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

cash transfer programs with income multipliers procampo in mexico abstract cash transfer programs create multiplier effects when recipients put the money they receive to work to generate further incomes when this is the case the ultimate income effects are multiples of the amounts transferred we analyze the procampo program in mexico that was introduced to compensate farmers for the anticipated negative effect of nafta on the prices of basic crops the transfer rules and the timing of the panel data collected allow unique control of biases in this impact analysis we find that the multiplier among ejido sector recipients is in the range 1 5 2 6 multipliers are higher for households with medium and large farms low numbers of adults in the household nonindigenous backgrounds and located in the center and gulf regions high multipliers reflect income opportunities that had remained unrealized due to liquidity constraints that are relaxed by the transfers opportunities come from the asset endowments that these households received through the land reform particularly irrigated land and they are enhanced by access to technical assistance

rational household labor supply traditionally household behavior is derived from the maximization of a unique utility function in this paper we propose an alternative approach in which the household is modeled as a two member collectivity taking pareto efficient decisions the consequences of this assumption are analyzed in a three good model in which only total consumption and each member s labor supply are observable if the agents are assumed egoistic i e they are only concerned with their own leisure and consumption it is possible to derive falsifiable conditions upon household labor supplies from both a parametric and nonparametric viewpoint if alternatively agents are altruistic restrictions obtain in the nonparametric context useful interpretation stems from the comparison with the characterization of aggregate demand for a private good economy

indirect effects of an aid program how do cash transfers affect ineligibles consumption cash transfers to eligible households indirectly increase the consumption of ineligible households living in the same villages this effect operates through insurance and credit markets ineligible households benefit from the transfers by receiving more gifts and loans and by reducing their savings thus the transfers benefit the local economy at large looking only at the effect on the treated underestimates the impact one should analyze the effects of this class of programs on the entire local economy rather than on the treated only and use a village level randomization rather than selecting treatment and control subjects from the same community

the impact of progresa on food consumption abstract in this article we used data from the mexican poverty alleviation program called progresa programa de educacion salud y alimentacion to examine whether eligibility for a cash transfer provided by the program conditional on children s regular school attendance and regular visits to health centers is also associated with increased consumption of food we used a longitudinal sample of approximately 24 000 households from 506 communities a distinguishing characteristic of this sample was that some of the communities were randomly selected for participation in progresa while the rest were introduced into the program at later phases exploiting this feature in our analysis we found that eligible households in the villages covered by progresa increased caloric acquisition compared with eligible households not receiving these benefits by november 1999 median beneficiary households in treatment localities obtained 6 4 more calories than did comparable households in control localities perhaps eve

the livelihood impacts of cash transfers in sub saharan africa beneficiary perspectives from six countries summary cash transfers cts are a social protection mechanism to reduce the poorest households vulnerability to shocks and build human capital by smoothing consumption and sustaining expenditure on education and social welfare our study examines whether and how cts go beyond welfare objectives to promote livelihoods presenting a cross case analysis using original qualitative data on beneficiary perspectives from six african countries kenya ethiopia malawi lesotho zimbabwe and ghana we explore ct livelihood impacts within household economies and social networks paying attention to gender issues we find that a small but predictable flow of cash improves strategic livelihood choices and stimulates productive investments including through positive effects on beneficiary entry into risk sharing arrangements and networks for economic collaboration levels of household vulnerability and labor constraint nevertheless significantly mediate the ability of cts to consolidate livelihood outcomes the varying availability of economic opportunities plus effective program implementation also shape livelihood impact incorporating beneficiary perspectives brings to the fore the multi dimensionality of ct effects on experiences of poverty and deprivation including gender dynamics and intangibles such as dignity and respect they add powerful realism to the influence of the ct on both immediate survival and livelihood choices beyond this they confirm wider knowledge on productive impact and bring nuance to the conditions under which and mechanisms by which beneficiaries use cts to build productive capability and assets and to make strategic livelihood choices

a test for moral hazard in the labor market contractual arrangements effort and health moral hazard plays a central role in many models depicting contractual relationships involving worker effort the authors show how time series information on worker health consumption and work time can be used to measure the effort effects of payment schemes estimates from longitudinal data describing farming rural households indicate that time wage payment schemes and share tenancy contracts reduce effort compared to piece rate payment schemes and on farm employment the evidence also indicates consistent with moral hazard that the same workers consume more calories under a piece rate payment scheme or in on farm employment than when employed for time wages copyright 1994 by mit press

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

deficits government expenditures and tax smoothing in the united states 1929 1988 abstract barro s tax smoothing hypothesis tsh implies that the government runs a budget deficit whenever it anticipates the growth rate of national income to increase or the growth rate of its expenditure to decline we test this implication of the hypothesis by examining the implied cross equation restrictions on a vector autoregression var model using u s data for the period ranging from 1929 to 1988 our formal tests reject the hypothesis for the full sample period but cannot reject it for the post 1947 period further investigations show that the statistical rejection should be attributed to sharp differences in the statistical properties of the pre 1947 and the post 1947 data rather than the failure of the hypothesis itself

the economics of poverty traps and persistent poverty an asset based approach abstract longitudinal data on household living standards open the way to a deeper analysis of the nature and extent of poverty while a number of studies have exploited this type of data to distinguish transitory from more chronic forms of income or expenditure poverty this paper develops an asset based approach to poverty analysis that makes it possible to distinguish deep rooted persistent structural poverty from poverty that passes naturally with time due to systemic growth processes drawing on the economic theory of poverty traps and bifurcated accumulation strategies this paper briefly discusses some feasible estimation strategies for empirically identifying poverty traps and long term persistent structural poverty as well as relevant extensions of the popular foster greer thorbecke class of poverty measures the paper closes with reflections on how asset based poverty can be used to underwrite the design of persistent poverty reduction strategies

caught in a productivity trap a distributional perspective on gender differences in malawian agriculture in targeting poverty gains sub saharan african governments have emphasized the alleviation of gender differences in agricultural productivity the empirical studies on the gender gap however have frequently used data that were limited regarding geographic and topical coverage and or details on intra household dynamics the study provides a nationally representative analysis of the gender gap in malawi and decomposes it for the first time at the mean and at selected points of the agricultural productivity distribution into i a portion driven by gender differences in levels of observable attributes the endowment effect and ii a portion driven by gender differences in returns to the same set of observables the structure effect sequentially the authors unpack the relative contributions of different factors towards the gender gap and suggest future research priorities to inform policy interventions the authors find that while female managed plots are on average 25 percent less productive 82 percent of this differential is explained by differences in endowments mainly due to high value crop cultivation and levels of household adult male labor inputs the factors driving the structure effect include child dependency ratio and effectiveness of household adult male labor and inorganic fertilizer the gender gap increases across the productivity distribution ranging from 22 percent at the 10th percentile to 37 percent at the 90th percentile while it is explained predominantly by the endowment effect in the first half of the distribution the contribution of the structure effect towards the gender gap increases steadily above the median standing at 34 percent at the 90th percentile

economic efficiency and supply response of women as farm managers comparative evidence from western kenya summary this paper assessed the relative economic efficiency and output supply and input demand responses of women farmers in western kenya the results showed that women are as technically and allocatively efficient as men however neither men nor women have absolute allocative efficiency women farmers are equally responsive to price incentives in terms of output supply and input demand while education and extension contact have significant effects on overall maize supply and input demand only extension contact has significant effects among women farmers the paper discusses a number of significant results and concludes with implications for policy

input choices in agriculture is there a gender bias summary this paper examines evidence of gender biases in the decisions of agricultural households utilizing data from international crops research institute for the semi arid tropics s village level studies in india 1975 85 the main empirical finding is that households with a high proportion of boys tend to use some agricultural inputs including fertilizers and irrigation services more intensively than households with girls this pattern is more pronounced among wealthier households but does not appear to be driven solely by bequest motives or male child labor productivity

conditional cash transfers schooling and child labor micro simulating brazil s bolsa escola program a growing number of developing economies are providing cash transfers to poor people that require certain behaviors on their part such as attending school or regularly visiting health care facilities a simple ex ante methodology is proposed for evaluating such programs and used to assess the bolsa escola program in brazil the results suggest that about 60 percent of poor 10 to 15 year olds not in school enroll in response to the program the program reduces the incidence of poverty by only a little more than one percentage point however and the gini coefficient falls just half a point results are better for measures more sensitive to the bottom of the distribution but the effect is never large

endogenous gender power household labor supply and the demographic transition abstract we present a microeconomic model of the household in which there exists no difference in spousal preferences but childrearing is more time costly for women bargaining between the wife and the husband forms the basis of household decisions marital bargaining power is determined according to the incomes of the spouses which in turn help to determine their reservation utility levels outside the marriage the endogeneity of bargaining power introduces a non cooperative element to the couples decision making problem because both the husbands and the wives take into account how their pre marital education decisions affect their marital power and the share they extract from household resources in the future the model predicts that wives invest more than is pareto efficient in their education in order to increase their bargaining power in marriage as a consequence couples have fewer children and consume more when exogenous structural changes lead women to invest more in education a corollary of the model is that empowering women directly through social reforms such as a lower gender wage gap leads to lower fertility and higher spousal consumption and leisure

how can safety nets contribute to economic growth the paper provides an up to date and selective review of the literature on how social safety nets contribute to growth the evidence is carefully chosen to show how safety nets have the potential to overcome constraints on growth linked to market failures and is organized into 4 distinct pathways i encouraging asset accumulation by changing incentives and by addressing imperfections in financial markets caused by constraints in obtaining credit and from information asymmetries overcoming such failures helps households to invest into their human capital or productive assets ii failures in insurance markets especially in low income setting safety nets are assisting in managing risk both ex post and ex ante iii safety nets are overcoming failure to create assets and other local economy complementary factors to household level investments iv safety nets are shown to relax political constraints on policy safety nets have a dual objective of directly alleviating poverty through transfers to the poor and of triggering higher growth for the poor however the trade off between the dual objectives of equity and growth is not eliminated by the potential for productive safety nets this remains critical for designing social policies

child labor and schooling responses to anticipated income in south africa abstract forward looking unconstrained households make child labor and schooling decisions considering their permanent income and weighing the relative returns to child time in various potential activities the timing of anticipated changes in income should have no effect on child labor and schooling in a setting where households can borrow against permanent income however this study documents large increases in schooling attendance and declines in total hours worked when black south african families become eligible for fully anticipatable social pension income as an explanation the data are most consistent with liquidity constraints for black elder males forcing rural families into less schooling for boys than they would choose absent the constraint perhaps because of schooling costs

paradoxical effects of increasing the normal retirement age a prospective evaluation abstract a life cycle model that incorporates both disability insurance di and old age insurance oai is developed to study social security reforms and is compared to an alternative model without di the model with di predicts that increasing the normal retirement age nra causes a decrease in employment and an increase in di receipt and that the decrease of payroll tax revenue and the increase of di expenses combined offset about 40 of the decrease of oai expenses these paradoxical effects of increasing the nra are absent from the model without di i employ both models to search for reforms that will balance the government budget in an economy with an aging population which has the demographics for the year 2100 and find that the required change in tax and benefit rules differ substantially across the two models

present value tests of the current account with durables consumption abstract the present value tests of the intertemporal model of the current account usually assume that all goods are traded and that aggregate consumption decisions can be closely approximated by a random walk process this paper extends these models by explicitly introducing durables and nontraded goods into an intertemporal model of the current account and tests the model using canadian data since aggregate consumption expenditures on durables do not exhibit random walk behavior even when the aggregate consumer has a quadratic utility function the model that includes durables makes predictions that differ from those of the basic approach when nontraded goods are also incorporated into the model the most appropriate income variable becomes output net of nontraded production these implications are examined using present value tests the results suggest that in the annual data introduction of both durables and nontraded goods improves upon the model with traded nondurables only this seems to be due to the combination of durables and nontraded goods as durables alone do not sufficiently refine the basic model

antipoverty transfers and labour market outcomes regression discontinuity design findings abstractthe article estimates the impact of familias en accion a human development conditional cash transfer programme on adult labour market outcomes in urban areas in colombia relying on a regression discontinuity design and a large panel dataset the article finds significant largely positive but heterogeneous programme effects on labour market outcomes the findings suggest that antipoverty transfers enable a re allocation of household productive resources among participant households

gender differentials in farm productivity implications for household efficiency and agricultural policy abstract within many african households agricultural production is simultaneously carried out on many plots controlled by different members of the household detailed plot level agronomic data from burkina faso provides striking evidence of substantial inefficiencies in the allocation of factors of production across the plots controlled by different members of the household production function estimates imply that the value of household output could be increased by 10 15 by reallocating currently used factors of production across plots this finding contradicts standard models of agricultural households a richer model of behaviour which recognizes that the individuals who comprise a household compete as well as co operate has important implications for the structure of agricultural production and for the design of agricultural policy

recovering individual preferences for non market goods a collective travel cost model traditional recreation demand models do not make a distinction between a household and an individual as the reference decision making unit thus assuming that a family maximizes a single utility function even if the family consists of different individuals such models ignore the possibility of family members divergent preferences for non market goods this study proposes a novel approach the collective travel cost model ctcm to eliciting individual preferences for a non market good such as a recreation site by using revealed preference data this approach accounts for the intra household resource allocation and the role of each household member s preferences we show that the collective travel cost model can be applied to estimating a recreation demand model that yields individual welfare estimates appropriate for policy analysis of non market goods such as the willingness to pay to access a recreation site we find that how resources are distributed within the household reflects significant differences in welfare measures

international capital mobility amongst the major industrialised countries too little or too much this paper examines capital flows among the major industrialized countries with a view to assessing m feldstein and c horioka s 1980 claim that international capital mobility is limited it argues that saving investment correlation tests are inherently flawed and proposes an alternative methodology for testing the degree of international capital mobility it finds that capital flows have been excessive in the sense that they are driven by speculative forces rather than by economic fundamentals copyright 1995 by royal economic society

the effect of expanding medicaid eligibility on supplemental security income program participation abstract low income adults without dependent children have historically had few paths to obtain public health insurance unless they qualified for supplemental security income ssi cash benefits because of a disability however in states that expand their medicaid programs childless adults may obtain medicaid without undergoing an intensive ssi disability review process and with substantially higher income and assets than the ssi program allows this expanded availability of medicaid coverage independent of ssi participation creates an opportunity to increase earnings and savings without jeopardizing health insurance coverage in this paper we use the natural experiments created by state decisions to expand medicaid to nondisabled nonelderly adults without dependent children to study the effect of decoupling medicaid eligibility and cash assistance using a difference in differences study design we collected data on the income eligibility limits enrollment caps and coverage characteristics of state medicaid expansions to childless adults from 2001 to 2013 we combine these data with the nationally representative american community survey to estimate the effects of state expansion on ssi participation we find relative declines in ssi participation of 0 17 percentage points on average after the introduction of medicaid coverage for childless adults a 7 relative decrease this finding suggests the potential for small but important efficiency gains from separating ssi and medicaid eligibility

is child labor inefficient we build a model of child labor and study its implications for welfare we assume that there is a trade off between child labor and the accumulation of human capital even if parents are altruistic and child labor is socially inefficient it may arise in equilibrium because parents fail to fully internalize its negative effects this occurs when bequests are zero or when capital markets are imperfect we also study the effects of a simple ban on child labor and derive conditions under which it may be pareto improving in general equilibrium we show that the implications of child labor for fertility are ambiguous

spice price spikes simulating impacts of saffron price volatility in a gendered local economy wide model summary access to international markets provides smallholders with unprecedented opportunities but also exposes them to world market whims we use a local economy wide impact evaluation lewie model to analyze how the recent global saffron price variability affected morocco s taliouine taznakht region a specialized agro export economy with a stark gender division of labor prices of saffron increased by 71 per year over the 2007 09 period before falling quickly back to their trend our modeling approach allows us to simulate such shocks and evaluate impacts not only on producers but also on the local economies around them in our simulations positive price shocks and increases in productivity both cause large reallocations of labor resources particularly for female workers at harvest time we use monte carlo simulations to evaluate how saffron price variance affects the economy female wage income is especially sensitive to global price variability a 100 increase in saffron price variance leads to 133 increase in female wage income variance but only 36 for males accounting for general equilibrium effects is critical for understanding the ramifications of exposure to export price volatility in poor economies

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

household income as a determinant of child labor and school enrollment in brazil evidence from a social security reform abstractthis article studies the effects of household income on labor participation and school enrollment of children aged 10 14 in brazil using a social security reform as a source of exogenous variation in household income i find that increased benefits are associated with increases in school enrollment for girls as well as a smaller reduction in their labor participation but i find no effects for boys i also uncover evidence that the gender of the benefit receiver matters for girls labor variables only benefits received by females reduce girls work

price policy poverty and power within rural west african households abstract this paper explores the impact of agricultural price policy on poverty in west africa a region in which prices are an important tool for raising rural household incomes a game theoretic collective model of household income generation and resource allocation is developed that incorporates three features typical of west african rural households preference heterogeneity among women and men individual resource control and power mediated bargaining over resource control in the face of changes in households economic environments to explore price effects the model is used to simulate the income impacts of large increases in cotton prices accompanying fast paced agricultural liberalisation in burkina faso in the 1980s the paper shows that where resources are controlled individually by household members rather than pooled pareto efficiency in income generation does not hold the impact of agricultural price policy on poverty is mediated by bargaining over resource control within households bo

testing between competing models of sharecropping the marshallian approach assumes a prohibitively high cost of monitoring the sharecropper s activities while the monitoring approach argues that landlords stipulate and effectively monitor sharecroppers activities i present new evidence using detailed data collected from eight indian villages most tenants own some land of their own this provides a controlled environment in studying the impact of contractual arrangements the differences in input and output intensities on owned minus sharecropped land of the same household are found to be sizable and significant suggesting a rejection of the monitoring approach and supporting the notion of the marshallian productive inefficiency of sharecropping

old age benefits and retirement decisions of rural elderly in brazil abstract i estimate the impact of social security benefits on retirement decisions of rural workers by studying changes in the rules governing old age benefits for rural workers in brazil i focus on a reform implemented in 1991 which reduced the minimum eligibility age increased benefits and extended the program to non heads of households because those benefits come with no strings attached they are not means or retirement tested any behavioral response is a pure income effect the main finding of the paper is that access to old age benefits is a strong determinant of retirement of rural workers in brazil receiving old age benefits increases the probability of not working by about thirty eight percentage points and reduces total hours per week by 22 h

the impact of ethiopia s productive safety net programme and its linkages abstract this paper assesses the impact of ethiopia s productive safety nets programme psnp the largest social protection programme in sub saharan africa outside of south africa using propensity score matching techniques we find that the programme has little impact on participants on average due in part to transfer levels that fell far below programme targets participants with access to both the psnp and packages of agricultural support are more likely to be food secure to borrow for productive purposes use improved agricultural technologies and operate non farm own business activities however beneficiaries did not experience faster asset growth

static and intertemporal household decisions we discuss the most popular static and dynamic models of household behavior our main objective is to explain which aspects of household decisions different models can account for using this insight we describe testable implications identification results and estimation findings obtained in the literature particular attention is given to the ability of different models to answer various types of policy questions

current accounts in the euro area an intertemporal approach abstract current accounts have diverged substantially among euro area countries since the creation of the euro this divergence has raised concerns about the sustainability of some member countries external indebtedness this paper uses an intertemporal model of the current account to analyze the fluctuations in current account balances experienced by euro area countries over the last three decades and to disentangle its determinants we find that the model is not rejected for six of the ten euro area countries examined belgium france italy netherlands portugal and spain although it tends to underestimate their current account volatility for these countries we derive the expectations about future income and relative prices which according to the model underlie their current account balances expectations about future growth increased in all southern european countries at the creation of the euro but they diverged considerably by 2005 while in portugal these expectations were below its historical mean by then in spain they were at an historical high

noncooperative bargaining models of marriage in this paper we discuss some simple noncooperative models of distribution within marriage in which the equilibria are not necessarily pareto optimal in which history and culture can affect which equilibrium is realized and in which distribution may depend on whether resources are controlled by the husband or by the wife recent moves away from single decision maker models of the family have permitted economists to address distribution within marriage and cooperative bargaining models have played the central role in these moves the next step is to permit strategic interaction between family members by modeling distribution within marriage as a noncooperative game noncooperative game theory allows great flexibility in specifying the rules of the game and unlike cooperative game theory imposes few a priori restrictions on the nature of equilibrium outcomes in particular noncooperative models neither assume nor imply that all equilibria are pareto optimal

inefficiency of male and female labor supply in agricultural households evidence from uganda this article analyzes the efficiency of the intra household allocation of female and male labor inputs in agricultural production in a collective household model spouses optimal on farm labor supply is such that the marginal rate of technical substitution between male and female labor is equated over different crops using the uganda national household survey 2005 06 we test whether this condition holds by estimating production functions and controlling for endogeneity using a method proposed by gandhi navarro and rivers 2009 we find that women are less productive than men that there is more female labor input on low productivity parcels and that men are relatively more productive on female controlled plots compared with male controlled plots total farm output could be higher and pareto improvements could be possible if male labor was reallocated to female controlled plots and or female labor was reallocated to male controlled plots

determinants and effects of income diversification amongst farm households in burkina faso using four years of household data from three agroecological zones in burkina faso sahelian sudanian and guinean the article examines the determinants and effects of household income diversification harvest shortfalls and terms of trade are found to drive diversification but land constraints do not income diversification is associated with higher incomes and food consumption and more stable income and consumption over years

investigating the gender gap in agricultural productivity evidence from uganda women comprise 50 percent of the agricultural labor force in sub saharan africa but manage plots that are reportedly on average 20 to 30 percent less productive as a source of income inequality and aggregate productivity loss the country specific magnitude and drivers of this gender gap are of great interest using national data from the uganda national panel survey for 2009 10 and 2010 11 the gap before controlling for endowments was estimated to be 17 5 percent panel data methods were combined with an oaxaca decomposition to investigate the gender differences in resource endowment and return to endowment driving this gap although men have greater access to inputs input use is so low and inverse returns to plot size so strong in uganda that smaller female managed plots have a net endowment advantage of 12 percent revealing a larger unexplained gap of 29 5 percent two fifths of this unexplained gap is attributed to differential returns to the child dependency ratio and one fifth to differential returns to transport access implying that greater child care responsibilities and difficulty accessing input and output markets from areas without transport are the largest drivers of the gap smaller and less robust drivers include differential uptake of cash crops and differential uptake and return to improved seeds and pesticides

a present value test of habits and the current account abstract forecasts derived from standard intertemporal current account ica models generally fail to match the volatility of actual current accounts this paper offers a solution to the excess volatility problem of standard ica models by incorporating consumption habits into the standard model the model as developed in the paper shows that significant habit formation implies increased current account volatility as sluggishness is introduced into the consumption adjustment process that follows income shocks a theory consistent measure of the degree of habit formation is estimated using gmm the estimated habit parameter is found to be statistically significant in six of eight quarterly samples

how can african agriculture adapt to climate change a counterfactual analysis from ethiopia we analyze the impact of different adaptation strategies on crop net revenues in the nile basin of ethiopia we estimate a multinomial endogenous switching regression model of climate change adaptation and crop net revenues and implement a counterfactual analysis households data are combined with spatial climate data we find that adaptation to climate change based upon a portfolio of strategies significantly increases farm net revenues changing crop varieties has a positive and significant impact on net revenues when coupled with water conservation strategies or soil conservation strategies but not when implemented in isolation jel q54 q56

inequality as a determinant of malnutrition and unemployment policy this paper explores the policy implications that are obtained once it is recognized that at low nutrition intakes a person s productivity is an increasing function of intake in the context of a fully general equilibrium model it is shown that if aggregate assets in an economy are neither large nor small certain patterns of lorenz improving asset redistributions or nutrition transfers increase aggregate output and reduce the volume of involuntary unemployment and the incidence of undernourishment copyright 1987 by royal economic society

social transfers and growth what do we know what do we need to find out summary the paper examines the extent to which emerging social transfer programs in developing countries can improve the productive capacity of households in poverty and contribute to micro level growth it introduces a basic framework linking transfers to growth mediating processes and productive capacity outcomes this is then used to organize and assess relevant findings from program evaluation studies the paper concludes that social transfer programs can have positive effects on the productive capacity of poor and poorest groups but further research is needed to identify and measure the size and significance of these effects

collective labor supply and welfare the paper develops a general collective model of household labor supply in which agents are characterized by their own possibly altruistic preferences and household decisions are only assumed to be pareto efficient an alternative interpretation is that there are two stages in the internal decision process agents first share nonlabor income according to some given sharing rule then each one optimally chooses his or her own labor supply and consumption this setting is shown to generate testable restrictions on labor supplies moreover the observation of labor supply behavior is sufficient for recovering individual preferences and the sharing rule up to a constant finally the traditional tools of welfare analysis can be adapted to the new setting

the demand side of social protection lessons from cambodia s labour rights experience summary in fragile states recent efforts to advance the social protection agenda have focused primarily on loosening supply side constraints but the resulting kaleidoscope of donor driven projects has often overlooked the need to create a sense of ownership by beneficiaries in part this is because it is unclear what political and social structures effectively facilitate activism in situations where state society relations are contentious we use cambodia s unusual success creating and sustaining a labor rights regime to illustrate the dynamics behind one type of social regime change that has opened up governance over worker protections in a sustainable and potentially replicable way

gender agricultural production and the theory of the household virtually all models of the household assume that the allocation of resources is pareto efficient within many african households agricultural production occurs on many plots controlled by different members of the household pareto efficiency implies that factors should be allocated efficiently across these plots i find in contrast that plots controlled by women are farmed much less intensively than similar plots within the household controlled by men the estimates imply that about 6 percent of output is lost because of inefficient factor allocation within the household the paper suggests a new approach to modeling intrahousehold allocation consistent with the empirical results

disability insurance and health insurance reform evidence from massachusetts abstract as health insurance becomes available outside of the employment relationship as a result of the affordable care act aca the cost of applying for social security disability insurance ssdi potentially going without health insurance coverage during a waiting period totaling 29 months from disability onset will decline for many people with employer sponsored health insurance at the same time the value of ssdi and supplemental security income ssi participation will decline for individuals who otherwise lacked access to health insurance we study the 2006 massachusetts health insurance reform to estimate the potential effects of the aca on ssdi and ssi applications

the impact of health care reform on hospital and preventive care evidence from massachusetts in april 2006 massachusetts passed legislation aimed at achieving near universal health insurance coverage the key features of this legislation were a model for national health reform passed in march 2010 the reform gives us a novel opportunity to examine the impact of expansion to near universal coverage state wide among hospital discharges in massachusetts we find that the reform decreased uninsurance by 36 relative to its initial level and to other states reform affected utilization by decreasing length of stay the number of inpatient admissions originating from the emergency room and preventable admissions at the same time hospital cost growth did not increase

strategic complementarities and social transfers how do progresa payments impact nonbeneficiaries the article examines local economy effects of social transfers by focusing on food consumption and asset holdings of noneligible households in rural mexico following the introduction of programa de educacion salud y alimentacion progresa in 1997 the quasi experimental nature of the evaluation data collected for the purposes of evaluating the impact of progresa enables comparison of welfare indicators among noneligible households in treatment areas and control areas the analysis finds that noneligible households in treatment areas show significantly higher levels of food consumption and asset holdings following the introduction of progresa compared to noneligible households in control areas these results are interpreted to suggest that transfers in poor rural areas in mexico enable agents to interact more strategically such that nonbeneficiaries as well as beneficiaries reap consumption and production advantages

do female instructors reduce gender bias in diffusion of sustainable land management techniques experimental evidence from mozambique agricultural innovation is essential to meet the food requirements of africa s growing population one pathway to increasing yields may be to enhance female farmer productivity in many settings married women cultivate plots separated from those of other family members they face different challenges to productivity such as deficiencies in inputs weak property rights and time constraints it has long been argued that traditionally male dominated extension services may also contribute to a gender bias in adoption of new agricultural techniques if this is true placing women in extension positions may help other women overcome barriers to adoption posed by inequitable access to agricultural extension services or exposure to inapt information to better understand the role of gender in the dissemination of sustainable land management slm techniques this study uses a randomized policy experiment conducted in 200 communities in mozambique we examine the impact of training female messengers of slm techniques on the awareness knowledge and adoption of slm practices by other female farmers communities were randomly selected in 2010 to have a female messenger trained in slm who was encouraged to teach other women the techniques using data from panel surveys collected in the experimental areas we find women s awareness of pit planting farming techniques increased by 9 percentage points in 2012 and adoption of the technology by 5 percentage points in 2013 in communities with female messengers

the gender gap in agricultural productivity the role of market imperfections abstractthis paper hypothesises that labour and credit market imperfections by discouraging off farm income generating activities and restricting access to inputs respectively affect female farm productivity more deeply than male productivity the paper develops a theoretical model which decomposes the contribution of various market imperfections to the gender productivity gap empirically we show that agricultural labour productivity is on average 44 per cent lower on female headed plots than on those managed by male heads 34 per cent of this gap is explained by differences in labour market access and 29 per cent by differences in credit access

public policy and extended families evidence from pensions in south africa how are resources allocated within extended families in developing economies this question is investigated using a unique social experiment the south african pension program under that program the elderly receive a cash transfer equal to roughly twice the per capita income of africans in south africa the study examines how this transfer affects the labor supply of prime age individuals living with these elderly in extended families it finds a sharp drop in the working hours of prime age individuals in these households when women turn 60 years old or men turn 65 the ages at which they become eligible for pensions it also finds that the drop in labor supply is much larger when the pensioner is a woman suggesting an imperfect pooling of resources the allocation of resources among prime age individuals depends strongly on their absolute age and gender as well as on their relative age the oldest son in the household reduces his working hours more than any other prime age household member

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

assessing the impact of a school subsidy program in mexico using a social experiment to validate a dynamic behavioral model of child schooling and fertility this paper uses data from a randomized social experiment in mexico to estimate and validate a dynamic behavioral model of parental decisions about fertility and child schooling to evaluate the effects of the progresa school subsidy program and to perform a variety of counterfactual experiments of policy alternatives our method of validation estimates the model without using post program data and then compares the model s predictions about program impacts to the experimental impact estimates the results show that the model s predicted program impacts track the experimental results our analysis of counterfactual policies reveals an alternative subsidy schedule that would induce a greater impact on average school attainment at similar cost to the existing program

conditional transfers labor supply and poverty microsimulating oportunidades this article summarizes a microsimulation exercise for the mexican human development program oportunidades and presents a series of simulations of its actual and potential impact upon poverty at the national urban and rural levels the microsimulation tool used for this paper makes accounting and behavioral exercises and aims to answer three main questions what would have happened to poverty if the program had been cancelled if benefits were doubled or if urban beneficiaries were doubled we conclude that oportunidades can be associated with up to a third of the reduction in rural poverty in mexico by the year 2002 doubling benefits and targeting urban beneficiaries would reduce poverty a further 30 percent from its 2002 level we also find that each percentage point of poverty reduction at the rural level costs around 326 million pesos per month in cash transfers that is 1 2 percent of the central government s total spending in 2002 further reductions of poverty would have higher or lower average costs depending on the area and on whether they are performed either by extensions in coverage or by enlargement of benefits finally behavioral simulations suggest that labor supply does not seem to be much affected by current cash transfers from oportunidades

interest rates exchange rates and present value models of the current account this paper develops a testable intertemporal model of the current account that allows for variable interest rates and exchange rates these additional variables are channels through which external shocks may influence the domestic current account the restrictions from the theoretical model are subjected to present value tests using quarterly data from three small open economies the paper finds that including the interest rate and exchange rate improves the fit of the intertemporal model over what was found in previous studies the model predictions better replicate the volatility of current account data and better explain historical episodes of current account imbalance

does child labour displace schooling evidence on behavioral responses to an enrollment subsidy this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled does child labour displace schooling evidence on behavioral responses to an enrollment subsidy conducted between 1995 and 1996 in bangladesh the study observed that the subsidy increases schooling but its effect on child labour is ambiguous the subsidy increased schooling by far more than it reduced child labour substitution effects helped protect current incomes from the higher school attendance induced by the subsidy substitution effects helped protect current incomes from the higher school attendance induced by the subsidy the reduction in the incidence of child labour by boys girls represents about one quarter eighth of the increase in their school enrollment rate

shadow wages and peasant family labour supply an econometric application to the peruvian sierra a striking feature of developing economies is the large proportion of the work force that is self employed lack of widespread labor market participation in the agricultural sector can pose a major obstacle to the empirical implementation of economic models of the peasant household whether because wage data are simply not available or because the assumptions required to make use of wage data stretch the bounds of credulity this paper develops a methodology for estimating a structural labor supply model for primarily self employed peasant households which holds under a general agricultural technology and set of labor market conditions the unique feature of the approach is that the opportunity cost of time or shadow wage of household workers is explicitly estimated from an agricultural production function and is subsequently used to identify a set of structural labor supply parameters recent household survey data from rural peru is employed to estimate and perform various diagnostic tests on the model the empirical findings lend support to the hypothesis that peasant households allocate their members time as if to maximize a family utility function and moreover demonstrate the tractability of the shadow wage methodology and its usefulness in estimating more elaborate time allocation models

shadow wages allocative inefficiency and labor supply in smallholder agriculture this article introduces a method for estimating structural labor supply models in the presence of unobservable wages and deviations of households marginal revenue product of self employed labor from their shadow wage this method is therefore robust to a wide range of assumptions about labor allocation decisions in the presence of uncertainty market frictions locational preferences etc we illustrate the method using data from rice producers in cote d ivoire these data like previous studies reveal significant systematic differences between shadow wages and the marginal revenue product of family farm labor we demonstrate how one can exploit systematic deviations in the present case related to household characteristics such as the land labor endowment ratio to control for both unobservable wages and prospective allocative inefficiency in labor allocation in structural household labor supply estimation

current accounts in debtor and creditor countries the authors reexamine a classic question in international economics what is the current account response to a transitory income shock such as a temporary improvement in the terms of trade a transfer from abroad or unusually high production to answer this question they construct a world equilibrium model in which productivity varies across countries and international borrowing and lending take place to exploit good investment opportunities despite its conventional ingredients the model generates the novel prediction that favorable income shocks lead to current account deficits in debtor countries and current account surpluses in creditor countries evidence from thirteen oecd countries broadly supports this theoretical prediction

conditional cash transfers adult work incentives and poverty conditional cash transfer cct programs aim to alleviate poverty through monetary and in kind benefits as well as reduce future levels of poverty by encouraging investments in education health and nutrition the success of cct programs at reducing poverty depends on whether and the extent to which cash transfers affect adult work incentives the authors examine whether the progresa program of mexico affects adult participation in the labor market and overall adult leisure time and they link these effects to the impact of the program on poverty using the experimental design of progresa s evaluation sample the authors find that the program does not have any significant effect on adult labor force participation and leisure time their findings on adult work incentives are reinforced further by the result that progresa leads to a substantial reduction in poverty the poverty reduction effects are stronger for the poverty gap and severity of poverty measures

disability benefit take up and local labor market conditions exploiting county level variation in oil producing areas from shocks to world oil and gas prices we study how local labor market conditions affect disability take up we extend well known previous work using a similar research design by analyzing a different price shock a larger more representative set of labor markets and a more recent period marked by skyrocketing disability payments our estimated elasticity for ssdi payments with respect to earnings of 0 29 is surprisingly similar to earlier findings our preferred ssi elasticity estimate of 0 16 is smaller than previous findings but we show that ssi programmatic changes explain most of the difference jel codes j0 h0

external shocks consumption smoothing and capital mobility in india evidence from an intertemporal optimization approach we examine the solvency of india s current account ca in the post liberalization period using intertemporal optimization approach to the ca using quarterly data ranging from 1996q1 to 2014q2 we

are the poor less well insured evidence on vulnerability to income risk in rural china the authors test how well consumption is insured against income risk in a panel of sampled households in rural china they estimate the risk insurance models by generalized method of moments treating income and household size as endogenous insurance exists for all wealth groups although the hypothesis of perfect insurance is universally rejected those in the poorest wealth decile are the least well insured with 40 percent of an income shock being passed on to current consumption by contrast consumption by the richest third of households is protected from almost 90 percent of an income shock the extent of insurance in a given wealth stratum varies little between poor and nonpoor areas

the economics of polygyny in sub saharan africa female productivity and the demand for wives in cote d ivoire polygyny is still practiced throughout much of sub saharan africa with important social consequences this paper makes the first attempt to link african polygyny directly to the productivity of women in agriculture using micro data i develop a structural model of the demand for wives that disentangles wealth and substitution effects using a large household survey from cote d ivoire i find that marked geographic diversity in cropping patterns leads to regional variation in female labor productivity i also find that conditional on wealth men do have more wives when women are more productive that is cheaper this substitution effect may explain why polygyny declined in rural areas of cote d ivoire during agricultural development

as good as the networks they keep improving outcomes through weak ties in rural uganda abstractwe examine an intervention randomized at the village level in which female farmers invited to a single training session were randomly paired with farmers whom they did not know and encourag

the intertemporal elasticity of substitution an exploration using a us panel of state data this paper uses state level consumption data to estimate the intertemporal elasticity of substitution of consumption ies in contrast to the results of hall 1988 and campbell and mankiw 1989 we provide evidence indicating that the ies is significantly different from zero and probably close to one since inference about the ies in the context of the standard euler equation is problematic as a result of mis specification bias we cast most of our discussion in the context of the framework developed by campbell and mankiw this modifies the euler equation in that a fraction of agents simply consume their income the use of panel data to examine the relationship between interest rates and consumption growth has two advantages first we achieve a significant increase in precision which in particular allows us to rule out a zero ies second we can use the panel aspect of the data to bypass asset return measurement problems in particular we identify a common time component in expected consumption growth that is associated with movements in interest rates when the ies is positive

euro area current account imbalances a tale of two financial liberalizations abstract this paper explores the extent to financial liberalization in the euro area had a differential impact on members current account positions theoretically it builds on an inter temporal consumption model augmented with household heterogeneity low middle income groups are impatient and constrained whilst high income groups are patient and under no constraint increased access to international credit in previously financially repressed countries implies a relaxation of collateral constraints specifically for the low skilled low middle income group who differently from high income agents borrows to finance current consumption it follows that financial liberalization is associated with deteriorating external positions there where initial levels of financial openness are lowest and the share of the low skilled low middle income group with potentially binding collateral constraints largest the same approach is useful to understand asymmetric current account reversals which relates to suddenly biting collateral constraints in indebted peripheral countries where the great recession hit disproportionally the low skilled

testing a present value model of the current account evidence from us and canadian time series abstract this paper presents a simple model of current account determination based upon the permanent income hypothesis of private consumption behavior under rational expectations the model employs a representative national agent who is forward looking and can borrow and lend at a constant world interest rate a present value relationship for the current account is derived and its implications are tested on post war data for the united states and canada testing is done using the framework developed by campbell and shiller 1987 which allows the forcing variables in the model to be difference rather than trend stationary our empirical results indicate the most stringent restrictions of the present value model are strongly rejected by the us and canadian data however less formal procedures suggest the consumption smoothing model has some ability to track the dynamic behavior of the us current account jel f32

separate spheres bargaining and the marriage market this paper introduces the separate spheres bargaining model a new model of distribution within marriage it differs from divorce threat bargaining models e g manser brown mcelroy horney in that the threat point is not divorce but a noncooperative equilibrium within marriage this noncooperative equilibrium reflects traditional gender roles the predictions of our model thus differ from those of divorce threat bargaining models in the separate spheres model cash transfer payments to the mother and payments to the father can but need not imply different equilibrium distributions in existing marriages in the long run the distributional effects of transfer policies may be substantially altered by changes in the marriage market equilibrium

is risk fully pooled within the household evidence from ghana using detailed household survey data from ghana this paper examines whether the transitory incomes of individual household members affect household expenditure patterns divided into six sections the themes include risk sharing networks household survey data from ghana theoretical framework of risk sharing within households estimating transitory income and effects on household budget shares the conclusion that transitory incomes earned by different members of the household have different effects on household expenditure patterns this implies that household members do not engage in full risk pooling with each other moreover it is not always the case that all women or all men display similar preferences or risk pooling behavior this suggests complex features within the household risk sharing structure which is more complex than might be hypothesized by a simplistic analysis framed along gender lines

is there an innovation effect on current account a case for european countries abstractthe aim of this article is to find out whether there is an innovation effect on the current account and if there is one then to determine its significance the study is carried out for the current accounts of european countries innovation is tested together with some other factors as control variables in order to estimate and compare its role in the determination process of the current account the results indicate that innovation has quite a significant influence on the current accounts of european countries and the form of the relationship between innovation and current account is non linear moreover the impact of innovation is stronger for countries at higher levels of innovation but the growth rate of its average marginal effect diminishes through its increasing levels

income and outcomes a structural model of intrahousehold allocation there is evidence from several sources that one cannot treat many person households as a single decision maker if this is the case then factors such as the relative incomes of the household members may affect the final allocation decisions made by the household we develop a method of identifying how incomes affect outcomes given conventional family expenditure data the basic assumption we make is that household decision processes lead to efficient outcomes we apply our method to a sample of canadian couples with no children we find that the final allocations of expenditures on each partner depend significantly on their relative incomes and ages and on the level of lifetime wealth

present value tests of an intertemporal model of the current account abstract this paper first demonstrates that in a simple intertemporal open economy model the current account is equal to the expected decline of the present discounted value of net output of a country net output is defined as gross domestic product less the sum of investment plus government spending it then uses econometric methods for present value models to analyze the current account for four countries in two of these countries the model does a satisfactory job of explaining the current account

why have women become left wing the political gender gap and the decline in marriage the last three decades have witnessed the rise of a pohtical gender gap in the united states wherein more women than men favor the democratic party we trace this development to the decline in marriage which we posit has made men richer and women poorer data for the united states support this argument first there is a strong positive correlation between state divorce prevalence and the political gender gap higher divorce prevalence reduces support for the democrats among men but not women second longitudinal data show that following marriage divorce women are less more likely to support the democratic party

sri lanka can conditional cash transfer programs serve as safety nets in keeping children at school and from working when exposed to shocks this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study can conditional cash transfer cct programs serve as safety nets in keeping children at school and from working when exposed to shocks conducted the program started in 1997 and still exists today in sri lanka the study observed that income shocks on poor households are known to induce parents to take their children out of school and send them to work when other risk coping instruments are insufficient cct programs where the condition is on school attendance have been shown to be effective in increasing educational achievements and reducing child work shocks are highly prevalent and children have irregular periods of school enrollment children who are taken out of school are less likely to re enroll

can unobserved land quality explain the inverse productivity relationship abstract an inverse relationship between both farm productivity and labor intensity and farm size is a common empirical finding in developing country agriculture the traditional explanation has been imperfect labor markets recently it has been suggested instead that the inverse relationship is a statistical artifact resulting from omitted land quality using a farm level data set from java i investigate whether omitted variable bias can explain the inverse relationship i show that the inverse relationship and accompanying wage responses are inconsistent with a model of neoclassical farm behavior that ignores omitted variable bias instrumental variables techniques yield parameter estimates in which the inverse relationship is eliminated and the estimated wage elasticities are more in line with economic theory further econometric investigation hints that a model of omitted land quality may be a possible source of the inverse relationship these results emphasize the importance of considering the sources of cross sectional variation in estimating microeconomic relationships