a test for moral hazard in the labor market contractual arrangements effort and health moral hazard plays a central role in many models depicting contractual relationships involving worker effort the authors show how time series information on worker health consumption and work time can be used to measure the effort effects of payment schemes estimates from longitudinal data describing farming rural households indicate that time wage payment schemes and share tenancy contracts reduce effort compared to piece rate payment schemes and on farm employment the evidence also indicates consistent with moral hazard that the same workers consume more calories under a piece rate payment scheme or in on farm employment than when employed for time wages copyright 1994 by mit press

agricultural household models extensions applications and policy this book presents the basic model of an agricultural household that underlies most of the case studies undertaken so far the model assumes that households are price takers and is therefore recursive the decisions modeled include those affecting production and the demand for inputs and those affecting consumption and the supply of labor comparative results on selected elasticities are presented for a number of economies the empirical significance of the approach is demonstrated in a comparison of models that treat production and consumption decisions separately and those in which the decisionmaking process is recursive the book summarizes the implications of agricultural pricing policy for the welfare of farm households marketed surplus the demand for nonagricultural goods and services the rural labor market budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings in addition it is shown that the basic model can be extended in order to explore the effects of government policy on crop composition nutritional status health saving and investment and to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the effects on budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings methodological topics primarily the data requirements of the basic model and its extensions along with aggregation market interaction uncertainty and market imperfections are discussed the most important methodological issues the question of the recursive property of these models is also discussed

nutrition and labor producvivity in agriculture estimates for rural south india using panel data for rural south india a fixed effects individual wage equation and farm production function are estimated that have calorie intake and nutritional status weight for height of workers as their arguments neither market wages nor farm output are observed to be responsive to changes in the daily energy intake of workers however both are highly elastic with respect to weight for height these results suggest that while the human body can adapt to inadequate nutrition in the short run it cannot adapt as readily to chronic malnutrition that eventually results in loss of weight for height copyright 1988 by mit press

health and schooling investments in africa this paper first outlines an organizing framework for considering how health and schooling affect labor productivity and growth and how household and community factors can in turn affect the demand for these human capital investments both cross country growth models and various aspects of microeconomic studies of individual productivity as related to education and health are discussed the conclusion offers some tentative leads for policy in this area based on existing research and an agenda for future research

the economic consequences of health shocks evidence from vietnam this paper finds that the incomes of urban households are more vulnerable to health shocks than rural households that health shocks may precipitate increases in unearned income that partially offset reductions in earned income and large increases in medical spending even among insured households it also finds that households spend less on food following a health shock but more on budget items such as housing and electricity measures of household health shocks used include a recent death of a working age household member a long inpatient spell and a recent sizeable drop in the body mass index of the household head

multinational corporations vs domestic corporations international environmental factors and determinants of capital structure this paper examines whether or not u s based multinational corporations mncs have different capital structures than u s domestic corporations dcs and if so what causes the differences in explaining the difference between the capital structures of mncs and dcs previous studies tended to directly discuss the relationships between international environmental factors e g political risk foreign exchange risk and the capital structure a framework of analysis is proposed in this paper that examines the influence of environmental factors on the firm related capital structure determinants e g agency costs bankruptcy costs that in turn affect the capital structure of the mnc among the determinants that are examined more emphasis is placed on the discussion of agency costs since no previous studies have applied this concept in the international arena empirical tests were conducted to investigate whether mncs are significantly different from dcs regarding agency costs of debt bankruptcy costs and capital structure contrary to conventional wisdom the empirical findings show that mncs do not have lower bankruptcy costs and that they tend to have lower debt ratios than dcs

barriers to participation of the poor in south africa s land redistribution abstract land redistribution is being characterized as poverty alleviation for rural south africa this paper argues that the poor have less inclination to move the distances demanded by the redistribution have less labor available for farming are less able to afford the program s up front costs have fewer farming specific skills and have less capacity to cope with agricultural risk therefore the poor are likely to be rationed out of participation in the program and the land redistribution will have little effect on rural poverty unless demand led targeting is dropped and ancillary programs are employed to make land redistribution attractive for the poor

foreign direct investment theories entry barriers and reverse investments in u s manufacturing industries this paper investigates empirically whether industrial organization oriented fdi theories explain the recent phenomenon of reverse foreign direct investment in the u s based on the distribution of fdi in two digit sic manufacturing industries we find that capital and advertising intensities act as entry barriers to foreign investments in the u s we also observe that foreign multinationals are attracted by the u s market size and that they invest heavily in industries with intensive r d combined with marketing efforts

public health spending tax reform and long run growth abstract public health spending is introduced into an endogenous growth model to examine the effect of a tax reform on the growth and learning time unlike previous studies the calibrated model produces an increase in the learning time consistent with the us data

health enterprise and labor complementarity in the household we study the role of household enterprise as a coping mechanism after health shocks using variation in the cost of traveling to formal sector health facilities to predict recovery from acute illness in tanzania we show that individuals with prolonged illness switch from farm labor to enterprise activity this response occurs along both the extensive entry and intensive capital stock and labor supply margins family members who are not ill exhibit exactly the same pattern of responses deriving a simple extension to the canonical agricultural household model we show that our results suggest complementarities in household labor

valuation of the operating flexibility of multinational corporations the returns to multinationality are estimated as the value of operating flexibility empirical measures of the return of multinationality require a precise specification of the extensiveness of the mnc s transnational network to measure the degree of multinationality this precise empirically grounded definition of multinationality has been absent from the academic literature to date we address this omission and we find that two characteristics of the transnational network its breadth number of foreign countries in which the mnc has operations and depth the concentration of foreign subsidiaries in a few countries are significant in explaining the value of operating flexibility in particular we find that the returns to multinationality are maximized for firms with networks that have breadth but not depth the role of market intangibles such as r d and advertising on mnc market valuation is shown to depend on the flexibility regime

productivity health and inequality in the intrahousehold distribution of food in low income countries a model is formulated incorporating linkages among nutrition labor market productivity health heterogeneity and the intrahousehold distribution of food and work activities in a subsistence economy empirical results based on a sample of households from bangladesh indicate that despite considerable intrahousehold disparities in calorie consumption households are averse to inequality furthermore consistent with the model the results also indicate that both the higher level and greater variance in the calories consumed by men relative to women reflect in part the greater participation by men in activities in which productivity is sensitive to health status copyright 1990 by american economic association

decomposing world health inequality this study explores global inequality in health status and decomposes it into within and between country inequality we rely on standardized height as our health indicator since it avoids the measurement pitfalls of more traditional measures of health such as morbidity mortality and life expectancy it also avoids measurement problems associated with using monetary variables such as income or expenditure across time or place to compare welfare our calculation of world height inequality indicates that in contrast with similar research on income inequality within country variation is the source of most inequality rather than the differences between countries

the granger causality between health care expenditure and output a panel data approach this study investigates the granger causality relationship between real per capita gdp and real per capita health care expenditure by employing a large macro panel data set with a var representatio

disease and development the effect of life expectancy on economic growth we exploit the major international health improvements from the 1940s to estimate the effect of life expectancy on economic performance we construct predicted mortality using preintervention mortality rates from various diseases and dates of global interventions predicted mortality has a large impact on changes in life expectancy starting in 1940 but no effect before 1940 using predicted mortality as an instrument we find that a 1 percent increase in life expectancy leads to a 1 7 2 percent increase in population life expectancy has a much smaller effect on total gdp however consequently there is no evidence that the large increase in life expectancy raised income per capita

wage and labor supply effects of illness in cote d ivoire and ghana instrumental variable estimates for days disabled abstract sickness should make individuals less productive but there are problems in measuring this effect first how is adult morbidity measured in a household survey second how is the impact or morbidity on productivity inferred if earning is partly used to improve health self reported functional activity limitation due to illness is considered an indicator of morbidity for wage earners and self employed people to deal with both the measurement and joint determination problems an instrumental variable estimation approach is used where local food prices and health services instrument for disability days that reduce wages by at least 10 and hours by 3 or more

the measurement of the degree of foreign involvement this paper extends errunza and senber 1984 in assessing the relationship between alternative measures of the degree of foreign involvement dfi and the conditions under which the use of a specific measure will not affect the outcome of empirical studies on corporate international diversification the results suggest that among 21 pairs of seven most widely used series of dfi only three series foreign assets foreign earnings and foreign tax ratios in two pairs are equivalent evidence of constant returns to scale between the ratio of foreign to total assets and the ratio of foreign to total earnings is also discussed

multiple criteria decision making combined with finance a categorized bibliographic study abstract this paper provides a categorized bibliography on the application of the techniques of multiple criteria decision making mcdm to problems and issues in finance a total of 265 references have been compiled and classified according to the methodological approaches of goal programming multiple objective programming the analytic hierarchy process etc and to the application areas of capital budgeting working capital management portfolio analysis etc the bibliography provides an overview of the literature on mcdm combined with finance shows how contributions to the area have come from all over the world facilitates access to the entirety of this heretofore fragmented literature and underscores the often multiple criterion nature of many problems in finance

international corporate diversification market valuation and size adjusted evidence errunza and senbet es 7 analyze the effects of international operations on the market value of the firm both at theoretical and empirical levels the theoretical model which is largely heuristic exploits the costly supply adjustment of multinational firms mncs in providing international portfolio diversification services to investors who face differential cost barriers to direct holdings of assets across national boundaries mncs compete as financial intermediaries to undo the barriers so that in equilibrium profits are driven out mncs and pure domestic firms sell at an equivalent risk adjusted return however costly financial intermediation and the associated relative efficiency leads to a positive valuation effect for mncs relative to purely domestic firms further the equilibrium analysis implies that demand side investor barriers to international capital flows alone are inconsequential to the valuation of mncs in their pure financial role but that the interaction with the supply side costs are necessary to produce a valuation effect at the corporate level es subject the theory to an empirical analysis in a value based approach by employing a variant of tobin s 17 qratio the analysis controlling for industrial market power suggests that the relationship between the excess valuation and the degree of international involvement doi has magnified over periods characterized by severe u s government controls vis a vis the more recent periods in this paper we formalize the theoretical argument by viewing indirect portfolio diversification by mncs as a means of completing the international capital market we employ a paradigm in the unanimity literature and formally characterize the equilibrium in which there is a rationale for mnc financial intermediation we then perform an expanded empirical study by employing generalized least squares and maximum likelihood procedures since the positive relationship between excess valuation and doi as suggested in es 7 might be attributed to the so called small firm or size and the p e effects the test methodology controls for such effects also the traditional literature has relied upon foreign sales percentage as a proxy for doi in view of the well recognized limitations of this proxy we employ four different measures of international

estimates of the economic returns to schooling from a new sample of twins this paper uses a new survey to contrast the wages of genetically identical twins with different schooling levels multiple measurements of schooling levels were also collected to assess the effect of reporting error on the estimated economic returns to schooling the data indicate that omitted ability variables do not bias the estimated return to schooling upward but that measurement error does bias it downward adjustment for measurement error indicates that an additional year of schooling increases wages by 12 to 16 percent a higher estimate of the economic returns to schooling than has been previously found copyright 1994 by american economic association

uninsured health shocks and agricultural productivity among rural households the mitigating role of micro credit this article investigates how health shocks affect farm productivity in the presence of microcredit it is expected that microcredit increases agricultural productivity by enhancing allocative and

the effects of international operations on the market value of the firm theory and evidence this paper investigates the existence of monopoly rents associated with international operations in a market value theoretic framework the benefits of international operations evolve from such factors as 1 imperfections in the product and factor markets 2 differential international taxation and 3 imperfections in the financial markets in this paper these factors are subject to an equilibrium analysis in the context of recent advances in financial theory in particular imperfections in the financial sector arising from corporate international diversification are examined in a framework which allows a supply adjustments by multinational firms and b the interaction of barriers to international capital flows faced by both firms and investors taking the u s capital market and investors as a base we then specify the conditions under which the foregoing imperfections get priced out in an equilibrium these pricing effects cannot be detected empirically through the methodologies employed by the existing studies which examine the effects of corporate international diversification indeed it was an attempt to rescue the limitations of these studies which initially motivated our paper the existing empirical inquiries into this area rely on traditional risk adjusted performance measures e g 7 or international analogs of return generating processes e g 1 8 instead at the empirical level we employ a value based method which is in the same vein of the thomadakis 17 approach developed to identify the monopoly benefits of industrial market structure we conduct the tests over subperiods characterized by differential government controls in an attempt a to separate the pure financial motives for multinationality from other motives and b to detect if the benefits of international operations carry through recent periods

investments in the schooling and health of women and men quantities and returns this paper surveys the evidence on recent trends in the growth of human capital investments in women that raised womens productivity in thus century in most countries patterns in school investments in men and women across regions and across birth cohorts within countries indicate that expected years of school enrollment is converging between low and high income countries to where the gaps have closed from about seven years in 1950 to five years in 1985 women today are receiving nearly as many years of education as men in industrially advanced high income countries latin america south east and east asia are relatively similar to the high income countries at the other extreme in most of the countries of south and west asia and north and sub saharan africa women receive about two fifths to three fourths the number of years of schooling as men do in every region however the ratio of female to male expected years of enrollment increased from 1950 to 1985 gender differences in mortality and nutritional status reveal that there has been a dramatic but largely unexplained advance in female longevity relative to male in the 20th century in most countries with the exception of certain countries in south asia this development is associated with the shift of populations from dependence on agriculture to working in urban areas these changes are a major source of decreasing inequality within and between countries in this century market failure could be responsible for families investing less than the socially efficient amount in girls than boys there are problems in measuring without bias these private and social return empirical patterns across countries in estimated returns to schooling illustrate that private returns at the primary secondary and higher education levels can vary for women and men

aids treatment and intrahousehold resource allocation children s nutrition and schooling in kenya this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled acquired immunodeficiency syndrome aids treatment and intra household resource allocation children s nutrition and schooling in kenya conducted in late 2003 till present in kenya the study observed the impact of antiretroviral arv medications to human immunodeficiency virus infection hiv or aids on the time allocated to various household tasks by treated hiv positive patients and their household members on the individual level treating adult aids patients with arv treatment results in substantial improvements in the welfare of children living with the patients after nine months of treatment the increases in school attendance are maintained with no significant drop off over the time period of study for boys in particular the increase in hours of attendance is almost exactly equal to the treatment driven decrease in their hours of market labor supply the short term nutritional status of young children in adult patients households improves significantly also within six months after treatment is initiated for the patients not presented separately for boys and girls these gains in nutritional status can be expected to improve the physical and cognitive abilities of children and eventually their post school productivity levels funding for the study derived from the economic and social research council pfizer the world bank yale university s center for interdisciplinary research on aids the national institute of mental health the social science research council and the calderone program at columbia university

acute morbidity and labor outcomes in mexico testing the role of labor contracts as an income smoothing mechanism abstract economic development is associated with an increase in the share of workers in salaried jobs this process may be accompanied by a reduction in wage fluctuations if labor contracts are used as income smoothing mechanisms this paper tests to what extent salaried jobs help reduce the volatility of wages by insuring workers against productivity shocks analysis of mxfls data indicates that the average contractual arrangement in mexico insures the worker against idiosyncratic productivity fluctuations associated with episodes of illness the evidence is stronger for workers in formal jobs to validate the methodology the test is also implemented on a sample of self employed workers in this case it correctly rejects the presence of insurance against productivity shocks

health and wage a simultaneous equation model with multiple discrete indicators in this article we propose all econometric approach for estimating the simultaneouls effects of health and wages in a structural equations framework in the theoretical works of grossmana 1972a 1972b health is viewed as anl elldogen1oulsly determined capital stock the demand for health should rise with the wage rate as the rate of return to health investment increases with wage onl the other hand better health should raise market productivity and hence wages since health capital is an abstract theoretical concept it can hardly be measured quantitatively however most population surveys include various health indicators these indicators are usually discrete variables in the empirical work of grossman and benham 1974 these qualitative indicators are treated as continuous variables and two stage least squares estimation techniques are used this specification raises various econometric problems see e g goldberger 1964 pp 248 255 domencich and mcfadden 1975 and nerlove and press 1973 a satisfactory specification should take into account the discrete nature of the indicators our specification generalizes the dummy variables simultaneous equations system of heckman 1978 the measurement models of joreskog and goldberger 1975 and is closely related to the models of muthe n 1976 1979 muthen studies full information maximum likelihood procedures for estimation except for very simple cases this does not generally yield feasible or tractable procedures in this article we introduce a tractable procedure for statistical estimation and testing this specification and the estimation procedure is then applied to study the joint dependence of health and wages another departure of our approach from others is that we will test and correct the possible incompatibility of the various health capital indicators in the population surveys one may have subjective health indicators such as self evaluation of health which may reflect different populations perception of health we propose a statistical procedure for testing measurement compatibility and if required for correcting this problem this article is divided into two parts initially we describe the model specification estimation and statistical tests in a general simultaneous equation model with multiple discrete indicators in the second part of the paper we consider specification of a simultaneous equation model for health and wages the model

evaluating the effects of optimally distributed public programs child health and family planning interventions this paper develops and tests an optimizing model determining the distribution of family planning and health subsidies across heterogeneous households and assesses the biases in cross area estimates of the health effects of such subsidies due to public resource optimization the model incorporates both health externalities and the endogenous response of the size of the recipient population to program subsidies longitudinal data describing child health and publicly provided family planning and health programs in 20 barrios in laguna province in the philippines are used to estimate the effects of such programs on child health and the relationships between the distribution of the programs and preprogram health levels the impact of a program on a particular childs health status is viewed as dependent upon the childs length of exposure to the program a basic feature of the model is the presence of health externalities which is shown to be sufficient along with plausible features of household behavior to make selective subsidization of fertility control either alone or in combination with health investment subsidies pareto efficient the model suggests that subsidization of fertility control is likely to be pareto efficient in the presence of health or human capital externalities when human capital and family size are gross substitutes and or when any per child human capital subsidies may substitute for direct subsidies to health investment and an equalizing distribution of the subsidies the highest family planning subsidies to the lowest health recipient households is efficient when both health and family planning subsidies are used fertility control subsidies minimize the subsidy burden for donors and are highest when total subsidy expenditures per child are greatest

disease and development in historical perspective health conditions and disease environments are important for economic outcomes this paper argues that the main impact of disease environments on the economic development of nations is not due to the direct effect of health conditions on income but rather because of their indirect effect via institutions health does affect income directly but this can explain only a small fraction of today s differences in per capita income in contrast when previously isolated populations came into contact during the period of european colonial expansion differences in disease environments had a major impact on the path of institutional development and consequently first order consequences for economic growth jel i12 o12

health nutrition and economic development the relationship between health and economic development is explored focusing on nutrition based health indicators the spotlight is placed on the inter related feedbacks between the influence of health on productivity on one hand and the influence of income on health status on the other disentangling causality in these relationships has preoccupied much of the literature we evaluate different empirical strategies that have been adopted and assess the results there is now a body of evidence based on careful empirical studies that demonstrates a causal relationship between health and labor productivity there is also evidence that at least among the very poor additional income is spent on improved nutrition there are two issues that have received little attention although we argue they are likely to be very important first measurement of health is discussed in detail evidence is presented on how taking into account differences in the extent of measurement error is critical for interpreting the impact of health on wages the same theme emerges in studies of the effect of income on health specifically calorie intake the key role of non linearities in these relationships is highlighted and we demonstrate that a good deal of the variation in estimates of income elasticities of demand for calories can be ascribed to the role of measurement and functional form authors

information learning and wage rates in low income rural areas in this essay we present evidence that employers in rural areas of developing countries have imperfect information with regard to the productivity of heterogeneous workers in addition to obtaining direct measures of the completeness of employer information we consider the implications of information asymmetries for the structure of casual labor markets we then evaluate the extent to which casual labor markets do in fact exhibit these attributes we find that 1 there is adverse selection out of the time rate labor market 2 employers discriminate statistically given two workers with different observed characteristics but the same actual productivity the worker from the group with the higher average productivity will have a higher wage 3 employers exhibit learning over time the extent of employer ignorance is negatively related to labor market exposure on the part of the workers and 4 calorie consumption affects productivity but is not rewarded in the time rate labor market in concluding we argue that an analysis of wage and employment patterns and the implications of these patterns for human capital investment in rural areas of developing countries that ignored the role of information problems could yield misleading conclusions

does better nutrition raise farm productivity household level data from sierra leone are used to test whether higher caloric intake enhances family farm labor productivity this is the notion behind the efficiency wages hypothesis which has found only weak empirical support a farm production function is estimated accounting for the simultaneity in input and calorie choice instruments include prices household demographic characteristics and farm assets the latter two sets of instruments are later dropped to explore the robustness of the results to different specifications of exogeneity the exercise shows a highly significant effect of caloric intake on labor productivity providing solid support for the nutrition productivity hypothesis the marginal effect on productivity falls drastically as calorie consumption rises but remains positive at moderately high levels of intake one result is a fall in the effective price of food a decline that is larger for households that consumer fewer calories

wage gains associated with height as a form of health human capital height is consulted as a latent indicator of early nutrition and lifetime health status height is observed to increase in recent decades in populations where per capita national income has increased and public health activities have grown height is determined by genetic make up and realized in part through satisfactory nutrition and health related care and conditions alternative instrumental variables iv are explored which proxy price and income constraints which are expected to influence the latter reproducible human capital investments in height i report ols and iv estimates of the partial effect of height on log hourly wages in recent national surveys from three countries ghana brazil and the united states i conclude that the human capital productivity effect of height estimated by parent education ivs in the us and ghana are many times larger than the ols estimates and in ghana and brazil the regional price ivs estimates also imply a substantially larger human capital wage effects of height compared with the ols estimates the ols estimates of height effects on wages are dominated by the genetic variation in height and appear to understate substantially the human capital returns to health and nutrition inputs which increase adult height this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

health shocks and consumption smoothing evidence from indonesia abstractepisodes of uninsured illness can seriously compromise a household s well being this article provides further evidence on the consequences of illness episodes on earnings and consumption in indonesia we exploit a rich panel data set that allows us to combine fixed effects and instrumental variables to address biases associated with the endogeneity of illness using deteriorations in physical functioning to measure illness for a sample of prime age individuals we find that earnings are significantly reduced however the effects on consumption are relatively small and statistically insignificant in addition we explore informal mechanisms that households may be using to smooth out the consequences of these episodes in particular we study whether households deplete liquid assets or receive transfers from noncoresident kin transfers are responsive to illness but there is no evidence of asset depletions overall our findings suggest some ability to smooth the income effects of illness on aver

estimating a household production function heterogeneity the demand for health inputs and their effects on birth weight the household production literature emphasizes that technical or biological processes condition input selection by households in their production activities along with prices and income exogenous variations in health to the extent that they are perceived by individuals heterogeneity lead to correlations between inputs and health outcomes that cannot be used to derive causal conclusions therefore estimates of health technology must be obtained from a behavioral model in which health inputs are themselves choices consistent estimates are reported of the effect of endogenous inputs such as medical care smoking and fertility on birth weight and fetal growth in the presence of health heterogeneity

arthritis and the earnings of men an analysis incorporating selection bias abstract arthritis is a chronic and crippling disease which affects the work effort and earnings of more than 14 million working age victims this paper examines the effects of arthritis on the earnings of men aged 18 to 64 arthritis has large and significant effects on earnings most models incorporating selection bias have examined groups with lower labor force participation rates than prime age males but significant selection bias is found here when selection bias is considered the estimated absolute effects of arthritis are increased and the percentage of the gap between arthritic and non arthritic males explained by arthritis as opposed to other factors increases this study is unusual in identifying the effects of a single disease on earnings

endowments and the allocation of schooling in the family and in the marriage market the twins experiment 03 we show how comparisons between the within twin correlations of human capital outcomes across identical and nonidentical twins can be used to identify the variability in the individual specific component of endowments and the responsiveness of schooling to individual specific endowments in the family and in the marriage market even when schooling is measured with error estimates from two twins samples indicate that 27 42 percent of the variance in log earnings obesity is due to variability in individual specific endowments allocations of schooling reinforce specific endowments and individual specific earnings endowments of men and their wives schooling are negatively associated

cultural diversity and the performance of multinational firms we test the hypothesis that culturally related international diversification will have a positive impact on firm performance and that the opposite will be true for culturally unrelated globalization cultural diversity for fortune 500 firms was used to predict performance over a ten year period 1985 1994 controlling for several organizational and industry characteristics regression tests using nine indicators of cultural diversity revealed no significant cultural effects alternate interpretations are offered

the effect of population health on foreign direct investment inflows to low and middle income countries this paper investigates the effect of population health on gross inflows of foreign direct investment fdi we conduct a panel data analysis of 74 industrialized and developing countries over 1980 2000 our main finding is that gross inflows of fdi are strongly and positively influenced by population health in low and middle income countries our estimates suggest that raising life expectancy by one year increases gross fdi inflows by 9 after controlling for other relevant variables these findings are consistent with the view that health is an integral component of human capital for developing countries

insuring consumption against illness one of the most sizable and least predictable shocks to economic opportunities in developing countries is major illness we investigate the extent to which families are able to insure consumption against major illness using a unique panel data set from indonesia that combines excellent measures of health status with consumption information we find that there are significant economic costs associated with major illness and that there is very imperfect insurance of consumption over illness episodes these estimates suggest that public disability insurance or subsidies for medical care may improve welfare by providing consumption insurance

data watch the world bank s living standards measurement study household surveys since 1985 the world bank has been collecting household survey data in developing countries that provide a rich source of information for assessing household welfare understanding household behavior and evaluating the impact of government policies this article describes these household surveys known as living standards measurement study lsms surveys and explains how to obtain their data lsms surveys have been implemented in over twenty developing countries and have been used to analyze poverty labor markets health and education pricing policies determinants of school performance savings and consumption smoothing health and nutrition policies and gender and fertility issues

the effects of human capital on wages and the determinants of labor supply in a developing country abstract the heckman procedure is used to correct for sample selection bias in estimating wage offer and net labor market supply equations the findings show that wages are affected by education and experience in addition the wage offer is influenced by other genetic and environmental influences captured in the wage of one s father calories as predicted by exogenous instruments are also shown to influence the wage offer suggesting that better nutrition increases labor productivity the probability of market labor participation as well as the amount of net market labor supply declined with the size of paddy landholding in addition to the net market supply elasticity increasing with the amount of land owned and being lower for urban than rural workers

excess market value the multinational corporation and tobin s q ratio the results of this study show that there is a positive and significant relationship between excess market value of multinational corporations and the degree of international involvement as measured by foreign sales percentage however the excess market value is not determined by the number of foreign subsidiaries nor the interaction between foreign sales and the number of foreign subsidiaries the relationship between excess market value and the two frequently used measures of monopoly power concentration ratio and the lerner index was also examined this study found that the lerner index contributes significantly in explaining excess market value but concentration ratio does not furthermore the positive and significant coefficients of advertising and r d intensity serve as evidence that product market imperfections appear to play a bigger role in explaining the excess market value experienced by mncs during our sample period

the quality of schooling quantity alone is misleading although much research discusses the quantity of schooling as an effective impact on productivity and earnings most such research leaves out the idea of the quality of schooling which may cause biases in the estimated returns to schooling this paper consequently attempts to extend the standard mincerian approach to incorporate school quality as well as quantity it demonstrates how exclusion of quality in the standard procedure may cause biases in the estimated returns to years of schooling probably in the upward direction the paper explores the implications of this extension of the standard model for the case of young brazilian males it shows that the estimate of the private return to years of schooling using the preferred quality inclusive specification is only one half the estimate using the standard procedure indicating substantial upward bias in the standard estimates it further outlines a method for estimating a social return to quality and finds that it exceeds substantially the social return to quantity the paper then shows why this in turn suggests there may be an equity productivity trade off in schooling investments

health shocks and consumption smoothing in rural households does microcredit have a role to play abstract this paper estimates using a large panel data set from rural bangladesh the effects of health shocks on household consumption and how access to microcredit affects households response to such shocks households appear to be fairly well insured against health shocks our results suggest that households sell livestock in response to health shocks and short term insurance is therefore attained at a significant long term cost however microcredit has a significant mitigating effect households that have access to microcredit do not need to sell livestock in order to insure consumption microcredit organizations and microcredit therefore have an insurance role to play an aspect that has not been analyzed previously

malaria incidence and agricultural efficiency in uganda the cost of accessing healthcare can be a major determinant of disease prevalence which in turn has short and long term welfare implications on poor households in response governments in developing countries often resort to subsidizing the cost of drugs which while perhaps easier to administer may not always be the most effective way of addressing healthcare cost in this regard we analyze the impact of different types of household level health expenses on disease incidence and agricultural production efficiency we use data from the 2006 uganda national household survey which covered approximately 7 400 households the results suggest that a 10 increase in consultation medicine and hospitalization expenses would reduce malaria incidence respectively by 35 6 20 5 and 21 3 which translates into a 1 1 0 6 and 0 6 decrease in agricultural inefficiency respectively the results indicate that helping poor households meet expenses for consultation through subsidies or eliminating consultation fees has a larger impact on malaria incidence and agricultural productivity among poor rural households than subsidizing the cost of medical drugs the most common avenue chosen by developing country governments in the fight against the disease

do agricultural outputs of partly autarkic peasants affect their health and nutrition evidence from rwanda abstract in rural areas of less developed countries because of market imperfections the health and nutritional status of peasants may directly depend on the production levels of specific agricultural goods rather than solely on income levels this channel of health and nutrition determination has never been studied in order to assess and test the empirical possibility of this channel we estimate the responses of health and nutritional status of autarkic agricultural households in rwanda with respect to differences in socio demographic characteristics and the main agricultural outputs and inputs while controlling for local environment and sampling scheme several food outputs are found to have a positive influence on health and nutrition whereas the production of traditional beers has a negative impact moreover greater land negatively affects health and nutrition conditionally on agricultural production perhaps because of a larger relative workload for households who have a large farm an alternative interpretation of the estimates is that they inform on the validity of the common hypothesis of perfect agricultural input output markets with no effect of agricultural inputs outputs on health and nutrition status this hypothesis is rejected

in times of sickness intra household labour substitution in rural indonesian households abstractin many developing countries households with ill adults suffer not only from diminished labour supply but also from an inability to borrow against future labour income intra household labour substitution may be an important coping strategy for these households using information about individual health status provided by indonesia family life survey this study finds some evidence that indonesian farm households cope with chronic illnesses of male adults through intra household labour substitution yet the results show that this strategy is not effective in the case of severe health shocks and that these households are unable to keep their family farm profits stable