access to markets and rural poverty evidence from household consumption in china abstract this paper presents evidence on the effects of access to domestic and international markets on per capita consumption of households using data from rural china the econometric analysis uses alternative identification schemes to address the potential endogeneity of access to markets we use straight line distances to coastline and navigable river along with the topography of the intervening counties as sources of exogeneous variations we also use identification through heteroskedasticity which does not rely on standard exclusion restrictions the results from alternative identification schemes show that better access to both domestic and international markets has positive effects on per capita consumption the domestic market effect is significantly larger in magnitude and there is complementarity between the access to domestic and international markets

design and analysis of simulated consumer choice or allocation experiments an approach based on aggregate data the authors integrate concepts in conjoint analysis and discrete choice theory in econometrics to develop a new approach to the design and analysis of controlled consumer choice or resource allocat

the part time premium enigma an assessment of the chilean case proquest denotes formulae omitted working part time has been seen by some researchers public policy advisers and politicians as a way for women to find a balance between home and paid work gregory and connolly 2008 bardasi and gornick 2008 however there is no agreement on the optimal balance indeed there are contrasting views on the subject those in favor suggest that in the absence of part time jobs female labor force participation would be substantially lower sundstrom 1991 dekker 2008 according to this belief women confronted with the choice between working full time and not working at all would opt for the latter on the other hand detractors in european countries assert that part time jobs imply a waste of resources and of investments in human capital since the many part time working women who are highly educated generally make a downward occupational move when they switch from full time to part time work gregory and connolly 2008 manning and petrongolo 2008 furthermore part time jobs have adverse repercussions for the economic well being of part time working women given that public social welfare benefits wage increases and professional development might be scarce for these women leiva 2000 warren 2008 fernandez kranz and others 2011 fernandez kranz and rodriguez planas 2011 in addition in mem ber countries of the organization for economic cooperation and develop ment oecd hourly earnings are lower manning and petrongolo 2008 and employer provided training less common gregory and connolly 2008 connolly and gregory 2009 in part time jobs than in full time jobs further more in those countries though the hourly earnings gap between women and men in full time work has been narrowing the same is not the case for female part time workers and males in full time jobs manning and petrongolo 2008 part time work among women after the birth of their first child is currently responsible for some of the pay gap between men and women kanji 2011 chile s rate of female labor force participation is one of the lowest in latin american countries cepal un eclac 2011 despite female educational attainment that is similar to or higher than that of other latin american countries carrillo gandelman and robano 2013 to increase female labor force partici pation the chilean government is promoting part time and home based work for women although part time work is not as extensive as in other countries the proportion of chilean women working part time has tripled in the past ten years and part time workers now represent more than 20 percent of the female work force national socio economic characterization survey casen 2009 contreras puentes and bravo 2005 show that in chile the female labor force participation rate is positively correlated with education it is not appar ent why female labor force participation is so low discrimination in the labor market or more generally the existent gender wage gap favorable to males nopo 2012 carrillo gandelman and robano 2013 might partially explain the low female participation rate as might cultural factors contreras and plaza 2010 find that women who have internalized machista values are less likely to participate in the labor market despite concerns of endogeneity owing to data limitations contreras and plaza 2010 find a negative rela tionship between female labor force participation and conservative values puentes and ruiz tagle 2011 using the voz de mujer survey analyze the same phenomenon while controlling for possible endogenous relationships 1 they find that cultural factors are not endogenously determined by a woman s labor participation decision on the contrary it seems that whether women work has little effect on cultural factors in the short term according to their study values develop in early childhood rather than during a woman s work ing life interestingly the same 2002 survey that contreras and plaza 2010 used was reapplied by the centro de estudios publicos and released in april 2012

where is the plus in credit plus the case of chiapas mexico abstractit has become common to try and increase the effectiveness of microfinance programmes by adding supplementary services to the financial product however the added value accruing from this credit plus approach has been little analysed we hypothesise that the extent of added value from credit plus depends on the ability of the credit supplier to cultivate trust or social capital amongst clients applying difference in difference estimation we exploit a natural experiment of two credit plus programmes in mexico the findings suggest that credit plus is not universally effective but that it is at its most effective especially with low income groups where bonding within group social capital exists

from correlates and characteristics to causes thinking about poverty from a chronic poverty perspective summary poverty and poverty reduction are currently the central concerns of development discourse and policy despite recent theoretical advances poverty analysis continues to be dominated by an income consumption conception of poverty we argue for understandings of poverty that go beyond measurement led conceptualizations to more adequately expose the causes of poverty chronic poverty is one such concept its focus on poverty duration and dynamics highlights the forms of social relations that produce poverty and which are often embedded within political institutions and economic structures poverty reduction does not simply require good policy it requires creating the capacity of poorer people to influence and hold accountable those who make policies

estimating the effects of free trade agreements on international trade flows using matching econometrics abstract this paper provides the first cross section estimates of long run treatment effects of free trade agreements on members bilateral international trade flows using nonparametric matching econometrics our nonparametric cross section estimates of ex post long run treatment effects are much more stable across years and have more economically plausible values than corresponding ols cross section estimates from typical gravity equations we provide plausible estimates of the long run effects of membership in the original european economic community eec and the central american common market cacm between 1960 and 2000 and the estimates confirm anecdotal reports of these agreements effectiveness

china s membership in the world trade organization wto and the exports of the developing economies of east asia a computable general equilibrium approach there is a general perception particularly among the developing countries of east asia that china s wto membership would spell bad news for their exports the asean countries in particular are quite concerned about its likely negative impact on their export and growth potentials in this light the main objective of this paper is to empirically assess the trade implications of china s wto membership for these countries only few studies using a computable general equilibrium cge approach have addressed the issue of china s wto membership trade implications further these studies have not adequately addressed the issue from the perspective of the developing countries of east asia particularly the asean countries using the latest version of the global trade analysis project gtap model and based on the latest tariff reduction commitments by china the results showed that contrary to the current perception and previous studies almost all of the developing countries of east asia are likely to benefi

heterogeneous trade agreements wto membership and international trade an analysis using matching econometrics this article explores the heterogeneous effects of trade agreements tas and world trade organization wto membership on the volume of international trade we extend baier and bergstrand s 2009a application of matching econometrics by distinguishing between different types of tas and wto participation and account for the endogenous nature of trade policy for a panel data set covering 1960 2005 and 187 countries we find that the treatment effect on international trade systematically varies with the type of ta and wto membership

the economics of poverty traps and persistent poverty an asset based approach abstract longitudinal data on household living standards open the way to a deeper analysis of the nature and extent of poverty while a number of studies have exploited this type of data to distinguish transitory from more chronic forms of income or expenditure poverty this paper develops an asset based approach to poverty analysis that makes it possible to distinguish deep rooted persistent structural poverty from poverty that passes naturally with time due to systemic growth processes drawing on the economic theory of poverty traps and bifurcated accumulation strategies this paper briefly discusses some feasible estimation strategies for empirically identifying poverty traps and long term persistent structural poverty as well as relevant extensions of the popular foster greer thorbecke class of poverty measures the paper closes with reflections on how asset based poverty can be used to underwrite the design of persistent poverty reduction strategies

toward a theory of regulation for developing countries following jean jacques laffont s lead the efficient operation and expansion of infrastructures in developing countries is crucial for growth and poverty reduction however recent reforms aimed at improving the performance of these sectors have had limited success evidence suggests that in many instances this was because the traditional regulatory theory relied on by policymakers was not suitable for the institutional context in developing countries this article surveys more recent theoretical work focusing on problems with regulation in these countries at the heart of the survey is the work of jean jacques laffont who in the last decade of his life set about developing a theoretical framework for regulation in developing countries we consider the implications of his work which focused on the key institutional limitations faced in developing countries we then discuss where experience suggests that there are important omissions from this modeling bringing in extensions and alternative approaches pursued by other authors we conclude by summarizing the key ways in which regulatory policy will be different when institutions are weak overall we find that an understanding of the institutional context and its implications are crucial when designing a regulatory framework for developing countries

are rta agreements with environmental provisions reducing emissions article i nfo this paper investigates whether rtas with environmental provisions affect relative and absolute pollution levels in order to do so the determinants of carbon dioxide emissions convergence are estimated for a cross section of 182 countries over the period 1980 to 2008 a propensity score matching approach is com bined with difference in differences techniques to effectively isolate the effect of the regional trade agree ment rta variable the usual controls for scale composition and technique effects are added to the estimated model and the endogeneity of income and trade variables is modeled using instruments the main results indicate that the co2 emissions of the pairs of countries that belong to an rta with environmen tal provisions tend to converge and are lower in absolute terms whereas this is not the case for rtas without environmental provisions as regards specific agreements we find that emissions converge more rapidly for nafta than for eu 27 and euro med countries we find consistent evidence that only rtas with environ mental harmonization policies affect relative and absolute pollution levels

do social protection transfers reduce poverty and vulnerability to poverty in pakistan household level evidence from punjab empirical studies in different developing countries have investigated the impact of social protection sp on ex post poverty however few studies analysed the impact of sp on ex ante vulnerability to poverty vtp this paper contributes to the literature by evaluating the impact of sp on vulnerability to poverty vtp and poverty rates among households in the punjab province of pakistan a hierarchical modelling approach is used to analyse the multiple indicator cluster survey mics 2011 data of about 90 000 households matching methods and simultaneous endogenous switching regression are used to control for potential selection bias and estimate average treatment effects our results show that sp has a positive impact in reducing household poverty and vtp but this impact is mainly driven by a short term flood relief cash transfer programme pension of government employees and households regular purchase from utility store network

localized market power in the u s airline industry this paper tests whether the observed dominance of most city pair markets and airports in the u s domestic airline industry by single carriers confers any pricing power on the dominan t firms the results of fixed effects estimation indicate that airport dominance by a carrier does confer upon it substantial pricing power whereas dominance at the route level seems to confer no such pricing power additionally the authors find a positive yet small correlation between both route concentration and price and airport concentration and price the quantitative importance of airport dominance reveals that the most promising direction for public polic y aimed at improving the industry s performance is to ensure equal acc ess to sunk airport facilities copyright 1993 by mit press

national pro poor spending programmes and their effect on income inequality and poverty evidence from vietnam abstractthis article examines the causal effects of the national pro poor targeted programmes ntps on both poverty incidence and inequality in vietnam over the period 2002 2010 while the links between ntps and poverty alleviation and income inequality have previously been analysed independently this study is the first to offer a comprehensive analysis of ntps expenditure on poverty and inequality simultaneously applying the system generalized method of moments estimator to a panel of vietnamese regional data we are unable to establish that ntps have significantly mitigated poverty incidence however we estimate that ntps have significantly increased inequality we offer possible explanations why the ntps have resulted in these unintended outcomes and discuss potential policies which can reduce both poverty and inequality

eu climate policy up to 2020 an economic impact assessment in its fight against climate change the eu is committed to reducing its overall greenhouse gas emissions to at least 20 below 1990 levels by 2020 to meet this commitment the eu builds on segmented market regulation with an eu wide cap and trade system for emissions from energy intensive installations ets sectors and additional measures by each eu member state covering emission sources outside the cap and trade system the non ets sector furthermore the eu has launched additional policy measures such as renewable energy subsidies in order to promote compliance with the climate policy target basic economic reasoning suggests that emission market segmentation and overlapping regulation can create substantial excess costs if we focus only on the climate policy target in this paper we evaluate the economic impacts of eu climate policy based on numerical simulations with a computable general equilibrium model of international trade and energy use our results highlight the importance of initial market distortions and imperfections as well as alternative baseline projections for the appropriate assessment of eu compliance cost

new evidence on the impact of structural reforms on electricity sector performance abstract the evolution of electricity industry over the last decades has shown substantial differences between oecd countries this paper empirically investigates to what extent different structural forms of regulation competition and privatisation explain these international differences it distinguishes three modes of electricity performance a net generation per capita b installed capacity and c labour productivity the empirical model spans the period 1975 2011 and uses panel data econometric techniques our analysis reveals that there is a strongly significant interaction impact on the level of electricity performance between regulation and competition the empirical findings do confirm that a robust independent regulatory scheme must be implemented in order to achieve a competitive electricity market

programs for the poorest learning from the igvgd program in bangladesh abstract this article examines a program that seeks to reach bangladesh s hardcore poor by combining elements of livelihood protection food aid with livelihood promotion skills training and microfinance bangladesh rural advancement committee s income generation for vulnerable group development program has deepened the outreach of its poverty reduction activity and achieved impressive results detailed local level fieldwork revealed however that program practice differed markedly from program plans this is found to have important implications for both future program design and the understanding of who does not benefit from such innovative programs we conclude that while such programs mixing livelihood protection and promotion should be a major focus for anti poverty strategies there will remain a role for more traditional social welfare schemes

do asset transfers build household resilience abstract we estimate the impact of an asset transfer program on household resilience we measure resilience as the probability that a household will sustain at least the threshold asset level required to support consumption above the poverty line using six rounds of data collected over 42 months in rural zambia we construct a measure of resilience based on households conditional welfare distributions to estimate program impacts we find that the program increased household resilience beneficiaries likelihood of being non poor in future periods increased by 44 the program both increased mean assets and decreased variance signaling an upward shift in households conditional asset distributions our method demonstrates the added value of the resilience estimation compared with a conventional impact assessment numerous households classified as non poor are unlikely to remain non poor over time and the relationship between wealth and resilience is driven by changes in both the conditional mean and the conditional variance

borrowing money exchanging relationships making microfinance fit into local lives in kumaon india summary why don t microfinance clients use programs the way development planners and funders expect why do clients change how microfinance projects function in unanticipated ways previous scholarship on microfinance has overlooked the relevance of already existing borrowing practices and norms to how people engage with and use microfinance over 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the kumaon region of eastern uttarakhand state in northern india i found that kumaonis altered the microfinance program of a local ngo to make it fit with their already existing borrowing practices which were intimately tied to their livelihood strategies kumaoni livelihoods were based on exchange relationships with family friends and neighbors through which they could secure the means for physical and financial survival as well as social and emotional survival these relationships were governed by a moral economy that obligated exchange partners to properly assist one another and ensured balance between partners and across multiple social ties rather than abandoning their exchange relationships kumaonis and local fieldworkers who also relied on these ties altered microfinance so that it fit with this moral economy and became another node in the already existing networks of assistance if they had not been able to alter projects kumaonis would likely have stopped participating as other groups in similar circumstances around the globe have done although the microfinance program was a success in the eyes of beneficiaries senior staff members and donors remained unaware of why projects changed on the ground to ensure that development programs can be made relevant to people s lives and cultural values development practitioners must relinquish control over the minutiae of development and allow local level workers to negotiate the details of projects with participants

analysing the impact of renewable energy regulation on retail electricity prices abstract retail electricity prices have substantially increased in the last decade in the european union eu as a result of different regulations raising the concern of policy makers the growth in the support costs for electricity from renewable energy sources res e has often been singled out as a main driver of the increase in these prices the aim of this paper is to analyse the degree of influence of res e promotion costs on the evolution of the retail price of electricity in the eu member states the analysis is carried out for households as well as for industry with the help of a panel data econometric model our results show that the impact of renewable energy promotion costs on retail electricity prices is positive and statistically significant although relatively small differences across consumer types can be observed an increase of 1 in those costs induces an average increase of only 0 023 in industrial retail prices and 0 008 in the residential retail prices this impact on retail prices is mediated by the type of support scheme which is adopted with price based support instruments showing a greater effect than quantity based ones

estimating the effects of kyoto on bilateral trade flows using matching econometrics many kyoto countries fear a loss of competitiveness due to unilateral climate policy efforts policymakers therefore call for carbon related border tax adjustments with this paper we attempt to estimate the treatment effect of kyoto commitment on bilateral export flows using regression adjusted differences in differences matching techniques the gravity and international environmental agreement formation literatures provide guidelines for the choice of matching variables we find that kyoto countries exports are reduced by 13 to 14 per cent due to kyoto commitment trade effects are largest in energy intensive homogeneous industries such as iron and steel non ferrous metals organic and inorganic chemicals but also in machinery and equipment

assessing the frontiers of ultrapoverty reduction evidence from challenging the frontiers of poverty reduction targeting the ultra poor an innovative program in bangladesh abstractthis article uses household panel data to provide robust evidence on the effects of brac s building resources across countries targeting the ultra poor tup program in bangladesh we use alternative treatment comparison pairs in addition to brac s own classification we exploit type 1 errors in assignment in brac s selection process to create a second treatment comparison pair this allows us to estimate the program effects on the target group not contaminated by mistargeting to address selection on unobservables we implement heteroskedasticity based identification and two recent estimators based on matching and propensity score reweighting the results show that participation had significant positive effects on food security clothing shoes livestock and cash savings but there is weak or no evidence of an impact on the number of household durables and assets and indicators of health and women s empowerment the effects on the poorest of the poor the target group may be different from

flypaper effects in transfers targeted to women evidence from brac s targeting the ultra poor program in bangladesh abstract many development interventions target transfers to women however little evidence directly explores the flypaper effects of whether women retain control over these transfers once within the household and how reallocation of the transfers affects women s empowerment we study these dynamics in the context of brac s randomized cfpr tup program in bangladesh which provides livestock and training to rural women in ultra poor households our analysis confirms previous findings that cfpr tup increased household asset ownership but shows complex effects on targeted women women appear to retain ownership over transferred livestock but new investments from mobilized resources are largely owned by men cfpr tup also reduces women s movement outside the home and control over income consistent with transferred livestock requiring maintenance at home however beneficiary women also report intangible benefits such as increased social capital and even with limited mobility a preference for work inside the home given a hostile environment outside the home

asean china free trade area a bane or boon for asean countries at the asean summit in november 2000 the leaders of asean and china agreed to enhance economic cooperation and integration with the goal of establishing an asean china free trade area fta this decision was a natural response to a number of important global and regional developments of the past decade since the signing of the framework agreement policymakers from china and asean member states have already started their negotiations on the specific terms and features for this proposed fta while such an fta would hold the potential of yielding enormous economic benefits it also causes some sense of apprehension and uncertainty in some quarters due to the common perception that china is already a strong competitor in trade and attracting foreign investment to examine the economic basis for such concern this paper analyses the economic implications of this proposed free trade area from the asean economies perspective specifically it examines how competitive asean countries are vis a vis china evaluate the scope for strengthening china asean trade and the impediments facing chinese and asean investors in each other s markets and recommends policy measures to maximise the benefits and minimise the hardships resulting from an asean china fta

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

the wto trade effect this paper reexamines the gatt wto membership efiect on bilateral trade ows using nonparametric methods including pair matching permutation tests and a rosenbaum 2002 sensitivity analysis together these methods provide an estimation framework that is robust to misspeciflcation biases allows general forms of heterogeneous treatment efiects and addresses potential hidden selection biases this is in contrast to most conventional parametric studies on this issue our results suggest large gatt wto trade promoting efiects robust to various restricted matching criteria alternative indicators for gatt wto involvement different matching methodologies non random incidence of positive trade ows and inclusion of multilateral resistance terms

strategic choices for renewable energy investment conceptual framework and opportunities for further research this paper introduces the special issue on strategic choices for renewable energy investment which is a collection of best papers presented at an international research conference held in st gallen switzerland in february 2010 substantial private investment is needed if public policy objectives to increase the share of renewable energy and prevent dangerous anthropogenic climate change are to be achieved the aim of this paper and the entire special issue is to draw scholarly attention to the processes underlying strategic choices for renewable energy investment and how they are influenced by energy policy we disentangle the role of risk return perceptions portfolio effects and path dependence in explaining energy investment decisions and suggest that the heterogeneous universe of investors requires a segmentation of policies the paper outlines some of the rich opportunities for further research in this emerging area

china india and the commodity boom economic and environmental implications for low income countries the international role of china has risen steadily for two decades and has become even more important in the current global recession the growing supply of labour intensive manufactured exports from china has been accompanied by a huge expansion in its imports both of raw materials and of skill intensive manufactured parts and components this offshoring of intermediates production by a large labour abundant economy has economic and environmental implications for other developing economies more recently the rapid expansion of the indian economy and trade indicates that it too will soon exert similar effects on global markets we sketch a model showing how the growth of these developing country giants generates adjustment pressures on other developing economies we discuss in particular how differences in relative factor endowments of resource rich economies can produce quite different outcomes in the context of product fragmentation and expanding commodity trade we also explore the effects on production trade environment and prospects for future growth in resource rich economies particularly in the context of weak institutions and other market failures we illustrate these different impacts by considering the cases of indonesia malaysia and thailand and highlight implications for growth development and policy

assessing and managing regulatory risk in renewable energy contrasts between canada and the united states abstact a challenge for energy firms when considering new investments is to balance expected financial gains against potential risks however while investment opportunities in different jurisdictions are often straightforward to identify the policy or regulatory risks for investors are more difficult to accurately ascertain here i provide a novel conceptual framework for how firms can assess regulatory risk that focuses on the institutional processes governing policy making risks are lower and policies will subsequently be more stable in jurisdictions where regulatory agencies have greater autonomy from politicians and where policies are formulated through more rigid policy making processes the contrasting development patterns of renewable energy policies in ontario and texas offer support for the framework i further develop strategies for how firms can successfully manage regulatory risks in different types of environment

does government ideology influence deregulation of product markets empirical evidence from oecd countries this paper examines how government ideology has influenced deregulation of product markets in oecd countries i analyze a dataset of non manufacturing regulation indicators covering energy transport and communication industries in 21 oecd countries over the 1980 2003 period and employ two different indices of government ideology the results suggest that government ideology has had a strong influence on the deregulation process market oriented governments promoted the deregulation of the energy transport and communication industries this finding identifies remarkable differences between leftist and rightwing governments concerning the role of government in the economy and basic elements of political order

selection on observed and unobserved variables assessing the effectiveness of catholic schools in this paper we measure the effect of catholic high school attendance on educational attainment and test scores because we do not have a good instrumental variable for catholic school attendance we develop new estimation methods based on the idea that the amount of selection on the observed explanatory variables in a model provides a guide to the amount of selection on the unobservables we also propose an informal way to assess selectivity bias based on measuring the ratio of selection on unobservables to selection on observables that would be required if one is to attribute the entire effect of catholic school attendance to selection bias we use our methods to estimate the effect of attending a catholic high school on a variety of outcomes our main conclusion is that catholic high schools substantially increase the probability of graduating from high school and more tentatively attending college we find little evidence of an effect on test scores

made in mexico energy reform and manufacturing growth we assess the real effects of a recent opening of the energy sector in mexico to private investment we look at one particular channel which operates through the change in the structure of electricity generation in favor of cheaper sources of energy such as natural gas we look at the potential impact of this structural change on electricity prices and ultimately on manufacturing output using subsector and state level manufacturing output data we first document that electricity prices relative to oil and gas are more important to the manufacturing sector with a one standard deviation reduction in those prices leading to a 2 8 increase in manufacturing output this elasticity together with estimated decreases in electricity prices on the back of the reform could increase manufacturing output by up to 3 6 and overall real gdp by 0 6 larger effects are possible in the long run if increased efficiency in the electricity sector leads to further decreases in electricity prices there can also be larger effects stemming from output in the services sector which we find to also respond statistically significantly to electricity prices and from the endogenous response of unit labor costs which decrease with lower electricity prices

gender assets and agricultural development lessons from eight projects ownership of assets is important for poverty reduction and women s control of assets is associated with positive development outcomes at the household and individual levels this research was undertaken to provide guidance for agricultural development programs on how to incorporate gender and assets in the design implementation and evaluation of interventions this paper synthesizes the findings of eight mixed method evaluations of the impacts of agricultural development projects on individual and household assets in seven countries in africa and south asia the results show that assets both affect and are affected by projects indicating that it is both feasible and important to consider assets in the design implementation and evaluation of projects all projects were associated with increases in asset levels and other benefits at the household level however only four projects documented significant positive impacts on women s ownership or control of some types of assets relative to a control group and of those only one project provided evidence of a reduction in the gender asset gap the quantitative and qualitative findings suggest ways that greater attention to gender and assets by researchers and development implementers could improve outcomes for women in future projects

political institutions of electricity regulation the case of turkey abstract turkey has been going through a liberalization process in its electricity market over the last decade so far the regulatory content of the market reforms has been in the center of attention in the literature to the negligence of regulatory governance however recent studies which applied the theoretical insights of new institutional economics to utilities regulation have demonstrated that political endowments of the country draw the boundaries to which extent such regulatory content can be effectively implemented in line with these studies this paper adopts an institutional approach and attempts to identify the political endowments of turkey in order to further analyze whether the market reforms succeeded in bringing about sufficient checks to cure the institutional problems in other words the paper takes a picture of the overall regulatory arena the results show that the current regulatory structure especially government regulator relations yet fails to meet good regulatory governance criteria the paper also provides some policy suggestions

interactions between the power and green certificate markets abstract the current trend of liberalising the power markets is combined with ambitious deployment plans for power production based on renewable energy supplies a new policy scheme to ensure this extension has been developed in the form of a green certificate system with a politically determined target of deployment in such a system producers of renewably based electricity receive tradable certificates in proportion to the electricity they produce the producer can thereby sell these certificates and receive additional revenue apart from the power price this paper studies the price and consumption effects of such a system with a simple model we show that the effects are ambiguous this ambiguity is caused by the interaction between the two markets therefore the green certificate system is difficult to manage if the state has parallel energy targets such as a desired deployment of renewably based energy and a stabilisation or reduction of the energy consumption in addition this complicates the regulation through a deployment target of renewably based power production as the regulator has to be aware of the different effects which follow a specific target until now these effects have not been considered in the analyses of the green certificate system when introducing the system even though it might have considerable consequences for the success of the system

evaluating the long run impact of an innovative anti poverty programme evidence using household panel data using a four round panel data set from the first phase of the challenging the frontiers of poverty reduction targeting the ultra poor cfpr tup programme of brac we investigate whether a one off transfer of livestock assets improves well being of the very poor women in bangladesh programme impact is assessed on a wide range of monetary and nonmonetary measures of well being using difference in difference dd as well as matching methods we find significant positive long term impact on food security household savings assets and participation in microfinance participant women are less likely to be in distress occupation and more into self employment however the long term effect is much smaller for most outcomes when compared to short and medium run impacts we conclude by discussing the significance of the institutional and regional context for the observed time path of estimated programme effect

do we really know that the wto increases trade comment in a recent article in the american economic review andrew k rose 2004 finds that countries belonging to the general agreement on tariffs and trade gatt and its successor the world trade organization wto did not trade more than countries that abstained from membership a vast literature on the gatt and the wto presupposes that these organizations were important but until rose there were few systematic efforts to test the assumption that membership increased trade rose s contribution is striking because he assembles a large dataset performs a myriad of analyses and uncovers scant evidence that the gatt and the wto had any impact rose describes his negative findings as an interesting mystery 112 the solution to this mystery lies in understanding who actually participated in the gatt we show that rose has overlooked a large proportion of countries to which the agreement applied and mistakenly classified them as nonparticipants when in fact they had rights and obligations under the agreement this causes a downward bias in his estimates of the gatt s effect on trade because his gravity regressions

alternative approaches to evaluation in empirical microeconomics four alternative but related approaches to empirical evaluation of policy interventions are studied social experiments natural experiments matching methods and instrumental variables in each case the necessary assumptions and the data requirements are considered for estimation of a number of key parameters of interest these key parameters include the average treatment effect the treatment on the treated and the local average treatment effect some issues of implementation and interpretation are discussed drawing on the labour market programme evaluation literature

milk in the data food security impacts from a livestock field experiment in zambia summary smallholder livestock ownership has potential to enhance food security by raising incomes of the poor and by increasing the availability of nutrient dense foods this paper exploits the staggered rollout of livestock distribution by heifer international in zambia to identify the effects of livestock using statistically similar treatment and control groups in a balanced panel of households results indicate that livestock ownership improves dietary diversity through both direct consumption of animal products produced on farm and through increased consumption expenditures further results indicate that expanded livestock ownership alters the local food economy to influence food consumption by households lacking farm animals

which renewable energy policy is a venture capitalist s best friend empirical evidence from a survey of international cleantech investors governments around the world have adopted ambitious targets to increase the share of renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions they pursue a variety of policy approaches to achieve these targets it has been a popular theme for contributions in energy policy to investigate the effectiveness of such policies this article adds a new perspective to the debate namely looking at the policy preferences of private investors in innovative clean energy technology firms we surveyed 60 investment professionals from european and north american venture capital and private equity funds and asked them to assess the effectiveness of various policies in terms of stimulating their interest to invest in innovative clean energy technologies in addition to quantitative rankings we use qualitative interview data to capture additional information on why investors prefer some policies over others the combined analysis compensates for the inherent limitations of a quantitative ranking using generic policy types the results of this exploratory analysis demonstrate that all other things being equal investors in our sample perceived feed in tariffs to be the most effective renewable energy policy the overall preference for feed in tariffs is even more pronounced among investors based in europe and with higher exposure to clean energy

green energy market development in germany effective public policy and emerging customer demand this paper reviews the development of renewable energy in germany from 1973 to 2003 it investigates the relative importance of energy policy and green power marketing in shaping the renewable energy market more than a decade of consistent policy support for renewables under the feed in law streg and its successor eeg has been an important driver for increasing renewable electricity generation to date putting the country in a better position than most of its peers when it comes to achieving european union targets for renewable energy green power marketing driven by customer demand on the other hand is growing but has had limited measurable impact so far we discuss potential intangible benefits of green power marketing and scenarios for future market development the paper concludes with lessons that can be learned from the german case for policy design and market development in other countries

how much can asset transfers help the poorest evaluating the results of brac s ultra poor programme 2002 2008 abstract the impacts of an innovative programme in rural bangladesh which has assisted extremely poor households literally the poorest of the poor were assessed over a six year period 2002 2008 the provision of a substantial dose of assets has helped produce very positive results by and large vulnerability to downturns on account of negative events such as illnesses and house damage has resulted in asset losses for several assisted households additional measures that reduce vulnerability and risk will help complete the good work commenced by the asset transfer plan

towards a unified scheme for environmental and social protection learning from pes and cct experiences in developing countries environmental protection and poverty alleviation in the developing world are usually heralded as joint objectives however these two goals are often associated with different sectoral policy instruments while so called payments for environmental services pes are increasingly being promoted for environmental protection poverty alleviation is increasingly addressed by conditional cash transfers cct program these instruments although aimed to achieve distinct objectives have a number of similarities and challenges in their design and implementation phases this paper elaborates on these similarities and develops a unifying generic framework that is used to discuss the extent to which both approaches could be unified

the need for improved financial reporting of a developing country energy utility abstract some consideration has been given to regulatory and institutional reforms to facilitate sustainable development in electricity usage in papua new guinea but little attention has been paid to bringing about full compliance of financial reporting expectations of the country s main energy utility examining documentary evidence of the audit reports of the auditor general s office of papua new guinea this study considers the financial reporting compliance of png power for the period 2007 2013 and the means by which compliant reporting may be improved the results of the study reveal that the financial statements of png power are late and receive disclaimers of opinion from the auditor general s office which suggest that png power s stakeholders are not receiving accurate and reliable financial information to make informed decisions about sustainable development of electricity usage and planning in papua new guinea the study reveals that it would take little resources to improve png power s reporting which in turn could enhance national energy policy decision making and energy utility accountability

a generalized design for bilateral trade flow models abstract this paper suggests a full interaction effects design to analyze bilateral trade flows this is illustrated with an unbalanced panel of bilateral trade between the triad eu15 usa and japan economies and their 57 most important trading partners over the period 1986 1997 our full interaction model finds empirical support for the new trade theory and linder s hypothesis we show that the omission of one or more interaction effects can result in biased estimates and misleading inference

the demand side of social protection lessons from cambodia s labour rights experience summary in fragile states recent efforts to advance the social protection agenda have focused primarily on loosening supply side constraints but the resulting kaleidoscope of donor driven projects has often overlooked the need to create a sense of ownership by beneficiaries in part this is because it is unclear what political and social structures effectively facilitate activism in situations where state society relations are contentious we use cambodia s unusual success creating and sustaining a labor rights regime to illustrate the dynamics behind one type of social regime change that has opened up governance over worker protections in a sustainable and potentially replicable way

the extent of the market and stages of agricultural specialization this paper provides empirical evidence of nonlinearity in the relationship between crop specialization in a village economy and the extent of the market size of the urban market relevant for the village the results suggest that the portfolio of crops in a village economy becomes more diversified initially as the extent of the market increases however after the market size reaches a threshold the production structure becomes specialized again this evidence on the stages of agricultural diversification is consistent with the stages of diversification identified in the recent literature for the economy as a whole and also for the manufacturing sector the evidence highlights the importance of improving farmers access to markets through investment in transport infrastructure and removal of barriers to trading

the price of policy risk empirical insights from choice experiments with european photovoltaic project developers managing the transition to a renewable energy future is an important policy priority in many countries solar photovoltaic pv technology is expected to make an important contribution but due to relatively higher cost its growth to date has been largely driven by public policy notably feed in tariffs feed in tariffs have been implemented in various countries however with widely differing outcomes in terms of installed pv capacity previous research indicates that the level of policy risk may be an important driver for differences in renewable energy policy effectiveness more specifically we suggest that investors who take a decision between pv investment opportunities in different countries carefully weigh feed in tariff induced returns against a set of policy risks and choose the country with the most favorable risk return profile we empirically test this model based on a stated preference survey among european pv project developers consisting of 1575 choice decisions by 63 investors the findings of our study demonstrate that risk matters in pv policy design and that a price tag can be attached to specific policy risks such as the duration of administrative processes or uncertainty induced by an approaching capacity cap governments can build on our empirical results to design policies that will be effective in attracting private pv investment while at the same time maintaining efficiency by providing an adequate compensation for policy risk

the direct and relative effects of preferential market access abstract the proliferation of preferential trade agreements has resulted in a complex system of preferences in which market access conditions are often discriminatory in this paper we investigate how market access conditions have evolved between 2000 and 2009 and how this has affected international trade our results show that the proliferation of preferential access has increased bilateral trade not only due to lower tariffs but also because preferential access often resulted in higher preferential margins vis a vis foreign competitors the results also indicate that the evolution of the system of preferences has been disadvantageous for countries that did not actively engage in forming new trade agreements

do trade agreements stimulate international trade differently evidence from 296 trade agreements in a seminal article rose 2004 found that the assumed positive impact of the wto on international trade was questionable this finding has been scrutinised and modified in subsequent research using different data sets econometric methods and separating the wto from other forms of trade agreements a key characteristic of the subsequent literature is the rather simplistic way in which trade agreements are treated whereby all trade agreements are lumped together trade agreements come however in many different forms and shapes this study addresses these differences in trade agreements using a unique database of 296 trade agreements we distinguish 17 trade related policy domains and indicate whether the agreements contain legally enforceable commitments this extensive and novel taxonomy of trade agreements enables us to allow for the possible heterogeneity of the impact of trade agreements on international trade using a gravity model we find that trade agreement heterogeneity indeed matters for international trade and that countries experience significant trade increases due to comprehensive trade agreements even if not all participants are in the wto

using conjoint analysis to derive estimates of compensating variation abstract we use several approaches to derive estimates of hicksian compensating variation from conjoint ratings data the different estimation approaches produced mixed results with respect to consistency with utility theory statistical significance of key variables magnitude of welfare estimates and confidence bounds on welfare estimates these findings suggest conjoint analyses are not a panacea for the problems being debated regarding contingent valuation and travel cost methodologies and conjoint questions appear to share many of the advantages and disadvantages associated with dichotomous choice contingent valuation questions

regulation competition and liberalization in many countries throughout the world regulators are struggling to determine whether and how to introduce competition into regulated industries this essay examines the complexities involved in the liberalization process while stressing the importance of case specific analyses this essay distinguishes liberalization policies that generally are procompetitive from corresponding anticompetitive liberalization policies

failure vs displacement why an innovative anti poverty program showed no net impact in south india abstract we analyze a randomized trial of an innovative anti poverty program in south india part of a series of pilot programs that provide ultra poor households with inputs to create new sustainable livelihoods often tending livestock in contrast with results from other pilots we find no lasting net impact on income or asset accumulation in south india we explore concerns with program implementation data errors and the existence of compelling employment alternatives the baseline consumption data contain systematic errors and income and consumption contain large outliers steps to address the problems leave the central findings largely intact wages for unskilled labor rose sharply in the area while the study was implemented blunting the net impact of the intervention and highlighting one way that treatment effects depend on factors external to the intervention itself such as broader employment opportunities

the impact of regulatory governance and privatization on electricity industry generation capacity in developing economies this article assesses whether a regulatory law and higher quality regulatory governance are associated with superior outcomes in the electricity industry the analysis for 28 developing economies over 1980 2001 draws on theoretical and empirical work on the impact of telecommunications regulators in developing economies controlling for privatization and competition and allowing for country specific fixed effects both regulatory law and higher quality regulatory governance are positively and significantly associated with higher per capita generation capacity this positive impact increases for more than 10 years as experience develops and regulatory reputation grows the results are robust to estimating alternative dynamic specifications including error correction models to inclusion of economy governance political risk indicators and to controlling for possible endogeneity biases the article concludes with a short discussion of causality in panel data modeling of governance models and the policy

the impact of group based credit programs on poor households in bangladesh does the gender of participants matter this paper estimates the impact of participation by gender in the grameen bank and two other group based micro credit programs in bangladesh on labor supply schooling household expenditure and assets the empirical method uses a quasi experimental survey design to correct for the bias from unobserved individual and village level heterogeneity we find that program credit has a larger effect on the behavior of poor households in bangladesh when women are the program participants for example annual household consumption expenditure increases 18 taka for every 100 additional taka borrowed by women from these credit programs compared with 11 taka for men

assessing the trade impact of the european neighbourhood policy on the eu med free trade area the european neighbourhood policy enp set an additional objective for the southern mediterranean countries smcs the prospect of a stake in the internal market the launch of this new policy has been the occasion for a revival of empirical studies aimed at assessing the impact of the eu med partnership on bilateral trade the novelty of this work is twofold i to present nonparametric matching estimators besides gravity estimates ii to assume as a counterfactual of the treatment the ex post long run average treatment effects of the europe agreements by controlling for likely selection bias and country and time heterogeneity using both qualitative and quantitative measures of the policy variable we assess ex post the trade enhancing impact of the eu preferential agreements towards smcs and ex ante the actual efficacy of the enp

estimating the average treatment effect of social safety net programmes in bangladesh since the famine in 1974 the bangladesh government and some national and international agencies have been providing food or cash or both to poor households through the social safety net programmes i seek to estimate how much these programmes affect the well being of poor households most previous studies have estimated impacts of these programmes on calorie consumption simply computing the raw differential however both observed and unobserved characteristics bias this treatment effect using fuzzy regression discontinuity rd design i control for these selection effects

one kind of freedom poverty dynamics in post apartheid south africa abstract a 1993 south african living standards survey documented the legacy of apartheid in the form high levels of inequality and human insecurity drawing on a 1998 re survey of households in the 1993 study this paper explores whether this legacy has been superseded or whether apartheid s end has been only one kind of freedom that has left households in a poverty trap from which they cannot escape after proposing a theoretically grounded dynamic poverty typology that distinguishes stochastic from structural poverty transitions the paper goes on to estimate that significant numbers of the south african poor are potentially trapped in a structural poverty trap and lack the means to escape poverty over time

no longer trapped promoting entrepreneurship through cash transfers to ultra poor women in northern kenya we examine the short to medium run impacts of the rural entrepreneur access program a poverty graduation program that promotes entrepreneurship among ultra poor women in arid and semi arid northern kenya a context prone to poverty traps the program relies on cash transfers rather than asset transfers in addition to business skills training business mentoring and savings participation in each of the program s three rounds was randomly determined through a public lottery in the short to medium run we find that the program has a positive and significant impact on income savings and asset accumulation similar to more traditional poverty graduation programs that rely on asset transfers

planning siting and the local acceptance of wind power some lessons from the french case abstract after some years of trifling development under a system of public tenders 1995 2000 french politicians progressively changed the national policy framework for feed in tariffs december 2000 and wind power development zones july 2005 the new policy framework has triggered a beginning of takeoff in wind power capacity the paper examines french wind power development in the light of two key dimensions and concepts related to wind power policy planning and siting part 1 we particularly focus on the recent french legislative debate which led to the adoption of the new policy framework part 2 the french case shows that the recourse to planning tools was not tailor made for siting issues but resulted from a political fight over the decentralization of energy policy the policy outcome which we call flexible decentralized planning is both interesting and ambiguous it is interesting in that it develops interfaces between planning tools and siting institutions it is ambiguous in that it is potentially very hierarchical the final decision power is left in state planners hands making it unpredictable the extent to which room will genuinely be provided for siting processes to take place

how effective is a big push to the small evidence from a quasi experiment summary this paper investigates whether a big push to the extreme poor in terms of a one off large grant enables them to participate in the microfinance program the analysis uses data from a quasi experiment on brac s ultra poor program in bangladesh the results for the baseline and repeat survey data for the treatment and comparison groups show that such a big push does make a significant impact on graduation to the microfinance program the results are robust to correction for self selection bias social capital and awareness also play important role in their decision on ngo membership and borrowing

the impact of the acfta on asean prc trade estimates based on an extended gravity model for component trade this article uses an extended gravity model to examine the impact of the free trade agreement between the association of southeast asian nations asean and the people s republic of china prc on their trade flows and patterns new determinants are utilized to capture the growing importance of global production sharing and intraregional trade in parts and components in east asia we show that the free trade agreement leads to substantially higher and more pronounced bilateral trade flows between asean and the prc than what a conventional gravity model predicts and the increase is concentrated in asean countries that have stronger industrial linkages with the prc

independent regulatory agencies and rules harmonization for the electricity sector and renewables in the mediterranean region the paper analyses the existing regulatory framework for the electricity and renewables sectors and the role of regulatory agencies in northern africa and middle east countries under the promotion by the european union using data collected through an original survey directed at regulators ministry departments and energy companies of the southern mediterranean the study is aimed at assessing the extent of agencies independence looking at three main dimensions of independence regulatory instruments available to regulators and decision making autonomy regulators organizational autonomy and regulators accountability results show that those countries having established an independent regulator have a more credible regulatory framework than those countries in which such a body does not exist in particular the analysis shows that turkey croatia and jordan have defined a regulatory framework that limits administrative expropriation and consequently creates an environment more suitable for attracting investments in the electricity and renewables sector on the institutional ground this is probably related with the harmonization of regulatory standards promoted by the european union through the neighboring policy for the jordan case and the membership perspective in the turkish and croatian cases

the marginal rate of corruption in public programs evidence from india abstract optimal fiscal policy depends on the marginal benefits of public spending in developing countries corrupt officials often embezzle funds so optimal policy should reflect marginal corruption we analyze marginal corruption in the context of a statutory wage increase in india s employment guarantee scheme strikingly workers received none of the increase even though initially they were on average overpaid the data are inconsistent with theories of voice in which the threat of complaints limits corruption but consistent with theories of exit in which outside options in the private sector limit how much rent officials can extract

how does contract design affect the uptake of microcredit among the ultra poor experimental evidence from the river islands of northern bangladesh abstractthis study examines the demand of microcredit among ultra poor households in northern bangladesh we implemented a field experiment to identify what type of credit is best suited to their demand we found that the uptake rate by the ultra poor is the lowest for regular small cash credit followed by in kind credit we also found that the ultra poor are significantly more likely to join a microcredit programme than the moderately poor if a grace period with longer maturity is attached to a large amount of credit irrespective of whether the credit is provided in cash or in kind

regional agricultural endowments and shifts of poverty trap equilibria evidence from ethiopian panel data we examine changes in patterns of equilibria over time and across regions applied to the ethiopia rural household survey we revisit incidence of multiple equilibria using new nonparametric techniques and examine single equilibria that remain stagnant below the poverty line using quantile regressions we identify differences across the income distribution we introduce the empirical analysis of sequences of equilibria we identify a single equilibrium in 1994 1999 but find a second higher equilibrium emerging in 1999 2004 evidencing a shift from unimodal toward a bimodal asset distribution the most deprived region exhibits a low level stagnant equilibrium despite significant rural income growth nationwide

why kill the golden goose a political economy model of export taxation why do governments tax exports at rates that are ultimately self defeating an answer may lie in the time inconsistent nature of a low tax policy using a dynamic model of export taxation i show that the sustainability of a low tax policy depends on three variables the ratio of sunk costs to total costs how heavily future export revenue is discounted and expected future export earnings using data on taxation leadership duration and profitability i test this theory for 32 countries and six crops from sub saharan africa these three variables are statistically and economically relevant predictors of tax regime

capturing the impact of shocks on the electricity sector performance in the oecd abstract this paper focuses on the responses of electricity performance to shocks arising from structural reform policies with a dynamic panel vector autoregression pvar model that allows endogeneity we decompose the responses of electricity performance measures to shocks generated by the inclusion of structural reform indicators capturing the effect of competition regulation and privatization the sample spans the period from 1975 to 2011 including 30 oecd countries the empirical findings do confirm that a robust independent regulatory scheme must be implemented in order to achieve a competitive electricity market finally the dynamic pvar results using impulse response functions and variance decomposition analysis further support the validity of these results

substitution and dropout bias in social experiments a study of an influential social experiment this paper considers the interpretation of evidence from social experiments when persons randomized out of a program being evaluated have good substitutes for it and when persons randomized into a program drop out to pursue better alternatives using data from an experimental evaluation of a classroom training program we document the empirical importance of control group substitution and treatment group dropping out evidence that one program is ineffective relative to close substitutes is not evidence that the type of service provided by all of the programs is ineffective although that is the way experimental evidence is often interpreted