smallholders land access in sub saharan africa a new landscape while scholars long recognized the importance of land markets as a key driver of rural non farm development and transformation in rural areas evidence on the extent of their operation and the nature of participants remains limited we use household data from 6 countries to show that there is great potential for such markets to increase productivity and equalize factor ratios while rental markets transfer land to land poor and labor rich producers their operation and thus impact may be constrained by policy restrictions their functioning may also be constrained by ill defined or insecure rights that may arise from failure to fully compensate existing rights in cases of expropriation a failure to implement more broadly land policies or to do so in a gender sensitive manner methodological and substantive conclusions are derived

population increase economic growth educational inequality and income distribution some recent evidence abstract using a recent inter country sample impacts of population increase short run growth rate and educational level and inequality on income distribution are assessed as in almost all other studies high population increase is observed to be a disequalizer however unlike the position indicated in several earlier studies rapid short run economic growth seems to reduce income inequality while higher mean schooling level appears to be a mild equalizer contrary to the results reported by earlier researchers no adverse effect of educational inequality on income distribution is found

biofuel investment in tanzania omissions in implementation abstract increasing demand for biofuels as a component of climate change mitigation energy security and a fossil fuel alternative attracts investors to developing countries like tanzania ample unused land is critical for first generation biofuels production and an important feature to attract foreign direct investments that can contribute towards agricultural modernization and poverty reduction initiatives despite the economic justifications the existing institutional and infrastructural capacities dictate the impacts of biofuels market penetrations furthermore exogenous factors like global recessionary pressure depressed oil prices below the level at which biofuel production were profitable in 2007 making tanzania s competitiveness and potential benefits questionable this paper investigates the extent that first generation jatropha based biofuels industry development in tanzania observed during fieldwork in kisarawe and bahi may fulfill policy objectives this paper argues that without strong regulatory frameworks for land investment management and rural development biofuel industrialization could further exacerbate poverty and food insecurity in tanzania the paper concludes with policy recommendations for first generation biofuel development while keeping in mind implications of second generation production since the topic is broad and multifaceted a multidisciplinary approach is used that includes political institutional and agricultural economics to analyze and conceptualize biofuel industry development and food security

the microfinance promise in the past decade microfinance programs have demonstrated that it is possible to lend to low income households while maintaining high repayment rates even without requiring collateral the programs promise a revolution in approaches to alleviating poverty and spreading financial services and millions of poor households are served globally a growing body of economic theory demonstrates how new contractual forms offer a key to microfinance success particularly the use of group lending contracts with joint liability for the most part however high repayment rates have not translated into profits and studies of impacts on poverty yield a mixed picture in describing emerging tensions the paper highlights the diversity of innovative mechanisms beyond group lending contracts the measurement of financial sustainability the estimation of economic and social impacts the costs and benefits of subsidization and the potential to reduce poverty through savings programs rather than just credit the promise of microfinance has pushed far ahead of the evidence and an agenda is put forward for addressing critical empirical gaps and sharpening the terms of policy discussion

a decomposition analysis of the trend in uk income inequality post war britain has experienced a number of dramatic demographic and social changes that have undoubtedly influenced the distribution of income there has been a rise in the number of pensioners whose incomes are relatively low a considerable increase in the number of young and old households living on their own and a remarkable expansion in the proportion of working wives the potential importance of these structural changes suggests that their impact on the income distribution needs to be examined systematically before any attempt can be made to interpret the observed trend in overall income inequality adequately the method usually adopted for this purpose attempts to create a comparable time series of distributions based on the structural characteristics pertaining in one particular year for example if we wished to investigate the effect of shifts in the age structure of the population this approach would disaggregate the distribution in one year tl and estimate what the distribution would have been like if the age structure had been the same as that observed in some other year to on the assumption that other distributional characteristics such as ageincome differentials and inequality within age groups remain invariant to this demographic change the comparison between the actual distribution at t1 and the constructed distribution at t1 with to s age structure is taken to indicate the impact of changes in the age structure over the period concerned this comparison can be presented in terms of quantile shares summary measures of inequality or the entire lorenz curves this approach known as shift share analysis or standardising the inequality series see semple i975 love and wolfson i976 dinwiddy and reed i977 royal commission i977 rowley and henderson i978 macleod and horner i980 is perfectly adequate for simple and straightforward structural changes when several changes are occurring simultaneously however it becomes difficult to identify the contribution of the individual factors and to assess their relative importance to the overall trend in inequality furthermore the combined impact of several structural influences will not in general sum up to the inequality change requiring explanation the purpose of this paper is to propose an alternative method of analysing

exclusive contracts and protection of investments we consider the effect of a renegotiable exclusive contract restricting a buyer to purchase from only one seller on the levels of noncontractible investments undertaken in their relationship contrary to some informal claims in the literature we find that exclusivity has no effect when all investments are fully specific to the relationship i e are purely internal exclusivity does matter when investments affect the value of the buyer s trade with other sellers i e have external effects we examine the effects of exclusivity on investments and aggregate welfare and the private incentives of the buyer seller coalition to use it

women s work and economic development using a cross country dataset and microdata from india and thailand we examine how women s work status changes with economic development several clear patterns emerge women s labor force participation first declines and then rises with development women move from work in family enterprises to work as paid employees fertility declines and gender gaps in education narrow women s education levels and those of their spouses appear to be important determinants of women s labor market activities broad welfare indicators such as mortality rates and education levels indicate that women s well being improves on average with development both in absolute terms and relative to men

identifying and addressing land governance constraints to support intensification and land market operation evidence from 10 african countries beyond concerns about agricultural productivity growth issues of land governance have attracted global interest as demand for land acquisition by outsiders has increased rapidly but most of the transfers failed to live up to expectations and instead disrupted local livelihoods we use the land governance assessment framework to identify key conceptual issues and identify how land governance in 10 african countries compares to global good practice results point towards weak protection of rights in practice large gaps in female land access and limited outreach and effectiveness of institutions to record rights and adjudicate disputes we note that programs to improve performance along these lines had significant impact in other contexts suggesting that efforts to improve land governance will be warranted and should be closely monitored and evaluated in an effort to identify models suited to african conditions and assess their impact and interaction with other factor markets

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

unforeseen contingencies and incomplete contracts we scrutinize the conceptual framework commonly used in the incomplete contract literature this literature usually assumes that contractual incompleteness is due to the transaction costs of describing or of even foreseeing the possible states of nature in advance we argue however that such transaction costs need not interfere with optimal contracting i e transaction costs need not be relevant provided that agents can probabilistically forecast their possible future payoffs even if other aspects of the state of the nature cannot be forecast in other words all that is required for optimality is that agents be able to perform dynamic programming an assumption always invoked by the incomplete contract literature the foregoing optimality result holds very generally provided that parties can commit themselves not to renegotiate moreover we point out that renegotiation may be hard to reconcile with a framework that otherwise presumes perfect rationality however even if renegotiation is allowed the result still remains valid provided that parties are risk averse

ageing the great challenge to health care reform abstract this contribution is an attempt to analyze an issue that seems to be frequently skirted over when discussing reforms of today s health care systems practitioners of health insurance point out the fact that a major share of medical care services goes to the uppermost age brackets who are believed to be unresponsive to the financial incentives such as cost sharing and bonuses for no claims that are being considered as innovations in the financing of health care at the same time rapid growth in the numbers of the old and very old is predicted for virtually all oecd countries acting in combination these two factors appear to undercut the rationale of conventional cost containment strategies in health care a closer look at the matter even reveals that a major part of lifetime health resources are spent during the last few months of human life economists are therefore challenged to explain a puzzle why is it that such a great deal of resources is dedicated to investments that will in all likelihood be characterized by a very short payoff period in an attempt at answering this question the decision situations facing the dying patient and his family treating physicians and politicians acting as agents of the population at large will be examined in turn of course no easy way out can be expected to result from this exercise nevertheless economic analysis can be counted upon to provide at least cues concerning the incentives that have to be built into future insurance contracts physician payment schemes and modes of hospital finance for dealing with the challenge to the health care system posed by a rapidly ageing population

biofuels in developing countries are comparative advantages enough this paper investigates the role of comparative advantage on biofuel policy adoption results show that different countries have different drivers to create biofuel policies gdp proves to be more significant for oecd countries while arable land and feedstock prices are more significant for non oecd countries land allocation may also be of importance we speculate that a naturally endowed comparative advantage may not necessarily equate to a successful biofuel industry

incentives and moral hazard plot level productivity of factory operated and outgrower operated sugarcane production in ethiopia we investigate the unique contractual arrangement between a large ethiopian sugar factory and its adjacent outgrower associations the only significant difference between the sugarcane production on the factory operated sugarcane plantation and on the outgrower operated plots is the remuneration system and thus the incentives to the workers we compare the productivity of the factory operated plantation with the outgrower operated plots based on a new cross sectional plot level data set that includes all plots that are operated by the sugar factory and its adjacent outgrower associations as sugar cane production depends on various exogenous factors that are measured as categorical variables e g soil type cane variety etc we estimate the production function by a nonparametric kernel regression method that takes into account both continuous and categorical explanatory variables without assuming a functional form and without imposing restrictions on interactions between the explanatory variables in order to obtain meaningful productivity measures we impose monotonicity in input quantities using the constrained weighted bootstrapping cwb method our results show that outgrower operated plots have ceteris paribus a statistically and economically significantly higher productivity than factory operated plots which can be explained by outgrowers having stronger incentives to put more effort into their work than the employees of the sugar factory

social and techno economical analysis of biodiesel production in peru peru has introduced a law to promote the use of biofuels with the objective to increase employment strengthening agriculture development providing an economic alternative to illegal drug production in this work the costs of biodiesel production from oil palm and jatropha were analyzed under different scenarios they include the participation of associations of smallholders and commercial producers as raw material provides in biodiesel business in peru the scenarios considered have a strong social dimension in which they explicitly consider how productions 39 costs change when smallholders supply a proportion of the feedstock to the industry production cost profiles were generated using the chemical process simulation and economical evaluation software packages provided by aspen technology total production cost found for oil palm biodiesel production ranged between 0 23 and 0 31 usd l and jatropha biodiesel production costs were between 0 84 and 0 87 usd l these production costs were analyzed and compared to biodiesel ex factory prices and diesel fuel production cost factors the results suggest that including smallholders in the supply chain can be under some conditions competitive with liquid biofuel production systems that are purely large scale c 2012 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

renegotiation design with unverifiable information this paper considers a buyer seller relationship with observable but unverifiable investments and or random utility parameters in such situations it is known that contract renegotiation may prevent the implementation of first best outcomes in this paper we show however that efficient investments and optimal risk sharing can typically be achieved provided the initial contract is able to monitor the ex post renegotiation process specifically we focus on the following two features of renegotiation design first default options in case renegotiation breaks down second the allocation of all bargaining power to either contracting party moreover we show that these two features can be obtained in standard rubinstein bargaining games through contractual provisions such as specific performance clauses and penalties for delay or equivalently financial hostages refundable without interest

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

bargaining and distribution in marriage the standard economic model of the family is a common preference model that assumes that a family maximizes a single utility function and implies that family behavior is independent of which individuals receive income or control resources in recent years this model has been challenged by game theoretic models of marriage that do not impose pooling and are therefore consistent with empirical evidence that income controlled by husbands and wives does have different effects on family behavior in this paper the authors review a number of simple bargaining models and relevant empirical evidence and discuss their implications for distribution within marriage

economists and the welfare state abstract this paper constrasts the views of the welfare state of economists in the 1940s and 1950s with those of the current generation it is argued that economists as a profession in particular in the scandinavian countries have changed from being strong spokesmen for the welfare state to becoming much more critical the reasons for this are sought both in the expansion of the public sector in recent decades and in the development of economic theory in the areas of public finance insurance and incentives and public choice an attempt is made to evaluate the importance of the empirical and theoretical developments for the changing views of the welfare state

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

biofuels and food security micro evidence from ethiopia abstract there is considerable controversy about the impact of biofuels on food security in developing countries a major concern is that biofuels reduce food security by increasing food prices in this paper we use survey evidence to assess the impact of castor production on poor and food insecure rural households in ethiopia about 1 3 of poor farmers have allocated on average 15 of their land to the production of castor beans under contract in biofuel supply chains castor production significantly improves their food security they have fewer months without food and the amount of food they consume increases castor cultivation is beneficial for participating households food security in several ways by generating cash income from castor contracts they can store food for the lean season castor beans preserve well on the field which allows sales when farmers are in need of cash or food spillover effects of castor contracts increases the productivity of food crops increased food crop productivity offsets the amount of land used for castor so that the total local food supply is not affected

taxation pension and saving in a small open economy an overlapping generations model of a small open economy is used to explore several policy options aimed at reducing the burden of income taxes and pay as you go payg contributions on labor income so as to improve the incentives to supply labor including the return of funded collective fc pension plans in the tax base turns out to be counterproductive cutting payg benefits in contrast succeeds in improving efficiency in general and labor market incentives in particular under specific variants of the fc plan reducing payg benefits even proves to be pareto welfare improving

sugarcane outgrowers in ethiopia forced to remain poor contract farming is often seen as a panacea to many of the challenges faced by agricultural production in developing countries given the large heterogeneity of contract farming arrangements it is debatable whether all kinds of contract farming arrangements offer benefits to participating smallholders we apply matching methods to analyze the effects of a public sugarcane outgrower scheme in ethiopia participation in the outgrower scheme significantly reduces the income and asset stocks of outgrowers who contributed irrigated land to the outgrower scheme while the effect was insignificant for outgrowers who contributed rain fed land we provide several explanations and discuss policy implications

public pensions choices for the future abstract the purpose of this paper is to analyze to what extent pay as you go government mandated pensions can provide adequate retirement income to future generations this question is particularly relevant at times when the financial viability of public pensions is threatened by demographic aging and possibly declining productivity and when more importantly there is little consensus as to why those programs exist as they are that is mandatory public and unfunded the gist of our argument is that an aging population particularly if combined with declining productivity would jeopardize the financial and political viability of public pensions if individuals behavior doesn t adjust to this new reality and public authorities don t adopt the appropriate reforms as to mandatory retirement age payroll taxes and benefits structure among key individual decisions we focus on saving labor participation retirement education migration and fertility we consider how sensitive each of these is to changes in the environment and to changes in policy parameters then we turn to a number of issues unsolved either because of analytical complexity or because they arise from new realities

the effect of changes in the population on several measures of income distribution an economic model is used to explore the relationship between population growth and 2 of the most commonly used income distribution statistics the share of the rich and the poor in total income and the rate of growth of real income of the rich and the poor brazilian statistics applied to the model illustrate the difficulty of interpreting the common inequality measures under conditions of rapid population growth neither income shares nor growth rates can tell much about the degree of progressivity in the growth strategy of a particular country without adjustment absolute income for the base period poor or base period teenagers was greater than reported for either the poor or teenagers however the rise in inequality was also greater for the base period population growth in brazil was seen to be even more regressive than previously thought significant upward mobility was however still possible

capital and labor saving technical change in an aging economy does population aging and the associated increase in the old age dependency ratio affect economic growth the answer is given in a novel analytical framework that allows for population aging to affect endogenous capital and labor saving technical change the short run analysis reveals that population aging induces more labor and less capital saving technical change as it increases the relative scarcity of labor with respect to capital due to external contemporaneous knowledge spill overs across innovating firms induced technical change has a first order effect on current aggregate income in the long run capitalsaving technical progress vanishes and the economy s growth rate reflects only labor saving technical change however the mere possibility of capital saving technical change is shown to imply that the economy s steady state growth rate becomes independent of its age structure neither a higher life expectancy nor a decline in fertility affects economic growth in the long run

job duration seniority and earnings an important stylized fact about labor markets is that workers with longer seniority with their current employer have higher earnings than other workers with the same total labor market experience this study shows that workers in longer jobs earn more throughout than workers in a series of shorter jobs and that the measured positive cross sectional return seniority is largely a statistical artifact due to the correlation of seniority with an omitted variable representing the quality of the worker the job or the worker employer match the implication is tha t earnings do not in fact rise very much with seniority copyright 1987 by american economic association

biofuel development in ghana policies of expansion and drivers of failure in the jatropha sector abstract biofuel development was mainly promoted in several parts of africa as an energy security or rural development strategy jatropha was the biofuel feedstock that received the most interest across africa from investors however jatropha expansion gave rise to a number of contested issues which produced conflicts winners and losers access to land was at the heart of several of these conflicts though some success stories of individual jatropha projects have been documented the overwhelming majority of these projects in africa have either collapsed or faced significant difficulties understanding the reasons behind the failure of the jatropha sector is an important gap in the academic literature while the lessons learnt from failed projects could inform future policies and practices this literature review synthesizes the key drivers of failure of the jatropha sector in ghana as identified in the literature and complemented through site visits and expert interviews it identifies a number of reasons behind the failure of individual jatropha projects such as poor business planning institutional barriers limited community participation unfair compensation practices obstacles posed by civil society and unconstructive involvement of chiefs the findings indicate the systemic nature of these problems as they often worked synergistically to catalyse the collapse of many jatropha projects in ghana re vitalising the biofuel and especially the jatropha industry is virtually impossible given the current challenges this would require a renewed political interest in ghana particularly to deal with the deficits of the land administration institutions

biofuels in sub sahara africa drivers impacts and priority policy areas there has been a growing interest in jatropha and sugarcane based biofuels across sub sahara africa biofuel expansion in the region reflects policy concerns related to energy security poverty alleviation and economic development however biofuels have also been linked to numerous environmental and socioeconomic impacts such as ghg emissions water availability pollution deforestation biodiversity loss poverty alleviation energy security loss of access to land and food security to name just a few yet there is a an insufficient understanding of these impacts and their synergies in sub sahara africa and b a lack of policies that could regulate the biofuel sector and ensure its viability while at the same time preventing its negative impact the aim of this literature review is to synthesize the current knowledge about biofuel impacts in africa and to identify priority policy areas that should be targeted for enhancing biofuel sustainability in the continent the findings of this review indicate that biofuel impacts can be positive or negative depending on several factors such as the feedstock the environmental socio economic context of biofuel production and the policy instruments in place during biofuel production use and trade in most cases there are significant trade offs but at least part of the negative impacts can be mitigated through careful planning the incomplete and piecemeal understanding of these trade offs combined with agronomic institutional and market failures are currently the most important barriers for the viability and sustainability of biofuel investments in the continent

the legal environment and incentives for change in property rights institutions summary land conflicts in many parts of the world indicate pressures for change in the property rights institutions governing land acquisition and land use whether or not institutional change occurs depends on the incentives and capacities of political actors this article argues that the legal environment is one factor influencing incentives for institutional change three case studies of land governance in southeast asia s palm oil industry illustrate three types of legal environment rule by law legalism legal pluralism and lawlessness or routinized illegality the cases show that the legal environment shapes modes of resistance to property reallocations in the palm oil industry rule by law legalism supports legalized modes of resistance through the court system in contrast legal pluralism and lawlessness favor the use of political strategies to contest property reallocations the mode of resistance in turn determines whether actors acquiring property have incentives to gain legal cover or whether investing in political resources is more rewarding although the effectiveness of resistance is largely determined by the distribution of political resources the mode of resistance helps explain whether there is demand for property rights institutions that offer generalized legal certainty in property protection path dependence arising from the legal environment therefore influences the direction of institutional change

complexity and renegotiation a foundation for incomplete contracts the paper considers a hold up model where only one of n future trading opportunities will prove to be efficient and where ex post renegotiation of the ex ante contract cannot be prevented as the environment becomes more complex n the outcome under any message contingent long term contract converges to that of the incomplete contracting model where trade is contractible ex post but not ex ante when trades are costly to describe both ex ante and ex post the incomplete contracting result is extended to a broader class of environments

does contingent repayment in microfinance help the poor during natural disasters abstract microfinances in bangladesh introduced a contingent repayment system beginning in 2002 which allowed rescheduling of savings and installments during natural disasters for affected members this paper is one of the first attempts to evaluate the system employing a unique dataset in using evidence from a flood in 2004 the author found that rescheduling plays the role of a safety net by decreasing the probability that people skip meals during negative shocks by 5 1 per cent this effect is even higher on the landless and females this study attempts to contribute to the issue regarding the poverty reduction effect of microfinances

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

addressing the renewable energy financing gap in africa to promote universal energy access integrated renewable energy financing in malawi abstract the sustainable energy for all initiative is a global initiative launched by the united nations secretary general in 2012 with a goal of providing universal access to modern energy services by 2030 to achieve this goal substantial financial and technological investments will be required at a rate far exceeding historical levels sub saharan africa has a 30 5 electrification rate and policy reform issues to improve electrification have been poorly implemented thereby sprinkling doubt as to whether the region would be able to achieve 100 access to electricity for all by the year 2030 sub saharan africa faces a tough challenge in order to achieve universal access to modern energy services since the region fails to attract energy sector investments there is also a general perception that the region contributes very little to global greenhouse gas emissions hence offers few opportunities to reduce these emissions consequently missing out on attracting climate finance projects a guarantee of power purchase has been shown to attract energy sector investments however guarantees of power purchases such as feed in tariffs are experiencing slow market growth in developing countries because of a range of technical regulatory and financial barriers using malawi as a case study of a developing country this review provides a perspective from a sub saharan africa least developed country as to the various electrification renewable energy deployment and climate change management challenges that still require urgent attention this study shows that despite the perceived regulatory and financial challenges malawi can integrate and use a combination of adapted price guarantee schemes cross subsidies and environmental taxes in order to support initiatives aimed at supporting the country s development of renewable energy sources and hence indirectly support the sustainable energy for all initiative

the tragedy of the grabbed commons coercion and dispossession in the global land rush rural populations around the world rely on small scale farming and other uses of land and natural resources which are often governed by customary traditional and indigenous systems of common property in recent years large scale land acquisitions have drastically expanded it is unclear whether the commons are a preferential target of these acquisitions here we argue that the contemporary global land rush could be happening at the expense of common property systems around the world while there is evidence that common property systems have developed traditional institutions of resource governance that make them robust with respect to endogenous forces e g uses by community members it is less clear how vulnerable these arrangements are to exogenous drivers of globalization and expansion of transnational land investments in common property systems farmers and local users may be unable to defend their customary rights and successfully compete with external actors we define the notion of commons grabbing and report on an exploratory study that applied meta analytical methods drawing from the recent literature on large scale land acquisitions and land grabbing informed by political economy and political ecology approaches we coded selected cases on the basis of acquisition mechanisms claims and property rights changes in production system and coercive dynamics and explored the interactions between the different variables using association tests and qualitative comparative analysis we found that the majority of the cases included in this analysis 44 of 56 could be examples of commons grabbing

savings of the elderly and desired bequests cross section data often show that the wealth of the elderly increases with age even at advanced ages these and other results suggest that the life cycle hypothesis of consumption should be augmented to include a bequest motive for saving in this paper the author proposes a model of bequests and a test for a bequ est motive using panel data he finds that over a ten year period the elderly in the data set dissaved in contradiction to most cross section results the test offers no support for a bequest motive copyright 1987 by american economic association

household bargaining and microfinance abstract this paper examines a household bargaining problem where one household member can use external finance to invest in an uncertain business project faced with limited income generating opportunities we show that the household member will consistently choose safe investment projects we also explain why other members of the household can be made worse off from investment even when aggregate household consumption is expected to rise in a dynamic version of the bargaining problem we study incentives for the household to contribute towards loan repayments and identify conditions under which the borrower will transfer control over her loan to her partner

why micro credit may leave women worse off non cooperative bargaining and the marriage game in south asia abstract micro credit programmes targeting women continue to grow in south asia although research suggests that wives frequently hand over loans to their husbands women may also be unable to control the income generated by micro enterprises this article presents an intra household bargaining model explaining these findings and showing how credit may leave women worse off while benefiting men this game theoretic model also shows why a woman might rationally choose to give her loan to her husband even though she does not expect to benefit and knows he may not repay finally the article identifies the conditions necessary for micro credit to benefit women

micro credit initiatives for equitable and sustainable development who pays abstract there is a growing acknowledgement that micro credit programs have potential for equitable and sustainable development however my anthropological research on the micro credit program of the grameen bank shows that bank workers are expected to increase disbursement of loans among their members and press for high recovery rates to earn profit necessary for economic viability of the institution to ensure timely repayment in the loan centers bank workers and borrowing peers inflict an intense pressure on women clients in the study community many borrowers maintain their regular payment schedules through a process of loan recycling that considerably increases the debt liability on the individual households increases tension and frustration among household members produces new forms of dominance over women and increases violence in society

the dynamics of population growth differential fertility and inequality studies of population growth relative to income distribution from single equation and simultaneous equation models have shown that higher population growth rates increase inequality the reasons for this inequality contain important welfare issues including the fact that different income groups grow at different rates with lower income the fastest the differential fertility of the income groups complicates these issues the lorenz curve has often been used as a foundation of the theory of inequality comparisons and uses cumulative shares of income as a function of cumulative shares of population the mortality rates age of new entrants and the mobility across income groups must be factored in these can be analyzed simultaneously using a multistate life table which describes simultaneous transitions across age groups and states data from brazil was used to test whether increase in the fertility rates of the poor would affect income inequality the results indicate a 100 increase in the fertility of the poor which increases the percentage of poor in the equal fertility case there were decreases in the percent of poor from the original number these results confirm that inequality measures can give conflicting signals and could be inconsistent with real changes in relative welfare analyzing relationships between population growth and inequality is difficult and standard measures are inadequate to test hypotheses about the distribution effects of migration or high fertility it appears to be impossible to differentiate changes in population make up from changes in economic status

aging population problems and policy options in the us and germany aging population axel borsch supan the expected change in the age structure of the industrialized countries will lead to a dramatically higher proportion of older people in germany for example 100 employed persons now support about 40 elderly by 2030 this ratio will rise to 85 elderly people per 100 employed persons this process will deeply affect labour financial and housing markets it will strain the social security systems change the accumulation of aggregate wealth and skew its intergenerational distribution while imposing a growing burden on family support by the young generation when the elderly are becoming frail and unable to live independently this paper investigates the mechanisms at work in labour financial and housing markets drawing systematically on comparisons between german and us institutions to determine the role of taxes subsidies and regulations the evidence demonstrates that economic policies have powerful effects some of them are also currently distortionary and interact with existing market imperfections so that a serious consideration of policy options which may moderate the implications of population aging is called for

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

potential impacts of biofuel development on food security in botswana a contribution to energy policy abstract biofuel development continues to be a critical development strategy in africa because it promises to be an important part of the emerging bio economy however there is a growing concern that the pattern of biofuel development is not always consistent with the principles of sustainable development this paper assesses the potential of the impacts of biofuel development on food security in botswana drawing on informal and semi structured interviews the paper concludes that there is potential for the development of biofuels in botswana without adverse effects on food security due mainly to availability of idle land which accounted for 72 of agricultural land in the eastern part of the country in 2008 it is suggested that farmers could be incentivized to produce energy crops and more food from such land although it is hypothesized that the implementation of biofuel development programmes in other countries had an impact on local commodity prices during the period 2005 2008 in botswana it is argued that local biofuel production may not necessarily lead to a substantial increase in commodity food prices because land availability is not a major issue the paper makes policy recommendations for sustainable biofuel development in botswana

the mystery of capital formation in sub saharan africa women property rights and customary law summary economists such as hernando de soto have argued that clearly defined property rights are essential to capital formation and ultimately to economic growth and poverty alleviation this article traces two impediments to the clear definition of property rights in the african context customary law and the status of women both of these issues interfere with the attempt of african countries to rearticulate property law with the goal of capital formation constructive attempts to define property rights must address the problem of enforcement in under resourced environments where changes may not be welcomed

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

space for innovation for sustainable community based biofuel production and use lessons learned for policy from nhambita community mozambique abstract this paper provides insights and recommendations for policy on the opportunities and constrains that influence the space for innovation for sustainable community based biofuel production and use promoted by the mozambican government nhambita community established jatropha trials in 2005 initial results were promising but crop failure and the absence of organized markets led to scepticism amongst farmers we start from the idea that the promotion of community based biofuel production and use requires taking interactions between social cultural biophysical economic political and legal subsystems across different scales and levels of analysis through time into account our analysis demonstrates that heterogeneous farming strategies and their synergies at community level should be carefully assessed furthermore national and international political and legal developments such as the development of biofuel sustainability criteria influence the local space in which community based biofuel developments take place we conclude that ex ante integrated assessment and creating an enabling environment can enhance space for sustainable community based biofuel production and use it may provide insights into the opportunities and constraints for different types of smallholders and promote the development of adequate policy mechanisms to prevent biofuels from becoming a threat rather than an opportunity for smallholders

the dynamics of population growth differential fertility and inequality note this note challenges the proposition david lam made in his attempt to examine the relationship between population growth and the distribution of income in the first 2 sections of his paper in which no income mobility was allowed lam successfully analyzed the effects of adding to the economy a group of immigrants with income distribution different from the original residents on 2 inequality measures in the 3rd section lam made the strong proposition that claims in effect in order to determine whether an increase in the ith income groups fertility would increase or reduce the steady state proportion of the ith income group all the information needed is the ith row of the mobility matrix a counterexample is presented here along with a correction for the error that is made in the derivation of lams proposition

population pensions and endogenous economic growth abstract we study the effect of a declining labor force on the incentives to engage in labor saving technical change and ask how this effect is influenced by institutional characteristics of the pension scheme when labor is scarcer it becomes more expensive and innovation investments that increase labor productivity are more profitable we incorporate this channel in a new dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous economic growth and heterogeneous overlapping generations we calibrate the model for the us economy and obtain the following results first the effect of a decline in population growth on labor productivity growth is positive and quantitatively significant in our benchmark it is predicted to increase from an average annual growth rate of 1 74 over 1990 2000 to 2 41 in 2100 second institutional characteristics of the pension system matter both for the growth performance and for individual welfare third the assessment of pension reform proposals may depend on whether economic growth is endogenous or exogenous

biofuel developments in mozambique update and analysis of policy potential and reality abstract climate change rising oil prices and concerns about future energy supplies have contributed to a growing interest in using biomass for energy purposes several studies have highlighted the biophysical potential of biofuel production on the african continent and analysts see mozambique as one of the most promising african countries favorable growing conditions and the availability of land water and labor are mentioned as major drivers behind this potential moreover the potential of biofuel production to generate socio economic benefits is reflected in the government s policy objectives for the development of the sector such as reducing fuel import dependency and creating rural employment this article provides an overview of biofuel developments in mozambique and explores to what extent reality matches the suggested potential in the country we conclude that biofuel developments mainly take place in areas near good infrastructure processing and storage facilities where there is skilled labor available and access to services and goods moreover our analysis shows the need to timely harmonize current trends in biofuel developments with the government s policy objectives as the majority of existing and planned projects are not focusing on remote rural areas and in absence of domestic markets principally target external markets

determinants of biofuel oriented land acquisitions in sub saharan africa abstract the recent surge of investors interest for african land has triggered the debate about the drivers and effects of the so called land grabbing after a review of the relationship between investment in land and biofuel development in sub saharan africa we contribute to the existing literature in four dimensions we use the updated version of land matrix whose potentialities are currently underexploited we concentrate on land deals for cultivating biofuel crops which are emblematic of the food land energy nexus we focus on fdi to the african continent the most targeted region for land grabbing finally we delve deeper into the influence of institutional quality by testing the role of different institutional dimensions we find that abundance of water resources and general business conditions security and regulatory quality facilitate the investment in land for biofuels as for land governance what matters is the strength and security of land tenure rights rather than the type of tenure system

biofuel production and its impact on food security in low and middle income countries implications for the post 2015 sustainable development goals abstract the post 2015 sustainable development goals sdgs aim to strengthen the achievements of the millennium development goals mdgs there are 17 sdgs the first two tackle ending poverty and hunger as well as food insecurity under nutrition and sustainable agriculture to address these goals requires eradicating chronic hunger this paper examines challenges associated with biofuel production and how they relate to sdgs and their targets we mainly focus on challenges associated with biofuel production not adequately addressed in the sdgs it draws from a range of peer reviewed and grey literature to advance the understanding of how biofuel production will impact the post 2015 development agenda the findings suggest that increasing use of food crops to produce biofuels in the united states european union japan and brazil has been one important element in explaining the steady rise in staple food prices since 2000 while this is a potential threat to food and nutrition security in low and middle income countries biofuel production also offers significant opportunities in low income countries there are several challenges to the development and harnessing of biofuels these include 1 the interaction between biofuel production and climate change 2 biofuel production and foreignisation of land 3 food wastage 4 poor governance and limited production capacity 5 biofuel production within a weak and fragmented policy framework 6 biofuel production land tenure and socio economic impacts 7 biofuel production and conflicts and 8 biofuel production and deforestation for the post 2015 sustainable development agenda to have an impact strong actions are required to protect rural communities as well as nurture the biofuels industry this should be matched by commensurate investments in food and nutrition security and transparent public private partnerships this calls for strong and pro poor policies on feedstock farming processing and trading such policies must address the rhetoric of stakeholder participation in land use management

microenterprise lending to female entrepreneurs sacrificing economic growth for poverty alleviation abstract this research compares the performance of female and male entrepreneurs in a microenterprise credit program in guatemala previous research and field practice has suggested that targeting credit at female borrowers allows for greater increases in household welfare but that male entrepreneurs may more aggressively expand enterprises when given access to credit in this paper we develop a model that shows that increases in value of home time during childbearing years for women may substantially account for gender differences in responses to credit access empirical results from guatemalan survey data yield estimations consistent with the predictions from our model

the geographic and sectoral patterns of large scale farmland investments in sub saharan africa following the food and energy price crises of the mid 2000s sub saharan africa has become one of the largest recipients for large scale farmland investments while much has been written on the phenomenon scant reliable empirical evidence is available as to the precise geographic and sectoral patterns and underlying drivers employing strict data quality requirements this paper addresses these knowledge gaps by analyzing 563 farmland projects that have been established between 2005 and 2013 in sub saharan africa findings show that the investment intensity and associated risks are not geographically uniform moreover the study highlights a number of popular misconceptions regarding investor origin and their sectoral interests and motives

biofuels development in sub saharan africa are the policies conducive this paper analyses national regional and international biofuels policies and strategies to assess whether these policies promote or undermine the development of biofuels sector in africa despite having a huge comparative advantage in land labour and good climatic conditions favourable for the growing of energy crops few countries in sub saharan africa have included biofuels strategies in their energy or national development policies further results show that while developed countries commit huge financial resources for research technology development and the provision of tax incentives to both producers and consumers there is little government support for promoting biofuels in africa although the consequences of biofuels on food supply remain uncertain the mandatory blending of biofuels with fossil fuels by industrialized countries will create demand for land in africa for the growing of energy crops for biofuels this paper urgently calls upon national governments in sub saharan africa to develop appropriate strategies and regulatory frameworks to harness the potential economic opportunities from biofuels sector development while protecting the environment and rural communities from the adverse effects of land alienation from the mainstream agriculture towards the growing of energy crops for biofuels at the expense of traditional food crops

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

land pressures the evolution of farming systems and development strategies in africa a synthesis abstract evidence assembled in this special issue of food policy shows that rising rural population densities in parts of africa are profoundly affecting farming systems and the region s economies in ways that are underappreciated in current discourse on african development issues this study synthesizes how people markets and governments are responding to rising land pressures in africa drawing on key findings from the various contributions in this special issue the papers herein revisit the issue of boserupian agricultural intensification as an important response to land constraints but they also go further than boserup and her followers to explore broader responses to land constraints including non farm diversification migration and reduced fertility rates agricultural and rural development strategies in the region will need to more fully anticipate the implications of africa s rapidly changing land and demographic situation and the immense challenges that mounting land pressures pose in the context of current evidence of unsustainable agricultural intensification a rapidly rising labor force associated with the region s current demographic conditions and limited nonfarm job creation these challenges are manageable but will require explicit policy actions to address the unique development challenges in densely populated rural areas

integrated assessment of sustainability trade offs and pathways for global bioenergy production framing a novel hybrid approach abstract current controversies and debates on bioenergy production in the areas of greenhouse gases emission reduction food and energy security social exclusion and welfare erosion and ecosystem deterioration attest to the challenges which the bioenergy sector has to overcome to achieve its global production potentials because it is yet an evolving sector the sustainability of bioenergy production in different regions is very elusive experiences show that bioenergy policies in one region can have impacts not only on its own but also on other regions social economic and ecological sustainability it is thus important to assess development pathways for bioenergy to exploit the potential benefits and forestall any unnecessary costs this paper frames a novel hybrid approach for assessing bioenergy potentials for regions with diverging economic social and ecological systems the approach is based on a conceptual framework that takes into account trade offs decisions on sustainability goals and production options in the assessment of bioenergy pathways it combines different empirical techniques for the systematic investigation of trade offs and pathways including fuzzy logic conjoint logit and path analyses to show the relevance and utility of these techniques for the integrated assessment of trade offs and pathways in bioenergy development we illustrated their application using results and data from previous related studies

economic consequences of an aging population pip europe and japan are experiencing the aging of their populations aging implies a restructuring of the economy political issues which arise in an aging society include 1 a voting majority for the interests of the elderly 2 a voting majority of females 3 the domination of the decision power in corporate and similar ruling bodies and 4 unemployment or a long wait for promotion for younger people economic issues of an aging society include 1 population aging often occurs under reduced rates of growth of per capita national income 2 the relative economic status of the elderly very much depends on the currently existing tax transfer systems and 3 the income of families whose head is over age 65 has generally been more unequally distributed than the income for younger families issues concerning the labor supply of the elderly include 1 the availability of pension income and health limitations strongly influence decisions to retire and 2 older workers become disheartened and choose early retirement when facing bad reemployment prospects in general population aging is likely to have its most substantive effect on the overall level of productivity in an economy where technical knowledge is changing rapidly and strong competition necessitates a high degree of adaptability of the labor force

a review of social sustainability considerations among eu approved voluntary schemes for biofuels with implications for rural livelihoods the rapid expansion of biofuel production and consumption has raised concerns over the social and environmental sustainability of biofuel feedstock production processing and trade the european union eu has thus balanced its commitment to biofuels as one option for meeting its renewable energy targets with sustainability criteria for economic operators supplying biofuels to member states seven voluntary eu sustainability schemes were approved in july 2011 as a means to verify compliance while mandated sustainability criteria have a strong environmental focus a number of these voluntary schemes have social sustainability as a significant component of the requirements put forward for achieving certification as several of these voluntary schemes are incipient thereby limiting evidence on their effectiveness in practice this analysis is based on a comparative analysis of the substantive content or scope of these schemes and the likely procedural effectiveness of the same findings show that while some schemes have considerable coverage of social sustainability concerns poor coverage of some critical issues the presence of schemes lacking any social sustainability requirements and gaps in procedural rules are likely to undermine the likelihood that social sustainability is achieved through these schemes or the eu sustainability policies lending credibility to them