community development with endogenous land use controls abstract when competitive landowners developers control incorporation and zoning decisions efficient patterns of development emerge when by contrast early arrivals control policy they may impose zoning restrictions that force later entrants to pay via the property tax a disproportionate share of the cost of providing public services if new arrivals are sufficiently poor they may choose to reside outside the community while higher quality land within the community remains unoccupied this inefficient and exclusionary outcome can be an equilibrium if boundaries once drawn are irreversible the ex ante introduction of a seemingly natural compensation scheme may not remedy the problem

who borrows from the lender of last resort understanding why banks borrow from the lender of last resort lolr during a nancial crisis is crucial to understanding the macroeconomic impact of such largescale interventions we document a strong divergence among banks take up of lolr assistance during the nancial crisis in the euro area as banks which borrowed heavily also used increasingly risky collateral we propose four explanations for this divergence

price indexes inequality and the measurement of world poverty i discuss the measurement of world poverty and inequality with particular attention to the role of purchasing power parity ppp price indexes from the international comparison project global inequality increased with the latest revision of the icp and this reduced the global poverty line relative to the us dollar the recent large increase of nearly half a billion poor people came from an inappropriate updating of the global poverty line not from the icp revisions even so ppp comparisons between widely different countries rest on weak theoretical and empirical foundations i argue for wider use of self reports from international monitoring surveys and for a global poverty line that is truly denominated in us dollars

technology adoption under seed access constraints and the economic impacts of improved pigeonpea varieties in tanzania dry land legumes well adapted to drought prone areas have largely been neglected in the past despite the good opportunities they offer for income growth and food and nutritional security for the poor this study evaluated the adoption and impact of two farmer and market preferred and disease resistant pigeonpea varieties that were developed and promoted in semi arid tanzania the new varieties were resistant to fusarium wilt a fungal disease devastating the crop however farmers wanting to adopt new varieties did not adopt due to seed access constraints and under developed seed delivery systems adoption of new varieties is therefore analyzed using an augmented double hurdle model that allows estimating variety adoption conditional on seed access thresholds accounting for the additional information on sample separation the study identifies the crucial role of seed access local supply extension education participatory decision making capital and household assets in determining adoption the social economic benefits of the technology and policies for improved seed access were further analyzed using the extended economic surplus method dream model even under restrictive assumptions overall discounted benefits were found to be quite attractive indicating the need for additional efforts to scale up the success story analysis of changes in research benefits from relaxing the seed access constraint showed that net gains would increase by up to 30 if farmer access to improved seeds can be assured smallholder farmers are the major beneficiaries along with consumers and rural net buyers who gain from productivity induced lower market prices

capitalization and the median voter the past decade has witnessed a strong interest among students of local public finance in models of voting with one s feet and in models of actual voting several authors including noel edelson susan rose ackerman and michael lea have recognized that these two types of voting must be considered simultaneously the capitalization of local fiscal variables into house values which is a by product of voting with one s feet influences the decisions of the median voter and the pattern of local services that arises through actual voting influences the allocation of households to communities a full fleged merger of the two types of voting requires an analysis of capitalization in a model that considers both the housing market and the local voting process in a metropolitan area with diverse local governments financed by property taxes previous articles have focused on pieces of this puzzle this paper reviews my attempt to bring these pieces together my analysis reveals that regardless of supply responses capitalization is a feature of long run equilibrium furthermore in the presence of capitalization an efficient pattern of local services cannot be obtained through voting with one s feet but must be obtained instead through actual voting if preferences in a community are not too diverse the median voter will pick the efficient level of services with or without capitalization however the median voter s choice may not be efficient in an extremely heterogeneous community in addition capitalization breaks the link between tax payments and the choice of a community and thereby insures that the property tax is not a benefit tax in other words it insures that housing is underconsumed relative to other goods these results provide a framework for evaluating state and federal policies toward local governments without much heterogeneity within communities one could achieve efficiency by eliminating the property tax or offsetting it with large subsidies to housing these approaches are not realistic however and a second best solution is to cut back local services the form of such a cutback is important i show that tax limitations do not lead to efficiency but that a second best solution could be obtained by redesigning intergovernmental grants

models of currency crises with self fulfilling features the discomfort a government suffers from speculation against its currency determines the strategic incentives of speculators and the scope for multiple currency market equilibria after describing an illustrative model in which high unemployment may cause an exchange rate crisis with self fulfilling features the paper reviews some other self reinforcing mechanisms recent econometric evidence seems consistent with the practical importance of these mechanisms

whatever it takes to resolve the european sovereign debt crisis bond pricing regime switches and monetary policy effects this paper investigates the role of unconventional monetary policy as a source of time variation in the relationship between sovereign bond yield spreads and their fundamental determinants we use a two step empirical approach first we apply a time varying parameter panel modelling framework to determine shifts in the pricing regime characterising sovereign bond markets in the euro area over the period january 1999 to july 2016 second we estimate the impact of ecb policy interventions on the time varying risk factor sensitivities of spreads our results provide evidence of a new bond pricing regime following the announcement of the outright monetary transactions omt programme in august 2012 this regime is characterised by a weakened link between spreads and fundamentals but with higher spreads relative to the pre crisis period and residual redenomination risk we also find that unconventional monetary policy measures affect the pricing of sovereign risk not only directly but also indirectly through changes in banking risk overall the actions of the ecb have operated as catalysts for reversing the dynamics of the european sovereign debt crisis

capitalization and the theory of local public finance the tiebout literature is incomplete this paper argues because it has not fully accounted for the capitalization of local fiscal variables into house values the paper explains why capitalization arises why it persists in long run equilibrium how it affects both residential location and the outcome of local voting and why it interferes with the efficiency of a system of local governments the analysis which is based on the main tiebout assumptions plus a property tax combines a model of household bids in a housing market with a median voter model of local public service determination

on welfare measurement in cities this paper extends project evaluation in a spatial urban economy to consider the more general case of distortionary public finances if a local public improvement is financed at least in part by a distortionary property tax we show that residential land prices do not accurately measure the value of land improvements even when households are identical and the improvement is infinitesimally small the magnitude and direction of the measurement error will depend on the second order effects on aggregate demand via changes in population density at each location and on overall city size

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

a new approach for identifying the parameters of a tax capitalization model abstract this study re estimates property tax capitalization rates with two empirical innovations first the underidentification problem inherent in all capitalization studies is resolved using estimates of rental values instead of estimates of the net user cost second the methodology along with the utilization of a unique data set mitigates biases resulting from potential correlations between property tax rates and unobservable amenities or public services the extent of tax capitalization estimated here is greater than estimates reported in many recent studies and is statistically indistinguishable from full capitalization the study also provides insights regarding the variability of the net user cost of housing

euro area government bonds fragmentation and contagion during the sovereign debt crisis abstract the paper analyzes the integration of euro area sovereign bond markets during the european sovereign debt crisis it tests for contagion i e an intensification in the transmission of shocks across countries fragmentation a reduction in spillovers and flight to quality patterns exploiting the heteroskedasticity of intraday changes in bond yields for identification the paper finds that euro area government bond markets were well integrated prior to the crisis but saw a substantial fragmentation from 2010 onward flight to quality was present at the height of the crisis but has largely dissipated after the european central bank s ecb s announcement of its outright monetary transactions omt program in 2012 at the same time italy and spain became more interdependent after the omt announcement providing our only evidence of contagion this suggests that countries have been effectively ring fenced and italy and spain benefited from the joint reduction in yields following the omt announcement

inequality in the local public sector effects on renters welfare of changes in local government spending are examined in a multijurisdiction model in equilibrium each income class chooses the jurisdiction whose combination of local public output and housing price maximizes utility comparative static analysis of this equilibrium is used to show how inequality in local public expenditure benefits low income residents if low income residents are observed to choose jurisdictions with low levels of per capita public expenditure then they may be worse off by outside aid which increases local public expenditure in their jurisdictions the advantages of inequality in the local public sector also exist when a program of tax base equalization is introduced

estimating the productivity impacts of technology adoption in the presence of misclassification this article examines the impact that misreporting adoption status has on the identification and estimation of causal effects on productivity in particular by comparing measurement error ridden self reported adoption data with measurement error free dna fingerprinted adoption data we investigate the extent to which such errors bias the causal effects of adoption on productivity taking dna fingerprinted adoption data as a benchmark we find 25 false negatives and 10 false positives in farmers responses our results show that misreporting of adoption status is not exogenous to household characteristics and produces a bias of about 22 percentage points in the productivity impact of adoption ignoring inherent behavioral adjustments of farmers based on perceived adoption status has a bias of 13 percentage points the results of this article underscore the crucial role that correct measurement of adoption plays in designing policy interventions that address constraints to technology adoption in agriculture

ecb policy and eurozone fragility was de grauwe right paul de grauwe s eurozone fragility hypothesis states that sovereign debt markets in a monetary union without a lender of last resort are vulnerable to self fulfilling dynamics fuelled by pessimistic investor sentiment that can trigger default we test this contention by applying an eclectic methodology to a two year window around mario draghi s whatever it takes pledge that can be understood as the implicit announcement of the outright monetary transactions omt program a principal components analysis reveals that the perceived commonality in default risk among peripheral and core eurozone sovereigns increased after the announcement an event study reveals significant pre announcement news transmission from spain to italy france belgium and austria that clearly dissipates post announcement country specific regressions of cds spreads on systematic risk factors reveal frequent days of large adverse shocks affecting simultaneously those five eurozone countries but only during the pre announcement period altogether these findings support the fragility hypothesis and endorse the omt program

a problem with observational equivalence disentangling the renter illusion hypothesis the renter illusion hypothesis argues that renters are more likely to support local public expenditures than homeowners because of a misperception about the actual costs and benefits they face numerous empirical studies have produced mixed results which are difficult to interpret because of the lack of micro foundations for the renter illusion hypothesis this paper helps fill that gap by introducing in a theoretical model the concept of renter illusion behaviour which can be seen as a rational behaviour in the presence of cognitive anomalies i e behavioural or bounded rationality and asymmetric information the resulting theoretical framework can be used to interpret and support a large share of micro and macro econometric findings in the previous empirical literature on renter illusion

what drives spreads in the euro area government bond market spreads between euro area government bond yields are related to short term interest rates which are in turn related to market liquidity to cyclical conditions and to investors incentives to take risk in theory lower interest rates are associated with lower degrees of risk aversion and smaller government bond spreads empirically the eurosystem s short term interest rates are positively related to those spreads which our econometric model finds to include significant and policy relevant default risk and liquidity risk components simone manganelli and guido wolswijk

the productivity and income effects of adoption of improved soybean varieties and agronomic practices in malawi abstract soybean constitutes an important component of the maize based smallholder cropping systems in malawi and holds considerable potential for countering soil fertility decline enhancing household food and nutrition security and raising rural incomes a number of yield enhancing improved soybean varieties and agronomic practices isvaps have been developed and disseminated in malawi but there is limited evidence on the adoption and impacts of these technologies this paper assesses the productivity and income effects of adopting isvaps using plot level data collected from a nationally representative sample of 1237 soybean growing households in malawi our results show that over a third of the sampled households have adopted isvaps furthermore results from a stochastic dominance analysis showed that soybean yields and net crop incomes for adopters are significantly higher than those of non adopters over the entire probability distribution of isvaps adoption endogenous switching regression model results further demonstrated that adoption of isvaps is associated with an average of 61 yield gain and 53 income gain for adopters overall the results point to the need for further scaling of isvaps for greater adoption and impact on the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in malawi

the heterogeneous effect of shocks on agricultural innovations adoption microeconometric evidence from rural ethiopia abstract theoretically the relationship between shocks and agricultural innovation adoption could be ambiguous while shocks could lower the competence and capacity of households to adopt new agricultural innovations households can also take up agricultural innovations as a coping mechanism against the different shocks they face using a nationally representative household data from ethiopia of the living standards measurement study integrated surveys on agriculture lsms isa of the world bank this paper analyzes the effect of idiosyncratic and covariate shocks on adoption of different agricultural innovations assuming interdependence among the innovations we find shocks to have heterogeneous effects on the adoption of agricultural innovations specifically production and health shocks have negative effects on the adoption of high cost innovations such as improved seeds chemical fertilizer and irrigation however production shocks are positively associated with low cost innovations such as organic fertilizer to enhance farmers adoption of agricultural innovations especially high cost innovations there is a greater need towards the design of policies and interventions that would reduce household s exposure to production and health shocks

self rated economic welfare in russia abstract most of those russian adults who feel that they are poor are not classified as such in the poverty statistics and most of those who are classified as poor don t feel that way we study the determinants of peoples perceptions of their economic welfare in an unusually rich socioeconomic survey while income is a highly significant predictor subjective economic welfare is influenced by many other factors including health education employment assets relative income in the area of residence and expectations about future welfare insights are obtained into how objective data should be weighted in assessing economic welfare

price knowledge in household demand for utility services a household s decision to acquire price knowledge is endogenous in the demand for utility services and may affect elasticities and consumption levels a simultaneous equation model with endogenous switching is developed to evaluate the effects of price knowledge and other sources of heterogeneity results indicate informed households were more responsive to average and marginal price signals informed households also use less water but this is due to heterogeneity rather than price knowledge controlling for heterogeneity price knowledge actually increases monthly water usage the implications of accounting for differences in price knowledge in utility demand modeling and demand management policy are discussed

the economic and poverty impacts of maize research in west and central africa this article assembles the results of three multicountry surveys on variety performance and adoption patterns to measure the impacts of maize research in west and central africa from 1981 to 2005 and uses cost data since 1971 to compute social rates of return on public investments in maize research in the region adoption of modern varieties increased from less than 5 of the maize area in the 1970s to about 60 in 2005 yielding an aggregate rate of return on research and development r d investment of 43 the estimated number of people moved out of poverty through adoption of new maize varieties rose gradually in the 1980s to more than one million people per year since the mid 1990s over half of these impacts can be attributed to international maize research at iita and cimmyt the article concludes with a discussion of strategic options to enhance the impacts of maize research in the region

limitations of contract farming as a pro poor strategy the case of maize outgrower schemes in upper west ghana summary contract farming cf arrangements have the potential to address market failures and improve technology adoption productivity and welfare in ghana government and donors use cf as a strategy for increasing adoption of new agricultural technologies and developing value chains yet to date there has not been a rigorous assessment of these cf schemes the focus in this paper is on different maize based cf schemes in the poorest and most remote region in ghana it assesses the profitability and potential impact of these cf schemes utilizing a unique plot level dataset that covers two periods of data and two maize plots scheme and non scheme per household and employing matching techniques and an instrumental variable approach to address selection bias and unobserved heterogeneity across farmers these are complemented by a community level survey in depth interviews with scheme operators and a series of key informant interviews results show that these schemes led to improved technology adoption and yield increases in addition a subset of maize farmers with high yield improvements due to cf participation have high profits maize cf schemes also enabled market coordination and consistent supply of quality maize to downstream industries however on average the impact of the cf schemes on profitability is negative even when input diversion is accounted for yield increases are not high enough to compensate for higher input requirements and the cost of capital under the schemes despite higher yields the costs to produce one metric tonne of maize under cf schemes are higher than on maize farms without cf schemes twice that of several countries in africa and more than seven times higher than that of major maize exporting countries the united states brazil and argentina sustainability of these cf schemes will largely depend on developing and promoting much improved varieties and technologies that boost yields in order to compensate for the high input and credit costs

agricultural technology crop income and poverty alleviation in uganda summary this paper evaluates the ex post impact of adopting improved groundnut varieties on crop income and poverty in rural uganda the study utilizes cross sectional data of 927 households collected in 2006 from seven districts in uganda using propensity score matching methods we find that adopting improved groundnut varieties technology significantly increases crop income and reduces poverty the positive and significant impact on crop income is consistent with the perceived role of new agricultural technologies in reducing rural poverty through increased farm household income this study supports broader investment in agriculture research to address vital development challenges reaching the poor with better technologies however requires policy support for improving extension efforts access to seeds and market outlets that simulate adoption

mobility and redistribution the ability of individuals to move freely from one jurisdiction to another is generally seen as a constraint on the amount of redistribution that each jurisdiction within a system of governments can undertake in this paper we look at this proposition by developing a positive analysis of income redistribution by local governments in a federal system we ask how much redistribution occurs when only local governments can have tax transfer instruments individuals can move freely among jurisdictions and voters in each jurisdiction are fully aware of the migration effects of redistributive policies local redistribution is shown to induce sorting of the population with the poorest households located in the communities that provide the most redistribution while the threat of out migration affects the potential for redistribution our results suggest that significant local redistribution is nonetheless feasible numerical computations indicate that the proportion of residents who are renters is a major factor affecting the local choice of level of redistribution

peasant household behaviour with missing markets some paradoxes explained a model of peasant household behavior under varying degrees of household specific food and labor market failures is constructed to show that these structural features can explain several well known patterns of peasant response which have often been attributed to peculiar motives presumed specific to peasants the model explains sluggish response to cash crops prices and high instability in perceived food and labor scarcities the key role of manufactured consumer goods prices in stimulating peasants effort in cash crops production the effectiveness of taxation as opposed to incentives in stimulating cash crops production and the key role of technological change in food production to enhance cash crop production results are obtained analytically in the case of one market failure and by numerical simulation with more than one

agricultural technology adoption and poverty reduction a propensity score matching analysis for rural bangladesh this study aims at shedding some light on the potential impact of agricultural technology adoption on poverty alleviation strategies it does so through an empirical investigation of the relationship between technological change of the green revolution type and wellbeing of smallholder farm households in two rural bangladeshi regions as technology adoption is not randomly assigned but there is self selection into treatment the paper tackles a methodological issue in assessing the causal effect of technology on farm household wellbeing through the non parametric p score matching analysis it pursues a targeted evaluation of whether adopting a modern seed technology causes resource poor farmers to improve their income and decrease the propensity to fall below the poverty line it finds a robust and positive effect of agricultural technology adoption on farm household wellbeing suggesting that there is a large scope for enhancing the role of agricultural technology in directly contributing to poverty alleviation 2006 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

the empirical analysis of fiscal illusion this paper examines the empirical analysis of the five main hypotheses subsumed under the generic term fiscal illusion after placing these hypotheses within a common theoretical framework the paper attempts to evaluate empirical research into the revenue complexity hypothesis the revenue elasticity hypothesis the flypaper effect renter illusion and debt illusion

impacts of supermarkets on farm household nutrition in kenya summary many developing countries experience a food system transformation with a rapid growth of supermarkets we analyze impacts of supermarkets on farm household nutrition with survey data from kenya participation in supermarket channels is associated with significantly higher calorie vitamin a iron and zinc consumption we use simultaneous equation models to analyze impact pathways supermarket supplying households have higher incomes a higher share of land under vegetables and a higher likelihood of male control of revenues furthermore income and the share of land under vegetables have positive impacts while male control of revenues has negative impacts on dietary quality policy and further research implications are discussed

can mobile phones improve gender equality and nutrition panel data evidence from farm households in uganda abstract since 2000 mobile phone technologies have been widely adopted in many developing countries existing research shows that use of mobile phones has improved smallholder farmers market access and income beyond income mobile phones can possibly affect other dimensions of social welfare such as gender equality and nutrition such broader social welfare effects have hardly been analyzed up till now here we address this research gap using panel data from smallholder farm households in uganda regression results show that mobile phone use is positively associated with household income women empowerment food security and dietary quality these results also hold after controlling for possible confounding factors in addition to the household level analysis we also look at who within the household actually uses mobile phones gender disaggregation suggests that female mobile phone use has stronger positive associations with social welfare than if males alone use mobile phones we cautiously conclude that equal access to mobile phones cannot only foster economic development but can also contribute to gender equality food security and broader social development further research is required to corroborate the findings and analyze the underlying causal mechanisms

the impact of improved maize varieties on poverty in mexico a propensity score matching approach summary this study examines the adoption of improved maize germplasm in oaxaca and chiapas in mexico it employs a propensity score matching approach to analyze the impact of the adoption of improved maize varieties on household income and poverty reduction using cross sectional data of 325 farmers from the two regions the findings reveal a robust positive and significant impact of improved maize variety adoption on farm household welfare measured by per capita expenditure and poverty reduction specifically the empirical results suggest that adoption of improved maize varieties helped raise household per capita expenditure by an average of 136 173 mexican pesos thereby reducing their probability of falling below the poverty line by roughly 19 31

adoption of improved wheat varieties and impacts on household food security in ethiopia this article evaluates the impact of the adoption of improved wheat varieties on food security using a recent nationally representative dataset of over 2000 farm households in ethiopia we adopted endogenous switching regression treatment effects complemented with a binary propensity score matching methodology to test robustness and reduced selection bias stemming from both observed and unobserved characteristics we expand this further with the generalized propensity score gps approach to evaluate the effects of continuous treatment on the response of the outcome variables we find a consistent result across models indicating that adoption increases food security and farm households that did adopt would also have benefited significantly had they adopted new varieties this study supports the need for vital investments in agricultural research for major food staples widely consumed by the poor and efforts to improve access to modern varieties and services policies that enhance diffusion and adoption of modern wheat varieties should be central to food security strategies in ethiopia

hedonic markets and sorting equilibria bid function envelopes for public services and neighborhood amenities abstract hedonic regressions with house value as the dependent variable are widely used to study public services and neighborhood amenities this paper builds on the theory of household bidding and sorting across communities to derive bid function envelopes which provide a form for these regressions this approach allows for household heterogeneity and multiple amenities yields estimates of the price elasticity of amenity demand directly from the hedonic without a rosen two step procedure and provides tests of hypotheses about sorting an application to cleveland area data from 2000 yields price elasticities for school quality and neighborhood ethnic composition and supports the sorting hypotheses

stock market liquidity and macro liquidity shocks evidence from the 2007 2009 financial crisis we develop an empirical framework that links micro liquidity macro liquidity and stock prices we provide evidence of a strong link between macro liquidity shocks and the returns of uk stock portfolios constructed on the basis of micro liquidity measures between 1999 and 2012 specifically macro liquidity shocks which are extracted on the meeting days of the bank of england monetary policy committee mpc relative to market expectations embedded in 3 month libor futures prices are transmitted in a differential manner to the cross section of liquidity sorted portfolios with liquid stocks playing the most active role we also find that there is a significant increase in shares trading activity and a rather small increase in their trading cost on mpc meeting days finally our results emphatically document that during the recent financial crisis the shocks returns relationship has reversed its sign interest rate cuts during the crisis were perceived by market participants as a signal of deteriorating economic prospects and reinforced flight to safety trading

risk financial stability and fdi all foreign direct investment fdi involves risk augmenting the international finance literature we assess the effects of financial system risk on fdi trends through considering both origin and host country effects motivated by the sovereign debt crisis and based on a dataset including bilateral fdi holdings this paper investigates the implications of sovereign and bank related risk on fdi in the eurozone strikingly we find that in terms of banking risk it is only that encountered in the country of origin that has an impact on fdi choices however we find that sovereign risk in both origin and host countries have effects as a corollary we suggest that although poor financial discipline by host governments has been widely blamed as the primary factor likely to frighten off overseas investors it is amongst fdi supplying nations that the effects of sovereign yields seem most pronounced policymakers in countries seeking to attract fdi should not only be attentive to domestic conditions but also be aware of the financing environment that multinational enterprises mnes encounter in their home countries and how this might impact on their choices

the greek debt crisis likely causes mechanics and outcomes we use insights from the literature on currency crises to offer an analytical treatment of the crisis in the market for greek government bonds we argue that the crisis itself and its escalating nature are very likely to be the result of i steady deterioration of greek macroeconomic fundamentals over 2001 09 to levels inconsistent with long term emu participation and ii a double shift in markets expectations from a regime of credible commitment to future emu participation under an implicit emu german guarantee of greek fiscal liabilities to a regime of non credible emu commitment without fiscal guarantees respectively occurring in november 2009 and february march 2010 we argue that the risk of contagion to other periphery emu countries is significant and that without extensive structural reforms the sustainability of the emu is in question

adoption of modern varieties farmers welfare and crop biodiversity evidence from uganda abstract this paper assesses the impact of modern varieties adoption on farmers welfare and crop biodiversity conserved in situ using nationally representative data collected in 2009 2010 in uganda an endogenous switching regression model estimates the net economic and environmental effects of switching from local landraces to modern species results show that after controlling for market and agro ecological factors the local varieties perform better than modern ones in marginalized and climatic vulnerable areas crop biodiversity shows to play a fundamental role in farmers risk minimizing strategies when the available modern varieties are not adaptable to the local context and not supported by the required level of agro intensification rural development policies should consider the heterogeneity in the adoption returns and support diversity conservation as a national strategic asset for a suitable bioprospecting and a best fitting agricultural system implementation

welfare impacts of maize pigeonpea intensification in tanzania this article examines the driving forces behind farmers decisions to adopt improved pigeonpea and maize and estimates the causal impact of technology adoption on household welfare using data obtained from a random cross section sample of 613 small scale farmers in tanzania we use seemingly unrelated and recursive bivariate probit regressions to test the endogeneity and joint decision making of pigeonpea maize production a double hurdle model is used to analyze the determinants of the intensity of technology adoption conditional on overcoming seed access constraints to address the impact of adoption on welfare the article employs both propensity score matching and switching regression techniques results from bivariate probit models show that unobservable factors cause both decisions to be correlated but the finding does not support the conjecture that both decisions are made jointly overall the analysis of the determinants of adoption identifies inadequate local supply of seed access to information human capital and access to private productive asset as key constraints for pigeonpea technology adoption the causal impact estimation from both the propensity score matching and switching regression suggests that maize pigeonpea adoption has a positive and significant impact on income and consumption expenditure among sample households

house price responses to a national property tax reform abstract we show that house prices in general did not respond to a substantial cut in the national property tax in sweden the estimates are based on rich register data covering more than 100 000 sales over a time period of two and a half years because the swedish property tax is national and thus unrelated to local public goods our setting is ideal for causal identification of the property tax on house prices we observe price increases only in a small segment of the market containing properties with very high tax values we discuss but can admittedly not empirically discriminate between several potential explanations for why we find no evidence of capitalization except for the top segment of the market

are female headed households more food insecure evidence from bangladesh summary this paper uses household and village level survey data to investigate the food security of male and female headed households in bangladesh with particular attention to indigenous ethnic groups and finds no significant differences in the food security between these two types of households the absence of social and cultural restrictions among the indigenous groups permitting their females greater freedom to participate in the labor force coupled with informal redistributive mechanism is attributed to their less food insecurity this result indicates that noneconomic institutions can significantly impact economic outcomes such as food security

estimating preferences for local public services using migration data using swedish micro data the paper examines the impact of local public services on community choice the choice of community is modelled as a choice between a discrete set of alternatives it is found that given taxes high spending on child care attracts migrants less conclusive results are obtained with respect to the role of spending on education and elderly care high local taxes deter migrants relaxing the independence of the irrelevant alternatives assumption by estimating a mixed logit model has a significant impact on the results

a macro financial analysis of the euro area sovereign bond market abstract we estimate the fundamental component of euro area sovereign bond yield spreads i e the part of bond spreads that can be justified by country specific economic factors euro area economic fundamentals and international influences the yield spread decomposition is achieved using a multi market no arbitrage affine term structure model with a unique pricing kernel more specifically we use the canonical representation proposed by joslin et al 2011 and introduce next to standard spanned factors a set of unspanned macro factors as in joslin et al forthcoming the model is applied to yield curve data from belgium france germany italy and spain over the period 2005 2013 overall our results show that economic fundamentals are the dominant drivers behind sovereign bond spreads nevertheless shocks unrelated to the fundamental component of the spread have played an important role in the dynamics of bond spreads since the intensification of the sovereign debt crisis in the summer of 2011

which school attributes matter the influence of school district performance and demographic composition on property values abstract increasing levels of segregation in american schools raises the question do home buyers pay for test scores or demographic composition this paper uses connecticut panel data spanning eleven years from 1994 to 2004 to ascertain the relationship between property values and school district attributes such as student test scores and the racial and ethnic composition of the student body town and census tract fixed effects are included to control for neighborhood unobservables the effect of changes in school district attributes is also examined over a decade long time frame in order to focus on the effect of long run changes which are more likely to be capitalized into prices the study finds strong evidence that increases in percent hispanic have a negative effect on housing prices in connecticut but mixed evidence concerning the impact of test scores on property values student test scores also appear to have increased in importance for explaining housing prices in recent years while the importance of percent hispanic has declined finally the study finds that estimates of property tax capitalization increase substantially when the analysis focuses on long run changes

synergies between different types of agricultural technologies in the kenyan small farm sector abstractsustainable intensification of agriculture will have to build on various innovations but synergies between different types of technologies are not yet sufficiently understood we use repre

how does liquidity affect government bond yields the paper explores the determinants of yield differentials between sovereign bonds using euro area data there is a common trend in yield differentials which is correlated with a measure of aggregate risk in contrast liquidity differentials display sizeable heterogeneity and no common factor we propose a simple model with endogenous liquidity demand where a bond s liquidity premium depends both on its transaction cost and on investment opportunities the model predicts that yield differentials should increase in both liquidity and risk with an interaction term of the opposite sign testing these predictions on daily data we find that the aggregate risk factor is consistently priced liquidity differentials are priced for a subset of countries and their interaction with the risk factor is in line with the model s prediction and crucial to detect their effect

poverty reduction effects of agricultural technology adoption a micro evidence from rural tanzania abstract this article evaluates the impact of adoption of improved pigeonpea technologies on consumption expenditure and poverty status using cross sectional data of 613 households from rural tanzania using multiple econometric techniques we found that adopting improved pigeonpea significantly increases consumption expenditure and reduces poverty this confirms the potential role of technology adoption in improving household welfare as higher incomes translate into lower poverty this study supports broader investment in agriculture research to address vital development challenges reaching the poor with better technologies however requires policy support for improving extension efforts access to seeds and market outlets that stimulate adoption

equity in infrastructure finance when are impact fees justified to the extent that impact fee financing of infrastructure replaces the property tax it shifts payment from owners of existing property to parties associated with newly devel oping property rapid growth in a community is often cited as justification for this shift a model of intergenerational equity is proposed based on benefit principle taxation and capitalization of tax costs and infrastructure benefits the study concludes that rapid growth per se need not bur den existing property owners unfairly unantici pated rapid growth on the other hand can lead to excess tax burdens on existing residents that may appropriately be mitigated through impact fees jel r11

legal constraints and the choice of educational grant structures recent empirical work suggests that legalconstraints are significant in choosingstate educational grant structures unfortunately the literature has not takensuch constraints into account thus callinginto question particular grant structurerecommendations this paper studies theconditions under which a legislature underorder to reform its educational grantstructure prefers foundation grants overdistrict power equalization grants atheoretical model is presented in which thechoice is shown to depend on the legalbasis of the court s decision and theempirical validity of this conclusion isdemonstrated using connecticut data and aseparate model of school districtexpenditure choice

sovereign bond yield spreads a time varying coefficient approach abstract we study the determinants of sovereign bond yield spreads across 10 emu countries between q1 1999 and q1 2010 we apply a semiparametric time varying coefficient model to identify to what extent an observed change in the yield spread is due to a shift in macroeconomic fundamentals or due to altering risk pricing we find that at the beginning of emu the government debt level and the general investors risk aversion had a significant impact on interest differentials in the subsequent years however financial markets paid less attention to the fiscal position of a country and the safe haven status of germany diminished in importance by the end of 2006 two years before the fall of lehman brothers financial markets began to grant germany safe haven status again one year later when financial turmoil began the market reaction to fiscal loosening increased considerably the altering in risk pricing over time period confirms the need of time varying coefficient models in this context

utility maximizing bureaucrats the bureaucrat s point of view in this paper we develop a model to examine the extent to which bureaucrats are maximizing their own utility in the spirit of williamson 1964 and simon 1957 we assume that bureaucrats are utility maximizers but not necessarily cost minimizers and we investigate how well the bureaucrat is doing in relation to his own goals

property taxation and local public spending the renter effect the point of departure for this study is the pervasive finding that other things equal local jurisdictions tend to spend more on local services the larger the fraction of renters among their residents this paper seeks to determine the approximate magnitude of this renter effect by posing the question how much smaller would local public budgets be if all residents were home owners making use of two quite different approaches the paper finds a typical renter effect on local public expenditure on the order of ten percent this finding suggests that we might do well to reform the administration of the property tax so that changes in property tax liabilities on rental dwellings are directly and visibly transformed into changes of monthly rental payments

resource saving and productivity enhancing impacts of crop management innovation packages in ethiopia crop management innovations are often not discrete fixed stand alone options and their adoption may imply various combinations and adaptations this potentially confounds their impact assessment this article assesses the resource saving and productivity enhancing impacts of a crop management package revolving around minimum tillage in maize based farming systems in northwest ethiopia an endogenous switching regression model was applied to plot and household level survey data collected from 290 rural households operating 590 maize plots during the 2012 production year controlling for variations in plot and household characteristics the average effect of minimum tillage package minimum tillage package on maize productivity is 0 44 t ha compared to conventional practice cp adoption of the mtp decreased the average male and female labor use in maize production by 14 4 and 8 2 person days per ha respectively similarly mtp adoption decreased draft power use for land preparation by 13 2 pair of oxen days per ha compared to cp in general there is a considerable short run maize productivity gain and reduction in labor and draft power use under mtp

rational and self fulfilling balance of payments crises speculative attacks on a pegged exchange rate must sometimes occur ifasset price paths are to be free of abnormal profit opportunities suchattacks are fully rational as they reflect the market s response to aregime breakdown that is inevitable the authors shows that under someexpectations about policy balance of payments crises can also be purely self fulfilling events in such cases even a permanently viableregime may collapse and the economy will possess multiple equilibriacorresponding to different subjective assessments of the probability ofa crisis the behavior of the domestic interest rate will naturally reflect the possibility of a speculative attack copyright 1986 by american economic association

agricultural technology adoption and household welfare measurement and evidence abstract previous studies on the adoption and impacts of improved crop varieties have relied on self reported adoption status of the surveyed households however in the presence of weak variety maintenance and poorly functioning seed certification system measurement errors in self reported adoption status can be considerable this paper investigates how such measurement errors can lead to biased welfare estimates using dna fingerprinting based varietal identification as a benchmark we find that misclassification in self reported adoption status is considerable with significant false negative and positive response rates we empirically show that such measurement errors lead to welfare estimates that are biased towards zero and substantially understate the poverty reduction effects of adoption while the empirical evidence suggests attenuation bias our theoretical exposition and simulations demonstrate that upward bias and sign reversal effects are also possible the results point to the need for improved monitoring of the diffusion process of improved varieties through innovative adoption data collection approaches to generate robust evidence for prioritizing and justifying investments in agricultural research and extension

the tiebout model bring back the entrepreneurs several recent papers in the literature have reformulltlated the nature of equilibrium in ifiebout mo lels by alssliuim ing an exogenous number of communities inflexible commullity l ou alaries anti in pirticular inactive lantlowners and developers ihis paper argues that these assumptions are unwarranted and resul1t iin in eterminate solutions and incorrect analyses determinate lon1g run1 solutions require equilibrium in intercommui land markets which in turn require giving lantlowners and or entrepreneurial leveloelers an active role in the models the role of politics in these models and its juxtaposition with entrepreneurial activities are also analyzed

government credibility and policy choice evidence from the pennsylvania earned income tax abstract this paper considers the decision of pennsylvania communities whether to levy a 1 wage tax while a simple political economy model suggests this tax should be enacted when many residents are exempted from the tax the opposite pattern seems to hold one explanation is that residents may mistrust their government and fear that the new tax monies will be spent unwisely several implications of this credibility story are consistent with the data and non taxing communities tend to have low credibility as measured by three proxies in addition after controlling for credibility the proportion of exempt residents is positively associated with the probability of enacting the wage tax just as the political economy model suggests

does cooperative membership improve household welfare evidence from apple farmers in china this paper examines the impact of cooperative membership on farm performance indicators such as apple yields net returns and household income using cross sectional data from a survey of farmers in china an endogenous switching regression model that accounts for selection bias is employed in the analysis the empirical results reveal that cooperative membership exerts a positive and statistically significant impact on apple yields farm net returns and household income a disaggregated analysis also reveals that small scale farms tend to benefit more from cooperatives than medium and large farms

the impact of food inflation on urban poverty and its monetary cost some back of the envelope calculations this paper uses a sample of 73 developing countries to estimate the change in the cost of alleviating urban poverty brought about by the recent increase in food prices this cost is approximated by the change in the poverty deficit that is the variation in financial resources required to eliminate poverty under perfect targeting the results show that for most countries the cost represents less than 0 1 percent of gross domestic product however in the most severely affected it may exceed 3 percent in all countries the change in the poverty deficit is mostly due to the negative real income effect of those households that were poor before the price shock while the cost attributable to new households falling into poverty is negligible thus in countries where transfer mechanisms with effective targeting already exist the most cost effective strategy would be to scale up such programs rather than designing tools to identify the new poor

measuring the effects of preservation on farm profits in a continuous treatment setting abstractdespite billions of dollars of public appropriations to state purchase of development rights pdr programmes there has been limited evaluation of the effects of these investments on the economic performance of preserved farms this article estimates dose response functions to evaluate the effects of enrolment in new jersey s pdr programme on farm profitability the generalized propensity score method in a continuous treatment setting is used to address selection bias arising from voluntary programme participation treatment effects are measured across treatment levels to determine whether farm profitability is affected differently across levels of programme participation our findings reveal that relative to unpreserved farms profit per acre tends to increase along lower treatment levels the profit per acre of preserved farms in the 1 40 treatment range is on average 407 higher than that of unpreserved farms in the full sample positive profit differentials averaging between 317 and 472

optimal local taxation and french municipal tax distortions this article presents both theoretical and empirical findings in the field of optimal local taxation i e neutral in locational decision this topic should throw light on the question of tax policy and tax reform we extend wildasin s 1987 model including mobile capital in this way we include his marginal cost of congestion taxation rule relating to mobile households proposition 1 this extension provides us with a new rule proposition 2 the optimal share out of taxes among household residents and firms in municipalities to illustrate these results we discuss the french municipal tax system properties and we pick out its main distortions

analysis of adoption and impacts of improved maize varieties in eastern zambia summary this paper analyzes the adoption and welfare impacts of improved maize varieties in eastern zambia using data obtained from a sample of over 800 farm households using both propensity score matching and endogenous switching regression models the paper shows that adoption of improved maize leads to significant gains in crop incomes consumption expenditure and food security results further show that improved maize varieties have significant poverty reducing impacts in eastern zambia the paper concludes with implications for policies to promote adoption and impacts of modern varieties in zambia

impact of green control techniques on family farms welfare abstract using survey data of 375 family farms in five provinces of the huang huai hai plain this paper conducts a comprehensive measurement of family farms welfare within the framework of the capability approach theory furthermore using an endogenous switching regression model and a multinomial treatment effects model this paper evaluates the impact of the adoption or non adoption of green control techniques on family farms welfare and estimate the welfare effects of the degree and timing of adoption this research finds that the average treatment effect on family farm welfare with and without adopting green control techniques is significant at 0 084 and 0 046 respectively therefore green control techniques help to improve the welfare level of family farms compared with family farms that do not adopt green control techniques the welfare level of family farms adopting a high or low degree of green control techniques increases by 22 63 and 16 42 respectively and the welfare level of family farms given the early or late adoption of green control techniques increases by 5 87 and 7 57 respectively therefore the welfare effect of a high degree of adoption on family farms is greater and the welfare level of family farms with late adoption is higher

property tax financing renting and the level of local expenditures the renter homeowner dichotomy has been systematically ignored in the local public goods literature the conventional justification for ignoring this dichotomy is that the only difference between the two groups of individuals is an innocuous accounting rule owners pay property taxes directly while renters pay property taxes indirectly via their rental payments to landlords 9 consequently when empirical studies after controlling for income and tastes find renter behavior that is discernably different from that of homeowners the explanation commonly offered is that renters are subject to fiscal illusion i e renters support higher levels of expenditures than homeowners because renters are unaware of the actual property tax burdens they bear 2 the fiscal illusion explanation despite its general acceptance is deficient on both empirical and theoretical grounds empirically the fiscal illusion hypothesis has not and probably cannot be directly tested 3 fiscal illusion is not so much a theory of renter behavior as it is a convenient ad hoc explanation for empirical results that are unexpected from the theory a revised theory of renter behavior cum illusion moreover would lack credibility to argue that even if time and again renters expectations are unfulfilled by experience i e they pay as much for increased services as owners when they expect not to yet renters consistently support higher levels of services would simply be untenable there are alternative possible explanations for renters behavior renters might have stronger preferences for public goods e g they may have a larger number of school age children renters

determinants of sovereign bond yield spreads in the emu an optimal currency area perspective in the light of the recent financial crisis we take a panel cointegration approach that allows for structural breaks to the analysis of the determinants of sovereign bond yield spreads in nine economies of the european monetary union we find evidence for a level break in the cointegrating relationship moreover results show that i fiscal imbalances namely expected government debt to gdp differentials are the main long run drivers of sovereign spreads ii liquidity risks and cumulated inflation differentials have non negligible weights but iii all conclusions are ultimately connected to whether or not the sample of countries is composed of members of an optimal currency area oca in particular we establish i that results are overall driven by those countries not passing the oca test and ii that investors closely monitor and severely punish the deterioration of expected debt positions of those economies exhibiting significant gaps in competitiveness

does adaptation to climate change provide food security a micro perspective from ethiopia we examine the driving forces behind farmers decisions to adapt to climate change and the impact of adaptation on farmers food production we investigate whether there are differences in the food production functions of farm households that adapted and those that did not adapt we estimate a simultaneous equations model with endogenous switching to account for the heterogeneity in the decision to adapt or not and for unobservable characteristics of farmers and their farm we compare the expected food production under the actual and counterfactual cases that the farm household adapted or not to climate change we find that the group of farm households that adapted has systematically different characteristics than the group of farm households that did not adapt the relationship between production and average temperature is inverted u shaped for farm households that adapted while it is u shaped for farm households that did not adapt and vice versa in the case of precipitation we find that adaptation increases food production however the impact of adaptation on food production is smaller for the farm households that actually did adapt than for the farm households that did not adapt in the counterfactual case that they adapted

agricultural technology productivity and poverty in madagascar summary this paper uses a unique spatially explicit dataset to study the link between agricultural performance and rural poverty in madagascar we show that controlling for geographical and physical characteristics communes that have higher rates of adoption of improved agricultural technologies and consequently higher crop yields enjoy lower food prices higher real wages for unskilled workers and better welfare indicators the empirical evidence strongly favors support for improved agricultural production as an important part of any strategy to reduce the high poverty and food insecurity rates currently prevalent in rural madagascar

assessing the impact of nerica on income and poverty in central and western uganda persistent food shortage and poverty in sub saharan africa ssa are major development issues new rice for africa nerica was developed to boost crop yield and income of rural households in ssa although its high yielding traits have become fairly well known there is no empirical analysis of its impact on income and poverty by taking the case of uganda where a nerica promoting program was initiated as one of the major poverty eradication measures this study attempts to compare actual income with the hypothetical income without nerica we found that introduction of nerica decreases poverty to a significant extent without deteriorating income distribution

analysing the link between environmental performance and sovereign credit risk this study investigates the effects of a country s environmental performance on sovereign credit risk we use sovereign credit default swap cds spreads for a large panel of countries to analyse w