the impact of mandatory disclosure laws on product choices an analysis of the salad dressing market abstract the nutrition labeling and education act nlea requires most food products to include a nutrition label prior to the nlea labeling was voluntary this study uses nutrition label information and supermarket scanner data pre and post nlea to examine the impact of moving from a voluntary to a mandatory labeling regime on consumer product choice the voluntary unraveling of information is shown to be an important market mechanism prior to the nlea all low fat salad dressings had a nutrition label while the majority of the higher fat dressings did not however there remained large variation in fat content among dressings that did not voluntarily label those with the highest fat levels experienced a significant decline in sales after they were required to disclose the results indicate that even in markets with credible low cost mechanisms to disclose mandatory labeling can have an impact on consumer behavior and health

women and budget deficits if women have different economic preferences than men then female economic and political empowerment is likely to change economic policy and in turn perhaps macroeconomic outcomes in this paper we narrow the focus to fiscal policy and we investigate whether female enfranchisement affects government budget deficits in a difference in differences regression for swiss cantonal panel data we find that the inclusion of women in the electorate has reduced deficits by a statistically significant amount

reputation effects in the market of certifiers evidence from the audit industry i introduction asymmetric information between seller and buyer can impede mutually beneficial transactions one of the solutions to this problem is to recruit an independent third party a certifier who verifies unobserved product characteristics for the buyer the certifier s independence is at the heart of the tripartite arrangement this independence however can be compromised when sellers pay for the certification for instance in the market of auditors and credit rating agencies cra it is not the investor i e the buyer of the security who pays for the certifier s services but the company which is to be impartially rated or audited in this business model companies can naturally manipulate their ratings audits furthermore investors only have a limited power to weed out dishonest certifiers simply because companies instead of investors choose auditors and cra ultimately these problems can pervert the certifier s mission to serve the investing community dranove and jin 2010 not surprisingly this conflict of interest has often been cited as a cause for accounting scandals and more recently for inflated credit ratings e g bis cfgs 2008 the economist 2004 2006 auditors and cra alike refute the criticism of their business model arguing that the threat of losing their reputation is a sufficient disciplinary device e g the economist 2005 1 however this claim has not yet been empirically substantiated a successful mechanism of reputation has three components in the presence of conflicts of interest consider the audit market 2 first investors have to punish companies which chose low quality auditors there is evidence that capital markets severely penalize companies whose audit reports are of dubious quality e g chaney philipich and kirk 2002 gao 2003a krishnamurthy zhou and zhou 2006 pacini and hillison 2003 second this negative capital market reaction should feed into companies auditor choice i e companies should choose high quality auditors third auditors then should have the incentive to provide high quality audits the second stage of this mechanism has not been empirically validated yet in particular it has not been analyzed whether the adverse capital market reaction to low audit quality feeds into companies auditor choice and if it does how a positive effect of adverse quality signals on audit demand means that firms prefer to engage lenient auditors in order to receive favorable reports suggesting that conflicts of interest overwhelm reputation concerns and clearly fail the disciplinary mechanism a negative effect on the other hand indicates that while investors do not pay for audit services they can exert discipline on auditors indirectly by forcing public companies to choose high quality auditors a success of reputation in this paper i exploit the natural experiment of arthur andersen s collapse and test the effects of audit quality signals on companies auditor choice in discrete choice models the quality signals in this study are auditors industry specific financial restatement histories i e the proportion of clients in an industry which restated financial statements in the past i find that auditors restatement histories are a crucial driving force in the subsequent auditor choice of deserting andersen clients there are compelling reasons why auditors financial restatement histories should forcibly feed into a company s auditor choice restatements are material corrections of published financial statements which cannot be relied upon anymore and have to be reissued since the very role of the independent auditor is to ensure that financial statements are fairly presented in all material respects it appears natural to think that the auditor has not done his job properly if a financial statement has to be restated later indeed there is ample evidence that capital markets receive restatements badly

strategic information disclosure the case of multi attribute products with heterogeneous consumers we examine the incentives for firms to voluntarily disclose otherwise private information about quality attributes of differentiated products in particular we focus on the case of differentiated products with multiple attributes and consumers that are heterogeneous in their preferences over these attributes we show that there exist certain configurations of consumer preferences under which a firm producing a high quality product even with zero costs of disclosure may choose not to reveal the quality of its product this failure of firms to voluntarily disclose the quality of their products will arise when providing consumers with more information results in more elastic demands for these products which in turn triggers more intensive price competition and leads to lower prices and profits for all firms as a result the equilibrium in which disclosure is voluntary may diverge from that in which disclosure is mandatory

imperfect choice or imperfect attention understanding strategic thinking in private information games to understand the thinking process in private information games we use mousetracking to record which payoffs subjects attend to the games have three information states and vary in strategic complexity subjects consistently deviate from nash equilibrium choices and often fail to look at payoffs which they need to in order to compute an equilibrium response choices and lookups are similar when stakes are higher when cluster analysis is used to group subjects according to lookup patterns and choices three clusters appear to correspond approximately to level 3 level 2 and level 1 thinking in level k models and a fourth cluster is consistent with inferential mistakes as for example in qre or cursed equilibrium theories deviations from nash play are associated with failure to look at the necessary payoffs the time durations of looking at key payoffs can predict choices to some extent at the individual level and at the trial by trial level

whose business is it anyway this article examines how gender may account for productivity gaps across enterprises first using data from six countries in sub saharan africa the article demonstrates that the extent and significance of any productivity gap by gender depends critically on the criteria used to classify an enterprise using a definition of female participation in ownership there are few differences in average performance measures however a 12 productivity gap emerges when a tighter definition based on decision making control is used second the article examines which entrepreneurial characteristics education management skills experience and the motivation for being an entrepreneur are most associated with higher productivity the findings reveal that there are some gender gaps in the prevalence of these characteristics but that these do not account for the overall gender productivity gap rather while women benefit as much as men from education and management skills there are non linear impacts by gender in the benefits of having a family background in entrepreneurship sons rather than daughters benefit from having a father that was an entrepreneur or from joining a family enterprise

who benefits the interactional determinants of microfinance s varied effects abstractsince its emergence as a development tool scholars and practitioners have questioned microfinance s short and long term impacts but have had insufficient empirical evidence to assess them to address this gap this paper draws on mixed method research to assess the effects of microfinance loan and educational services over time it explores why even within the same microfinance institution mfi some borrowers benefit from microfinance services more than others in the short term and examines how this translates into long term impacts the article identifies understudied sources of intra group variation the diversity and choices of borrowers and mfi employees interacting with each other and their broader contexts

the short run and long run effects of behavioral interventions experimental evidence from energy conservation we document three remarkable features of the opower program in which social comparison based home energy reports are repeatedly mailed to more than six million households nationwide first initial reports cause high frequency action and backsliding but these cycles attenuate over time second if reports are discontinued after two years effects are relatively persistent decaying at 10 20 percent per year third consumers are slow to habituate they continue to respond to repeated treatment even after two years we show that the previous conservative assumptions about post intervention persistence had dramatically understated cost effectiveness and illustrate how empirical estimates can optimize program design jel d12 d83 l94 q41

the effect of standardized information on firm survival and marketing strategies we argue that standardized information disclosure information using a common format and uniform metrics creates asymmetric opportunities for firms which affects their strategies and survival we test our predictions using a longitudinal quasi experimental field study involving the nutrition labeling and education act of 1990 nlea and we focus on firm market share within a category as a key asymmetry findings indicate that in general the nlea had no effect on firm responses however when accounting for firm differences we observe that the nlea led to 1 an increase in small share firm exits and 2 a greater increase in distribution for large share firms no concurrent increase in price by large share firms following the nlea was observed we conclude by discussing the implications of these effects for firm strategy the design of public policy and theories regarding the impact of information on markets

gender and microfinance performance why does the institutional context matter summary this paper investigates why and under which institutional circumstances female membership in microfinance institutions mfi improves mfi performance in terms of debt repayment specifically this paper theorizes that female membership in mfis improves the mfi s performance through enhanced debt repayment especially under adverse cognitive and regulatory institutional conditions we draw upon unique qualitative and quantitative data covering 26 microfinance projects in 22 african eastern european latin american and asian countries this study has implications for the microfinance literature in that it challenges the widely held assumption that female participation has a positive effect on mfi performance under all institutional circumstances

credit constraints credit unions and small scale producers in guatemala abstract efficient and equitable development outcomes may depend in part on whether formal financial institutions leave low wealth producers tightly constrained in their access to credit if so can cooperative institutions efficiently relax these constraints these issues are explored using survey data gathered from 950 small scale producer households in areas of guatemala with market oriented credit unions that mobilize savings and make unsubsidized loans nonprice rationing by banks is found to be common among lower wealth households while credit unions relax credit constraints for a significant portion of those rationed by banks but not the poorest of the study households

the effect of agriculture on repayment efficiency a look at mfi borrowing groups there is a widely held industry assumption from microfinance institutions that agricultural loans have poorer repayment rates which has resulted in many loans being provided for small businesses as opposed to agricultural purposes using data from a sample of 100 borrowing groups from a south indian microfinance institutions mfi this study challenges this belief by analyzing the repayment efficiency of borrowing groups and reflects on the implications for agricultural microfinance loans the analysis is run using bayesian stochastic frontier estimation with an exponential hierarchical prior on the efficiency term our results indicate that the average efficiency of the borrowing groups analyzed was approximately 75 and that having a higher percentage of agricultural loans increased borrowing group efficiency while gains in efficiency also rose as the size of the borrowing group increases

incentive intensity forbearance law and the governance of transactions this paper uses a simple make or buy model to summarize and illustrate some of the distinguishing aspects of williamson s transaction cost theory it is shown that each mode of governance is associated with a different degree of incentive intensity which in turn is attributable to the difference in court access and in the control of accounts copyright 2004 oxford university press

the influence of expert reviews on consumer demand for experience goods a case study of movie critics an inherent problem in measuring the influence of expert reviews on the demand for experience goods is that a correlation between good reviews and high demand may be spurious induced by an underlying correlation with unobservable quality signals using the timing of the reviews by two popular movie critics siskel and ebert relative to opening weekend box office revenue we apply a difference in differences approach to circumvent the problem of spurious correlation after purging the spurious correlation the measured influence effect is smaller though still detectable positive reviews have a particularly large influence on the demand for dramas and narrowly released movies

policies for a heterogeneous informal sector in latin america abstract the concept of the informal sector has gained increasing acceptance in latin america some 30 million persons now work outside the modern economy in low productivity jobs with marginal incomes many of them are living in poverty international and national policy makers have become aware of the political and economic consequences of this phenomenon and are seeking ways to improve returns and incomes the sector however is composed of different kinds of activities each with its own problems which need to be addressed in different ways policy planners should bear this in mind as they seek solutions the paper recommends three types of measures providing productive assistance to informal enterprises supporting informal sector workers and revising regulations that govern informal sector activities

the impact of mandatory trans fat labeling on product mix and consumer choice a longitudinal analysis of the u s market for margarine and spreads abstract the impact of changes in food labeling policy on food consumption depends on how market participants both firms and consumers react to the changes across all products in the market we investigate how both responded to the u s food and drug administration s 2006 rule mandating that the quantity of trans fat in food products be separately labeled on the mandatory nutrition facts panel across an entire differentiated product category using a longitudinal data set tracking both product offerings and consumer purchases in the market for margarine and spreads for over a decade we analyze how product mix and consumer purchase behaviors were influenced by the new regulatory requirement we find that the number of products bearing voluntary trans fat free labels increased after the labeling regulation was implemented however a large number of the newly introduced products exited the market within five years as a result the fda s 2006 rule had a stronger short run than long run effect on product offerings even after the introduction of additional trans fat free labeled products such products remained only a small percentage of margarine and spreads product offerings increasing from a pre regulation level of 2 3 of the market to a peak of 6 5 in 2007 before dropping to 3 1 by 2011 in addition to firm response we examine demand side reactions to the 2006 rule and find that consumers significantly increased their expenditures on trans fat free labeled products soon after the labeling changes were implemented increasing from about 1 2 of the market in 2001 to a peak of 5 9 in 2007 before returning to 1 8 in 2011 we further explore variations in responses across different demographic characteristics although long run effects are small the market for trans fat free labeled margarine and spreads settled into a new equilibrium with a somewhat higher level of products in the market than prior to the 2006 rule taking effect and a somewhat higher share of expenditures in the category overall our category wide analysis of both firm and consumer behavior indicates that the effects of the labeling policy change were smaller in the longer run in this market than would be indicated by an analysis of only new product introductions in response to the policy change

voluntary quality disclosure and market interaction marketers disclose quality information directly to potential consumers using a variety of communication channels this study investigates how competition may influence duopoly firms incentive to voluntarily reveal quality information we show that firms in competitive markets reveal less information than a monopoly firm in addition sequential disclosure leads to asymmetric equilibrium disclosure behavior the disclosure leader reveals unambiguously less information than in the simultaneous disclosure case whereas the follower ex ante reveals less more private information than that released by the leader or by the firms in the simultaneous case when the disclosure cost is sufficiently low high we also examine the equilibrium firm profits and social welfare we demonstrate that there may be a u shaped relationship between equilibrium monopoly profits or social welfare under both monopoly and duopoly and the disclosure cost moreover in comparison to the simultaneous disclosure case sequential disclosure can lead to increasingly softened competition improving both firm profitability and social welfare

how access to credit affects self employment differences by gender during india s rural banking reform abstract household survey data for 1983 2000 from india s national sample survey organisation are used to examine the impact of credit on self employment among men and women in rural labour households results indicate that credit access encourages women s self employment as own account workers and employers while it discourages men s self employment as unpaid family workers ownership of land a key form of collateral also serves as a strong predictor of self employment among the lower castes in india self employment is less likely for scheduled castes prone to wage activity but more likely for scheduled tribes prone to entrepreneurial work

the effect of information on product quality evidence from restaurant hygiene grade cards this study examines the effect of an increase in product quality information to consumers on e rms choices of product quality in 1998 los angeles county introduced hygiene quality grade cards to be displayed in restaurant windows we show that the grade cards cause i restaurant health inspection scores to increase ii consumer demand to become sensitive to changes in restaurants hygiene quality and iii the number of foodborne illness hospitalizations to decrease we also provide evidence that this improvement in health outcomes is not fully explained by consumers substituting from poor hygiene restaurants to good hygiene restaurants these results imply that the grade cards cause restaurants to make hygiene quality improvements

observing unobservables identifying information asymmetries with a consumer credit field experiment information asymmetries are important in theory but difficult to identify in practice we estimate the presence and importance of hidden information and hidden action problems in a consumer credit market using a new field experiment methodology we randomized 58 000 direct mail offers to former clients of a major south african lender along three dimensions i an initial offer interest rate featured on a direct mail solicitation ii a contract interest rate that was revealed only after a borrower agreed to the initial offer rate and ii a dynamic repayment incentive that was also a surprise and extended preferential pricing on future loans to borrowers who remained in good standing these three randomizations combined with complete knowledge of the lender s information set permit identification of specific types of private information problems our setup distinguishes hidden information effects from selection on the offer rate via unobservable risk and anticipated effort from hidden action effects via moral hazard in effort induced by actual contract terms we find strong evidence of moral hazard and weaker evidence of hidden information problems a rough estimate suggests that perhaps 13 to 21 of default is due to moral hazard asymmetric information thus may help explain the prevalence of credit constraints even in a market that specializes in financing high risk borrowers

giving women credit the strengths and limitations of credit as a tool for alleviating poverty abstract poor women in developing countries often turn to self employment as a way to support themselves and their families but these small scale activities rarely yield enough income to lift them out of poverty recently ngos and donor agencies have sought to assist these women by providing credit which is otherwise largely unavailable to them the broad aims of these programs vary as do the strategies which range from simply offering credit a minimalist approach to providing training and technical assistance as part of the credit package a credit plus approach the channels used bank schemes intermediary programs parallel programs or poverty focused development banks also vary so far the last three channels have been more effective than the first in improving women s access to credit however not enough is known about which strategies have the greatest economic impact for particular groups of women and further evaluation is needed

microenterprise finance is there a conflict between growth and poverty alleviation abstract microenterprise finance has generated enormous enthusiasm among aid donors and nongovernment organizations ngos as an instrument for reducing poverty in a manner that is financially self sustaining although something of a consensus has emerged concerning the principles by which such institutions should be designed however we know little about their impact the paper reports on a research project which estimated the impact of 13 microfinance institutions in seven developing countries on poverty and other target variables and attempted to relate such impact to the institutions design features for each of the institutions studied the impact of lending on the recipient household s income tended to increase at a decreasing rate as the recipient s income and asset position improved a relationship which can easily be explained in terms of the greater preference of the poor for consumption loans their greater vulnerability to asset sales forced by adverse income shocks and their limited range of investment opportunities there are significant outliers to this general pattern in particular very poor people who have been able to achieve significant loan impact but they are the exception rather than the rule and the relationship is significant at the 1 level for all the institutions studied except the malawi mudzi fund this relationship defines in the short term an impact frontier which serves as a tradeoff lenders can either focus their lending on the poorest and accept a relatively low total impact on household income or alternatively focus on the not so poor and achieve higher impact the position and slope of the estimated impact curve vary however with the design of the institution for well designed schemes impact at all levels of income is higher than for ill designed schemes hence for many lender institutions the tradeoff can often be moved by appropriate innovations in institutional design in particular modifications to savings loan collection and incentive arrangements for borrowers and staff

the problem of transaction costs in group based microlending an institutional perspective abstract to be financially viable group based microlending needs to economize on transaction costs for both lenders and borrowers group lending programs vary in their transaction cost characteristics depending on their specific credit delivery arrangements and social contexts this article illustrates these arguments by examining the challenges faced by various group lending programs worldwide it also examines how social capital or the lack of it affects the transaction costs and operations of three typical group lending arrangements group loan with joint liability individual loan with joint liability and individual loan with individual liability

asymmetric information adverse selection and online disclosure the case of ebay motors since the pioneering work of akerlof 1970 economists have been aware of the adverse selection problem that information asymmetries can create in used goods markets the remarkable growth in online auctions of used goods where buyers generally purchase sight unseen therefore poses a puzzle i argue that given a means for credible information disclosure sellers will voluntarily disclose their private information to buyers through online media this limits information asymmetries and adverse selection to test this theory i examine the role of information in a large online used car market ebay motors i nd that sellers selectively disclose information that information asymmetries are reduced by these disclosures and that online media such as photos text and graphics provide a rich environment for information disclosure

effects of microcredit and other loans on female empowerment in bangladesh the borrower s gender influences intra household resource allocation this article examines microcredit s effectiveness in empowering women borrowers in rural bangladesh it does so by examining how gender specific borrowing activities influence household expenditures which are either specifically of interest to men or women and by examining the effects of all loans rather than only those provided by microcredit organizations the article uses a quasi experimental design to identify the effects of borrowing by men and women by using an original combination of panel data and instrumental variables on subsamples of the surveyed population it finds that the borrower s gender affects how households allocate their resources to different expenditure items and assets that are valued differently by men and women in all the findings suggest that providing greater credit access to women may improve their household bargaining positions

household bargaining and microfinance abstract this paper examines a household bargaining problem where one household member can use external finance to invest in an uncertain business project faced with limited income generating opportunities we show that the household member will consistently choose safe investment projects we also explain why other members of the household can be made worse off from investment even when aggregate household consumption is expected to rise in a dynamic version of the bargaining problem we study incentives for the household to contribute towards loan repayments and identify conditions under which the borrower will transfer control over her loan to her partner

quality disclosure and certification theory and practice this essay reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on quality disclosure and certification after comparing quality disclosure with other quality assurance mechanisms and describing a brief history of quality disclosure we address two sets of theoretical issues first why don t sellers voluntarily disclose through a process of unraveling and given the lack of unraveling is it desirable to mandate seller disclosure second when we rely on certifiers to act as the intermediary of quality disclosure do certifiers necessarily report unbiased and accurate information we further review empirical evidence on these issues with a particular focus on healthcare education and finance the empirical review covers quality measurement the effect of third party disclosure on consumer choice and seller behavior as well as the economics of certifiers jel d18 k32 l15 m31

do women borrowers augment financial performance of mfis abstractthere is some consensus that depth of outreach and financial performance of microfinance institutions mfi are positively correlated a majority of microcredit borrowers are women and since the prevalence of female borrowers is even greater among the very poor there should be a positive correlation between female borrowers and financial performance most of the mfis target women as preferred borrowers however no study to date has investigated the relationship between targeting women and mfi s sustainability with respect to profitability and yield utilizing a panel of 892 mfis over a period of 10 years this study shows that increased proportion of women borrowers has a statistically significant positive impact on yield and financial performance of mfis consequently this article also analyses the implication as to whether female borrowers have better repayment rate than male borrowers

school quality and information disclosure evidence from the housing market i introduction tiebout s 1956 theory tying residential sorting patterns to the provision of local public goods provided the foundation for a large and growing literature assessing the relationship between school quality and housing markets many of these studies have used housing prices to directly estimate the monetary value of improvements in student test scores to parents and homeowners few have focused on the role of information in mediating relationships between buyers sellers schools and housing values 1 fewer still have examined the behavior of home sellers and their role in the provision of information on school quality this article takes a step toward filling these gaps in the literature building on the unraveling theory of information disclosure in the industrial organization literature grossman 1981 milgrom 1981 we first investigate the behavior of home sellers in revealing information about local schools we ask whether and how school quality affects the likelihood that a seller will reveal the identity of a property s assigned school in an online real estate listing empirical tests of unraveling are rare as the true quality of a product is typically unobserved the housing market provides a novel context to test this theory if sellers selectively reveal information on schools then information on its own controlling for school quality may have an impact on sales prices if the cost to buyers of obtaining information on school quality is sufficiently high we explore these issues empirically both in a period where the costs of gathering information are relatively high years 2001 and 2002 and in a period where these costs are presumably much lower years 2006 and 2007 between these two periods the mandates of the 2001 no child left behind nclb act coupled with the growth of the internet undoubtedly reduced the cost of information gathering for potential buyers and perhaps also lowered the costs of disclosure for sellers drawing on multiple listing service mls data of residential sales in fairfax county virginia the largest suburb of washington dc our results confirm that sellers of units located in high quality school assignment zones are on average more likely to disclose the school s identity in an online listing an increase of just ten points in an elementary school s passage rate on statewide tests increases the likelihood of information disclosure by a sizeable 5 percentage points in the 2001 2002 period a finding that is robust to a variety of alternative specifications and controls including the addition of real estate agent fixed effects predictably selective disclosure appears to be present but weaker in the 2006 2007 period when the cost of gathering information on school quality was likely lower a ten point increase in test scores yields a 2 to 4 percentage point increase in the likelihood of disclosure our findings of moderate selective disclosure in the latter period hold even when we apply a school boundary discontinuity design and are robust to alternate measures of school quality including measures of adequate yearly progress under nclb in both periods we observe more selective disclosure for single family homes and those with three or more bedrooms presumably families with children than for smaller units we also find more selective disclosure in neighborhoods with high concentrations of young children our results support the findings of several previous studies bayer ferreira and mcmillan 2007 figlio and lucas 2000 confirming that school quality is more important in housing transactions involving families with children than for those without we also investigate the extent to which information disclosure is capitalized in housing prices using school fixed effects to control for school quality we find that information disclosure does not have an independent effect on a home s price

can social cohesion be harnessed to repair market failures evidence from group lending in guatemala the success of group lending in developing countries has been attributed to the ability of the institution to mitigate asymmetric information problems in credit markets previous research has offered a number of explanations for this phenomenon social ties between borrowing group members internal group pressure to repay loans and peer monitoring this research presents empirical tests on borrowing group data from guatemala which indicate that peer monitoring significantly effects borrowing group performance through stimulating intra group insurance group pressure is found to have a small effect in deterring moral hazard while the effect of social ties among members is statistically insignificant

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

can information costs affect consumer choice nutritional labels in a supermarket experiment this paper investigates whether information costs under currently regulated nutritional labeling prevent consumers from making healthier food choices we implement five nutritional shelf label treatments in a market level experiment these labels reduce information costs by highlighting and summarizing information available on the nutritional facts panel following a difference in differences and synthetic control method approach we analyze weekly store level scanner data for microwave popcorn purchases from treatment and control stores our results suggest that consumer purchases are affected by information costs implemented low calorie and no trans fat labels increase sales in contrast implemented low fat labels decrease sales suggesting that consumer response is also influenced by consumers taste perceptions a combination of these claims into one label treatment increases information costs and does not affect sales significantly

an economy of scales a selective review of obesity s economic causes consequences and solutions this paper reviews the economic research on obesity covering topics such as the measurement of and trends in obesity the economic causes of obesity e g the monetary price and time cost of food food assistance programs income education macroeconomic conditions and peer effects and the economic consequences of obesity e g lower wages a lower probability of employment and higher medical care costs it also examines the extent to which obesity imposes negative externalities and economic interventions that could potentially internalize such externalities such as food taxes subsidies for school based physical activity programs and financial rewards for weight loss it discusses other economic rationales for government intervention with respect to obesity such as imperfect information time inconsistent preferences and irrational behavior it concludes by proposing a research agenda for the field overall the evidence suggests that there is no single dominant economic cause of obesity a wide variety of factors may contribute a modest amount to the risk there is consistent evidence regarding the economic consequences of obesity which are lower wages and higher medical care costs that impose negative externalities through health insurance studies of economic approaches to preventing obesity such as menu labeling taxes on energy dense foods and financial rewards for weight loss find only modest effects on weight and thus a range of policies may be necessary to have a substantial effect on the prevalence of obesity

women and repayment in microfinance a global analysis notice this is the author s version of a work that was accepted for publication in world development changes resulting from the publishing process such as peer review editing corrections structural formatting and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication a definitive version was subsequently published in world development 39 5 758 772 http dx doi org 10 1016 j worlddev 2010 10 008

do microfinance institutions fulfil their promise evidence from cross country data abstractthe concept of microfinance promises poverty reduction and economic growth we empirically challenge this economic and social promise in an attempt to prove its fulfilment our multivariate regressions of economic development variables such as per capita gross national income based on ppp converted to international dollars gni per capita ppp gdp growth as well as gross capital formation and labour participation rate against specific microfinance institutions mfi variables show that the success and performance of mfis significantly influence economic development microfinance directly influences economic growth through the value that mfi performance adds to purchasing power an indirect impact comes from an improvement in capital accumulation and employment rates these insights are valuable as the interdependencies between microfinance and economic development that this article verifies offer new and progressive insights into purposeful action that can be taken to stimulate economic develop

microenterprise lending to female entrepreneurs sacrificing economic growth for poverty alleviation abstract this research compares the performance of female and male entrepreneurs in a microenterprise credit program in guatemala previous research and field practice has suggested that targeting credit at female borrowers allows for greater increases in household welfare but that male entrepreneurs may more aggressively expand enterprises when given access to credit in this paper we develop a model that shows that increases in value of home time during childbearing years for women may substantially account for gender differences in responses to credit access empirical results from guatemalan survey data yield estimations consistent with the predictions from our model

unintended nutrition consequences firm responses to the nutrition labeling and education act this paper investigates how firms responded to standardized nutrition labels on food products required by the nutrition labeling and education act nlea using a longitudinal quasi experimental design we test our predictions using two large scale samples that span 30 product categories results indicate that the nlea reduced brand nutritional quality relative to a control group of products not regulated by the nlea at the same time among regulated products brand taste increased although this reduction in nutrition represents an unintended consequence of regulation there were a set of category firm and brand conditions under which the nlea produced a positive effect on brand nutritional quality we find that firms were more likely to improve brand nutrition when firm risk or firm power is low lower risk occurs when the firm is introducing a new brand rather than changing an existing brand and weaker power in a category is reflected by lower market share in a category furthermore firms competing in low health categories e g potato chips or small portion categories e g peanut butter improved nutrition more than firms competing in high health categories e g bread or large portion categories e g frozen dinners recommendations for firm strategy and the design of consumer information policy are examined in light of these surprising firm responses

do voluntary biotechnology labels matter to the consumer evidence from the fluid milk market this article examines the effects on the demand of voluntary labeling for the use of genetically modified growth hormone for retail fluid milk using supermarket scanner data retail fluid milk tracks one of the first biotechnology products approved is fairly standardized and ubiquitous and allows for cross sectional differentiation between labeled and unlabeled products and between conventional and organic brands the results indicate that voluntary labeling increases the demand for recombinant bovine growth hormone free milk in addition the estimated effects of labeling appear to have increased over time innovations through biotechnology enable agricultural producers to reduce production costs and or enhance product quality for many livestock and crop commodities at the same time however these innovations may affect the demand for the products that utilize those commodities many individuals for example are concerned about potential risks to human health although by no means all consumers have such concerns burton metcalfe and smith heiman just and zilberman the use of the recombinant bovine growth hormone rbgh in milk production has been a particular concern for some consumers as approximately one third of the united states dairy herd about 3 million dairy cows currently receive rbgh supplements monsanto product labeling particularly with respect to the provision of health and environmental information is increasingly being used to provide information about product characteristics such as biotechnology content that

what labelling policy for consumer choice the case of genetically modified food in canada and europe faced with divergent opinions among consumers on the use of genetically modified gm foods canada has adopted a voluntary labelling approach for non gm foods whereas the european union has a mandatory labelling policy for gm foods interestingly both labelling systems have resulted in very little if any additional consumer choice using an analytical model we show that the coexistence of gm and non gm products at the retail level depends on the labelling policy consumer perceptions and the type of product although voluntary labelling tends to favour the use of gm products it is more likely to provide consumer choice confrontes a des opinions publiques divergentes sur l usage des aliments genetiquement modifies gm le canada a adopte une politique d etiquetage volontaire pour les aliments non gm alors que l union europeenne a mis en place une politique d etiquetage obligatoire des aliments gm curieusement ces deux systemes d etiquetage n ont pas reellement permis de faciliter le choix des consommateurs a l aide d un modele analytique nous demontrons que la coexistence des produits gm et non gm au niveau du commerce de detail depend de la politique d etiquetage de la perception des consommateurs et du type de produit bien que l etiquetage volontaire ait tendance a favoriser l usage des produits gm cette approche est plus a meme de faciliter le choix du consommateur que l etiquetage obligatoire

how poor women earn income in sub saharan africa and what works against them abstract in sub saharan africa household based agricultural activity remains the foundation of rural livelihoods and women do most of the work their activities are under increasing stress they and their children are falling into poverty even as their need for cash income is increasing although they keep a foothold in the household economy increasingly women are dependent on self employment or wage work for survival they have little access to services and few opportunities to become more productive their situation is exacerbated by continuing male dominance and unequal household responsibilities the informal sector offers opportunities for entrepreneurship especially in trading or small scale agroindustry but unlicensed activity is discouraged in many countries some women also find themselves competing with businesses that are run or licensed by the state several micro level interventions are identified that support women s income earning activities and may halt further deterioration in rural livelihoods

secrecy two sided bias and the value of evidence abstract we provide necessary and sufficient conditions on players preferences for a verifiable message game to possess a separating equilibrium and or a pooling equilibrium as well as sufficient conditions for every equilibrium of such a game to be pooling we also characterize all nonseparating equilibria and use this property to show that less information might be conveyed in any equilibrium of a verifiable message game than in some equilibrium of the cheap talk game with the same parameters