technology and transaction cost economics a reply abstract i argue here as i have previously that technology is neither fully determinative of nor irrelevant to economic organization transaction cost economizing occupies a prominent position in any effort to assess the efficacy of alternative forms of economic organization

economic mobility and poverty dynamics in developing countries this study provides an introduction to this special issue of the journal of development studies on economic mobility and poverty dynamics in developing countries in addition to providing a conceptual framework it outlines how the contributions fit into the extant literature a series of regularities emerge across these studies the poor consist of those who are always poor poor at all dates and those who move in and out of poverty with the latter group tending to be strikingly large such movements in and out of poverty are apparent when looking at poverty in either absolute or relative terms changes in returns to endowments can be a potent source of increased incomes finally seemingly transitory shocks can have long term consequences the study concludes by drawing out the policy implications of these regularities

food preferences and nutrition in rural bangladesh t he dietary choice of households near subsistence levels of nutrient intake is one of obvious policy importance in many countries such as bangladesh national goals are set in terms of nutritional intake and there is heavy intervention in the markets for foods however little is known about the manner in which food preferences vary with food expenditure and nutrient intake the design of efficient programs to aid nutritionally deficient households in attaining minimal levels of nutrient intake requires information on all ownand cross price elasticities for both target and non target groups the net effect of a food price subsidy on the consumption of food nutrients cannot be predicted without knowledge of the complete elasticity matrix results presented below demonstrate that substitution effects can be so strong that the subsidization of certain foods quite often reduces nutrient consumption in this study demand equations for nine foods which allow for extremely flexible consumer price response are estimated from the individual budgets of 5 750 rural bangladeshi households estimation at the household level is preferred because it more readily permits the incorporation of household composition variables into the demand analysis such as household size occupation and employment status that are typically lost in aggregation there is also a greater range and variation in expenditure levels than found in grouped data this is of particular importance in the study of nutritional well being as it is the poorest households which are of special interest moreover the household sample provides sufficient degrees of freedom to estimate a simple varying parameter model which requires the estimation of 270 parameters previous econometric analysis of income class specific dietary choice has been limited and not altogether satisfactory pinstrup anderson de londono and hoover 1976 estimated complete sets of price elasticities for different income strata using frisch s scheme in order to study the impact of changes in relative prices on nutrient consumption their results are suspect because of the assumption of want independence necessary for this methodology to be valid alderman and timmer 1980 who were also concerned with studying the relationship between food price policy and nutrient intake by income classes econometrically estimated separate price coefficients for each income group by including slope dummy variables in their demand equations for rice and cassava in indonesia the inclusion of these dummy variables revealed surprisingly large differences in compensated price response across income groups although their results support the notion that poorer households respond differently to prices than the rich the limitations of their data constrained them to consider only two foods and to specify changes in price response which are discontinuous with respect to income i the formulation and estimation of the food demand equations is discussed in section ii below section iii presents the results of the estimation and discusses the nutritional implications of movements in relative food prices and other exogenous variables section iv summarizes our findings

vertical integration market foreclosure and consumer welfare in the cable television industry i examine the effects of vertical integration between programming and distribution in the cable television industry i assess the effects of ownership structure on program offerings prices and subscriptions and i compare consumer welfare across integrated and unintegrated markets the results of this analysis suggest two general conclusions first integrated operators tend to exclude rival program services suggesting that certain program services cannot gain access to the distribution networks of vertically integrated cable system operators second vertical integration does not harm and may actually benefit consumers because of the associated efficiency gains

nonfarm diversification poverty economic mobility and income inequality a case study in village india this paper assembles data at the all india level and for the village of palanpur uttar pradesh to document the growing importance and influence of the non farm sector in the rural economy between the early 1980s and late 2000s the suggestion from the combined national sample survey and palanpur data is of a slow process of non farm diversification whose distributional incidence on the margin is increasingly pro poor the village level analysis documents that the non farm sector is not only increasing incomes and reducing poverty but appears as well to be breaking down long standing barriers to mobility among the poorest segments of rural society efforts by the government of india to accelerate the process of diversification could thus yield significant returns in terms of declining poverty and increased income mobility the evidence from palanpur also shows however that at the village level a significant increase in income inequality has accompanied diversification away from the farm a growing literature argues that such a rise in inequality could affect the fabric of village society the way in which village institutions function and evolve and the scope for collective action at the village level failure to keep such inequalities in check could thus undermine the pro poor impacts from the process of structural transformation currently underway in rural india

caste and tribe inequality evidence from india 1983 1999 abstract despite policies targeting scheduled castes sc and scheduled tribes st there remain large disparities of living standards between sc st and non sc st households in india the sc st households may be poorer because they possess lower human and physical capital but they may also earn lower returns to these assets this study finds that 30 50 of the welfare disparities are attributable to different returns such structural differences between the sc and the non sc st are partly because the sc earn lower returns to schooling a large part of the structural disparities between the st and the non sc st comes from the fact that the areas where the st live are different from those where the non sc st live in addition the st tend to earn lower returns even with controls for geographical conditions

making real progress toward more sustainable societies using decision support models and tools introduction to the special volume academics politicians professionals and the general public are aware that without stewarding our planet s natural resources man is on the pathway towards a global collapse over the next three decades mankind is expected to consume an estimated 140 billion tons of minerals ores fossil fuels and biomass per year three times current consumption social welfare and human wellbeing are threatened with the scarcity of natural resources consequently nations and their societies are also at risk of collapse the readers of this special volume will find a compilation of scholarly research papers with real life applications that take the challenge of proposing decision making models and tools to address sustainability challenges in integrative ways the main focus of this special volume is integration of sustainability dimensions economic social environmental ethical and time into decision support models and to identify pathways to achieve more sustainable societies the majority of the research in this special volume 74 percent focuses on environmental and economic dimensions only 26 percent integrated social dimensions with them methodologically a range of mathematical models and tools are presented to support prescriptive decision making with some descriptive models integrated to support decision makers in solving practical problems across a variety of industries and scenarios the breadth and complexity of issues facing organizations and society requires innovative applications of these methodologies the concerns cover a spectrum ranging from energy to solid waste management a multitude of levels from broad based policy concerns to strategic inter organizational sustainable supply chain management and significantly shop floor operational issues are also covered the variety of problems and solutions exemplifies the potential for modelling and operations research for addressing some of our world s most pressing concerns

land contingent poverty alleviation schemes abstract target groups for rural poverty alleviation schemes in south asia and elsewhere have often been identified in terms of their landholding class with landless or near landless households being the intended beneficiaries this paper offers a quantitative approach to the analysis and design of land contingent poverty alleviation schemes an application to bangladesh suggests that when income is generally unobserved landholding class is a good instrument for targeting poverty relief in that it is strongly correlated with the informationally feasible allocations which minimize aggregate poverty for a given budget it is however far from being a perfect instrument even under otherwise ideal conditions the maximum feasible reduction in poverty which is attainable by relying solely on land based targeting is substantially less than that attainable with perfect income information indeed the poverty alleviation impact of domestically financed and revenue neutral transfers across 10 landholding classes in rural bangladesh could also be achieved without targeting by simply giving every household a lump sum payment equivalent to 10 of mean rural income political restrictions on tax powers or errors made in administration will further reduce the gains from land contingent targeting greater impact on poverty for a given budgetary cost will require more precise targeting within landholding classes

on measuring child costs with applications to poor countries the theoretical basis for measuring child costs is discussed and detailed consideration is given to two straightforward procedures for calculation engel s food share method and rothbarth s adult good method each of these methods embodies different definitions of child costs so that the same empirical evidence can generate quite different estimates depending on the method used it is shown that true costs are generally overstated by engel s method and understated by rothbarth s procedure although the latter unlike the former can provide a sensible starting point for cost measurement our estimates from sri lankan and indonesian data suggest that children cost their parents about 30 40 percent of what they spend on themselves

slipping into and out of poverty the dynamics of spells this paper examines the dynamics of poverty previous analyses have examined either fluctuations in the male heads earnings or the frequency of poverty periods over a fixed time frame our approach depends on a definition of spells of poverty using this methodology we find that the majority of poor persons at any time are in the midst of a rather long spell of poverty the methodology also allows us to estimate that less than 40 percent of poverty spells begin because of a drop in the heads earnings while 60 percent of the spells end when the heads earnings increase thus researchers must focus on household formation decisions and on the behavior of secondary family members there has been a dramatic resurgence recently of discussion of the underclass the discussion is reminiscent of debates about poverty during the 1960s when the notions of a culture of poverty particularly as popularized by michael harrington s other america 1962 dominated both intellectual and policy thinking the idea of an underclass seems inconsistent however with much of the research on the dynamics of poverty during the 1970s that research using new longitudinal data seemed to show that the bulk of the poor were poor for only a few years the research also showed that the poor were a very heterogeneous group including a small minority of persistently poor the persistence of poverty is of interest both for understanding the phenomenon and for developing policy claims about dependency and separate life styles among the poor rest on assumptions about the long term nature of poverty questions

how well do static indicators identify the chronically poor abstract we investigate how well the most widely used static welfare indicators perform in identifying the chronically poor we propose a normative measure of performance the cost of a given impact on chronic poverty when transfers are contingent upon a purely static indicator using longitudinal household data from rural india we find that current consumption is not always a better indicator of chronic poverty than current income both however perform much better than other common indicators such as food share and access to land

foreclosure of railroad markets a test of chicago leverage theory the possibility of vertical foreclosure arises when at least one firm in a market is vertically integrated and other firms are not for example in the well known alcoa case the production of aluminum ingot is monopolized by a single firm while the aluminum sheet industry is competitive the ingot producer is vertically integrated into sheet rolling nonintegrated sheet rollers are thus dependent for aluminum ingot on their vertically integrated competitor who has a monopoly in the aluminum ingot market 1 foreclosure implies that no transactions among integrated and nonintegrated firms will occur or at least that the quantities exchanged will be less than would occur in the absence of vertically related bargaining power as in the alcoa case the vertically integrated firm can also price squeeze its nonintegrated buyers by raising its price above competitive levels these potential inefficiencies have generated considerable concern in the industrial organization and antitrust literature the long standing legal view which first appeared in the 1911 american tobacco case was

combining quantitative and qualitative methods in assessing chronic poverty the case of rwanda this paper addresses the issue of chronic poverty in rwanda an issue which has not been addressed specifically in the policy debate despite the fact that it is likely to be widespread in part this has reflected lack of available evidence in that the conventional sources used to analyze chronic poverty are not available we argue in this paper that by judicious combination of existing qualitative a high quality nationwide participatory poverty assessment and quantitative sources a household survey it is possible to identify and characterize a clearly distinct group of chronically poor households whose characteristics are different from the poor as a whole

a structural decomposition analysis of the emissions embodied in trade abstract the aim of this study is to quantify the driving forces behind the growth of carbon dioxide emissions embodied in trade eet the world input output database is used to estimate eet in 40 countries during 1995 2007 after which a structural decomposition analysis is applied to avoid biases in the results we have used the input output tables in previous year s prices and chained the outcomes in many developed countries the growth of emissions embodied in imports is much higher than the growth of emissions embodied in exports a key reason for this finding is the change in the structure of trade both in intermediate and in final products emerging economies like the bric countries have increased their share in production and trade at the expense of developed countries producers and consumers in developed countries have shifted towards importing a larger share of products from emerging countries this is the distinguishing feature that led to an increase of emissions embodied in imports for developed countries and an increase of emissions embodied in exports for emerging countries these results suggest policy makers to monitor eet more carefully and take the effects of trade on emissions into consideration

poverty in palanpur the meaning and identification of poverty are examined using three indicators of standard of living in the north indian village of palanpur the first is intended as a measure of apparent prosperity based on the personal assessments of investigators after intensive field work in the village over the full agricultural year 1983 84 the other two are income in 1983 84 and a measure of permanent income obtained by averaging incomes from four surveys conducted over a twenty six year interval a comparison of these three indicators shows that income measured in any one year may give a misleading impression of the incidence of poverty the risk of poverty for households is calculated vulnerability is high among low caste households and those which are involved in agricultural labor categories however are not homogeneous for example whereas the landless and widows are more likely to be poor some of such households are quite well off it is argued that poverty in a good agricultural year is a better indicator of sustained poverty than poverty in a bad year occupational mobility out of agricultural labor is low and changes in the distribution of land are largely accounted for by demographic processes such as household splits

how acquisitions affect firm behavior and performance evidence from the dialysis industry many industries have become increasingly concentrated through mergers and acquisitions which in health care may have important consequences for spending and outcomes using a rich panel of medicare claims data for nearly one million dialysis patients we advance the literature on the effects of mergers and acquisitions by studying the precise ways providers change their behavior following an acquisition we base our empirical analysis on more than 1 200 acquisitions of independent dialysis facilities by large chains over a 12 year period and find that chains transfer several prominent strategies to the facilities they acquire most notably acquired facilities converge to the behavior of their new parent companies by increasing patients doses of highly reimbursed drugs replacing high skill nurses with less skilled technicians and waitlisting fewer patients for kidney transplants we then show that patients fare worse as a result of these changes outcomes such as hospitalizations and mortality deteriorate with our long panel allowing us to identify these effects from within facility or within patient variation around the acquisitions because overall medicare spending increases at acquired facilities mostly as a result of higher drug reimbursements this decline in quality corresponds to a decline in value for payers we conclude the article by considering the channels through which acquisitions produce such large changes in provider behavior and outcomes finding that increased market power cannot explain the decline in quality rather the adoption of the acquiring firm s strategies and practices drives our main results with greater economies of scale for drug purchasing responsible for more than half of the change in profits following an acquisition

assessing the extent and nature of chronic poverty in low income countries issues and evidence discussions of chronic poverty have mostly considered its monetary dimensions with current evidence suggesting that such poverty is much more transient than chronic but chronic poverty is a real and important phenomenon potentially more important quantitatively than it first appears once account is taken of different methodological approaches and inevitable measurement difficulties the chronic poor have distinctive characteristics such as lack of assets or high dependency rates which may account for their persistent poverty the paper argues that it is also necessary to develop concepts of chronic poverty further covering relevant nonmonetary dimensions and not just relying on panel data

identifying the poor in developing countries do different definitions matter abstract this paper compares several commonly used definitions of poverty household survey data from cote d ivoire are examined to see whether different definitions choose the same people as poor we find that they often do not choose the same people even though we a priori set all the definitions so that 30 of the population is classified as poor this implies that different definitions of poverty may lead to different policy recommendations which suggests that more attention should be given to the choice of a particular definition of poverty when analyzing the effects of economic policies on the poor

the theory of preferential trade agreements historical evolution and current trends the theory of preferential trade agreements pta s or what might be described in policy terms as the general agreement on tariffs and trade gatt article xxiv sanctioned freetrade areas fta s and customs unions cu s has undergone two phases of evolution in two very different modes largely reflecting the contrasting policy concerns of the time in this paper we trace this evolution offering both a historical context and an intellectual coherence to diverse analytical approaches

sharecropping in a north indian village this article presents a case study of sharecropping in a north indian village drawing on a detailed survey of tenancy relations in the village it examines a number of issues that have received prominent attention in the literature including the motives for tenancy the choice of tenancy contract the rationale for equal shares the relationship between tenant and landlord the efficiency of sharecropping and interlinkage the wider implications of this case study are also discussed

the changing effects of competition on non profit and for profit hospital pricing behavior abstract has the nature of hospital competition changed from a medical arms race in which hospitals compete for patients by offering their doctors high quality services to a price war for the patients of payors this paper uses time series cross sectional methods on california hospital discharge data from 1986 1994 to show the association of hospital prices with measures of market concentration changed steadily over this period with prices now higher in less competitive areas even for non profit hospitals regression results are used to simulate the price impact of hypothetical hospital mergers

assessing sustainability performance of global supply chains an input output modeling approach abstract measuring the sustainability performance of supply chains is fundamental to sustainable supply chain management sustainability performance is usually evaluated from multiple aspects within the triple bottom line framework with globalization supply chains have also been characterized by the complex and global natures ignoring the multidimensional and transnational features imposes challenges on the performance assessment of global supply chains gscs to resolve this issue we propose an input output modeling approach based on the multi region input output mrio model and the data envelopment analysis dea technique which is able to account for the multidimensional characteristic of supply chains in a global context two indices are introduced to measure the status and evolvement of environmental sustainability performance of gscs we apply the proposed approach to empirically examine the environmental performance of gscs of the manufacturing sectors in 16 major economies during 2005 2014 the average environmental inefficiency of the economies was considerable and roughly 40 of the pollution could potentially be reduced along gscs overall the environmental performance of gscs averagely rose by 20 6 during the study period with fluctuations and regional sectoral heterogeneities observed

ecology sustainability and environment as capital abstract the idea of environment as capital has found widespread support in both the economic and ecological literature it is often suggested in a related sustainability literature that natural capital should remain intact if possible the popularity of this approach to exploring the human environment relationship is due in part to the way it is seemingly legitimised by ecological theory and practice this legitimation is important for emerging areas of human environment study such as ecological economics because ecology and other natural sciences have often dismissed economic constructions of the environment however a closer examination of the state of contemporary ecology suggests that there are problems with an ecological legitimation of the environment as capital approach first ecology itself is a troubled discipline and its ability to provide a comprehensive theory of human environment interactions is limited second emerging ecological discourse tends to undermine the ecological rationale for many natural capital related resource management recommendations this does not mean that the environment as capital concept is without considerable heuristic power it does imply however a need to return to a social construction of the environment in which different environmental possibilities are valued in terms of their potential contribution to human well being

expected poverty under risk induced welfare variability two of the most widely accepted stylised facts about agriculture in south asia sub saharan africa and elsewhere are that income is highly uncertain from one year to another and that deep and widespread poverty exists and yet there has been very little analysis of the joint problems of poverty and risk this paper offers a methodological approach to the issue of how risk affects poverty and applies it to household level data for dry areas of rural india the following questions are addressed under what conditions can one expect an increase in the riskiness of an income or consumption stream to increase poverty how should one measure the contribution of risk to poverty and what long term benefits in terms of reduced poverty can be expected from policies aimed at stabilising incomes of the poor such policies have been widely discussed in the indian subcontinent of late and their effect on rural

paying a premium on your premium consolidation in the us health insurance industry we examine whether and to what extent consolidation in the u s health insurance industry is leading to higher employer sponsored insurance premiums we make use of a proprietary panel dataset of employer sponsored healthplans enrolling over 10 million americans annually between 1998 and 2006 to explore the relationship between premium growth and changes in market concentration we exploit the differential impact of a large national merger of two insurance firms across local markets to estimate the causal effect of concentration on market level premiums we estimate real premiums increased by approximately 7 percentage points in a typical market due to the rise in concentration during our study period we also find evidence that consolidation facilitates the exercise of monopsonistic power vis a vis physicians whose absolute employment and relative earnings decline in its wake

providers affiliation insurance and collusion abstract this paper provides a theoretical analysis of the benefits for an insurance company to develop its own network of service providers when insurance fraud is characterized by collusion between policyholders and providers in a static framework without collusion exclusive affiliation of providers allows insurance companies to recover some market power and to lessen competition on the insurance market this entails a decrease in the insured s welfare however exclusive affiliation of providers may entail a positive effect on customers surplus when insurers and providers are engaged in a repeated relationship in particular while insurers must cooperate to retaliate against a fraudulent provider under non exclusive affiliation no cooperation is needed under exclusive affiliation in that case an insurer is indeed able to reduce the profit of a malevolent provider by moving to collusion proof contracts when collusion is detected and this threat may act as a deterrent for fraudulent activities this possibility may supplement an inefficient judicial system it is thus a second best optimal anti fraud policy

strategic integration of hospitals and physicians a striking development in the healthcare market place has been the formation of strategic relationships between hospitals and physicians hospital physician integration appears to be a response to rapidly expanding managed care health insurance we examine whether integration lead to efficiency gains from transaction cost economies thereby allowing providers to offer managed care insurance plans lower prices or whether integration is really a strategy to improve bargaining power and thereby increase prices we find that integration has little effect on efficiency but is associated with an increase in prices especially when the integrated organization is exclusive and occurs in less competitive markets

do indicators have politics a review of the use of energy and carbon intensity indicators in public debates abstract in this paper we analyse how energy and carbon intensity indicators which have huge popularity among policy makers are framed in the discourse of think tanks consulting groups and other stakeholders what emerges from the analysis of public documents reports and policy briefs is that intensity indicators are often framed uncritically and unreflectively our analysis highlights three fundamental themes that emerge from public debates around intensity indicator first efficiency and intensity often framed in terms of productivity are used equivalently second intensity is perceived as a measure of win win sustainability in which economic growth can be decoupled from energy consumption without a substantial restructuring of the productive system third the analysis suggests that energy and carbon intensity indicators are attractive for policy makers especially in the so called developing world because they can be used to design political targets e g paris agreement without questioning the right to economic growth of powerful emerging economies like the brics the paper shows the strong limitations of intensity indicators and their potential do misguide policymakers

vertical mergers and market foreclosure ythe model in this paper illustrates three effects of vertical mergers when both stages are oligopolistic and vertically integrated and unintegrated producers coexist first the merging firm increases its final good output second the resulting backward shift in the residual demand curve facing unintegrated final good producers ylowers their demand for the intermediate good third the merged firm withdraws from the intermediate good market the increased concentration pushes the intermediate good price upward which effect dominates depends on market structure under some conditions a vertical merger causes the price of the final good to increase

a quantitative model for environmentally sustainable supply chain performance measurement abstract the development of robust mechanisms for supply chain performance measurement have been identified as an integral step needed for the transition towards sustainable supply chain systems and a greener global economy however measuring the environmental performance of supply chains is a challenging task due to several factors such as the lack of standardised methodologies and the inherent multi criteria nature of the problem by leveraging the capability of a multi regional input output framework to handle the complex and global nature of supply chains the current work presents a robust environmental sustainable performance measurement model underpinned by industrial lifecycle thinking as a result some theoretical insights are provided and an empirical application of the model to the metal products industry of the brics brazil russia india china and south africa nations undertaken in an attempt to address some of the methodological and applied measurement challenges in particular this allowed the modelling of carbon emissions trends within and between the brics nations and with the rest of the world over a 20 year period 1992 2011 as well as providing an opportunity to hypothesis on their future carbon emissions performances specific analyses of the metal product industry showed that demand represents the main driver for the increasing carbon footprint however the overall decline in reported carbon footprint was due to improvements in emissions intensity and efficiency gains induced by technology the study further assesses the effects of imports and economic growth on carbon footprint and discusses the implications of the study to sustainability transition processes in the brics nations

monitoring technology and firm boundaries physician hospital integration and technology utilization abstract we study the relationship between physician hospital integration and its relation to monitoring it utilization we develop a theoretical model in which monitoring it may complement or substitute for integration and test these relationships using a novel data source physician labor market heterogeneity identifies the empirical model we find that monitoring it utilization is increasing in integration implying that expanded firm boundaries complement monitoring it adoption we argue that the relationship between monitoring it and firm boundaries depends upon the contractibility of the monitored information

children and household economic behavior this paper looks at some of the methodological issues that arise in modeling the effects of children on household behavior and presents some estimates for selected areas for our purposes household behavior will be taken to refer to household decisions on labor supply the allocation of expenditure to different periods and the decision as to what to do with the difference between income and expenditure i shall be concerned mainly with the effects of dependent children and i restrict attention largely to western societies excerpt

sustainability assessment of u s final consumption and investments triple bottom line input output analysis the u s final demand categories such as household consumption private fixed investments government purchases and investments and export of goods and services have a wide range of environmental economic and social impacts analysis of these impacts termed as the triple bottom line tbl stimulated a tremendous interest by policy makers over the last decade therefore current research aims to analyze the tbl of u s final demands from a systems perspective to accomplish this goal the supply and use tables published by the u s bureau of economic analysis are merged with a range of environmental economic and social metrics the results show that household consumption has the largest indirect tbl sustainability impacts compared to other final demand categories with shares that range between 43 and 88 industrial sectors including manufacturing utilities agriculture construction transportation and mining are generally found to be responsible for the highest impacts for most of the environmental impact categories service sectors generally have the highest impacts on the economic and social indicators of sustainability analysis results also indicate that while meeting the household demand agriculture utilities and manufacturing sectors have relatively more environmental impacts than their contributions to gross domestic product gdp whereas service sectors contribute to gdp with a higher share than their environmental burdens furthermore it is envisioned that significant reductions in environmental footprints of u s households can be achieved if environmental policies that aim to reduce the household consumption are also supported with sustainable growth through greener and resource efficient economy

does household consumption behave as a martingale a test for rural south india abstractthe hypothesis that consumption evolves over time as a martingale process is tested on household panel data for three villages in south india a novel feature of the methodology is that it gives consistent estimates of dynamic effects in short panels the estimated coefficients of lagged consumption are generally smaller than unity and a number of the lagged income and wealth variables are statistically significant the results are inconsistent with the proposition that consumption equals permanent income this is also true when the data are disaggregated by household wealth

finding the poor vs measuring their poverty exploring the drivers of targeting effectiveness in indonesia centralized targeting registries are increasingly used to allocate social assistance benefits in developing countries there are two key design issues that matter for targeting accuracy i which households to survey for inclusion in the registry and ii how to rank surveyed households the authors attempt to identify their relative importance by evaluating indonesia s unified database for social protection programs udb among the largest targeting registries in the world used to provide social assistance to over 25 million households linking administrative data with an independent household survey they find that the udb system is more progressive than previous program specific targeting approaches however simulating an alternative targeting system based on enumerating all households they find a one third reduction in undercoverage of the poor compared to focusing on households registered in the udb overall there are large gains in targeting performance from improving the initial registration stage relative to the ranking stage

population matters in ecological economics abstract it is an axiom of ecological economics that resource depletion and environmental pollution depend on the number of people and how many goods and services each consumes modified by the technological efficiency of production the paper reviews some studies quantifying the contribution of human numbers to environmental impact it warns against playing this factor off against that of high consumption in rich countries it asks whether from the environmental point of view complacency about either present or predicted population size is warranted the answer depends both on fertility and mortality assumptions and on constraints such as resource and food availability the concept of cultural carrying capacity would aid societies in determining their optimal population when account is taken not only of subsistence but of quality of life a population control toolkit for both rich and poor societies is sketched and some controversial coercive policy possibilities analysed

moral hazard and risk spreading in partnerships partnerships provide a classic example of the tradeoff between risk spreading and moral hazard the degree to which firms choose to spread risk and sacrifice efficiency incentives depends upon risk preferences for which data are typically unavailable we use a unique dataset on medical group practice to investigate this tradeoff risk aversion leads to compensation arrangements which spread risk through greater sharing of revenues we find that compensation arrangements with greater degrees of revenue sharing significantly reduce physician effort the results imply that changing the method of physician payment from fee for service to capitation will dramatically reduce physician effort