the realm of natural resources there are special challenges associated with renewable resources which are frequently characterized by open access an important example is the degradation of openaccess fisheries critical commons problems are also associated with environmental quality a key contribution of economics has been the development of market based approaches to environmental protection these instruments are key to addressing the ultimate commons problem of the twenty first century global climate change jel q15 q21 q22 q25 q54

reaching out access to and use of banking services across countries the authors 1 present new indicators of banking sector penetration across 99 countries based on a survey of bank regulatory authorities 2 show that these indicators predict household and firm use of banking services 3 explore the association between the outreach indicators and measures of financial institutional and infrastructure development across countries and 4 relate these banking outreach indicators to measures of firms financing constraints in particular they find that greater outreach is correlated with standard measures of financial development as well as with economic activity controlling for these factors the authors find that better communication and transport infrastructure and better governance are also associated with greater outreach government ownership of financial institutions translates into lower access while more concentrated banking systems are associated with greater outreach finally firms in countries with higher branch and atm penetration and higher use of loan services report lower financing obstacles thus linking banking sector outreach to the alleviation of firms financing constraints

a dynamic game of emissions pollution with uncertainty and learning we introduce learning in a dynamic game of international pollution with ecological uncertainty we characterize and compare the feedback non cooperative emissions strategies of players when the players do not know the distribution of ecological uncertainty but they gain information learn about it we then compare our learning model with the benchmark model of full information where players know the distribution of ecological uncertainty we find that uncertainty due to anticipative learning induces a decrease in total emissions but not necessarily in individual emissions further the effect of structural uncertainty on total and individual emissions depends on the beliefs distribution and bias moreover we obtain that if a player s beliefs change toward more optimistic views or if she feels that the situation is less risky then she increases her emissions while others react to this change and decrease their emissions

flexibility learning and irreversibility in environmental decisions a bayesian approach the bayes decision is characterized and studied for a two period decision problem involving a proposed resource development project it is assumed that development is irreversible and that expectations about benefits and costs during the second period vary with experiences resulting from the first period action the amount and types of learning achieved depend upon the particular action taken during the first period flexible sequential decision procedures are compared with fixed once and for all decisions it is shown that under this specification optimal development decisions are not necessarily more conservative when a sequential procedure is used the possibility of reneging on a fixed decision is formally specified and studied

strategic exploitation with learning and heterogeneous beliefs abstract we study the effect of learning with heterogeneous beliefs on the exploitation of a renewable common pool resource to that end we extend the great fish war model of levhari and mirman 1980 to a learning environment in which several agents interact strategically and learn about the distribution of the stochastic evolution of the resource we find that the effect of anticipation of learning with heterogeneous beliefs is twofold first the anticipation of learning makes future payoffs more uncertain which induces the agents to decrease present exploitation due to the precautionary motive second under heterogeneity of beliefs there is a differential informational externality that induces the agents to increase or decrease present exploitation we also perform a comparative analysis on the cournot nash equilibrium with learning by studying the effect of optimism and riskiness on resource exploitation

the legal environment banks and long run economic growth this paper examines the relationship between the legal system and banlding development and traces this connection through to long run rates of per capita gdp growth capital stock growth and productivity growth the data indicate that countries where the legal system 1 emphasizes creditor rights and 2 rigorously enforces contracts have better developed banks than countries where laws do not give a high priority to creditors and where enforcement is lax furtherrnore the exogenous component of banking development the component defined by the legal environment is positively and robustly associated with per capita growth physical capital accumulation and productivity growth this paper addresses two questions first do crosscountry differences in the legal rights of creditors the efficiency of contract enforcement and the origin of the legal system explain cross country differences in the level of banking development second do better developed banks cause faster economic development that is is the component of banking development defined by the legal environment positively associated with long run rates of economic growth capital accumulation and productivity growth examining the relationship between the legal system and banking development is valuable irrespective of issues associated with long run growth first banks may influence the level of income per capita and the magnitude of cyclical fluctuations bernanke and gertler 1989 1990 second many economists stress that understanding the evolution of legal and financial systems is essential for understanding economic development north 1981 engerman and sokoloff 1996 consequently quantitative information on the relationship between the legal environment and banks will improve our understanding of business cycles and the process of economic development furthermore examining the causal links between banks and economic growth has both conceptual and policy implications on the conceptual front a long literature debates the importance of banks in economic development starting as early as bagehot 1873 economists have argued that better banks banks that are better at identifying creditworthy firms mobilizing savings pooling risks and facilitating transactions

uncertainty learning and heterogeneity in international environmental agreements this paper concerns the formation of international environmental agreements under uncertainty about environmental damage with different models of learning complete learning partial learning or no learning the results of the existing literature are generally pessimistic the possibility of either complete or partial learning generally reduces the level of global welfare that can be achieved from forming an iea relative to no learning that literature regards uncertainty as a parameter common to all countries so that countries are identical ex ante as well as ex post in this paper we extend the literature to the case where there is no correlation between damage costs across countries each country is uncertain about a particular parameter in our case the benefit cost ratio drawn from a common distribution but ex post each country s realized parameter value is independently drawn consequently while countries remain identical ex ante they may be heterogeneous ex post we show that this change reinforces the negative conclusions about the effects of partial learning on international environmental agreements but under certain conditions moderates the negative conclusions about the effects of complete learning

growth inequality and poverty looking beyond averages the evidence is compelling that the poor in developing countries do typically share in the gains from rising aggregate affluence and in the losses from aggregate contraction but how much do poor people share in growth do they gain more in some settings than others do some gain while others lose does pro poor growth mean more or less aggregate growth recent theories and evidence suggest some answers but deeper microeconomic empirical work is needed on growth and distributed change only then will we have a firm basis for identifying the specific policies and programs needed to complement and possibly modify growth oriented policies

financial inclusion gender dimension and economic impact on poor households summary we examine the question in the context of gender dimension what is the evidence of the impact of the financial inclusion programs on poor households represented by women relative to that represented by men by constructing a good counterfactual and comparison group we employ the difference in difference estimator approach with panel least squares and generalized methods of moments using standard errors for a robust analysis we notice that income growth cagr net of inflation effect was 8 40 for women as against 3 97 for men indicating that the gender of participating poor undoubtedly affects the outcomes of these programs

water for life the impact of the privatization of water services on child mortality while most countries are committed to increasing access to safe water and thereby reducing child mortality there is little consensus on how to actually improve water services one important proposal under discussion is whether to privatize water provision in the 1990s argentina embarked on one of the largest privatization campaigns in the world including the privatization of local water companies covering approximately 30 percent of the country s municipalities using the variation in ownership of water provision across time and space generated by the privatization process we find that child mortality fell 8 percent in the areas that privatized their water services and that the effect was largest 26 percent in the poorest areas we check the robustness of these estimates using cause specific mortality while privatization is associated with significant reductions in deaths from infectious and parasitic diseases it is uncorrelated with deaths from causes unrelated to water conditions

intensifying financial inclusion through the provision of financial literacy training a gendered perspective this study examines the impact of financial literacy training on financial inclusion and its intensity using data collected from a randomised control trial an additive index of financial inclusion

strategic exploitation of a common resource under environmental risk abstract we study the effect of environmental risk on the extraction of a common resource using a dynamic and non cooperative game in which an environmental event impacts the renewability and the quality of the resource we show that the anticipation of such an event has an ambiguous effect on extraction and the tragedy of the commons a risk of a reduction in the renewability induces the agents to extract less today while a risk of a deterioration in the quality has the opposite effect moreover when environmental risk induces conservation the tragedy of the commons is worsened

sequential entry with brand loyalty caused by consumer learning by using we examine first mover advantages in a new product market with sequential entry effort is necessary to learn how to use new products and consumers are assumed to differ in their ability to expend such effort we consider the intertemporal pricing strategy of the first entrant who anticipates the late entry of a rival firm the first entrant s optimal strategy is to set a low introductory price this builds up a customer base which remains loyal despite the later entry of a lower priced rival and weakens price competition between the two firms thus brand loyalty makes entry into the market easier

imitation costs and patents an empirical study it has long been recognised that the costs of imitating new products have an important effect on the incentives for innovation in a market economy as arrow i962 and others have pointed out if firms can imitate an innovation at a cost that is substantially below the cost to the innovator of developing the innovation there may be little or no incentive for the innovator to carry out the innovation in their discussions of the innovation process economists frequently have called attention to the major role played by the costs of imitation but there has been little or no attempt to measure these costs to test various hypotheses concerning the factors influencing them or to estimate their effects in this paper we report some findings of what seems to be the first study of this topic in addition we present data regarding the effects of patents on imitation costs and on the rate of innovation

the challenge of rural financial inclusion evidence from microfinance financial inclusion is said to foster development and growth however progress in financial inclusion has been slow in rural areas where poverty is most pronounced this is often attributed to hig

mobile money financial inclusion and development a review with reference to african experience we survey literature on mobile money and its contribution in promoting financial inclusion and development with a focus on sub saharan africa we use taxonomic descriptive and analytical methods to evaluate the state of knowledge in the area we analyse how mobile technology in general may contribute to economic development and financial inclusion in theory and practise we explain the mechanics of mobile money using kenya s m pesa as a canonical example and consider whether the literature has fully established the potential economic impact of mobile money especially its contribution to financial inclusion we also consider market structure pricing and regulatory implications of mobile money we conclude by highlighting issues that require further investigation the take up of mobile money mobile money and financial inclusion substitutability between mobile money and conventional finance and regulatory structures for institutions providing mobile money services

preemptive patenting and the persistence of monopoly this article takes a different tack and inquires whether institutions such as the patent system create opportunities for firms with monopoly power to maintain their monopoly power the results apply to other situations such as brand identification spatial location and capacity expansion which share the characteristic that early or preemptive actions may lower the returns to potential competitors

is there an intrahousehold flypaper effect evidence from a school feeding programme are public transfers targeted toward children neutralised by the household as the theory of altruism implies or is there an intrahousehold flypaper effect whereby such transfers stick to the child this paper studies the impact of a school feeding programme on child caloric intake in the philippines using a quasi experimental methodology the empirical results confirm an intrahousehold flypaper effect indeed they indicate virtually no intrahousehold reallocation of calories in response to the feeding programme in poorer households however children s gains from the programme appear to be taxed more heavily

copying and indirect appropriability photocopying of journals creators and owners of intellectual properties are alarmed by the growth of technologies that ease the tasks of copying these properties this paper however shows that the unauthorized copying of intellectual properties need not be harmful and actually may be beneficial the empirical impact of photocopying on publishers of journals is examined in an attempt to discover if publishers can indirectly appropriate revenues from users who are not original purchasers the evidence indicates that publishers can indirectly appropriate revenues from users who do not directly purchase journals and that photocopying has not harmed journal publishers 18 references 1 table

banking services for everyone barriers to bank access and use around the world using information from 193 banks in 58 countries the authors develop and analyze indicators of physical access affordability and eligibility barriers to deposit loan and payment services they find substantial cross country variation in barriers to banking and show that in many countries these barriers can potentially exclude a significant share of the population from using banking services correlations with bank and country level variables show that bank size and the availability of physical infrastructure are the most robust predictors of barriers further the authors find evidence that in more competitive open and transparent economies and in countries with better contractual and informational frameworks banks impose lower barriers finally though foreign banks seem to charge higher fees than other banks in foreign dominated banking systems fees are lower and it is easier to open bank accounts and to apply for loans on the other hand in systems that are predominantly government owned customers pay lower fees but also face greater restrictions in terms of where to apply for loans and how long it takes to have applications processed these findings have important implications for policy reforms to broaden access

the impact of group based credit programs on poor households in bangladesh does the gender of participants matter this paper estimates the impact of participation by gender in the grameen bank and two other group based micro credit programs in bangladesh on labor supply schooling household expenditure and assets the empirical method uses a quasi experimental survey design to correct for the bias from unobserved individual and village level heterogeneity we find that program credit has a larger effect on the behavior of poor households in bangladesh when women are the program participants for example annual household consumption expenditure increases 18 taka for every 100 additional taka borrowed by women from these credit programs compared with 11 taka for men

threatening thresholds the effect of disastrous regime shifts on the non cooperative use of environmental goods and services abstract this paper presents a tractable dynamic game in which agents jointly use a resource the resource replenishes fully but collapses irreversibly if the total use exceeds a threshold the threshold is assumed to be constant but its location may be unknown consequently an experiment to increase the level of safe resource use will only reveal whether the threshold has been crossed or not if the consequence of crossing the threshold is disastrous i e independent of how far the threshold has been exceeded it is individually and socially optimal to update beliefs about the threshold s location at most once the threat of a disastrous regime thereby facilitates coordination on a cautious equilibrium if the initial safe level is sufficiently valuable the equilibrium implies no experimentation and coincides with the first best resource use the less valuable the initial safe value the more the agents will experiment for sufficiently low initial values immediate depletion of the resource is the only equilibrium when the regime shift is not disastrous but the damage depends on how far threshold has been exceeded experimentation may be gradual

intra household resource allocation an inferential approach if household income is pooled and then allocated to maximize welfare then income under the control of mothers and fathers should have the same impact on demand with survey data on family health and nutrition in brazil the equality of parental income effects is rejected unearned income in the hands of a mother has a bigger effect on her family s health than income under the control of a father for child survival probabilities the effect is almost twenty times bigger the common preference or neoclassical model of the household is rejected if unearned income is measured with error and income is pooled then the ratio of maternal to paternal income effects should be the same equality of the ratios cannot be rejected there is also evidence for gender preference mothers prefer to devote resources to improving the nutritional status of their daughters fathers to sons

empowering women with micro finance evidence from bangladesh abstract this article examines the effects of men s and women s participation in micro credit programs on various indicators of women s empowerment using data from a special survey carried out in rural bangladesh these credit programs are well suited to studying how gender specific resources alter intrahousehold allocations because they induce differential participation by gender through the requirement that only one adult member per household can participate in any micro credit program empowerment is formalized as an unobserved latent variable reflecting common components of qualitative responses to a large set of questions pertaining to women s autonomy and decision making power the empirical methods are attentive to various sources of endogeneity and the results are consistent with the view that women s participation in micro credit programs helps to increase women s empowerment the effects of male credit on women s empowerment were generally negative

schooling and labor market consequences of school construction in indonesia evidence from an unusual policy experiment between 1973 and 1978 the indonesian government engaged in one of the largest school construction programs on record combining differences across regions in the number of schools constructed with differences across cohorts induced by the timing of the program suggests that each primary school constructed per 1 000 children led to an average increase of 0 12 to 0 19 years of education as well as a 1 5 to 2 7 percent increase in wages this implies estimates of economic returns to education ranging from 6 8 to 10 6 percent

a theory of trickle down growth and development this paper develops a model of growth and income inequalities in the presence of imperfect capital markets and it analyses the trickle down effect of capital accumulation moral hazard with limited wealth constraints on the part of the borrowers is the source of both capital market imperfections and the emergence of persistent income inequalities three main conclusions are obtained from this model first when the rate of capital accumulation is sufficiently high the economy converges to a unique invariant wealth distribution second even though the trickle down mechanism can lead to a unique steady state distribution under laissez faire there is room for government intervention in particular redistribution of wealth from rich lenders to poor and middle class borrowers improves the production efficiency of the economy both because it brings about greater equality of opportunity and also because it accelerates the trickle down process third the process of capital accumulation initially has the effect of widening inequalities but in later stages it reduces them in other words this model can generate a kuznets curve

bank supervision and corruption in lending abstract which commercial bank supervisory policies ease or intensify the degree to which bank corruption is an obstacle to firms raising external finance based on new data from more than 2500 firms across 37 countries this paper provides the first empirical assessment of the impact of different bank supervisory policies on firms financing obstacles we find that the traditional approach to bank supervision which involves empowering official supervisory agencies to monitor discipline and influence banks directly does not improve the integrity of bank lending rather we find that a supervisory strategy that focuses on empowering private monitoring of banks by forcing banks to disclose accurate information to the private sector tends to lower the degree to which corruption of bank officials is an obstacle to firms raising external finance in extensions we find that regulations that empower private monitoring exert a particularly beneficial effect on the integrity of bank lending in countries with sound legal institutions

component based technology transfer in the presence of potential imitators technology transfer to low cost locations offers global firms an opportunity to reduce their variable costs involved in serving emerging markets however such moves may also make imitation by local competitors easier as a consequence technology transfer may create competition in the local market we introduce component based technology transfer for the global firm as a means to deter or accommodate the imitators entry recognizing that components may differ in technological complexity by choosing a subset of components to transfer the global firm s decision has an impact not only on the imitators fixed entry costs but also on postentry competition based on variable costs our research identifies two different types of deterrence strategies the barrier erecting strategy and the market grabbing strategy in the former deterrence strategy the global firm retains enough component technology in the home country to make the potential imitator s fixed entry costs so high that it is not worthwhile entering in the latter deterrence strategy the global firm transfers enough component technology to the emerging market reducing the global firm s variable cost to make the potential imitator s revenues so low that it is not worthwhile entering which deterrence strategy the global firm should employ depends on the degree to which geographical proximity reduces imitation costs and the degree of differentiation between the local firm s and the global firm s products some other interesting and counterintuitive results arise for example it may benefit a global firm to transfer less technology for products with a higher emerging market potential