assessing the functioning of land rental markets in ethiopia although a large theoretical literature discusses the possible inefficiency of sharecropping contracts the empirical evidence on this phenomenon has been ambiguous at best household level fixed effect estimates from about 8 500 plots operated by households that own and sharecrop land in the ethiopian highlands provide support for the hypothesis of marshallian inefficiency at the same time a factor adjustment model suggests that the extent to which rental markets allow households to attain their desired operational holding size is extremely limited our analysis points towards factor market imperfections no rental for oxen lack of alternative employment opportunities and tenure insecurity as possible reasons underlying such behavior suggesting that rather than worrying almost exclusively about marshallian inefficiency it is equally warranted to give due attention to the policy framework within which land rental markets operate

ceo characteristics and firm r d spending over the past fifteen years a number of studies have examined the determinants of firm r d spending these studies however almost invariably focus on the role of firm or external ownership characteristics in predicting r d spending while overlooking the attributes of the top managers involved in allocating corporate resources in this study we change that focus by empirically examining how r d spending as compared to industry competitors varies at firms based on the characteristics of their ceos using a sample of publicly traded firms we find that ceo characteristics explain a significant proportion of the sample variance in firm r d spending even when corporate strategy ownership structure and other firm level attributes are controlled in terms of individual ceo characteristics we find that r d spending is greater at firms where ceos are younger have greater wealth invested in firm stock and signifacant career experience in marketing and or engineering r d in contrast to existing theory we find that the amount of a ceo s formal education had no significant association with r d spending once a ceo has attained a college degree however significant r d spending increases are found at firms where ceos have advanced science related degrees from subgroup analyses we further find that ceo effects on relative r d spending increase with longer ceo tenure implying that ceos over time may mold r d spending to suit their own preferences from these results we make implications for both research on determinants of r d spending and managerial practice

how reliable are simple single equation specifications of import demand this paper examines nine models of aggregate import demand for each of five countries canada germany japan united kingdom and united states in an attempt to determine which of the frequently used single equation models of import demand are appropriate an appropriate model is defined as one which generates unbiased or at least consistent and efficient elasticity estimates while models without lagged adjustments and almon lag models perform rather poorly according to these criteria models including dynamic behavior through lagged values of the dependent variable are frequently accepted results are reported regarding functional form measures of variables and structural shift economists have devoted considerable attention to the estimation of aggregate import demand elasticities because of their importance in trade theory the simplest procedure for estimating these elasticities which is consistent with economic theory is to assume that the elasticity of supply of imports is infinitely elastic and to estimate

political connections and entrepreneurial investment evidence from china s transition economy abstract recent literature in entrepreneurship suggests that market and legal institutions matter for entrepreneurial investment yet prior studies have focused on the role of formal institutions building on new institutional theory and political connections literature this study aims to evaluate the role of political connections in entrepreneurial reinvestment in less developed and transition economies the purpose of this paper is threefold first it aims to demonstrate systematically how political connections affect entrepreneurial reinvestment second it applies this relationship to a subsample group i e small and medium enterprises smes in order to empirically test whether political connections are more beneficial for large firms or smes third it demonstrates that political connections substitute for rather than complement formal market and legal institutions the empirical test uses a nationally representative sample of entrepreneurial firms from china s transition economy

the forgotten property rights evidence on land use rights in vietnam summary studies of land property rights usually focus on tenure security and transfer rights rights to determine how to use the land are regularly ignored however user rights are often limited relying on a unique vietnamese panel data set at both household and plot levels we show that crop choice restrictions are widespread and prevent crop diversification restrictions do not decrease household income but restricted households work harder and there are indications that they are supplied with higher quality inputs our findings are consistent with the view that it is possible to intervene effectively in agricultural production to promote output and food security nevertheless potential benefits of a more diversified crop pattern must be carefully considered in a period where global food markets are in turmoil

control and ownership of assets within rural ethiopian households this article investigates how the control and devolution of productive assets are allocated among husband and wife theory predicts that bargaining power within marriage depends on the division of assets upon divorce and on control over assets during marriage using detailed household data from rural ethiopia we show that assets brought to marriage ownership of assets control within marriage and disposition upon death or divorce are only partly related productive resources are controlled by the household head disposition upon death or divorce only loosely depends on individual ownership during marriage but control is associated with larger claims upon divorce assets brought into marriage have little impact on disposition upon death but matter in case of divorce

the effect of land tenure governance on technical efficiency evidence from three provinces in eastern china this study aims to identify the mechanisms through which land tenure governance affects the technical efficiency of grain production in an integrated framework and to examine the impacts of the public governance village self governance and relational governance of land tenure on the technical efficiency of contracted land and rented in land farm level survey data collected from liaoning jiangxi and jiangsu provinces covering the years of 2014 and 2015 is used for the empirical analysis the findings indicate that i public governance associated with land certification significantly increases the technical efficiency of grain production ii village self governance and administrative land reallocations can serve as substitutes for the land rental market in optimizing the distribution of land resources and improving technical efficiency and iii compared to multi year transfer contracts both annual and open ended transfer contracts have negative impacts on technical efficiency

partial land rights and agricultural outcomes evidence from thailand to disentangle the issue concerning which dimensions of land rights among security tradability and pledgeability affect agricultural outcomes this paper exploits a unique partial land rights entitlement program in thailand that guarantees only security allows a limited access to credit and prohibits any land sale based on an instrumental variables strategy i find that the entitlement increases 1 second rice but not major rice productivity 2 land use intensity and 3 land related investment and leads to 4 better soil quality this suggests that the security dimension alone can play an important role in improving farm activities

the economic significance of national border effects to address the economic significance of national border effects this paper provides evidence on two fundamental questions 1 do large border effects arise because of high perceived price wedges between foreign and domestic products or because imports and domestic goods are very close substitutes and 2 if price wedges are important do they reflect distortionary barriers to trade or do they arise from nondistortionary factors such as differences in transactions costs or product characteristics i conclude that while border effects may imply barriers welfare costs and a role for policy distortions are probably not as substantial as initial border results suggested jel f1

intra national versus international trade in the european union why do national borders matter the first objective of this paper is to estimate border effects among european union countries in this context the specification of the gravity equation together with the choice of the distance measure are shown to be crucial for assessing the size of the border effect the second objective is to evaluate the determinants of the cross commodity variation in national border effects contrary to previous findings reported in the literature we show that trade barriers do provide an explanation in particular technical barriers to trade together with product specific information costs increase border effects whereas non tariff barriers are not significant our results further suggest that these barriers are not the only cause since the spatial clustering of firms is also found to matter

factors affecting entry and intensity in informal rental land markets in southern ethiopian highlands abstract informal land transactions particularly rental land markets are emerging in rural ethiopia in response to the inadequacies of the administratively based land distribution system to meet the growing demand for land and correct imbalances in factor proportions at the farm level these informal land markets provide a vehicle to equalise factor proportions at the farm level and to improve productivity and hence households welfare among the farmers who lease out land those who live in the highland areas where land is scarce and unequal are more likely to engage in these markets increases in the size of land holdings relative to labour and livestock ownership the number of non working household members and pressure for subsistence increase the likelihood of leasing out land on the other hand increases in the number of working adults improved nutritional status and greater wealth affect negatively the supply of land into these markets the potential exists for these markets to improve factor equalisation reduce inequality in land holdings and shift the income position of participating households however success depends on whether other factor markets are functioning to thwart forced disposal of land to meet subsistence public policy has pivotal role in fostering the growth of these markets and their land transfer and factor equalisation functions by ensuring their legally enforceable status and removing legal restrictions that constrain choices of contracts and trading over greater distances in addition both long and short term policy measures are needed to reduce the extent to which poor farmers engage in distress transactions

the dynamism of mexican exports lost in chinese translation summary this paper analyzes the extent to which mexican exports have penetrated us markets in recent years and juxtaposes such an analysis with the performance of china we find that mexico s main non oil exports are losing dynamism and their relative share in the us market is either declining or growing slower than china s this trend is a new one and begins after china s entry into the wto a number of factors could explain these findings these include i the real appreciation of the real exchange rate of the peso relative to the us dollar combined with the trend toward undervaluation of the chinese currency ii the decline of public investment in mexico especially in infrastructure iii limited access to bank credit in mexico and iv the absence of government policy in mexico to help spur technological innovation and to strengthening its domestic backward and forward linkages

the effects of land sales restrictions evidence from south india abstract the effects of land sales restrictions on credit use land investment and cultivation decisions are investigated using data from two villages in south india sales restrictions are found to have little effect on credit supply and demand or demand for land improvements some household characteristics are found to affect investment demand on plots subject to sales restrictions in one village suggesting that the transactions effect of such restrictions may be inhibiting allocative efficiency however we also find that household characteristics influence investment on titled plots and that the magnitude of impact of such characteristics is greater on titled plots these results imply that sales restrictions are not a major source of inefficiency in the villages studied and suggest that the nature of village credit and land markets and enforcement of sales restrictions are critical determinants of the impacts of such restrictions

investment and equity effects of land regularisation the case of nicaragua we use data from nicaragua to examine the impact of award of registered and non registered title on land values and changes in land attached investment registration acquisition through purchase and agrarian reform title all are associated with significant increases in the value of plots receipt of registered title is found to increase land values by 30 and at the same time greatly increase the propensity to invest bringing such investment closer to the optimum in line with descriptive statistics indicating great demand for land right regularisation especially from the poor this suggests that titling can have a positive distributional effect at the same time the legal validity and official recognition of the titles issued appears to be of great importance

determinants of smallholder farmers participation in banana markets in central africa the role of transaction costs a bivariate probit model was employed to jointly and separately estimate banana market participation decisions of buying and selling households in rwanda and burundi using household survey data selectivity bias was corrected for estimating the transacted volumes using heckman s procedure the results showed that transaction cost related factors such as geographical location of households market information sources and travel time to the nearest urban center influence market participation non price related factors such as security of land tenure labor availability off farm income gender of the household head and years of farming experience had a significant influence on the transacted volumes output prices had a significant correlation with sales volume indicating price incentives increased supply by sellers generally the findings suggest that policies aimed at investments in rural road infrastructure market information systems collective marketing and value addition of banana products may provide a potential avenue for mitigating transaction costs and enhancing market participation and production of marketed surplus by rural households

land tenure and productivity farm level evidence from papua new guinea does land tenure form affect farm level productivity the answer from farm level data for an oil palm project in papua new guinea is in the affirmative analysis of farm level output controlling for all measured inputs shows systematic differences in productivity across three land tenure types namely farms under customary purchase agreements those under the land settlement scheme and those under village owned land schemes the empirics suggest that the higher productivity is due to benefits from economies of scale and absence of income sharing enjoyed by farms with improved tenure security

property rights and natural resource management incentives do transferability and formality matter this article examines how property rights expectations affect resource management incentives it utilizes expected property rights over different timespans and of different strengths corresponding to a investments of different intensities and b farmers sense of security regarding their often de facto property rights the results suggest that property rights and their alienability in ten year time matter to intensive infrastructural investments although not to lighter investments formality of property rights is shown to be insignificant to investment incentives indicating that there is no functional difference between formal rights and customary rights at present in indigenous communities of the philippines copyright 2008 oxford university press

corporate environmental responsibility in polluting industries does religion matter using a sample of chinese listed firms in polluting industries for the period of 2008 2010 we empirically investigate whether and how buddhism china s most influential religion affects corporate environmental responsibility cer in this study we measure buddhist variables as the number of buddhist monasteries within a certain radius around chinese listed firms registered addresses in addition we hand collect corporate environmental disclosure scores based on the global reporting initiative gri sustainability reporting guidelines using hand collected buddhism data and corporate environmental disclosure scores we provide strong and robust evidence that buddhism is significantly positively associated with cer this finding is consistent with the following view buddhism can serve as social norms to evoke the consciousness of social responsibility and thereof strengthen cer our findings also reveal that the positive association between buddhism and cer is attenuated for firms with higher law enforcement index the results are robust to various measures of buddhism and a variety of sensitivity tests

tenure security investment and productivity in gambian agriculture a generalized probit analysis the determinants of investment input use and productivity are investigated under customary tenure in peri urban areas of the gambia a structural model is specified to investigate the role of tenure security on farm investments and input use and thereby on yield testing of the structural form hypotheses requires simultaneous equation estimation containing both continuous and discrete endogenous variables the model is estimated as a feasible generalized least squares amemiya s generalized probit some of the positive relationships hypothesized between tenure security investment and yields are corroborated in particular tenure security is found to enhance long term investments which in turn enhance yields

endogeneity and the dynamics of internal corporate governance abstract we use a well developed dynamic panel generalized method of moments gmm estimator to alleviate endogeneity concerns in two aspects of corporate governance research the effect of board structure on firm performance and the determinants of board structure the estimator incorporates the dynamic nature of internal governance choices to provide valid and powerful instruments that address unobserved heterogeneity and simultaneity we re examine the relation between board structure and performance using the gmm estimator in a panel of 6 000 firms over a period from 1991 to 2003 and find no causal relation between board structure and current firm performance we illustrate why other commonly used estimators that ignore the dynamic relationship between current governance and past firm performance may be biased we discuss where it may be appropriate to consider the dynamic panel gmm estimator in corporate governance research as well as caveats to its use

executive turnover and firm performance in china executive turnover and its link to firm performance can provide a crucial measure of how effectively a firm solves the two sets of principal agent problems a the diverging interests between top management and shareholders which may result in managerial entrenchment and b the diverging interests between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders which may lead to the expropriation of the latter by the former or tunneling as referred to in the literature tying the personal fortune of top executives to the firm s performance aligns the interests of shareholders and those of management it also breaks up the insider alliance between the controlling shareholder and management thereby helping protect the interests of minority shareholders although there is a large literature on executive turnover in western firms research on executive turnover in non western firms is limited and this paper is the only one on china a closer look at the executive turnoverperformance link in china one of the two major internal discipline mechanisms in corporate governance is particularly relevant since effective markets for corporate control are missing in china the largest developing and transitional economy in the world furthermore china is an interesting case because both types of agency problems are acute due to poorly defined property rights and weak investor protection which result largely from its command economy legacy

property rights productivity and common property resources insights from rural cambodia summary this paper uses data from the 2003 04 cambodia household socioeconomic survey to investigate the effects of property rights to land plots held with a paper documenting ownership in rural cambodia are found to have higher productivity and land values than other plots while property rights have weak effects on access to credit the paper also investigates whether the introduction of private property rights leads to decreased availability of common property resources the data offers only weak support for this hypothesis the general insight is that policies to strengthen land property rights can have important positive effects on the rural economy even in an environment of low state capacity

environmental assessment for corporate sustainability by resource utilization and technology innovation dea radial measurement on japanese industrial sectors abstract this study proposes a new use of dea data envelopment analysis radial approach to examine the corporate sustainability of japanese industrial sectors the concept of corporate sustainability is measured by its subcomponent measures including uen unified efficiency under natural disposability uem unified efficiency under managerial disposability uenm unified efficiency under natural and managerial disposability uei unified efficiency for intermediate measurement and uenm dc unified efficiency under natural and managerial disposability with desirable congestion among the five measures the uei examines a degree of how each firm can efficiently utilize its resources the uenm dc examines a degree of how the firm can reduce an amount of undesirable outputs by technology innovation and or managerial change such a combined use between uei and uenm dc has been never explored in dea environmental assessment the empirical results obtained from the proposed approach have identified two important implications one of the two implications is that the japanese energy industry has been long under governmental regulation so that energy firms do not have corporate governance capabilities at the level of other industrial sectors which are competing in a global market in particular the implication is applicable to japanese electric power firms it is necessary for them to change their corporate governances e g by adding new executive board members who have international experience and or woman executives as widely found in american and european energy industries so that they can pay attention to consumers not regulatory agencies of the japanese government the other implication is that technology innovation can more effectively improve the performance of the energy sector employing high efficiency and low carbon generation technologies to achieve desirable fuel mix is essential for improving the corporate sustainability of the japanese energy sector

estimates of a traditional aggregate import demand model for five countries abstract in this paper we show for five advanced economics that if the variables in the aggregate import demand relationship are best described as non stationary integrated process then the traditional estimates of the income and price elasticity will be subject to substantial upward bias

political connections and corporate environmental responsibility adopting or escaping abstract corporate environmental responsibility cer is increasingly viewed as an important business strategy by researchers investors and society as a whole while prior research has emphasized the role of social pressures firm specific factors as well as ceo characteristics in cer little attention has been paid to the impacts of political connections we propose a mechanism based framework to study how political connections affect firm s propensity to engage in cer using comprehensive environmental information disclosure data on china s listed firms augmented by unique data on political connections we find that political connections have a positive effect on cer this effect is more pronounced for state owned firms and in cities with stringent environmental regulations with respect to the channels through which political connections increase cer we further find that political connections help firms to receive government grants subsidies and tax reduction related to the environment protection and implement government environmental policies

export sensitivity to time delays and the pattern of international trade a growing body of literature in the field of international trade highlights the increasing importance of the time delays associated with transporting goods over long distances and the differing eff

impacts of tenancy arrangements on investment and efficiency evidence from pakistan in this article we use farm level data from the punjab province in pakistan to analyze the impact of three tenancy contracts on investment in soil improving and productivity enhancing measures and farm productivity a multivariate tobit model that accounts for potential substitutability and complementarity of investment options as well as endogeneity of tenure arrangements was employed in the empirical analysis our empirical results indicate that land tenure arrangements influence farmers decisions to invest in soil improving and productivity enhancing measures in particular owner cultivators with secured tenancy arrangements were found to be more likely to invest in soil improving and productivity enhancing measures compared to those on leased contracts we also find that output per hectare was highest on land cultivated by owners and lowest on land under sharecropping tenancy lending support to the marshallian inefficiency hypothesis

land tenure and agricultural productivity in africa a comparative analysis of the economics literature and recent policy strategies and reforms summary this paper examines the convergence and divergence of results from economic studies of the relationships between land tenure security and agricultural productivity in africa and how these results have been incorporated into recent agricultural poverty alleviation and land policy documents the paper finds that there are both areas of convergence and divergence in the economics literature similarly the attention given to land tenure and its perceived effects on productivity varies considerably in the policy literature the significant heterogeneity in findings itself suggests that policy responses must pay attention to local context and the overarching macro and sectoral conditions within which tenure systems operate

measuring the sustainability and economic viability of tropical farming systems a model from sub saharan africa abstract new technologies must be developed in sub saharan africa which are sustainable and economically viable this paper discusses a methodology for measuring the agricultural sustainability and economic viability of tropical farming systems for new technology evaluation the approach is based on the concept of interspatial and intertemporal total factor productivity paying particular attention to valuation of natural resource stock and flows agriculture is a sector which utilizes natural resources e g soil nutrients and the stock and flows of these resources affect the production environment however in many cases the stock of these resources is beyond the control of the farmer and must be accounted for in an agricultural sustainability and economic viability measurement for example soil nutrients are removed by crops erosion or leaching beyond the crop root zone or other processes such as volatilization of nitrogen agricultural production can also contribute to the stock of some nutrients by leguminous plants such as agroforestry systems using a data set available at the international institute of tropical agriculture we compute the intertemporal and interspatial total factor productivity indices for four cropping systems in southwestern nigeria using stock of major soil nutrients as the natural resource stock results show that the sustainability and economic viability measures are sensitive to changes in the stock and flow of soil nutrients as well as the material inputs and outputs where the contribution of natural resource stock and flows are important such as in the case of alley cropping the measures provide markedly different results from conventional tfp approaches the advantage of this approach is that interspatial and intertemporal total factor productivity measures are computed using only price and quantity data thus eliminating the need for econometric estimation

the mortality cost of political connections we study the relationship between the political connections of chinese firms and workplace fatalities in our preferred specification we find that the worker death rate for connected companies is two to three times that of unconnected firms depending on the sample employed a pattern that holds for within firm estimations the connections mortality relationship is attenuated in provinces where safety regulators promotion is contingent on meeting safety targets in the absence of fatalities connected firms receive fewer reports of major violations for safety compliance whereas in years of fatal accidents the rate of reported violations is identical moreover fatal accidents produce negative returns at connected companies and are associated with the subsequent departure of well connected executives these results provide suggestive evidence that connections enable firms to avoid potentially costly compliance measures rather than using connections to avoid regulatory response after accidents occur our findings emphasize the social costs of political connections and suggest that appropriate regulatory incentives may be useful in mitigating these costs

do lenders favor politically connected firms rent provision in an emerging financial market corruption by the politically connected is often blamed for economic ills particularly in less developed economies using a loan level data set of more than 90 000 rms that represents the universe of corporate lending in pakistan between 1996 and 2002 we investigate rents to politically connected rms in banking classifying a rm as political if its director participates in an election we examine the extent nature and economic costs of political rent provision we nd that political rms borrow 45 percent more and have 50 percent higher default rates such preferential treatment occurs exclusively in government banks private banks provide no

investment in soil conservation in northern ethiopia the role of land tenure security and public programs abstract a double hurdle statistical analysis of 250 farms in the tigray region of ethiopia reveals different causal factors for soil conservation adoption versus intensity of use farmers reasons for adopting soil conservation measures vary sharply between stone terraces and soil bunds long term investments in stone terraces were associated with secure land tenure labour availability proximity to the farmstead and learning opportunities via the existence of local food for work ffw projects by contrast short term investments in soil bunds were strongly linked to insecure land tenure and the absence of local food for work projects public conservation campaigns on private plots reduced adoption of both stone terraces and soil bunds whereas capacity factors largely influenced the adoption decision expected returns carried more influence for the intensity of stone terrace adoption measured as metres of terrace per hectare more stone terracing was built where fertile but erodible silty soils in higher rainfall areas offered valuable yield benefits intensity of terracing was also greater in remote villages where limited off farm employment opportunities reduced construction costs these results highlight the importance of the right kind of public interventions direct public involvement in constructing soil conservation structures on private lands appears to undermine incentives for private conservation investments when done on public lands however public conservation activities may encourage private soil conservation by example secure land tenure rights clearly reinforce private incentives to make long term investments in soil conservation

land tenure security and investment incentives puzzling evidence from burkina faso abstract the commonsense logic associating higher land security and higher incentives to invest has been recently called into question in the case of african agriculture to be meaningful empirical tests have to be carefully designed so as to take account of the possible endogeneity of the land rights variable this is done in this paper by applying suitable econometric methods to the original data collected in burkina faso the results obtained cast doubt on the existence of a systematic influence of land tenure security on investment by reviewing the justifications for scepticism in the recent literature we are able to conclude that the traditional village order where it exists provides the basic land rights required to stimulate small scale investment

whether top executives turnover influences environmental responsibility from the perspective of environmental information disclosure we have empirically examined the relationship between top executives turnover and the corporate environmental responsibility by identifying the influence of ten specific turnover reasons resulting in the chairman s departure and two important types of chairman s succession using a sample of 782 manufacturing listed companies across 3 years in china we find that the corporate environmental responsibility is negatively associated with the involuntary and negative turnover i e dismissal health and death and forced resignation and positively associated with improving corporate governance and not associated with the normal turnover i e retirement and contract expiration and the types of chairman s succession i e independence and internal or external promotion our study significantly contributes to research in environmental disclosure by revealing the relationship between chairman s turnover and the corporate environmental responsibility a feasible way is suggested to regulators and other stakeholders in monitoring or assessing the possible abnormality of environmental responsibility when firms experience involuntary and negative chairman s turnover in the emerging economies

land redistribution tenure insecurity and intensity of production a study of farm households in southern ethiopia this study analyzes the determinants of land tenure insecurity and its impact on intensity of use of purchased farm inputs among households in southern ethiopia seventeen percent of the households stated that they were tenure insecure the feeling of tenure insecurity could be caused by the land redistribution policy in ethiopia where household size has been the main criterion used for land allocation after the land reform in 1975 this would imply that land rich households should be more tenure insecure alternatively the local power structure may be strong enough to counter this and cause the land rich who are also likely to be influential to be able to protect their land rights the analysis revealed that in the overall sample relative farm size was not significantly correlated with tenure insecurity when testing for each site however we found that in four of the sites per capita farm size was positively associated with tenure insecurity while in five other sites it had a significant negative association this may be due to local historical cultural and demographic differences giving way to differences in the effects of the redistribution policy and the local power structure on tenure insecurity we assessed the impact of tenure insecurity on the intensity of use of purchased farm inputs the tenure insecurity variable was insignificant farmers in areas with a positive correlation between farm size and tenure insecurity were more likely to purchase farm inputs larger farms were more likely to use purchased inputs but this effect was lower in areas with a positive correlation between farm size and tenure insecurity poverty and subsistence constraints may explain this absence of higher intensity of use of purchased inputs on small farms by contrast the land redistribution policy may have improved small farms access to purchased farm inputs text of abstract

national borders and international trade evidence from the european union in this paper the impact of national borders on international trade within the european union is considered using a gravity model i find that averaged over all eu countries intranational trade is about ten times as high as international trade with an eu partner country of similar size and distance this relatively strong home bias suggests that even within the european union national borders still have a decisive impact on trade patterns jel classification f02 f14 f15 o52 ce memoire examine l impact des frontieres nationales sur le commerce international a l interieur de l union europeenne on montre que en moyenne pour tous les pays de l union europeenne le commerce intranational est a peu pres dix fois plus important que le commerce international avec un pays partenaire de l union europeenne de meme taille et a meme distance ce degre relativement important de preference nationale suggere que meme dans le cadre de l union europeenne les frontieres nationales ont encore un impact determinant sur les patterns de commerce

land tenure and investment incentives evidence from west africa abstract the existing literature on the relationship between property rights in land and agricultural investment in africa has given results that are often confusing and contradictory i make two clarifying contributions to this literature first i pull together existing studies and investigate whether the results they find have been affected by research methods or local contexts studies with small sample sizes those that use binary investment measures and those that control for household fixed effects are less likely to find a statistically significant link between land tenure and investment self reported tenure security has been a poor predictor of investment outcomes second i test for a relationship between land tenure and agricultural investment in nine data sets from west africa while the link between tenure and investment is significant for fallow and tree planting it is less robust for labor use and other inputs such as manure or chemical fertilizer

measuring the production efficiency of alternative land tenure contracts in a mixed crop livestock system in ethiopia abstract in this paper we test the hypothesis that land held under varying configurations of property rights will be farmed at different levels of production efficiency production data were collected from 477 plots in a fairly productive mixed farming system in the ethiopian highlands interspatial measures of total factor productivity based on the divisia index were used to measure the relative production efficiency of three informal and less secure land contracts rented share cropped and borrowed relative to lands held under formal contract with the ethiopian government although the informally contracted lands are farmed 10 16 less efficiently the analysis indicates that farmers of such lands actually apply inputs more rather than less intensively i e more inputs per unit of land the gap in total factor productivity thus results from the inferior quality of inputs or lack of skills in applying them rather than a lack of incentive to allocate inputs to mixed crop livestock farming for this reason we find no empirical basis to support the hypothesis that land tenure is a constraint to agricultural productivity

investing in human and natural capital an alternative paradigm for sustainable development in awassa ethiopia article ethiopia remains underdeveloped due to limitations in natural human social and built capital a 2006 scientific atelier conducted in the city of awassa ethiopia investigated investments in human and natural capital as a sustainable development strategy local stakeholders identified firewood shortages degradation of croplands rising lake levels encroaching on croplands and poor water quality as major impediments to development they further identified ecological degradation as a key component of these problems and they acknowledged multiple vicious cycles compounding the environmental and economic threats to the awassa community proposed solutions included investment in natural capital in the form of reforestation activities investment in human capital in the form of promoting more efficient wood stoves along with increasing public awareness of environmental threats and investments in social capital in the form of inter institutional coordination to address environmental problems all recommended investments rely primarily on national resources in distinct contrast to the extensive imports required for most built capital investments unfor tunately awassa lacks the surplus necessary for major capital investments of any kind the atelier therefore helped local participants identify potential funders and write grant proposals for various projects though none have been funded so far reversing the ecological degradation on the scale necessary for sustained economic development in ethiopia however will require a steady flow of substantial investments and cannot rely solely on the short term generosity of funders international payments for carbon sequestration and other ecosystem services could help provide the necessary resources

freight transportation costs and the thickening of the us mexico border border regulatory requirements and administrative practices changed subsequent to the september 11 2001 9 11 terrorist attacks in the united states research in this study examines the manners in which transportation cost data for merchandise imports from mexico behaved before and after 2001 evidence is obtained that confirms results earlier tabulated for imports from canada empirical results further indicate that beyond freight cost changes growth in the value of imports from mexico was disrupted by events associated with the aftermath of 9 11

property rights and productivity the case of joint land titling in vietnam this paper explores the effect of land titling on agricultural productivity in vietnam and the productivity effects of single versus joint titling for husband and wife using a plot fixed effects approach our results show that obtaining a land title is associated with higher yields for both individually and jointly held titles we conclude that there is no tradeoff between joint titling and productivity and so joint titles are potentially an effective way to improve women s bargaining power within the household with no associated efficiency losses

decomposition of gender differentials in agricultural productivity in ethiopia this paper employs decomposition methods to analyze differences in agricultural productivity between male and female land managers in ethiopia it employs data from the 2011 2012 ethiopian rural socioeconomic survey an overall 23 4 percent gender differential in agricultural productivity is estimated at the mean in favor of male land managers of which 10 1 percentage points are explained by differences in land manager characteristics land attributes and unequal access to resources the endowment effect the remaining 13 4 percentage points are explained by unequal returns to productive components but cannot be easily tied to specific covariates these results are mainly driven by non married female managers mainly single and divorced married female managers do not display such disadvantages further analysis along the productivity distribution reveals that gender differentials are more pronounced at mid levels of productivity and that the share of the gender gap explained by the endowment effect declines as productivity increases detailed decomposition of estimates at selected points of the agricultural productivity distribution provides valuable information for policy intervention purposes

environmental investment and firm performance a network approach abstract this study examines the role of investment in environmental production practices for both environmental performance and energy efficiency over time we employ a network dea approach that links successive production technologies through intertemporal investment decisions with a period by period estimation this allows us to estimate energy efficiency and environmental performance separately as well as productivity change and its associated decompositions into efficiency change and technology change incorporating a network model also allows us to account for both short term environmental management practices and long term environmental investments in each of our productivity measures we apply this framework to a panel of detailed plant level production data for swedish manufacturing firms covering the years 2002 2008

land ownership security and farm productivity evidence from thailand the article discusses the impact of land ownership security on farmers input use and output value economic theory suggests that farmers with secure legal ownership will have more incentives and better ability to invest due to a lower perceived risk and a favourable access to institutional credit this leads to higher variable inputs use and higher output per unit of land the article uses farm level data from three provinces in thailand to test the above propositions the data pertain to samples of squatters who lack secure legal ownership as contrasted with legally titled farmers the results confirm that the provision of secure ownership in ldcs can increase productivity significantly