what determines female autonomy evidence from bangladesh abstract this paper examines the determinants of female autonomy within households in a developing country in particular we investigate the relative contributions of earned versus unearned income in enhancing women s autonomy and the role of employment outside of their husband s farm in a simple theoretical model it is demonstrated that earned income could be more important than unearned income in empowering women using data from rural bangladesh empirical estimations confirm this prediction and also reveal the surprising fact that it is not employment per se but employment outside their husbands farms that contributes to women s autonomy the data also point to the importance of choosing the correct threat point in theoretical analyses of female autonomy

inheritance patterns in migration prone communities of the peruvian highlands abstract on the basis of detailed information on inheritance practices collected in the course of an in depth survey of three andean communities of peru and unlike most empirical studies which rely on remittance functions we have been able to estimate an inheritance function with a view to identifying the main factors associated with particular patterns of land bequests a central result is that the positive relationship between caring and a favourable access to land bequest indeed exists yet is only observed for migrant children whether urban or rural long distance or short distance migrants combined with other findings and observations this result strengthens the case for an interpretation based on an active role of potential heirs in the determination of inheritance outcomes it therefore calls into question the strategic bequest theory which presumes that parents are the ultimate decision makers in this matter in addition our study shows that inheritance patterns are complex besides migration and caring behavior personal characteristics of potential heirs such as gender birth order and family status having children or not do appear to influence division of parental land

marriage bequest and assortative matching in rural ethiopia abstract this article examines the determinants of human and physical capital at marriage using detailed data from rural ethiopia we find that assets brought to marriage are distributed in a highly unequal manner for first unions assets brought to marriage are positively associated with parents wealth indicating that a bequest motive affects assets at marriage parental wealth affects the inheritance of neither groom nor bride sibling competition from brothers affects grooms inheritance but sisters have no effect the marriage market is a major conduit for rural and gender inequality although avenues do exist for couples to accumulate wealth over their life cycle

the economic effects of land registration on smallholder farms in kenya evidence from nyeri and kakamega districts effects of land registration and title on security of tenure use of formal credit crop yields and land concentration are analyzed from household and plot data in four kenyan sites results indicate that the registration and titling program had a weak impact on perceived land rights of farmers credit use and terms crop yields or concentration of land holdings the conclusion is that titles are acquired for enhancing security of rights rather than for increasing agricultural production scarce government resources are best targeted towards providing better infrastructure and market opportunities which should also foster a greater demand for titling

international portfolio choice and political instability risk a multi objective approach abstract the benefits derived from international portfolio diversification into foreign nations including the less developed countries are well documented yet this practice is discouraged due to market imperfections such as political instability in practice nations may be differentiated further by many aspects such as border controls or political and social trends which constrain private transactions and financial decisions this paper attempts to examine 1 whether the home asset bias in a portfolio holding is associated with higher political instability risk and 2 to what extent international diversification among stocks in the presence of such risk outperforms domestic stock portfolios using alternative instability risk proxies in the context of a discrete time version of mean variance framework we corroborate the impact of this type of risk on international portfolio investment decisions

financial portfolio management through the goal programming model current state of the art abstract since markowitz 1952 formulated the portfolio selection problem many researchers have developed models aggregating simultaneously several conflicting attributes such as the return on investment risk and liquidity the portfolio manager generally seeks the best combination of stocks assets that meets his her investment objectives the goal programming gp model is widely applied to finance and portfolio management the aim of this paper is to present the different variants of the gp model that have been applied to the financial portfolio selection problem from the 1970s to nowadays

how does land fragmentation affect off farm labor supply panel data evidence from china abstract this article provides a deeper theoretical understanding of the linkages between land fragmentation and off farm labor supply in china andinvestigates this relationship empirically in a more direct way than does the existing literature drawing upon a rural household panel data setcollected in zhejiang hubei and yunnan provinces from 1995 to 2002 we estimate the effects in two steps first we estimate the effect of landfragmentation on labor productivity second we estimate the effect of land fragmentation on off farm labor supply the production function resultsshow that land fragmentation indeed leads to lower agricultural labor productivity implying that land consolidation will make on farm work moreattractive and thus decrease off farm labor supply however the effect of land consolidation on off farm labor supply is not signi cant one likelyexplanation for this result may be the potentially imperfect labor markets jel classi cations j22 q15 q24 r23 keywords

a fuzzy goal programming approach to portfolio selection abstract portfolio selection is a usual multiobjective problem this paper will try to deal with the optimum portfolio for a private investor taking into account three criteria return risk and liquidity these objectives in general are not crisp from the point of view of the investor so we will deal with them in fuzzy terms the problem formulation is a goal programming g p one where the goals and the constraints are fuzzy we will apply a fuzzy g p approach to the above problem to obtain a solution then we will offer the investor help in handling the results

economic growth in a cross section of cities abstract we examine the relationship between urban characteristics in 1960 and urban growth between 1960 and 1990 income and population growth move together and both types of growth are 1 positively related to initial schooling 2 negatively related to initial unemployment and 3 negatively related to the initial share of employment in manufacturing racial composition and segregation are uncorrelated with urban growth across all cities but in cities with large nonwhite communities segregation is positively correlated with population growth government expenditures except for sanitation are uncorrelated with growth government debt is positively correlated with later growth

the rationale of the mean standard deviation analysis skewness preference and the demand for money publisher summary this chapter discusses the rationale of the mean standard deviation analysis skewness preference and the demand for money in january 1969 issue of the review of economic studies karl borch and martin feldstein separately criticized the widely used mean variance analysis of portfolio selection borch contended that any system of upward sloping mean standard deviation e s indifference curves can be shown to be inconsistent with the basic axiom of choice under uncertainty he pointed out that one can always pick any two points on an upward sloping indifference curve to represent two bernoulli distributions with probability 1 p of gaining the same amount x in both the cases and probability p of gaining y1 in the case of one distribution and y2 in the case of the second distribution with y2 y1 if the second distribution represents the point to the northeast of the other point then by the dominance axiom the second distribution must be preferred to the first which contradicts the basic meaning of indifference curves feldstein by using a log utility function and a lognormal distribution for investment outcome showed that e s indifference curves for a risk averter need not be convex downwards though upward sloping they would change from convex to concave once the standard deviation of the outcome exceeds the mean multiplied by on the face of it this seems to suggest that risk aversion might decrease as risk is increased beyond a certain extent

industrial reallocation across us cities 1977 1997 abstract between 1977 and 1997 us employment shifted dramatically in favor of industries that used skilled labor intensively during this same period some cities withered while others prospered this paper examines employment growth in 39 industries across 316 cities to evaluate the importance of learning by doing industry specific location fundamentals human capital externalities and hiring cost explanations in these geographic shifts growth in industries that used skill intensively was particularly sensitive to the presence of local human capital that growth was almost always negatively related to the initial size of the industry within the city implies a limited role for learning by doing and industry specific location fundamentals stories

agricultural outputs and conflict displacement evidence from a policy intervention in rwanda abstract in 1997 rwanda introduced a resettlement policy for refugees displaced during previous conflicts i exploit geographic variation in the speed of implementation of this policy to investigate the impact of conflict induced displacement and the resettlement policy on household agricultural output and on skill spillover mechanisms between returnees and stayers i find that returns to on farm labor are higher for returnees relative to stayers although the evidence suggests that the policy contributed little additional effect to this differential more speculatively these differentials suggest that upon return from conflict induced exile returnees are more motivated to increase their economic performance

land reforms poverty reduction and economic growth evidence from india recognition of the importance of institutions that provide security of property rights and relatively equal access to economic resources to a broad cross section of society has renewed interest in the potential of asset redistribution including land reforms empirical analysis of the impact of such policies is however scant and often contradictory this paper uses panel household data from india together with state level variation in the implementation of land reform to address some of the deficiencies of earlier studies the results suggest that land reform had a significant and positive impact on income growth and accumulation of human and physical capital the paper draws policy implications especially from the fact that the observed impact of land reform seems to have declined over time

risk crop choice and savings evidence from tanzania rural households engaged in agricultural activities face considerable risks in their income process these income risks are especially important if they result in consumption fluctuations this is likely if insurance and credit markets are absent one possible strategy for household is to take up low risk activities even if they imply lower returns such response cannot be viewed independently from the other options available to households to reduce consumption fluctuations this paper focuses on the importance of liquid asset formation for risk taking behaviour by households an intertemporal model of consumption under liquidity constraints is developed in which households can choose between income activities with different returns and riskiness it shows that if liquid asset holdings are large providing a buffer for consumption shortfalls then households will be more willing to take up high risk activities evidence based on survey data from shinyanga district tanzania is presented consistent with this prediction this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

efficiency and equity impacts of rural land rental restrictions evidence from india recognition of the potentially deleterious implications of inequality in opportunity originating in a skewed asset distribution has spawned considerable interest in land reforms however little attention has been devoted to fact that in the longer term the measures used to implement land reforms could negatively affect productivity use of state level data on rental restrictions together with a nationally representative survey from india suggests that contrary to original intentions rental restrictions negatively affect productivity and equity the restrictions reduce the scope for efficiency enhancing rental transactions that benefit poor producers simulations suggest that by doubling the number of producers with access to land through rental from about 15 million currently liberalization of rental markets could have far reaching impacts

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

portfolio selection under strict uncertainty a multi criteria methodology and its application to the frankfurt and vienna stock exchanges abstract in modern portfolio theory it is common practice to first compute the risk reward efficient frontier and then to support an individual investor in selecting a portfolio that meets his her preferences for profitability and risk potential flaws include a the assumption that past data provide sufficient evidence for predicting the future performances of the securities under consideration and b the necessity to mathematically determine or approximate the investor s utility function in this paper we propose a methodology whose initial phase filters portfolios that are inefficient from a historical perspective while this is consistent with traditional approaches the second phase differs from the standard approach as it uses a decision table constructed by considering multiple scenarios assuming strict uncertainty the table cells measure consequences by a multi criteria linear performance index of simulated future returns which avoids difficulties with performance ratios the real world applicability is illustrated through two studies based on data from the stock exchanges in frankfurt and vienna

costs and benefits of land fragmentation evidence from rwanda this paper disentangles different aspects of land fragmentation and its impact on the efficiency of resource use the paper uses information on the incidence of crop shocks to assess whether fragmentation provides benefits in reducing risk and parcel coordinates and terrain adjusted travel times between parcels to more precisely account for the associated costs in 2010 11 data from rwanda while fragmentation increases the time required to move between a household s parcels this does not appear to affect overall technical efficiency on the farm fragmentation rather reduces the incidence of crop shocks and increases yields and productive efficiency in rwanda s setting interventions to reduce fragmentation may therefore be ineffective or counterproductive

multiple criteria decision making combined with finance a categorized bibliographic study abstract this paper provides a categorized bibliography on the application of the techniques of multiple criteria decision making mcdm to problems and issues in finance a total of 265 references have been compiled and classified according to the methodological approaches of goal programming multiple objective programming the analytic hierarchy process etc and to the application areas of capital budgeting working capital management portfolio analysis etc the bibliography provides an overview of the literature on mcdm combined with finance shows how contributions to the area have come from all over the world facilitates access to the entirety of this heretofore fragmented literature and underscores the often multiple criterion nature of many problems in finance

impacts of land certification on tenure security investment and land market participation evidence from ethiopia this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled impacts of land certification on tenure security investment and land market participation evidence from ethiopia conducted between 2006 and 2011 in ethiopia the study observed the impact of land registration on tenure security land related investment and rental market participation using 900 randomly selected households and 4000 plots cultivated by the households on the household and land plots level certification resulted in significant reduction of tenure insecurity and an increase in land related investment the propensity to invest in water conservation increased between 20 and 30 percent from panel estimates the increased investment appears to be sustained over the long term the propensity to rent land increases by 9 to 13 percent the titling had significant positive impacts on the rate at which female headed households rented their land funding for the study derived from the gender action plan global land tools network and norwegian environmentally and socially sustainable development essd trust fund

measuring efficiency by a single price system we propose a multi criteria model to measure the relative levels of efficiency for a set of alternatives measurement is achieved by a single price system this involves a marked difference between data envelopment analysis dea and the model herein neither the assumptions of the proposed model nor its mathematical solution are related to dea in contrast to dea the model allows for selecting a single efficiency optimum

measuring human capital divergence in a growing economy abstract the stylized fact that the fraction of workers who are college graduates appears to increase more in us cities where the initial share is larger has attracted significant attention furthermore more educated cities appear to grow faster these two trends could portend the divergence of cities by skill with low skill workers segregated in slow growing or declining cities this paper compares measures of skill divergence and finds that relative measures which have the property of scale invariance show no divergence for the period from 1970 to 2010 in addition the relation between skill intensity and city growth appears to be concave so that differences in the growth rate of skill intensity across cities may diminish over time as the average college share of the country rises

foundations of portfolio theory prize lecture to the memory of alfred nobel december 7 1990 this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

on crop biodiversity risk exposure and food security in the highlands of ethiopia this paper investigates the effects of crop genetic diversity on farm productivity and production risk in the highlands of ethiopia using a moment based approach the analysis uses a stochastic production function capturing mean variance and skewness effects welfare implications of diversity are evaluated using a certainty equivalent measured as expected income minus a risk premium reflecting the cost of risk we find that the effect of diversity on skewness dominates its effect on variance meaning that diversity reduces the cost of risk the analysis also shows that the beneficial effects of diversity

expected failures and unexpected successes of land titling in africa abstract the imposition of market oriented economic reforms throughout africa in the 1990s has sparked renewed debate over the desirability of state sponsored land titling programs proponents argue that land titling is an essential foundation for economic growth opponents contend that titling programs are unnecessary and premature at best or detrimental at worst this paper addresses these concerns through an examination of cameroon s 1974 lands ordinance using both quantitative and qualitative data we find that the 1974 lands ordinance has not introduced western style private property rights in cameroon s agrarian sector nevertheless the ordinance is not irrelevant to rural farmers rural farmers have used the ordinance to obtain concrete boundary markers on their land enhancing their tenure security in addition administrators have used the ordinance to register underdeveloped land reducing the contradictions between state law and customary law these findings suggest that policy makers could fruitfully redesign their land tenure policies to render them more attractive to rural farmers and thereby give the state a more constructive role in enhancing tenure security and in promoting economic growth

a generalized production frontier approach for estimating determinants of inefficiency in u s dairy farms this article investigates farm level efficiency of u s dairy farmers by estimating their technical and allocative efficiency technical inefficiency is assumed to be composed of a deterministic component that is a function of some farm specific characteristics and a random component by doing this we extend the stochastic frontier methodology in which determinants of technicial inefficiency are explicitly introduced in the model given the inputs variations in efficiency of farms are then explained by both deterministic and random components of technical inefficiency the empirical results indicate that a levels of education of the farmer are important factors determining technical inefficiency and b large farms are more efficient technically than small and medium sized farms both technical and allocative inefficiency are found to decrease with increase in the level of education of the farmer

cities skills and regional change glaeser e l ponzetto g a m and tobio k cities skills and regional change regional studies one approach to urban areas emphasizes the existence of certain immutable relationships such as zipf s or gibrat s law an alternative view is that urban change reflects individual responses to changing tastes or technologies this paper examines almost 200 years of regional change in the united states and finds that few if any growth relationships remain constant including gibrat s law education does a reasonable job of explaining urban resilience in recent decades but it does not seem to predict county growth a century ago after reviewing this evidence a simple model of regional change is presented and estimated where education increases the level of entrepreneurship human capital spillovers occur at the city level because skilled workers produce more product varieties and thereby increase labour demand it is found that skills are associated with growth in productivity or entrepreneurship not

effects of land fragmentation and returns to scale in the chinese farming sector using household survey data from rural china economies of scale as measured by returns to scale and the effects of land fragmentation on crop outputs are examined while these effects are found to be detrimental statistically significant and substantial existing economies of scale appear to be too small to suggest radical land policy changes in china

the determinants and welfare implications of us workers diverging location choices by skill 1980 2000 abstract from 1980 to 2000 the rise in the us college high school graduate wage gap coincided with increased geographic sorting as college graduates concentrated in high wage high rent cities this paper estimates a structural spatial equilibrium model to determine causes and welfare consequences of this increased skill sorting while local labor demand changes fundamentally caused the increased skill sorting it was further fueled by endogenous increases in amenities within higher skill cities changes in cities wages rents and endogenous amenities increased inequality between high school and college graduates by more than suggested by the increase in the college wage gap alone jel d31 i26 j24 j31 j61 r23

smallholder technical efficiency controlling for environmental production conditions abstract smallholder agricultural production depends heavily on environmental production conditions that are largely exogenously determined yet few data sets collect necessary detailed information on environmental production conditions this oversight raises the spectre of likely omitted variables bias because farmers input choices typically respond in part to environmental conditions moreover because environmental production conditions are rarely symmetrically distributed the omission also generally leads to upward bias in estimated technical inefficiency and to biased estimates of the correlates of estimated technical inefficiency as well using panel data from 464 traditional rice plots in cote d ivoire we show that controlling for heterogeneous environmental production conditions significantly changes inferences perhaps especially with respect to smallholder rice farmers estimated technical inefficiency

comparison of alternative utility functions in portfolio selection problems this paper examines the effect of alternative utility functions and parameter values on the optimal composition of a risky investment portfolio normally distributed assets are the setting for the theoretical and empirical analyses the results agree well with the available theory and imply utility functions and parameter values that are appropriate for investors with particular risk bearing attitudes the results give strong empirical support to the proposition that utility functions having different functional forms and parameter values but similar absolute risk aversion indices have similar optimal portfolios these results suggest that over horizons up to one year one can safely substitute convenient surrogate utility functions for other utility functions for reasons of tractability or otherwise the results also provide guidance regarding the significance of the magnitude and change of particular numerical values of the risk aversion index moreover theoretical exact results are obtained using rubinstein s measure of global risk aversion

land inheritance rules theory and cross cultural analysis abstract this paper develops a general theory of land inheritance rules that distinguishes between two classes of rules those allowing a testator discretion in disposing of his land e g a best qualified rule and those constraining his choice e g primogeniture the primary benefit of the latter is to prevent rent seeking by heirs but the cost is that the testator cannot use information about the relative abilities of his heirs to manage the land we also account for the impact of scale economies in land use and discuss the impact of the presence of a land market on the form of the inheritance rule we conclude by offering some empirical tests of the model using a cross cultural sample of societies

the roles of land tenure reforms and land markets in the context of population growth and land use intensification in africa this article reviews the past and potential future roles of land tenure reforms and land markets in sub saharan africa ssa as responses to population growth in the process of land use intensification and livelihood transformation the farm size distribution and the existence of an inverse relationship ir between farm size and land productivity in ssa and the implications of this relationship for efficiency and equity are investigated more secure property rights and removal of restrictions on land markets have the potential to create both efficiency and equity benefits but there are high risks of elite capture of large land areas with inefficient and inequitable outcomes this situation is the case not only in land abundant areas but also in urban and peri urban areas where increasingly larger proportions of people will make their living increasing population pressure in densely populated rural areas contributes to more rapid rural urban migration and creating alternative livelihood opportunities for the migrating youth population is essential to achieving economic development with social stability

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

land fragmentation and food insecurity in ethiopia this paper revisits the economic consequences of land fragmentation taking seriously concerns regarding the exogeneity of fragmentation its measurement and the importance of considering impacts in terms of welfare metrics using data that are well suited to addressing these issues the analysis finds that land fragmentation reduces food insecurity this result is robust to how fragmentation is measured and to how exogeneity concerns are addressed further the paper finds that land fragmentation mitigates the adverse effects of low rainfall on food security this is because households with diverse parcel characteristics can grow a greater variety of crop types

is there a farm size productivity relationship in african agriculture evidence from rwanda whether the negative relationship between farm size and productivity that is confirmed in a large global literature holds in africa is of considerable policy relevance this paper revisits this issue and examines potential causes of the inverse productivity relationship in rwanda where policy makers consider land fragmentation and small farm sizes to be key bottlenecks for the growth of the agricultural sector nationwide plot level data from rwanda point toward a constant returns to scale crop production function and a strong negative relationship between farm size and output per hectare as well as intensity of labor use that is robust across specifications the inverse relationship continues to hold if profits with family labor valued at shadow wages are used but disappears if family labor is rather valued at village level market wage rates these findings imply that in rwanda labor market imperfections rather than other unobserved factors seem to be a key reason for the inverse farm size productivity relationship

human capital divergence and the size distribution of cities is gibrat s law obsolete this article studies how the changing geographic distribution of skilled workers in the us affects theoretical models that use gibrat s law to explain the size distribution of cities in the empiri

gender differences in land inheritance schooling and lifetime income evidence from the rural philippines this article examines the difference in lifetime incomes arising from parental preferences in the allocation of land inheritance and investments in schooling between sons and daughters in the rural philippines sons are preferred with respect to land inheritance receiving 0 15 additional hectares of land while daughters are treated more favourably in schooling investments receiving 1 5 more years of schooling however differences in both current and life cycle incomes between sons and daughters are insignificant this suggests that filipino parents allocate intergenerational transfers to equalise incomes among their children without sacrificing efficiency

does land fragmentation increase the cost of cultivation evidence from india although a large literature discusses the productivity effects of land fragmentation measurement and potential endogeneity issues are often overlooked this paper uses several measures of fragmentation and controls for endogeneity and crop choice by looking at inherited paddy and wheat plots to show that these issues matter empirically while crop choice can mitigate effects fragmentation as measured by the simpson index increases production cost and fosters substitution of labor for machinery especially for small and medium farmers greater distances between fragments have a smaller effect creating opportunities for market based consolidation could be one step to limit fragmentation induced cost increases

land reform and agricultural productivity in india a review of the evidence in this paper we review as well as contribute to the empirical literature on the impact of land reform on agricultural productivity in india we find that overall for all states land reform legislation had a negative and significant effect on agricultural productivity however this hides considerable variation across types of land reform as well as variation across states decomposing by type of land reform the main driver for this negative effect seems to be land ceiling legislation in contrast the effect of tenancy reform averaged across all states is insignificant there seems to be a wide range of state specific effects which suggests that focusing on average treatment effects can hide a considerable amount of heterogeneity in particular allowing a separate slope for west bengal one of the few states that implemented tenancy laws rigorously we find that land reform had a marginal positive effect relative to the rest of india

can social protection work in africa the impact of ethiopia s productive safety net programme abstractthis study evaluates a large social protection program in rural ethiopia the productive safety net programme psnp the effectiveness of the psnp is of interest because the program was implemented at scale in one of africa s poorest countries which has limited physical and communications infrastructure and scarce administrative resources using longitudinal survey data collected in 2006 2008 and 2010 at the household and locality levels we employ an extension of the propensity score matching method to continuous treatments to estimate the impact of transfers from the psnp and a separate program on household food security against the formidable background of rising food prices and widespread drought participation in the public works component of the psnp has modest effects the psnp reduced the length of the last hungry season by 1 29 months among households that received transfers for 5 years compared to eligible households that received almost nothing five years of participation raises l

rural market imperfections and the farm size productivity relationship evidence from pakistan the subject of this article is the relationships between farm size and productivity and between farm size and profitability in the developing countries the recent controversies over the inverse size output relationship are reviewed and a framework is provided that explains the inverse relationship based on plausible assumptions about imperfections in the markets for labor land credit and risk from this framework a set of testable hypotheses are derived the hypotheses are tested on recent farm level panel data from pakistan a strong inverse relationship between farm size and yield is present in the sample even when household fixed effects are used to account for unobserved heterogeneity moreover the suggested market imperfections framework is consistent with the data