activity choice labor allocation and forest use in malawi this article examines the determinants of activity choice affecting forest use among low income households in malawi data from three villages are used to estimate a system of household labor share equations for maize production forest employment and non forest employment a system estimation approach is used to identify factors influencing the competing and synergistic livelihood strategies which households undertake at the forest margin results from constrained maximum likelihood estimation indicate heightened incentives to degrade forests when returns to forest use are high factors reducing forest pressure include favorable returns to non forest employment secondary education of the household head and wealth

oil price uncertainty and the canadian economy evidence from a varma garch in mean asymmetric bekk model abstract in this paper we build on recent work by elder and serletis 2010 forthcoming and rahman and serletis forthcoming and investigate the relationship between oil price uncertainty and the level of economic activity using quarterly canadian data over the period from 1974 1 to 2010 1 in doing so we use a bivariate varma garch in mean asymmetric bekk model as detailed in engle and kroner 1995 grier et al 2004 and shields et al 2005 we show that the conditional variance covariance process underlying output growth and the change in the real price of oil exhibits significant non diagonality and asymmetry we also present evidence that increased uncertainty about the change in the real price of oil is associated with a lower average growth rate of real economic activity in canada consistent with the results in elder and serletis 2010 forthcoming and rahman and serletis forthcoming for the united states and elder and serletis 2009 for canada our results are robust to alternative measures of the price of oil alternative measures of the level of economic activity and alternative data frequencies

impact of access to credit on labor allocation patterns in malawi summary this paper uses data from the malawi financial markets and household food security survey to examine the impact of gendered access to credit on labor allocation patterns within the household the paper corrects for potential endogeneity of access to credit in the estimations access to credit relies on the credit limit concept thus an individual has access to credit from a particular source if he she is able to borrow a positive amount from that source results suggest that the impact of access to credit depends upon both the gender of the recipient and whether it is formal or informal credit

asymmetric effects of oil price uncertainty on corporate investment abstract using a comprehensive data set of a large panel of us firms over 1984 2017 we show that the negative effect of crude oil price return uncertainty on investments is asymmetric in particular we show that investment is more significantly reduced following the volatility of positive oil price changes than that of negative changes and this asymmetric effect is more pronounced in small firms in addition we find that the asymmetric effect is stronger in the crude oil and gas producing companies where the effect of the volatility of negative oil price changes is greater than that of positive oil price changes we also find that the impact of positive or negative oil price change uncertainty on investments substantially differs across different industries the results are quite robust to the way in which we measure the investment and oil price uncertainty and to alternative regression methods

international evidence on crude oil price dynamics applications of arima garch models abstract we examine the usefulness of several arima garch models for modeling and forecasting the conditional mean and volatility of weekly crude oil spot prices in eleven international markets over the 1 2 1997 10 3 2009 period in particular we investigate the out of sample forecasting performance of four volatility models garch egarch and aparch and figarch over january 2009 to october 2009 forecasting results are somewhat mixed but in most cases the aparch model outperforms the others also conditional standard deviation captures the volatility in oil returns better than the traditional conditional variance finally shocks to conditional volatility dissipate at an exponential rate which is consistent with the covariance stationary garch models than the slow hyperbolic rate implied by the figarch alternative

evaluating natural resource investments notwithstanding impressive advances in the theory of finance over the past 2 decades practical procedures for capital budgeting have evolved only slowly the standard technique which has remained unchanged in essentials since it was originally proposed see dean 1951 bierman and smidt 1960 derives from a simple adaptation of the fisher 1907 model of valuation under certainty under this technique expected cash flows from an investment project are discounted at a rate deemed appropriate to their risk and the resulting present value is compared with the cost of the project this standard textbook technique reflects modern theoretical developments only insofar as estimates of the discount rate may be obtained from crude application of single period asset pricing theory but see brennan 1973 bogue and roll 1974 turnbull 1977 constantinides 1978 the inadequacy of this approach to capital budgeting is widely acknowledged although not widely discussed its obvious deficiency is its the evaluation of mining and other natural resource projects is made particularly difficult by the high degree of uncertainty attaching to output prices it is shown that the techniques of continuous time arbitrage and stochastic control theory may be used not only to value such projects but also to determine the optimal policies for developing managing and abandoning them the approach may be adapted to a wide variety of contexts outside the natural resource sector where uncertainty about future project revenues is a paramount concern

energy efficiency in india achievements challenges and legality abstract this paper explores the main legal center enforced commissions and acts that are aimed at improving the current energy deficit in the country with a specific emphasis on the need for research and a shift in the power market towards more sustainable technology the paper first examines the main aims of the governmental 5 year plans in the past ten years and then evaluates the merits and short comings of the existing technical framework that governs the electrical grid and generation systems in the country the paper also proposes inherent improvements with ground scale methods in developing a sound and competitive system for power distribution through consumer and employee involvement as well as changes in the investment arena that can substantially alter the market compatibility of renewably generated energy the paper indicates several key steps that the center and state governments have taken in order to revolutionise the feasibility of the electrical systems in the country finally the paper appraises and assesses the main amendments in the electrical industry legal literature and enforcement mechanisms that can effectuate rapid and systemic changes across the indian context

off farm work decisions of husbands and wives joint decision making theoretical and econometric models are developed to examine joint wage labor participation and hours decisions of a husband and wife in farm households the econometric model is multiple equation and recursive the specification of the off farm labor supply equation of the husband wife depends on whether his her wife husband does or does not work off the farm and this structure is endogenous the model is fitted to data for iowa farm households the main conclusion is that the off farm labor supply equation of a married individual differs significantly depending on whether his or her spouse also works for a wage copyright 1989 by mit press

the effects of oil price uncertainty on global real economic activity this paper investigates the effect of oil price uncertainty on global real economic activity using a quarterly vector autoregressive model with stochastic volatility in mean stochastic volatility allows oil price uncertainty to vary separately from changes in the level of oil prices and allows one to incorporate an extraneous indicator of oil price uncertainty such as realized volatility that greatly improves the precision of the estimated uncertainty series the estimation results show that an oil price uncertainty shock has negative effects on world industrial production all else equal for example it is shown that a doubling of oil price volatility is associated with a cumulative decline as high as 0 3 percentage points in world industrial production

estimating labor supply of farm households under nonseparability empirical evidence from nepal abstract this paper examines the labor supply of farm households in nepal using a recently developed methodology that accounts for the simultaneity between production and consumption decisions of the households estimates of marginal products of male and female labor or shadow wages are obtained from an agricultural production function an instrumental variable approach is then used to recover the household s structural labor supply from variations in the shadow wages and income as well as other household characteristics the findings reveal that both male and female total labor supply are sensitive to changes in shadow wages and income human capital embodied in education is found to exert a significant positive effect on output but has no statistically significant impact on total labor supply of individuals the results also rejects the existence of efficient labor markets in rural nepal

labor market opportunities and intrafamily time allocation in rural households in south asia this paper utilizes a time allocation survey of a four year panel of households from six villages in semi arid tropic rural india estimates of the inter relationships between adult male female and child market wage rates and time allocated to the market domestic production leisure and schooling by boys and girls are presented the role of individual unobservable heterogeneity and self selection into activity participation is also accounted for the overall results suggest the importance of the opportunity cost of time in intrafamily time use

a market for renewable energy credits in the indian power sector abstract electricity generation from renewable energy sources in india has been promoted through a host of fiscal policies and preferential tariff for electricity produced from the same the fiscal policies include tax incentives and purchase of electricity generated through renewable energy sources the enactment of the electricity act 2003 the act has lent further support to renewable energy by stipulating purchase of a certain percentage of the power procurement by distribution utilities from renewable energy sources the renewable portfolio obligation as well as the feed in tariff for power procurement has been specified by a number of state electricity regulatory commissions sercs for the respective state under their jurisdiction a feed in tariff determined through a cost plus approach under a rate of return framework lacks incentive for cost minimisation and does not encourage optimal utilisation of renewable energy resources in the country such regulatory provisions differ across states the prevalent practice of fixing a renewable portfolio obligation along with cost based feed in tariffs disregards economic efficiency the paper proposes nationally tradable renewable energy credits scheme for achieving the targets set by the respective sercs as renewable portfolio obligation this would reduce the cost of compliance to a renewable portfolio obligation and would encourage efficient resource utilisation and investment in appropriate technologies the paper highlights its advantages and implementation issues this paper discusses regulatory developments for promotion of renewable energy in various indian states the paper also identifies a number of issues related to regulations concerning renewable portfolio obligation

allocative disturbances and specific capital in real business cycle theories chanted albeit in varying degree with business cycle theories that either posit unexplained nominal wage and price rigidities or rely on misperceptions about nominal variables as a key driving force one response to this disenchantment has been a concentration of research effort on real business cycle theories aside from dissatisfaction with competitor theories the very visible oil price shock episodes of the 1970 s lent plausibility to the view that exogenous real disturbances cause large fluctuations in aggregate economic activity this essay on real business cycle theory considers the role of allocative disturbances in aggregate economic fluctuations when human and physical capital are specialized by allocative disturbances i mean events that impinge on the economy by inducing a costly time consuming reallocation of specialized resources at least since the publication of ricardo s principles in 1817 economists have recognized some of the potentially important aggregate consequences of allocative disturbances ricardo writes

permanent and transitory oil volatility and aggregate investment in malaysia abstract this paper investigates the relation between aggregate investment and oil volatility and its permanent and transitory components for a developing country malaysia in the paper the components generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity cgarch model is utilized to decompose conditional oil volatility into permanent oil volatility and transitory oil volatility respectively reflecting fundamental driven and random shifts in oil volatility they are expected to exert differential effects on aggregate investment adopting a vector autoregression var framework to allow feedback effects between aggregate investment and its determinants the paper documents evidence supporting the adverse effects of conditional oil volatility permanent oil volatility and transitory oil volatility on aggregate investment and real output interestingly contrary to the findings for the developed markets us and oecd the real effects of permanent oil volatility tend to be stronger these findings are reasonably robust to variable specification and measurements in the var system hence there is an indication that heightened oil volatility accounts for the slumps in malaysia s aggregate investment after the asian financial crisis

power sector reform in india current issues and prospects power sector reforms in india were initiated at a juncture when the sector was plagued with commercial losses and burgeoning subsidy burden investment in the sector was not able to keep pace with growing demand for electricity this paper takes stock of pre reform situation in indian power sector and identifies key concerns that led to initiation of the process of reform the paper discusses major policy and regulatory changes undertaken since the early 1990s the paper also illustrates changes in the market structure as we move along the reform process we also discuss some of the major provisions of the recently enacted electricity act 2003 that aims to replace the prevailing acts which govern the functioning of the power sector in the country in this context we discuss two issues arising out of it namely open access and multi year tariff that we think would have a significant bearing on the performance of the sector in the near future the paper also evaluates the reform process in the light of some of the regulatory changes undertaken finally the paper briefly discusses the issues involved in introduction of competition in the power sector primarily through development of a market for bulk power

the asymmetric impact of oil prices interest rates and oil price uncertainty on unemployment in the us abstract in this study we investigate the presence of asymmetric interactions between oil prices oil price uncertainty interest rates and unemployment in a cointegration framework utilizing the nonlinear auto regressive distributed lag nardl approach we show the asymmetric responses of unemployment to changes in oil prices oil price uncertainty and interest rates in the long run more specifically the results of our analyses suggest that an increase in oil price results in increased unemployment while there is no significant impact of reduced oil prices on the one hand reduced oil price uncertainty leads to a decrease in unemployment whereas an increase in oil price uncertainty does not have an impact we also observe increased unemployment in response to a decrease in interest rates as the impact of increased interest rates is not significant last but not least we find that option implied oil price volatility as a measure of oil price uncertainty outperforms the conditional volatility of crude oil prices in predicting unemployment this study provides valuable implications for policymakers to design sound economic policies

regulatory performance analysis case study britain s electricity industry the success or failure of the privatisation and liberalisation of electricity supply industries has more often been judged in terms of process than of outcomes in this paper in contrast this performance is assessed in terms of the performance of its associated system of regulatory governance taking the uk s electricity supply industry between 1989 and 2000 as case study initially a vertical cross section of the regulation system gives a finding matrix for the various stakeholders involved and identifying winners and losers from the standpoint of funding flows next a horizontal cross section provides the environmental distributive allocative dynamic and productive efficiencies grid for this system the survey shows that the performance of the british esi regulation system produced benefits although not for all stakeholders and not as fairly as possible the chosen path did not seem sustainable and failed to respect intergenerational transfers as a way of fostering sustainability and equity it was unable to underpin simultaneous improvements in efficiencies over time while redistributing industry s funding flows among the players in a regressive manner

using evidence of household income diversification to inform study of the rural nonfarm labor market in africa abstract the labor market literature in developing countries has seldom drawn on the studies of rural household income diversification this paper draws on such studies to inform future study of the rural nonfarm labor market in africa the review of evidence provides some surprising departures from traditional images of nonfarm activities of rural households among the most striking is the dominant importance in the majority of case study areas of nonfarm wage labor as compared to self employment of nonfarm sector earnings as compared to farm sector wage earnings and of local nonfarm earnings as compared to migration earnings the most worrying finding was the poor distribution of nonfarm earnings in rural areas despite the importance of these earnings to food security and farm investments this poor distribution implies significant entry barriers and market segmentation it is probable that this will lead over time to an increasingly skewed distribution of land and other assets in rural africa

another perspective on the effects of inflation uncertainty this paper examines the effects of inflation uncertainty on real economic activity by utilizing a flexible dynamic multivariate framework that accommodates possible interaction between the conditional means and variances the empirical model is based on a familiar identified vector autoregressive framework modified to accommodate multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity our empirical model is preferred to the baseline var by likelihood based information criteria and it retains the important dynamics of the underlying var we find that an average shock to inflation uncertainty has tended to reduce output growth over three months by about 22 basis points

the effect of oil price volatility on strategic investment in this paper we investigate how oil price volatility affects the strategic investment decisions of a large panel of us firms this paper uses key insights from the real options literature to develop a model of a company s strategic investment and shows how changes in oil price volatility can impact strategic investment decisions the model is estimated using recently developed generalized method of moment estimation techniques for panel data sets empirical results are presented to show that there is a u shaped relationship between oil price volatility and firm investment this is consistent with the predictions from the strategic growth options literature the results should be useful to decision makers investors managers policy makers and others who need to make strategic investment decisions in an uncertain world

haddad lawrence john hoddinott and harold alderman eds intrahousehold resource allocation in developing countries models methods and policy baltimore md johns hopkins university press 1997 384 pp 55 00 in this volume economists demographers sociologists and anthropologists collaborate in the study of how resources are allocated within households in developing countries and why it matters from a policy perspective surveying a broad range of theory and evidence the contributors examine the many social and cultural factors that influence decisions about the family and household level about the allocation of time income assets and other resources ths contributors show that a more complete understanding of intrahousehold behaviour can increase the likelihood that policies will reach the people they are intended to affect

the development of renewable energy power in india which policies have been effective abstract the international energy agency has identified the development of renewable energy sources as a key element to mitigate climate change at the same time it has projected india to be the second largest contributor to the increase in global energy demand to 2035 india hence faces a significant challenge to ensure its energy security by diversifying its power generation mix in the wake of the creation of a green climate fund in cancun this paper studies empirically the effect of the introduction of the electricity act 2003 and the tariff policy 2006 as well as the implementation of feed in tariffs and minimum quotas on clean electricity sourcing on the development of grid connected renewable energy power in nine indian states over the period 2001 2009 results suggest that the passing of the tariff policy 2006 state level policies quantity based instruments and a greater participation of the private sector have played a key role in promoting the development of installed capacity from renewable energy power in the nine states of the sample

covariance breakdowns and connectedness of crude oil futures markets with non synchronous data this article identifies the breakdowns in the covariance of three benchmark crude oil futures markets wti brent and dubai and investigates the changes of market connectedness across the breakdow

off farm labor supply responses to permanent and transitory farm income a sample of iowa farm couples is used to evaluate whether off farm labor supply decisions respond to permanent and transitory components of farm income off farm labor supply of both spouses declines in response to increases in permanent farm income farm wives also reduce off farm labor supply in response to positive transitory farm income shocks consequently one mechanism farm households use to smooth their goods consumption when facing fluctuating farm income is to modify their consumption of leisure ability to smooth goods consumption does not imply the absence of liquidity constraints among farm households unless leisure consumption is also smoothed

promoting policy reforms the twilight of conditionality abstract for the past 15 years the world bank often in cooperation with the international monetary fund and sometimes also with bilateral donors has tried to encourage policy reforms through conditions attached to structural or sector adjustment loans in the 1990s however such loans are a rapidly dwindling portion of the bank s disbursements this article examines major reasons for this shift including increased flows of private capital democratization the changing nature of the reform agenda itself and growing bank emphasis on ownership reduced direct conditionality is likely to be replaced in part by growing selectivity the results may well be constructive but will not ease tensions in the aid relationship

impact of reform and privatization on consumers a case study of power sector reform in orissa india abstract orissa is the first state in india to have undergone reform in the power sector with the government withdrawing its control the model of this reform is known as the wb orissa model the goal of this paper is to examine the impact of this reform on consumers of electricity which has been measured using multiple regression models the variables represent the parameters that consumers are most interested in and the regression coefficients represent the weights of the corresponding variables the data were collected using a survey methodology the impact of reform was found to be mixed some groups of consumers saw benefits while others felt a negative impact a focus group study was conducted to identify the variables of interest to consumers of electricity the model was used to estimate consumer benefit and was validated using primary data and structural equation modeling the study revealed beneficial aspects of reform and areas with no benefits

getting reforms done in inhospitable institutional environments untying a gordian knot in india s power distribution sector when grand institutional reforms based on idealized models are stalled by the poor institutional environments and difficult politics which often surround large infrastructure systems in developing countries partial reforms whose design and implementation take into account the different interests of the key stakeholders can provide valuable and immediate benefits while moving these systems from low towards higher level equilibria strategically negotiated experimentally partial and purposefully hybrid these reforms are based on careful stakeholder analysis and strategic coalition building that avoid rigid positions based on idealized models our findings are based on a study of power sector reforms in india where we performed a micro level and in depth analysis of a partial and innovative experiment which has allowed private sector participation in electricity distribution within a hostile institutional environment

the effect of regulatory governance on efficiency of thermal power generation in india a stochastic frontier analysis abstract this paper investigates the impact of institutional quality typified as regulatory governance on the performance of thermal power plants in india the indian power sector was reformed in the early 1990s however reforms are effective only as much as the regulators are committed in ensuring that they are implemented we hypothesize that higher the quality of regulation in a federal indian state higher is the efficiency of electric generation utilities a translog stochastic frontier model is estimated using index of state level independent regulation as one of the determinants of inefficiency the dataset comprises a panel of 77 coal based thermal power plants during the reform period covering over 70 of installed electricity generation capacity the mean technical efficiency of 76 7 indicates there is wide scope for efficiency improvement in the sector results are robust to various model specifications and show that state level regulators have positively impacted plant performance technical efficiency is sensitive to both unbundling of state utilities and regulatory experience the policy implication is that further reforms which empower independent regulators will have far reaching impacts on power sector performance

electricity privatization revisited a commentary on the case for new initiatives in india abstract normally privatization is resorted to by different economies for different reasons resource mobilization introducing efficiency by promoting competition and for achieving commercial orientation often these are assumed to be independent objectives the indian experience is showing that they are quite interdependent and unless all the three objectives are tackled simultaneously privatization will not succeed specifically the poor financial performance of the state electricity boards and their lack of commercial orientation is applying a brake on investment in the power sector by foreign ipps similarly the government s approach to privatization without promoting competition through the so called memorandum of understanding is leading to high cost solutions and acrimonious public debates demanding transparency in decision making and review of those already made

status of electricity act 2003 a systematic review of literature abstract the electricity act 2003 was a landmark act which promised to remove the maladies which afflict the indian power sector and that too at a time when the sector was ridden with problems with concepts such as open access multiple distribution licensees wheeling of electricity etc the said act intended to encourage competition which in turn was meant bring a paradigm shift in the sector the paper undertakes a systematic literature review to find the status of review of the promising act more than a decade has passed since its enactment and amendments are due with the legislative body of india but none of the literature reviewed gives a comprehensive view encompassing all the objectives of the act moreover these documents study either the probable impact or the impact on a particular segment only it has important implications for the power sector which highlights a significant gap in literature and provides a basis on which future research can be built upon

power sector reform in developing countries mismatched agendas power sector reform is rapidly spreading across all corners of the developing world at an alarmingly rapid pace while the rationales for reform seem to have gained acceptance among the stakeholders the reform model and process are contested this paper examines the impacts of reform using the promised outcomes as a basis for analysis the ability of reform to meet the developmental challenges facing the reformers is explored it concludes that reform has had some achievements if conventional performance indicators are used but also questions the validity of some of these indicators reform has however not fulfilled many of its goals and the prevailing recipes are likely to leave developing countries socially and economically worse off than in the pre reform period progressive government intervention is needed to shift reform process towards a more responsible development path

as a husband i will love lead and provide gendered access to land in ghana summary improving women s access to land is high on the agricultural policy agenda of both governmental and non governmental agencies yet the determinants and rationale of gendered access to land are not well understood this paper argues that gender relations are more than the outcomes of negotiations within households it explains the importance of social norms perceptions and formal and informal rules shaping access to land for male and female farmers at four levels 1 the household family 2 the community 3 the state and 4 the market the framework is applied to ghana using the results from qualitative field work norms on household and family organization and on men s and women s responsibilities and capabilities play a key role in gendered allocation of resources however these norms and perceptions are dynamic and evolve jointly with the development of markets and changes in values of inputs such as labor and land theoretical models that represent the gendered distribution of assets as the result of intrahousehold bargaining should be revised and extrahousehold factors should be included from a policy perspective laws that ensure gender equality in terms of inheritance and a more gender equitable distribution of property upon divorce can play a key role in improving women s property rights yet their impact may be limited where customary rights dominate and social norms and rules continue to discriminate according to gender

oil price uncertainty and the u s stock market analysis based on a garch in mean var model abstract this paper uses a bivariate garch in mean var model to examine the effect of oil price uncertainty on the u s real stock returns at the aggregate and sectoral levels estimation results suggest that there is no statistically significant effect of oil price volatility on the u s stock returns the absence of an uncertainty effect might be explained by the fact that companies are likely to hedge against fluctuations in oil prices it could also stem from the ability of most companies to transfer the higher cost of oil to customers moreover the impulse responses indicate that accounting for oil price uncertainty oil price increases and decreases have symmetric effects on the u s aggregate stock returns in that energy price increases and decreases are estimated to have equal and opposite effects on the u s financial market however this symmetric effect doesn t hold across all the sectors studied in this paper

non farm work and food security among farm households in northern ghana this paper examines the impact of non farm work on household income and food security among farm households in the northern region of ghana we analyze the impact by employing propensity score matching method that accounts for self selection bias the matching results show that participation in non farm work exerts a positive and statistically significant effect on household income and food security status supporting the widely held view that income from non farm work is crucial to food security and poverty alleviation in rural areas of developing countries

using shadow wages to estimate labor supply of agricultural households with few exceptions most studies of the labor demand and supply decisions of agricultural households in developing countries have relied on the empirical advantages of separability given the questionable nature of some of the assumptions sufficient for separability i apply a recent methodology that accounts for the simultaneity between the production and consumption decisions of a farm household using data from rural india direct estimates of the marginal productivities shadow wages of family male and female labor are derived from a cobb douglas agricultural production function the estimated shadow wages and income are then used as regressors in a structural model of labor supply

a neoclassical model of unemployment and the business cycle this paper investigates a general equilibrium model of unemployment and the business cycle in which specialization of labor plays a key role a rational expectations equilibrium with fully flexible wages and prices can exhibit unemployment in which the marginal product of employed workers exceeds the reservation wage of those who are without jobs workers are unemployed either because they are in the process of relocating for a better job or because they are waiting for conditions in the depressed sector to improve moreover seemingly small disruptions in the supplies of primary commodities such as energy could be the source of fluctuations in aggregate employment and can exert surprisingly large effects on real output

oil price uncertainty in canada bernanke bernanke ben s irreversibility uncertainty and cyclical investment quarterly journal of economics 98 1983 85 106 shows how uncertainty about energy prices may induce optimizing firms to postpone investment decisions thereby leading to a decline in aggregate output elder and serletis elder john and serletis apostolos oil price uncertainty http ssrn com abstract 908675 2009 find empirical evidence that uncertainty about oil prices has tended to depress investment in the united states in this paper we assess the robustness of these results by investigating the effects of oil price uncertainty in canada our results are remarkably similar to existing results for the united states providing additional evidence that uncertainty about oil prices may provide another explanation for why the sharp oil price declines of 1985 failed to produce rapid output growth impulse response analysis suggests that uncertainty about oil prices may tend to reinforce the negative response of output to positive oil shocks

off farm labour allocation decisions in small scale rural households in zimbabwe the double hurdle model is used to analyse the off farm labour decisions of small scale agricultural household members in the shamva district of zimbabwe the approach permits the joint modelling of the decision to participate in the labour market and the decision regarding the amount of time allocated to work results indicate that a number of variables notably gender education and assets indeed have effects which are qualitatively and quantitatively different in terms of participation and hours worked overall the empirical analysis confirms the importance of individual characteristics such as gender and education and household farm characteristics e g land area accessible to the household productive assets remittances and the agricultural terms of trade in influencing the labour market decisions of rural household members

off farm work decisions of farm couples and land transfer choices in rural china although previous studies have widely examined the association between off farm work participation and land use behaviours of rural households little attention has been paid to the effects of the

determinants of income diversification amongst rural households in southern mali abstract household level panel data from a representative sample of rural households in southern mali describing the different sources of household income are used to examine the determinants of income diversification a conditional fixed effects logit model is employed in the analysis to control for household specific effects we find evidence that poorer households have fewer opportunities in non cropping activities such as livestock rearing and non farm work and hence less diversified incomes this appears to reflect their relative lack of capital which makes it difficult for them to diversify away from subsistence agriculture the results also indicate that households in remote areas are less likely to participate in the non cropping sector than their counterparts closer to local markets while households with educated heads are more likely to participate in the non farm sector than those with illiterate heads the significance of entry constraints in explaining portfolio diversification suggests that the role of government in making assets as well as improved infrastructure available to poorer households is still essential in promoting income diversification

household composition labor markets and labor demand testing for separation in agricultural household models this paper tests the separation of farm labor supply and labor demand decisions using the observation that household composition is an important determinant of farm labor use with nonseparation after assessing the conditions under which the test has power against several alternatives an empirical model is developed to test the proposition that farm employment is independent of family composition the model is estimated on a data set from rural java the null hypothesis that farm labor allocation decisions are independent of household structure is not rejected the results are robust to different specifications of the labor demand function copyright 1992 by the econometric society

fossil fuel price uncertainty and feedstock edible oil prices evidence from mgarch m and virf analysis abstract this paper focuses on examining the impact of crude oil price volatility on the price changes of major edible oils rapeseed soybean and sunflower which are the main feedstock for the biodiesel industry in the european union for this purpose a four variate version of non diagonal garch in mean model that allows for asymmetry in the variance covariance matrix is used an important conclusion that emerges from this study is that the crude oil price uncertainty appears to be responsible for a significant decline in price returns of major feedstock edible oils considered in this study the volatility impulse response analyses support the conclusion that the conditional variances of both edible and crude oil and covariances between them are generally highly responsive to historical shock however the size of the impacts is mainly commodity specific finally we investigate the causality from crude oil price volatility to edible oil prices and the effects of oil price shocks on edible oil prices by using the granger causality test and generalized impulse response function analysis respectively the empirical results show that there is strong evidence of causality from crude oil price volatility to all edible oil prices under study and generalized impulse response analysis shows that the edible oil markets significantly respond to the shocks in oil prices

determinants of nonfarm earnings of farm based husbands and wives in northern ghana the nonfarm work participation decisions of married men and women in rural northern ghana were jointly and separately estimated for married couples through a bivariate probit using recent survey data selectivity bias was corrected for in estimating wage offer and labor supply equations using heckman s procedure education experience infrastructure distance to the capital and population density as well as interactions between education and infrastructure and between education and distance to the city were found to be significantly related to the probability of nonfarm labor market participation wages and the amount of nonfarm labor performed with significant differences by gender

implications of non farm work to vulnerability to food poverty recent evidence from northern ghana summary using survey data from northern ghana this study seeks to establish the impact of participation in non farm work on the vulnerability of resource poor households to food poverty vulnerability to food poverty is assessed based on expected future food expenditure of households the potential endogeneity problem associated with participation in non farm work by households is overcome using a novel instrumental variable approach analysis of the determinants of expected future food expenditure is done using a standard feasible generalized least squares fgls method demographic and socioeconomic variables location variables and household facilities are included in the model as control variables our study finds that participation in non farm work significantly increased the future expected food consumption thereby alleviating the vulnerability of households to food poverty our study also confirms that current food poverty and future food poverty i e vulnerability to food poverty are not independent from each other non farm work plays a crucial role in providing the means to overcome the risk of food poverty in these resource poor households policies that promote off farm income generating activities such as small businesses and self employment as well as the creation and support of businesses that absorb extra labor from the farm should be encouraged in the study region because households in the study region are exposed to above average levels of hunger and food poverty the study recommends the government of ghana and development partners to take measures that enhance the resilience of these resource poor households

off farm work and technical efficiency on u s dairies in this study we investigate the impact of an increase in farm households off farm work on technical efficiency te of u s dairies we present a theoretical framework that implies that an increase in farm household off farm work decreases te we use two nationally representative samples of u s dairies 2010 and 2005 agricultural resource management surveys and a parametric approach stochastic frontier analysis to empirically test the hypothesis results are generally consistent with the hypothesis and show that an increase in off farm work by the farm household is associated with a significant decrease in te in addition results show that there is a statistically significant difference in te between small medium and large farms small farms are associated with significantly higher off farm work and have lower te than large farms which implies that less off farm work by households with larger farms is at least partially responsible for the evidence of economies of scale in the u s dairy industry

labor force participation and earnings determinants for women in the special conditions of developing countries abstract little systematic analysis exists regarding hypothesized special labor market conditions for women in developing countries this study explores such conditions in nicaragua major results are i small children affect participation less than in developed countries due to child care from extended families or while on informal sector jobs and the necessity for poor mothers to work ii schooling and experience have major roles affecting work sector and earnings but the primary school return is half that cited by the world bank iii other human capital variables particularly nutrition have some impact

correlations and volatility spillovers between oil prices and the stock prices of clean energy and technology companies abstract in this paper multivariate garch models are used to model conditional correlations and to analyze the volatility spillovers between oil prices and the stock prices of clean energy companies and technology companies four different multivariate garch models bekk diagonal constant conditional correlation and dynamic conditional correlation are compared and contrasted the dynamic conditional correlation model is found to fit the data the best and generates results showing that the stock prices of clean energy companies correlate more highly with technology stock prices than with oil prices on average a 1 long position in clean energy companies can be hedged for 20 cents with a short position in the crude oil futures market

does the volatility of commodity prices reflect macroeconomic uncertainty abstract while there exists numerous studies on the macroeconomic effects of oil and commodity shocks the literature is quite silent on the impact of macroeconomic uncertainty on oil and commodity prices and especially on their volatility this paper tackles this issue through the estimation of a structural threshold vector autoregressive tvar model on a sample of 19 commodity markets we aim at i assessing whether the effect of macroeconomic uncertainty shocks on commodity price returns depends on the degree of uncertainty and ii investigating the transfer from macroeconomic uncertainty to price uncertainty using a newly developed measure of commodity price uncertainty our findings show that both agricultural and industrial markets are highly sensitive to the variability and the level of macroeconomic uncertainty while the impact on precious metals is more parsimonious given their well identified safe haven role in time of economic turmoil in addition we find evidence that the recent 2007 09 recession has generated an unprecedented episode of high uncertainty in numerous commodity prices interestingly our analysis further reveals that volatility and uncertainty in prices can be disconnected this is especially true for the oil market as most important shocks in the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s that lead to price volatility do not generate price uncertainty highlighting the relevance of our uncertainty measure in linking uncertainty to predictability rather than to volatility

modeling farm households price responses in the presence of transaction costs and heterogeneity in labor markets we develop a farm household model to analyze price responses of farm households this model incorporates various types of transaction costs as well as labor heterogeneity nonproportional variable transaction costs or labor heterogeneity imply that production and consumption decisions become nonseparable even when the household buys or sells labor an empirical model is estimated using data from midwest poland the results show that nonproportional variable transaction costs and labor heterogeneity significantly influence household behavior not all price elasticities however change significantly if these are neglected

oil price uncertainty and unemployment abstract in this study we empirically search the effects of oil price uncertainty and oil price shocks on u s unemployment rate using a garch in mean var model for the period 1974 q2 2017 q4 based on our findings we show that oil price uncertainty significantly increases unemployment rate in the u s economy likewise our impulse response analysis affirms that a positive oil price shock increases unemployment while the response of unemployment to a negative oil price shock is negative moreover we reveal that unemployment rate reacts to positive and negative shocks asymmetrically more specifically the response of unemployment to negative oil price shocks is negative and slighter in size besides oil price uncertainty is found to magnify the rise in the u s unemployment rate these findings are in keeping with the real options theory which reveals that the uncertainty about goods prices leads firms to postpone or abandon their production and investment and they seem to be robust to the use of different real oil price measures

promoting intersectoral growth linkages in rural africa through agricultural technology and policy reform this paper addresses how increased rural incomes in select african cases are spent on consumption items the implications of these patterns for stimulating rural growth and areas of intervention necessary to sustain demand led growth from improved agricultural technology and economic reforms the country studies utilize panel data collected by the international food policy research institute ifpri in collaboration with african institutions and re

rural electrification and household labor supply evidence from nigeria in nigeria the most populated african country rural electrification is a critical issue because of the low household electrification rate and the poor quality of the grid this energy poverty has harmful economic and social consequences in rural areas such as low productivity lack of income generating opportunities and poor housing conditions in this paper we consider electrification as a technical shock that may affect household time allocation using the 2010 2011 general household survey we investigate how electrification affects female and male labor supply decisions within rural households in nigeria focusing on husband wife data we consider potential dependence in spouses labor supply decisions and address the challenge of zero hours of work using a recent copula based bivariate hurdle model deb et al 2013 in addition an instrumental variable strategy helps identify the causal effect of elec trification our results underline that this dependence in spouses labor supply decisions is critical to consider when assessing the impact of electrification on these outcomes electrifi cation increases the working time of both spouses in the separate assessments but the joint analysis emphasizes only a positive effect of electrification on husbands working time in line with the household labor supply approach our findings highlight that within the household the labor supply decisions of one spouse significantly affect those of the other spouse thus if we neglect the effect of electrification on the spouse of the individual examined we may fail to assess how this individual has been actually affected by this common shock on both spouses our results suggest that these within household relationships promote husbands working time at the expense of wives working time

small enterprise employment growth in rural africa become increasingly recognized earlier empirical studies have indicated that they provide 20 to 45 of full time employment and 30 to 50 of rural household income chuta and liedholm haggblade hazell and brown this is also reflected in the agricultural growth linkage literature e g haggblade and hazell where rural enterprise growth is typically a demand driven spinoff of agricultural growth as well as in the rural household studies that have

political pricing of electricity can it go with universal service provision abstract political parties in india are known to use electricity prices as a tool to secure a win in the democratic election process this article examines the setting of electricity prices from a political economy perspective citizens differ in their willingness to pay for electricity and the consumer surplus and electoral uncertainty seem to influence their choices while exercising their franchise to win political parties must receive a majority of votes and a party in power may try to achieve this by choosing to ignore a consumer group either by charging a price higher than their willingness to pay or by choosing to satisfy them by charging a lower price two theoretical models are proposed the first model computes the possible prices when common perfectly correlated electoral shocks are anticipated while the second model computes the possible prices for independent and identically distributed electoral shocks we test these models with available data on willingness to pay and electricity price for agricultural domestic and industrial consumers in an indian state by generating prices that would be charged to each of these types of consumers to maximize the chances of re election actual prices seem to confirm the second model more than the first

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

current status and analysis of renewable promotional policies in indian restructured power sector a review restructuring has changed the traditional mission and mandates of power utilities in complex ways and had large impacts on environmental social and political conditions for any particular country at the same time new regulatory approaches are being found for reducing environmental impacts in restructured power sectors india has a vast supply of renewable energy resources and it has one of the largest programs in the world for deploying renewable energy based products and systems so this paper attempts to review the various policies and measures undertaken by indian government for promotion of renewable energy the aim of this paper is also to review the current policy mechanisms especially investment or generation based price driven and capacity driven mechanisms ranging from investment incentives for the development of renewable energy projects feed in tariffs production tax incentives tradable green certificates and their effects upon the prospects of encouraging as well as expanding the development of renewable energy in indian restructured power sector this will make renewable more attractive in the indian future electricity market

irreversible investment uncertainty and ambiguity the case of bioenergy sector we analyze production and investment decisions of an agent in industrial activities that are characterized by two forms of uncertainty demand uncertainty in terms of number of buyers and competitive effect uncertainty in terms of other energy resource we apply our model on the bioenergy industries we compare the case of an ambiguity neutral agent with that of an ambiguity averse agent we show that the investment decision of an agent depends on the effects of both the capital investment and the level of production on the cost and the uncertainty the agent is confronted with moreover we find that ambiguity aversion tends to decrease the agent s optimal levels of production and investment our numerical analysis of the french case illustrates the different effects associated with demand uncertainty and competitive effect uncertainty

farm nonfarm linkages in rural sub saharan africa this paper is an accumulation over the past 25 years of a body of detailed work examining the structure of africa s rural nonfarm economy first it systematically reviews empirical evidence on the nature and magnitude of the african rural nonfarm economy it then explores differences across locality and size across countries and over time in an effort to assess likely patterns of growth a subsequent review of key production and consumption parameters allows an estimate of the magnitude of the agricultural growth multipliers in africa the paper concludes with a brief discussion of policies and programs that will be necessary if farm nonfarm growth linkages are to achieve their full potential

oil prices and stock markets does the effect of uncertainty change over time abstract this paper investigates empirical marginal effects of uncertainty measured by conditional variance of the stock and crude oil prices on their returns using stock index prices for u s japan korea and hong kong over the period 1996 2015 a time varying parameter model with a dynamic conditional correlation dcc bivariate garch in mean specification is considered to investigate time varying marginal effects of uncertainty on the stock and crude oil returns the empirical findings show that there exist significant negative time varying effects of uncertainty on the returns over some sub periods

oil price uncertainty and u s employment growth abstract this paper studies the effects of oil price changes on u s aggregate and sectoral employment growth in the presence of time varying oil price uncertainty we estimate a bivariate garch in mean var model using u s monthly data of oil prices and employment growth for the period 1974 m2 2018 m11 based on the results we show that an increase in oil prices reduces total employment growth and that in most private sectors but the public sector is largely unaffected the effects on employment growth in various hub sectors are also different furthermore employment growths at both aggregate and disaggregate levels respond asymmetrically to positive and negative oil price shocks which could possibly be attributed to oil price uncertainty this asymmetric impact is more evident when the model is estimated on the entire sample than on the 1970s sample implying that the role of oil price uncertainty in accounting for variations in employment growth can differ over time these findings underline the empirical relevance of oil price uncertainty for the u s labor market dynamics

forecasting energy market volatility using garch models can multivariate models beat univariate models abstract in this paper we forecast energy market volatility using both univariate and multivariate garch class models first we forecast volatilities of individual assets and find that multivariate models display better performance than univariate models second we forecast crack spread volatility and contrast the performance of multivariate models for two underlyings with the alternative of univariate ones for crack spreads directly our evidence shows that univariate models allowing for asymmetric effects display the greatest accuracy we also discuss the hedging strategy based on multivariate models and its implications for market participants

are farmers decisions to work off the farm related to their decisions to participate in the conservation reserve program since both working off the farm and participating in the conservation reserve program crp remove important resources from us agricultural production we utilize two econometric specifications to test hypotheses regarding whether these two decisions by farmers are independent we find statistical evidence that decisions to participate in crp and work off the farm are correlated characteristics of farm households and farm operations affect both decisions directly and indirectly as do local economic conditions and participation in other farm programs to illustrate their importance we simulate the combined direct and indirect effects of changes in decoupled payments and farm size on the probabilities of farm households engaging in these two activities we also illustrate that the probability of engaging in these two activities depends on whether the farm is located in a state or local agricultural district or participates in a related farmland retention program

income diversification and entry barriers evidence from the tigray region of northern ethiopia abstract farm households diversify their income sources into off farm wage employment motivated by low farm income and availability of surplus family labor whereas they enter into off farm self employment to earn an attractive return farm households have upward sloping although inelastic off farm labor supply curves therefore increasing the availability of off farm activities and improving the wage rate received by farm households can expand the economic activity of the tigray regional state due to entry barriers relatively wealthy farm households may dominate the most lucrative rural non farm activities such as masonry carpentry and petty trade hence the underlying factors that hinder participation in non farm activities such as credit constraints and lack of skill may have to be addressed through the provision of credit and technical training for the poor

the asymmetric effects of oil price and monetary policy shocks a nonlinear var approach in this paper we investigate the asymmetric effects of oil price shocks and monetary policy on macroeconomic activity using monthly data for the united states over the period from 1983 1 to 2008 12 in doing so we use a logistic smooth transition vector autoregression var as detailed in terasvirta and anderson 1992 and weise 1999 and make a distinction between two oil price volatility regimes high and low using the realized oil price volatility as a switching variable we isolate the effects of oil price and monetary policy shocks and their asymmetry on output growth and following koop et al 1996 and weise 1999 we employ simulation methods to calculate generalized impulse response functions girfs to trace the effects of independent shocks on the conditional means of the variables our results suggest that in addition to the price of oil oil price volatility has an impact on macroeconomic activity and that monetary policy is not only reinforcing the effects of oil price shocks on output it is also contributing to the asymmetric response of output to oil price shocks

crude oil price uncertainty and corporate investment new global evidence abstract using a comprehensive dataset of more than 33 000 firms from 54 countries in the period 1984 2015 we show that crude oil price uncertainty negatively influences corporate investment more importantly the effect is dependent on the market and stock characteristics of the firms in addition we discover that the effect is stronger in the crude oil producers group than for crude consumers our analysis reveals that the global financial crisis and market volatility phases significantly affect this relationship our results survive a range of robustness tests

the effects of human capital on wages and the determinants of labor supply in a developing country abstract the heckman procedure is used to correct for sample selection bias in estimating wage offer and net labor market supply equations the findings show that wages are affected by education and experience in addition the wage offer is influenced by other genetic and environmental influences captured in the wage of one s father calories as predicted by exogenous instruments are also shown to influence the wage offer suggesting that better nutrition increases labor productivity the probability of market labor participation as well as the amount of net market labor supply declined with the size of paddy landholding in addition to the net market supply elasticity increasing with the amount of land owned and being lower for urban than rural workers

does cash crop adoption detract from child care provision evidence from rural nepal this document addresses the issues of agricultural commercialization using data from fieldwork conducted in nepal it aimed to examine the impact of a project designed to commercialize vegetables and fruit the vegetable and fruit cash crop program vcf on male and female time allocation the goal of vfc program was to increase the commercial production of vegetables and fruits in farm households that were heavily dependent on the production of cereal and livestock for home consumption findings from multivariate analysis suggest that for households with one preschooler vfc participation results in more time to agricultural production of the cash crop for both men and women but also a decrease in care time to preschoolers from both men and women meanwhile for households with more than one preschooler this trade off is not so apparent the analysis also suggests that behavior change initiatives to protect time to child care might be feasible in that vfc participation does not decrease the overall nonwork time of men or women with preschool children in residence

efficiency assessment and benchmarking of thermal power plants in india abstract per capita consumption 1 of electricity in india is many folds lesser than canada usa australia japan chaina and world average even though total energy shortage 2 and peaking shortage 3 were recorded as 11 2 and 11 85 respectively in 2008 09 reflecting non availability of sufficient supply of electricity performance improvement of very small amount can lead to large contribution in financial terms which can be utilized for capacity addition to reduce demand supply gap coal fired thermal power plants are main sources of electricity in india in this paper relative technical efficiency of 60 coal fired power plants has been evaluated and compared using ccr and bcc models of data envelopment analysis target benchmark of input variables has also been evaluated performance comparison includes small versus medium versus large power plants and also state owned versus central owned versus private owned result indicates poor performance of few power plants due to over use of input resources finding reveals that efficiency of small power plants is lower in comparison to medium and large category and also performance of state owned power plants is comparatively lower than central and privately owned study also suggests different measures to improve technical efficiency of the plants

time to build option value and investment decisions abstract investment decisions and outlays are often made sequentially for example the rate at which construction proceeds is usually flexible and can be adjusted with the arrival of new information traditional discounted cash flow methods which treat the pattern of investment as fixed ignore this flexibility and understate the value of the project this paper uses contingent claims analysis to derive optimal decision rules and to value such investments we determine the effects of time to build opportunity cost and uncertainty on the investment decision for reasonable parameter values we show how a simple npv rule can lead to gross errors

regulating a monopolist with unknown costs we consider the problem of how to regulate a monopolistic firm whose costs are unknown to the regulator the regulator s objective is to maximize a linear social welfare function of the consumers surplus and the firm s profit in the optimal regulatory policy prices and subsidies are designed as functions of the firm s cost report so that expected social welfare is maximized subject to the constraints that the firm has nonnegative profit and has no incentive to misrepresent its costs we explicitly derive the optimal policy and analyze its properties in their classic papers dupuit 2 and hotelling 5 considered pricing policies for a bridge that had a fixed cost of construction and zero marginal cost they demonstrated that the pricing policy that maximizes consumer well being is to set price equal to marginal cost and to provide a subsidy to the supplier equal to the fixed cost so that a firm would be willing to provide the bridge this first best solution is based on a number of informational assumptions first the demand function is assumed to be known to both the regulator and to the firm while the assumption of complete information may be too strong the assumption that information about demand is as available to the regulator as it is to the firm does not seem unnatural a second informational assumption is that the regulator has complete information about the cost of the firm or at least has the same information about cost as does the firm this assumption is unlikely to be met in reality since the firm would be expected to have better information about costs than would the regulator as weitzman has stated an essential feature of the regulatory environment i am trying to describe is uncertainty about the exact specification of each firm s cost function in most cases even the managers and engineers most closely associated with production will be unable to precisely specify beforehand the cheapest way to generate various hypothetical output levels because they are yet removed from the production process the regulators are likely to be vaguer still about a firm s cost function 12 p 684 as this observation suggests it is natural to expect that a firm would have better information regarding its costs than would a regulator the purpose of this paper is to develop an optimal regulatory policy for the case in which the regulator does not know the costs of the firm one strategy that a regulator could use in the absence of full information about costs is to give the firm the title to the total social surplus and to delegate the pricing decision to the firm in pursuing its own interests which would then be to maximize the total social surplus the firm would adopt the same marginal cost pricing strategy that the regulator would have imposed if the regulator had

power sector reform in orissa an ex post analysis of the causal factors abstract from the early 1990s dramatic changes have been taking place in the structure of electricity supply industry esi worldwide the primary reasons for electricity sector reform has however been different for industrialised and developing countries the objective of this paper is to study and identify various factors leading to power sector reform in developing countries the restructuring of orissa state electricity board in india was used as a case study in identifying the various factors the factors that result in implementation of restructuring are a contextual factors they are the primary drivers for initiating reform the performance of the utility and the conditionalities of the lending agencies are contextual factors b trigger factor it is the determining factor that creates a compelling necessity to undergo restructuring the inability of the government to continue to support the utility acts as the trigger factor c facilitating factors they act as facilitators for initiating reform support of the government absence of a powerful lobby and the support of the top management are facilitating factors

what s so spatial about diversification in nigeria summary many households in developing countries allocate their productive assets among various income generating activities in order to develop a portfolio of income from occupations with different degrees of risk expected returns and seasonal and liquidity constraints the push and pull factors influencing diversification decisions of households are widely discussed in the literature however no study to date has taken into account spatial interdependence of household decisions in spite of various channels of neighborhood effects such as information flow learning from others social networks and agglomeration economies this paper fills in the gap by incorporating spatial dependence in the choice model of diversification using a spatial auto regressive probit model and an advanced bayesian strategy to its estimation empirical analysis is run taking advantage of the nigerian general household survey panel 2010 11 providing gis coordinates for the surveyed households the results imply endogeneity of the neighbors decisions to allocate their productive assets among various occupations and signal the importance of social learning and agglomeration effects favoring the spillover of diversification activities through neighbors networks and local markets the households decisions respond to local environment factors such as weather shocks or infrastructural constraints as shown by the regional differences taking into account spatial interdependence is particularly important in the event of a wide divide of the data available into different zones as for example in case of the nigerian northern region where the states are larger

fishing and nonfishing income decisions the role of human capital and family structure resource dependent households often diversify their income we model demand for remittances and supply of off resource labor as a joint decision and discuss household trade offs we extend the off farm labor supply literature to a rural fishery contrasting our results to common findings in the farm literature and providing empirical evidence of the interdependence between education and family structure in determining income diversification using a unique dataset from malaysia we find that more educated households are less likely to diversify their income with caveats depending on family composition policy implications for resource management in a remittance economy with alternative livelihoods are discussed

oil and the macroeconomy when prices go up and down an extension of hamilton s results in an important paper hamilton 1983 demonstrated a strong correlation between oil price changes and gross national product growth in u s data however his study pertained to a period in which all the large oil price movements were upward and thus it left unanswered the question whether the correlation persists in periods of price decline moreover the price variable he used was somewhat distorted by price controls in the 1970s this note investigates whether hamilton s results continue to hold when the sample is extended to include the recent oil market collapse and the oil price variable is corrected for the effects of price controls particular attention is given to the possibility of asymmetric responses to oil price increases and decreases as suggested in the structural employment literature loungani 1986 davis 1987 hamilton 1988 like hamilton i based my investigation on the gnp equation in sims s 1 980b six variable quarterly vector autoregressive model