global feminization through flexible labor abstract the emphasis on structural adjustment and labor flexibility in both developing and industrialized economies is rapidly altering the nature of employment women are being substituted for men and many forms of work are being converted into the kinds of jobs traditionally geared to women international data on recent trends in female economic activity reveal that new types of labor data are needed to highlight the mechanisms of control over workers and the actual economic forms of vulnerability to which women are exposed the paper concludes by posing questions that challenge the traditional concerns of donors and policy makers in many developing countries

the gender gap fertility and growth changes in fertility have long been recognized as important correlates of economic growth with the relationship between the level of fertility and the level of income per capita being one of the strongest observable correlations in cross country data this paper examines the linkages between fertility and growth theory the structure of the model is presented in sections on production couples decision making system dynamics and steady state equilibria the first component of the model is that increases in capital per worker raise womens relative wages since capital is more complementary to womens labor input than to mens the second component is that increasing womens relative wages reduces fertility by raising the cost of children more than household income finally lower fertility raises the level of capital per worker a positive feedback loop generates demographic transition a rapid decline in fertility accompanied by accelerated output growth

the political economy of gender explaining cross national variation in the gender division of labor and the gender voting gap mainstream political economy has tended to treat the family as a unit when examining the distributional consequences of labor market institutions and of public policy in a world with high divorce rates we argue that this simplification is more likely to obscure than to instruct we find that labor market opportunities for women which vary systematically with the position of countries in the international division of labor and with the structure of the welfare state affect women s bargaining power within the family and as a result can explain much of the cross country variation in the gender division of labor as well as the gender gap in political preferences

good for living on the relationship between globalization and life expectancy this paper analyzes the relationship between three dimensions economic social and political of globalization and life expectancy using a panel of 92 countries covering the 1970 2005 period using different estimation techniques and sample groupings we find that economic globalization has a robust positive effect on life expectancy even when controlling for income nutritional intake literacy number of physicians and several other factors the result also holds when the sample is restricted to low income countries only in contrast political and social globalization have no such robust effects

pollution claim settlements under private information abstract the classical problem of resolving a nuisance dispute between a pollution generating firm and nearby residents is modelled here as a mechanism design problem we assume that the designer of the mechanism is the firm that it is uncertain about the actual losses suffered by residents and that the initial assignment of property rights is one where each resident is entitled to prevail we derive a profitmaximizing scheme under the individual rationality and incentive compatibility constraints and examine its properties it is shown that the outcomes it yields are sometimes inefficient moreover when many residents are affected by pollution and the degree of uncertainty with respect to the losses they suffer is large these inefficiencies become rampant

bargaining and strikes strikes are generally regarded as an important economic phenomenon and yet good theoretical explanations of them are hard to come by the difficulty is to understand why rational parties should resort to a wasteful mechanism as a way of distributing the gains from trade why could not both parties be made better off by moving to the final distribution of surplus immediately or if it is uncertain to its certainty equivalent and sharing the benefits from increased production

seigniorage operating rules and the high inflation trap there may be both a high and a low inflation equilibrium when the government finances the deficit through seigniorage under rational expectations the high inflation equilibrium is stable and the low inflation equilibrium unstable under adaptive expectations or lagged adjustment of money balances with rational expectations the low inflation equilibrium may be stable adding bond financing dual equilibria remain if the government fixes the real interest rate but a unique equilibrium is attained when the government sets a nominal anchor for the economy the existence of dual equilibria is thus a result of the government s operating rules

the costs of missing the millennium development goal on gender equity abstract at the millennium summit the world community pledged to promote gender equality and chose as a specific target the achievement of gender equity in primary and secondary education by the year 2005 in every country of the world based on the findings from a growing empirical literature that suggests that gender equity in education promotes economic growth reduced fertility child mortality and undernutrition we estimate what the costs in terms of growth and forgone fertility mortality and undernutrition reduction will be for the 45 countries that are on current projections unlikely to meet the target our estimates suggest that by 2005 the countries that are off track are likely to suffer 0 1 0 3 percentage points lower per capita growth rates as a result will have 0 1 0 4 more children per woman and by 2015 an average of 15 per 1 000 higher rates of under five mortality and 2 5 percentage points higher prevalence of underweight children under five sensitivity analyses suggest that the results are quite robust to using different specifications and approaches to estimating these losses

bargaining with two sided incomplete information an infinite horizon model with alternating offers this paper examines an infinite horizon bargaining model incorporating five features two sided incomplete information with potentially information revealing strategies an infinite horizon uncertainty concerning the potential gains from trade an illumination of interesting qualitative bargaining issues and plausible free from arbitrarily specified out of equilibrium conjectures equilibria these features motivated in the paper have powerful implications a nash equilibrium exists and is generically both unique and sequential comparative static implications of variations in the game s specifications are developed we find that natural indications of bargaining strength emerge from the model and establish the intuitive result that an increase in a player s relative bargaining strength makes that player more likely to capture the gains from bargaining

intra firm bargaining under non binding contracts we present a new methodology for studying the problem of intra firm bargaining based on the notion that contracts cannot commit the firm and its agents to wages and employment we develop and analyse a general non cooperative multilateral bargaining framework between the firm and its employees and consider outcomes which are immune to renegotiations by any party equilibrium firm profits are characterizable as both a weighted average of a neo classical non bargaining firm s profits and a generalization of shapley value for a corresponding cooperative game furthermore the resulting payoffs induce economically significant distortions in the firm s input and organizational design decisions

labor markets as gendered institutions equality efficiency and empowerment issues abstract labor markets are gendered institutions operating at the intersection of the productive and reproductive economies participation in labor markets does not automatically empower women reduction in gender differentials in earnings may be the result of harmonizing down rather than up discrimination against women may persist because in the absence of institutional changes it is profitable it is important to distinguish between static and dynamic and micro and macro efficiency labor market regulation has an important role to play in the institutional transformation needed to reconcile goals of efficiency and equality

trends countertrends and gaps in women s employment abstract the factors driving global integration namely trade expansion technological change and the internationalization of production have altered production patterns and changed the composition of output in both developed and developing countries as global patterns and modes of production have changed there has been a general shift away from agriculture toward industry and services along with these output changes have come significant changes in regional and national employment in developing and developed countries these changes span divergent trends on the one hand there is the increased availability of more and better quality employment as workers shift out of agriculture and subsistence production and into waged employment in the expanding manufacturing and service sectors on the other hand there have been sectors where the trend has been away from formalization toward the informalization and semi formalization of production activities and employment practices women have generally benefited from improvements in the world economy this article demonstrates however that patterns of employment and income generation among women often diverge however from global trends in important ways that suggest that the forces shaping global integration effect women differently the article frames a policy discussion that the international center for research on women led to debate the implications of recent trends in women s employment in the developing and developed world the six articles in this section represent this discussion they span a range of empirical and theoretical inquiry exploring global employment trends and highlighting changes in women s participation in formal and informal economic activities

assessing the stability of the inter industry wage structure in the face of radical economic reforms we assess the stability of the wage structure in an economy experiencing substantial economic changes we find that the structure of inter industry wage differentials remained remarkably stable in brazil in the face of major shocks

female headed households and female maintained families are they worth targeting to reduce poverty in developing countries controversy exists over whether to target public and private sector programs to female headed households in developing countries in the attempt to combat poverty and social disadvantage the issues related to the definition and measurement of female headship and the importance of the concept for development policy are discussed a systematic review is then presented of the empirical evidence on the relation between female headship and poverty if female headed households tend to be poorer on average than other households headship should seriously be considered as a potentially useful criterion for targeting antipoverty interventions especially in developing countries where means testing is not feasible the authors examine the potential costs and benefits of targeting female headship and review the experience of chile one of the few countries which has targeted female headship through government intervention and the only one which has evaluation data available the analysis of the project experience is used along with a review of the empirical evidence to answer the question of the desirability and efficiency of targeting female headship in order to reduce poverty in developing countries

fooling all of the people some of the time a theory of endogenous sequencing in confidential negotiations we analyse a bargaining game in which one party called the buyer has the option of choosing the sequence of negotiations with other participants called sellers when the sequencing of negotiations is confidential and the sellers goods are highly complementary efficient non dissipative equilibria exist in which the buyer randomizes over negotiation sequences in these equilibria the buyer can obtain higher pay offs than in pure strategy equilibria or in public negotiations the degree of sequencing uncertainty that maximizes buyer pay offs is inversely related to the aggregate bargaining power of the sellers

women and globalization a study of 180 countries 1975 2000 how do rising levels of international interconnectedness affect social economic and political conditions for women research on gender and international relations frequently offers clear propositions but seldom submits them to broad quan titative testing this article begins to fill that gap we advance the hypothesis that on balance and over time increasing cross national exchange and communication lead to improvements in women s status and equality economic aspects of global ization can bring new opportunities and resources to women but equally important globalization promotes the diffusion of ideas and norms of equality for women in an analysis of 180 countries from 1975 to 2000 employing cross sectional time series regression techniques we examine the impact of several measures of global ization on women s levels of life expectancy literacy and participation in the economy and parliamentary office international trade foreign direct investment membership in the united nations un and world bank and ratification of the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women cedaw are asso ciated with improved conditions for women how do rising levels of international interconnectedness affect the social eco nomic and political conditions for women competing hypotheses are easy to identify indeed research on gender and international relations sometimes offers clear propositions but seldom submits them to broad quantitative testing this article begins to fill that gap we expect to find a considerably mixed picture some women will benefit from globalization and some will be hurt the status of women will improve in some respects but not others nevertheless we advance the hypothesis that on balance and over time increasing cross national exchange

human capital family planning and their effects on population growth statistical evidence at the household level suggests that fertility and child mortality are related to factors specified by economic models of family resource allocation and behavior several of these factors such as women s education and family planning appear to decrease both fertility and child mortality leaving in doubt what net effects these human capital and social welfare programs have had on the recent slowing of world population growth the specific factors considered here include family planning programs human capital endowments of women and men natural resource wealth other economic structural determinants of the costs and benefits of children and the availability of nutritional inputs cross sectional relationships are reported and changes within countries are analyzed with fixed effect methods using data for 68 lowincome countries for the last two decades

marginalization revisited women s market work and pay and economic development abstract a substantial literature argues that women have been left out of economic development but evidence from labor force surveys in middle income developing countries suggests otherwise women s participation rates in the market labor force have been increasing women have shifted into white collar occupations and certain previously male dominated occupations have become female dominated clerical work in asia for example women s relative pay has risen somewhat faster in asia and latin america than occurred during industrialization in the united states although inequalities remain there is no evidence that women on average are being marginalized

the effect of trade openness on women s welfare and work life summary this study of 134 countries analyzes whether women are generally the losers or winners of globalization the results show that economic integration does not directly improve women s life expectancies women s access to primary and secondary education may improve slightly although women s welfare does not seem to improve more than that of men on the other hand economic integration does influence women s professional lives in developing countries trade openness increases female labor force participation in industrialized states it decreases the share of working women trade openness in developed countries increases the number of women employed in the service sector while in developing states it increases the number of women working in industrial jobs and in agriculture

alternating bid bargaining with a smallest money unit abstract in a seminal paper ariel rubinstein has shown that impatience implies determinateness of the two person bargaining problem in this note we show that this result depends also on the assumption that the set of alternatives is a continuum if the pie can be divided only in finitely many different ways for example because the pie is an amount of money and there is a smallest money unit any partition can be obtained as the result of a subgame perfect equilibrium if the time interval between successive offers is sufficiently small we also show that for a fixed discount rate all subgame perfect equilibrium payoffs of the discrete game converge to the solution obtained by rubinstein if the smallest money unit tends to zero

fiscal faux pas an analysis of the revenue implications of trade liberalization abstract this paper examines the argument that trade liberalization depresses tax revenue gdp ratios in developing countries this occurs because the structural characteristics associated with developing countries limit their ability to make the transition from trade to domestic taxes using a panel of 80 developing and industrialized countries over 1970 98 the econometric analysis carried out employs a fixed effects regression framework to examine the evidence the results indicate that low income and upper middle income countries have experienced declining tax revenues as a result of falling income and trade tax revenues and that structural characteristics have been significant in explaining the decline

gender inequality and economic growth a reply to schober and winter ebmer summary using data from a meta wage analysis schober and winter ebmer fail to confirm my earlier finding that gender wage inequality stimulates growth in semi industrialized economies sies the authors contend their wage data based on micro level studies with heterogeneous coverage are superior to the education adjusted manufacturing wages on which my paper relied in response i elucidate why wage data should be restricted to the manufacturing sector i explore possible measurement errors their data introduce and note concerns with the meta regression approach that limit the applicability of these data to the specific task of understanding the growth effect of gender inequality in sies finally i discuss advances made over the last decade in the methodology used to evaluate gender effects on growth identifying directions for new research on this important topic

haddad lawrence john hoddinott and harold alderman eds intrahousehold resource allocation in developing countries models methods and policy baltimore md johns hopkins university press 1997 384 pp 55 00 in this volume economists demographers sociologists and anthropologists collaborate in the study of how resources are allocated within households in developing countries and why it matters from a policy perspective surveying a broad range of theory and evidence the contributors examine the many social and cultural factors that influence decisions about the family and household level about the allocation of time income assets and other resources ths contributors show that a more complete understanding of intrahousehold behaviour can increase the likelihood that policies will reach the people they are intended to affect

breakdown in multilateral negotiations abstract we analyze a complete information multilateral bargaining model in which a buyer is to purchase two complementary goods from two sellers binding cash offer contracts are used to govern transactions in contrast to preexisting literature we do not normalize the parties reservation utilities to zero we show that this assumption holds critical importance by demonstrating that a complete breakdown of negotiations may occur as the unique equilibrium outcome even if only two sellers are present

what determines individual trade policy preferences abstract this article provides new evidence on the determinants of individual trade policy preferences using individual level survey data for the united states there are two main empirical results first we find that factor type dominates industry of employment in explaining support for trade barriers second we find that home ownership also matters for individuals trade policy preferences independent of factor type home ownership in counties with a manufacturing mix concentrated in comparative disadvantage industries is correlated with support for trade barriers this finding suggests that in addition to current factor incomes driving preferences as in standard trade models preferences also depend on asset values

low schooling for girls slower growth for all cross country evidence on the effect of gender inequality in education on economic development using cross country and panel regressions this article investigates how gender inequality in education affects long term economic growth such inequality is found to have an effect on economic growth that is robust to changes in specifications and controls for potential endogeneities the results suggest that gender inequality in education directly affects economic growth by lowering the average level of human capital in addition growth is indirectly affected through the impact of gender inequality on investment and population growth some 0 4 0 9 percentage points of differences in annual per capita growth rates between east asia and sub saharan africa south asia and the middle east can be accounted for by differences in gender gaps in education between these regions

gender inequality and economic growth a cross country analysis abstract this paper investigates empirically the determinants of economic growth for a set of semi industrialized export oriented economies in which women provide the bulk of labor in the export sector the primary hypothesis tested is that gender inequality which contributes to women s relatively lower wages was a stimulus to growth via the effect on exports during 1975 95 empirical analysis shows that gdp growth is positively related to gender wage inequality in contrast to recent work which suggests that income inequality slows growth evidence also indicates that part of the impact of gender wage inequality on growth is transmitted through its positive effect on investment as a share of gdp

worker substitutability and patterns of unionisation a strategic three party bargaining model is developed in which one distinguished party the firm has to reac h agreements with the other two each of which is a group of workers in the prebargaining stage the two worker groups decide whether to organize jointly or separately the main observation relates the equi librium pattern of unionization to the substitutability in production between the two groups the outcome is joint or separate unions acco rding to whether the two groups are substitute or complementary facto rs of production the analysis also considers possibilities for firm s strategic intervention in the unionization process copyright 1988 by royal economic society

contracts and externalities how things fall apart a single principal interacts with several agents offering them contracts the crucial assumption of this paper is that the outside option payoffs of the agents depend positively on how many uncontracted or free agents there are we study how such a principal unwelcome though he may be approaches the problem of contract provision to agents when coordination failure among the latter group is explicitly ruled out two variants are considered when the principal cannot re approach agents there is a unique equilibrium in which contract provision is split up into two phases in phase 1 simultaneousoffers at good though varying terms are made to a number of agents in phase 2 offers must be made sequentially and their values are discontinuously lower they are close to the very lowest of all the outside options when the principal can repeatedly approach the same agent there is a multiplicity of equilibria in some of these the agents have the power to force delay they can hold off the principal s overtures temporarily but they must succumb in finite time in both models despite beingable to coordinate their actions agents cannot resist an invasion by the principal and hold to their best payoff it is in this sense that things eventually fall apart

when is growth pro poor evidence from a panel of countries abstract growth is pro poor if the poverty measure of interest falls according to this definition there are three potential sources of pro poor growth a a high growth rate of average incomes b a high sensitivity of poverty to growth in average incomes and c a poverty reducing pattern of growth in relative incomes i empirically decompose changes in poverty in a sample of developing countries during the 1980s and 1990s into these three components in the medium to long run most of the variation in changes in poverty can be attributed to growth in average incomes suggesting that policies and institutions that promote broad based growth should be central to the pro poor growth agenda most of the remainder of the variation in changes in poverty is due to poverty reducing patterns of growth in relative incomes rather than differences in the sensitivity of poverty to growth in average incomes cross country evidence provides relatively little guidance as to the policies and institutions that promote these other sources of pro poor growth

wealthier is healthier we estimate the effect of income on health using cross country timeseries data on health infant and child mortality and life expectancy and income per capita we use instrumental variables estimates using exogenous determinants of income growth to identify the pure income effect on health isolated from reverse causation or incidental association the long run income elasticity of infant and child mortality in developing countries lies between 0 2 and 0 4 using these estimates we calculate that over a half a million child deaths in the developing world in 1990 alone can be attributed to the poor economic performance in the 1980s

a letter to the editor on wage bargaining abstract the rubinstein perfect information alternating offers bargaining model is problematic when applied to wage negotiations a strike or any other industrial action is not an automatic consequence of a delay in reaching an agreement because production can continue normally also when negotiations take place this paper extends the rubinstein model to incorporate the choice of calling a strike and it is shown that in this model there is no longer a unique subgame perfect equilibrium and that strikes with a length in real time can occur in equilibrium

non cooperative bargaining and union formation we study a union formation decision problem when workers consist of two groups distinguished by different productivities workers may form either a joint union or two separate unions the whole decision process is modelled as an extensive form bargaining game workers form a joint union when the sizes or productivities of the groups are similar in the first case there is a wage differential which is more less than proportional to the productivity difference if the size of the more productive is smaller larger than that of the less productive in the second case there is no wage differential in this paper we study a union formation decision problem when workers consist of two groups distinguished by different productivities they may form either a joint union or two separate unions depending on the relative size and productivity of the two groups the whole decision process is modelled as an extensive form bargaining game in which the two groups of workers bargain with each other as well as with a firm the labour market is sharply distinguished from the goods market by the widespread practice of collective bargaining usually several groups of workers with different characteristics for example skill level or geographical location are represented as a single unit and or several employers form a single bargaining unit against a giant union this multiplicity of bargaining units creates a complicated bargaining structure and makes the outcome hard to analyse the purpose of this paper is to provide a model which captures this complexity and at the same time clarifies the underlying structure of bargaining power although economists have been aware of the multiplicity problem for a long time it has been received little rigorous theoretical treatment until recently davidson 1985 examined the possible gains that can be obtained by trade unions through joint bargaining in an oligopolistic industry there is a positive externality due to the fact that a higher wage rate in one firm generates a larger demand hence a higher wage in competing firms when a joint union is organized these externalities are internalized to the benefit of workers horn and wolinsky 1985 investigated the equilibrium pattern of unionization in an industry where a firm employs two types of workers they found that workers tend to form a single union when the two types are substitutes in the sense that the incremental contribution of one group to the firm s revenue is decreasing with respect to the size of the other group since workers bargaining power comes from the loss that they can

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

women and labor market changes in the global economy growth helps inequalities hurt and public policy matters this report examines the level and changes in female and male participation rates employment segregation and female wages relative to male wages across the world economy it funds sufficient evidence to support the view that labor markets in developing countries are transformed relatively quickly in the sense that gender differentials in employment and pay are narrowing much faster than they did in industrialized countries however the report evaluates the inefficiencies arising from persisting gender differentials in the labor market and finds them to be potentially significant the estimates also indicate that the resulting deadweight losses are borne primarily by women while men gain mainly in relative terms there are no real winners from discrimination the paper concludes that growth benefits women at large inequalities can have significantly adverse effects on welfare and market based development alone can be a weak instrument doe reducing inequality between the sexes to break the vicious cycle of women s low initial human capital endowments and inferior labor market outcomes compared to men s the report proposes greater access to education and training for girls and women enforceable equal pay and equal employment opportunities legislation a taxation and benefits structure that treats reproduction as an economic activity and women as equal partners within households and a better accounting of women s work to include invisible production

export orientation and female share of employment evidence from turkey abstract we investigate the relationship between export orientation and female share of employment in the turkish manufacturing sector during 1983 85 following the onset of export led industrialization policies using plant level data we find that female share of employment in a plant increases with the export to total output ratio of its sector the contribution of the study to the literature is its use of plant level data for a large number of plants enabling us to control for other determinants of female share of employment such as workers skill composition at the plant level

on the land assembly problem abstract we consider a segment of the land market where the entire available land stock is needed for the realization of some indivisible development project the stock is shared by several landholders who either collude or negotiate independently with the developer over the prices of their lots investigating the price setting behavior of the landowners and the optimal strategy of the developer we show that landowners set more moderate prices under collusion than when acting independently in the latter case the individual asking price falls with the size of the land share and the total price increases with the number of landowners as regards the optimal strategy we find that the developer will in general not offer the lowest price he expects to be accepted by the landowners

economic openness democracy and income inequality an empirical analysis scholars have studied effects of economic openness and democracy on national income inequality in two literatures in democracy studies scholars agree democracy reduces inequality but empirical evidence is ambiguous in globalization studies effects of economic openness on inequality are debated but have not been rigorously examined this article is the first systematic statistical study of the effects of both economic openness and democracy on income inequality these effects need to be studied together the authors measure national income inequality from a comprehensive gini coefficient data set economic openness is measured from trade flows foreign direct investment inflows and financial capital inflows the period studied is 1960 to 1996 the unit of analysis is a country decade and the sample includes 69 countries the authors find that democracy and trade reduce income inequality foreign direct investments increase income inequality and financial capital does not affect income inequality policy implications are discussed

delay in multilateral bargaining under complete information abstract this paper analyzes a complete information infinite horizon multilateral bargaining model in which one player bargains with each of the other players one at a time and binding cash offer contracts are used to govern transactions under a weak stationarity condition on equilibrium strategies we characterize the set of equilibria for the game we show that when players are sufficiently patient significant delay in reaching agreements may emerge and this delay can become longer quickly as the number of involved parties rises indeed when the number of bargainers is large perpetual disagreement can occur in equilibrium journal of economic literature classification numbers c78 d23 d62

decomposing the gender gap in cognitive skills in a poor rural economy girls lag markedly behind boys in education in many developing countries which may slow economic growth and increase inequity this paper uses indicators of the output of the education production process cognitive skills to characterize and to investigate the determinants of the large educational gender gap in rural pakistan local school availability accounts for about a third of the total cognitive achievement gender gap and over two fifths of that in numeracy which implies that policies that increased local school availability for girls could reduce substantially the gender gaps in cognitive skills to further reduce these gender gaps will require policies that focus on the demand side of the market where our results suggest the response to modest changes in incentives may be high

unequal laws and the disempowerment of women in the labor market evidence from firm level data institutions are defined as the set of rules that govern human interactions when these rules are discriminatory they may disempower segments of a population in the economic spheres of activity this study explores whether laws that discriminate against women influence their engagement in the economy the study adopts a holistic approach exploring an overall measure of unequal laws also known as legal gender disparities and relates it to several labor market outcomes for women using data for more than 60 000 firms across 104 economies the study finds that unequal laws not only discourage women s participation in the private sector workforce but also their likelihood to become top managers and owners of firms suggestive evidence indicates that access to finance and corruption are pathways by which legal gender disparities disempower women in the labor market

vocational training programs and youth labor market outcomes evidence from nepal abstract lack of skills is arguably one of the most important determinants of high levels of unemployment and poverty in response policymakers often initiate vocational training programs in effort to enhance skill formation among the youth using a regression discontinuity design we examine a large youth training intervention in nepal we find twelve months after the start of the training program that the intervention generated an increase in non farm employment of 10 percentage points itt estimates and up to 31 percentage points for program compliers late estimates we also detect sizeable gains in monthly earnings women who start self employment activities inside their homes largely drive these impacts we argue that low baseline educational levels and non farm employment levels and nepal s social and cultural norms towards women drive our large program impacts our results suggest that the program enables otherwise underemployed women to earn an income while staying at home close to household errands and in line with the socio cultural norms that prevent them from taking up employment outside the house

feminization of the labor force the effects of long term development and structural adjustment abstract using crosscountry data pooled for 1985 and 1990 we analyze the relationship between women s share of the labor force and the processes of long term economic development and macroeconomic changes associated with structural adjustment we find that the relationship between long term development and women s share of the labor force is u shaped controlling for the feminization u we also find that structural adjustment policies have led to an increase in feminization of the labor force via worsening income distribution and increased openness

the gendered labor market impacts of trade liberalization evidence from brazil this paper investigates gender differences in the impact of brazil s trade liberalization on labor market outcomes to identify the causal effect of trade reforms the paper uses difference in difference estimation exploiting variation across microregions in pre liberalization industry composition the analysis finds that trade liberalization reduced male and female labor force participation and employment rates but the effects on men were significantly larger thereby tariff reductions contributed to gender convergence in labor force participation and employment rates gender differences are concentrated among the low skilled population and in the tradable sector where male and female workers are most likely to be imperfect substitutes

are high interest rates effective for stopping high inflation some skeptical notes high interest rates are considered an effective toolfor stopping high inflation the case for a policy of high interest rates is developed in terms of a conventional is lm model however among other things the model ignores some central aspects of modern credit markets in particular high interest rates may give rise to nonperforming bank loans thus seriously jeopardizing the effectiveness of the policy examples are developed in which it would be optimal to aim for equilibriums of low rather than high interest rates one of these examples hinges on the existence of nonindexed domestic debt this article looks at the effectiveness and desirability of relatively high interest rates in stabilization programs high interest rates refer to nominal interest rates that would result in unsustainable high real interest rates that is real rates of interest that would cause a state of generalized bankruptcy if maintained for a few months or a year if the program s inflation target were to be achieved the article evolves through a series of examples beginning with the is lm model described in section i despite its simplicity and early vintage the model is still important in discussions of policy the conventional is lm approach which gives strong support to a policy of high interest rates implies that tight money is effective in reducing economic activity and through the phillips curve is also effective in lowering inflation the larger the interest rate the sooner price stability will be achieved section ii questions the relevance of the is lm result on the basis of two observations first we live in a world in which countries are closely linked from a financial point of view therefore high interest rates are likely to signal expectations of high devaluation or inflation second high inflation rates make expected or ex ante real interest rates look much smaller than if the stabilization plan s inflation targets were to be fulfilled consequently banks may continue lending despite high nominal rates with the passage of timne however firms will find themselves in serious financial straits which eventually may result in a state

striking for a bargain between two completely informed agents this paper models the wage contract negotiation procedure between a union and a firm as a sequential bargaining process in which the union must decide in each period whether or not to strike for the duration of that period we show that there exist subgame perfect equilibria in which the union engages in several periods of strikes prior to reaching a final agreement although both parties are completely rational and fully informed this has implications for other inefficient phenomena such as tariff wars debt negotiations and wars in general we characterize the set of equilibria show that strikes can occur in real time and discuss extensions of the model such as lockouts and the possibility of multiple recontracting opportunities copyright 1991 by american economic association

trade openness foreign direct investment and child labor summary the skeptics of globalization argue that increased trade openness and foreign direct investment induce developing countries to keep labor costs low for example by letting children work this article argues that there are good theoretical reasons why globalization might actually have the opposite effect we test this with various measures of child labor and provide the first analysis of foreign investment in addition to trade we present evidence that countries that are more open to trade and or have a higher stock of foreign direct investment also have a lower incidence of child labor this holds for the labor force participation rate of 10 14 year old children the secondary school nonattendance rate and a count measure of economic sectors with child labor incidence as the dependent variables globalization is associated with less not more child labor

explaining african economic performance africa has had slow growth and a massive exodus of capital in many respects it has been the most capital hostile region we review and interpret the aggregate level and microeconomic literatures to identify the key explanations for this performance there is a reasonable correspondence of the two sets of evidence pointing to four factors as being important these are a lack of openness to international trade a high risk environment a low level of social capital and poor infrastructure these problems are to a substantial extent attributable to government behaviour and the paper includes a review of the political economy literature which addresses that behaviour

modeling the effects of trade on women at work and at home abstract foreign trade affects women s wages and jobs their household work and their leisure this paper develops a model which covers not only all the sectors of the market economy but also social reproduction and leisure activities for women and men separately the model which in other respects is a standard cge computable general equilibrium model is applied to a simplified set of data for bangladesh its use is illustrated by simulating the gendered effects of changes in trade policies and capital flows

achieving fair trade through a social tariff regime a policy thought experiment this paper pursues a fair trade policy thought experiment that i presents the social index tariff structure sits regime and ii simulates a multilateral sits regime using bilateral trade flow data a sits regime seeks to promote strong labour and environmental standards and other initiatives that engender human development equality and sustainability it does this by institutionalising both the incentives and means for countries to enhance their performance in these areas we demonstrate that a multilateral sits regime would generate substantial and stable flows of development funds while incentivising an international race to the top in labour and environmental standards and more broadly in human development equality and sustainability

transparency complementarity and holdout this paper characterizes the conditions under which holdout i e bargaining inefficiency may or may not be significant in a two sided one buyer many seller model with complementarity we address this problem in a very general setup with a bargaining protocol that is symmetric and allows for both publicly observable as well as secret offers and a technology that allows for variable degrees of complementarity the central insight is that the transparency of the bargaining protocol formalized by whether offers are publicly observable or secret as well as the extent of complementarity play a critical role in generating efficiency even with perfect complementarity holdout seems to be largely resolved whenever the bargaining protocol is public but not if it is secret further irrespective of the bargaining protocol holdout is resolved if the marginal contribution of the last seller is not too large

a picture of wage inequality and the allocation of labor through a period of trade liberalization the case of brazil this paper constructs a picture of the labor market impact of trade liberalization in brazil we examine the level and dispersion of wages the skilled wage premium and employment composition before and after trade liberalization after trade reform there was a rise in the returns to college education which since the share of college workers also rose is attributable to rising demand this change did not increase overall wage dispersion because of the small share of college educated workers and because of decreasing returns to intermediate levels of education

trade openness and economic growth a cross country empirical investigation abstract this paper demonstrates that trade liberalization does not have a simple and straightforward relationship with growth using a large number of openness measures for a cross section of countries over the last three decades we use two groups of trade openness measures the regression results for numerous trade intensity ratios are mostly consistent with the existing literature however contrary to the conventional view on the growth effects of trade barriers our estimation results show that trade barriers are positively and in most specifications significantly associated with growth especially for developing countries and they are consistent with the findings of theoretical growth and development literature

asymmetric information bargaining problems with many agents a yes or no decision must be made about some issue all agents must agree the coase theorem asserts that the efficient outcome will always result suppose the value positive or negative that an individual attaches to an affirmative decision is privately known to that individual it is proved under very mild conditions that with independent types as the number of agents increases the probability of an affirmative efficient decision goes to zero an example in which it is common knowledge that an affirmative decision is efficient and yet the probability of such a decision goes to zero is given

sequential bargaining with incomplete information this paper describes a simple two person two period bargaining game and solves it using the concept of perfect bayesian equilibrium in which the actions of each player convey information which is used by his opponent the paper examines the effects of changes in bargaining costs the size of the contract zone and the length of the bargaining process on such aspects of the solution as the probability of impasse and the likelihood of concessions the combination of information transfer and the lack of pre commitment embodied in perfectness yields many surprising results common perceptions about the effects of parameter changes on bargaining processes are suspect and should be checked in the particular game being discussed

gender and multidimensional poverty in nicaragua an individual based approach most existing empirical papers concerned about multidimensional poverty use the household as the unit of analysis so that the multidimensional poverty status of the household is equated with the multidimensional poverty status of all its members this assumption ignores intra household inequalities additionally households containing both a female and a male cannot contribute to a gender gap in poverty so gender differentials in poverty cannot be estimated but the sustainable development goals have put special emphasis on gender equality therefore new measures able to capture the gender differences are needed consequently in this paper we propose an individual based multidimensional poverty measure in order to estimate the three i s of multidimensional poverty incidence intensity and inequality in nicaragua as well as the gender differentials we also estimate logit regressions to better understanding the determinants of multidimensional poverty in this country overall we find that there are statistically significant gender differences in multidimensional poverty in nicaragua but they are estimated to be small and lower than 5 however the gender differential in inequality is larger than 10 and it suggests that multi dimensionally poor women are living in very intense poverty when compared with multi dimensionally poor men we also find that the elderly and children are the most vulnerable people in terms of multidimensional poverty in this country furthermore when information on employment domestic work and social protection is considered in the analysis the gender gaps become more substantial and women are more likely to be poor than men

perfect equilibria in a negotiation model rubinstein s alternating offers bargaining model is enriched by assuming that players payoffs in disagreement periods are determined by a normal form game it is shown that such a model can have multiple perfect equilibria including inefficient ones provided that players are sufficiently patient delay is possible even though there is perfect information and the players are fully rational the length of delay depends only on the payoff structure of the disagreement game and not on the discount factor not all feasible and individually rational payoffs of the disagreement game can be supported as average disagreement payoffs indeed some negotiation games have a unique perfect equilibrium with immediate agreement

canaries and vultures a quantitative history of monetary mismanagement in brazil during the last two decades of the twentieth century brazil went through a sequence of failed stabilization plans that tried to cope with an enduring hyperinflation this paper uses a money demand model to evaluate monetary policies during those episodes consistency between money supply and expected conditional money demand growth rates is considered for each plan it is shown that unsuccessful programs were marked by excessive liquidity the results not only suggest that monetary mismanagement led to the failure of the plans but also that the excessive liquidity could have been predicted