after chayanov and lenin new paths of agrarian capitalism abstract the theory of peasant economy is dominated by two classic authors of largely contradictory views a v chayanov and v i lenin this paper begins by setting forth their contrasting interpretations of differentiation among the russian peasantry at the end of the nineteenth century and the contrasting theoretical frameworks of marginalism and marxism which underlie those interpretations it then proceeds to set its debate against certain aspects of current transformations in the agrarian structures of latin america which call for a transcendence of this classic debate in particular it is pointed out in conclusion that family farms far from being a feature of peasant societies are more common and more dominant in countries and regions which have experienced a relatively dynamic process of capitalist development

a study in development by dispossession the paper analyses corporate led jobless growth propelled by development induced displacement caused by land acquisition by the state it shows as its inevitable outcome an expanding informal sector which encroaches upon land related natural resources allocated to the corporate sector this reduces the latter s labour productivity and competitiveness along with negative impact on environment and social cohesion using the example of india as a multiparty democracy the paper points to the emergence of a dangerous developmental politics of mutualism between political parties and corporations over land acquisition which subverts the very democratic process through which political power is wielded

the state and economic stagnation in tropical africa abstract politics while only one strand in the explanation of africa s massive economic problems is nonetheless a significant factor a central conundrum facing postcolonial political leaders is how to govern and hold together unintegrated peasant societies in the absence of legitimacy personal rule a particular mode of patrimonial governance provides an answer permitting regime survival and the advancement of political insiders but personal rule has an economically destructive tendency that only shrewd political leadership and propitious world economic conditions can check if uncontrolled certain political practices corrode bureaucratic and legal rationality and promote the misallocation of scarce public resources the result can be a downward spiral of interrelated political and economic decline that is increasingly difficult to reverse

the economic viability and stability of capitalised family farming an analysis of agricultural decollectivisation in peru agricultural decollectivisation in peru created a nascent capitalist family farm sector does the empirical fact of parcellisation suggest that small scale agriculture is optimal will land reconcentration occur with differentiation among the parceleros studying the causes and consequences of parcellisation provides insight into a number of questions relating to alternative production systems productive efficiency is compared between the parceleros and their co operative predecessors and among the parceleros some conclusions reached are 1 rice yields increased relative to the final years of co operative production 2 sample parceleros and co operatives exhibit similar levels of technical efficiency 3 the production potential of parcelled units is estimated to be less than that of a well functioning co operative system and 4 differentiation among parceleros is occurring as a range of incomes is realised from a more or less homogeneous resource base

a framework for the analysis of evolving patron client ties in agrarian economies abstract this paper looks systematically at the various factors that can account for the disappearance or the transformation of the institution of patronage that used to structure labor and other relationships in many agrarian societies of the past it is an attempt to offer a unifying framework capable of guiding one s attention to the relevant variables and to the way they interact in this process the rather simplistic view according to which there is a unique linear path through which patronage evolves is called into question and a number of different scenarios are instead presented these alternatives are illustrated with reference to asia

the agrarian barrier to industrial growth it is argued here that in transitional economies industrial growth depends not so much on the size of the agricultural surplus but rather on the rates of productivity growth and population growth in agriculture via their effects on the size of the home market for manufactures in developing this argument estimates of the agricultural surplus and inter sectoral market shares in post restoration japan and post independence india are compared a typology of agrarian systems is then suggested based on how alternative systems influence productivity and population trends in agriculture the typology is illustrated with historical comparisons from europe japan and india

sharecropping and the capitalist transition in agriculture some evidence from the highlands of ecuador abstract sharecropping has been the subject of much debate among economists concerned with static efficiency and to some extent with equity this paper shifts the focus to the dynamics of structural change the research reported adds to the discussion a detailed account of a large number of sharecropping contracts and why they vary and offers a theory of the relationship between sharecropping as practised in the ecuadorian province of carchi and a particular pattern of structural change which is described as the transition to an agrarian structure dominated by capitalised family farms the prevalent use of wage labour on sharecropped land and the place of sharecropping in intergenerational asset transfers are shown to be important elements in explaining this transition

agriculture in recent development theory abstract this paper is a critical review of recent contributions to the literature on agriculture in development theory it considers and compares the main lines of advance made within neoclassical neo marxian and structuralist approaches recent neo marxian and structuralist studies of agrarian development reveal that traditional agriculture is neither stationary nor efficient that resource allocation cannot be separated from wealth distribution or production organization that forms of surplus appropriation do not necessarily follow the dictates of efficiency that the social relations of production may inhibit accumulation and determine the forms of technological change that the state s role in primitive accumulation is more economic than explicitly coercive political and that political and macroeconomic constraints preclude a simple get the prices right view of the intersectoral terms of trade the thrust of these developments is to challenge both neoclassical and some orthodox marxian formulations of agrarian development issues and add to the insights to be gleaned from a political economy of development

income distribution transaction costs and market fragmentation in informal credit markets in an environment characterized by inequitable wealth distribution and limited market infrastructural institutions the trust component of credit transactions is founded on personal relations through these information and transaction costs advantages are provided but also control and unequal bargaining power can be exercised in the informal sector transaction and information costs will lead to non price closure in credit markets while behavioral differences in lenders will lead to manipulation of prices as well as of quantities the quantity closure rules are modeled and tested for two types of informal lenders in the agricultural sector of the philippines the trader lenders and the farmer lenders it is found that the two groups of lenders systematically sort their borrowers and ration credit copyright 1992 by oxford university press

internal adjustments to falling civil service salaries insights from uganda abstract real basic salaries of civil servants in many developing countries have fallen during the past 15 years little is known however as to how the civil service personnel structure and pay system have responded to the salary cuts civil service basic salaries fell drastically in uganda during 1975 1988 the adaptive responses of the civil service are identified allowances have not increased to cushion the salary cuts as is alleged to have happened in many developing countries the adaptive responses have had negative effects on efficiency and equity within the civil service they have reversed the decline in the public wage bill the raison d etre for deep salary slashes in the first place

on prices and economic power explaining recent changes in intersectoral relations in the indian economy two contrasting views about the relationship between agriculture and industry and in particular about the optimal level of the terms of trade between these two sectors are identified and first set in the context of the political economy of contemporary india methodological issues relating to the correct measurement of intersectoral price shifts are taken up and it is shown that these have considerable bearing on current controversies it is argued in particular that single factor explanations of the behaviour of the terms of trade lack credibility and that these have to be analysed in the context of wider issues of growth and imbalance in developing economies

can land market reform mitigate the exclusionary aspects of rapid agro export growth abstract agro export growth has been associated with land concentration and employment instability in the wake of exclusionary agro export booms land market reform has been proposed as a way to improve peasant land access through the market developing a model of the economic competitiveness of different classes of producers this paper evaluates the likely effectiveness of land market reform while the model itself gives ambiguous answers numerical simulation identifies a large gap between market price and peasants abilty to pay for land among the components of land market reform policy progressive land taxation appears unlikely to close that competitiveness gap while farm land mortgage banks appear more likely to mitigate exclusionary aspects of growth

trust interlinking transactions and credit in the industrial district an essential feature of the industrial district is trust among individuals and firms within it this paper focuses mainly on trust based on investments in building up a good reputation that is a personal capital that can even substitute for collateral in obtaining credit informal credit often linked to other transactions and especially subcontracting is therefore an important way of financing economic development in the industrial district moreover the importance of trust as personal capital gives rise to a double financial intermediation in the industrial district this double intermediation constitutes a device to reduce information problems that are usually responsible for credit rationing c 1994 academic press inc copyright 1994 by oxford university press

the impact of credit on peasant productivity and differentiation in nicaragua abstract an endogenous switching regressions framework is used to structure and identify the impact of credit on small farm food production in nicaragua the results which emerge weakly support the hypothesis that credit had a positive impact on production and could be expected to reduce the pattern of structurally unbalanced growth in nicaraguan agriculture however the estimated impact is of a form which implies a process of differentiation and unequal growth in the peasant sector in the wake of the new opportunities afforded by credit

divergent cultures when public organizations perform well in developing countries abstract throughout the developing world there are organizations that perform relatively well despite dauntingly unfavorable contexts and despite overall poor public sector performance this article explores evidence from 29 organizations in six countries to suggest that the concept of organizational culture provides a useful hypothesis to explain why some of them performed relatively well while others did not organizational mystique management style and performance expectations contributed to positive organizational cultures in better performing organizations while some autonomy in personnel management provided a facilitating context for these characteristics to be developed

governing access to forests in northern ghana micro politics and the rents of non enforcement summary decentralization of natural resource management is often presented as a novelty however successive attempts to decentralize authority were undertaken during the development of forest policy in the northern territories of the gold coast colony between the 1930s and 1950s from 1960 however this was rolled back forest policy was thenceforth characterized by centralization exclusion and restrictive legislation new forest policies of local management from the 1990s attempt to change this but differ from colonial decentralization in terms of institutional fragmentation and the absence of effective fiscal decentralization the assumed illegality of people s use of the resources and the non enforcement of the law provides a context for monetary and political rent seeking for political agents

profit rent and the terms of trade a rejoinder abstract in response to my article in this issue gibson and mcleod argue that by ignoring a viability condition i incorrectly conclude that a positive profit rate is not necessary for the perverse profit response furthermore they argue that a positive profit rate not the technology parameters is the profoundly important social determinant of their original result it is shown here that the imposition of the viability condition does not contradict my conclusion the relevance ascribed by gibson and mcleod to their positive profit rate condition is disputed and an unexpected relationship between rural wages and profit rates is uncovered technology is again shown to be the modulator of the distributional struggle finally the empirical evidence presented by gibson and mcleod in support of a fixed profit equilibrium trap for u s agriculture is examined and its relevance questioned

earnings and ethnicity in trinidad and tobago this study employs 1993 continuous sample survey of the population cssp data for trinidad and tobago to investigate the determinants of earnings by ethnicity the data organised into three ethnic groupings reveal lower levels of remuneration in the labour market for africans and indians than for individuals of other ethnicities taken as a whole while the larger portion of the earnings differentials generally appears to be explained by ethnic differences in characteristics valued by the labour market africans and indians would benefit substantially if they were to receive the same rates of remuneration for their educational endowments as workers of other ethnicities in the trinidad and tobago labour market notwithstanding indians lowest average earnings africans appear more likely to be discriminated against

class relations in an asiatic regime this paper develops a theoretical analysis of the economic and political relationships among the state the peasantry and zamindars in mughal india 1550 1750 the analysi s rests on a pasinetti type accumulation model which also incorporate s state taxation tax evasion a wages fund and a variable peasant s aving propensity it is shown that zamindar incomes and the economic dependence of peasants are related to the extent of state taxation an d of evasion potential sources of systematic change are identified b y highlighting both conflict and harmony of class interests arising f rom taxation evasion military or luxury expenditures and productiv e investments copyright 1987 by oxford university press

forced commerce and agrarian growth abstract the paper explains why contractually interlocked agrarian markets differ from price and quantity adjustments under pressures of excess demand supply in neoclassical general equilibrium analysis such contractual interlocking arising say from the indebtedness of the peasants gives rise to a contrived system of forced commerce this commercial mode of exploitation not only exhibits unequal relations of economic power but more important it is also a mechanism for maintaining such unequal power structure often at the cost of retarding agrarian growth the paper thus emphasizes the need to understand the very notion of market exchange and commerce in backward agriculture from an unconventional viewpoint

characteristics of mexican economic growth empirical testing of some latin american structuralist hypotheses abstract this article examines a series of hypotheses about the latin american industrialization process put forward by the structuralist school of thought using mexico as a test case in particular it examines the relationship between the distribution of income and associated patterns of consumption and industrial structure and its implications on demand constraints growth constraints employment constraint and multinational control the results indicate that the modern traditional dichotomy based on durable versus non durable consumer goods is not the best way to examine this relationship since the consumption patterns for durable goods do not show a homogeneous behavior when distribution changes overall it was found that growth and employment constraints and multinational control seem to get more exacerbated under greater inequality with respect to the demand constraints no definite conclusion can be made because of the mentioned heterogeneity in the response of durable goods to changes in distribution and the lack of information on relative excess capacity and or dynamic linkages of the different sectors

food supply and inflation abstract the paper presents an analytic version of the latin american structuralist theory of inflation it emphasizes the difference between the productive sectors of the economy and draws attention to the fact that the inflationary process is closely linked to inconsistent claims for shares in income it describes a keynesian economy with two three sectors real desired wages are rigid money is passive it is shown that the structuralist hypotheses are capable of generating disequilibria that can lead to constantly rising prices without any built in mechanism to offset them steady inflation can only persist if workers allow their real wage to be kept below target as the workers try to catch on the model will blow up an accelerating inflation can be observed in many latin american countries during periods when wage settlements aimed at restoring inflation losses escaped the government control the paper also explores the implications of foreign trade it shows that under structuralist hypotheses external disequilibria cannot be corrected through exchange rate devaluations alone and it examines the stagflationary impacts of an increase in the price of imported intermediates

terms of trade and domestic distribution export led growth with abundant labour abstract a general equilibrium macro model is constructed to explore effects of export led growth policies on the terms of trade and the domestic distribution of a developing region with abundant labour this region the south trades with another the north they have different technologies and supplies of factors it is shown that under certain conditions of dualism in the production of goods and of abundant labour supply in the south an increase in the volume of exports from the south may bring about a sustained worsening of the south s terms of trade with the north even if this increase in exports is due to a positive shift in demand from the north this change in the terms of trade is accompanied by a sustained loss of purchasing power of wages within the south these results take place in a walrasian stable market when technologies are more homogenous and labour less abundant the results are reversed increased exports will take place together with improvements in terms of trade and a tendency to equalise factor prices between the regions the results argue for coordination of domestic and international policies with special attention to technologies and labour markets

heterodox theories of economic growth and income distribution a partial survey heterodox theories of economic growth and income distribution are surveyed focusing on major theories and recent contributions first a general framework for examining growth and distribution is discussed in terms of which classical marxian and post keynesian kaleckian and other theories are presented since this framework examines how variables are determined in equilibrium second dynamics behind equilibria are examined focusing on goods market and labor market changes third the framework is extended in a variety of ways to examine additional models addressing productivity growth and technical change money and inflation finance and debt additional distributional considerations multisector issues open economy questions and the environment it is concluded that the literature on heterodox theories of growth and distribution is vibrant large and growing and addresses many issues that are ignored or neglected in orthodox theories including power unemployment and aggregate demand

market failure and control of labour power towards an explanation of structure and change in indian agriculture part 1 1 although existing approaches do on occasion shed light on certain specific aspects of indian agriculture in general they run into problems of methodology or content or more frequently both in particular it is misleading to treat indian agri culture in peasant economy no markets or neoclassical perfect market terms and problematic to view it as semi feudal markets subordinate to extra economic factors 2 analysis of the relationships between farm size land productivity sharecropping and mechanisation suggest the need for an integrated model which emphasises both the unemployment and poverty of poor peasants and the problems of supervision and control of wage labour and tenants 3 proper appreciation of the interlinked role of these factors can help to explain the system s inability to combine the abundant labour of the poor with resources owned largely by the rich it can also go on to explain institutional responses like sharecropping as partial solutions to the problem of intensifying labour use and technological ones such as mechanisation as a means of delinking large farm growth from the need to intensify labour use 4 the tensions and choices between these responses underlie both the problem of stagnation and the phenomenon of switches from sharecropping to mechanisation 5 for associated reasons more rapid growth in indian agriculture is unlikely without major institutional changes to create much new employment and is likely to be more capital intensive than is usually assumed

terms of trade policy in a model with non produced means of production abstract terms of trade policies between agriculture and industry are analysed in a two sector sraffian model if both sectors use only produced means of production and labor it can be shown that an improvement in agriculture s terms of trade always leads to higher profits in agriculture however when non produced means of production are introduced an exogenous increase in the relative price of agricultural commodities may cause the rate of profit in agriculture to increase remain constant or even decrease two preconditions are identified for the case in which a favorable movement in agriculture s terms of trade decreases that sector s profit rate first at least one quality of competitively priced land must be scarce relative to the total output required second the initial economy wide rate of profit must be positive finally the effect of an input subsidy used in conjunction with terms of trade policy is considered it is shown that under certain conditions reducing the price of production inputs can also cause profits to fall and rents to rise in agriculture

stagnation income distribution and monopoly power the deceleration in the rate of industrial growth in the indian economy since the middlesixties initially interpreted by some as a temporary downward deviation from trend hasnow come to be generally accepted as reflecting long run tendencies towards stagnation several explanations for these tendencies have been offered bhagwati and desai 1970 and bhagwati and srinivasan 1975 have focused on inefficiencies and the misallocationof resources arising from industrial policies pursued by the government others chakravarty 1974 raj 1976 and vaidyanathan 1974 among them have emphasisedthe sluggishness of agricultural growth which is alleged to have retarded industrial growthby limiting markets and the supply of wage goods and raw materials a third view reflectedin srinivasan and narayana 1977 for example has put the blame on a slackening of invest ment demand due to lower public investment but does not explain why public investmentfell or why its fall restrained industrial growth finally there is the explanation put forthin bagchi 1970 1975 1982 in nayyar 1978 and in parts of mitra 1977 that inequali ties in income distribution have resulted in a limited demand for industrial goods reducedincentives for investment and therefore reduced growth this view seems to suggest apositive relation between growth and income equality which is opposed to the generallyaccepted idea derived from cambridge growth models that higher growth requires greaterinequality the purpose of this paper is to examine the last explanation by considering the inter action between growth and income distribution in an underdeveloped economy with thehelp of a simple macroeconomic model the model is a stylisation of the indian economy so that we will be able to use the model to assess the argument that a deceleration in therate of growth of the indian industrial economy could have been caused by an unequaldistribution of income the argument will not be made that this income distributional con straint is the binding constraint on industrial growth the model will merely examine theinternal consistency of the argument that a bad income distribution could explain stagnation in the sense of reduced growth and show that in the indian context as in other similarcontexts this argument can be put forward in explaining stagnation our argument is first presented with a highly simplified schematisation of the indianeconomy which we shall call the basic model the economy modelled produces only one

share tenancy external risk and labour use a note on pakistani data this article outlines a labour market based explanation of the institution of sharecropping it is argued that two distinct rationales for sharecropping within the non tradable labour based explanation pertain to the supervisory labour endowments of land owners on the one hand and non supervisory family labour endowments of tenant households on the other the validity of these rationales is tested at a macro level based on data computed for each district of the punjab and sind provinces in pakistan it is found that a labour market based explanation of sharecropping is important in the pakistan context the analysis has some regional and dynamic implications as well

profit rent and the terms of trade a reply abstract andrews 1985 investigates the theoretical coherence and policy relevance of our 1982 model and concludes contrary to our own findings that a positive rate of profit is not necessary to obtain a two signed derivative of the profit rate with respect to agriculture s terms of trade she characterizes the model as neo ricardian on the grounds that the technology is the culprit and also questions the empirical relevance of our fixed profit equilibrium or land price treadmill we show here that if a viability condition stated in our original paper holds parameter values of the model must yield a positive rate of profit if the profit rate is to fall following an improvement in the terms of trade we then contrast our model with a more neoclassical one in which the sign of the derivative does strictly depend on the technology that is upon factor intensities finally we present empirical evidence from a detailed study of the u s economy based on our original model these data support the existence of a land price treadmill in agriculture especially for countries in which workers are successful in defending a given real wage

on the dynamic instability of induced migration unemployment in a dual economy abstract previous attempts to integrate the todarian analysis of rural urban migration with the dual economy growth model have relied upon an essentially static version of the migration hypothesis inappropriate in a growth context in this paper it is shown that when a dynamic version of the hypothesis is used the steady state growth equilibrium whilst characterised by a positive unemployment rate typical of todarian models is unstable these results have policy implications which differ from those presented in the previous literature

rent income distribution and growth in an underdeveloped agrarian economy abstract a model is constructed to examine the determination of income distribution in an underdeveloped agrarian economy such as the indian one in which both rich capitalist farmers and poor subsistence farmers rent in land from landlords it is used to analyse the growth and income distributional consequences of different kinds of institutional and technological changes the possibilities of the growth of capitalism and the impact of industrial expansion

explaining positive deviance in public sector reforms in development summary public sector reforms are commonplace in developing countries much of the literature about these reforms reflects on their failures this paper asks about the successes and investigates which of two competing theories best explain why some reforms are positive deviants solution and leader driven change sldc and problem driven iterative adaptation pdia the theories are used to analyze data emerging from a case survey involving thirty cases from princeton university s innovations for successful society iss program the bulk of evidence from this study supports a pdia explanation but there is reason to believe that sldc hypotheses also have value

the endogeneity between language and earnings international analyses this study is concerned with the determinants of dominant language fluency its effects on earnings and its endogeneity with earnings among immigrants dominant language fluency is hypothesized to

terms of trade and class conflict in a computable general equilibrium model for mexico a computable general equilibrium model for mexico is constructed in which class conflict over the distribution of the surplus is the principal determinant of the terms of trade the model consists of seven social classes and eight productive sectors classes are distinguished as fundamental or subsumed according to whether their incomes are primarily determined by conscious class struggle or by the resulting system of relative prices flexible prices are assumed to clear markets for which non produced means of production such as agricultural land limit supply while output in the remaining sectors is determined by the level of effective demand for the latter sectors two theories of price formation are compared and are seen to differ radically in their implicit conception of the nature of class conflict a keynes kalecki closure is considered in which prices are determined by a fixed mark up on costs this enables capitalists to protect themselves from incursions on the rate of profit due to labou

agro export production and peasant land access examining the dynamic between adoption and accumulation abstract new technologies and export opportunities have often contributed to dualistic agrarian structure and intense social conflict in latin american a switching regression model developed in this paper explicitly links export adoption and land accumulation patterns controlling for pre existing differentiation processes applied to survey data gathered from peasant households in guatemala the model provides evidence of equitable structural change induced by a recent export boom in vegetable crops however the optimism of these results is tempered by consideration of the unfavorable longer term market dynamics confronting small scale producers

brazil s agrarian structure changes from 1970 through 1980 abstract structural patterns that accompany the growth and modernization of brazil s agrarian economy are identified despite increasing land concentration a rather large and disproportionate economic contribution of sizable numbers of very small farms is documented as is an enhanced vitality of larger farms meanwhile large quantities of unused agricultural land remain on many medium sized and large farms the expected inverse relationship between farm size and various measures of production per land unit is validated and reasons for the inverse relationship are deduced production is so large on small farms because their intensity of resource use overwhelms the facts that yields are greater and higher valued export crops are more usually found on large farms that capitalized intermediate and large farms seem destined to play a larger role in future production in brazil is argued but it is doubtful that the small farm and by implication the peasantry will disappear in the foreseeable future

does supervision matter some hypothesis tests using indian farm level data abstract a model is developed and estimated to test for heterogeneity of family and hired labor in agricultural production and to estimate the impact of employer supervision on the productivity of hired labor plot level data are used from a rice growing village in semi arid tropical india the hypothesis that family and hired labor are homogeneous inputs was rejected results indicate that family member supervision is required to increase hired labor productivity output loss attributable to operating at reduced supervision intensity was greater than 10 on over 40 of the plots

agricultural terms of trade and distributional perversities in a neo ricardian model abstract the comparative static effects of a change in terms of trade for the agricultural sector are examined in a two sector neo ricardian model when wages are held constant and intensive rents are earned by owners of the non produced land resource it is possible for a favorable shift in agriculture s terms of trade to lead to a fall in the rate of profit on circulating capital or a decline in the rental rate on land the conditions causing these perverse profit and rental rate responses are shown to depend on the type of high yielding technology available the relevance of the analysis to policy making and investment in the agriculture sector is discussed

women s earnings reexamined since a discussion of details may obscure important general issues we start by restating what we consider to be the two major contributions of our 1974 study 5 1 the methodological contribution lies in the specification of an earnings function when human capital investment occurs at different rates including zero over various segments of the life cycle such specifications are appropriate for persons when market work does not continue throughout the usual working age or for analyses of continuous work histories segmented by some relevant criteria such as job change and occupational or geographic mobility applied work on these subjects continues 1 and specifications are undergoing refinement in retrospect the model we used to analyze earnings of women is not the best but it is serviceable which permits us to refrain from injecting new matters into the present discussion 2 the substantive interest in our study of earnings of women focuses on several propositions a even with identical current characteristics women whose past experience was shorter have currently lower wages as their total job investments were smaller b total investments are smaller not only because they are spread over fewer years of work experience but also because persons who spend less time in market work invest less per year worked than persons with longer work experience c if work experience is interrupted for any significant length of time job skills tend to erode so the human capital stock is reduced by depreciation or atrophy the relevance of these propositions to the analysis of the sexual wage gap is obvious in part women s wages are lower than men s because their labor force attachment is shorter and often discontinuous also the gap widens over the life cycle since initial differences in experience are necessarily small

south african land policy the legacy of history and current options abstract the highly dualistic farm structure of south africa and the low productivity of native african farmers have been the result of systematic distortions in land allocation output markets the provision of infrastructure agricultural credit and services the dualistic structure did not emerge because of genuine economies of scale in the large commercial sector other countries in latin america and africa that once supported a dualistic farm size structure through similar distortions have either implemented large scale land reforms or have experienced decades of peasant revolts and civil war the paper compares these international experiences to south africa and outlines judicial and market assisted approaches to south african land reform

trust in a rent seeking world health and government transformed in northeast brazil abstract this article draws lessons from a set of innovative programs carried out by a state government in brazil now widely acclaimed for excellence in public management key to the high performance was strong worker commitment to the job and what the state did to elicit a topic of little note in the development literature but of central importance in the literature of industrial performance and workplace transformation in the industrialized countries the state created an unusual sense of calling among the program s workers new prestige in the communities where they worked and an informed citizenry that both monitored the workers and trusted them

on price risk and the inverse farm size productivity relationship abstract the oft observed inverse relationship between farm size and productivity has elicited several explanations having important policy and theoretical implications using advances in the analysis of price risk effects on producer behavior and a simple two period model of an agricultural household that both produces and consumes under price uncertainty at the time labor allocation decisions are made this paper demonstrates analytically that a non degenerate land distribution and price risk can together produce an inverse relationship even absent any of the more common explanations empirical evidence from madagascar confirms the plausibility of this intuitive explanation for the phenomenon

employers discriminatory behavior and the estimation of wage discrimination this paper considers the linkage of empirical estimates of wage discrimination between two groups introduced by oaxaca 1973 to a theoretical model of employers discriminatory behavior it is shown that conditional on different assumptions about employers discriminatory tastes oaxaca s estimators of wage discrimination can be derived that the approach is more generally useful is demonstrated by deriving an alternative estimator of wage discrimination based on the assumption that within each type of labor e g unskilled skilled the utility function capturing employers discriminatory tastes is homogeneous of degree zero with respect to labor inputs from each of the two groups the estimators are compared empirically in an application to male female wage differentials

social articulation as a condition for equitable growth abstract a formal model is developed to establish the structural conditions that result in growth being progressive or regressive on the personal distribution of income these conditions include 1 intersectoral investment priorities between wage goods and luxuries and 2 the state of the levels and distribution of incomes which determines the social origin of demand for different sectors of the economy the particular combinations of investment and income structures that result in equalizing social articulation or unequalizing growth social disarticulation are derived we show empirically that the structural conditions that allowed rapid but unequalizing growth in brazil between 1968 and 1977 were those of social disarticulation

a note on social articulation abstract de janvry and sadoulet 1983 present a model of unequalizing growth and the closure rule of the model is discussed in this note it is shown that income distribution in the model is determined by the market clearing mechanism in the wage goods market and how the condition for social articulation is related to the excess demand function on the wage goods market

growth distribution and sectoral heterogeneity reading the kaleckians in latin america abstract the aim of this paper is to explore a parallelism between two episodes in the history of economic thought in order to suggest that the interaction between them can contribute to the research on kaleckian growth and distribution models first a brief summary of the theoretical development from steindl s stagnationist claims to the debate about demand regimes is offered then a more detailed account is provided of the latin american debate that began with furtado s stagnationist claims and resulted in the formulation of models of social articulation and disarticulation finally an analytical classification of kaleckian and latin american growth and distribution models is provided indicating the way in which sectoral heterogeneity and demand composition can act as a plausible link between growth and distribution

population growth and real wages of agricultural labourers in bangladesh a long run negative impact of population growth upon real wages is neither theoretically self evident nor in the case of rural bangladesh empirically clear cut in addition to its negative labour supply effect population growth may have a positive labour demand effect upon wages the latter may help to explain why bangladeshi districts with higher rural population densities have higher agricultural wages and why districts with more rapid population growth in the first half of this century subsequently experienced slower than average real wage declines an investigation of agricultural growth and agrarian structure as mediating variables in the population wage relation indicates that changes in average operational holding size inequality of landholdings and the extent and nature of tenancy contributed to this result

labor market discrimination against hispanic and black men h ispanic american men have lower average wage rates than white non hispanics in 1975 the average white non hispanic male wage earner in the united states earned 5 97 an hour mexican men earned 4 31 72 as much as white non hispanics puerto rican men earned 4 52 76 as much and cuban men earned 5 33 89 as much as white non hispanics by way of comparison black men s average wages in 1975 were 4 65 78 of the white male wage several possible reasons for the hispanics lower wages come to mind among them are age and education geographic location immigration language difficulties and discrimination for example as shown in table 1 mexicans and puerto ricans are younger on average than the white non hispanic population and earnings tend to rise with age hispanics have lower average levels of education than white non hispanics and wages are positively associated with education many mexican americans live in the southwest where prices are relatively low moreover hispanics are more likely to be recent immigrants and to lack fluency in english than white non hispanics and so to be at a disadvantage in the labor market in addition there is a widespread belief that hispanics suffer from employment discrimination and cannot obtain the wages that their human capital would command if they were non hispanic whites how much of the wage differentials described above are due to each of these factors and to other inter group differences in wage related characteristics in particular how much impact does labor market discrimination have on the average hispanic man s wage and how does this compare with discrimination against blacks this paper provides answers to these questions a few other efforts have been made to analyze the relative earnings of hispanic and white nonhispanic men using 1960 and 1970 census data fogel 1966 poston and alvirez 1973 poston alvirez and tienda 1976 long 1977 and gwartney and long 1978 we use more recent data from the 1976 survey of income and education this data set enables us to measure wage rates more accurately and to specify the wage function more completely than does the census unlike previous analysts in estimating the wage function we take account of possible selectivity bias due to the distinction between average wage offers and average observed wages thus we hope to obtain a more accurate and up to date measure of labor market discrimination against hispanic men section ii explains the method used to separate the minority white non hispanic wage differential into the portions due to differences in average characteristics and the portion due to differences in unobserved factors and discrimination taking into account the possibility of selectivity bias in the observed wage sample section iii describes the data used in the study and the specification of the wage equation the breakdown of the observed wage differentials into components due to differences in participation in the wage and salary sector local price levels average characteristics and discrimination are presented in section iv section v summarizes our findings and discusses their implications for efforts to improve the economic situation of hispanics in the united states

differences in education and earnings across racial and ethnic groups tastes discrimination and investments in child quality viewing the united states as comprising many racial and ethnic groups it is shown that group differences in earnings schooling and rates of return from schooling are striking and that the groups with higher levels of schooling also have higher rates of return these data are shown to be consistent with a child quality investment model but they are not consistent with the hypotheses that the primary determinants of schooling level are discrimination minority group status differences in time preference discount rates or tastes for schooling group differences in fertility and female labor supply are examined as partial determinants of investment in child quality policy implications are discussed this paper was originally presented at the 1987 annual meeting of the population association of america see population index vol 53 no 3 fall 1987 p 443 excerpt

does the labour market explain lower female schooling in india labour market discrimination against women and parental discrimination against daughters are two of the most commonly cited explanations of the gender gap in education in developing countries this study empirically tests the labour market explanation for india using recent household survey data the results reveal substantial omitted family background bias in the estimates of rates of return to education the findings suggest that as well as overall labour market discrimination girls face poorer economic incentives to invest in schooling than boys because they reap lower labour market returns to education than boys

male female wage differentials and policy responses without implicating them for any of the contents of the paper i am grateful to the following for helpful discussions or comments andrea beller university of illinois david bloom harvard and columnbia glen cain university of wisconsin ron ehrenberg cornell victor fuchs stanford bob gregory australian national university jonathan leonard university of california berkeley roberta robb brock university and paul weiler harvard financial support of the humanities and social sciences committee of the research board of the universitu of toronto is eratefullu acknowlede ed

rigidities in rural labor markets an empirical test the presence of potentially binding constraints in rural labor markets is investigated by examining spillover effects on land market participation decisions farm and household data from icrisat village level surveys are used in a multinominial logit model that accounts for the simultaneous nature of the land and labor market participation decisions estimated parameters and likelihood ratio tests indicate that except for the presence of potentially binding constraint on the supply of female labor off the farm no other evidence of binding constraints is present in these villages copyright 1990 by mit press

an east asian model of economic development japan taiwan and south korea the east asian model of economic development focuses on 5 shared characteristics that seem significant in the contemporary economic development of japan taiwan and korea they are economic characteristics and include 1 high investment ratios 2 small public sectors 3 competitive labor markets 4 export expansion and 5 government intervention in the economy large and efficient investments in human capital and well developed capacities to absorb new technology are 2 other economic features shared by the three one could add overcrowding high man land ratios and scarcity of natural resources though these are handicaps rather than sources of economic strength it is possible however that virtue springs from necessity and that ample arable land or abundant natural resources mainly permit governments to postpone the difficult decisions needed to promote development rather than provide the wherewithal needed to finance development other noneconomic characteristics of the three such as ethnic and linguistic homogeneity relatively compact geography manageable population size and the confucian tradition have not been considered in the model even though they have undoubtedly influenced labor productivity savings behavior and other aspects of economic performance whether the east asian model ought to be followed depends on whether current and foreseeable circumstances are sufficiently like those faced by the three to justify using the same policies that they used applicability of the east asian model should also depend on whether the strategy employed by the three has been responsible for their economic success 2 aspects of the east asian models policy features are noteworthy 1 the policies typically work by influencing rather than replacing private market decisions and 2 the public expects government to intervene to influence economic growth

productivity and distribution under cropsharing tenancy abstract this paper develops a model of sharecropping assuming tenant autonomy competitive behavior of landlords and laborers and endogenously determined wage and share rental rates the coexistence of wage labor and sharecropping is explained in terms of their incentive labor process and risk sharing characteristics sharecropping serves as a surrogate for the direct supervision of the labor process its incidence is shown to rise in the presence of unemployment at a subsistence wage the model implies that the abolition of tenancy will raise output raise labor income and reduce land income

sectoral balance in development a survey abstract this paper surveys the literature on sectoral balance to see how sectoral imbalances can retard economic development it examines definitions of sectors and balance provides background facts theories and planning tools reviews the debate on balanced growth and surveys two sector models of agriculture industry consumption investment and luxury basics interaction the open economy and the role of service nonmarket and unproductive sectors it argues that the examination of important development issues requires multisectoral analysis incorporating the insights of several of these models and that alternative models with different structural characteristics deserve attention

on the decomposition of wage differentials the often used method for decomposing wage differentials into human capital and discrimination components is reformulated so that both t he disadvantage or cost discrimination it imposes on a black or minority wage earner and the advantage or benefit it bestows on a white or majority wage earner can be estimated copyright 1988 by mit press

increasing returns and the foundations of unemployment theory current approaches to macroeconomic theory divide roughly into two basic schools of thought one approach typically associated with rational expectations views the economy as basically at or near walrasian market clearing equilibrium in which case it becomes very difficult to explain away convincingly the undeniable persistence at times of involuntary unemployment another approach views the underemployed economy as being in a state of temporary fixed price disequilibrium in which case aside from having to repress suspicions that the essence of effective demand failure might not have to do with prices fixed at wrong values there is a lot of rationalising to be done about why profitable adjustments are so slow this paper argues that something like an internally consistent theory of steady state involuntary unemployment is possible and even plausible the cornerstone of this third approach is increasing returns to scale which blocks unemployed agents from breaking out of a low level equilibrium trap unless there is overall coordination or stimulation a simple model is presented which contains the basic ideas

food policy and class transformation in revolutionary nicaragua 1979 1986 abstract state grain policy in nicaragua has represented both a short run intervention in food production and a longer run strategy of class transformation the emphasis given peasant production of corn and beans has depended on both considerations and has varied over the seven years of the revolutionary process a class analysis of this policy reveals changing responses by the fsln to external and internal political and economic conditions recent measures point to an acceptance of petty commodity grain production which may or may not be compatible with socialist agricultural development

non produced means of production in sraffa s system basics non basics and quasi basics all value land and other non produced means of production can make no contribution to the value of commodities rent is consequently a deduction from the total surplus produced by labour although the labour theory of value has been the subject of extensive criticism for more than a century the associated issues of non produced means of production1 have been largely ignored indeed steedman 1977 who argues that the entire apparatus be abandoned and replaced with sraffa s 1960 theory of production prices makes no refer ence to the problem of rent this paper investigates the extent to which the classical intuition regarding non produced means of production is consistent with sraffa s system in production of commodities by means of commodities sraffa provides a rigorous refor mulation of the classical theories of intensive and extensive rent noting that land and natural resources occupy among means of production a position equivalent to that of non basics among products in single product systems non basics are typically interpreted as luxury goods and it can be shown inter alia that technical progress in non basic industries does not affect the system of relative prices and the economy wide rate of profit if it is true that land is always non basic then we might conclude that the classical view is broadly confirmed by sraffa s modernisation of the theory of value unfortunately both the extensive and intensive systems are formally multiple product process economies for which the definition of non basics is considerably more subtle and complex than in single product industries 2 important properties of single product non basics do not always survive the transition to multiple product economies prices and profits may respond in unexpected ways to technical change taxes and class conflict over the distribution of the surplus the source of the perverse behaviour is traced to a class of commodities characterised here as quasi basics the paper is organised as follows in section 2 we show that in systems with extensive

change in state power international conditions and peasant producers the case of kenya arguments for food self sufficiency at the level of small scale farms invariably refer to the need for national self sufficiency this article shows that state inspired attempts to impose self sufficiency upon specialised middle peasant producers in kenya have had the effect of reducing the supply of marketed food and increasing food imports a change in the character of presidential power has also inhibited food production by large scale farms and this together with imported price shocks has reduced the supply of food for commercialised peasants who produce for international markets only very specific political conditions make it possible for international and internal circuits of capital and exchange to be harmonised through the power of a nation state

labour market discrimination against indigenous people in peru in this article the component of the gross wage differential that can be explained by productivity enhancing attributes and that which is due to unexplained factors and labour market discrimination are empirically determined individual data from the 1991 living standards measurements survey of peru are used to analyse labour market earnings and to decompose the gross earnings differential a large portion of the indigenous non indigenous wage gap is unexplained by human capital and other observable differences