calculated inequality portfolio benchmarking and regional office property investment in the uk the paper explores the reasons for the persistence in the uk of significant relative interregional variations in office property investment in the face of economic theory and empirical evidence that would support its more even spatial distribution the argument is made from a cultural economy perspective and involves the application to property of a concept drawn from the accountancy literature calculative practice uk investment decision making is distinguished by the primacy attributed to portfolio benchmarking as an influence on investment strategy the wider logic underpinning property benchmarking is subjected to critical appraisal then evidence is presented that suggests that benchmarking is a self referential practice which results in convergence and rigidity in fund structures and in the concentration of performance around a bounded range of sub optimal returns it is a barrier to the greater geographical diversification of office property investment

future directions for domestic food policy the u s food programs have gone through considerable changes over the last fifty years originally the food stamp program and the school lunch program which began in the 1930s were intended to dispose of farm surplus paarlberg p 101 however starting in the 1960s a series of events significantly changed the nature and scope of the u s food programs in the late 1960s the hunger lobby rallying various organizations motivated to help the poor came into existence resulting in an expansion of the domestic food assistance programs annual federal expenditures on u s department of agriculture usda food programs rose over ninefold to over 10 billion in the decade 1969 79 and reached 16 billion in 1981 longen about 60 of these expenditures were for the food stamp program the largest of the domestic food programs other current u s food programs include the school lunch program the school breakfast program the supplemental food program for women infants and children wic and the food distribution programs 1 each has its own eligibility criteria which target it toward a particular group of the population for example while the food stamp program s eligibility is based on general grounds such as income and family size and is not restricted to certain categories of the poor the wic program is precisely targeted toward those people determined by local health professionals to be at nutritional risk pregnant women infants etc the food assistance programs are now aimed at improving the nutritional status of low income people and school children for example emphasis is given to providing balanced meals in many of the child nutrition programs other changes include the greatly expanded food stamp program which through the use of vouchers or stamps has become the national approach to general food assistance finally as national standards replaced state and local regulations uniform eligibility standards and benefits gave the food programs a national scope however the spiraling costs of the domestic food programs have led some to question their effectiveness for example paarlberg p 109 has argued that the food stamp program has been expanded beyond its optimal point of providing food for those who are truly in need a growing federal deficit the new federalism and the current mood for fiscal restraint certainly indicate that the period of fast growth of the food programs is over after the escalation of the 1970s the 1980s likely will see a plateau in the total funding for domestic food programs in this context the issues of this decade will be to improve the effectiveness of the current food assistance programs it will require a better assessment of what is the appropriate safety net and what are the most efficient ways for society to provide such a safety net for domestic food policy this indicates a careful evaluation of the kind and amount of assistance provided e g in kind versus cash transfers it also raises the question of the proper target group and eligibility criteria for each food program in this paper some of the desirable characteristics of the food programs are examined for example it is argued that as far as food policy is concerned in kind transfers to households are superior to cash transfers implying that the food programs should not evolve toward direct cash assistance also any program that has rather general eligibility the author is an associate professor department of agricultural economics university of wisconsin the author wishes to acknowledge the comments and suggestions of peter helmberger and richard bishop i see longen and allen for a more detailed description of each program and senauer for a discussion of some food policy issues for example senauer has argued that modifications of the food program over the last twenty years have significantly weakened its ability to expand food consumption

seasonal poverty in madagascar magnitude and solutions abstract seasonal reductions in food consumption pull about one million malagasy below the poverty line during the lean season there they join the nine million more who remain chronically undernourished throughout the year because the seasonality of food shortages coincides with the increased prevalence of diarrhea and other diseases during the rainy season the resulting lean season exacts a heavy toll in the form of increased rates of malnutrition and child mortality combining the results of recent field studies with a seasonal multi market model this paper measures the probable impacts of three common interventions aimed at combatting seasonal food insecurity we find the most promising interventions to be those that increase agricultural productivity of the secondary food crops such as cassava other roots and tubers and maize

performance diversity and national identity evidence from association football the increasing national diversity of coworkers has no consensus on its impact on performance using a team s predominant nationality as a proxy for national diversity and national identity there is robust evidence that it affects team and individual performance detailed worker level data from a highly globalized industry association football show a nonlinear relationship between performance and the predominant nationality of a team s roster as the number of members from the predominant nationality increases performance declines however beyond a threshold level performance rises it follows that performance benefits from national diversity when the predominant nationality is small and from national identity when it is large jel m14 z21 z22 j15

virtual special issue editorial essay the shitty rent business what s the point of land rent theory in this introduction to a virtual special issue on land rent we sketch out the history of land rent theory encompassing classical political economy marx s political economy the marginalist turn and subsequent foundations for urban economics and the marxist consensus around rent theory during geography s spatial turn we then overview some of the contemporary strands of literature that have developed since the break down of this consensus namely political economy approaches centred on capital switching institutionalism of various stripes and the rent gap theory we offer a critical urban political economy perspective and a particular set of arguments run through the review first land is not the same as capital but has unique attributes as a factor of production which require a separate theorisation second since the 1970s consensus around land rent and the city dissipated the critical literature has tended to take the question of why how the payment exists at all for granted and so has ignored the particular dynamics of rent arising from the idiosyncrasies of land amongst the talk of an anthropocene and planetary urbanisation it is surprising that the economic fulcrum of the capitalist remaking of geography has fallen so completely off the agenda it is time to bring rent back into the analysis of land cities and capitalism

marketed surplus under risk do peasants agree with sandmo using a newly defined notion of aversion to income risk the behavior of the marketed surplus producer under price risk is characterized unlike the familiar case first examined by sandmo output depends on both ordinal preferences for goods and on risk attitudes conditions are found that yield an output level under risk that is smaller than under certainty if these conditions do not hold both risk and risk aversion may have a positive effect on output implications for econometric studies of risk attitudes are considered and illustrated with an example finally we examine the effect of uncertainty on the peasant s long run equilibrium

exploring the notional property developer as a policy construct this paper explores how far policy makers understand the structure of the development industry the perceived characteristics of developers and the extent to which such actors can be considered policy responsive if these matters are poorly understood the effectiveness of planning policy may be undermined especially where the private sector is responsible for undertaking most development the paper is based upon empirical research on the scottish executive s perceptions of and policy stances towards developers between 1999 and 2007 it finds that the executive appeared to have only limited understanding of what drives the development process or motivates individual developers and seemed unfamiliar with important differences within the industry sectorally and geographically instead the notional property developer was incorrectly conceived as a malleable and potentially compliant partner with shared objectives to the state the paper calls for a more thorough understanding of the development industr

why haven t global markets reduced inequality in emerging economies the theory of comparative advantage predicts that globalization should cause inequality in emerging economies to fall however this has not been true of the current globalization even though the prediction held up well for previous such episodes in this paper i sketch an alternative theory developed in collaboration with michael kremer that seems to fit recent history well

evaluation of investor behaviour in urban regeneration the financing of urban regeneration and levering of private sector investment remains a major policy issue this article utilising the results of a behavioural survey analyses the motivations of

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

budgetary units a weberian approach to consumption1 established consumption theory relies heavily on application of individualistic frames and market models of behavior a framework built around consumption oriented groups would facilitate progress toward a more general theory of consumption this article reintroduces and extends weber s budgetary unit concept to address this gap correcting key problems dogging the consumption literature the budgetary unit concept 1 offers a new framework for theorizing and better accounting for observed consumption patterns 2 reveals how consumption units have organizational logics preferences strengths and vulnerabilities that are consequentially distinct from market logic of production and profit and 3 focuses attention on social processes and features enabling theorization of general social patterns of consumption across diverse contexts this article highlights the explanatory power and broad applicability of weber s budgetary unit approach using the conventionally dissimilar cases of russian organized

quality quantity and spatial variation of price this paper develops and implements a method for estimating price elasticities of demand using cross sectional household survey data geographically clustered households report unit values which when corrected for quality effects and for measurement error indicate the underlying spatial variation in prices and can be matched to variation in demand patterns a simple model of quality choice is proposed while the correction for measurement error exploits the clustered design of such surveys data from a 1979 household survey from the ivory coast are used to estimate price elasticities for beef meat fish cereals and starches copyright 1988 by american economic association

transfers in cash and in kind theory meets the data we review theoretical explanations for in kind transfers in light of the limited empirical evidence after reviewing the traditional paternalistic arguments we consider explanations based on imperfect information and self targeting we then discuss the large literature on in kind programs as a way of improving the efficiency of the tax system and a range of other possible explanations including the samaritan s dilemma pecuniary effects credit constraints asymmetric information amongst agents and political economy considerations our reading of the evidence suggests that paternalism and interdependent preferences are leading overall explanations for the existence of in kind transfer programs but that some of the other arguments may apply to specific cases political economy considerations must also be part of the story

the price effects of cash versus in kind transfers this article examines the effect of cash versus in kind transfers on local prices both types of transfers increase the demand for normal goods in kind transfers also increase supply in recipient communities which could lead to lower prices than under cash transfers we test and confirm this prediction using a programme in mexico that randomly assigned villages to receive boxes of food trucked into the village equivalently valued cash transfers or no transfers we find that prices are significantly lower under in kind transfers compared to cash transfers relative to the control group in kind transfers cause a 4 fall in prices while cash transfers cause a positive but negligible increase in prices in the more economically developed villages in the sample households purchasing power is only modestly affected by these price effects in the less developed villages the price effects are much larger in magnitude which we show is due to these villages being less tied to the outside economy and having less competition among local suppliers

risk and insurance in a rural credit market an empirical investigation in northern nigeria credit contracts play a direct role in pooling risk between households in northern nigeria repayments owed by borrowers depend on realizations of random shocks by both borrowers and lenders the paper develops two models of state contingent loans the first is a competitive equilibrium in perfectly enforceable contracts the second permits imperfect information and equilibrium default estimates of both models indicate that quantitatively important state contingent payments are embedded in these loan transactions but that a fully efficient risk pooling equilibrium is not achieved the research is based on a year long survey in zaria nigeria conducted by the author

pecuniary redistribution through in kind programs abstract the pecuniary effects of cash and in kind programs differ a program that builds housing for the poor for example is likely to result in a lower price of existing low income housing than would an equally costly cash transfer program low income renters in general would benefit landlords would lose this paper argues that these pecuniary effects provide a previously unstudied rationale for the use of in kind programs specifically in a world in which the government has limited ability to target taxation the pecuniary effects of in kind programs may be used to transfer rents from one group in society to another the pros and cons of using in kind programs in this way are identified and examples from the real world are discussed

cash vs in kind transfers indian data meets theory this paper uses qualitative and quantitative data from a survey of over 1200 rural households in nine indian states to explore the arguments for and against cash and in kind in this case food transfers when respondents were asked to think about argue and choose between the two two thirds of the respondents expressed a preference for food rather than the choice made by respondents the focus here is on understanding the reasons behind their choice as explained by beneficiaries themselves two main findings emerge first some arguments corroborate existing theory e g paternalism fungibility but others e g self control transition costs are not incorporated in existing theory on the advantages of in kind transfers second context is important most importantly respondents reported preferences were associated with the benefits they were experiencing under the status quo where the pds performed better at distributing food respondents were more likely to report preferring food to cash transfers the contention of traditional theory that cash is superior fails to factor in contextual concerns

consumption and income seasonality in thailand many households in developing countries rely on seasonal agriculture for their incomes this paper investigates whether household consumption expenditure tracks income across seasons using data from thailand i contrast the seasonal consumption patterns of households with different seasonal income patterns and estimate the responsiveness of seasonal consumption to seasonal income i find little evidence that consumption tracks income over the course of the year the findings suggest that observed seasonal consumption patterns are the result of seasonal variations in preferences or prices common to all households rather than an inability of households to use savings behavior to smooth consumption

exploring recipient preferences and allocation mechanisms in the distribution of development aid this study uses incentive compatible techniques to obtain valuations of 14 common poverty reduction interventions from probable aid recipients recipients valuations for these interventions are

on the relative efficiency of cash transfers and subsidies i introduction economic theory has long argued that to raise the welfare of an individual at the lowest possible cost cash grants are more efficient than subsidies to the consumption of specific commodities indeed a demonstration of this result now constitutes part of many undergraduate price theory courses and most undergraduate courses in public finance put simply cash grants do not create the deadweight losses in consumption that would result from the distortion of relative prices 1 as familiar as this demonstration may be subsidies to selected commodities notably housing education food and health care represent a substantial fraction of government aid to the disadvantaged citizens of many countries 2 it is natural for us to ask why this is so as gary becker 1983 1985 has argued it is in no government s interest to transfer resources in a pareto inefficient manner if a switch to cash grants could make both recipients and donors better off by reducing the deadweight loss why would any government not make such a change to the several extant theories this paper adds another subsidies may be more effective than cash grants at raising the welfare of all members of a family when parents put insufficient in society s view weight on their children s welfare in household decision making when a government directs resources to a deserving family in which all consumption decisions are made by the head of the household an agency problem arises the head as the government s agent may not allocate resources in the way the government would wish by constraining the transfer using subsidies or in kind gifts the government may be able to influence the intrafamily allocations in a desired way ii subsidies vs cash grants there can be little doubt that a large fraction of aid to low income households in the united states comes in the form of subsidies 3 table i presents some statistics on the amount spent by the federal government on the largest programs table i some federal programs for low income individuals 1982 billions cash transfers aid to families with dependent children 8 00 supplemental security income 7 7 in kind and subsidies medicaid 17 4 medicare 44 8 food stamps 11 0 child nutrition 4 0 housing assistance 7 9 employment and training 4 5 social services 6 7 compensatory education 4 0 legal aid 0 3 low income energy assistance 1 7 figure is for 1981 source rosen 1985 88 the reader might glean at least two striking facts from this table the first is the magnitude of the redistribution represented here when one adds to this list the transfers by other levels of government for example for education it becomes clear that redistribution is a major function of american governments 4 second a significant share of this redistribution is done using subsidies including in kind transfers the public finance literature offers a number of explanations for the popularity of subsidies 5 taxpayers or their elected representatives might simply be paternalistic by this we mean that they evaluate the recipient s welfare using a utility function other than the recipient s 6 though undeniably interested in the welfare of those less fortunate these taxpayers might not be willing to provide cash if some fraction will be applied toward the purchase of alcohol tobacco or other luxury or disreputable commodities it may also be that there exist certain goods that society feels should be distributed more equally than free market allocations would provide

a degrowth transition pathways for the degrowth niche to replace the capitalist growth regime abstract facing the intertwined environmental social and economic crisis requires us to seriously consider alternatives to the current capitalist system including the emerging concept of degrowth existing understandings of degrowth have focused on characterizing the shape the key elements and the proposals for a degrowth society however its dynamic and evolving nature as an alternative vision of the future and the dynamics of a transition toward degrowth are inadequately considered this paper seeks to address this conceptual gap through a reconceptualisation of degrowth as a radical niche innovation to the capitalist growth regime by extending the multi level perspective framework to the capitalist growth system we undertake a critical reconsideration of the multi level perspective exposing key assumptions of this framework grounded in capitalist economic theory through this we propose a pluriversal potential pathway for change to consider this further a bibliometric analysis is used to measure and visualize research activity in degrowth as a proxy for the processes of development of the degrowth niche then we return to the multi level perspective to consider two potential pathways for change involving the degrowth niche and the capitalist growth regime finally we point to areas for further research that build on this new conceptualisation of a degrowth transition

cultural explanation of regional property markets a critique in a recent paper in this journal simon guy and john henneberry 2000 proposed an institutional approach to property markets that emphasises exceptional behaviour on the part of particular market agents using this cultural approach they claimed to have evidence that london based property investors deliberately underinvest in british property outside southern england this paper criticises their dismissal of pre existing economic and institutional property market analysis and questions the validity of their empirical conclusions

cash transfers and high food prices explaining outcomes on ethiopia s productive safety net programme an ongoing and highly politicised debate concerns the relative efficacy of cash transfers versus food aid this paper aims to shed light on this debate drawing on new empirical evidence from ethiopia s productive safety net programme psnp our data derive from a two wave panel survey conducted in 2006 and 2008 ethiopia has experienced unprecedented rates of inflation since 2007 which have reduced the real purchasing power of psnp cash payments our regression findings confirm that food transfers or cash plus food packages are superior to cash transfers alone they enable higher levels of income growth livestock accumulation and self reported food security these results raise questions of fundamental importance to global humanitarian response and social protection policy we draw out some implications for the design of social transfer programmes and describe some steps that could be taken to enable predictable transfers to meet predictable needs

informing food security decisions in africa empirical analysis and policy dialogue discussions of economic and agricultural development in africa have focused heavily in recent years on structural adjustment i e basic policy changes aimed at allowing international and domestic markets to play a greater role in coordinating national economic activities often these structural adjustments and accompanying policies aimed at improving economic performance have been based on several implicit assumptions about how african food systems operate yet for many countries little empirical information has been available to test these assumptions hence designing policies too often becomes an exercise in planning without facts this paper argues that not only is there a need to base food security and structural adjustment policies more firmly on empirical information but that the process by which the information is obtained is as important as the information itself agricultural economists and other social scientists can and increasingly should design policy research in africa in ways that simultaneously increase effective demand for empirical information as an input into the ongoing policy process and augment african capacity continually to inform policy deliberations we illustrate the payoffs to such an approach by drawing on selected experience in several african countries weber

noise a firm made trade barrier abstract a dominant domestic firm confronted by a fringe of risk averse importers achieves higher profits by adopting a volatile price policy than by setting quantity according to the standard marginal condition the fluctuating domestic price is equivalent to a tariff on imports for all intents and purposes the local firm raises its rivals costs

community based risk management arrangements a review summary risk and its consequences pose a formidable threat to poverty reduction efforts this article reviews a plethora of community based risk management arrangements across the developing world these types of arrangements are garnering greater interest in light of the growing recognition of the relative prominence of household or individual specific idiosyncratic risk as well as the increasing shift towards community based development funding the article discusses potential advantages such as targeting cost and informational and disadvantages such as exclusion and inability to manage correlated risk of these arrangements and their implications for the design of community based social protection programs and policies

brokered livelihoods debt labour migration and development in tribal western india seasonal labour migration is an increasingly important aspect of rural livelihoods in tribal areas of western india such migration can no longer be viewed merely as an adjunct to an essentially agrarian way of life but has to be seen as integral to the coping survival and livelihood strategies of tribal farming families rural to urban migration is often viewed as a consequence of environmental crisis in which migrants as ecological refugees gadgil and guha 1995 are forcibly displaced by processes of deforestation soil erosion water scarcity land fragmentation declining agricultural productivity and population increase while increasing pressure on a fragile resource base has indeed contributed to widespread failure to meet subsistence needs among tribal households the research discussed in this study shows that the forces leading to migration are as much to do with the social relations of dependency and indebtedness which subsistence failure entails as with ecological decline the problem is

an experiment on cash and in kind transfers with application to food assistance programs the impact of providing food assistance in kind via food stamps or restricted debit cards vs cash has long been a subject of debate prior efforts to causally identify the effects of the two types of transfers have been hindered by concerns over non random selection into assistance programs misreporting of program benefits and identification of inframarginal households who theoretically should treat cash and in kind transfers identically this paper reports the results of an economic experiment designed to cleanly test some conceptual issues associated with in kind vs cash giving in a lunchroom meal setting given current debates about the healthiness of food assistance recipients diets we also consider the impacts of placing restrictions on in kind transfers that either prohibit soda purchases with the transfer or require the transfer be spent on fruits and vegetables overall we find that as theory predicts in kind transfers have the same effect on food expenditures as an unrestricted cash transfer for inframarginal consumers and for extramarginal consumers food expenditures are higher for in kind than cash transfers participants also respond to the fruit and vegetable restriction as theory would predict however in contrast to the theoretical prediction the soda restriction reduces soda expenditures for more than half the inframarginal consumers

will developing country nutrition improve with income a case study for rural south india aggregate estimates of food expenditure are consistent with such a possibility implying income expenditure elasticities close to one however the high degree of aggregation at which such estimates are made means that the considerable increase in price per nutrient as income increases is ignored and the nutrient elasticities are therefore overstated estimates for a rural south indian sample indicate that this bias is considerable and that the true nutrient elasticities with respect to income may be close to zero

price risk in supply equations an application of garch time series models to the u s broiler market that risk considerations figure prominently into agents decisions is now widely recognized by both theoretical and applied economists for example much research has focused on extending neoclassical production theory to include agents that maximize expected utility of returns under price and or output uncertainty 37 4 25 35 12 31 concurrent with this theoretical research on risk has been a growing literature on the empirical effects of risk on economic decisions examples include the studies on the role of risk in aggregate agricultural production and

on price risk and the inverse farm size productivity relationship abstract the oft observed inverse relationship between farm size and productivity has elicited several explanations having important policy and theoretical implications using advances in the analysis of price risk effects on producer behavior and a simple two period model of an agricultural household that both produces and consumes under price uncertainty at the time labor allocation decisions are made this paper demonstrates analytically that a non degenerate land distribution and price risk can together produce an inverse relationship even absent any of the more common explanations empirical evidence from madagascar confirms the plausibility of this intuitive explanation for the phenomenon

liberalization and food price distributions arch m evidence from madagascar abstract there is no well articulated theory of how stochastic food prices respond to economic liberalization measures a surprising oversight in the vast literature on market oriented reforms this paper presents reduced form estimates of the effects of liberalization measures on food commodity prices in madagascar using autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic in mean arch m methods the data indicate that the short term effects of liberalization on the mean and variance of food prices vary substantially by commodity region and season in the long term liberalization increases both the mean and the variance of food prices the abandonment of a quantity rationed state marketing system with administrative pricing also leads to smaller inter regional and interseasonal differences in mean food prices and a sharp increase in price autocorrelation real exchange rates have pronounced positive effects on mean food prices but these effects emerge indirectly rather than directly through induced changes to border parity prices

optimal storage and marketing over space and time borrowing from the theory of optimal resource extraction we develop the mechanism guiding efficient commodity storage and marketing over producing regions through the crop year optimal storage occurs at producing areas and time in storage varies directly with distance to market prices grow with interest rates in locations where storage is efficient but more slowly elsewhere which explains why market prices i e prices at the market grow more slowly than interest rates the model is empirically supported by examining storage in the corn belt rates of price growth at various points and quarterly grain marketings

farmers welfare and changing food prices nonparametric evidence from rice in madagascar this paper uses nonparametric density estimation and kernel smoothing techniques to examine the instantaneous distributional implications of rice price changes in madagascar while many farmers do not participate in product markets as either buyers or sellers and net sales or marketable surplus are fairly small for many others the roughly one third of rice farmers who fall below the poverty line face significant negative first order welfare effects from increases in the mean or variance of rice prices conversely the first order gains from rice price increases are highly concentrated among the largest rice farmers and particular regions in madagascar

economics and underdetermination a case study of urban land and housing economics underdetermination associated with the duhem quine thesis is a familiar if under researched theme in economics in the light of this we examine the development of urban land and housing economics through its cartesian dualistic delineation of theory and data the contemporary mainstream approach appears unable to circumvent the problem of underdetermination in effect it employs the strong version of duhem quine in its retention of the assumption of a single unitary competitive market and associated access space trade off conversely we highlight the affinity of ely s and the later columbia school s approach to pragmatists dewey and peirce which provides a more fruitful basis for explanation

urban bias in price risk the geography of food price distributions in low income economies the geography of agricultural marketing has important implications for the stochastic distribution of agricultural commodity prices this article proposes that objective food price risk differs between rural and urban areas of infrastructure poor economies characterised by spatially concentrated patterns of foodgrains storage this difference implies an urban bias having adverse welfare effects for peasants who seasonally switch between net food seller and net food buyer positions empirical analysis of rice price data from madagascar suggests that price variability and skewness indeed differ between rural and urban areas in ways that adversely influence the relative welfare of rural peasants

saving in developing countries theory and review in the literature on economic development much of the interest in saving has been focused on the relation between saving and growth but saving is not only about accumulation it is about smoothing consumption in the face of volatile and unpredictable income and helping to ensure the living standards of poor people whose lives are difficult and uncertain this paper develops a model of households which cannot borrow but which accumulate assets as a buffer stock to protect consumption when incomes are low such households dissave as often as they save do not accumulate assets over the long term and have on average very small asset holdings but their consumption is markedly smoother than their income much of the evidence is as consistent with this view of saving as it is incosistent with standard views of smoothing over the life cycle and with explanations of the link between saving and growth in terms of life cycle saving behavior consumption smoothing is also a useful way of thinking about government policy where volatility in the world prices of taxed commodities can generate sharp fluctuations in government revenues as well as reallocations of revenue between the private and public sectors many important policy issues in developing countries hinge on issues of consumption and smoothing and research on these issues is currently likely to be more productive than work on the relation between saving and growth

parastatals as instruments of government policy the food corporation of india abstract reforms of agri food policies typically occur without taking account of the structure of markets in which the policy reforms occur it is usually assumed that markets are perfectly competitive an assumption that is violated in the presence of parastatals they often play multiple roles in meeting the objectives of government policy through their activities in procurement and distribution of food commodities after presenting a general framework we modify it to model the specifics of the food corporation of india and the functions that it fulfils in providing price support to farmers and food security to poor households keeping the government s policy objectives unchanged we then alter the functions that the fci fulfils to be consistent with recommendations from the high level committee that recently investigated the role of the fci these recommendations included the substitution of negotiable warehouse receipts for the minimum support price scheme for farmers and the substitution of cash transfers in place of the targeted public distribution system for poor households we find that this re instrumentation of the means of achieving policy objectives together with a consequent greater role for the private sector leads to substantial welfare gains as well as to greater food security when measured as food availability

how effective is public health expenditure in improving overall health a cross country analysis the primary emphasis of this paper is on seeking some justification for the worldwide phenomenon of increasing government involvement in health care the disability adjusted health expectancy dale rankings of countries in the world health report 2000 ranked wealthier countries with a typically large public sector involvement in health care higher on the list contrary to the possible implications for this ranking this paper finds that the comparatively higher dale in wealthier countries is not a result of greater public health expenditures in the middle income and less developed countries however there is some evidence of effective public involvement in health care

rents from in kind subsidy charity in the public sector public choice analysis usually focuses attention on the behaviour of self interested individuals but this paper considers rent seeking when some taxpayers are motivated by altruism redistribution policies initiated by self interested rent seekers require taxpayer approval even if taxpayers are fully informed their resistance to inefficient schemes is reduced when public sector schemes are the only means available to pursue altruistic goals altruism serves to broaden the scope within which rent seekers may operate a discussion of international tied aid illustrates the impact which rent seeking can exert on public sector charity