the role of empowerment in agricultural production evidence from rural households in niger we use new household and individual level weai data from the tahoua region of niger and estimate a variable coefficient cobb douglas production function in which traditional inputs interact with tw

intergenerational transfers in philippine rice villages gender differences in traditional inheritance customs abstract this paper examines education land and nonland asset transfers from parents to children in five rice villages in the philippines a model with family fixed effects explains transfers better than either individual heterogeneity or observed parent and child characteristics without family fixed effects families facing different land constraints exhibit significantly different patterns of educational investment in children in a subsample with completed inheritance daughters receive less education land and total inheritance but are compensated with nonland assets parents also exhibit preferential behavior towards children of the same gender daughters of better educated mothers receive more land nonland assets and total inheritance better educated fathers give land preferentially to sons but favor daughters in education

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

pairs trading the case of norwegian seafood companies abstractin this article i investigate the performance of a pairs trading strategy on 18 seafood company stocks traded in the norwegian consumer goods sector on the oslo stock exchange i apply both high frequency and daily data from january 2005 to december 2014 i use two approaches a distance approach and a cointegration approach and compare the results for both the distance and the cointegration approaches nonconvergence of the pairs is high which may indicate that more fundamental information about the companies traded should be accounted for none of the strategies evaluated had significant profits after accounting for transaction costs it therefore remains unclear which approach is best suited for pairs selection using high frequency data yielded empirical distributions that were symmetrical and had a lower degree of leptokurtosis compared to the daily data

housing dynamics over the business cycle housing construction measured by housing starts leads gdp in a number of countries measured as residential investment the lead is observed only in the united states and canada elsewhere residential investment is coincident variants of existing theory however predict housing construction lagging gdp in all countries in the sample nominal interest rates are low ahead of gdp peaks introducing long term nominal mortgages and an estimated process for nominal interest rates into a standard model aligns the theory with observations on starts as mortgages transmit nominal rates into real housing costs longer time to build makes residential investment cyclically coincident abstract from author

who are the world s food insecure new evidence from the food and agriculture organization s food insecurity experience scale summary until recently there was lacking a common food security measure and the necessary data to study the individual level determinants of food insecurity around the world in 2014 the food and agriculture organization s voices of the hungry project developed an experiential measure of food insecurity the food insecurity experience scale fies translated it into 200 languages and contracted gallup inc for collection of data through the gallup world poll this is the first paper that identifies and examines the common determinants of food insecurity in 134 countries using this cross country comparable experiential measure of food insecurity we also investigate whether and to what extent the common determinants of food insecurity identified in a global model differ across rankings of economic development using a series of multilevel linear probability models we find that the five characteristics associated with the largest increase in the likelihood of experiencing food insecurity around the world are having low levels of education weak social networks less social capital low household income and being unemployed we also find significant heterogeneity in the determinants of food insecurity over development rankings this study is an important first step in utilizing the new fies to document risk factors of food insecurity around the globe

poverty food security nexus evidence from a survey of urban slum dwellers in kolkata we explore the poverty food security nexus using an experience based indicator of food security constructed using a cross section sample of slum households in kolkata within the framework of a simultaneous ordered probit model we find a poor household is also likely to be food insecure additionally education gender and household composition are major drivers of food insecurity among low income urban households with the policy implication that anti poverty policies should be successful in eliminating household food insecurity however they need to be complemented with human capital investment and gender empowerment to be most effective

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

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

counting and multidimensional poverty measurement this paper proposes a new methodology for multidimensional poverty measurement consisting of an identification method k that extends the traditional intersection and union approaches and a class of poverty measures m our identification step employs two forms of cutoff one within each dimension to determine whether a person is deprived in that dimension and a second across dimensions that identifies the poor by counting the dimensions in which a person is deprived the aggregation step employs the fgt measures appropriately adjusted to account for multidimensionality the axioms are presented as joint restrictions on identification and the measures and the methodology satisfies a range of desirable properties including decomposability the identification method is particularly well suited for use with ordinal data as is the first of our measures the adjusted headcount ratio we present some dominance results and an interpretation of the adjusted headcount ratio as a measure of unfreedom examples from the us and indonesia illustrate our methodology

determinants of dietary quality evidence from bangladesh summary whereas a large number of studies have been devoted to analyzing consumer demand for dietary quantity much less attention has been paid to the demand for dietary quality to address this gap in the literature this paper explores the determinants of dietary quality in bangladesh using data from a nationally representative household expenditure survey conducted in 2000 we find that while male education plays a positive role female education has a substantially stronger influence further female household headship is associated with lower dietary quality than male headship thus promoting female education and addressing the unique constraints faced by female headed households with respect to diet quality could be a significant policy instrument for addressing food insecurity in bangladesh

addressing household indebtedness monetary fiscal or macroprudential policy in this paper we build a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with housing and household debt and compare the effectiveness of monetary policy housing related fiscal policy and macroprudential regulations in reducing household indebtedness

impacts of supermarkets on farm household nutrition in kenya summary many developing countries experience a food system transformation with a rapid growth of supermarkets we analyze impacts of supermarkets on farm household nutrition with survey data from kenya participation in supermarket channels is associated with significantly higher calorie vitamin a iron and zinc consumption we use simultaneous equation models to analyze impact pathways supermarket supplying households have higher incomes a higher share of land under vegetables and a higher likelihood of male control of revenues furthermore income and the share of land under vegetables have positive impacts while male control of revenues has negative impacts on dietary quality policy and further research implications are discussed

maternal empowerment and child malnutrition in bangladesh abstractthe study examines the importance of maternal empowerment in reducing the prevalence of child malnutrition in bangladesh maternal empowerment is measured by a composite index based on four

status caste and the time allocation of women in rural india abstractwe argue that women may be disinclined to participate in market work in the rural areas of india because of family status concerns in a culture that stigmatizes market work by married women we set out a theoretical framework that offers predictions regarding the effects of caste based status concerns on the time allocation of women we then use the all india national sample survey data for the year 2004 5 and the time use survey for six states of india for the year 1998 99 to empirically test these hypotheses after controlling for a host of correlates we find that the ratio of women s market work to men s declines as we move up the caste hierarchy this ratio falls as family wealth rises and the decline is steeper for the higher castes finally the effect on women s market work of higher education is weaker for the higher castes these findings lend support to our theory and to the view that through its emphasis on family status caste plays a pivotal role in undermining the autonomy of wome

assessing food insecurity in latin america and the caribbean using fao s food insecurity experience scale abstract the complexity of the operational concept and definition of food insecurity has complicated the study of the food insecure and efforts to determine clear policy directions previous findings on the prevalence and severity of food insecurity are inconsistent and often depend on the measure used to overcome limitations in food security measurement the food and agriculture organization of the united nations developed the food insecurity experience scale which is the first survey protocol to measure people s direct experience of food insecurity on a global scale using this new measure our study contributes to the understanding of the food insecure by examining the determinants of food insecurity within and across countries in latin america and the caribbean lac using a series of multilevel linear models we find the three determinants associated with the largest increase in the likelihood of experiencing food insecurity in lac are low levels of education limited social capital and living in a country with low gdp per capita results suggest the need to promote education of the most vulnerable encourage social interactions that help build individuals social capital and adopt gender sensitive programs the results also suggest the need for a shift in policy from short term strategies to long term efforts that sustain household productive capacity and employment to promote sustained economic growth

women s empowerment in agriculture implications for technical efficiency in rural bangladesh although a great deal of research exists on gender and agriculture few studies investigate the implications of reduced gender disparities in households for technical efficiency in this article i compare the levels of technical efficiency achieved on plots operated by households with different levels of gender disparities using plot level data from the 2011 2012 bangladesh integrated household survey and drawing on indicators derived from the women s empowerment in agriculture index i estimate a stochastic frontier production function model which includes women s empowerment in agriculture as an exogenous determinant of technical inefficiency i find that reduced gender disparities within households measured in terms of the empowerment gap between spouses are associated with higher levels of technical efficiency this result extends to plots that women jointly manage with their spouses as well as those that women do not actively manage

an empirical investigation into measurement and determinants of food security abstractwe examine the association between calorie based indicators and experiential indicators of food security using data from slum households of kolkata surveyed in 2010 2011 experiential indicator is constructed following the united states household food security survey module calorie based indicator is constructed using household specific calorie norms modelling techniques take account of potential endogeneity in the relationship the two indicators are aligned in the same direction implying more accurate targeting however there is a lack of one to one correspondence between the two measures and the drivers of calorie deprivation and food insecurity also differ suggesting a one size fits all policy cannot address both concerns simultaneously

women s empowerment in agriculture what role for food security in bangladesh summary using a nationally representative survey from bangladesh we examine the relationship between women s empowerment in agriculture measured using the women s empowerment in agriculture index and per capita calorie availability dietary diversity and adult body mass index bmi accounting for potential endogeneity of empowerment we find that increases in women s empowerment are positively associated with calorie availability and dietary diversity at the household level overall household wealth education and occupation are more important than women s empowerment as determinants of adult nutritional status although negative impacts of group membership and credit on male bmi suggest that intrahousehold trade offs may exist