learning about a new technology pineapple in ghana this paper investigates the role of social learning in the diffusion of a new agri cultural technology in ghana we use unique data on farmers communication patterns to define each individual s information neighborhood conditional on many potentially confounding variables we find evidence that farmers adjust their inputs to align with those of their information neighbors who were surpris ingly successful in previous periods the relationship of these input adjustments to experience further indicates the presence of social learning in addition applying the same method to input choices for another crop of known technol ogy correctly indicates an absence of social learning effects jel d83 013 033 q16

natural resources curse or blessing are natural resources a curse or a blessing the empirical evidence suggests that either outcome is possible this paper surveys a variety of hypotheses and supporting evidence for why some countries benefit and others lose from the presence of natural resources these include that a resource bonanza induces appreciation of the real exchange rate deindustrialization and bad growth prospects and that these adverse effects are more severe in volatile countries with bad institutions and lack of rule of law corruption presidential democracies and underdeveloped financial systems another hypothesis is that a resource boom reinforces rent grabbing and civil conflict especially if institutions are bad induces corruption especially in nondemocratic countries and keeps in place bad policies finally resource rich developing economies seem unable to successfully convert their depleting exhaustible resources into other productive assets the survey also offers some welfare based fiscal rules for harnessing resource windfalls in developed and developing economies

household level determinants of adoption of improved natural resources management practices among smallholder farmers in western kenya abstract integrated natural resources management inrm of which integrated soil fertility management isfm is a component offers considerable promise for increasing food production in kenya it nonetheless remains unclear whether isfm inrm techniques lend themselves easily to adoption by smallholder farmers using panel data collected in western kenya in 1989 and 2002 this study finds that resource constraints limit many farmers adoption of isfm inrm techniques the size of the farm owned by a household the value of its livestock off farm income family labor supply and the educational attainment and gender of the household head all had a significant positive effect on the likelihood of adoption similar factors were found to be statistically significant in discouraging abandonment of the practices under study there thus seem to exist reinforcing feedback between investments in soil fertility management and household wealth as measured by asset endowments our findings raise important questions as to whether isfm and related techniques are really affordable to poorer smallholder farmers

modelling the transport sector fuel demand for developng economies abstract this paper concentrates on the transport sector of six developing countries with similar common denominators namely turkey thailand pakistan morocco tunisia and malaysia by using standard econometric techniques we analyse the evolution of oil demand for road transport in these countries in relation to independent variables such as income population price of gasoline and diesel etc unlike the treatment in the present literature on the subject gasoline and diesel consumption are estimated separately due to the high share of diesel in the total transport sector consumption on the basis of the estimation over the period 1970 1990 on a country by country basis we forecast the demand for these six countries until 2010 the results of this study indicate that the transport sector will be the driving force for energy and oil demand as part of economic growth in these developing countries its share in the future energy market structure is expected to grow consequently the pricing policies of oil products in this sector have a crucial role for shaping rational economic and energy strategies within the framework of rising environmental concern

effects of treatment beyond the treated a general equilibrium impact evaluation of lesotho s cash grants program africa s social cash transfer programs target the most resource constrained households unlikely to expand supply in response to transfer induced demand we propose a local economy wide impact evaluation model and use it to evaluate local spillovers from lesotho s child grants program we report monte carlo confidence bounds around impact simulation results we find significant spillovers to nonrecipient households and significant real income multipliers although the latter are dampened if factor supply constraints generate excessive inflationary pressures our findings raise questions about how to measure the impacts of cash transfers evaluations focusing only on eligible households are likely to significantly understate program impacts

adoption of improved maize varieties in southern ethiopia factors and strategy options abstract this paper identifies factors that influence the decision behavior of farmers in southern ethiopia in adopting improved maize varieties by estimating a logistic regression data for this study came from 222 farmers interviewed as part of a national adoption survey conducted in three selected maize growing administrative zones of southern ethiopia in 1998 the paper also assesses the impact of pure and mixed strategy options on the probability of adoption of improved maize varieties through simulation under different scenarios as far as pure strategies are concerned the credit strategy is more powerful than the others in terms of raising the probability of adoption however results from the analysis of pure versus mixed strategies imply that mixed strategies are no necessarily much better than pure strategies

the big push natural resource booms and growth a simple application of big push reasoning suggests that natural resource booms can be important catalysts for development in poorer countries in this paper we present evidence from seven latin american countries that natural resource booms are sometimes accompa nied by declining per capita gdp we present a model with natural resources increasing returns in the spirit of big push models and expectations to clarify some of the reasons this may happen q 1999 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the crisis of gasoline consumption in the iran s transportation sector fossil fuels have the greatest share in supplying the world s energy demands regarding the limited natural resources fuel consumption management and energy planning in the end user sectors are two great matters of importance among the fossil fuels gasoline is the principal fuel for light duty vehicles in iran fuel consumption especially that of gasoline has increased sharply with the growth rate of 10 2 for the year 2006 in comparison with that in 2005 turning into a big crisis in the recent years on the other hand enormous subsidies for importing 40 of domestic demands which have reached more than 10 billion us are too much to be supplied in this study we have assessed the gasoline consumption production import and prices reviewed main causes of the tremendous growth rate of consumption current conservation policies and their advantages or disadvantages swot analysis proposed short to long term solutions and strategies for efficient gasoline consumption management and finally current strategies and proposed solutions are analyzed and evaluated a foregone conclusion strongly suggests that not only the low price of motor gasoline but also mass production of vehicles with the conventional technology likewise affects motor gasoline demand a second conclusion is that gasoline crisis in iran has no straight solution and that fundamental strategies and policies are needed to solve the problem

the demand for gasoline abstract sufficient time must be allowed to elapse to assess fully the response of gasoline demand to price changes hitherto empirical work on the subject has generally not examined the period beyond 1975 moreover the extant time series studies concentrate almost exclusively on the usa this study extends both the observation period and the country coverage a vehicle stock adjustment model is estimated via its reduced form without explicit consideration of the vehicle stock itself however the estimation procedure incorporates the structure by way of constraints on the parameters cross section analysis offers additional evidence concerning the truly long run price elasticity the results suggest that there is no need to resort to elaborate models to explain adequately gasoline demand gasoline demand exhibits a long run price elasticity near unity with time lags exceeding six years while there is tentative evidence that the duration of these lags is not fixed

integrating technology traits and producer heterogeneity a mixed multinomial model of genetically modified corn adoption this article proposes a model of technology adoption that integrates demand for individual traits of new technologies with the potential for heterogeneity based on farm and farmer characteristics the model is applied to recent genetically modified corn adoption data from minnesota and wisconsin farmers using a mixed multinomial logit mmnl model to estimate the effects of traits and farm and farmer characteristics on adoption outcomes this approach allows explicit recovery of estimates of farmers shadow prices for individual technology traits results show the importance of producer and regional heterogeneity in preferences for seed traits

social networks and technology adoption in northern mozambique despite their potentially strong impact on poverty agricultural innovations are often adopted slowly using a unique household dataset on sunflower adoption in mozambique we analyse whether and how individual adoption decisions depend upon the choices of others in the same social networks since farmers anticipate that they will share information with others we expect farmers to be more likely to adopt when they know many other adopters dynamic considerations however suggest that farmers who know many adopters might strategically delay adoption to free ride on the information gathered by others we present empirical evidence that shows that the relationship between the probability of adoption and the number of known adopters is shaped as an inverse u in line with information sharing the network effect is stronger for farmers who report discussing agriculture with others the data contains information which is needed to ameliorate the identification issues that commonly arise in this context in particular social networks are precisely identified and in addition we can control for village heterogeneity and endogenous group formation

supply chain design and adoption of indivisible technology in this paper we develop a framework to analyze adoption of indivisible technologies by relatively small farms using a threshold diffusion model it shows that different supply chains may emerge to enable the adoption of indivisible technologies independent technology dealers may buy the indivisible equipment and rent it to farmers when the gain from adoption is not affected by scale or ownership of the technology also larger farmers may buy the technology equipment and rent it renting the machine per se or providing a set of services that includes use of the machinery for the farmer buying the service to smaller farmers especially when there are gains from scale or ownership the paper derives equilibrium prices and quantities in the output equipment and technology rental market these equilibrium prices and quantities depend on the heterogeneity of farmers and the features of the technology introduction of the new indivisible technology will benefit larger adopting farmers and consumers but may hurt non adopters we illustrate our conceptual findings with empirical examples

biogas energy from family sized digesters in uganda critical factors and policy implications dependence on fossil energy sources is increasingly becoming unsustainable due to ecological and environmental problems and rapid depletion biogas energy could augment these conventional energy sources but despite its advantages and favourable conditions for its production biogas energy use in uganda remains low due to technical economic and socio cultural impediments based on primary data on households in central and eastern uganda and the use of logistic regression this study analyses factors affecting the adoption of biogas energy in uganda the empirical results suggest that the probability of a household adopting biogas technology increases with decreasing age of head of household increasing household income increasing number of cattle owned increasing household size male head of household and increasing cost of traditional fuels in contrast the likelihood of adoption decreases with increasing remoteness of household location and increasing household land area policy options and recommendations including educational and awareness campaigns on biogas benefits and successes the provision of financial and non financial incentives to households and establishment of an institutional framework could bolster wider biogas energy acceptance in uganda

ngos agricultural technology and the rural poor abstract a wide range of agencies outside the public and private commercial sectors is involved in generating introducing testing and promoting agricultural technology particularly for small farmers and landless labourers in marginal areas of less developed countries their experience is largely undocumented and tends to be overlooked for specific locations this paper discusses the significance of different types of voluntary agency vis a vis the public sector focusing on non government organizations it then examines in what roles they can be expected to perform well although still fragmentary the evidence from africa asia and latin america indicates substantial unexploited complementarities between agencies within and outside the public sector

world transport energy demand modelling methodology and elasticities abstract this paper presents the international energy agency s iea approach of modelling transport energy demand fuel demand which is not a demand per se is derived whenever possible from the economic activity in the transport sector and not estimated directly ie using one equation or simultaneous equation system in general the transport models employ a two step approach in the first step transport activity the sector s relevant energy service is estimated econometrically in the second step the transport activity projections are then combined with estimates of efficiency improvements car turnover rates and diesel gasoline penetration assumptions in order to arrive at projections of fuel demand the principal advantages of this approach are that the relevant energy services are modelled and that for model simulation efficiency improvements can be dealt with explicitly the effectiveness of economic instruments is a function of the reaction of consumers and businesses to income and price changes an in depth understanding of income and price elasticities of transport demand and transport energy demand is important in order to be able to assess the effectiveness of policies considered the paper also shows the underlying long term income and price elasticities for oecd and non oecd regions

the returns from schooling in a diversified rural economy controlling for the endogeneity of activity choice and considering both household head and family schooling we findevid ence of high returns from schooling in both crop andnoncrop activities as schooling levels increase the returns from schooling shift away from crop production failure to control for activity selection andfamily schooling is likely to result in biasedestimates of the returns from schooling in individual activities copyright 2000 oxford university press

who benefited from burundi s demobilization program this paper assesses the impact of the demobilization reinsertion and reintegration program in post war burundi two major rebel groups benefited from cash and in kind transfers the cndd fdd from 2004 and the fnl from 2010 a panel data of households collected in 2006 and 2010 is combined with official records from the national commission for demobilization reinsertion and reintegration regression analysis shows that the cash payments received by fnl demobilized households had a positive impact on consumption nonfood spending and investments the program also generated positive spillovers in the villages where fnl combatants returned ex combatants indeed spent a large part of their allowance on consumption goods and clothing thereby generating a short run economic boom in villages however the long run evolution of consumption indicators is negative for cndd fdd households as well as for villages where cndd fdd combatants returned suggesting that the direct impact and the spillovers of the program vanished in the long run

participation public policy political economy and development in rural bangladesh 1958 85 abstract during this period four successive regimes in bangladesh have felt reluctantly compelled to set up structures for local participation in government each found it had to reach out beyond the support of urban and rural elites and the military if it was to move beyond mere stability to real development of the country despite many problems most notably local elite takeover at local level and military coup at national level there is considerable evidence particularly from neighboring india to suggest that local participatory institutions can be successful over the longer term in promoting development for the middle and the poorer rural classes

input choices in agriculture is there a gender bias summary this paper examines evidence of gender biases in the decisions of agricultural households utilizing data from international crops research institute for the semi arid tropics s village level studies in india 1975 85 the main empirical finding is that households with a high proportion of boys tend to use some agricultural inputs including fertilizers and irrigation services more intensively than households with girls this pattern is more pronounced among wealthier households but does not appear to be driven solely by bequest motives or male child labor productivity

the impact of perception and other factors on the adoption of agricultural technology in the moret and jiru woreda district of ethiopia the objectives of this study are to examine both the significance of the impact of farmers perceptions regarding new technology for the adoption decision and how perceptions themselves are influenced by the decision to adopt new technology the study is based on data from 96 wheat farms in the moret and jiru woreda district of ethiopia the probit approach is used to analyse the adoption decision while the variables relevant to farmers perceptions are modelled using the ordered probit methodology a simultaneous equations model combining the probit and ordered probit approaches provides a useful approach to modelling the two way relationship between perception and adoption variables such as farm size farm income and soil type have a key role to play in the model perception is measured by eight different components and as there is a strong collinearity among these various measures a principal components analysis is attempted to draw the best possible linear combination of variables

do giant oilfield discoveries fuel internal armed conflicts we use new data to examine the effects of giant oilfield discoveries around the world since 1946 on average these discoveries increase per capita oil production and oil exports by up to 50 percent but these giant oilfield discoveries also have a dark side they increase the incidence of internal armed conflict by about 5 8 percentage points this increased incidence of conflict due to giant oilfield discoveries is especially high for countries that had already experienced armed conflicts or coups in the decade prior to discovery

information flows and social externalities in a tanzanian banana growing village this article analyses the role of social networks as facilitators of information flows and banana output increase based on a village census full information is available on the socio economic characteristics and banana production of farmers kinship group members neighbours and informal insurance group members the census data enable us to use individual specific reference groups and include exogenous group controls to tackle standard difficulties related to identification and omitted variables bias when analysing social effects for the survey village of nyakatoke in tanzania the results suggest that information flows exist within all types of groups analysed but output externalities are limited to kinship groups using networks may offer scope for effective information flows on agricultural techniques but our evidence suggests that not just any local network will have a social externality impact requiring a clear understanding of local social networks for maximum impact

spillovers from modern supply chains to traditional markets product innovation and adoption by smallholders there is an emerging body of literature analyzing how smallholder farmers in developing countries can benefit from modern supply chains however most of the available studies concentrate on export markets and fail to capture spillover effects that modern supply chains may have on local markets here we analyze the case of sweet pepper in thailand which was initially introduced as a product innovation in modern supply chains but which is now widely traded also in more traditional markets using survey data from smallholder farmers and econometric techniques we show that sweet pepper cultivation contributes significantly to higher household incomes strikingly at this stage participation in modern supply chains does not lead to higher incomes than supplying sweet pepper to traditional markets however the results also indicate that missing land titles weak infrastructure conditions and limited access to information constituted serious constraints during the early phases of sweet pepper adoption such constraints need to be overcome so that smallholder farmers are better prepared for the prompt reactions needed under rapidly changing market conditions

adoption of agricultural innovations in developing countries a survey this paper reviews various studies which have provided a description and possible explanation to patterns of innovation adoption in the agricultural sector the survey points out that the tendency of many studies to consider innovation adoption in dichotomous terms adoption nonadoption may not be appropriate in many cases where the actual decisions are defined over a more continuous range more attention needs to be given to the socio cultural and institutional environment in area studies so that their interrelation with economic factors affecting adoption can be inferred the presence of several interrelated innovations is another aspect that needs to be considered more carefully in future research since a number of simultaneous decisions may be involved furthermore the possibility of regular sequential patterns in adopting components of a new technological package should be specifically addressed in future studies finally the impact of differential adoption rates on land holding distribution merits attention in future research

technology adoption and agricultural price policy market interventions such as price supports or fertilizer subsidies can lead to gains from speeding up adoption of new technologies but the policies distort resource allocation a framework is developed for optimizing policies in light of the adoption allocation trade off based on adoption coefficients and production parameters from third world agriculture levels and duration of policies are estimated sensitivity analyses are performed gains are small at best and may be zero or negative in view of farmer costs of adjustment and deadweight losses from taxes profit technology adoption if new technologies are desirable why not use price supports or input subsidies to encourage faster technology adoption while frequently raised in policy deliberations this question has received little serious analysis particularly neglected has been the conflict or trade off between a gains in output as producers switch from old to new technologies and b the losses from resource use distortions brought about by price policies when output prices are raised or prices of inputs such as fertilizer are lowered the

the demand for information and the diffusion of a new product abstract the paper examines the implications of the ability of a consumer to learn about the characteristics of a new product on the diffusion of the product over time the demand for information by the consumer is shown to generate a sigmoid diffusion curve for total sales of the product further it is shown that over time the elasticity of demand along the diffusion curve increases

unpacking the meaning of market access evidence from rural kenya summary this paper critically examines the dimensions of market access using farm panel survey data from kenya we investigate changes in ten indicators of market access during the 1997 2010 post liberalization period we find major improvements in certain market access conditions and little change in others there is generally low correlation between alternative indicators of market access all purpose indicators may not accurately reflect specific market access conditions of interest distances to physical infrastructure are often not representative of farmers access to markets changes in specific market access conditions may have more to do with the behaviors of marketing agents we consider the implications of these findings for agricultural marketing policies and for research methods

news shocks in open economies evidence from giant oil discoveries this article explores the effect of news shocks in open economies using worldwide giant oil and gas discoveries as a directly observable measure of news shocks about future output the delay between a discovery and production is on average four to six years we first analyze the effects of a discovery in a two sector small open economy model with a resource sector we then estimate the effects of giant oil and gas discoveries on a large panel of countries our empirical estimates are consistent with the predictions of the model after an oil or gas discovery the current account and saving rate decline for the first five years and then rise sharply during the ensuing years investment rises robustly soon after the news arrives whereas gdp does not increase until after five years employment rates fall slightly and remain low for a sustained period

the role of education on the adoption of chemical fertiliser under different socioeconomic environments in ethiopia studies on input adoption consider education as one of the most important factors that affect adoption decisions however very little is known about the spill over effect of intra household education on the adoption process and about the impact of education on adoption decisions under different socioeconomic conditions we investigate these two issues using a discrete choice model the results indicate that the decision making process is a decentralised one in which educated adult members of the household actively participate in the decision making process this casts doubt on the traditional assumption that the household head is the sole decision maker the results reveal that there is a substantial and statistically significant intra household spill over effect of education on the adoption decision of households the results of the study also show that the coefficient of the education and the environment interaction variable is negative and statistically significant this demonstrates that education and socioeconomic environments could be substitutes in modern environments and complementary in traditional ones this implies that the expansion of education in traditional areas may be more attractive than in modern areas since education is usually the only means to enhance the ability of farmers to acquire synthesise and respond to innovations such as chemical fertiliser

the resource curse a statistical mirage abstract a surprising feature of resource rich economies is slow growth it is often argued that natural resource production impedes development by creating market or institutional failures this paper establishes an alternative explanation a slow growing resource sector a declining resource sector is disproportionately reflected in resource dependent countries additionally there is little evidence that resource dependence impedes growth in non resource sectors more generally this paper illustrates the importance of considering industry composition in cross country growth regressions

institutional development the world bank and india s new agricultural extension programme the new world bank sponsored and funded training and visit system of agricultural extension represents a major attempt by the bank to promote institutional development the very considerable investment has in fact resulted in little change or improvement in the quality of extension the reasons lie in failure to analyse the cause of the weakness of the previous extension systems inherent defects of the training and visit system and the way in which it has been introduced into india these failures in turn can be explained by the interests and the politics underlying the programme

do natural resources attract nonresource fdi abstract a new and extensive panel of outward nonresource and resource fdi is used to investigate the effect of natural resources on the different components of fdi our main findings are as follows first for countries which were not a resource producer before a resource discovery causes nonresource fdi to fall 16 in the short run and by 68 in the long run second for countries that were already a resource producer a doubling of resource rents induces a 12 4 fall in nonresource fdi third on average the contraction in nonresource fdi outweighs the boom in resource fdi aggregate fdi falls by 4 if the resource bonanza is doubled finally these negative effects on nonresource fdi are amplified through the positive spatial lags in nonresource fdi we also find that resource fdi is vertical whereas nonresource fdi is of the export fragmentation variety our main findings are robust to different measures of resource reserves and the oil price and to allowing sample selection bias

the political realities of african management abstract amidst the outburst of concern for public management in africa there is frequently a failure to distinguish among its components policy making leadership general internal administration and bureaucratic hygiene accounting procurement the merit system etc each of these four areas is different in the importance that it has for project performance the knowledge base that is available for improving it and the way in which it is affected by african political and social structures as a consequence those seeking to improve public management on the continent frequently are mistaken in the priorities that they establish and import inappropriate management technologies

the slave trade and the origins of mistrust in africa in a recent study nunn 2008 examines the long term impacts of africa s slave trade he finds that the slave trade which occurred over a period of more than 400 years had a significant negative effect on long term economic development although the article arguably identifies a negative causal relationship between the slave trade and income today the analysis is unable to establish the exact causal mechanisms underlying this reduced form relationship in this article we examine one of the channels through which the slave trade may affect economic development today combining contemporary individual level survey data with historical data on slave shipments by ethnic group we ask whether the slave trade caused a culture of mistrust to develop within africa initially slaves were captured primarily through state organized raids and warfare but as the trade progressed the environment of ubiquitous insecurity caused individuals to turn on others including friends and family members and to kidnap trick and sell each other into slavery sigismund wilhelm koelle 1854 p e h hair 1965 charles piot 1996 we hypothesize that in this environment a culture of mistrust may have evolved which may persist to this day we show that current differences in trust levels within africa can be traced back to the transatlantic and indian ocean slave trades combining contemporary individual level survey data with historical data on slave shipments by ethnic group we find that individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade are less trusting today evidence from a variety of identification strategies suggests that the relationship is causal examining causal mechanisms we show that most of the impact of the slave trade is through factors that are internal to the individual such as cultural norms beliefs and values jel j15 n57 z13

rural finance and agricultural technology adoption in ethiopia does the institutional design of lending organizations matter summary it has now become almost a stylized fact that sustained agricultural growth is central to rapid poverty reduction and economic development yet world poverty is largely concentrated in the agrarian societies which have the potential for agricultural productivity growth this is particularly true for sub saharan african countries where the gaps between potential and actual yields remain high minimizing this gap through the promotion of modern inputs such as fertilizer and modern seeds has been at the core of almost all development strategies in ethiopia among other initiatives the country has promoted microfinance institutions and member owned financial cooperatives to alleviate credit constraints of the smallholder farmers this paper analyzes the impacts of these institutions using household survey data and a propensity score matching technique we examine the effects that institutional financial services have on farmers adoption of agricultural technology in ethiopia the results suggest that access to institutional finance has a significant positive impact on both the adoption and extent of technology use however when impacts are disaggregated by type of financial institution and farm size heterogeneities are observed in particular financial cooperatives have a greater impact on technology adoption than microfinance institutions and the results appear to vary depending on farm size and types of inputs the paper concludes with implications for policies to promote adoption of modern agricultural inputs

the economics of water conserving technology adoption in tunisia an empirical estimation of farmer technology choice economic theory tells us that increases in the relative prices of natural resources should cause farmers to switch to techniques that use fewer farming resources the adoption of resource conserving technology is one possible response that can lead toward a more environmentally sustainable outcome do farmers respond to changes in natural resource prices and quality by adopting available resource conserving technology this article investigates a case study of decisions made by tunisian farmers as to whether or not they should invest in water conserving drip irrigation technology as a function of natural resource prices and quality along with farm and farmer characteristics in contrast to many studies of technology adoption this work uses both the standard revealed preference analysis of who adopts and a direct elicitation of the reasons for adoption or nonadoption by farmers by reviving an ancient methodology the direct question to elicit real preferences from farmers the research goes beyond the restrictive assumptions of the commonly used random utility models the combination of these techniques allows triangulation on the causes of technology adoption and helps insure that the results are more than a statistical artifact excerpt

sources of innovation in agricultural technology abstract this paper focuses attention on environmental and biological characteristics of agriculture which shape the process of technical innovation the interaction of natural selection and human purposive selection and experimentation is shown to result in a continuous process of innovation placing farmers in the informal r and d systems as well as scientists in formal r and d systems in an innovative treadmill the importance and limitations of informal r and d are reviewed a discussion of the characteristics and potential of formal r and d systems leads to the identification of some major problems of policy inherent in and specific to the organization and management of agricultural research resources these include genetic vulnerability choices between environmentally specific or widely adapted technologies the location of research activity the linkages between agricultural producers and scientists and methods for maintaining and strengthening informal r and d systems

retail globalization and household welfare evidence from mexico the arrival of global retail chains in developing countries is causing a radical transformation in the way that households source their consumption this paper draws on a new and unique collection of mexican microdata to estimate the effect of foreign supermarket entry on household welfare and its underlying channels the richness of the data allows us to estimate a general expression for the welfare gains from retail fdi and to decompose the total effect into several distinct components to base our estimates on plausibly exogenous variation in foreign retail entry we propose an event study design that exploits data on the universe of foreign store locations and opening dates in combination with high frequency data on barcode level store prices consumption quantities and household incomes in those same locations over the period 2002 2014 we find that foreign retail entry causes large and significant welfare gains for the average household that are mainly driven by a reduction in the cost of living a substantial share of this price index effect is due to pro competitive effects on consumer prices charged by domestic stores we find little evidence of significant changes in average municipality level incomes wages or employment we do however find evidence of store exit and adverse effects on domestic store profits and the incomes of traditional retail sector workers finally we present evidence that the gains from retail fdi are on average positive for all income groups but strongly regressive and quantify the opposing forces that underlie this finding

learning from neighbours when payoffs from different actions are unknown agents use their own past experience as well as the experience of their neighbours to guide their decision making in this paper we develop a general framework to study the relationship between the structure of these neighbourhoods and the process of social learning we show that in a connected society local learning ensures that all agents obtain the same payoffs in the long run thus if actions have different payoffs then all agents choose the same action and social conformism obtains we develop conditions on the distribution of prior beliefs the structure of neighbourhoods and the informativeness of actions under which this action is optimal in particular we identify a property of neighbourhood structures local independencewhich greatly facilitates social learning simulations of the model generate spatial and temporal patterns of adoption that are consistent with empirical work

agriculture and economic growth in ethiopia growth multipliers from a four sector simulation model abstract agriculture accounts for over half of ethiopian gdp yet the case for agriculture as a focus of economic growth strategies must rely on identifying a set of intersectoral linkages through which agricultural growth contributes to the growth of non agriculture in the ethiopian economy this article develops a four sector numerical simulation model of economic growth in ethiopia which permits the calculation of macroeconomic growth multipliers resulting from income shocks to agriculture services modern industry and traditional industry the resulting growth multipliers are 1 54 for agriculture 1 80 for services 1 34 for modern industry and 1 22 for traditional industry these results depict an economy in which intersectoral linkages operate on a highly uneven basis these limits are reflected in the wide disparity between sectoral growth multipliers and by substantial differences in the patterns of their decomposition the policy relevance of these findings relate in part to the distributional implications of growth in particular sectors poverty in ethiopia is disproportionately rural an income shock to agriculture is clearly the most progressive choice indicating the need to highlight agricultural development in growth strategies for ethiopia yet the simulation results further indicate that doing so imposes relatively little trade off against total benefit while a 1 service sector income shock generates 0 80 in indirect benefits a 1 agricultural income shock still generates 0 54 in indirect gains a somewhat smaller benefit but one likely to make the greatest possible impact on poverty reduction

using natural resources for development why has it proven so difficult developing economies have found it hard to use natural resource wealth to improve their economic performance utilizing resource endowments is a multistage economic and political problem that requires private investment to discover and extract the resource fiscal regimes to capture revenue judicious spending and investment decisions and policies to manage volatility and mitigate adverse impacts on the rest of the economy experience is mixed with some successes such as botswana and malaysia and more failures this paper reviews the challenges that are faced in successfully managing resource wealth the evidence on country performance and the reasons for disappointing results

innovation technical assistance and development the importance of technology users abstract in both industrialized and developing country situations technology users play a key role in generating successful new products and processes both high tech innovation such as the design of the boeing 747 aircraft and ibm computer software and innovative technologies for the rural poor such as vietnamese expeller pumps and bangladeshi hybrid rice strains owe much to the creativity and skill not of research scientist but of local housewives farmers and artisans new approaches to technical assistance which increase the interaction between r d institutions and these technology users are needed in order to tap this important innovation resource the incorporation of such an interactive research strategy into the work of the sudan energy research council led to highly successful initiatives in the fields of charcoal production improved charcoal stoves and agroforestry

agricultural research effort conceptual clarity and measurement abstract this paper emphasizes the need for basic conceptual clarity regarding the measures of research effort in econometric analyses this conceptual clarity could help reduce the misinterpretation of historical and institutional contexts underlying agricultural research effort after a brief review of econometric studies estimating the returns to and determinants of research the centrality of the conceptual contextual and causal significance of this measure is examined conceptualized and measured at the input frontier of the research process an expenditure measure of research reveals the institutional features and changes in the research process in india over time this basic understanding is essential to develop appropriate econometric specifications and correspondingly effective research policy statements

the demand for gasoline in south africa an empirical analysis using co integration techniques abstract using the recently developed autoregressive distributed lag ardl bound testing approach to co integration suggested by pesaran et al pesaran m h shin y smith r j bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships journal of applied econometrics 2001 16 3 289 326 we empirically analyzed the long run relationship among the variables in the aggregate gasoline demand function over the period 1978 2005 our study confirms the existence of a co integrating relationship the estimated price and income elasticities of 0 47 and 0 36 imply that gasoline demand in south africa is price and income inelastic

the demand for transport fuels in turkey abstract in this paper we estimate the demand for transport fuels in turkey specifically using four different models namely a partial adjustment model a distributed lag model an autoregressive distributed lag model and an error correction model we estimate gasoline and diesel demand functions with quarterly data covering the period 2003 q1 2014 q3 we find a stable long run relationship only for diesel demand income and price our results imply that gasoline demand does not respond to income and price in the long run reflecting a shift from gasoline towards diesel induced by differential tax policies furthermore we find that transport fuel demand is price inelastic making tax on fuel a perfect tool for raising budget revenues in addition our results suggest that fuel demand responds to negative and positive price changes symmetrically

district level economic linkages in kenya evidence based on a small regional social accounting matrix abstract this paper explores the nature and extent of the economic linkages in a small regional economy defined by a market center and its hinterland in kenya the analysis is based on a set of income and employment multipliers derived from a social accounting matrix estimated for the region issues considered include the impact of production activities on regional value added and employment the influence of sectoral production on the level of household income and the impact of household expenditure on regional value added and the relative significance of production and consumption linkages in terms of stimulating aggregate income the above questions are examined under the assumption of complete excess capacity in regional production and under the assumption of supply constraints in agriculture the usefulness of the analysis for district level economic planning is demonstrated

a multiple source of innovation model of agricultural research and technology promotion abstract two models of agricultural research and technology diffusion are described and contrasted the central source of innovation model frequently underlies the theories and rhetoric of agricultural research and extension institutions the multiple source of innovation model places agricultural research and diffusion processes in the historical political economic agroclimatic and institutional context in which technological change takes place the paper discusses the evidence and reasons for the dominance of the central model and reviews the significance of the multiple source model for agricultural research policy

dynamics of variety change on wheat farms in pakistan a duration analysis abstract decades after the green revolution sustaining wheat productivity remains an important policy goal for the government of pakistan understanding the speed of diffusion of new wheat varieties can contribute to this goal we apply duration analysis to identify the factors that shorten the time until a farmer replaces one modern variety by another and test hypotheses concerning two recurring themes of the green revolution farm size differences and the role of information sources in seed diffusion we find that time to adoption averages only 4 years but is shorter on larger farms factors that speed variety change also differ by farm size extension and media sources of information significantly influence adoption among larger farmers relative to information gained through social relationships but this is not the case for marginal farmers traits related to consumption quality speed adoption on smaller wheat farms where families both sell and consume their wheat higher yields drive adoption for the most subsistence oriented marginal group

the economic impacts of drought on the economy of iran an integration of linear programming and macroeconometric modelling approaches in this paper we provide economy wide estimates of the costs of drought in the cropping sector of the iranian economy using a linear programming model to estimate the direct costs on agriculture and a macroeconometric model to trace the indirect impacts on the rest of the economy the results indicate that a severe drought such as the one that occurred in the crop year 1999 2000 imposes a direct cost of 1605 million usd equivalent to 30 3 of the total value added of the cropping sector in iran this in turn leads to a 12 7 reduction in the value added of other agricultural sub sectors livestock fisheries and forestry in the rest of the economy the manufacturing and service sectors experience value added declines of 7 8 and 3 7 respectively in addition there is a substantial decrease in investment in the agricultural manufacturing and service sectors thus such a drought reduces overall gdp by about 4 4 and it would also result in decreased non oil exports increased food imports and a rise in inflation the results of some drought mitigation simulations are reported in brief such estimates strengthen the case for increased attention to drought strategies and management in agriculture in iran and elsewhere

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

a reappraisal of the extent of world hunger abstract the variation between different estimates of the magnitude of the world food problem are enormous the author questions the basis of the major surveys of fao the world bank and usda and suggests that they have grossly overestimated the extent of worid hunger by analysing the connection between population food and economic participation a more realistic view is obtained suggesting a return to targeted assistance programmes for the improvement of maternal and child health

the pricing of transport fuels abstract there is now widespread agreement on the need for correct pricing as a necessary if not sufficient condition for securing optimal efficiency in road transport energy use despite this wide measure of agreement and the fact that road transport is invariably the largest single market for liquid fuels empirical work on transport energy pricing has so far been largely confined to the industrial countries this paper is a contribution to filling the gap by examining within a comparative framework the structure of transport energy pricing in both developing and industrial countries the advantage of the comparative approach is that it throws light on characteristics of energy pricing which may be obscured if the analysis is limited to the pricing regimes of a group of broadly homogeneous countries

seeing is believing evidence from an extension network experiment extension is designed to enable lab to farm technology diffusion decentralized models assume that information flows from researchers to extension workers and from extension agents to contact farmers cfs cfs should then train other farmers in their communities such a modality may fail to address informational inefficiencies and accountability issues the authors run a field experiment to measure the impact of augmenting the cf model with a direct cf training on the diffusion of a new technology all villages have cfs and access the same extension network in treatment villages cfs additionally receive a three day central training on the new technology they track information transmission through two nodes of the extension network from extension agents to cfs and from cfs to other farmers directly training cfs leads to a large statistically significant increase in adoption among cfs however higher levels of cf adoption have limited impact on the behavior of other farmers

market imperfections access to information and technology adoption in uganda challenges of overcoming multiple constraints limited empirical evidence exists on how multiple binding constraints influence the adoption of improved technologies by smallholder farmers this article uses the case of groundnut variety adoption in uganda to investigate the role of information seed supply and credit constraints in conditioning technology uptake new data from a household survey in seven groundnut growing districts n 945 indicate that 8 of farmers lack information on new varieties while 18 and 6 of farmers respectively cannot adopt mainly due to seed supply and capital constraints a tobit type specification that considers all nonadopters as being uninterested in the technology i e corner solutions would lead to inconsistent parameter estimates and incorrect conclusions in this context we therefore estimate a modified multi hurdle specification of demand for new varieties taking into account how information seed supply and capital constraints jointly determine adoption probability and intensity the study reveals new empirical insights on why agricultural technology adoption in africa has lagged behind slow uptake is not mainly due to a lack of economic incentives but rather a reflection of information seed supply and credit constraints that prevent farmers from translating their desired demand into adoption of modern varieties policy implications are discussed

systems of innovation theory and the changing architecture of agricultural research in africa abstract this paper examines the on going evolution of the organisational architecture of agricultural research in africa once considered a rural backwater populated by agronomists extension agents and farmers agricultural research is now being explicitly placed within global debates about innovation technology institutions and development this is reflected in a growing interest in the use of systems of innovation theory to both understand and reform innovation processes within agriculture the basic argument put forward in the paper is that the conception of a global agricultural research system and associated efforts to create a coordinated multi layered supra national research infrastructure are at odds with both the realities of research at national level and the bio physical and socio economic heterogeneity that characterises rural africa it is suggested that a less directive approach to support for agricultural research is required to allow national characteristics and differences to come to the fore and to give more room for the development of the all important demand side

analysing gasoline demand elasticities a survey this paper is a survey of studies on gasoline demand although there are very many dxerent studies in this eld which sometimes appear to arrive at contradictory results we find that with proper stratification of studies by model and data type much of the contict turns to consensus in this survey we classtfy studies by data type and by ten d erent categories of model and with the exception of estimates on seasonal data which tend to be unstable and of certain inappropriate model formulations we find a fair degree of agreement concerning average short run and even long run income and price elasticities

the effect of household wealth on the adoption of improved maize varieties in zambia abstract production and price risks that could render input use unprofitable sometimes prevent rural households from benefiting from input technological change the household s ability to cope with such risks and hence benefit from input technological change is often positively related to its wealth or stock of productive assets empirical evidence however suggests a non linear relationship between wealth and adoption of new agricultural technologies so that within a rural community households on the lower wealth continuum behave differently from those on the higher level using farm level data collected from 300 randomly selected households in three districts of zambia in 2004 2005 crop season this paper first stratifies households into poorly and well endowed households based on their access to productive assets and estimates separate double hurdle models for the adoption of improved high yielding maize ihym varieties for each group the results show that factors influencing the adoption and use intensity of ihym varieties differ between the two groups this draws attention to the need for recommending wealth group specific interventions to increase the adoption and use intensity of such varieties and their subsequent impacts on food security and general livelihoods of the households the explicit testing for the possibility that differences in household wealth affect the way in which other variables influence adoption decisions is the paper s unique contribution to the adoption literature

evaluating a seasonal fuel tax in a mass tourism destination a case study for the balearic islands abstract this paper estimates the monthly aggregate demand for diesel oil and gasoline in a mass tourism region characterized for a high level of seasonality using time series models price elasticities are estimated with special emphasis in evaluating differences between seasons in order to assess the consequences of a fuel tax applied exclusively during the high season using the case study of the balearic islands spain from january 1999 to december 2010 results from a partial adjustment model show a relatively low price elasticity evidencing how the internalizing mechanism that could be argued for introducing the tax in order to reduce transport externalities does not work additionally no statistical differences have been found between seasons for both fuels invalidating the argument that tourism activity reacts differently to host activity

value chain clusters and aquaculture innovation in bangladesh abstract farmers adopting and implementing innovations such as new technologies and new products often require collaborative inter segment innovation by other actors in other segments of the value chain such as wholesalers implementing new product innovations such as supply of commercial fish feed and chemicals and buying and marketing non traditional fish species we tested whether the clustering and thus economies of agglomeration with implied lower transaction costs encourage and facilitate farmers to innovate that potential determinant of farmer choices has not been studied in agriculture or aquaculture or indeed the food sector we use a unique data set from our own primary survey of the aquaculture value chain in bangladesh including micro data for 1500 fish farm households and 20 districts 77 villages for meso level data we calculate an index to include both horizontal agglomeration and vertical interconnections among actors in the value chain we find being in an area with a high clustering index is associated with a higher probability of farmers using more modern inputs and growing non traditional commodity fish species controlling for farmers other characteristics as well as proximity to cities

poverty status and the impact of formal credit on technology use and wellbeing among ethiopian smallholders summary this paper examines the impact of formal credit largely microfinance on the use of improved technology and on consumption and asset growth across households in different degrees of asset poverty using data from rural ethiopia the analysis finds no relationship between participation in microfinance programs and the use of technologies or consumption growth among the poorest households even though the use of certain technologies like fertilizer contributes to their asset accumulation over time for other households microfinance has positive effects on both consumption and asset growth as well as on the use of improved technology the findings imply variation in constraints faced by different classes of poor households and suggest the value of asset based poverty classifications in identifying target groups for poverty interventions

estimating the demand for gasoline in developing countries senegal abstract this paper estimates the aggregate demand for gasoline in senegal from 1970 to 2008 the long term and short term elasticities of demand with respect to gasoline prices and income are of paramount interest in this study in senegal rising food prices unemployment and shortage of electric supply are always associated with the spiking cost of world oil prices to understand the external shocks of world oil price and demand for gasoline in senegal this study tested a log linear model against the linear model of the demand for oil function with lagged dependent variables as an explanatory variable here the linear specification of the demand for oil is rejected in this study in favor of the log linear the natural log transformation is typical when using high frequency data and significantly reduces skewness and kurtosis generally in this study i found that short run elasticity is smaller than long run elasticity and gasoline demand is inelastic with respect to both price and income for both the short and long runs in senegal this is why researcher like moosa posits that this assertion can be rationalised on the grounds that oil is such an important commodity that does not have close substitutes at least for its uses 1998 p 3

time to change what to sow risk preferences and technology adoption decisions of cotton farmers in china this paper examines the role of individual risk attitudes in the decision to adopt a new form of agricultural biotechnology in china i conducted a survey and a field experiment to elicit the risk preferences of chinese farmers who faced the decision of whether to adopt genetically modified bt cotton a decade ago in my analysis i expand the measurement of risk preferences beyond expected utility theory to incorporate prospect theory i find that farmers who are more risk averse or more loss averse adopt bt cotton later farmers who overweight small probabilities adopt bt cotton earlier

more oil less democracy evidence from worldwide crude oil discoveries this article exploits variations in the timing and size of oil discoveries to identify the impact of oil wealth on democracy i find that discovering 100 billion barrels of oil approximately the initial endowment of iraq pushes a country s democracy level almost 20 percentage points below trend after three decades the estimated effect is larger for oilfields with higher quality oil and lower exploration and extraction costs however the estimates become less precise when oil abundance is measured by oil discovery per capita suggesting politicians may care about the level instead of the per capita value of oil wealth

resource discoveries fdi bonanzas and local multipliers evidence from mozambique we show that giant and unpredictable oil and gas discoveries trigger fdi bonanzas across developing countries we document a 56 increase in fdi in the 2 years following a giant discovery these b

private agricultural research in asia abstract agricultural research in south and south east asia was started by a mix of private companies commodity groups and governments in the 1960s and 1970s government research increased rapidly commodity groups declined in importance and there were signs of private research growth recently the increased demand for modern inputs and changes in government policy provide greater incentives for private research but first they have to resolve a number of issues about the role private research should play in their societies

farm nonfarm linkages in rural sub saharan africa this paper is an accumulation over the past 25 years of a body of detailed work examining the structure of africa s rural nonfarm economy first it systematically reviews empirical evidence on the nature and magnitude of the african rural nonfarm economy it then explores differences across locality and size across countries and over time in an effort to assess likely patterns of growth a subsequent review of key production and consumption parameters allows an estimate of the magnitude of the agricultural growth multipliers in africa the paper concludes with a brief discussion of policies and programs that will be necessary if farm nonfarm growth linkages are to achieve their full potential

the diffusion of new agricultural technologies the case of crossbred cow technology in tanzania the recent literature on agricultural technology adoption shows that diffusion of new technologies varies significantly across space and time furthermore puzzles exist about why some seemingly profitable technologies are not adopted especially in livestock production we employ a hazard or duration function to explain diffusion of crossbred cow technology in a unique sample of tanzania farmers a farmer s adoption of crossbred technology depends positively on the proximity of his farm to other users on his schooling and on his access to credit and contact with extension agents

agricultural technology and farm nonfarm growth linkages abstract agricultural growth stimulates rural nonfarm activity by boosting demand for production inputs and consumer goods but different kinds of agricultural technology promote different patterns of nonfarm linkages to explore how key features of agricultural technology affect growth in the rural nonfarm economy this paper reviews an array of cross section and time series evidence bearing on the dynamics of the rural nonfarm economy then using consumption and production parameters associated with different agricultural technologies it introduces a simple model which isolates the effects of different technologies on nonfarm growth linkages

policy volatility institutions and economic growth abstract in this paper we present evidence that policy volatility exerts a strong and direct negative impact on growth using data for 93 countries we construct measures of policy volatility based on the standard deviation of the residuals from country specific regressions of government consumption on output undisciplined governments that implement frequent and large changes in government spending unrelated to the state of the business cycle generate lower economic growth we employ both instrumental variables and panel estimation to address concerns of omitted variables and endogeneity a 1 standard deviation increase in policy volatility reduces long term economic growth by about 0 74 in the panel regressions and by more than 1 percentage point in the cross section

why doesn t capital flow from rich to poor countries an empirical investigation we examine the empirical role of difierent explanations for the lack of ows of capital from rich to poor countries the lucas paradox the theoretical explanations include difierences in fundamentals across countries and capital market imperfections we show that during 1970i2000 low institutional quality is the leading explanation for example improving peru s institutional quality to australia s level implies a quadrupling of foreign investment recent studies emphasize the role of institutions for achieving higher levels of income but remain silent on the speciflc mechanisms our results indicate that foreign investment might be a channel through which institutions afiect long run development

community pressure and clean technology in the informal sector an econometric analysis of the adoption of propane by traditional mexican brickmakers abstract in many developing countries the informal sector comprised of low technology unlicensed micro enterprises is a major source of pollution environmental management in this sector is exceptionally challenging though clean technologies offer a means of mitigating the problem to our knowledge there has been no rigorous empirical research on why informal or even small scale firms do and do not adopt them as a first step toward filling this gap this paper presents the results of an econometric analysis of the diffusion of propane among informal traditional brickmakers in cd juarez mexico a leading source of air pollution owing to their reliance on cheap highly polluting fuels such as used tires and scrap wood the two key policy implications of our analysis are that 1 it is possible to successfully promote the adoption of a clean technology by intensely competitive informal firms even when the new technology significantly raises variable costs and 2 community pressure applied by competing firms and private sector local organizations can generate incentives for adoption

why research partnerships really matter innovation theory institutional arrangements and implications for developing new technology for the poor abstract this paper explores the conceptual basis for existing and emergent institutional patterns in the context of partnership approaches to technology development drawing examples from recent studies of private enterprise activity in india smallholder horticulture it suggests that agricultural innovation as a process involves a wider range of organizational types than the conventional policy focus on public sector research organizations would tend to suggest it uses the concept of a national innovation system to argue that a partnership approach is adopted as a core methodology for engaging science and technology development with the livelihood demands of the poor

ecological economic modeling and valuation of ecosystems abstract we are attempting to integrate ecological and economic modeling and analysis in order to improve our understanding of regional systems assess potential future impacts of various land use development and agricultural policy options and to better assess the value of ecological systems starting with an existing spatially articulated ecosystem model of the patuxent river drainage basin in maryland we are adding modules to endogenize the agricultural components of the system especially the impacts of agricultural practices and crop choice and the process of land use decision making the integrated model will allow us to evaluate the indirect effects over long time horizons of current policy options these effects are almost always ignored in partial analyses although they may be very significant and may reverse many long held assumptions and policy predictions this paper is a progress report on this modeling effort indicating our motivations ideas and plans for completion

investment and abandonment behavior of rural households an empirical investigation this article uses models of irreversible investment under uncertainty to examine the investment and abandonment behavior of poor rural households it considers the decision of ugandan coffee farming households to invest in or abandon coffee trees the observed levels of investment and abandonment are found to be consistent with models of investment that allow for irreversibility uncertainty fixed costs and liquidity constraints the findings highlight the importance of addressing volatility irreversibility fixed costs and liquidity constraints in order to increase households responsiveness to changes in the fundamentals and to enable households to recover from shocks to their capital stock

the economic aftermath of resource booms evidence from boomtowns in the american west the current us oil and gas boom is injecting labour capital and revenue into communities near reserves will these communities be cursed with lower long run incomes in the wake of the boom we study the oil boom and bust cycle of the 1970s and 1980s to gain insights using annual data on drilling to identify western boom and bust counties we find substantial positive local employment and income effects during the boom in the aftermath of the bust however we find that incomes per capita decreased and unemployment compensation payments increased relative to what they would have been if the boom had not occurred