from food availability to nutritional capabilities advancing food security analysis abstract this paper has a threefold objective first it provides a comprehensive review of different approaches to analysing food security second it highlights the added value provided by the capability approach and the human development paradigm third it proposes a methodology to assess food security through this approach our proposal entails three basic steps 1 analysis of food entitlements 2 analysis of nutritional capabilities and 3 analysis of the capability to be food secure in this way we can move beyond income entitlement or livelihood related frameworks and identify the root causes of food insecurity food insecurity can be the result of a lack of education health or other basic capabilities that constitute people s wellbeing this therefore allows situating the study within the broader area of wellbeing and development

how important is the capacity of local governments for improvements in welfare evidence from decentralised uganda abstract decentralisation is often claimed to be effective for improvements in welfare and hence the reduction of poverty but empirical evidence is scarce this paper seeks to gain further insights into the relationship between decentralisation and welfare by investigating the role of local governments capacity for household consumption and school enrolment in uganda using household survey data it finds suggestive evidence that both household consumption and school enrolment are positively related with the level of capacity of district governments

understanding agricultural policy in africa the contributions of robert bates abstract robert bates s writings on the determinants of agricultural policy in africa employ rational choice and dialectical approaches to political economy this paper discusses some of the strengths and weaknesses of each and proposes an alternative dynamic approach to understanding both the limitations and the sources of agricultural policy with particular reference to kenya

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

the origins and development of the northeast asian political economy industrial sectors product cycles and political consequences theories of the product cycle hegemony and the world system are used to analyze the creation and development of the northeast asian political economy in this century japan south korea and taiwan have each developed in a particular relationship with the others the three taken together form a hierarchical constantly interacting political economic unit during the period of colonial rule japan was unique in building an imperial economic unit marked by a strong role for the state whether in tokyo or taipei by a tight integral unking of all three nations into a communications and transport network running toward the metropole and by a strategy of both using the colonies for agricultural surpluses and then locating industries there after 1945 a diffuse american hegemony replaced japan s unilateral system but elements of the prewar model have survived strong states direct economic development in south korea and taiwan here termed bureaucratic authoritarian industrializing regimes both countries are receptacles for japan s declining industries and both countries develop in tandem if in competition with each other the most recent export led competition has seen taiwan succeed where south korea has temporarily failed leaving seoul in an export led trap burdened with rapidly increasing external debt taiwan furthermore has industrialized relatively free of social disruption whereas korean society resisted its transformation at japanese hands and remains more rebellious today there can be one japan and one taiwan but not two or many of either in the world economy

household coping in war and peacetime cattle sales in rwanda 1991 2001 abstract the economic literature has given due attention to household coping strategies in peacetime in contrast little is known about such strategies in wartime this paper studies the use of cattle as a buffer stock by rwandan households during 1991 2001 a period characterized by civil war and genocide it is found that the probability of selling cattle increases upon the occurrence of both peacetime and wartime covariant adverse income shocks the peacetime cattle sales are largely explained by shifts in the household asset portfolio in contrast in 1994 the year of the genocide almost half of the cattle sales were motivated by the need to buy food however we argue that the effectiveness of this coping strategy was severely reduced due to the wartime conditions first during the year of ethnic violence cattle prices plummeted to less than half of their pre genocide value second we find that households most targeted in the violence did not sell cattle we discuss several explanations for this latter finding

beyond the short versus long accountability route dichotomy using multi track accountability pathways to study performance of rural water services in uganda summary performance of social service delivery is often linked with effective accountability accountability studies increasingly acknowledge that studying one type of accountability relation at a time is too restrictive our study aims to correct for this and explores the effectiveness of combinations of different accountability mechanisms we take the world development report s accountability triangle as a starting point and adapt it in three ways first we refine the long route to accountability into three tracks by differentiating between the three groups of demand side actors political accountability opposition citizen led and civil society led social accountability second for each track we take into account the demand and supply side and the availability of supply demand interfaces finally we adopt a holistic approach through the simultaneous incorporation of both the short and long with the different tracks routes to test its usefulness we use our refined accountability framework to study the accountability constellations and their link to performance in uganda s rural water sector building on qca our findings identify the long three track route supply interface all three demand actors and the citizen led social accountability route as viable routes to high water service performance in ugandan districts additionally a set of new hybrid accountability arrangements are identified while contrary to theoretical assumptions the short route clients to service providers does not prove effective

dynamic pricing of electricity as both a regulator and an academic fred kahn argued that end use electricity consumers should face prices that reflect the time varying marginal costs of generating electricity this has been very slow to happen in the us even in light of recent technological advances that have lowered costs and improved functionality for meters and automated demand response technologies we describe these recent developments and discuss the remaining barriers to the proliferation of time varying electricity pricing

power struggle dispute and alliance over local resources analyzing democratic decentralization of natural resources through the lenses of africa inland fisheries summary this paper is based on a global review of fisheries decentralization programs co management in sub saharan africa partly challenging the current narrative but in line with experience in other sectors e g forestry the review shows that the outcomes of these decentralizations have not been systematically positive in most cases fisheries co management failed to improve governance but simply altered the distribution of power and responsibility amongst the different stakeholders in this new political landscape poorly designed reforms have enabled a variety of usual and new local actors to advance their own agendas often at the detriment of the direct end users fisherfolk

sources of stagnation in sub saharan africa abstract this paper investigates the sources of economic stagnation in sub saharan africa during the 1970s several policy variables are considered as well as a set of environmental variables which include climate violence export prices and other exogenous factors the paper uses statistical analysis in an attempt to identify the relative importance of the policy variables and the environmental variables taken as groups it also seeks to identify particular policy variables which seem to have been most significant in determining growth outcomes the technique employed for investigation is reduced form econometric estimation in a preliminary analysis the impact of the international trade environment on average economic performance in africa during the period since independence is investigated the results suggest an extremely close relationship between movements in export prices and average performance throughout the 20 year period a second econometric exercise investigates the joint impacts of environmental and policy variables on growth in a cross section of african states since 1970 the spirit of the approach is exploratory and a relatively large number of variables are constructed and tested through multivariate analysis a primary finding is that the environmental variables seem to have had more impact on growth as a group than the policy variables this finding must be qualified however by the continuing lack of some important policy variables agricultural price data have not yet become available in sufficient quantity for cross section analysis nor have several important human resource variables and indices of the use of resources in the public domain among the policy variables which have been used for the analysis those identified with retrenchment during periods of declining commodity prices seem most significant primary among these are the real effective exchange rate and some measures of effectiveness in foreign exchange reallocation during periods when imports must contract severely in the final section of the paper the cross section results are used for a counterfactual analysis of the growth experiences of individual african states measures of growth opportunity cost are constructed which suggest the degree to which errors in management and uncontrollable circumstances have held states below their potential growth paths the results suggest that some success stories may owe much to good luck while some failures may well be due less to bad management than to adverse circumstances

nonfarm income diversification and household livelihood strategies in rural africa concepts dynamics and policy implications abstract asset activity and income diversification lie at the heart of livelihood strategies in rural africa this paper introduces a special issue on the topic income diversification and livelihoods in rural africa cause and consequence of change we concentrate on core conceptual issues that bedevil the literature on rural income diversification and the policy implications of the empirical evidence presented in this special issue

targeting maps an asset based approach to geographic targeting summary proper targeting of policy interventions requires reasonable estimates of the benefits of the alternative options to inform such decisions we develop an integrated approach stemming from the small area estimation literature that estimates the marginal returns to a range of assets across geographically defined subpopulations we create a series of maps that can be overlaid with traditional poverty maps to identify strong candidate areas for intervention though an efficiency equity tradeoff sometimes exists we apply our method using recent ugandan data results are consistent with independent empirical findings and suggest asset specific transfer schemes would improve with a spatially targeted strategy

asking questions to understand rural livelihoods comparing disaggregated vs aggregated approaches to household livelihood questionnaires summary this study tests the hypothesis that both disaggregated and aggregated data collection methods produce similar estimates of the relative importance of livelihood portfolio activities and expenditures the results show that different methods of data collection yield substantively different estimates of livelihood strategies for two indicators income and expenditure we also find evidence of a seasonal bias in responses to household livelihood questions asked at higher levels of aggregation our findings highlight the challenge of designing household surveys to elicit accurate and precise information and demonstrate that different methods of data collection influence our understanding of rural livelihoods

does commercialization undermine the benefits of decentralization for local services provision evidence from mexico s urban water and sanitation sector summary decentralization has been promoted as a means to better reflect citizen preferences and improve local services many developing countries decentralized and promoted neoliberal policies such as commercialization simultaneously leaving mayors with the responsibility of improving public services through self financing reforms this study evaluates experiences in three mexican cities to assess whether decentralization and commercialization practices have resulted in improved water and sanitation services it finds that commercialization has increased social conflict surrounding urban services provision and that local institutional constraints further undermine mayor s ability to adopt politically contentious policies the result has been stalled and uneven service improvements

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

the sacrifices of micro borrowers in ghana a customer protection perspective on measuring over indebtedness this article measures the over indebtedness of micro borrowers it defines over indebtedness from a customer protection perspective based on the borrowers sacrifices we analyse the sacrifices borrowers experience and find that 30 per cent of borrowers are over indebted we then test risk management indicators of debt problems as predictors of over indebtedness over indebtedness is strongly related to delinquency and the debt to income ratio but not to debt amounts or to multiple borrowing although our model correctly predicts 72 6 per cent of cases even the best indicators identify only a few over indebted borrowers risk management is not enough to protect customers against over indebtedness but the industry needs to measure customer experiences directly

rainfall shocks and within community wealth inequality evidence from rural ethiopia summary household level impacts of environmental shocks are often negative but may vary considerably due to heterogeneous vulnerability this paper considers how differential vulnerability among households affects inequality within rural communities in ethiopia this study makes novel use of the demographic and health surveys dhs and a nasa agro climatology dataset results show that rainfall deficits have an equalizing effect on within community livestock inequality in parts of ethiopia but regional differences are observed a non significant effect is observed with respect to asset inequality as an initial study on this topic this paper outlines an agenda for future data collection and analysis efforts

consumer choice and competition policy a study of uk energy markets consumer choice is increasingly recognised as a crucial factor in competition policy to illustrate the implications of such choice we present an investment model of the switching choice in the uk residential natural gas market and examine responses to a specially commissioned survey of nearly seven hundred consumers identifying search and switching costs through an assessment of the savings which consumers say they require to switch supplier together with an evaluation of consumer switching behaviour we deduce that the incumbent retained considerable market power suggesting that some continued regulation may be necessary

rural income generating activities whatever happened to the institutional vacuum evidence from ghana guatemala nicaragua and vietnam this paper assesses the current rural development practice against the main trends in recent rural development thinking based on evidence from four country case studies while much progress has been made in understanding the need to look beyond only agriculture for the promotion of productive activities in rural areas and the institutional vacuum consistently identified in the rural non farm literature is gradually being filled much remains to be done one aspect on which more research is particularly needed is the development of better mechanisms to promote productive investment rather than just social investment and to assess the appropriate level community regional national at which to do this

rural income and poverty in a time of radical change in malawi abstract malawi is one of the poorest countries in africa there is widespread though not universal agreement about the shape of poverty in the country and the policy challenge this sets agriculture continues to be the most obvious means to stimulate broad based rural growth and to provide levels of food security and income needed for the majority rural population a longitudinal study over a decade during which radical policy and political changes occurred provides the data and basis for discussing the appropriate policy directions for reducing poverty

a practice approach to the institutionalization of economic degrowth the degrowth literature is rich in critical debate about the unsustainability of the growth economies and in normative envisioning of a transition it lacks analyses on actual materialization and the nature of the change required there have been calls for research that pay attention to institutional constraints and possibilities of implementing a democratic process of sustainable degrowth this paper introduces a practice approach to institutional agency as a fruitful tool for future studies and politics of degrowth the potential of this approach is demonstrated through a struggle between finnish timebanking activists and the tax authorities the cultural and institutional transition promoted by radical bottom up initiatives requires a disruption of existing institutional arrangements some of which may be very persistent and supported by defenders who want to maintain the present institutional order in the case example the authorities and politicians managed to preserve the mechanisms through which certain sanctions are associated with the non compliance of timebanking with the income tax law a practice approach to institutionalization increases our understanding of institutional persistence and makes visible forces that support the present status quo it also enhances understanding of the opposing dynamics and gives tools to engage in more effective efforts to change institutions

periodic high risk as a cause of fertility decline in a changing rural environment survival strategies in the 1980 1983 south indian drought in the attempt to explain persistent high fertility in much of the third world attention has been drawn both to current returns from child labor and to the mitigation or avoidance of future risks the latter can be subdivided into meeting emergencies while the parental generation is still of working age and providing for old age or even safeguarding the transmission of family property on parental death the problems of old age have recently received most attention and they may well be of paramount importance in many societies yet in a research program that we have conducted in rural south india since 1979 the reasons given for demographic behavior have more frequently emphasized the need to plan strategies to meet periodic crisis than to ensure old age support 2 nevertheless one should not underemphasize the latter merely because the problem is predictable and the solutions understood in the study area for the great majority of the aged the support system still worked well 3 in contrast in our investigations of marriage fertility control and education we repeatedly discovered that a fundamental consideration with regard to parental decisions in these areas was to strengthen the ability of the family to withstand periodic crises 4 by far the most important type of crisis in this dry drought prone area was recurrent famines resulting

few opportunities much desperation the dichotomy of non agricultural activities and inequality in western kenya summary using data from western kenya we confirm the existence of a dichotomous non agricultural sector the poverty and inequality implications of the differently motivated diversification strategies only partly correspond to expected patterns while high return activities are indeed confined to richer households low return activities constitute an important income source for households across the entire income distribution finally we examine the wider implications of our findings for rural livelihoods we find that only engagement in high return non agricultural activities is significantly associated with increased agricultural productivity it seems that such high return activities play a key role in triggering cumulative effects of relative livelihood success

does the nonfarm economy offer pathways for upward mobility evidence from a panel data study in ethiopia summary empirical studies across many developing countries routinely document a positive correlation between participation in rural nonfarm employment and households wealth or income this paper explores whether nonfarm employment leads to higher consumption expenditure growth in ethiopia we find that 1 households consumption expenditure growth is positively correlated with the initial share of nonfarm income 2 the growth elasticity of nonfarm income share is higher for wealthier households and 3 the main source of growth for nonfarm participants comes from the higher rates of return participants enjoy on their human and physical capital

measuring food insecurity the frequency and severity of coping strategies abstract defining and interpreting food security and measuring it in reliable valid and cost effective ways have proven to be stubborn problems facing researchers and programs intended to monitor food security risks this paper briefly reviews the conceptual and methodological literature on food insecurity measurment describes a particular method for distinguishing and measuring short term food insecurity at the household level and discusses ways of generalizing the method the method developed enumerates the frequency and severity of strategies relied on by urban households when faced with a short term insufficiency of food this method goes beyond more commonly used measures of caloric consumption to incorporate vulnerability elements of food insecurity as well as the deliberate actions of household decision makers when faced with food insufficiency

local currencies for purposive degrowth a quality check of some proposals for changing money as usual this article provides a quality check of the degrowth movement s proposal of local currencies as tools for advancing socially equitable and ecologically sustainable degrowth the article draws comprehensively upon mainly english language academic research about four widespread local currency types lets time banks hour currencies and convertible local currencies clcs to assess their performance with respect to four degrowth related criteria community building advancement of alternative values in economic exchange facilitation of alternative livelihoods and eco localization lets have been found to support alternative livelihoods under quite uncommon conditions and contribute indirectly to eco localization by moderately facilitating informal resale repair and sharing of commercially produced goods although their burdensome management and confinement to small memberships limit their usefulness time banks help expand social networks and are best at reaching the socially excluded however they are confined to unskilled personal services and dependent on grant funding hour currencies do not stand out with regard to any criteria but may have a minor capacity to promote local purchasing clcs are best at attracting local businesses but no significant evidence of their said capacity to localize supply chains has surfaced as yet and their business friendly design works to the detriment of other criteria in sum existing research provides a very weak basis for advocating local currencies as tools for purposive degrowth local currencies are here categorized as two utopian socialist approaches the behind society s back variety of lets and hour currencies and the appeal to elites variety of time banks and clcs marx and engels s critiques of these approaches remain valid successful monetary systems require resources that are not available behind society s back notably the power to levy taxes and designate by which means they can be paid local currencies that appeal for elite support without mass popular backing have shaken off most radical connotations and are vulnerable to changing policy agendas given the present historical conjuncture of popular outrage against the banking sector this paper argues that the degrowth movement would improve its chances of contributing to purposive degrowth by prioritizing government centred ecological reform of the monetary system over local currencies

modelling embedded risk in peasant agriculture methodological insights from northern malawi abstract using a linear programming model of farming systems in northern malawi the conditions under which peasant farm household models may need to allow for embedded risk are investigated tactical sequential responses to uncertainty are found to be more important to labour scarce households with limited access to capital and to credit markets compared with semi sequential programming discrete stochastic programming dsp provided more efficient solutions for problems involving embedded risk there may be intuitive advantages in presenting results from dsp models in terms of a semi sequential strategy

rural livelihood diversification in sub saharan africa a literature review abstractthis article provides a comprehensive review of the literature on the nature and evolution of rural livelihood diversification in sub saharan africa and the situation regarding smallholders it reveals mixed findings about the causes and consequences of livelihood diversification on rural smallholders adopting this strategy a lot of evidence from the literature suggests that it is relatively better off smallholders with sufficient assets who achieve successful livelihood diversification mainly by exploiting opportunities and synergies between farm and nonfarm activities because of asset constraints increase in incomes and wealth based on livelihood diversification has not yet benefitted the large majority of smallholders

the rural non farm economy prospects for growth and poverty reduction summary policy makers have high expectations for the rural non farm economy rnfe given high income shares growing employment and frequently low capital requirements they see the rnfe as a potential pathway out of poverty for their rural poor yet available evidence suggests that pro poor rural non farm growth does not occur automatically for the poor to benefit from rural non farm growth policy makers must stimulate buoyant rural economies with robust non farm income growth not simply low productivity employment moreover the poor must gain access to growing market niches fluid labor markets provide one important bridge linking the rural poor to growing non farm opportunities

willing consumers or locked in policies for a sustainable consumption postmodern explanations of consumer behaviour stress social and psychological factors to the neglect of explanations based on structural issues such as the working life conditions which favour a work and spend lifestyle the conditions of urban living or the effects of pervasive marketing this paper argues that consumers may not be so keen and willing but are rather locked in by circumstances some of these circumstances are deliberately created by other interests and a policy to limit consumption must look for adequate means over a large and varied field in the end shorter working hours may be an important key to a more sustainable future 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

poverty in african households the limits of survey and census representations african poverty statistics depend on household level measurements from survey data making the definition of household of critical importance detailed case studies from tanzania and burkina faso explore 1 understandings of household membership and ambiguities and 2 how well survey definitions capture households as economic units and the implications for household size and responses to and mitigation of poverty we develop an analytic framework of open and closed households open households cope with poverty using flexibility movement and extra household networks but are poorly represented by survey data closed households are likely to be better described by survey data

local clearing unions as stabilizers of local economic systems a stock flow consistent perspective various examples of complementary currencies have recently emerged in europe in response to the impact of the 2007 financial crisis they have been variously labelled as social local and alternative money but their economic meaning has still to be discussed on the one hand they have been hailed as innovative tools for socio territorial policies with a focus on localist anti globalist and anti capitalist values on the other the emphasis on the value of currencies as instruments of alternative territorial development runs the risk of overshadowing issues concerning the specific features of such projects the first part of this paper puts forward an interpretation of the current situation as a crisis of the liquidity principle and suggests that the principle of clearing instead represents the primary point of reference for any institutional arrangement aimed at restoring a balanced relationship between lenders and borrowers a critical review of known european complementary monetary circuits is followed by examination of the sardex clearing system the paper then goes on to argue by means of a stock flow consistent model that complementary monetary circuits can serve to stabilise local economic systems in particular a local clearing union for local exchanges has the effect of stabilising the profits of firms while attenuating the impact of the credit crunch at same time

combining household income and asset data to identify livelihood strategies and their dynamics abstractcurrent approaches to identifying and describing rural livelihood strategies and household movements between strategies over time in developing countries are imprecise here we i present a new statistical quantitative approach combining income and asset data to identify household activity choice variables characterise livelihood strategy clusters and analyse movements between strategies and ii apply the approach using an environmentally augmented three wave household n 427 level panel dataset from nepal combining income and asset data provides a better understanding of livelihood strategies and household movements between strategies over time than using only income or asset data most households changed livelihood strategy at least once over the two three year periods a common pathway out of poverty included an intermediate step during which households accumulate assets through farming petty trading and migratory work

economic reform and political change in myanmar burma abstract this paper examines recent policy changes in myanmar formerly burma analyzing the reasons for the decision to move from a state led socialist planning system to a more market oriented system and attempting to evaluate both the direction and sustainability of these economic reforms on the basis of this survey of recent economic development the paper seeks to evaluate the argument that economic reform is a hostage to political reform the discussion of the relationship between economic change and political reform has suffered from drastic oversimplification and rests on misleading assumptions about causal relationships between economic and political factors the paper argues that a less superficial account must embrace an understanding of the historical roots of the burmese political economy the history and nature of the burmese state and the characteristics of burmese military and political elites we conclude that it is more illuminating to focus on the historical interaction of economic and political factors so as to construct a convincing political economy of myanmar than to argue for the current significance of political conditionality

agriculture reform and food crisis in syria impacts on poverty and inequality abstract the paper pursues a twofold objective from a methodological viewpoint it shows how to carry out an impacts evaluation of exogenous shocks on poverty and inequality in a context characterised by out of equilibrium poorly adjusting markets as it is the case in many developing countries using a social accounting matrix framework from an empirical viewpoint it provides an assessment of how the cereal price spikes of 2007 2008 and the global recession of 2008 2009 have impacted the welfare of syrian households and how did they compound with the on going agricultural sector liberalisation implemented by the government of syria since mid 1990s this will contribute to shed some lights on the economic background behind the spreading of unrest across the country over the last couple of years or so the results show that liberalisation impacts are very different and largely affected by the adopted budget closure rules while reforms aiming at reducing agricultural market distortions such as production subsidies and price support for strategic crops could generally have a positive effect on growth poverty and inequality the elimination of food security interventions such as food stamp schemes determines an adverse distributional impact against rural household and an increase of poverty the recent macroeconomic shocks food price crisis and the global recession determined a generalised poverty increase and showed an income distribution bias against rural households three fundamental policy implications can be drawn by this study first the liberalisation of agricultural sector shows a significant growth potential and is likely to determine positive effects on poverty through a generalised increase of incomes as well as public budget savings that could be used for pursuing other policy goals second in the short run there is a structural trade off between equity improvements and poverty alleviation the policy options that will more likely reduce absolute poverty show undesirable distributive biases both on overall inequality and on rural households vis a vis urban households third the reform should include a careful design of the use of budget savings mainly to address equity goals that are likely to be generated in the short run by liberalisation

drought transfer entitlements and income distribution the botswana experience abstract using 1974 75 and 1985 86 income distribution survey data with the latter supplemented by drought relief data this paper presents an analysis of intertemporal rural household income distribution in botswana despite the fact that the 1974 75 survey was conducted during one of the best agricultural production periods on record and the 1985 86 survey was conducted in the midst of one of the worst after the rural income economy had been weakened by a severe and prolonged drought botswana s rural income inequality did not appear to have increased significantly there was no marked reduction in rural household real incomes the explanation for this outcome is found to lie in the income maintenance strategy pursued by rural households with strong support from transfer entitlement guarantees from private and public sources supplementing rural household incomes

returns to spending on agricultural extension the case of the national agricultural advisory services naads program of uganda the aim of this paper is to assess the direct and indirect impacts of the agricultural extension system of uganda the national agricultural advisory services naads program on household agricultural income data from two rounds of surveys of ugandan rural farm households conducted in 2004 and 2007 as well as different program evaluation methods and model specifications are used to estimate impacts and compute a rate of return the direct and indirect impact of the program is estimated at 37 95 and 27 55 increase in per capita agricultural gross revenue between 2004 and 2007 for households participating directly and indirectly in the program respectively compared to nonparticipants the rate of return on the program s expenditures is estimated at 8 49 the program has been relatively more effective among male headed larger and asset poor households as well as those taking up noncrop high value enterprises and living further away from financial services all weather roads and markets or located in the eastern and northern regions policy implications of the results are drawn

sri lanka s rural non farm economy removing constraints to pro poor growth summary we use a survey of rural enterprises from sri lanka to explore characteristics of the informal non farm sector and identify obstacles to its expansion and productivity value added in this sector amounts to 80 of agricultural gdp participating households incomes are significantly higher than those of households who do not participate barriers to entry are low and the impact of non farm development on inequality modest implying a large potential contribution to growth and poverty reduction infrastructure constraints negatively affect new startups investment in and productivity of existing enterprises with small enterprises being particularly affected

does greater accountability improve the quality of public service delivery evidence from uganda summary it is now widely realized that in many developing countries the low quality of public services and governance can limit the scope for poverty reduction and growth empirical micro level evidence on the scope for improved accountability to help reduce corruption and improve the quality with which critical public services are provided is however limited using a large data set from uganda to address this issue we find that household knowledge on how to report inappropriate behavior by bureaucrats and unsatisfactory quality of services does help to not only reduce the incidence of corruption but is also associated with significant improvements in service quality

poverty and the rural nonfarm economy in oromia ethiopia the rural nonfarm sector has gained increasing importance not only in asia but also in africa it is however widely believed that in most parts of africa the growth of the nonfarm economy has increased inequality and has had a limited effect on the poor who face entry barriers to nonfarm activities the present article analyzes the relation between nonfarm income poverty and inequality in oromia ethiopia we use two complementary methodologies i econometric estimates of household income from the nonfarm sector and ii a gini decomposition of analysis income inequality by source the results consistently indicate that in oromia entry barriers to nonfarm activities is low and the general growth of the sector will benefit the poor

famine and household coping strategies abstract households faced with risks to their entitlement to food will plan strategically to minimize their impact the task of doing this will be particularly demanding during famines this paper reviews the evidence on household strategies for coping with famine in africa and identifies some distinctive patterns in these strategies which can be used to examine household objectives at times of crisis the management of resources to meet these objectives and limits to the effectiveness of coping strategies in particular it examines the role of asset management and trade offs between maintaining current food consumption levels and protecting the future income generating capacity of the household

sustainable consumption the new economics and community currencies developing new institutions for environmental governance seyfang g 2006 sustainable consumption the new economics and community currencies developing new institutions for environmental governance regional studies 40 781 791 sustainable consumption is gaining currency as a new environmental policy objective but there is a limit to the changes in consumption behaviour that individuals can make within current socio economic frameworks the new economics literature argues that sustainable consumption is characterized by five factors localization reducing ecological footprints community building collective action and building new social institutions these form a set of indicators for the evaluation of initiatives and policies community currencies have been put forward as a new tool to promote sustainable consumption but until now there has been no appraisal of their ability to deliver this goal three different community currency types are described and their effectiveness and potential in enabling more sustainable consumption patterns are assess

balancing rural poverty reduction and citizen participation the contradictions of uganda s decentralization program abstract uganda s ambitious decentralization program is analyzed in terms of a dual mode system of local governance under a technocratic mode conditional funding from the center is earmarked for particular programs but with little local participation in contrast the patronage mode is an elaborate system for local bottom up planning but with limited resources which are largely consumed in administrative costs and political emoluments along with the spoils of a committee system controlling contracts and appointments these resources provide the means for building political alliances and loyalty in the absence of a culture of transparency and civic engagement to assure downward accountability it remains to be seen whether decentralization can promote both efficient service delivery and local empowerment simultaneously

as an economy becomes more developed do people become less altruistic abstractinter household private transfers are one of the main informal insurance mechanisms that prevalently implemented in developing countries unfortunately most of the literatures investigates

growing green money mapping community currencies for sustainable development abstract parallel sustainable monetary systems are being developed by civil society groups and non governmental organisations ngos informed by ecological economics perspectives on development value economic scale and growth and responding to the unsustainability of current global financial systems these parallel systems of exchange or community currencies are designed to promote sustainable development by localising economic development building social capital and substituting for material consumption valuing work which is marginalised in conventional labour markets and challenging the growth based monetary system however this international movement towards community based ecological economic practices is under researched this paper presents new empirical evidence from the first international study of the scope and character of community currencies it identifies the diversity scale geography and development trajectory of these initiatives discusses the implications of these findings for efforts to achieve sustainable development and identifies future research needs to help harness the sustainability potential of these initiatives

agricultural input credit in sub saharan africa telling myth from facts recent evidence shows that many sub saharan african farmers use modern inputs but there is limited information on how these inputs are financed we use recent nationally representative data from four countries to explore input financing and the role of credit therein a number of our results contradict conventional wisdom found in the literature our results consistently show that traditional credit use formal or informal is extremely low across credit type country crop and farm size categories instead farmers primarily finance modern input purchases with cash from nonfarm activities and crop sales tied output labor arrangements which have received little empirical treatment in the literature appear to be the only form of credit relatively widely used for farming

efficient retail pricing in electricity and natural gas markets a long line of research investigates whether the retail prices of electricity and natural gas send proper signals about scarcity in order to induce efficient consumption historically regulated utilities have not designed tariffs that set marginal prices equal to marginal costs currently some jurisdictions are opening the retail sectors to competition via retail choice these new regimes replace imperfect regulation with imperfect competition as the process by which retail tariffs are formed we discuss the challenges in evaluating the efficiency of tariffs and present evidence of how pricing has changed in markets with retail choice

the equity and efficiency of two part tariffs in u s natural gas markets abstractresidential natural gas customers in the united states face volumetric charges that average about 30 percent more than the marginal cost of gas this inefficient departure from marginal cost pricing allows gas utilities to cover their fixed infrastructure and operating costs proposals for recovering these costs instead through fixed monthly fees are often opposed because of a widespread belief that current rate schedules have desirable distributional consequences using nationally representative household level data we show that the correlation between household income and natural gas consumption is indeed positive but surprisingly weak so current rate schedules are only mildly progressive in part we argue that this is because poor households tend to have larger families and less energy efficient homes we calculate bill impacts under a variety of scenarios and show that even a modest energy assistance program would more than offset the distributional impact of tariff rebalancing for most low

rural livelihoods and poverty reduction strategies in four african countries this paper compares and contrasts rural livelihoods in uganda kenya tanzania and malawi with a view to informing rural poverty reduction policies within poverty reduction strategy plans prsps low household incomes in rural areas of all countries are associated with low land and livestock holdings high reliance on food crop agriculture and low monetisation of the rural economy these adverse factors are in some instances made more difficult by land sub division at inheritance declining civil security in rural areas deteriorating access to proper agronomic advice and inputs and predatory taxation by decentralised district councils better off households are distinguished by virtuous spirals of accumulation typically involving diverse livestock ownership engagement in non farm self employment and diversity of on farm and non farm income sources lessons for prsps centre on the creation of a facilitating rather than blocking public sector environment for the multiplication of non farm enterprises seeking creative solutions to the spread of technical advice to farmers and examining critically the necessity for and impact of tax revenue collection by district councils on rural incomes and enterprise

blending top down federalism with bottom up engagement to reduce inequality in ethiopia donors increasingly fund interventions to counteract inequality in developing countries where they fear it can foment instability and undermine nation building efforts to succeed aid relies on the principle of upward accountability to donors but federalism shifts the accountability of subnational officials downward to regional and local voters what happens when aid agencies fund anti inequality programs in federal countries does federalism undermine aid does aid undermine federalism or can the political and fiscal relations that define a federal system resolve the contradiction internally this study explores this paradox via the promotion of basic services program in ethiopia the largest donor financed investment program in the world using an original panel database comprising the universe of ethiopian woredas districts the study finds that horizontal geographic inequality decreased substantially donor financed block grants to woredas increased the availability of primary education and health care services in the bottom 20 percent of woredas weaker evidence from household surveys suggests that vertical inequality across wealth groups within woredas also declined implying that individuals from the poorest households benefit disproportionately from increasing access to and utilization of such services the evidence suggests that by combining strong upward accountability over public investment with extensive citizen engagement on local issues ethiopia s federal system resolves the instrumental dissonance posed by aid funded programs to combat inequality in a federation

nonconvex equilibrium models for gas market analysis failure of standard techniques and alternative modeling approaches abstract this paper provides a first approach to assess gas market interaction on a network with nonconvex flow models in the simplest possible setup that adequately reflects gas transport and market interaction we elaborate on the relation of the solution of a simultaneous competitive gas market game its corresponding mixed nonlinear complementarity problem mncp and a first best benchmark we provide conditions under which the solution of the simultaneous game is also the solution of the corresponding mncp however equilibria cannot be determined by the mncp as the transmission system operator s tso s first order conditions are insufficient which goes back to nonconvexities of the gas flow model this also implies that the welfare maximization problem may have multiple solutions that sometimes do not even coincide with any of the market equilibria our analysis shows that even in the absence of strategic firms market interaction fails to implement desirable outcomes from a welfare perspective due to the tso s incentive structure we conclude that the technical environment calls for a market design that commits the tso to a welfare objective through regulation and propose a design where the market solution corresponds to a welfare maximum and vice versa

risk coping land tenure and land markets an overview of the literature over the last decades a significant amount of literature has been published on informal risk coping in developing countries in this paper we review how informal risk coping has been addressed in the land tenure literature from two main perspectives a first stream of research looks at how customary tenure and communal property perform key informal risk coping functions a second subset of this literature analyses how informal risk coping creates land market imperfections through sharecropping or distress sales the segmentation of the literature results from the demsetzian property rights framework further research on risk coping and land tenure would benefit from examining recent work on property regimes

when households run out of fuel responses of rural households to decreasing fuelwood availability ntcheu district malawi this paper examines strategies used by rural households in ntcheu district malawi to cope with a decreasing fuelwood availability fieldwork was carried out in 1990 and 1991 with increasing distance to woodlands households initially collected further away spending more time on collection but when distance to woodlands increased further households returned to nearby places using less time for collection and switching to lower quality woods results indicate that distance to collection place and collection time are not reliable indicators of fuelwood shortages households within the same village differed in collection strategies particularly as regards collection distance and collection frequency households that tended to collect further away and more frequently were large in size with more female adults these households also collected more wood even per capita compared to smaller households suggesting that smaller households economized on fuelwood use this paper supports the idea that level of fuelwood used is not only determined by fuelwood availability but more by labour availability

the hidden costs of political instability evidence from kenya s 2007 election crisis abstract this paper studies the microeconomic impacts of the political crisis and civil conflict that immediately followed the december 2007 presidential election in kenya income expenditures and consumption dramatically declined for a broad segment of the rural population for the duration of the conflict to make up for the income shortfall women who supply transactional sex engaged in higher risk sex both during and after the crisis while this particular crisis was likely too short for these behavioral responses to seriously increase the risk of hiv or other stis for these women such responses could have long term repercussions for health in countries with longer or more frequent crises overall our results suggest that social unrest can be an important channel through which political instability can affect long term outcomes such as health

seasonal food crises and policy responses a narrative account of three food security crises in malawi summary this paper examines seasonal food price crises in malawi in the 2000s malawi experienced three episodes in which seasonal maize prices rose in 2001 02 2004 05 and 2007 09 by 354 218 and 395 respectively these extreme price spikes resulted from a sequential interaction of economic and political events a repeated pattern of cause inapt response and adverse outcome is identified the relative neglect in vulnerability analysis of staple food price movements as lead indicators of impending food crises is emphasized and implications are drawn for price stabilisation public private coordination and social protection policies

nonfarm employment agricultural intensification and productivity change empirical findings from uganda this article uses panel data from the living standards measurement study integrated surveys on agriculture for uganda to assess the farm level effects of nonfarm employment on agricultural intensification and productivity change a sample selection model is used to account for both unobserved heterogeneity and potential simultaneity between agricultural production and nonfarm income results show that nonfarm employment can have differential impacts on farm technology intensity and productivity nonfarm income is found to have a positive impact on farm hired labor and improved seed intensity a negative effect on on farm family labor use and no significant impact on fertilizer soil water management and joint use of farm technologies the econometric evidence also indicates that agricultural productivity declines as nonfarm income increases taken together our findings reveal important trade offs between nonfarm employment and income and farm productivity growth under smallholder agriculture the results indicated that targeted policies are required to reduce these potential trade offs between nonfarm employment and agricultural intensification and productivity change

african evidence on the relation of poverty time preference and the environment abstract it is typically argued in the economics literature that the poor operate with a higher rate of time preference than their wealthier counterparts the poor it is suggested have a higher rate of time preference because they are more concerned about present survival than they are about saving for the future such thinking is also central to the economic growth for environmental conservation and the poverty induced environmental degradation arguments according to these assertions wealth allows people to consider the future and invest in environmental conservation and poverty leaves people with no alternative but to exploit the environment so that they may feed their families today evidence from the food security and famine early warning fields suggests that households in many african contexts behave quite to the contrary during periods of food shortage poor households will often undertake extreme measures in the present including depriving the family of needed calories in order to preserve productive capital for the future such as a plough oxen or seed stock this evidence suggests that poor african households may in fact have very low rates of time preference this calls into question our general assumptions about discount rates for developing countries for which rates of time preference are a theoretical determinant

combining income and assets measures to include the transitory nature of poverty in assessments of forest dependence evidence from the democratic republic of congo abstract a considerable amount of research on poverty environment relations in developing countries under the cifor pen initiative focuses on household income generation from forests using total annual income as a measure of poverty however income alone produces a static picture in a snapshot of time while poverty is a dynamic state that can be a transitory phenomenon using income only also fails to consider that households can liquidate asset to overcome income shocks here we show that using asset quintiles measured by value of assets produce a distinctly different pattern than the commonly observed negative relation between income and forest dependence we then present an approach enabling categorization of households as chronic or transient poor transient rich and rich providing a more nuanced picture than that provided by cifor pen studies so far the validity of groupings is tested by comparing household characteristics and exposure to shocks we then show that the chronic poor are most reliant on forest income while the transient poor consume a higher share of harvested forest products the transient rich have higher agricultural productivity and absolute forest income rich households relies more on business based on the results we suggest recommendations for improving future studies on poverty environment relations

right target wrong mechanism agricultural modernization and poverty reduction in uganda summary household consumption surveys suggest that the downward trend in rural poverty indicators recorded in uganda during the 1990s has been reversed since 2000 this paper examines the ugandan government s strategy to reduce rural poverty the plan for modernization of agriculture pma it argues that while there appear few better choices of target for the pma than to improve incomes of the rural poor through increased agricultural productivity emphasis on decentralization as a mechanism for poverty reduction is misplaced in the current political context of uganda the paper considers what alternative mechanisms might better deliver reductions in rural poverty

shocks and their consequences across and within households in rural zimbabwe abstract increasing attention is now being paid to poverty dynamics in developing countries this work links the extent to which households smooth consumption or smooth assets given income shocks the empirical evidence on the churning of households in and out of poverty and the possibility that temporary shocks can have permanent consequences using longitudinal data from rural zimbabwe this paper extends the discussion of these issues by disaggregating the impact of shocks by levels of asset holdings by disaggregating the impact of shocks on individual level welfare and by assessing the extent to which such shocks have permanent consequences by doing so it assesses the validity of distinguishing between asset and consumption smoothing and provides insights into whether poverty dynamics assessed at the household level provide an adequate picture of dynamics at the individual level

poverty and productivity in female headed households in zimbabwe abstract a household survey conducted in rural zimbabwe in 2001 is used to compare the position of de facto and de jure female headed households to those with a male head these households are characterised by different forms of poverty that impinge on their ability to improve agricultural productivity however once inputs are accounted for it is only for growing cotton that female headed households productivity is lower than that found for male headed households general poverty alleviation policies will benefit the female headed household but specific interventions via extension services and access to marketing consortia are also indicated

making reform work institutions dispositions and the improving health of bangladesh we examine whether local governance can improve social development empirically using good and bad cases of public health outcomes in bangladesh we explore the institutional underpinnings of service provision digging down beneath the rules of the game to analyze the beliefs understandings and dispositions that drive social behavior changes in deep social attitudes led to improvements in social indicators regional variation in health outcomes is explained by the presence or absence of a dense web of relationships that enmeshed reformers in local systems of authority and legitimacy strengthening their actions and making local society more susceptible to change

ten years of q squared implications for understanding and explaining poverty summary over the past decade there have been a number of initiatives to promote a more systematic integration of quantitative and qualitative or q squared approaches to poverty analysis in the global south and a large body of literature had emerged the objective of the article is to present a selective review of this empirical work with a view to demonstrate the value it has added for understanding and explaining poverty the evidence strongly suggests that q squared approaches have aided our understanding of the characteristics of the poor and the causes of poverty

how access to irrigation influences poverty and livelihoods a case study from sri lanka abstractthis study combines a livelihoods approach with a regression approach to quantify the effectiveness of irrigation infrastructure investment on improving people s livelihood strategies using a unique dataset based on households in southern sri lanka and a natural experimental setting we estimate from a two stage income regression model to show that irrigation access has a positive effect on income through livelihood choices we also show through qualitative approaches that factors not linked to irrigation infrastructure may contribute to changes in livelihood portfolios in addition we highlight factors that result in certain households being unable to move out of poverty despite access to the improved irrigation infrastructure

price hike of staple food nutritional impact and consumption adjustment evidence from the 2005 2010 rice price increase in rural bangladesh this paper studies the nutritional impact of the rice price increase between 2005 and 2010 on households in rural bangladesh and their resulting adjustment in consumption of rice non rice food and

household strategies and rural livelihood diversification this article reviews the recent literature on diversification as a livelihood strategy of rural households in developing countries with particular reference to sub saharan africa livelihood diversification is defined as the process by which rural families construct a diverse portfolio of activities and social support capabilities in order to survive and to improve their standards of living the determinants and effects of diversification in the areas of poverty income distribution farm output and gender are examined some policy inferences are summarised the conclusion is reached that removal of constraints to and expansion of opportunities for diversification are desirable policy objectives because they give individuals and households more capabilities to improve livelihood security and to raise living standards

aid growth and devolution summary this paper examines whether the degree of fiscal decentralization in aid receiving countries matters in explaining aid effectiveness the decentralization theorem predicts that the devolution of powers should increase aid effectiveness since local decision makers are better informed about local needs thereby decentralization may also have reverse effects e g through coordination problems excessive regulation administrative costs and local capture we use panel data for up to 60 countries and find that aid contributes to economic growth in centralized developing economies whereas it is less effective or even harmful in decentralized countries the cases of indonesia the philippines and uganda support our findings our results imply that donor countries should carefully consider how the two development instruments foreign aid and decentralization interact

the politics of staying poor exploring the political space for poverty reduction in uganda summary despite claims that uganda s recent success in poverty reduction has been significantly related to getting the politics right there are concerns that the poorest may not have benefited from this form of poverty reduction or the types of politics that have helped shape it employing the analytical framework of political space reveals that although some of the poorest groups are represented within the political system political discourse reveals a strong bias toward the economically active leaving the poorest excluded from poverty programs significantly there is an increasing divergence between the regime s political project of modernization and the international poverty agenda with important implications for the poorest

solving the mystery of the africa dummy abstract most empirical studies have reported a negative effect on growth of being an african country even when accounting for ethnic heterogeneity modeling policy choices has reduced this effect in recent studies but these have begged the question of why africa appears adverse to developmental policies this paper uses a cross sectional data set to show that the governments of arbitrary postcolonial states as are most african states face substantial limitations to their power and are constrained in their responses deriving greater relative power payoffs from neo patrimonial than from developmental policies differing levels of state legitimacy account therefore largely for the policy choices which characterize most of africa