analyzing nutritional impacts of policies an empirical study for malawi summary widespread malnutrition in developing countries calls for appropriate strategies presupposing good knowledge about nutritional impacts of policies little previous work has been carried out in this direction especially with respect to micronutrients we use representative household data from malawi and develop a demand systems approach to estimate income and price elasticities of food demand and nutrient consumption these estimates are applied for policy simulations given multiple nutritional deficiencies income related policies are better suited than price policies to improve nutrition while consumer price subsidies for maize improve calorie and mineral consumption they can worsen vitamin consumption in urban areas

nonparametric and parametric analysis of calorie consumption in tanzania abstract the empirical literature on the demand for calories in developing countries suggests mixed results regarding the role of income and other socioeconomic characteristics on calorie demand this study employs both nonparametric and parametric methods to examine the impact of household expenditure and other socioeconomic variables on household demand for calories in tanzania using recent survey data the parametric methods include estimation strategies that ensure consistent estimates in the presence of behavioral endogeneity and measurement error under each estimation strategy we employ we find a strongly significant and positive relationship between household expenditure and calorie demand lending support to conventional wisdom that income growth can alleviate inadequate calorie intake the results also show a negative and significant relationship between food prices and calorie demand suggesting that effectively targeted food subsidies for very poor households may play a role in improving their calorie intake

the impact of maize price shocks on household food security panel evidence from tanzania abstract using three waves 2008 09 2010 11 2012 13 of the tanzanian national panel survey this study investigates the impact of maize price shocks on household food security between 2008 09 and 2012 13 calorie intake stagnated for urban households yet sharply deteriorated for rural households the latter was driven by a significant decline in the consumption of the major staple maize which showed strongest price hikes among all major food items fixed effects regressions indicate a clear negative relationship between maize prices and average household energy intake almost all population groups were found to be negatively affected by maize price shocks with rural landless households being the most vulnerable group in particular a 50 percent rise in maize prices decreases caloric intake for rural urban households on average by 4 4 5 4 percent and for rural landless households by 12 6 percent results further indicate that subsistence agriculture can act as an effective strategy to insure against food price volatility

sacrifice and stigma reducing free riding in cults communes and other collectives this paper presents an economic analysis of religious behavior that accounts for the continuing success of groups with strange requirements and seemingly inefficient prohibitions the analysis does not presuppose any special motives for religious activity rather religion is modeled as a club good that displays positive returns to participatory crowding the analysis demonstrates that efficient religions with perfectly rational members may benefit from stigma self sacrifice and bizarre behavioral restrictions the model also addresses sacrifice in nonreligious social clubs fraternities communes political parties work groups and families

are estimates of calorie income fxelasticities too high a recalibration of the plausible range abstract the wide range of calorie income elasticities in the literature results in large part from the particular calorie and income variables used for estimation elasticities across four estimation techniques and four calorie income variable pairs for a sample of philippine farm households ranged from 0 03 to 0 59 estimates associated with calorie availability are biased upwards first because random errors in measuring food purchases are transmitted by construction both to calorie availability and total expenditures and second because the residual difference between family calorie intake and household calorie availability will often increase with income the calorie intake total expenditure variable pair gives the preferred elasticity estimate in the 0 08 0 14 range

issues relating to the un system of national accounts and developing countries abstract the recent revision of the united nations system of national accounts sna represents improved harmonization of the international trade balance of payments government finance and monetary data collected by national and international statistical agencies although such harmonization is welcomed by the developing countries a number of other major unresolved issues remain specifically the sna has not solved problems relating to 1 delineation of the formal and informal sectors of an economy 2 appropriate treatment of market and non market production and 3 satisfactory analysis of sector saving and capital formation and 4 harmonization of household sector macrodata with household survey microdata

the effect of income on demand for food in poor countries are our food consumption databases giving us reliable estimates abstract cross section estimates of income elasticities for food staples in the aggregate based on quantity information from household food expenditure surveys are often in the 0 3 0 6 range it is shown that differences in per capita calorie intakes across income groups implied by these income elasticities are grossly inconsistent with observed differences in bodyweights moreover time series data frequently indicate that national per capita consumption of food staples in the aggregate remains constant even as per capita gross national product rises substantially cross section income elasticity estimates are biased upwards due to the failure of food expenditure surveys to undertake an accurate accounting of food transfers from high to low income groups biases which are not generated by survey techniques which record food intakes directly

nutrient consumption and household income in rural mexico we estimate the income elasticity for a variety of macro and micronutrients using a sample of poor rural households in mexico the nutrientincome elasticity is estimated using both parametric and semiparametric methods a special focus is placed on the nonlinearity of the relationship between nutrient intake and income and on measurement error and endogeneity issues one major finding is that income elasticity for calories is close to zero when we control for measurement error issues for some nutrients namely fats vitamin a and c calcium and heme iron we find a sizeable positive income elasticity robust to the choice of the estimator and percentiles at which it is evaluated these nutrients are also those for which we find the largest deficiency in our sample in addition we find that for the poorest households in our sample the deficiency of total energy protein and zinc is not accompanied by a positive income elasticity

economic inequality and intolerance attitudes toward homosexuality in 35 democracies using hierarchical linear models fitted to data from the world values survey and national statistics for 35 countries this article builds on the postmaterialist thesis by assessing the impact of economic inequality across and within nations on attitudes toward homosexuality it provides evidence that tolerance tends to decline as national income inequality rises for professionals and managers the results also support the postmaterialist argument that economic development leads to more tolerant attitudes on the other hand attitudes of the working class are generally less tolerant and contrary to expectations of the postmaterialist thesis are seemingly unaffected by economic development in other words economic development influences attitudes only for those who benefit most these findings have political implications suggesting that state policies that have the goal of economic growth but fail to consider economic inequality may contribute to intolerant social and political values an attribute widely considered detrimental for the health of democracy i nglehart s 1987 1990 1997 postmaterialist thesis suggests that liberal values result from democracy economic development and modernization important to this argument is the idea that the prosperity of modern societies allows people to shift their attentionfrommaterialconcernstoso called postmaterialist concerns such as social issues and self expression this shift to postmaterialist values allegedly results in greater social tolerance moreover by focusing on average value differences across country and time the postmaterialist thesis implies that economic prosperity affects the attitudes of citizens in all economic positions within a given nationinmuchthesameway althoughinequalitywithin nationsisnotentirelydiscounted thetheoryassumesthat once economic development reaches a particularly high level inequality lessens to the point that it no longer influences values inglehart 1987 the present research takes issue with the assumption that national economic prosperity affects all members within a nation in a similar manner given the vast differences in economic conditions and life chances according to income group social class and occupation even within rich democracies it is not controversial to argue

joint determination of food consumption and production in rural sierra leone estimates of a household firm model abstract this paper investigates the determination of food consumption for rural households in sierra leone that produce the foods which they consume a household firm model is estimated with seven commodities including five foods non foods and labor as compared to three commodities in past studies such food disaggregation permits tracing of the effects of socioeconomic variables on household nutrient availability household specialization in production is such that censored data is a problem a tobit approach is used to correct for this for most crops the own price effects on consumption remain negative when a price change is allowed to shift the budget constraint by effecting the profits from home production elasticities of calorie availability with respect to toal expenditure are found to be sizeable varying little by expenditure group the price elasticities of calorie availability are generally positive however an important exception occurs for price of the staple food rice this exception has several important policy implications which are explored

personal liberties religiosity and effort abstract in this paper we study the role of religiosity in influencing the choice of labor effort many religions promote restrictions on personal liberties such as divorce abortion gender parity or gay marriage often regulated by law we assume that the higher the degree of religiosity of an individual the less he enjoys such personal liberties and the less he likes to be in a society which allows them while seculars enjoy such liberties by standard consumer theory the differential valuation induced by religiosity influences individual decisions on other dimensions as well notably labour supply we show empirically that this nexus holds and that the size of the effect is large specifically we construct an index of personal liberties and find solid evidence in support of the joint effect of religiosity and liberties on labor effort our empirical results indicate that religiosity interacted with the legal level of liberties has a significant and strong negative effect on labor supply and that increases in the cap on liberties have a negative effect on the labor supply of the religious individuals and positive for the secular

does religion distract the poor income and issue voting around the world this article asks whether religion undermines the negative relationship between income and left voting that is assumed in standard political economy models of democracy analysis of cross country survey data reveals that this correlation disappears among religious individuals in countries that use proportional representation this is the case in large part because there is a moral values dimension that has a correlation with income that is equal in magnitude but has the opposite sign as the economic dimension and the votes of the religious are better explained by their positions on moral than economic issues especially in countries with multiparty systems the authors conclude by discussing implications for theories of redistribution

on the origins of gender roles women and the plough the study examines the historical origins of existing cross cultural differences in beliefs and values regarding the appropriate role of women in society we test the hypothesis that traditional agricultural practices influenced the historical gender division of labor and the evolution of gender norms we find that consistent with existing hypotheses the descendants of societies that traditionally practiced plough agriculture today have less equal gender norms measured using reported gender role attitudes and female participation in the workplace politics and entrepreneurial activities our results hold looking across countries across districts within countries and across ethnicities within districts to test for the importance of cultural persistence we examine the children of immigrants living in europe and the united states we find that even among these individuals all born and raised in the same country those with a heritage of traditional plough use exhibit less equal beliefs about gender roles today jel codes d03 j16 n30 copyright 2013 oxford university press

market fairness the poor country cousin of market efficiency both fairness and efficiency are important considerations in market design and regulation yet many regulators have neither defined nor measured these concepts we develop an evidencebased policy framework in which these are both defined and measured using a series of empirical proxies we then build a systems estimation model to examine the 2003 2011 explosive growth in algorithmic trading at on the london stock exchange and nyse euronext paris our results show that greater at is associated with increased transactional efficiency and reduced information leakage in top quintile stocks for less liquid stocks manipulation at the close declines we also document the tradeoff between reduced spreads and increased manipulation or information leakage following the introduction of mifid1

comparing labor supply elasticities in europe and the united states new results we suggest the first large scale international comparison of labor supply elasticities for 17 european countries and the united states using a harmonized empirical approach we find that own wage elasticities are relatively small and more uniform across countries than previously considered nonetheless such differences do exist and are found not to arise from different tax benefit systems wage hour levels or demographic compositions across countries suggesting genuine differences in work preferences across countries furthermore three other findings are consistent across countries the extensive margin dominates the intensive margin for singles this leads to larger responses in low income groups and income elasticities are extremely small

does it matter how we survey demand for food evidence from kenya and the philippines abstract this article examines the reliability of food quantity information collected from expenditure surveys and finds that measurement errors will very often be systematically correlated with income such that the response of food intakes to increases in income is seriously overstated this may be firstly because food quantities are not measured independently of income if total expenditures are the proxy used for income and secondly because food transfers in the form of guest and hired worker meals are under recorded these biases are illustrated using household surveys from kenya and the philippines

mothers and sons preference formation and female labor force dynamics this paper argues that the growing presence of a new type of man one brought up in a family in which the mother worked has been a significant factor in the increase in female labor force participation over time we present cross sectional evidence showing that the wives of men whose mothers worked are themselves significantly more likely to work we use variation in the importance of world war ii as a shock to women s labor force participation as proxied by variation in the male draft rate across u s states to provide evidence in support of the intergenerational consequences of our propagation mechanism

analyzing nutritional impacts of price and income related shocks in malawi simulating household entitlements to food the 2007 2008 food price crisis and the following global economic recession has temporarily increased the number of people to suffer from hunger while the impacts can be measured with precision only ex post for policy makers it is critical to get a sense of likely impacts ex ante in order to plan approaches to mitigate these impacts in this paper we adopt a very simple micro based simulation approach to analyze how changes in prices of specific food groups such as maize prices or prices for staple foods as well as how negative short term household level income shocks affect the entitlements to calorie consumption of individuals and how these changes affect overall food poverty we illustrate our approach using household survey data from malawi we find that food poverty is of serious concern with large within country variations we find that price shocks for staple foods have a considerable impact on food security with particularly strong effects on poor net food buyers in rural and urban areas this paper demonstrates that it is possible to estimate food security impacts of price and income shocks ex ante in a relatively straightforward fashion that can be done relatively quickly and that is suitable for cross country assessments of the likely impacts of shocks on food security and the design of appropriate response measures

toward a food secure future ensuring food security for sustainable human development in sub saharan africa food security remains a top development priority and global concern it is enshrined in the 2030 agenda for sustainable development in sustainable development goal two food security is also a core component of the human development and capability paradigm since food access and entitlements are critical for reinforcing essential human capabilities in introducing this special issue this paper argues that agriculture is central to improving food security and reducing poverty in africa it suggests that realizing the potential of agriculture in africa requires rapid increases in land productivity and increases in agricultural yields a science based approach that integrates gender and sustainability is critical to meet this goal through the design and implementation of policies that improve the availability farm inputs and farm technology the paper concludes by introducing the papers in this special issue

economic crisis and the unemployment effect on household food expenditure the case of spain this paper examines the unemployment effect on food expenditure uefe for spanish households and quantifies its magnitude in boom and crisis periods the results show that the uefe was negative in both contexts but was reinforced during the economic crisis applying propensity score matching and difference in differences techniques to a sample of spanish households for 2006 and 2013 representative of a boom period and a crisis period respectively we found that the uefe amounted to 2 9 in the boom period and to 4 5 in the crisis period quantile difference in differences estimates confirmed that the economic crisis enhanced the uefe for spanish households with this effect decreasing continuously up to quantile 0 9 the uefe was exacerbated mainly in those economically disadvantaged households

intergenerational persistence in health in developing countries the penalty of gender inequality this paper is motivated to investigate the often neglected payoff to investments in the health of girls and women in terms of next generation outcomes this paper investigates the intergenerational persistence of health across time and region as well as across the distribution of maternal health it uses comparable microdata on as many as 2 24 million children born of about 0 6 million mothers in 38 developing countries in the 31 year period 1970 2000 mother s health is indicated by her height bmi and anemia status child health is indicated by mortality risk and anthropometric failure we find a positive relationship between maternal and child health across indicators and highlight non linearities in these relationships the results suggest that both contemporary and childhood health of the mother matter and that the benefits to the next generation are likely to be persistent averaging across the sample persistence shows a considerable decline over time disaggregation shows that the decline is only significant in latin america persistence has remained largely constant in asia and has risen in africa the paper provides the first cross country estimates of the intergenerational persistence in health and the first estimates of trends