the ambivalent impact of coffee certification on farmers welfare a matched panel approach for cooperatives in central kenya certification is promoted to improve rural welfare through better market access and improved agricultural practices we compare net effects of fairtrade and utz certified coffee production in central kenya using a matched panel from 218 farm households that belong to three cooperatives and were visited twice in 2009 and 2013 we distinguish between effects at field farm household cooperative community and market levels both certification regimes improved coffee returns but fairtrade was more effective in coffee processing whereas utz contributed to productivity under stagnating coffee prices fairtrade farmers increased their coffee specialization while utz farmers reduced coffee areas but increased yield

what is to be done for third world commodity exporters an evaluation of the stabex scheme third world economies largely dependent on commodity exports other than oil have been the principal victims of the world recession attempts at restructuring international commodities regimes through the creation of the common fund have met with little success accordingly the possibility of helping commodity exporters through the provision of compensatory finance has attracted increasing attention one possible model for a new international compensatory facility is the eec s stabex scheme established as part of the lome convention however rather than operating automatically and without interfering with market mechanisms as its proponents suggest the administration of stabex has depended on discretionary judgments on the part of the eec commission and the scheme has introduced distortions into trade between the eec and its partners in the lome convention transfers under the stabex scheme have had only a minor impact on the economies of recipient countries especially on the sectors affected by fluctuations in export earnings stabex is an unsatisfactory model for a new compensatory facility additional finance to compensate ldcs for losses in export earnings might most feasibly be made available through further liberalization of the imf s compensatory financing facility

the ethiopian commodity exchange and spatial price dispersion abstract in this article we study the impact of an institutional intervention on market efficiency in ethiopia more specifically we analyze to what extent the ethiopian commodity exchange ecx in combination with regional warehouses have contributed to a reduction in price spreads between regional markets our hypothesis is that warehouses connected to the ecx reduce the dispersion between export prices and local retail prices in different coffee growing areas as well as the dispersion between export prices and local retail prices in different coffee growing areas by doing so the ecx has the potential to improve the market efficiency to identify the causal effect we combine retail price data with information on the gradual rollout of warehouses connected to the ecx from 2007 to 2012 our results suggest that when two markets both have access to an operating warehouse the average price spread is 0 86 1 78 etb lower than it is for markets where at least one part lacks warehouse access this is a substantial reduction considering that the average price spread over the full period is 3 33 etb the main results are robust to various econometric specifications and our analysis thus suggests that local warehouses connected to the ecx have indeed improved market efficiency

shirking and sorting in a political market with finite lived politicians this paper analyzes principal agent slack in the context of a political market composed of voters challengers and incumbents the introduction of a last period via finite livedness in combination with voters imperfect information about politicians preferences causes time varying shirking behavior on the part of politicians political markets eventually sort out those politicians with significantly deviant policy preferences potentially providing a solution to the last period problem and enabling politicians to make credible commitments in the extreme sorting can insure that it is not worthwhile for potential shirkers to run for office a systematic relationship between political shirking and number of terms in office may exist and depends on how quickly sorting takes place we show that evidence of little if any shirking is quite consistent with politicians having diverse and strongly held policy preferences in addition if sorting is a significant feature of political markets cross sectional studies will tend to oversample little and non shirking politicians compared to longitudinal studies reinterpretations of existing empirical work are also discussed

searching for symptoms of political shirking congressional foreign travel despite the hypothesized propensity for shirking to marklegislative institutions the evidence is rather equivocal moreover most of the research has focused exclusively onlegislator voting thereby constraining whatevergeneralizations might emerge the purpose of this paper is tocontribute to the debate over the question of politicalshirking by extending the range of phenomena examined toinclude congressional foreign travel our analysis providesevidence that opportunism is a problem in congress we findthat last period problems have arisen in the area of foreigntravel and that increased scrutiny to the problem on the partof congress only shifted consumption patterns i e legislators began taking foreign junkets near but not at theend of their legislative careers not all foreign travelshould be construed as worthless junketing since there isstrong evidence that some foreign travel is related tomembers responsibilities on congressional committees

selling at the farmgate or traveling to market using detailed survey data from uganda this article examines whether coffee producers sell to itinerant traders or directly to markets where they can get a higher price but must incur a transport cost we find that selling to the market is more likely when the quantity sold is large and the market is close by wealthy farmers are less likely to sell to the market possibly because the shadow value of their time is higher but if they have a large quantity of coffee for sale they are more likely to sell it to the market they are also more likely to travel to a distant market these findings are consistent with their better ability to pay for public transportation we find no evidence that the decision to sell at the farmgate is driven by a self control motive

can mobile phones improve agricultural outcomes evidence from a randomized experiment in niger the widespread growth of mobile phone coverage worldwide has offered new potential for increasing rural households access to information and public and private transfers yet despite the proliferation of mobile phone based interventions in the agricultural sector there is mixed evidence on their impact we report the results of a randomized evaluation in niger in which rural households increased their access to information technology and their capacity to use it we find that households in treated villages planted a more diverse basket of crops particularly marginal cash crops grown by women this did not increase the likelihood of selling these crops or the farm gate price received suggesting that other market failures need to be addressed to improve farmers welfare

constituent interest vs legislator ideology the role of political opportunity cost this paper applies the economic model of legislative voting to the automobile industry domestic content vote in the u s house of representatives in 1982 we consider constituent interests for and against the ml and compare the predictive powers of alternative indicators of ideological preferences we also examine the role of political opportunity cost and find that lame ducks were significantly less likely to vote for the bill than were returnees to congress given the political advantages of voting for the bill this is consistent with the view that legislators were influenced by the case for freer trade

rural nonfarm activities and agricultural crop production in nigeria although most rural households are involved in the farm sector the nonfarm sector has grown significantly in recent decades and its role in rural development has become increasingly important this article examines the effect of participation in nonfarm activities on crop expenses of farm households in nigeria the relationship is modeled using a nonseparable agricultural household model that suggests that participating in nonfarm activities can relax the credit constraints facing farm households and reduce risk thereby helping households improve farm production and smooth consumption over time the results show that participation in nonfarm activities by nigerian farmers has a positive and significant effect on crop expenses and in particular on payments for hired labor and inorganic fertilizers separate analysis of the six geopolitical zones in nigeria indicates that it is in the south south and south east zones where nonfarm participation appears to induce more hiring of labor the results support the hypothesis that nonfarm participation helps relax liquidity constraints but suggests how that liquidity is used is zone specific in general the results also indicate that liquidity is used more to pay for inputs into staple production as opposed to cash crops

editorial marketing science in emerging markets in this editorial accompanying the special section on marketing science in emerging markets msem we describe how research on emerging markets can contribute to richer theoretical and substantive understanding of markets and marketing such research can also aid in providing managerial guidance on how to operate in emerging markets we conclude with a description of the selection and review process for the special section and an overview of the four papers being published

does electoral accountability affect economic policy choices evidence from gubernatorial term limits this paper analyzes the behavior of u s governors from 1950 to 1986 to investigate a reputation building model of political behavior we argue that differences in the behavior of governors who face a binding term limit and those who are able to run again provides a source of variation in discount rates that can be used to test a political agency model we find evidence that taxes spending and other policy instruments respond to a binding term limit if a democrat is in office the result is a fiscal cycle in term limit states which lowers state income when the term limit binds

the digital provide information technology market performance and welfare in the south indian fisheries sector when information is limited or costly agents are unable to engage in optimal arbitrage excess price dispersion across markets can arise and goods may not be allocated efficiently in this setting information technologies may improve market performance and increase welfare between 1997 and 2001 mobile phone service was introduced throughout kerala a state in india with a large fishing industry using microlevel survey data we show that the adoption of mobile phones by fishermen and wholesalers was associated with a dramatic reduction in price dispersion the complete elimination of waste and near perfect adherence to the law of one price both consumer and producer welfare increased

does remuneration affect the discipline and the selection of politicians evidence from pay harmonization in the european parliament we study the harmonization of the base pay for the members of the european parliament meps prior to this reform implemented in 2009 base pay was aligned with that of national parliamentarians causing large differences in pay between the meps representing 27 member states based on detailed information on individual meps between 2004 and 2011 we find that the reform which introduced an exceptional base pay increase of 200 per national delegation on average has a positive incentive effect on in office effort proxied by the number of speeches written declarations and reports drafted however more generous remuneration is associated with higher rates of absenteeism with respect to political selection we find that higher pay also raises reelection rates the composition of the pool of meps in terms of ex ante quality approximated by formal education previous political experience in elected office and occupational background is however unaffected if we restrict our attention to newly elected meps a salary increase is related to fewer meps with previous political experience at the highest national level

ict and transport infrastructure development an empirical analysis of complementarity abstractthis paper provides an empirical framework to assess the nonlinear complementary linkage effects that arise from the interaction between motorway capital and information and communications

how is the liberalization of food markets progressing market integration and transaction costs in subsistence economies we propose a modification of baulch s parity bounds model to measure the market integration of food markets in developing countries instead of extrapolating a single observation of transaction costs we estimate transaction costs predicted transaction costs compare well with survey data of traders probabilities of market regimes computed on the basis of predicted transaction costs fluctuate significantly and do not support fixed regime probabilities over time the probability of market integration with trade decreases consistently during food shortages increasing either the probability of no trade or loss making trade or the probability of profitable but unexploited trade opportunities the data further support a negative trend in market integration with trade

working or shirking expenses and attendance in the uk parliament this paper studies the determinants of mps expense claims and of their attendance at parliamentary meetings using a multiple regression framework we correlate the expenses with three sets of variables constituency characteristics political variables and individual characteristics we then look at the ratio of parliamentary expenses claimed to votes cast in parliament as a crude measure of value for money this take on the data provides a somewhat benign view of the usage of expense claims we use the results to reflect on two views of the motivation of mps the public choice view and the public service view

mobile money remittances and household welfare panel evidence from rural uganda access to financial services is crucial for development as it enhances resource mobilization needed for productive investment and facilitates consumption smoothing with a vast majority of adult ugandans having no access to formal financial services mobile money is expected to bridge this gap especially in rural areas this financial product allows users to make financial transactions using their mobile phones within five years of its inception in uganda since 2009 the mobile money service has been used by over 35 of the adult population and the rate of penetration is rapidly increasing we investigate its impact on household welfare using panel data covering 846 rural households using a combination of household fixed effects instrumental variable and propensity score matching methods we find a positive and significant effect of mobile money access on household welfare measured by real per capita consumption the mechanism of this impact is the facilitation of remittances user households are more likely to receive remittances receive remittances more frequently and the total value received is significantly higher than that of non user households we attribute this impact on the reduction in transaction transport and time costs associated with mobile phone based financial transactions our results are robust to changes in model specifications and alternative explanations

internal borders ethnic based market segmentation in malawi summary ethnic diversity is associated with poorer economic development but why i argue that market segmentation is one mechanism linking diversity to economic underdevelopment when ethnic groups are geographically segregated and trust is concentrated within groups markets will be tend to be segmented along ethnic lines i evaluate this argument using maize price data from seventy malawian markets over 14 years and combine it with census data on the spatial distribution of ethnic groups i find that maize price differences a key indicator of market segmentation are indeed larger for ethnically dissimilar markets even after taking sub national administrative borders geographic barriers and climatic differences into account these statistical findings are complemented by interview data from farmers and traders in three markets across malawi which highlight the centrality of trust in small scale maize trading as well as a preference for coethnic trading partners together these findings suggest that ethnic diversity and ethnoregional segregation in particular can have a negative impact on market integration an important driver of food security and long term economic development

integration and productivity satellite tracked evidence this paper introduces satellite tracked real time data from a large fishing firm managing its vertically horizontally and geographically linked ships to study the causal impact of integration on total factor productivity tfp after the firm acquired its vertically unintegrated contractual fish suppliers tfp increased 16 among newly integrated ships whereas it did not vary for already owned ships some classic mechanisms such as increased effort due to monitoring do not systematically explain tfp gains under integration whereas evidence on hold up threat alleviation is mixed importantly enhanced knowledge transfer and hierarchical authority enacting productivity improving operational practices among newly integrated ships are more likely explanations of the results this paper was accepted by bruno cassiman business strategy

mobile money agricultural marketing and off farm income in uganda mobile money mm services can contribute to welfare gains in smallholder farm households previous research showed that one important pathway for these mm related welfare gains is through higher remittances received from relatives and friends here the role of other impact pathways is examined especially focusing on agricultural marketing and off farm economic activities the analysis builds on panel data from smallholder coffee farmers in uganda regression models show that the adoption of mm technology has contributed to higher household incomes and consumption levels off farm income gains are identified to be an important pathway also beyond remittances typical off farm income sources are small businesses in trade transport and handicrafts which benefit from novel savings and money transfer opportunities through mm in terms of agricultural marketing mm users sell a larger proportion of their coffee as shelled beans to buyers in high value markets instead of selling to local traders immediately after harvest mm services help to reduce cash constraints and facilitate transactions with buyers from outside local regions in conclusion mm can contribute to rural development through various important pathways analysis of adoption patterns suggests that mm services are socially inclusive

trade gaps analytical gaps regime analysis and international commodity trade regulation studies of international regimes have sought to describe international collaborative arrangements in more systematic terms than in the past and to analyze their development in terms of major schools of international relations theory this article refines the commonly used definition of regimes and elucidates the major hypotheses of one theoretical school structural realism the strength and nature of the international commodity trade regime are systematically described and their development is analyzed in terms of the major hypotheses of structural realism in large part these hypotheses are supported by the analysis of what is a relatively weak international regime

risk sharing and transactions costs evidence from kenya s mobile money revolution we explore the impact of reduced transaction costs on risk sharing by estimating the effects of a mobile money innovation on consumption in our panel sample adoption of the innovation increased from 43 to 70 percent we find that while shocks reduce consumption by 7 percent for nonusers the consumption of user households is unaffected the mechanisms underlying these consumption effects are increases in remittances received and the diversity of senders we report robustness checks supporting these results and use the four fold expansion of the mobile money agent network as a source of exogenous variation in access to the innovation jel e42 g22 o16 o17 z13 in developing countries informal networks provide an important means by which individuals and households share risk though the insurance they provide is often incomplete economists have proposed a number of reasons for this incompleteness including information asymmetries which manifest in problems of moral hazard and limited commitment both of which induce positive correlations between realized income and consumption in this article we emphasize a complementary source of incompleteness transaction costs literally the costs of transferring resources between individuals we test the impact of transaction costs on risk sharing by analyzing data from a large panel household survey that we designed and administered in kenya over a three year period to capture the expansion of mobile money this financial innovation has allowed individuals to transfer purchasing power by simple short messaging service sms technology and has dramatically reduced the cost of sending money across large distances mobile money is a recent innovation in developing economies one of the first and most successful examples to date is kenya s m pesa 1 in just four years after its

information efficiency and welfare in agricultural markets information and communications technologies icts have spread rapidly in the developing world there has been considerable interest in the potential role icts particularly mobile phones have begun to play in the marketing of agricultural outputs in these countries in this article we discuss the potential impacts icts may have on welfare both in terms of potential efficiency gains via improved arbitrage and welfare transfers among agents in the supply chain via reduced informational asymmetries and market power we also review the recent empirical evidence for such effects

can mobile phones improve gender equality and nutrition panel data evidence from farm households in uganda abstract since 2000 mobile phone technologies have been widely adopted in many developing countries existing research shows that use of mobile phones has improved smallholder farmers market access and income beyond income mobile phones can possibly affect other dimensions of social welfare such as gender equality and nutrition such broader social welfare effects have hardly been analyzed up till now here we address this research gap using panel data from smallholder farm households in uganda regression results show that mobile phone use is positively associated with household income women empowerment food security and dietary quality these results also hold after controlling for possible confounding factors in addition to the household level analysis we also look at who within the household actually uses mobile phones gender disaggregation suggests that female mobile phone use has stronger positive associations with social welfare than if males alone use mobile phones we cautiously conclude that equal access to mobile phones cannot only foster economic development but can also contribute to gender equality food security and broader social development further research is required to corroborate the findings and analyze the underlying causal mechanisms

the unintended consequences of internet diffusion evidence from malaysia abstract can the introduction of the internet undermine incumbent power in a semi authoritarian regime i examine this question using evidence from malaysia where the incumbent coalition lost its 40 year monopoly on power in 2008 i develop a novel methodology for measuring internet penetration matching ip addresses with physical locations and apply it to the 2004 to 2008 period in malaysia using distance to the backbone to instrument for endogenous internet penetration i find that internet exposure accounts for 6 6 points nearly half the swing against the incumbent party in 2008 i find limited evidence of increased turnover and no evidence of an effect on turnout

payment mechanisms and antipoverty programs evidence from a mobile money cash transfer experiment in niger abstractcash transfers have become an increasingly important component of social protection policies in both developed and developing countries while such programs are often implemented electronically in developed countries in many developing countries with weak financial infrastructure such transfers are distributed manually resulting in significant costs to program recipients and the public sector alike the introduction of mobile money systems in many developing countries offers new opportunities for distributing cash transfers using data from a randomized experiment of a mobile money cash transfer program in niger we find evidence of benefits of this new system household diet diversity was 9 16 higher among households who received mobile transfers and children ate an additional one third of a meal per day these results can be partially attributed to time savings associated with mobile transfers as program recipients spent less time traveling to and waiting for their transfer they are also

general equilibrium tragedy of the commons many poor economies depend on open access resources for their livelihoods households in resource based economies allocate their time and other factors between resource extraction and other activities as a result factors may shift from one sector to another as marginal returns change this has two important implications first it implies potentially strong linkages between resource and non resource sectors second it means that unmanaged resources cause inefficient allocations of inputs across all sectors and the effects of resource management spill into other sectors we construct a local general equilibrium model that accounts for inputs that over allocate to an open access resource and create a general equilibrium tragedy of the commons this model describes resource rent dissipation more adequately in economies with mobile factors than a model with slowly dissipating rents perfectly mobile factors dissipate rent in every period but endogenous wages cause labor and capital allocations to change with the resource stock we use the model to illustrate medium run impacts of a limit on capital in an artisanal fishery in honduras simulation results reveal that fishery management has economy wide impacts on prices and wages managers in developing countries thus should consider these linkages when implementing policies to conserve fish stocks

bilateral trading in networks in many markets goods flow from initial producers to final customers travelling through many layers of intermediaries and information is asymmetric we study a dynamic model of bargaining in networks that captures these features we show that the equilibrium price demanded over time is non monotonic but the sequence of transaction prices declines over time with the possible exception of the last period the price dynamic is therefore reminiscent of fire sales and hot potato trading traders who intermediate the object arise endogenously and make a positive profit the profit earning intermediaries are not necessarily traders with many connections for the case of multilayer networks they belong to the path that reaches the maximum number of potential buyers using the minimal number of intermediaries this is not necessarily the path of the network that maximizes the probability of consumption by traders who value the most the object i e welfare

face value information and signaling in an illegal market author affiliation trevon d logan the ohio state university and nber 410 arps hall 1945 north high street columbus oh 43210 usa e mail logan 155 osu edu corresponding author manisha shah dagger university of california los angeles and nber 3250 public affairs building los angeles ca 91195 e mail manishashah ucla edu acknowledgment we would like to thank george akerlof rodney j andrews raj arunachalam andrea a cann lisa d cook brahima coulibaly scott cunningham angus deaton avinash dixit claudia d goldin karla hoff joseph kaboski simon loertscher joseph m newhard christina paxson john pepper ruth peterson patricia reagan seth sanders ebonya washington nathan woodfork three anonymous referees and numerous seminar participants who provided helpful suggestions the usual disclaimer applies 1 introductionformal enforcement is often seen as the cornerstone of contract design while information can overcome the problems of asymmetric information akerlof 1970 spence 1973 principals are unlikely to engage agents unless the information conveyed is credible and verifiable while the use of formal institutions such as courts is rare relative to the volume of transactions the standard argument is that the presence of formal institutions gives contracts their authority in schelling s 1960 classic terminology the power to sue and be sued gives parties the ability to make credible enforceable commitments a prerequisite to most transactions without means of redress the information that principals and agents share would a priori have little value numerous studies have documented how informal networks long term relationships and reputations overcome problems of asymmetric information indeed researchers have developed large literatures that look at limited contractibility hart 1995 tirole 1999 and situations in which formal enforcement is costly greif 1993 to consider the additional mechanisms that must be in place if existing institutions are lacking or unable to mediate disputes however the literature has not developed an empirical answer to whether the value of information without formal enforcement approaches its value when formal enforcement is present in this article we ask two questions i are formal enforcement mechanisms necessary for the information that principals and agents share to have value ii if not then what is the value of information in an environment without formal enforcement ideally we would like to analyze an illegal market to answer these questions illegal markets rule out the possibility that market function or variation in the information environment is due to the presence of formal enforcement similarly in an illegal market the information that principals and agents convey to one another may not be credible or verifiable and misrepresentation is not likely to be punished the problem is that most illegal markets have coarse information environments it is therefore challenging to obtain information on prices quantities and consumer and producer behavior making empirical answers to these questions especially difficult we overcome these problems by analyzing an illegal market with a rich information structure the online market for male sex work we begin with a general description of this seldom studied market we then document the ways in which the clients of male sex workers informally police the market by informing other clients of deceptive sex workers and by reviewing sex workers on independent client owned web sites the informal policing in the market raises the cost of misrepresentation for would be fraudulent escorts and rewards the truthful self disclosure of honest escorts encouraging truthful self disclosure we further exploit this institutional knowledge to identify the specific information clients treat as signals of escort quality

transaction costs information technologies and the choice of marketplace among farmers in northern ghana using a transactions costs framework we examine the impact of information and communication technologies mobile phones and radios use on market participation in developing country agricultural markets using a novel transaction level data set of ghanaian farmers our analysis of the choice of markets by farmers suggests that market information from a broader range of markets may not always induce farmers to sell in more distant markets instead farmers may use broader market information to enhance their bargaining power in closer markets finally we find weak evidence on the impact of using mobile phones in attracting farm gate buyers

is it enough evidence from a natural experiment in india s agriculture markets access to information and communication technologies icts such as mobile phone networks is widely known to improve market efficiency in this paper we examine whether access to timely and accurate information provided through ict applications has any additional impact using a detailed data set from reuters market light rml a text message service in india that provides daily price information to market participants we find that this information reduces the geographic price dispersion of crops in rural communities by an average of 12 over and above access to mobile phone technology and other means of communication to identify the effect of information on price dispersion we exploit a natural experiment where bulk text messages were banned unexpectedly across india for 12 days in 2010 we find that besides reducing geographic price dispersion rml also increases the rate at which prices converge across india over time we discuss the implications of this for development organizations and informat

impact of sms based agricultural information on indian farmers this study estimates the benefits that indian farmers derive from market and weather information delivered to their mobile phones by a commercial service called reuters market light rml we conduct a controlled randomized experiment in 100 villages of maharashtra treated farmers associate rml information with a number of decisions they have made and we find some evidence that treatment affected spatial arbitrage and crop grading but the magnitude of these effects is small we find no statistically significant average effect of treatment on the price received by farmers crop value added crop losses resulting from rainstorms or the likelihood of changing crop varieties and cultivation practices although disappointing these results are in line with the market take up rate of the rml service in the study districts which shows small numbers of clients in aggregate and a relative stagnation in take up over the study period jel codes o13 q11 q13 the purpose of this study is to ascertain whether agricultural information distributed through mobile phones generates economic benefits to farmers we implement a randomized controlled trial of a commercial service entitled reuters market light rml offered by the largest and best established private provider of agricultural price information in india at the time of the experiment operating in maharashtra and other indian states rml distributes price weather and crop advisory information through sms messages we offered a one year free subscription to rml to a random sample of farmers to test whether they obtain higher prices for their agricultural output

consumer s surplus without apology the purpose of this paper is to settle the controversy surrounding consumer s surplus and by so doing to validate its use as a tool of welfare economics i will show that observed consumer s surplus can be rigorously utilized to estimate the unobservable compensating and equivalent variations the correct theoretical measures of the welfare impact of changes in prices and income on an individual i derive precise upper and lower bounds on the percentage errors of approximating the compensating and equivalent variations with consumer s surplus these bounds can be explicitly calculated from observable demand data and it is clear that in most applications the error of approximation will be very small in fact the error will often be overshadowed by the errors involved in estimating the demand curve the results in no way depend upon arguments about the constancy of the marginal utility of income consequently this paper supplies specific empirical criteria which can replace the apologetic caveats frequently employed by those who presently apply consumer s surplus moreover the results imply that consumer s surplus is usually a very good approximation to the appropriate welfare measures to preview below i establish the validity of these rules of thumb for a

look who s talking the impacts of the intrahousehold allocation of mobile phones on agricultural prices abstract using data from the philippines we study the impact of mobile phones on the prices agricultural producers receive for their cash crop we first look at the impact on price of mobile phone ownership at the household level because this masks a considerable amount of heterogeneity we then look at the impact on price of the intrahousehold allocation of mobile phones we find that whether the household owns a mobile phone has no impact on price but whether a farmer or spouse owns a mobile phone is associated with a 5 to 8 per cent increase in price

trade developments during the first lome convention abstract the lome convention signed in 1975 between the european economic community eec and 46 african caribbean and pacific acp states was hailed as a model for a new international economic order this article analyses the trade between the two groupings during the five years 1975 1979 of the first convention in the context of world trade in general there was no substantial change in trade flows contrary to acp aspirations for an improvement in their export performance with the europeans the eec share of acp exports declined despite the convention s provisions the acp even failed to maintain their shares of the eec market actually faring worse than other non oil ldcs little diversification was achieved in acp exports in contrast the eec maintained its position in acp markets

economic liberalization and indian economic growth what s the evidence india s growth and poverty performance over the last three decades has been a subject of great curiosity unlike the east asian countries india s growth spurt is not associated with exceptionally high domestic savings or foreign capital inflows or manufacturing exports so what triggered the change in the growth trajectory did the market liberalization policies of the 1990s help how have the initial conditions shaped the process and how has the indian model impinged on india s central problem of mass poverty this paper surveys the literature and offers its own assessment of the drivers of change jel i32 o13 o14 o15 o21 o47

a transaction level analysis of spatial arbitrage the role of habit attention and electronic trading despite the central role of arbitrage in finance and economic theory there is limited evidence of the factors that create and eliminate arbitrage opportunities how often arbitrage occurs and how profitable it is we address these gaps via a transaction level analysis of spatial arbitrage in the wholesale automotive market we investigate why arbitrage opportunities are created by analyzing how sellers choose where to sell vehicles we find that the attention sellers pay to the distribution of a vehicle is negatively related to the probability that it is arbitraged arbitrage occurs in approximately 1 of transactions although electronic trading is making arbitrage less prevalent by improving buyer seller matching across locations arbitrage yields a 5 6 return on average although arbitrageurs take a loss 14 of the time our results contribute to the literature on arbitrage the effect of attention allocation on market outcomes and the effect of information technology on market efficiency this paper was accepted by brad barber teck ho and terrance odean special issue editors

sustainability standards gender and nutrition among smallholder farmers in uganda abstractsustainability standards are gaining in importance in global markets for high value foods while previous research has shown that participating farmers in developing countries may benefit through income gains nutrition impacts have hardly been analysed we use survey data from smallholder coffee farmers in uganda certified under fairtrade organic and utz to analyse impacts on food security and dietary quality estimates of instrumental variable models and simultaneous equation systems show that certification increases calorie and micronutrient consumption mainly through higher incomes and improved gender equity in certified households women have greater control of coffee production and monetary revenues from sales

off the hook measuring the impact of mobile telephone use on economic development of households in uganda using copulas it is now widely understood that mobile phone use has beneficial effects on development in developing countries but little is known about the effects at the household level we examine the impact of mobile telephone use on household income using a unique cross sectional data set from uganda we use a novel econometric technique to handle endogeneity which models the correlation between the endogenous regressor and the error term with copulas to the best of our knowledge this is the first time that the copula method has been applied in the economic development literature we find a positive impact of mobile phone use on income

contribution of fisheries and aquaculture to food security and poverty reduction assessing the current evidence following a precise evaluation protocol that was applied to a pool of 202 articles published between 2003 and 2014 this paper evaluates the existing evidence of how and to what extent capture fisheries and aquaculture contribute to improving nutrition food security and economic growth in developing and emergent countries in doing so we evaluate the quality and scientific rigor of that evidence identify the key conclusions that emerge from the literature and assess whether these conclusions are consistent across the sources the results of the assessment show that while some specific topics are consistently and rigorously documented thus substantiating some of the claims found in the literature other areas of research still lack the level of disaggregated data or an appropriate methodology to reach consistency and robust conclusions more specifically the analysis reveals that while fish contributes undeniably to nutrition and food security the links between fisheries aquaculture and poverty alleviation are complex and still unclear in particular national and household level studies on fisheries contributions to poverty alleviation lack good conceptual models and produce inconsistent results for aquaculture national and household studies tend to focus on export value chains and use diverse approaches they suggest some degree of poverty alleviation and possibly other positive outcomes for adopters but these outcomes also depend on the small scale farming contexts and on whether adoption was emergent or due to development assistance interventions impacts of fish trade on food security and poverty alleviation are ambiguous and confounded by a focus on international trade and a lack of consistent methods the influences of major drivers decentralization climate change demographic transition are still insufficiently documented and therefore poorly understood finally the evaluation reveals that evidence based research and policy narratives are often disconnected with some of the strongest and long lasting policy narratives lacking any strong and rigorous evidence based validation building on these different results this paper identifies six key gaps facing policy makers development practitioners and researchers

how much more do growers receive for fair trade organic coffee abstract i use a representative sample of coffee growing households in southern mexico to estimate the price premium and gross income gain from participating in fair trade organic markets through grower cooperatives for the 2004 2005 season ft organic growers received an average premium of 12 8 cents per pound yielding a gross income gain of 5 of total household income or about 26 dollars per household member the gain is net of the costs of cooperative participation but not of other costs incurred to become certified and suggests that price premiums alone have a limited potential to increase household returns from growing coffee more broadly speaking the finding raises questions about the persistence of substantial price premiums associated with social or environmental labeling initiatives

following up on smallholder farmers and supermarkets in kenya in many developing countries supermarkets are expanding rapidly this affects farmers marketing options previous studies have analyzed welfare effects of smallholder participation in supermarket channels from a static perspective using cross section data we develop a conceptual framework and use panel data to better understand participation and impact dynamics the analysis focuses on vegetable producers in kenya participation in supermarket channels is associated with income gains however many farmers have dropped out of the supermarket channel due to various constraints the initial income gains cannot be sustained when returning to the traditional market organizational support may be needed to avoid widening income disparities

food standards certification and poverty among coffee farmers in uganda summary voluntary standards are gaining in importance in global markets for high value foods we analyze and compare impacts of three sustainability oriented standards fairtrade organic and utz on the livelihoods of smallholder coffee farmers in uganda using survey data and propensity score matching with multiple treatments we find that fairtrade certification increases household living standards by 30 and reduces the prevalence and depth of poverty for the other two certification schemes no significant impacts are found several factors that can explain differential impacts are discussed overly general statements about the effects of sustainability standards on smallholder livelihoods may be misleading

expected product market reforms and technology adoption by senegalese onion producers author s bernard t de janvry a mbaye s sadoulet e abstract the authors 2017 we assess the responsiveness of senegalese onion producers to their knowledge of expected changes in product market conditions whereby onions would no longer be sold based on volume but rather on weight and with labeling certifying quality a village level randomized information campaign on the upcoming introduction of these reforms induced significant investments by farmers into quality enhancing inputs delays in the actual introduction of scales enabled us to rigorously identify positive price effects from these investments our results point to the importance of farmers expectations regarding the improved functioning of product markets in triggering technology adoption

measurement of consumer gains from market stabilization for most cases of practical significance in which partial equilibrium analysis is appropriate there is little difference between exact measures of consumer gains from market stabilization and approximations such as expected change in marshallian or hicksian consumer surplus careful specification of the nature of stabilization is more crucial than the choice of welfare measure it is important to represent correctly the demand curvature and supply response and to determine whether general equilibrium responses can be ignored in any event an improved analytical approximation and a simple numerical method for calculating the exact measures make it unnecessary to rely on suspect measures

supermarkets farm household income and poverty insights from kenya summary the expansion of supermarkets in developing countries may have important implications for poverty and rural development while previous studies have compared farm profits between participants and non participants in supermarket channels wider income effects have hardly been analyzed moreover most existing studies do not account for structural differences between the two groups we address these issues by using endogenous switching regression and building on a survey of vegetable farmers in kenya participation in supermarket channels is associated with a 48 gain in average household income which also contributes to poverty reduction to realize these benefits on a larger scale will require institutional support

getting prices right the impact of the market information service in uganda the market information service project in uganda collected data on prices for the main agricultural commodities in major market centers and disseminated the information through local fmradio stations in various districts exploiting the variation across space between households with and without access to a radio we find evidence suggesting that better informed farmers managed to bargain for higher farm gate prices on their surplus production

globalization and the connection of remote communities a review of household effects and their biodiversity implications abstract the remote regions of the world provide refuge to a disproportionate amount of the earth s biodiversity as globalization continues isolated human communities in these regions are increasingly connected to global market migration and technology networks we review the diffuse literature on the household effects of changing market access migration and technology adoption in remote regions and implications for native biodiversity market access affects biodiversity in remote communities through changes in household economics and social networks migration either to or from remote settlements affects biodiversity through changes in population remittances human capital and social networks finally we consider effects due to production public infrastructure and information and communication technologies there is much ambiguity surrounding these causal pathways and thus we also examine the roles of various ecological household community and institutional mediating factors in determining the impacts of global connection finally we explore the limitations of our current knowledge and research practices and propose directions for future work to address key uncertainties in theory and evidence as well as weaknesses in methodological approaches we recommend a broad and interdisciplinary mode of inquiry as the best means toward clarifying globalization s impacts on human settlements and the biodiversity harbored in the earth s remaining remote regions

transaction networks evidence from mobile money in kenya mobile money allows households in kenya to spread risk more efficiently in this paper we show that these efficiencies are achieved through deeper financial integration and expanded informal networks active networks are more geographically dispersed and support more reciprocal financial arrangements consistent with the reported reciprocity mobile money users report a higher share of transactions as being for credit and insurance purposes

time series evidence on shirking in the u s house of representatives this paper presents time series evidence on the voting behavior of members of the u s house of representatives from 1975 to 1990 the empirical results indicate that voting behavior of individual congressmen is remarkably stable over time we find no evidence of economically significant last term effects on voting behavior nor are there important effects of legislative tenure on voting patterns the most significant deviations in voting behavior occur for congressmen who failed to win their reelection bid suggesting that sizable deviations from previous policy positions may result in swift retribution by constituents in the district