how robust is the kearney foreign policy globalisation index we argue that the kearney foreign policy kfp index of globalisation is constructed by making some problematic assumptions about the measurement normalisation and weighting of the variables included in the index we propose alternative measurement normalisation and weighting rules and using these rules recalculate the ranking of the fifty countries using the original kfp data specifically we use in various combinations i variables adjusted for geographical characteristics of countries ii statistically optimal weights obtained by principal components analysis iii a normalisation rule that treats different years of observations separately we find that the country rankings change significantly when adjusted variables are used indicating that the original kfp index is partially measuring geographical differences between countries

agricultural productivity differences across countries abstract recent studies argue that cross country labor productivity differences are much larger in agriculture than in the aggregate we reexamine the agricultural productivity data underlying this conclusion using new evidence from disaggregate sources we find that for the world s staple grains maize rice and wheat cross country differences in the quantity of grain produced per worker are enormous according to both micro and macrosources our findings validate the idea that understanding agricultural productivity is at the heart of understanding world income inequality

the nonparametric risk adjusted efficiency measurement an application to taiwan s major rural financial intermediaries in this article a nonparametric approach is used to incorporate risk into the measurement of technical efficiencies of the major financial intermediaries in rural taiwan risk is treated as a joint but undesirable output given the fact that various regulatory actions may prevent its free disposability three risk indicators nonperforming loans allowance for loan losses and risky assets are employed alternatively in the empirical work results suggest that all three risk constraints are binding regulations on controlling risky assets and loan loss reserves are effective but more burdensome than those on controlling loan quality

agricultural productivity and structural transformation evidence from brazil we study the eects of the adoption of new agricultural technologies on structural transfor mation to guide empirical work we present a simple model where the eect of agricultural productivity on industrial development depends on the factor bias of technical change we test the predictions of the model by studying the introduction of genetically engineered soybean seeds in brazil which had heterogeneous eects on agricultural productivity across areas with dierent soil and weather characteristics we nd that technical change in soy production was strongly labor saving and lead to industrial growth as predicted by the model

large scale agricultural investments and smallholder welfare a comparison of wage labor and outgrower channels in tanzania summary this article evaluates household welfare effects of large scale agricultural investments in tanzania one of the main recipients of such investments in africa specifically the article compares households participating in sugar and rice investments through outgrower schemes or as agro industry workers with non participants in terms of household income and income poverty building on primary household data it is one of the first studies to empirically analyze ex post impacts of large scale agricultural investments in africa the analysis draws on cross section survey data of 516 households collected in kilombero district a priority cluster for the southern agricultural growth corridor of tanzania sagcot the results show overall positive household welfare differences between participants of the investments and the respective counterfactual however there are large differences between arrangements and subsectors estimated effects for outgrowers are largest yet for land rich outgrowers more so than for land poor effects for agro industry workers in the sugar investment are significantly larger than for those in the rice investment though in both investments land poor workers seem to benefit hence the study results suggest potential benefits of outgrower schemes and potentials of agro industry wage employment for the land poor to escape extreme poverty yet it also stresses particularly the need to address the constraints of land poor outgrowers qualitative interviews for example pointed to growing risks for land poor outgrowers in the context of rising elite capture by larger outgrowers

efficiency and risk in taiwan banking sbm super dea estimation in this study we adopt the two data envelopment analysis dea methods including banker charnes cooper bcc and slacks based measure sbm super efficiency to investigate whether a bank s technical efficiency index s results incorporating account risk and not incorporating account risk differ significantly the information is obtained from 43 taiwanese banks for the period 1998 to 2002 we also employ the nonradial and slacks based malmquist total factor productivity tfp index to measure the impact of productivity change on the panel data our empirical results from the dea approach are summarized as follows 1 loan quality factors have an impact on a bank s efficiency in general the bank with a higher degree of problem loans drops down its efficiency by incorporating account risk however the bank with a lower degree of problem loans increases its efficiency by incorporating account risk 2 super efficiency provides a good framework for ranking efficient units 3 based on the nonradial an

diversification strategies and scope economies evidence from a sample of italian regional bus transport providers a growing number of local public transport lpt companies diversify their production lines by providing a large set of services we investigate the cost structure of a sample of lpt companies operating in italy and assess the presence and the magnitude of scope economies we split the whole sample of firms according to their diversification strategy private firms mainly diversifying in competitive transport related services and public firms providing nontransport services in regulated markets scope economies appear sizeable for both groups but higher for firms pursuing a transport related strategy suggesting caution in the multiutility development pursued by public lpt firms in italy

using national statistics to increase transparency of large land acquisition evidence from ethiopia the 2007 08 commodity price boom triggered a rush for land in developing countries yet many affected countries lacked the regulatory infrastructure to cope with such demand and reliable data on investors performance this study uses the example of ethiopia to show how simple improvements in administrative data collection can help to address this by i allowing assessment of the productivity of land use and taking measures to increase it ii comparing productivity between large and small farms to identify spillovers and ways to improve these and iii setting in motion a process of continuing improvement implications for global investment in this area are drawn out

the dominance of inefficiencies over scale and product mix economies in banking abstract this study measures and analyzes inefficiencies for all u s banks in 1984 inefficiencies are measured relative to a thick frontier cost function and are found to dominate measured scale and product mix economies most inefficiencies are operational in nature involving the overuse of physical inputs rather than financial involving overpayment of interest also technical inefficiencies proportionate overuse of all inputs dominate allocative inefficiencies improper mix of inputs these results suggest that competitive pressures in banking from deregulation will be focused primarily on banks that do not control costs rather than on those of a particular size or product mix

comparing malmquist and hicks moorsteen productivity indices exploring the impact of unbalanced vs balanced panel data abstract we explore the effect of balancing unbalanced panel data when estimating primal productivity indices using non parametric frontier estimators first we list a series of pseudo solutions aimed at making an unbalanced panel balanced then we discuss some intermediate solutions e g balancing 2 years by 2 years furthermore we link this problem with a variety of literatures on infeasibilities statistical inference of non parametric frontier estimators and the index theory literature focusing on the dynamics of entry and exit in industries we then empirically illustrate these issues comparing both malmquist and hicks moorsteen productivity indices on two data sets in particular we test for the differences in distribution when comparing balanced and unbalanced results for a given index and when comparing malmquist and hicks moorsteen productivity indices for a given type of data set the latter tests are crucial in answering the question to which extent the malmquist index can approximate the hicks moorsteen index that has a total factor productivity tfp interpretation finally we draw up a list of remaining issues that could benefit from further exploration

how significant is the alleged unfair advantage enjoyed by state owned banks in germany the european commission argues that the state owned banks in germany enjoy an unfair advantage over the private sector banks in the cost of borrowing funds in the financial markets because of state guarantees that public sector banks are perceived to enjoy this note demonstrates that the blame for the comparatively poor profitability of private sector banks in germany cannot be laid at the door of the relatively cheaper funds that the public sector banks can raise in the wholesale markets copyright 2006 oxford university press

does globalization affect growth evidence from a new index of globalization the study develops an index of globalization covering its three main dimensions economic integration social integration and political integration using panel data for 123 countries in 1970 2000 it is analysed empirically whether the overall index of globalization as well as sub indexes constructed to measure the single dimensions affect economic growth as the results show globalization indeed promotes growth the dimensions most robustly related with growth refer to actual economic flows and restrictions in developed countries although less robustly information flows also promote growth whereas political integration has no effect

a study of bank efficiency taking into account risk preferences abstract i use the stochastic cost frontier approach to investigate efficiency of banks operating in the third federal reserve district accounting for the quality and riskiness of bank output in addition to the mean and mode of the conditional distribution of the one sided error term i calculate confidence intervals for the inefficiency measures based on the conditional distribution the results indicate that third district banks are operating at cost efficient output levels and product mixes but are not efficiently using their inputs the second part of the article relates the inefficiency measures to several correlates

traditional and nontraditional banking an information theoretic approach abstract this paper uses a multiproduct approach to analyze the costs of a sample of large banks where bank outputs are measured to account for the different types of information produced by banks diseconomies of scope are found between traditional banking activities of originating and monitoring loans and nontraditional activities of loan selling and buying this suggests maintaining fire walls between commercial bank functions and investment bank functions after the glass steagall act is repealed will not sacrifice joint production economies it also suggests that arguments for repeal of the act based on the existence of such economies are ill founded

inefficiency and heterogeneity in turkish banking 1990 2000 recent studies have stressed the importance of privatization and openness to foreign competition for bank efficiency and economic growth we study bank efficiency in turkey an emerging economy with great heterogeneity in bank types and ownership structures earlier studies of turkish banking had three limitations i excessive reliance on cost function frontier analyses wherein volume of loans is a measure of banking output ii pooling all banks or imposing ad hoc heterogeneity assumptions and iii lack of a comprehensive panel data set for proper analysis of productivity and heterogeneity we use an estimation classification procedure to find likelihood driven classification of bank technologies in an 11 year panel in addition we augment traditional cost frontier analysis with a labour efficiency analysis we conclude that state banks are not particularly inefficient overall but that they do utilize labour inefficiently this partially supports recent calls for privatization we also conclude that special finance houses or islamic banks utilize the same technology as conventional domestic banks and do so relatively efficiently this suggests that they do not cause harm to the financial system finally we conclude that foreign banks utilize a different technology from domestic ones this suggests that one should not overstate their value to the financial sector copyright 2005 john wiley sons ltd

productivity and efficiency change and shareholder value evidence from the spanish banking sector productivity change and shareholder value have been analysed in the banking sector in the last few years although it should be noted that these two important aspects have been studied separately in this regard the main contribution of our study is to link these two lines of research by verifying whether those banks characterized by higher levels of efficiency and productivity change have a higher shareholder value to measure changes in efficiency and productivity we use the malmquist nonparametric technique which is calculated from data envelopment analysis dea linear programming approach the malmquist total factor productivity index enables separation of the catching up effect i e changes over time in technical efficiency from technological change i e the shift of best practice frontier over time due to technological progress our results for a sample of listed spanish banks in the period 2000 to 2004 confirm that those banks with higher efficiency and productivity changes have a higher

global land investments in the bio economy evidence and policy implications for countries dependent on agriculture the recent wave of investor interest in farmland could in principle help set in motion a virtuous cycle of economic growth and poverty reduction a large literature documenting failure of such investments documents the risks involved to appreciate associated opportunities and challenges we review past experience quantify country level potential for area expansion versus intensification and identify determinants of countries attractiveness for investors in the initial stages of the land rush the fact that weak land governance seems to increase rather than reduce land demand justifies an emphasis on improving institutions transparency and accountability while at the same time providing concrete suggestions for policy and research

the rural non farm economy prospects for growth and poverty reduction summary policy makers have high expectations for the rural non farm economy rnfe given high income shares growing employment and frequently low capital requirements they see the rnfe as a potential pathway out of poverty for their rural poor yet available evidence suggests that pro poor rural non farm growth does not occur automatically for the poor to benefit from rural non farm growth policy makers must stimulate buoyant rural economies with robust non farm income growth not simply low productivity employment moreover the poor must gain access to growing market niches fluid labor markets provide one important bridge linking the rural poor to growing non farm opportunities

are scale economies in banking elusive or illusive evidence obtained by incorporating capital structure and risk taking into models of bank production abstract this paper explores how to incorporate banks capital structure and risk taking into models of production in doing so the paper bridges the gulf between 1 the banking literature that studies moral hazard effects of bank regulation without considering the underlying microeconomics of production and 2 the literature that uses dual profit and cost functions to study the microeconomics of bank production without explicitly considering how banks production decisions influence their riskiness various production models that differ in how they account for capital structure and in the objectives they impute to bank managers cost minimization versus value maximization are estimated using u s data on highest level bank holding companies modeling the bank s objective as value maximization conveniently incorporates both market priced risk and expected cash flow into managers ranking and choice of production plans estimated scale economies are found to depend critically on how banks capital structure and risk taking are modeled in particular when equity capital in addition to debt is included in the production model and cost is computed from the value maximizing expansion path rather than the cost minimizing path banks are found to have large scale economies that increase with size moreover better diversification is associated with larger scale economies while increased risk taking and inefficient risk taking are associated with smaller scale economies

a study on long run inefficiency levels of a panel dynamic cost frontier under the framework of forward looking rational expectations abstract this paper aims to provide a theoretical underpinning of the dynamic efficiency model pioneered by ahn s c good d h sickles r c 2000 estimation of long run inefficiency levels a dynamic frontier approach econometric reviews 19 461 492 in the context of a quadratic loss function this paper formulates a multi period forward looking rational expectations model on the evolution of the technical inefficiency level which correctly produces a dynamic panel data model the model is illustrated using panel data of 112 french banks encouraging evidence of superiority in favor of the model is reached substantial cost inefficiency prevails in this industry where the constituent banks are characterized as having volatile adjustment speeds toward their long run steady states the sample banks exhibit increasing returns to scale and product mix economies

threshold effects of financial status on the cost frontiers of financial institutions in nondynamic panels this article applies hansen s 1999 2000 threshold regression model to estimate translog cost frontiers in the hope of shedding light on the banking industry s production processes and the extent of its technical efficiency te the threshold technique allows for the existence of multiple technologies of production distinguished by an exogenous threshold variable strong evidence of multiple technologies is found in the industry irrespective of which financial indicator as constructed by factor analysis defines the threshold variable cost savings and scale economies among the various underlying technologies are compared herein we also highlight the differences between the threshold results and the conventional cost frontier

the rise of large farms in land abundant countries do they have a future increased levels and volatility of food prices has led to a surge of interest in large scale agriculture and land acquisition this creates challenges for policy makers aiming to establish a policy environment conducive to an agrarian structure to contribute to broad based development in the long term based on a historical review of episodes of growth of large farms and their impact this paper identifies factors underlying the dominance of owner operated farm structures and ways in which these may change with development the amount of land that could potentially be available for expansion and the level of productivity in exploiting available land resources are used to establish a country level typology the authors highlight that an assessment of the advantages of large operations together with information on endowments can provide input into strategy formulation at the country level a review of recent cases of land acquisition reinforces the importance of the policy framework in determining outcomes it suggests that transparency and contract enforcement recognition of local land rights and ways in which they can be exercised attention to employment effects and technical viability and mechanisms to re allocate land from unsuccessful ventures to more productive entrepreneurs are key areas warranting the attention of policy makers

globalization party positions and the median voter the authors argue that the effects of economic globalization on social democratic parties in western europe are conditional on the position of the median voter if the median is far enough to the right such parties will adopt business friendly policies because they are required to win office only when the median is relatively far to the left will globalization constrain social democratic parties forcing them to adopt policies further to the right in order to retain credibility it is on this basis the authors argue that empirical studies are misspecified unless they include an interaction between measures of globalization and the position of the median in addition to presenting formal theoretical arguments the article reports empirical findings from fifteen countries in the period from 1973 to 2002 that support the conclusion that the effects of globalization are indeed contingent on the median the authors find that the effects of globalization are significant for social democratic parties only in circumstances in which the median is relatively far to the left

measuring efficiency at u s banks accounting for heterogeneity is important abstract estimates of bank cost efficiency can be biased if bank heterogeneity is ignored i compare x inefficiency derived from a model constraining the cost frontier to be the same for all banks in the u s and a model allowing for different frontiers and error terms across federal reserve districts i find that the data reject the single cost function model x inefficiency measures based on the single cost function model are on average higher than those based on the separate cost functions model the distributions of the one sided error terms are wider for the single cost function model than for the separate cost functions model and the ranking of districts by the level of x inefficiency differs in the two models the results suggest it is important when studying x inefficiency to account for differences across the markets in which banks are operating and that since x inefficiency is by construction a residual it will be particulary sensitive to omissions in the basic model

agricultural labour productivity food prices and sustainable development impacts and indicators in the last few years high and unstable food and agricultural commodity prices and concerns about population growth increasing per capita food demands and environmental constraints have pushed agriculture and food production up national and international political policy and research agendas drawing on both theory and empirical evidence this paper argues that fundamental impacts of links between agricultural productivity sustainability and real food price changes are often overlooked in current policy analysis this is exacerbated by a lack of relevant and accessible indicators for monitoring agricultural productivity sustainability and real food prices two relatively simple and widely applicable sets of indicators are proposed for use in policy development and monitoring historical series of these indices are estimated for selected countries regions and the world their strengths weaknesses and potential value are then discussed in the context of the need for better sustainable agricultural development and food security indicators in any post 2015 successors to the current mdgs

comparing fourier and translog specifications of multiproduct technology evidence from an incomplete panel of french farmers selecting a functional form for a cost or profit function in applied production analysis is a crucial step in assessing the characteristics of a technology the present study highlights differences in the description of a technology which are induced by fitting a fourier or a translog cost functions on average both forms provide similar information on the technology however estimation results and statistical tests tend to favour the fourier specification this is mainly because many trigonometric terms appear to be significant in our application accordingly our results show that the fourier cost function is able to represent a broader range of technological structures than the translog the paper presents an application to the case of an incomplete panel of french farmers in the process three technical issues are addressed the missing data problem the choice of the order of approximation and the conditions ensuring asymptotic normality of fourier parameters estimates

an examination of cost subadditivity and multiproduct production in large u s banks this paper examines the subadditivity of costs for a sample of the largest commercial banks in the u s we introduce into the bank production literature the grid approach developed by evans and heckman 1984 we estimate two models of the bank cost function one where deposits are treated as outputs while in the other deposits are treated as inputs the models are estimated using the commonly used translog and the more flexible miniflex laurent viewed narrowly the findings imply that cost complementarities are not the raison d etre for multiproduct production in the largest commercial banks subadditive costs however are sufficient but not necessary for multiproduct production it is quite possible for multiproduct production to be optimal when output are produced independently levy and haber 1986 and teece 1980 1982 it is only required that inputs be shareable as opposed to joint copyright 1990 by ohio state university press

trade standards and poverty evidence from senegal summary in the debate on trade and poverty it is argued that standards act as trade barriers and cause marginalization of the poor this paper quantifies income and poverty effects of high standards trade and integrates labor market effects by using company and household survey data from the vegetable export chain in senegal we find that exports grew sharply despite increasing standards contributing importantly to rural incomes and poverty reduction tightening standards induced a shift from smallholder contract farming to integrated estate production altering the mechanism through which poor households benefit through labor markets instead of product markets

impact of global cotton markets on rural poverty in benin world cotton prices fell by about 40 over 2001 2002 focusing attention on the effect of subsidies for cotton growers in depressing world prices this paper combines farm survey data from benin with assumptions about the decline in farm level prices to estimate the direct and indirect effects of cotton price reductions on rural income and poverty in benin the results indicate that there is a strong link between cotton prices and rural welfare in benin a 40 reduction in farm level prices of cotton results in an increase in rural poverty of 8 points in the short run and 6 7 points in the long run under the assumptions of the partial input output model we estimate the multiplier to be in the range of 2 96 meaning that 1 us of reduced income by cotton growers results in a contraction of 2 96 us in overall income finally econometric analysis of the determinants of the demand for hired agricultural labor suggests that falling cotton prices will not greatly reduce labor demand since the labor intensity of cotton is similar to that of competing crops in benin overall the study demonstrates the impact of changes in world cotton prices on rural poverty in benin thus highlighting the likely negative effects of cotton subsidies in the united states and elsewhere on benin farmers

global value chains large scale farming and poverty long term effects in senegal this paper presents panel data evidence on the impact of expansion of global value chains and large scale export oriented farms in developing countries over almost a decade we estimate the income effects of wage employment on large scale farms in the horticultural export sector in senegal using data from two survey rounds covering a seven years period of rapid expansion of the sector we estimate average income effects as well as heterogeneous income effects using fixed effects and quantile fixed effects regressions we find that poverty and inequality reduced much faster in the research area than elsewhere in senegal employment in the horticultural export sector is associated with higher household income and the income effect is strongest for the poorest households expansion of the horticultural export sector in senegal has been particularly pro poor through creating employment that is accessible and creates substantial income gains for the poorest half of the rural population these pro poor employment effects contrast with insights in the literature on increased inequality from rural wage employment

efficiency in the savings and loan industry abstract the stochastic econometric cost frontier approach is modified to investigate efficiency in mutual and stock s ls using 1991 data on u s s ls this methodology allows both the cost frontier and error structures to differ between s ls of these two ownership forms a likelihood ratio test indicates that the data support this unrestricted model which implies efficient mutual and stock s ls use different production technologies various measures of inefficiency show that on average stock s ls are less efficient than mutual s ls the second part of the article relates the inefficiency measures to several correlates

mergers and technical efficiency in spanish savings banks a stochastic distance function approach abstract the aim of this paper is to test the temporal variation of technical efficiency of spanish savings banks during the period 1985 1998 furthermore we test whether merged and non merged firms have different levels and temporal patterns of technical efficiency a stochastic output distance function r w shephard theory of cost and production functions princeton university press princeton nj is employed to accommodate multiple output technology the distance function provides the advantage that it does not need information about prices so it can accommodate the multi product nature of the financial sector only using the quantities as data an important point when the assumptions about perfectly competitive markets are unlikely to be met the temporal variation of efficiency is modeled extending the battese and coelli journal of productivity analysis 3 1992 153 169 approach in two ways relaxing the monotonicity of the temporal variation pattern of the efficiency term and allowing for different patterns of efficiency change between merged and non merged firms

cross country comparisons of efficiency evidence from the uk and italian investment firms abstract this paper compares and reconciles two new methods for cross country comparisons of the cost efficiency of uk and italian investment firms over the period 1995 1998 it employs four different specifications of the stochastic frontier methodology using a translog cost function in order to measure x efficiency the traditional common frontier reveals that italian investment firms are nearly as efficient as uk firms to overcome traditional limitations two methods are used in this paper they provide consistent results the first method shows differences between the efficiency of the two countries by incorporating environmental variables into the cross country common frontier the second method shows differences in the efficiency of the domestic versus foreign investment firms in the two countries by testing the ability to monitor and control on a cross border basis finally to identify investment firms that are both cost and profit efficient we undertake a profitability test

constructing confidence intervals using the bootstrap an application to a multi product cost function a multi product cost function system is estimated for 387 banks in states that allow branch banking the bootstrap resampling method is used to construct confidence intervals for marginal costs output cost elasticities economies of scale and scope and allen elasticities of substitution confidence intervals for these measures are usually constructed using a first order variance approximation under a normality assumption but such confidence intervals are inexact if the measures are not normally distributed or the variance approximations are imprecise we find that the bootstrap standard error estimates can differ significantly from the usual estimates furthermore we use the bootstrap to expand the analysis of cost function regularity properties copyright 1990 by mit press

is there a single frontier in a single european banking market abstract this paper attempts to estimate comparable efficiency scores for european banks operating in the single market in the eu using a data set of more than 5000 large commercial banks from all major european banking markets over the period 1993 2004 the application of meta frontiers enables us to assess the existence of a single and integrated european banking market we find evidence in favor of a single european banking market characterized by cost and profit meta frontiers however compared to the meta frontier estimations pooled frontier estimations tend to underestimate efficiency levels and correlate poorly with country specific frontier efficiency ranks

labour market effects of large scale agricultural investment conceptual considerations and estimated employment effects summary large scale agricultural investments lsais in general and their socio economic implications in particular have been heavily debated in recent years while some claim that lsais are an important catalyst for development in neglected rural areas others caution that they pose a risk to rural communities livelihoods the extent to which lsais provide benefits for local communities is hence still contested this paper sets out to conceptually understand what effects the establishment of a large scale farm has on the rural labor market in low and middle income countries in addition we empirically address the question of whether large scale farming as recorded in the land matrix creates or destroys employment we develop a transition matrix to identify several scenarios based on key determinants of the direct employment creation potential of lsais namely the former land use the crop type and the production model we empirically assess the actual importance of these scenarios and the employment creation to be expected from this sample of lsais based on labor intensities we further look into the net employment effects for land formerly used by smallholder farmers our analysis shows that lsais massively crowd out smallholder farmers which is only partially mitigated through the cultivation of labor intensive crops and the application of contract farming schemes this holds true for all regions targeted by lsais although regional differences are found in terms of magnitude the paper concludes that these effects tend to be large on the local scale i e in the immediate surroundings of the investment site but small in relation to total national employment in agriculture however indirect employment creation related to lsais which is discussed but not empirically addressed in this paper needs to be taken into account to have the full picture

shadow wages allocative inefficiency and labor supply in smallholder agriculture this article introduces a method for estimating structural labor supply models in the presence of unobservable wages and deviations of households marginal revenue product of self employed labor from their shadow wage this method is therefore robust to a wide range of assumptions about labor allocation decisions in the presence of uncertainty market frictions locational preferences etc we illustrate the method using data from rice producers in cote d ivoire these data like previous studies reveal significant systematic differences between shadow wages and the marginal revenue product of family farm labor we demonstrate how one can exploit systematic deviations in the present case related to household characteristics such as the land labor endowment ratio to control for both unobservable wages and prospective allocative inefficiency in labor allocation in structural household labor supply estimation

1992 and its impact on local and regional banking markets molyneux p 1989 1992 and its impact on local and regional banking markets reg studies 23 523 533 the aim of this paper is to examine how the structure performance and ownership characteristics of ec banking markets will influence the expansion strategies of large ec banks up to 1992 we will also examine the implied effect this will have on local and regional banking markets within the ec the emphasis focuses on large bank acquisition opportunities available up to 1992 we find that the majority of potential big banks acquisition targets are based in the uk germany france spain italy and luxembourg the limited big bank takeover opportunities available to banks will probably encourage them to establish niche business branch networks overseas it will also accelerate the current move of large banks to acquire small and medium sized regional banks across borders as well as to form joint ventures with institutions in other ec countries molyneux p 1989 1992 et son impact sur les marches banc

contemporary processes of large scale land acquisition in sub saharan africa legal deficiency or elite capture of the rule of law summary growth of emerging economies policy commitments to biofuels and volatility in commodity prices have contributed to a marked increase in the pace and scale of foreign direct investment in land based enterprises in the global south this paper explores the relationship between policy and practice associated with customary rights protections in the context of large scale land acquisitions through a document review and case study analyses from ghana mozambique tanzania and zambia findings point to the difficulty of safeguarding customary rights even in countries providing best practice legal protections and point to the fundamental role of human agency in shaping outcomes

de agriculturalization as a result of productivity growth in agriculture abstract this paper explores the secular decline in the employment share in agriculture as a result of productivity growth in the agricultural sector i study an equation that states that employment share in agriculture is determined by the subsistence constraint and productivity in agriculture given the calibrated value for subsistence level of consumption in agriculture labor productivity in this sector implies a share of employment in agriculture in the model that turns out to be very close to the data for a variety of countries between 1963 and 2005

self employment in the developing world summary this paper analyzes heterogeneity among the self employed in 74 developing countries representing two thirds of the population of the developing world after profiling how worker characteristics vary by employment status it classifies self employed workers outside agriculture as successful or unsuccessful entrepreneurs based on two measures of success whether the worker is an employer and whether the worker resides in a non poor household four main findings emerge first jobs exhibit a clear pecking order with household income and worker education highest for employers followed by wage and salaried employees non agricultural own account workers non agricultural unpaid family workers and finally agricultural workers second a substantial minority of own account workers reside in non poor households suggesting that their profits are often a secondary source of household income third as per capita income increases across countries the structure of employment shifts rapidly first out of agriculture into unsuccessful non agricultural self employment and then mainly into non agricultural wage employment finally roughly one third of the unsuccessful entrepreneurs share similar characteristics with their successful counterparts suggesting they have the potential to be successful but face constraints to growth the authors conclude that although interventions such as access to credit can benefit a substantial portion of the self employed effectively targeting the minority of self employed with higher growth potential is important particularly in low income contexts the results also highlight the potential benefits of policies that facilitate shifts in the nature of work first from agricultural labor into non agricultural self employment and then into wage and salaried jobs

quantifying spillover effects from large land based investment the case of mozambique summary almost a decade after a spike in land demand following the 2007 08 commodity boom evidence on impacts of this phenomenon remains limited and mostly case study based we show that information on location and start data of large farms combined with existing smallholder farm surveys allows to complement this with a difference in difference approach to systematically assess spillovers from large farm establishment illustrative application to mozambique suggests positive short term effects from newly established large farms on adoption of agricultural practices and input use by small farms less than 50 km from newly established large operations robustness checks for crop farms only also suggest job creation in the proximity of newly established crop but not livestock farms yet large farm establishment decreased perceived well being within a 25 km band and in the time horizon considered here did not lead to better access to output markets cultivation of larger areas or once other factors are controlled for higher yields this allows us to reject the notion of negative spillovers from large farm establishment but casts doubt on the wisdom of large unconditional subsidies to attract investors in addition to drawing policy conclusions for mozambique we highlight the methodology s wider applicability and scope for expansion