sequential labor decisions under uncertainty an estimable household model of west african farmers this paper reports estimates of the structural parameters of a stochastic control model that describcs the labor decisions of small farmers in burkina faso west africa the focus of the estimation is on measuring flexibility in production and intertemporal substitutability in consumption full information maximum likelihood estimates of the primitive parameters of the model are computed even though optimal labor decision rules cannot be derived analytically vuong s non nested model specification test shows that this method yields parameter estimates that are superior to those derived by assuming that farmers solve a deterministic control problem the low levels of agricultural labor effort commonly observed in the survey area are shown to be a consequence both of the low productivity of labor in archaic rainfed agriculture and of farmers awareness that in the absence of a labor market overly ambitious production plans lead to seasonal manpower constraints to meet rainfed farmers concerns agricultural research institutes and extension services should factor flexibility into their research agendas

the international telecommunications regime the political roots of regimes for high technology the international telecommunications regime provided a multilateral framework that reinforced domestic monopolies and bilateral cartel arrangements in the global market the regime s epistemic community believed that telecommunications services and equipment were best supplied by national monopolies and that international communications by telephone telegram and telex should be jointly provided by monopolists strong domestic political incentives reinforced this cognitive framework when technological innovation triggered a successful political attack on the domestic regulation of telecommunications in a few key countries the stage was set for a global challenge to the intellectual and political foundations of the regime two paths to reform have emerged their significance can be assessed by looking at changes in the distribution of benefits from the regime changes in the manner in which governments delegate power to the regime and shifts in the epistemic community associated with the regime

capital market development in china abstract this paper examines why and how capital markets have developed in a low income socialist country it shows that the development is the response of economic agents operating under a more market oriented economic environment with a highly regulated and inefficient banking system this development has presented new policy challenges and opportunities the paper argues that the developmental effects of the emergence of capital markets in china can be as important as its impact on improving allocative efficiency and resource mobilization

why are informal loans still a big deal evidence from north east thailand abstractthis article examines the use and benefit of informal loans for different income groups of rural households in north east thailand using a difference in differences estimation approach which is later complemented by propensity score matching the article shows that different household groups profit from informal loans in different ways poor households increase their asset endowment and in particular farming assets whereas rich households food consumption rises especially if households borrow due to a shock by showing that informal loans serve different households for different purposes this article provides an explanation why they still play an important role

telephone demand over the atlantic evidence from country pair data international calls include consumption and financial externalities theoretical analysis predicts that the volume of outbound and inbound calls is a function of originating country price own price and terminating country price cross price analysis of annual data for minutes of calling between the u s and seventeen west european countries from 1979 to 1986 reveals negative own price effects in both directions with inbound calls more elastic cross price effects are generally not statistically significant the findings are consistent with arbitrage and call externality motivation that cancel each other level of gdp number of telephones and telex prices are statistically significant copyright 1992 by blackwell publishing ltd

rural development finance in vietnam a microeconometric analysis of household surveys abstract this study examines a the rural household participation in the vietnamese rural credit market b the behavior of a formal lender in response to the credit needs of households and c the impact of credit the rural credit market in vietnam is quite segmented the formal sector specializes in lending for production purposes whereas the informal sector s lending is quite diverse we show that rural households are rational in deciding which sources to ask for a particular kind of loan reputation the dependency ratio of households and the amount of credit applied for by the household are identified as the determinants of credit rationing by the bank credit is shown to have a significant impact on household production

remittances banking status and the usage of insurance schemes empirical evidence that migrants send home more remittances after disasters raises the question of whether remittances can be used to self insure substituting for both formal and informal insurance we investigate this question using a unique data set on the usage patterns of financial services by households in south africa we show that the likelihood that a respondent has a formal funeral cover increases with income and banking status however it is lower for individuals receiving remittances which supports the idea that remittances act as self insurance we also show that purchasing formal funeral cover is influenced by other risk management strategies and that determinants of informal insurance differ from those of formal insurance jel code d14 f24 g22 o16

labor tying in a poor agrarian economy a theoretical and empirical analysis in this paper we show how tied labor contrary to its common characterization as a feudal relic and as a symptom of economic stagnation may actually be strengthened by capitalist agricultural development we construct a simple two period theoretical model of a two tiered labor market to show how the proportional importance of voluntary labor tying contracts may increase with yield increasing improvements and with a tightening of the labor market we then provide in support of these hypotheses some general historical as well as more detailed econometric evidence from a variety of cross sectional data in rural india

rural financial markets in low income countries recent controversies and lessons abstract recently some researchers have criticized traditional agricultural credit policies in low income countries this article identifies the major points of controversy between traditional views and these new views and also summarizes the primary lessons learned from these controversies savings mobilization more flexible interest rate policies less loan targeting and greater emphasis on improving the quality of financial services in rural areas are new views that are emphasized

banking the poor via savings accounts evidence from a field experiment abstract in a setting with low penetration of bank accounts i randomly gave access to bank accounts with zero fees at local bank branches to a large sample of female household heads in nepal the zero fees and physical proximity of the bank led to high take up and usage rates compared to similar studies in other settings however impact on income aggregate expenditures and assets are too imprecisely estimated to draw a conclusion i do find reallocation of expenditures across categories e g more spending on education and meat and fish and less on health and dowries and higher ability to cope with shocks on qualitative outcomes i find households report that their overall financial situation has improved the lack of a clear story on mechanisms yet strong result on aggregate self perception of financial wellbeing is consistent with access to quality savings accounts leading to household improvements via multiple mechanisms

a new assessment model of social cost of carbon and its situation analysis in china abstract the social cost of carbon scc represents monetary value of the damage caused by carbon dioxide emissions in climate change it is an important standard for the formulation of climate policy the uncertainty of carbon social cost is closely related to climate sensitivity damage parameters discount rate and so on previous studies have mainly focused on the consequences of climate change and the effect of social cost of carbon and welfare under different policies its research on the social cost of carbon has not included the evolution coefficient of carbon emissions and it has rarely introduced the climate disaster damage function into the process of solving the social cost of carbon this paper provides a simplified formula for the social cost of carbon the model has a nonlinear processing of the carbon circulation system which increases the nonlinear structure of co2 emission potential in addition the model modifies the climate damage function which adds additional losses from climate catastrophes this paper analyzes the combined effects of several key sensitivity parameters resulting in a fat tail distribution of social cost of carbon ultimately it is found that the mean scc of 2015 is 44 93 tco2 and the median scc is 15 9054 tco2 considering the possibility of extreme results and the impact of disaster risk loss on uncertain structure the joint effects of damage parameters climate sensitive parameters and discount rates make the social cost of carbon as much as 2 8 times the median and fat tail effect is obvious this brings uncertainty to the current emission reduction policies and abatement costs making it more difficult to assess cost effectiveness at last the paper evaluates the social cost of carbon under the base situation and low discount rate in china

evaluating the economic impact of a special credit programme kik kmkp in indonesia this article discusses a study of the economic impact of indonesia s kik kmkp programme of special credits for small scale enterprises our major focus is on how to measure economic impact it discusses the concept of impact the survey design the statistical framework and the practical problems of implementation and briefly summarises the findings we believe that our methodology generated reasonably reliable data and fundamentally sound estimates of the credit programme s direct impact on employment output and income

some economics of global warming the greenhouse effect itself is simple enough to understand and is not in any real dispute what is in dispute is its magnitude over the coming century its translation into changes in climates around the globe and the impacts of those climate changes on human welfare and the natural environment these are beyond the professional understanding of any single person the sciences involved are too numerous and diverse demography economics biology and the technology sciences are needed to project emissions atmospheric chemistry oceanography biology and meteorology are needed to translate emissions into climates biology agronomy health sciences economics sociology and glaciology are needed to identify and assess impacts on human societies and natural ecosystems and those are not all there are expert judgments on large pieces of the subject but no single person clothed in this panoply of disciplines has shown up or is likely to this article makes an attempt to forecast the economic and social consequences of global warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases and attempting to prevent it

do village funds improve access to finance evidence from thailand summary this paper examines whether recently introduced village funds one of the largest microfinance programs ever implemented improve access to finance village funds are analyzed in a cross sectional approach in comparison to competing financial institutions we find first that they reach the target group of lower income households better than formal financial institutions second village funds provide loans to those kinds of borrowers who tend to be customers of informal financial institutions third village funds help to reduce credit constraints thus village funds provide services in the intended direction albeit to a seemingly limited degree

adoption of agricultural innovations in developing countries a survey this paper reviews various studies which have provided a description and possible explanation to patterns of innovation adoption in the agricultural sector the survey points out that the tendency of many studies to consider innovation adoption in dichotomous terms adoption nonadoption may not be appropriate in many cases where the actual decisions are defined over a more continuous range more attention needs to be given to the socio cultural and institutional environment in area studies so that their interrelation with economic factors affecting adoption can be inferred the presence of several interrelated innovations is another aspect that needs to be considered more carefully in future research since a number of simultaneous decisions may be involved furthermore the possibility of regular sequential patterns in adopting components of a new technological package should be specifically addressed in future studies finally the impact of differential adoption rates on land holding distribution merits attention in future research

a theory of remittances as an implicit family loan arrangement abstract the idea of an implicit and informal loan agreement between family members to explain migrants remittances is not new but its implications have not been fully explored in the theoretical literature many empirically testable propositions may be derived from this hypothesis when trying to explain why emigrants remit what the time profile of remittances is how it depends on the intent to stay on the expected length of stay and on interest rates what use people make of remittances and how the home family consumption behavior is affected by the economic prospects in the receiving country furthermore this theory yields many interesting policy prescriptions for less developed countries wishing to maximize the remittance flow from emigrants

the us so2 auction analysis and generalization abstract the new acid rain program allows electric utilities all over the us to trade so 2 emission permits an annual discriminative and revenue neutral auction is linked to this program this innovative so 2 auction distributes 3 of the permits in circulation and takes place at the chicago board of trade early results showed that the auction generated a clearing price signal lower than the market price now the auction price seems to be determined by the outside market price still in the important starting phase a non discriminative auction design would probably have generated better price signals since potentially severe downward biases in both seller price offers and buyer bids are due to the discriminative feature of the epa auction

out of space regulation and technical change in communications satellites regulatory practices by the federal communications commission fcc have the effect of rationing the use of a particular resource required for communications satellite technology the electromagnetic spectrum spectrum or the airwaves is the medium over which communications signals such as tv telephone and radar travel federal government allocation of spectrum among competing services has long been implemented to mitigate the interference that can arise between nearby signals hence for instance the assignment of radio stations to unique regions along the am and fm dials that government regulation can and probably does fail to allocate spectrum efficiently for all the usual economic reasons has been attested to criticized and in turn the subject of proposed reformation in an economics literature both historic radio spectrum regulation inspired coase s theorem and growing including work which dates from harvey levin 1971 and references cited therein to most recently stanley besen et al 1984 left unaddressed however have been the implications of inefficient spectrum regulation for the pace and direction of technical change specifically the problems of static resource misallocation may be compounded by inefficiency in induced innovation v kerry smith 1974 1975 koji okuguchi 1975 wesley magat 1976 if fcc allocations incorrectly signal the true economic scarcity of spectrum innovation to augment spectrum and other inputs on the basis of relative scarcity may be misdirected and the overall rate of r d spending may be distorted accordingly the effect of government regulation on innovation in communications satellite technology merits particular attention for several reasons first a recent fcc ruling will increase the cost of future satellites by requiring them to operate at fcc mandated minimum levels of intensity of spectrum use on top of rationed quantities of spectrum see federal register 1983 para 69 second unlike other uses of spectrum there is a large public sector component to satellite r d spending that is also likely to be affected by fcc regulation undertaken by nasa current research expenditures on advanced communications satellite technology have been justified in large part by a perceived need to develop methods that use spectrum more intensively see nasa 1984 and u s congress house 1984 third and again distinguishing satellites from other users of spectrum the inherently global nature of satellite technology renders satellite spectrum allocations a contentious international issue in particular developing countries not currently using satellite technology have expressed serious concern about future spectrum availability in response technical change economizing on spectrum is frequently endorsed by regulators and moral suasion is accordingly brought to bear on industry as an appropriate solution see fcc 1985 and u s congress 1982 1 this paper proceeds as follows section i tailors a model of induced innovation de

the determinants of credit access and its impacts on micro and small enterprises the case of garment producers in kenya abstract there are diverse sources of credit for micro and small manufacturing enterprises mses in developing countries ranging from relatives and friends rotating savings and credit associations roscas micro finance institutions and commercial banks using a unique set of data on mses in garment clusters in nairobi this study attempts to identify the determinants of access to different credit sources and their impacts on firm profitability and growth the results of the regression analysis demonstrate that factors determining access to credit are often different from those affecting enterprise performance indicating limited impacts of credit access on enterprise performance

pathways into and out of poverty a study of rural household wealth dynamics in kenya this study identifies the factors associated with smallholder farm households that have risen out of poverty or descended into poverty between 1997 and 2007 in kenya the study uses data from a nationwide balanced panel of 1 275 households and data from detailed retrospective life history survey of 84 households that had experienced either an appreciable improvement or decline in their asset wealth over the 10 year panel period the results indicate that household welfare dynamics are associated with a disparate set of idiosyncratic and unexpected shocks such as death and chronic illness demographic factors proximity to infrastructural facilities as well as intergenerational wealth transfers

an analysis of offer functions of banks and credit unions in guatemala economists have sought to identify institutions which might fill the gap in household access to credit arising from rationing by formal lenders credit unions have been identified as institutions which might use informational and monitoring advantages to fill that gap using information on household perceptions of their access to credit this article analyses the impact of certain credit unions on the access to credit of households in guatemala regression results indicate that credit unions serve markets unserved by formal lenders and that information on household perceptions of their access to credit is important in making inferences about lender lending activities

credit market access and profitability in tunisian agriculture this work develops an econometric model that links credit access with agricultural profitability and investment using data collected from rural tunisia this work provides direct estimates of credit access and its effects econometric estimates are run for agricultural investment and profitability as a function of credit access the investigation of credit access and its effect suggests that the presence of credit market constraints does impinge significantly on farm profitability but not on investments

cost structure and technical change in rural banking abstract using the multi product translog cost function this paper examines the cost structure and technical change occurring within the novel ghanaian rural banks the results of the seemingly unrelated error components model indicate substantial unexploited economies of scale in individual products as well as in overall intermediation there is presence of pairwise complementarity between loans and government securities and between deposits and government securities but absence of pairwise complementarity between loans and deposits overall capital using and labour saving technical change has occurred but efficiency loss in deposit mobilization outweighs the efficiency gains in government securities and lending activities operation of agencies reinforces the overall efficiency loss the rural banks must not be hindered from expanding but in any growth strategy deposit mobilization should take a central position and the cost of operating agencies watched closely

who is credit constrained in the u s economy an important assumption of the life cycle model of consumption is the postulate of perfect capital markets this hypothesis has recently been challenged by substantial empirical evidence hall and mishkin 1982 using the panel study of income dynamics estimate that 20 percent of united states families are liquidity constrained mariger 1986 derives a life cycle model with endogenous liquidity constraints and using a cross section estimates this fraction to be 19 4 percent hubbard and judd 1986 simulate a model with a constraint on net worth which shows that with reasonable assumptions about preferences 19 0 percent of united states consumers are liquidity constrained the emerging consensus points therefore to a fraction of approximately 20 percent of the population behaving in a manner that is inconsistent with the pure life cycle model in addition hayashi 1985 and zeldes 1989 investigate the correlation among consumption wealth and income for various population groups and infer that liquidity constraints are more important for younger families with low levels of wealth and saving the main limitation of these studies is that in their data sets constrained consumers are not observable and have to be identified via indirect evidence thus there is as yet little firm evidence about the characteristics of the consumers who are likely to be credit constrained this paper adopts an approach that differs from previous tests for liquidity constraints because it makes use of data where constrained consumers are observable and explicitly links their existence to credit market imperfections and personal characteristics the data drawn from the 1983 survey of consumer finances scf and described in section ii provide information on individuals whose request for credit has been rejected by financial intermediaries in section iii a model is developed in which consumers and lenders behavior jointly determines the probability that a consumer is rationed in the credit market this probability is then

income smoothing and consumption smoothing one way that risk averse households protect consumption levels is to borrow and use insurance mechanisms another way common in low income economies is to diversify economic activities and make conservative production and employment choices households thus tend toward limiting exposure only to shocks that can be handled with available credit and insurance typically both types of mechanisms are studied independently but much more can be learned by studying them together first we obtain a more complete picture of risks costs and insurance possibilities second it opens the way to considering biases in standard tests of credit and insurance

targeting the poor in mexico an evaluation of the selection of households into progresa abstract in this paper we conduct an evaluation of the targeting method used by health education and nutrition program progresa of mexico to identify beneficiary households we address two key questions a how well does progresa s targeting perform and b how does the program perform in terms of its impact on poverty alleviation relative to other feasible methods and transfer schemes the first question is accomplished by comparing progresa s method to an alternative selection method based on household consumption which is our preferred measure of welfare we employ the concepts of undercoverage and leakage and find that progresa selection method is more effective in identifying the extremely poor localities or households but less so when it comes to distinguishing among localities or households in the middle of the scale to address the second question we compare the potential impact of progresa on poverty alleviation against uniform transfers that involve no targeting at all targeting based on consumption and geographic targeting i e targeting at the locality level rather than at the household level we find that progresa s method of targeting households outperforms uniform coverage and targeting at the locality level in terms of reducing the poverty gap and severity of poverty indices even after taking into account the economic costs of targeting but the closeness of progresa s performance to what could be achieved by geographic targeting alone raises some serious questions about the costs and benefits associated with the practice of household targeting within poor localities

social networks and credit access in indonesia abstract in this paper we investigate how family and community networks affect an individual s access to credit institutions using new data from the indonesia family life surveys our theoretical framework emphasizes the family and community s role in providing information thus lowering the search costs of the borrower and monitoring and enforcement costs for the lender from our empirical results community and family networks are important in knowing a place to borrow as well as for loan approval consistent with an information based explanation of networks family and community networks have a larger impact on credit awareness of new credit institutions with a lower impact on awareness of established credit sources interestingly we find that women benefit from participating in community networks more than men there is no evidence that the rich benefit from community networks more than the poor our results on the benefits from participation in the community network are robust to the inclusion of community fixed effects

u s interest groups prefer emission trading a new perspective if there is to be environmental regulation what kind of regulation would the main interest groups then prefer this political distortion must be taken into account when designing future environmental regulation such as co2 regulation the three main interest groups in the u s private business environmentalist groups and the electricity sector prefer a grandfathered permit market business is attracted by this solution because free initial distribution of permits both favours existing sources financially and furthermore creates a barrier to entry for new firms environmentalist groups have changed attitudes and promote the idea too as a way of negotiating higher target reduction levels with industry to maintain voluntary contributions from their members finally electric utilities prefer a grandfathered permit market and this step towards less planned economy may be explained by the rise of competition in the u s electricity sector therefore it is suggested that a grandfathered permit market is a more effective policy than a tax in relation to organized interests such as industry electric utilities and environmental organizations in perspective the grandfathered permit market may be mixed with the use of taxes in the case of co2 regulation for example taxes may be applied to badly organized polluters such as households and the transport sector because their lobbying power is weak

empirical measurement of credit rationing in agriculture a methodological survey empirical analysis of rural credit market failure has been of key scientific and political interest in recent years the aim of this article is to give an overview of the various methods for measuring credit rationing that are employed in the literature furthermore the methods are subjected to a comparative evaluation of their specific strengths or shortcomings six approaches are distinguished measurement of loan transaction costs analysis of qualitative information collected in interviews analysis of quantitative information collected in interviews using the credit limit concept analysis of spill over effects with regard to secondary credit sources econometric household modeling and the econometric analysis of dynamic investment decisions an explicit comparison with a first best solution is impossible in the first three approaches since they essentially rely on a subjective assessment of borrowers access to credit based on qualitative or quantitative indicators the fifth and sixth approaches allow a rigorous interpretation in the framework of neoclassical equilibrium theory the fourth approach takes an intermediate position since spill over on segmented loan markets reveals a willingness to pay with regard to the supposedly less expensive but rationed primary source the approaches are fairly data demanding in general usually requiring specific data on loan transactions even so most approaches are applicable to cross sectional household data with the exception of the first all methods surveyed might plausibly be used to empirically detect credit rationing

consumption smoothing migration and marriage evidence from rural india a significant proportion of migration in low income countries particularly in rural areas is composed of moves by women for the purpose of marriage we seek to explain these mobility patterns by examining marital arrangements among indian households in particular we hypothesize that the marriage of daughters to locationally distant dispersed yet kinship related households is a manifestation of implicit interhousehold contractual arrangements aimed at mitigating income risks and facilitating consumption smoothing in an environment characterized by information costs and spatially covariant risks analysis of longitudinal south indian village data lends support to the hypothesis marriage cum migration contributes significantly to a reduction in the variability of household food consumption farm households afflicted with more variable profits tend to engage in longer distance marriage cum migration the hypothesized and observed marriage cum migration patterns are in dissonance with standard models of marriage or migration that are concerned primarily with search costs and static income gains

econometric estimation of producers risk attitudes general methods are proposed for the identification and econometric estimation of the parameters of the distribution of risk attitudes in a producer population the proposed methods also provide the basis for the development of statistical tests of model specification and of behavioral hypotheses econometric risk attitude estimation is shown to be possible under less restrictive conditions than previously believed a moment based version of the general model is applied to indian data and the econometrically estimated risk attitudes are presented and compared to experimental results for a similar group of producers

wealth weather risk and the composition and profitability of agricultural investments despite the growing evidence that farmers in low income environments are risk averse there has been little empirical evidence on the importance of risk in shaping the actual allocation of production resources among farmers differentiated by wealth the authors use panel data on investments in rural india to examine how the composition of productive and nonproductive asset holdings varies across farmers with different levels of total wealth and across farmers facing different degrees of weather risk income variability is a prominent feature of the experience of rural agents in low income countries the authors report evidence based on measures of rainfall variability that the agricultural investment portfolio behavior of farmers in such settings reflects risk aversion due evidently to limitations on consumption soothing mechanisms such as crop insurance or credit markets the authors results suggest that uninsured weather risk is a significant cause of lower efficiency and lower average incomes a one standard deviation decrease in weather risk measured by the standard deviation of the timing of the rainy season would raise average profits by up to 35 percent among farmers in the lowest wealth quartile moreover rainfall variability induces a more unequal distribution of average incomes for a given distribution of wealth wealthier farmers are willing to absorb significant risk without giving up profits to reduce production risk smaller farmers have to invest their limited wealth in ways that reduce their exposure to risk at the cost of lower profit rates the authors found that at high levels of rainfall variability differences in rates of profit per unit of agricultural assets were similar across classes of wealth but over the sample range of rainfall variability these rates of profit were always higher for the poorer farmers than for the wealthier ones suggesting that the disadvantages of small farmers in risk diffusion are more than offset by their labor cost advantage

the role of warehouse receipt systems in enhanced commodity marketing and rural livelihoods in africa most african countries have since the 1980s liberalised agriculture without experiencing food crisis as feared by sceptics but the outcome of reforms has been rather disappointing and agricultural markets remain underdeveloped and inefficient one means to improve agricultural marketing which is the focus of this paper is to develop regulated warehouse receipt wr systems the system will curtail cheating on weights and measures ease access to finance at all levels in the marketing chain moderate seasonal price variability and promote instruments to mitigate price risks it will also reduce the need for the government to intervene in agricultural markets and reduce the cost of such interventions if needed the major problem in establishing wr systems in africa is disabling elements in the policy environment drawing on experience from projects implemented in africa during the last decade 1 the authors outline how this challenge can be addressed the most crucial being to build strong stakeholder support behind the initiative 2002 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

a sketch of the economics of the greenhouse effect over the last decade scientists have studied extensively the greenhouse effect which holds that the accumulation of carbon dioxide co2 and other greenhouse gases ghgs is expected to produce global warming and other significant climatic changes over the next century see stephen schneider 1989 the present study presents an economic approach for analyzing policies to slow climate change

risk sharing with limited commitment and preference heterogeneity structural estimation and testing in order to analyze the role of limited commitment and preference heterogeneity in explaining the consumption allocation i propose a theoretical and empirical framework to estimate and evaluate a risk sharing model where insurance transfers have to be self enforcing and the coefficient of relative risk aversion may depend on observable household characteristics i compare this model to benchmark models with full commitment and or without preference heterogeneity using data from three indian villages i find that the limited commitment model with heterogeneous preferences outperforms the benchmark models in a statistical sense and in terms of i explaining the dynamic response of consumption to idiosyncratic income shocks ii accounting for the variation of consumption unexplained by household and time effects and iii capturing the variation of inequality across time and villages and predicting changes in inequality i also use the estimated models to predict the effects of a counterfactual tax and transfer policy on the consumption allocation the limited commitment model with preference heterogeneity predicts larger benefits to the poor than its homogeneous counterpart

rural women s access to credit market imperfections and intrahousehold dynamics summary credit rationing studies carried out at the household level and based on responses from male heads of households present an incomplete and biased assessment of who is likely to be constrained why they are constrained and what is the extent of the constraints they ignore possibly conflictive intrahousehold dynamics and assume that imperfections in rural financial markets are gender neutral this paper addresses both issues theoretically and empirically the semi cooperative household model developed for this analysis formalizes the conditions under which spouses and particularly women s individual access to credit can be affected by their own position in the financial market as well as by intrahousehold dynamics these notions are then explored empirically using husbands and wives individual perceptions of their access to credit in rural paraguay the most significant empirical findings of the paper are that i compared to men women are more likely to be credit constrained ii women s rationing status responds to a different set of factors than men s and iii husbands may choose not to intermediate capital to their wives even when they are able to do so results from this exercise provide empirically sound support for the assumptions underlying women targeted credit programs

social security and private transfers in developing countries the case of peru do social security systems crowd out private transfers from younger to older generations this question has generated much theoretical discussion but little empirical work exists to confirm or refute this crowding out hypothesis we investigate the connection between social security and private transfers in peru using the peruvian living standards survey and find that private transfers from young to old would have been nearly 20 percent higher without social security benefits this indicates that the peruvian social security system is less effective at delivering benefits to the elderly than a simple assignment of government expenditures would suggest social security s displacement of private transfers while significant is less than that predicted by models with widespread altruistic transfers

the rural non farm sector issues and evidence from developing countries abstract the rural non farm sector has traditionally been viewed as a low productivity sector which produces low quality goods it is often expected to wither away as a country develops recent years have seen a shift away from this position towards recognition that the rural non farm sector can and often does contribute to economic growth rural employment poverty reduction and a more spatially balanced population distribution this paper reviews the literature on the conceptual and empirical underpinnings of this more recent perspective focussing on the experience in developing countries the paper documents the size and heterogeneity of the sector pointing to evidence that in many countries the sector is expanding rather than declining the issues associated with measuring the sector s economic contribution are discussed followed by empirical assessments for several countries and regions the distributional impact of non farm earnings is examined and it is found that a pro poor impact while by no means inevitable can be considerable the sector s trajectory over time in different settings is reviewed and the scope for and experience of various policy interventions is discussed

is informal risk sharing less effective for the poor risk externalities and moral hazard in mutual insurance abstract poor farm households are less keen to adopt high risk high return technologies than rich households yet the poor are more vulnerable to income shocks we develop a model of endogenous risk taking to explain these facts in autarky poor households adopt less risky production plans and obtain lower expected returns but face higher relative risk than the rich the introduction of risk sharing generates negative risk externalities between agents at the first best the social planner imposes a homogeneous level of risk taking in the group at the second best risk taking is not enforceable and increases with insurance generating moral hazard interestingly the poor s risk taking behavior is more sensitive to insurance the social planner thus mitigates risk taking by applying a lower insurance coverage in poor groups the introduction of risk sharing therefore reinforces the gap between rich and poor in terms of expected income and absolute risk while the effect on relative risk is ambiguous

the spectrum as commons tomorrow s vision not today s prescription abstract eli noam has proposed using nascent technologies to treat the electromagnetic spectrum as an open access commons rather than as a subdivided collection of property rights in his view public auctions reduce competition threaten free speech foster fiscal mismanagement and presume illegitimate government ownership of spectrum but government auctioning is our collective decision to sell that which we all own to foster spectrum efficiency via the market threats to free speech are exaggerated especially when asserted on behalf of corporations noam correctly observes that a government auctioneer might make too little spectrum available but concerns about fostering oligopoly are exaggerated his open access alternative would likely increase the cost of assembling the substantial long term rights to use spectrum for standardized reliable telecommunication services if the benefits of open access ever exceed the costs spectrum owners could carry out the necessary subdivision management and

the conundrum of successful credit projects in floundering rural financial markets many governments use credit projects to foster agricultural development and donors spend billions of dollars supporting these activities in low income countries lics most of these activities are justified by the purported impact that loans have on ultimate borrowers for example credit demands filled additional crops produced changes in modern inputs used and borrowers incomes increased most project evaluations report favorable impacts that in turn stimulate donors and governments to spend more money on agricultural credit these favorable evaluations have prompted policymakers to conclude that rural financial markets are strengthened by most credit projects at the same time other researchers have evaluated rural financial markets in countries with successful credit projects and have found mounting problems they report on markets that lose substantial portions of the purchasing power of their loan portfolios to ravages of default or inflation concentrations of cheap loans in the hands of the wealthy political meddling in lending systems that offer few savings opportunities large transaction costs for lenders and borrowers lenders who are addicted to outside funds for their sustenance and credit institutions that sporadically implode or self destruct these reports of healthy parts but infirm wholes present a conundrum how can the major parts of the rural financial system involved in donor and government projects be doing well while the system as a whole is doing poorly are these projects islands of tranquility in otherwise stormy seas or is one of these two approaches to evaluation giving an erroneous picture unfortunately few credit project evaluations are published in journals or books although a large number of these studies have been done typically evaluation results are buried in unpublished reports or in graduate student theses while millions of dollars have been spent

a general model for co2 regulation the case of denmark abstract for both economic political and administrative reasons a mixed design of permit market bubble and tax may be preferable for co 2 regulation in the case of denmark a co 2 market should be introduced for the private manufacturing sector and an administratively set co 2 bubble should be introduced for the public electricity sector permits should then be devaluated in year 2005 by 20 a co 2 tax should be correctly set at a level of 50 in year 2005 for households the transportation sector and private firms not participating in the co 2 market this model may guide future energy policies in other countries as well

food marketing liberalization and trader entry evidence from madagascar abstract food marketing liberalization was expected to induce massive trader entry and competitive markets in africa despite evidence of trader entry enterprise expansion remains difficult and many claim market power persists though perhaps in different hands this paper confronts this puzzle of substantial market entry that might not foster competition data from madagascar reveal distinct groups within rural food marketing channels separated by intraindustry mobility barriers that limit entry to a few niches moreover individuals place within the rural marketing network is defined largely by a priori social identity so the experience of food marketing liberalization varies across socially distinct subpopulations

outer space resources in efficient and equitable use new frontiers for old principles space is the common property of mankind traditionally access to common property resources such as the oceans has been open and free this is appropriate for resources that are plentiful at first glance space appears to be not only abundant but infinite however future demand for space resources may soon make them scarce in the sense that an allocation mechanism will be needed for their efficient utilization satellites already perform traditional and new services using outer space resources and plans for industrial ventures in space are under way space activities compete with more earthly activities for use of the scarce electromagnetic spectrum this paper demonstrates how the general principles of efficient markets easily can be extended to space resources in fact the market mechanism is particularly well suited to achieving efficient use of these resources given the difficulty for a central authority to obtain the necessary information the paper is inspired by two seminal articles by r h coase on the organization of economic activity our application is one of many

a socio economic study of the borrowing process the case of microentrepreneurs in jordan this paper investigates the socio economic determinants of four stages of borrowing process of the jordanian microfinance market the equations and functions corresponding to the stages of the borrowing process are estimated using a sample of 474 microentrepreneurs the main results are as follow variables that reflect the repayment ability are the main determinants of credit rationing in the microfinance market religious beliefs social responsibilities availability of local microfinance provides application costs level of knowledge about microfinance providers significantly affect the borrowing process of microentrepreneurs credit rationing is found to be a problem for some applicants but not for the majority

land use and income diversification comparing traditional and colonist populations in the brazilian amazon this article compares and analyzes land use and income diversification among two distinct groups of farmers in the brazilian amazon recent colonists in ouro preto do oeste rondonia and traditional long term residents along the tapajos river para we investigate the hypothesis that farmers who diversify their cash income sources clear less forest on an annual basis and we compare these livelihood choices across colonist and traditional populations in particular we develop a conceptual model based on the household production framework and use econometric models to identify determinants of diversification and forest clearing we find that diversification of agricultural cash crops is negatively correlated with forest clearing by colonists providing limited evidence for the hypothesis other significant covariates of diversification and forest clearing include cash income levels stage in family life cycle cattle ownership and chemical inputs differences in these variables and differences in household response to these variables explain variation in diversification and forest clearing across the two populations

segmentation in rural financial markets the case of nepal abstract based on a farm household survey in nepal this study found that farm size and irrigation are major determinants of borrowing from formal institutions whereas family size is the most decisive factor in borrowing from informal sources formal sector borrowing per hectare of cultivated area however initially increases and then decreases with farm size our analysis indicates that while very small farmers tend to be excluded from the formal financial market because of a lack of collateral very large farmers choose to borrow less from that source because of lower production efficiency

microequity and microfinance abstract this paper examines the work of the village enterprise fund an us nongovernmental organization in east africa as a case study in equity based microfinance in low income countries many small businesses established in high income countries rely on some form of equity capital to fund the startup phase and much of the growth of the business the success of startup grants and equity financing in high income countries suggests that this method might also be applicable in low income countries using the work of the village enterprise fund as an example the paper argues that startup grants and equity finance are useful and appropriate in addition to the more common loan based approaches

the relationship between credit and productivity in chinese agriculture a microeconomic model of disequilibrium credit is an important element in agricultural production systems it allows producers to satisfy the cash needs induced by the production cycle which characterizes agriculture preparation planting cultivation and harvesting of the crops are typically done over a period of several months in which very little cash revenue is earned while expenditures on materials purchased inputs and consumption must be made in cash cash income is received a short time after the harvest in the absence of credit markets farmers would have to maintain cash reserves so as to facilitate production and consumption in the next cycle the availability of credit allows both greater consumption and greater purchased input use and thus increases welfare of the farmers

buying greenhouse insurance the economic costs of carbon dioxide emission limits in recent years a growing concern that the increasing accumulation of greenhouse gases will lead to undesirable changes in global climate has resulted in a number of proposals both in the united states and internationally to set physical targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions but what will these proposals cost based on the authors earlier ground breaking work buying greenhouse insurance outlines a way to think about greenhouse effect decisions under uncertainty it describes an insightful model for determining the economic costs of limiting carbon dioxide emissions produced by burning fossil fuels and provides a solid analytical base for rethinking public policy on the farreaching issue of global warming manne and richels present region by region estimates of the costs that would underlie an international agreement using a computer model known as global 2100 they analyze the economic impacts of limiting c02 emissions under alternative supply and conservation scenarios the results clearly indicate that a reduction in emissions is not the sole policy response to potential climate change following a summary of the greenhouse effect its likely causes and possible consequences manne and richels take up issues that concern the public at large they provide an overview of global 2100 look at how the u s energy sector is likely to evolve under businessas usual conditions and under carbon constraints and describe the concept of greenhouse insurance they consider possible global agreements including an estimate of benefits that might result from trading in an international market in emission rights they conclude with a technical description directed toward modeling specialists alan manne is professor of operations research at stanford university richard richels is director of the energy analysis and planning department at the electric power research institute

on financial innovations and credit market evolution abstract this paper examines the role of financial innovations in the economic development process it discusses the place of policy intervention in the financial development of developing countries and through a case study of an innovative bank illustrates the nature and characteristics of the financial innovations necessary for financing small enterprises and mobilizing resources from low and middle income groups such financial innovations are shown to reduce transaction costs and risk and as a result to bring about widening deeping and intergration of capital markets this process accelerates economic development through a favorable impact on savings investment and output

using weather variability to estimate the response of savings to transitory income in thailand this paper measures the extent to which farmers are able to use savings and dissavings to smooth consumption in response to unexpected shocks to income time series information on regional rainfall is used to construct estimates of transitory income due to rainfall shocks the relationship between these measures of transitory income and savings indicates that farm households save a significantly higher fraction of transitory income than nontransitory income jel d91 016 the incomes of farm households in developing countries are notorious for being both low and uncertain policies that increase the incomes of farmers may well be different

risk sharing versus low cost credit systems for international development low cost credit programs in developing countries have failed to achieve agricultural technology adoption goals this research attributes the failure to the inabiiity of poor farmers to bear the combined business and financial risks p sed ly adopting new technologies and develops proposals for the design of credit programs that reduce these risks agronomic and socioeconomic data are combined through simulation and mathematical programming to analyze problems of decision making under risk for developing countries the results will assist iii the design of new rural financial institutions conducive to the adoption of new production technologies by subsistence

consumers industrialists and the political economy of green taxation co2 taxation in oecd abstract economists have traditionally suggested that politicians should simply impose a uniform tax on harmful emissions as the first best solution prescribes however a detailed analysis of the actual design of green taxes in the oecd reveals that they are differentiated and far from this first best optimal design public choice theory suggests that an important reason that industry as a group in contrast to households is capable of lobbying against green taxation the paper presents empirical findings on co2 taxation within the oecd countries which confirm this theoretical prediction taxes are not uniform and households pay a tax rate which is six times higher than that paid by the industry on average even when tax revenue is fully refunded to industry the potential losers energy intensive firms will lobby harder against it than the potential winners labor intensive firms due to small group advantages the norwegian case confirms these arguments finally it is suggested that a co2 tax may perhaps successfully be applied to households because they tend to be badly organized as such a mix of green taxes in relation to non organized interests and grandfathered permit markets in relation to organized interests should be considered in the search for cost effective and politically feasible instruments

the limits of international organization systematic failure in the management of international relations contributors to the literature on international organization io have traditionally been overly optimistic about the ability of multilateral management to stabilize in ternational relations and have tended to ignore the destabilizing effects of io while recent revisionist scholarship has acknowledged both the potential for organizational failure and the conditionality of management it has tended to focus on how io fails within specific issue areas and institutions this article offers a typology of the inherent systematic failures of io across issue areas and institutions and thereby seeks to bridge the gaps in our understanding of why many different institutions and managerial schemes have adverse effects it argues that io is prone to failure 1 when it attempts to manage complex tightly coupled systems of relations and issues 2 when it serves as a substitute either for more substantive and long term resolutions to international problems or for responsible domestic or foreign policy 3 when it intensifies international disputes and 4 when it generates moral hazard in offering a general theoretical approach to understanding the destabilizing effects of io the analysis is intended to serve both as a focal point for understanding critical approaches to the study of io and as an alternative rationale for eliminating the excesses of multilateral management

credit rationing in rural credit markets of india this article analyses the prevalent situation of the formal financial institutions fis in rural india using data from national sample survey 54th round january june 1998 we use sample selectivity model to examine the sanction of the loan by the fis as a two stage process we model the choice of the household s credit requirement using an unordered choice model namely a multinomial logit model our results reveal that the rural households are considerably credit constrained the households who do not have an account in a fi have a lower chance of obtaining the loan and households who are credit constrained have relatively lower land holding and they do not possess livestock households who borrow for nonfarm purpose exhibit a lower chance of obtaining credit compared to those households who borrow for farm business village level infrastructure plays an important role in determining the credit rationing behaviour in rural india

peer monitoring and credit markets a major problem for institutional lenders is ensuring that borrowers exercise prudence in the use of the funds so that the likelihood of repayment is enhanced one partial solution is peer monitoring having neighbors who are in a good position to monitor the borrower be required to pay a penalty if the borrower goes bankrupt peer monitoring is largely responsible for the successful financial performance of the grameen bank of bangladesh and of similar group lending programs elsewhere but peer monitoring has a cost it transfers risk from the bank which is in a better position to bear risk to the cosigner in a simple model of peer monitoring in a competitive credit market this article demonstrates that the transfer of risk leads to an improvement in borrowers welfare

allocation of orbit and spectrum resources for regional communications what s at stake abstract contentious debate surrounds allocation of the geostationary orbit and electromagnetic spectrum two resources used by communications satellites an extensive economics literature alleges that the nonmarket administrative allocative procedures now in place are highly inefficient but no research has empirically estimated the welfare loss this article develops a conceptual framework and a computerized model to estimate the economic value of the resources the size and distribution of welfare costs associated with the present regulatory regime and the potential gains from more market like allocation

agricultural workers credit rationing and family networks in rural mexico abstractwe use mixed methods and first hand household data in mexico to investigate credit practices by households engaged in agricultural wage employment quantitative analysis shows evidence of rationing in the formal sector but also suggests the existence of mitigating mechanisms qualitative analysis provides additional insights first income patterns associated with agricultural wage generate income smoothing needs that are sometimes better met by the informal sector second family networks can perform key functions as gateways to the formal sector through specific informal arrangements that inject flexibility into formal rules and procedures

california shows the future of electricity production in the single market in california pressure from industrial and commercial ratepayers has initiated liberalization in electricity production this us experience is important because the plausibility arguments against liberalization may reappear in the european debate on the single market

nonstructural risk attitude estimation this paper presents an econometric approach to risk attitude estimation that does not require joint estimation of the structure of the firm s technology and input decision rules the nonstructural approach replaces optimal input choice with the assumption that farmers optimally manage their portfolios of productive activities by thus shifting the focus from the detailed production decisions of the farm manager to the net returns of the whole farm operation the modeling problem is simplified the nonstructural approach is used to estimate risk attitudes in three indian villages the results are compared to previous experimental and econometric estimates from the same villages

shocks and asset dynamics in ethiopia abstractthis article uses household survey panel data of 416 rural households to study asset dynamics in the northern highlands of ethiopia and the response of assets to shocks the period under examination 1996 2003 was marked by severe environmental shocks including a series of droughts the article empirically studies the nature of household asset paths over time using as the point of departure the theory on precautionary savings behavior results indicate that the response of assets to weather shocks the differential effect of these shocks on liquid and less liquid forms of wealth holdings and the nature of asset dynamics are all consistent with the implications of a precautionary motive for holding wealth

global water crisis and future food security in an era of climate change food policy should serve humanity by advancing the humane goals of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger however these goals have recently been challenged by emerging forces including climate change water scarcity the energy crisis as well as the credit crisis this paper analyses the overall role of these forces and population growth in redefining global food security specifically global water supply and demand as well as the linkages between water supply and food security are examined the analysis reveals that the water for food security situation is intricate and might get daunting if no action is taken investments are needed today for enhancing future food security this requires action on several fronts including tackling climate change preserving land and conserving water reducing the energy footprint in food systems developing and adopting climate resilient varieties modernising irrigation infrastructure shoring up domestic food supplies reforming international food trade and responding to other global challenges

household responses to economic and demographic shocks marginal logit analysis using indonesian data abstract we analyse the responses of indonesian households to demographic and economic shocks and examine how these responses vary in relation to the household s permanent income and the extent to which the shock is common across the community households respond in different ways to demographic and economic shocks economic shocks are more likely to result in a labour supply response from the household and this probability is further increased if the shock is common for rural households use of savings increases with permanent income the article also examines the role of the interviewer in influencing survey responses

rural credit markets and institutions in developing countries lessons for policy analysis from practice and modern theory this article presents evidence of the failure of government intervention in rural credit markets of ldcs in the past three decades it then shows how lessons for policy analysis can be drawn from modern theory particularly those theories focussing on credit rationing in competitive markets and interlinking of credit contracts with labor and land contracts the article outlines the policy implications of these theories and finds them insufficient to account for the empirical evidence it contends that a more systematic and rigorous analysis of institutions and institutional environments is essential for understanding and implementing effective policy reforms of rural credit markets it presents suggestions for undertaking such an analysis

managing the global commons when should internationally shared resources be subdivided and property and management rights to parts of the resource be distributed among nation states subdivision leads to inefficient exploitation and to an arbitrary division of benefits under three conditions when property rights cannot be economically enforced when the size and the value of the resource are unknown and when exploitation involves external economies the efficient use of such common property resources requires private or public regulation voluntary private regulation is likely to be effective only when few users are involved in other cases public regulation is called for some attributes of an intergovernmental organization designed to achieve efficient equitable and stable exploitation are presented current proposals for managing ocean resources the orbit spectrum resource and antarctica are considered

the complex dynamics of smallholder technology adoption the case of sri in madagascar this article explores the dynamics of smallholder technology adoption with particular reference to a high yielding low external input rice production method in madagascar we present a simple model of technology adoption by farm households in an environment of incomplete financial and land markets we then use a probit model and symmetrically censored least squares estimation of a dynamic tobit model to analyze the decisions to adopt expand and disadopt the method we find that seasonal liquidity constraints discourage adoption by poorer farmers learning effects both from extension agents and from other farmers exert significant influence over adoption decisions

the future of small farms new directions for services institutions and intermediation summary efficient pre and post harvest services are essential if small farms in high potential areas are to intensify production contribute to economic growth and reduce poverty they also matter if small farms in marginal areas are to manage their natural resource base in the face of growing population pressure and climate change difficulties that smallholders face in accessing services are reviewed showing how incentives for commercial delivery of services to smallholders differ between staple food traditional cash crop and high value product supply chains the major challenge in service delivery to smallholders in much of africa concerns coordination of service development and delivery different forms of intermediary institution for achieving such coordination are examined

the performance of village intermediaries in rural credit delivery under changing penalty regimes evidence from senegal this article concerns the use of village intermediaries to mitigate asymmetric information problems in rural credit delivery we consider an example from senegal and examine the intermediaries screening of loan applicants the results show that when the intermediaries expected to incur a substantial penalty in the event of borrower default they engaged in appropriate screening allocating credit to borrowers likely to repay their loans when the default penalty was lowered however the intermediaries engaged in opportunistic screening emphasising political affiliation and consanguinity in their lending decisions these results reveal both the potential efficacy of village intermediaries in allocating credit and their extreme sensitivy to penalty regimes

allocation of co2 emissions permits a general equilibrium analysis of policy instruments what are the effects of different ways of allocating co2 emissions permits under a tradable permit scheme numerical simulations show that using the permit revenue to lower existing taxes implies by far the lowest welfare cost but also a large reduction in employment in energy intensive sectors and substantial stranded costs grandfathering the permits compensates owners for losses on stranded investments but comes at a welfare cost and does not mitigate the adjustment imposed on the economy finally distributing the permits according to market shares reduces the degree of sectoral adjustment but also comes at a high welfare cost

many borrow more save and all insure implications for food and micro finance policy abstract among policy makers researchers and micro finance practitioners alike there is much discussion on the role of micro finance for alleviation of poverty this paper focuses on the linkages between access to credit savings and insurance services and household food security what is the role of micro finance in the overall mix of policy instruments what types of financial services are demanded by the poor and which are offered by micro finance institutions mfis hence which are the gaps in financial products we present a conceptual framework that addresses these questions and provide a synthesis of the empirical results of a multi country research program in ten african and asian countries we conclude that insurance can be considered as the missing third of micro finance during the 1990s and that the mfi s outreach to the poor can be improved by offering savings credit and insurance products that enhance the poor s ability to bear risks applied research on the poor s preferences as well as bold experimentation with new financial products appear to be particularly promising in making progress towards that goal since insurance services are difficult to be offered except for easily observable idiosyncratic risks precautionary savings services can be a valuable insurance substitute in particular for the poorest

microenterprise development programs in the united states and in the developing world abstract sparked by examples from bangladesh bolivia indonesia and other developing countries hundreds of microenterprise programs have been started in the united states will these us efforts be successful this paper reviews the evidence and concludes that microenterprise development is much more difficult in the united states than in the developing world the paper suggests some ways to address the challenges of us microenterprise development

determinants of credit rationing a study of informal lenders and formal credit groups in madagascar abstract previous research on the determinants of credit rationing focused exclusively on the behavior of formal lenders who contract directly with an individual borrower based on survey data from madagascar this paper presents an analysis of credit rationing by informal lenders and by members of community based groups that allocate formal group loans among themselves the results show that group members are able to obtain and to use locally available information about the applicant s creditworthiness in much the same way as informal lenders do both types of lenders use the applicant s debt servicing obligations and income as the main criteria for credit rationing this paper therefore empirically confirms theoretical arguments that community based groups have an information advantage over distant formal bank agents

financial market efficiency in an agrarian economy microeconometric analysis of the pakistani punjab the shadow price of capital in production is a useful indicator of the efficacy of the rural financial system using data on participants and non participants in a small farm credit programme from the pakistani punjab this article estimates the shadow price of capital endogenous switching regressions techniques are employed to control for the likely heterogeneity of borrowers versus non borrowers results indicate that an individual selected at random from the population of small farmers would experience a 200 per cent rate of return on the first rupee borrowed from the small farm credit programme indicating a high shadow price of capital and a prima facie case for small farm credit programmes

formal and informal rural credit in four provinces of vietnam abstract this paper uses a survey of 932 rural households to uncover how the rural credit market operates in vietnam households obtain credit through formal and informal lenders formal loans are almost entirely for production and asset accumulation while informal loans are used for consumption smoothening the determinants of formal and informal credit demand are distinct while credit rationing depends on education and credit history in particular regional differences in the demand for credit are striking a one size fits all approach to credit policy in vietnam would be inappropriate