farm household production efficiency evidence from the gambia this article investigates the economic efficiency of farm households with an application to the gambia the efficiency analysis is conducted not at the farm level but at the household level thus capturing the importance of off farm activities output based measures of technical allocative and scale efficiency are generated using nonparametric measurements an econometric analysis of factors affecting the efficiency indexes is then conducted using a tobit model technical efficiency is fairly high indicating that access to technology is not a severe constraint for most farm households the cost of scale inefficiency is modest allocative inefficiency by contrast is found to be important for the majority of farm households on the basis of the tobit results imperfections in markets for financial capital and nonfarm employment contribute to significant allocative inefficiency

violence or economics what drives internal migration in guatemala politically motivated violence has plagued guatemala since 1966 the first wave of terror coincided with an antiguerilla offensive launched by the government in late 1966 2 waves of terror began in 1969 and 1970 the 4th wave of terror began in 1978 with the highest level of political violence ever 1524 individuals were killed by the guerrillas the military and death squads during the 1966 76 period but a recent study estimated that in 1986 100000 250000 individuals had moved within guatemala to escape political violence another 150000 360000 had fled guatemala to live in other countries between 31 and 7 5 of the national population the analytical core of harris todaro type model was modified to analyze the effect of violence on the migration decision the most common dependent variable used in reduced form migration equations was the probability of migrating from one location to another source and destination unemployment were entered into the migration equation from the 1981 census per capita government spending was entered into the migration equation to test whether governments contribution to aggregate demand was important in attracting migrants the first measure of violence used in the regressions was the number of politically motivated killings carried out in a department from 1966 1976 the second violence measure was per capita corpses found of individuals who had been killed for some political end violence did have an impact on migration flows at least when measured by assassinations the percentage difference between per capita assassinations in origin and destination areas was statistically significant the sign and 5 statistic on the assassinations squared variable suggested that higher levels of violence might cause the migration response to intensify but this variable was significant only at the 20 level both violence variables were statistically significant and increased origin violence did spur out migration

taxes on tax exempt bonds implicit tax rates priced in the cross section of municipal bonds are approximately two to three times as high as statutory income tax rates with implicit tax rates close to 100 using retail trades and above 70 for interdealer trades these implied tax rates can be identified because a portion of secondary market municipal bond trades involves income taxes after valuing the tax payments market discount bonds which carry income tax liabilities trade at yields around 25 basis points higher than com parable municipal bonds not subject to any taxes the high sensitivities of municipal bond prices to tax rates can be traced to individual retail traders dominating dealers and other institutions the issue of how taxes affect asset prices is an important issue in finance accounting and economics in theoretical models examining the effect of taxes

political uncertainty and public financing costs evidence from u s gubernatorial elections and municipal bond markets this research investigates how political uncertainty around u s gubernatorial elections in uences the borrowing costs of public debt measured by yields of municipal bonds our evidence from both the new issuance market and the secondary market shows that yields of municipal bonds increase sharply by 6 to 8 basis points before elections and then reverse afterward elections have more pronounced impact during economic downturns when outcomes are less predictable and when states have more outstanding debt several state institutions such as gaap budgeting spending limits and tax increase limits help to mitigate the adverse impact of political uncertainty

shirking or work morale abstract standard economics assumes that rational agents shirk and that they have to be disciplined by monitoring and regulating however under specific circumstances regulating systematically worsens workers morale and thereby negatively affects their behavior when a principal attributes a lower work morale to the agents than they actually have an implicit contract is unilaterally violated and agents reduce their excess morale this reaction is theoretically and empirically well supported by the notions of reciprocity and of overjustification the theoretical propositions are applied to a specific employment relationship but hold more generally they are consistent with empirical observations

municipal bond liquidity and default risk this paper examines the pricing of municipal bonds i use three distinct complementary approaches to decompose municipal bond spreads into default and liquidity components and find that default risk accounts for 74 to 84 of the average spread after adjusting for tax exempt status the first approach estimates the liquidity component using transaction data the second measures the default component with credit default swap data and the third is a quasi natural experiment that estimates changes in default risk around pre refunding events the price of default risk is high given the rare incidence of municipal default and implies a high risk premium

taxes default risk and yield spreads this paper develops a model of bond prices and yield spreads that incorporates the effect of both taxes and differences in default probabilities the tax loss consequences of default are recognized traditionally tax free municipal bond yields have been viewed as linearly related to taxable yields with a slope coefficient equal to one minus the tax rate and the intercept representing differences in default risk while our model supports the linearity assumption it implies that the slope and intercept are both functions of both the break even tax rate and the default probability ies clientele effects among both municipal and taxable bonds are demonstrated finally the implied marginal tax rates and the implied default probabilities are estimated for different categories of municipal bonds students of financial markets cannot help but be impressed by the number of new financial instruments that have been introduced successfully in recent years the fixed income market has been particularly innovative as bonds carrying a whole host of specific features have been successfully marketed bonds with small or zero coupons variable coupon rates or detachable warrants are three examples from among an expanding list of such features not surprisingly there has developed a large and expanding literature attempting to explain the rate spreads between different fixed income securities this literature has evolved much as one would expect early empirical work was in general not well founded in theory and was not based on an underlying expected return price model later empirical research has tended to be more careful in its specification of factors affecting yield spreads and as a consequence better founded in valuation

reducing public private sector pay differentials the single spine pay policy as a natural experiment in ghana empirical studies have documented the existence of the public private pay differentials in both developed and developing countries the implementation of policies aiming to reduce this gap has however been mitigated or inconclusive this paper exploits the single spine pay policy sspp in ghana as a natural experiment to examine the effectiveness of wage policies in developing countries the sspp was implemented in 2010 by the government of ghana to address the public private sector wage gap and improve productivity in the public sector using a quantile treatment effect approach based on a difference in difference did estimation we show that the sspp has yet to reduce the wage gap between the public and private sectors across the entire distribution of earnings in ghana the improvement observed is only at the lower tail of the distribution of earnings however the sspp has a larger effect on the earnings of female workers than that of males in the education and health services sector suggesting that the policy was successful in reducing the gender wage gap in that sector moreover the sspp has decreased the productivity of workers across the distribution of earnings mainly due to a decrease in the effort of female public sector workers nevertheless the sspp has had some successes and could be improved by putting in place a good managerial quality in the government agencies in addition it is important that the government pays much attention to various macroeconomic factors that have challenged the success of the sspp

determinants of the decreasing term structure of relative yield spreads for taxable and tax exempt bonds the empirical finding that the relative yield spread for taxable and tax exempt bonds decreases across the term structure is usually attributed to tax differentials and or arbitrage opportunities using monthly data it is found that the decresing term structure of relative yield spreads is determined by the decreasing forward marginal tax rate increasing default risk premium increasing tax timing option premium and expected rate of inflation

malmquist productivity index estimation with zero value variables the case of greek prefectural training councils abstract the paper suggests a technique for the parametric estimation of the malmquist productivity growth index when the dataset to be analyzed contains a considerable number of observations with zero values a dummy variable technique suggested by battese j agric econom 48 1997 250 is extended to a translog specification of the input distance function moreover technical changes tcs are decomposed into neutral and biased components and the sources of total productivity growth are computed via formulae explicitly accounting for the discrete nature of the data our approach has been applied to the greek prefectural training councils a state extension system for the general public findings indicate a considerably negative productivity growth primarily attributable to regressive tc

the pricing of corporate debt a note to develop a theory of the risk structure of interest rates r c merton 2 defines the risk as the possible gains or losses to bond holders as a result of unanticipated changes in the probability of default p 449 he derives the pricing theory of a pure discount bond corporation debt along the line of blackscholes 1 comparative statics are used to develop graphs of the risk structure although his algebraic derivation is correct his graphical presentation is inadvertently wrong

private irrigation investment in colombia effects of violence macroeconomic policy and environmental conditions abstract this paper identifies and estimates the effects of several determinants on private investment in irrigation in colombia it attempts to quantify macroeconomic policy environment and violence variables that have been identified in previous studies as significantly affecting investment in agriculture in general and in irrigation in particular variables such as violence climate and governmental price and credit policies are used to explain changes in private investment in irrigation across regions and over time violence negatively affects private investment climate affects the investment such that in regions with favorable climate conditions investment in irrigation is less attractive and appropriate government crop price and credit policies promote investment in irrigation

was the tax exempt bond market inefficient or were future expected tax rates negative this paper shows that the sharp narrowing with maturity of the spread between taxable and tax exempt yields leaves room for tax arbitrage at times tax exempt forward rates have exceeded taxable forward rates at such times only expectations of higher taxes on treasury than on municipal bonds would eliminate profit opportunities the authors develop the idea of forward tax rates and compute forward tax rates for 1955 through 1984 they also outline tax arbitrage mechanisms involving private forward sale of long municipal bonds or the use of the municipal bond futures contract and show the potential profits the municipal yield curve has been upward sloping for the entire postwar period even at times when taxable yield curves were humped or downward sloping thus the spread in yields between taxable and tax free bonds narrows dramatically with increasing maturity this paper focuses on the term structure of the spread in yields between taxable and tax exempt bonds we show that the sharp narrowing of the spread with maturity leaves room for some apparently unexploited tax arbitrage at times the narrowing has been so dramatic that taxexempt forward rates have exceeded taxable forward rates in other words only expectations of negative future tax rates on treasury interest or the expectations of a reversal in the relative taxability of treasury and municipal bonds would eliminate profit opportunities this situation makes little sense if the markets are well arbitraged three theories of the relationship between the yields on taxable and taxexempt bonds have attracted attention 2 miller 8 asserts that the corporate tax rate determines the yield spread between taxable and tax exempt debt in the

auction failures and the market for auction rate securities abstract the market for auction rate securities ars made headlines during the second week of february 2008 when auctions at which the bonds interest rates reset experienced a wave of failures contrary to headlines that attribute the failures to a frozen market or investors irrationality we find that 1 even at their height less than 50 of ars experienced auction failures 2 the likelihood of auction failure was directly related to the level of the bonds maximum auction rates 3 the implied market clearing yields of bonds with failed auctions were significantly above their maximum auction rates and 4 ars yields were generally higher than yields of various cash equivalent investment alternatives we infer that investors priced the possibility of auctions failures into ars yields and rationally declined to bid for bonds for which required market yields exceeded their maximum auction rates

political violence and farm household efficiency in colombia abstract this article estimates farm household levels of technical efficiency and their determinants in colombia with particular reference to political violence i e guerrilla fronts homicides kidnappings and forced population displacements an input oriented stochastic frontier is estimated simultaneously with a technical inefficiency model that incorporates an index of political violence at the local level using survey data from 822 farm households the findings show that household productivity is lower in areas with high political violence due mainly to disruptions in rural labor markets and in the operation of large farms should political violence be eliminated the ensuing increases in the farrell s technical efficiency indexes of farm households in the sample would increase substantially pointing to significant peace dividends for rural households in colombia

municipal debt and marginal tax rates is there a tax premium in asset prices we study the marginal tax rate incorporated into short term municipal rates using municipal swap market data using an affine model we identify the marginal tax rate and the credit liquidity spread in 1 week tax exempt rates as well as their associated risk premia the marginal tax rate averages 38 0 and is related to stock bond and commodity returns the tax risk premium is negative consistent with the strong countercyclical nature of after tax fixed income cash flows these results demonstrate that tax risk is a systematic asset pricing factor and help resolve the muni bond puzzle

the tax rate induced bond substitution hypothesis and the traditional textbook treatment of the relationship between tax free and taxable bond yields abstractthis empirical study posits and tests the tax rate induced bond substitution hypothesis wherein the propensity for bond buyers to substitute tax exempt municipal bonds for taxable bonds

dealer intermediation and price behavior in the aftermarket for new bond issues municipal bonds trade in decentralized broker dealer markets and are underpriced when issued but unlike equities the average price rises slowly over several days newly issued municipal bonds have high levels of price dispersion and the average price rises because the mix of trade sizes changes over time while large trades occur close to the reoffering price small trades occur between the reoffering price to as much as 5 above the reoffering price using a mixed distribution model we quantify the losses uninformed traders or issuers give up to broker dealers

a generalized production frontier approach for estimating determinants of inefficiency in u s dairy farms this article investigates farm level efficiency of u s dairy farmers by estimating their technical and allocative efficiency technical inefficiency is assumed to be composed of a deterministic component that is a function of some farm specific characteristics and a random component by doing this we extend the stochastic frontier methodology in which determinants of technicial inefficiency are explicitly introduced in the model given the inputs variations in efficiency of farms are then explained by both deterministic and random components of technical inefficiency the empirical results indicate that a levels of education of the farmer are important factors determining technical inefficiency and b large farms are more efficient technically than small and medium sized farms both technical and allocative inefficiency are found to decrease with increase in the level of education of the farmer

are individual investors tax savvy evidence from retail and discount brokerage accounts using brokerage account data we analyze the tax awareness of individual investors we find strong evidence that taxes matter investors prefer to locate bonds and mutual funds in retirement accounts and in december harvest stock losses in their taxable accounts however investors also trade actively in their taxable accounts realize gains more frequently than losses and locate a material portion of their bonds in taxable accounts though taxes leave clear footprints in the data we analyze many investors could improve their after tax performance by fully capitalizing on the tax avoidance strategies available to equities while optimally locating their assets

smallholder technical efficiency controlling for environmental production conditions abstract smallholder agricultural production depends heavily on environmental production conditions that are largely exogenously determined yet few data sets collect necessary detailed information on environmental production conditions this oversight raises the spectre of likely omitted variables bias because farmers input choices typically respond in part to environmental conditions moreover because environmental production conditions are rarely symmetrically distributed the omission also generally leads to upward bias in estimated technical inefficiency and to biased estimates of the correlates of estimated technical inefficiency as well using panel data from 464 traditional rice plots in cote d ivoire we show that controlling for heterogeneous environmental production conditions significantly changes inferences perhaps especially with respect to smallholder rice farmers estimated technical inefficiency

the personal tax advantages of equity abstract we value a firm that pays its cash flows to equity through share repurchases in a dynamic environment where personal taxes are paid on capital gains upon realization the cost of capital is reduced by approximately 0 8 through the use of repurchases relative to dividends we use the empirical distribution of pre tax free cash flows in fama and french 1999 to evaluate the tradeoffs between the costs of financial distress the personal tax advantages of equity and the corporate tax advantage to debt the optimal capital structure is interior with a 3 bankruptcy cost

firm size and technical efficiency applications of production frontiers to indian survey data abstract this paper is an empirical investigation of the relationship between relative technical efficiency and firm size in four indian manufacturing industries a frontier translog production function is used to derive measures of technical inefficiency at the enterprise level given the properties of the estimated production frontier these indices of technical efficiency are also indices of total factor productivity tfp which is the single most widely accepted measure of productive efficiency variations in technical efficiency are correlated with several explanatory variables including size of firm firm size is found to be positively associated with relative productive efficiency in only one of the four industries

an econometric analysis of coca eradication policy in colombia abstract we estimate an econometric model of coca production in colombia our results indicate that coca eradication is an ineffective means of supply control as farmers compensate by cultivating the crop more extensively the evidence further suggests that incentives to produce legal substitute crops may have greater supply reducing potential than eradication

default risk cannot explain the muni puzzle evidence from municipal bonds that are secured by u s treasury obligations fama 1977 and miller 1977 predict that one minus the corporate tax rate will equate after tax yields from comparable taxable and tax exempt bonds empirical evidence shows that long term tax exempt yields are higher than theory predicts two popular explanations for this empirical puzzle are that relative to taxable bonds municipal bonds bear more default risk and include costly call options i study u s government secured municipal bond yields which are effectively default free and nonmalleable these municipal yields display the same tendency to be too high i conclude that differential default risk and call options do not explain the municipal bond puzzle article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

tax subsidized underpricing the market for build america bonds build america bonds babs were issued by municipalities for 20 months as a part of the 2009 fiscal package unlike traditional tax exempt municipals babs are taxable to the holder but the treasury rebates 35 of the coupon to the issuer the stated purpose was to provide municipalities access to a more liquid market including foreign tax exempt and tax deferred investors we find babs do not exhibit greater liquidity than traditional municipals babs are more underpriced initially particularly for interdealer trades babs also show a substitution from underwriter fees toward more underpricing suggesting that the underpricing is a strategic response to the tax subsidy

tax distortions and bond issue pricing abstract original issue premium oip bonds are the norm in the us tax exempt market but very rare in the taxable market a tax subsidy helps explain this disparity unlike bonds issued at par or discount the price of oip bonds can fall and yet remain above par providing secondary market buyers with more tax exempt coupon and less taxable market discount gain the subsidy for oip bonds explains additional previously undocumented empirical facts in a calibration exercise the subsidy s expected cost to the u s treasury is estimated at 1 7 billion per year

a simple model of the taxable and tax exempt yield curves i examine the anomalous behavior of the taxable and tax exempt yield curves long municipal yields appear too high relative to the equivalent after tax yield that can be earned in treasury or corporate bonds i discuss existing explanations of the problem and propose a simple model that relates the yields of taxable bonds to the yield curve for par tax exempts the ratio of the tax exempt yield to the taxable yield increases with maturity in the model so it is consistent with observed phenomena such as inverted yield curves for taxables and contemporaneous rising yield curves for tax exempts statistical and descriptive comparisons between the yields predicted by the model and observed yields on par bonds that the model has some promise in explaining the apparent anomalies in the behaviors of the two yield curves article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

political variables in cross country growth analysis the recent boom in cross country growth analysis has renewed the empirical interest in political sources of economic growth a large number of studies have tested political variables in growth regressions and a very heterogenous set of variables has been proposed to measure economically relevant differences in the political systems of countries this paper distinguishes five categories of relevant political variables democracy government stability political violence policy volatility and subjective perception of politics for each of these categories the specification testing method and results of the most relevant studies are presented and are critically discussed the paper concludes that measures of democracy are least successful and measures of policy volatility and subjective perception of politics most successful as explanatory variables in cross country growth regressions

the term structure of interest rates in real and monetary economies abstract this paper modifies standard asset pricing models by introducing capital a variable labor supply and money a surprising but very positive result is that in a real production economy the interest rate is close to a random walk this result is found to be true even if there is no persistence in the driving process of the model in this paper we generalize the standard cash in advance constraint by using a shopping time technology this generalization makes it possible to match observed variability for the velocity of money this type of monetary model however is not successful in matching observed behavior of bond prices