the ambivalent impact of coffee certification on farmers welfare a matched panel approach for cooperatives in central kenya certification is promoted to improve rural welfare through better market access and improved agricultural practices we compare net effects of fairtrade and utz certified coffee production in central kenya using a matched panel from 218 farm households that belong to three cooperatives and were visited twice in 2009 and 2013 we distinguish between effects at field farm household cooperative community and market levels both certification regimes improved coffee returns but fairtrade was more effective in coffee processing whereas utz contributed to productivity under stagnating coffee prices fairtrade farmers increased their coffee specialization while utz farmers reduced coffee areas but increased yield

return migration uncertainty and precautionary savings this paper presents a life cycle model where migrants determine re migration and consumption simultaneously in a stochastic environment whether precautionary savings of migrants are above or below those of natives is ambiguous in general the sign depends on the risk in host and home country labor markets and on the correlation of labor market shocks furthermore the effect of an uncertain environment on migration and re migration plans cannot be unambiguously signed for the general case it depends on the size of the wage differential as well as the relative risk the migrant exhibits in the two labor markets

agricultural price instability a survey of competing explanations and remedies there are two explanations for agricultural price dynamics one follows cobweb logic and models fluctuations driven by expectation errors but emphasises that these expectations create complex dynamics and possibly chaos the other stems from the rational expectations tradition of dynamics driven by real shocks the empirical evidence tends to support the latter but is not conclusive the rational expectations model generates an optimal dynamic path from which no improvement can be expected from public intervention however if we take account of all the potential market failures in agricultural markets and especially in developing countries this conclusion might require some qualifications although an appropriate policy design for stability has still to be achieved this paper surveys the positive and normative literature on agricultural prices highlighting empirical evidence and identifying remaining unresolved issues

effects of the price of charitable giving evidence from an online crowdfunding platform abstract a long literature has examined the effects of the price of giving that is the amount an individual must give for one dollar to accrue to the charitable activity itself on donative behavior we use data from donorschoose org an online platform linking teachers with prospective donors that are uniquely suited to addressing this question due to exogenous variation in overhead costs an increased price of giving results in a lower likelihood of a project being funded we also calculate the price elasticity of giving finding estimates between 0 8 and 2 finally we examine the effect of competition on giving and find that increased competition reduces the likelihood of a project being funded these results provide insight into the workings of the market for charitable gifts

determinants of donations in private nonprofit markets abstract we estimate the responsiveness of donations to a number of economic variables including price advertising and the availability of revenue from such other sources as government grants and program service sales utilizing a set of irs data on individual nonprofit organizations in each of seven industries including hospitals and higher education for the years 1982 1994 we find distinct overall patterns as well as notable variation across industries a nonprofit organization s fundraising expenditures are estimated to exert two countervailing effects on donations the direct advertising and information effect augments donations while the indirect effect on the price of donating has a negative effect we do not find evidence that fundraising is carried to the profit maximizing levels in some industries fundraising is substantially short of that level while in other industries it is excessive implying that the marginal return to fundraising is exceeded by the cost focusing on whether revenue from other sources affects donations to a nonprofit organization we find evidence that revenue from either government grants or from the organization s own program sales activity generally does not crowd out private donations to the contrary in most industries there are significant positive effects

are church and state substitutes evidence from the 1996 welfare reform abstract churches provide community services similar to those provided by the government but there has been no convincing analysis of the extent to which church activity can substitute for government activity to address this important issue this paper uses a new panel data set of presbyterian church usa congregations to regress both church member donations and a church s community spending on a number of variables including government welfare expenditures a provision of the 1996 welfare law that decreased the availability and use of welfare services by non citizens serves as an instrument to identify the causal effect of government spending on church activity the results show that church activities substitute for government activities extrapolating the findings to all denominations the estimated crowd out effect lies between 20 and 38 cents on the dollar the results are subjected to a number of robustness tests

return migration the european experience labour immigration contributed strongly to europe s post war economic development in contrast to migration to north america or australia these movements of labour were always seen as temporary by sending and receiving countries and at least initially also by most migrants although many migrants stayed more permanently return migration is a highly relevant feature in practice its significant role and the underlying behavioural mechanisms are not well understood however it is therefore not too surprising that most policy measures taken in the 1970s and 1980s to encourage return migration failed the paper takes the view that much can be learned from recent european history temporary immigration schemes may be helpful to moderate illegal migration and to foster east west economic relationships given the tight policies in the european union short term migration seems to be the only channel to open the door slightly the paper reviews the european history of return migration and the policy regimes in important european labour migration receiving countries it also provides new empirical evidence on the determinants of return behaviour and successful return return propensities of migrants increase with the age at entry but decrease with the number of years of residence conditional on having decided to return however the remaining years in the country decrease with years of residence and keeping years of residence constant with entry age return incentives may cause dissatisfaction and reintegration problems in the home country the results support the view that economic benefits are the larger the earlier it is clear whether migration is temporary or permanent

demand for charity donations in private non profit markets the case of the u k abstract this paper presents estimates of the demand for donations for u k charities in 1985 these estimates make demand depend upon price fund raising expenditure a quality index and alternative revenue sources the price elasticity of donations found here shows for the most part an elastic response and is consistent with previous studies using u s data our empirical results suggest that non profits in the u k unlike their counterparts in the u s are net revenue maximisers we discovered no significant evidence that public donations crowded out private donations in our sample of 300 charities

middle income classes and food crises the new food feed competition famine was averted the novelty was that a 3 shortfall in grain production led to a 250 price increase this specific manifestation of the food crisis was the result of the congruence of an old force population pressure with new ones the income explosion and income inequality in a world in which the economic distance between the rich and the poor grows ever greater even minor food shortages are likely to assume major proportions the agricultural price instability that will ensue represents a major threat to the food security of less developed countries examination of the ingredients of modern food crises can help explain some of the new ramifications of the age old problem of world hunger the three elements that are reflected in the food demand situation are population incomes and prices to avoid needless complexity i will reserve my examination of prices to the end population and incomes deserve more detailed analysis

why do people give testing pure and impure altruism abstract researchers measure crowd out around one level of charity output to identify whether giving is motivated by altruism and or warm glow however crowd out depends on output implying first that the power to reject pure altruism varies and second that a single measurement of incomplete crowd out can be rationalized by many different preferences by instead measuring crowd out at different output levels we allow both for identification and for a novel and direct test of impure altruism using a new experimental design we present the first empirical evidence that consistent with impure altruism crowd out decreases with output jel d64 l31

tracking the quality premium of certified coffee evidence from ethiopia summary certification of voluntary sustainability standards vss is rapidly increasing in global value chains while consumers mostly in developed countries are willing to pay significant premiums for the certification of such standards it is not well understood how effectively these incentives are transmitted to producing countries we study vss more in particular fair trade and organic certification in ethiopia s coffee sector the country s most important export commodity using a unique census of transaction data at the export level and large scale data at the production level we find that transmission of export quality premiums to coffee producers is limited with only less than one third of this premium being passed on and we find limited evidence of effects due to communal investments moreover as quality premiums are small and average production levels in these settings are low we estimate that these premiums would only lead to an increased income for coffee farmers of 22 usd per year even with a perfect transmission scenario and therefore would have little impact on the welfare of the average coffee farmer given that the vss studied are characterized by the highest premiums among vss schemes it can be assumed that even lower benefits from other vss certification schemes trickle down to producers

demand for collective goods in private nonprofit markets can fundraising expenditures help overcome free rider behavior abstract economic theory ascribes the primary role in the provision of public goods to government this emphasis on government overlooks the role of the not for profit sector in providing collective type goods in this paper we seek to determine the factors influencing charitable contributions to private nonprofit organizations by estimating a demand function for the output of these collective good providers specifically we test the hypothesis that voluntary giving is responsive to conventional market variables such as advertising expenditures price and quality overall the results are strongly supportive

board composition and nonprofit conduct evidence from hospitals abstract this study uses data from hospitals to test the hypothesis that management representation on nonprofit boards leads to excessive ceo pay defined as compensation that exceeds the level predicted by a market wage model we document a relatively small but statistically significant positive association between ceo pay and insider boards that include the ceo and other employees as members additional tests confirm that this result is not driven by endogenous board structure and that excess pay is greater in the absence of competition from for profit hospitals we then examine whether management board representation is associated with larger underlying agency concerns that lead to reduced donations our tests do not support this hypothesis but do however reveal a negative correlation between donations and physician representation on the board suggesting a potential conflict between the interests of donors and non employee physicians our overall evidence provides empirical support for modeling nonprofit organizations as consisting of competing stakeholders

faith based charity and crowd out during the great depression abstract interest in religious organizations as providers of social services has increased dramatically in recent years churches in the u s were a crucial provider of social services through the early part of the twentieth century but their role shrank dramatically with the expansion in government spending under the new deal in this paper we investigate the extent to which the new deal crowded out church charitable spending in the 1930s we do so using a new nationwide data set of charitable spending for six large christian denominations matched to data on local new deal spending we instrument for new deal spending using measures of the political strength of a state s congressional delegation and confirm our findings using a different instrument based on institutional constraints on state relief spending with both instruments we find that higher government spending leads to lower church charitable activity crowd out was small as a share of total new deal spending 3 but large as a share of church spending our estimates suggest that benevolent church spending fell by 30 in response to the new deal and that government relief spending can explain virtually all of the decline in charitable church activity observed between 1933 and 1939

world cereal price instability and a market based instrument for ldc food import risk management abstract the paper reviews the types of responses of low income food deficit country lifdc agents to food related shocks it suggests that lifdcs would probably benefit from internationally provided insurance the paper then argues that the world cereal markets do not appear to have become more unstable despite recent liberalisation and declines in world stocks the paper proposes the institution of a fund aimed at providing option like contracts to the lifdcs to insure that they would not incur excessive food import costs in times of need the premiums of such contract could be subsidised by developed countries as part of their overall aid while such a fund would not provide full insurance against excessive food import bills it would go part of the way toward such a goal simulations of the proposal suggest that the cost to developed and developing countries alike would seem to be smaller than the cost of current arrangements and the benefits would seem larger

financial reporting quality and price competition among nonprofit firms donors increasingly rely on financial information reported by internal revenue service irs form 990 to allocate donations among nonprofit firms however competition among nonprofits creates an incentive for managers to under report management and fund raising expenditures to make their firms appear relatively efficient increasingly researchers suspect that information provided in the form 990 may not accurately portray the true financial condition of nonprofit firms inaccurate price information weakens the ability of donors to promote efficiency and discipline excess among nonprofit managers this article examines the reaction of donors to variation in form 990 reporting quality we find that donors reward nonprofit firms for investments in more accurate financial reporting additionally higher quality financial information sharpens the ability of donor markets to discipline nonprofit firms by increasing price sensitivity the primary implication of this study is that regulatory improvements in rep

how giving affects giving a long term analysis of donations social preferences theories suggest that at least some people show altruistic behaviour however this philanthropic behaviour ranges from pure altruistic preferences to reluctant altruists the fa

using nonprofit organization level financial data to infer managers fund raising strategies abstract using irs data from 1982 to 1994 this study finds the typical fund raising elasticities in seven categories of nonprofit organizations to be between zero and one these results are consistent with most nonprofit managers following intermediate strategies between pure program service maximization and pure organization size maximization however the distribution of fund raising elasticities contains extreme observations that can disproportionately affect mean elasticities and standard deviations as a result prior researchers tests of the difference of mean elasticities from zero may not properly characterize the behavior of typical nonprofit organizations

the effects of commodity price stabilization programs in this paper the authors analyze the effects of commodity programs in which the government attempts to support and stabilize price through open market purchases and sales specifically they as sess the effects of such programs on the u s soybean market using a rational expectations model that allows for private storage expected price responsive production and arbitrary support and release price s a salient feature of the model is that private storage and product ion behavior adjusts to changes in government policy stochastic simu lations of the market model demonstrate that price stabilization prog rams can reduce long run market price and destabilize producer revenu e copyright 1988 by american economic association

lithuania s food demand during economic transition the linear approximate version of the almost ideal demand system la aids model is estimated using data from the lithuanian household budget survey hbs covering the period from july 1992 to december 1994 price and real expenditure elasticities for 12 food groups were estimated based on the estimated coefficients of the model very little or nothing is known about the demand parameters of lithuania and other former socialist countries so the results are of intrinsic interest estimated expenditure elasticities were positive and statistically significant for all food groups while all own price elasticities were negative and statistically significant except for that of eggs which was insignificant results suggest that lithuanian household consumption did respond to price and real income changes during their transition to a market oriented economy

kids or cash exploring charter school responses to declining government revenues while the literature is extensive on school districts revenue sources less research has been done on the impact of donations on school district funds in this paper we extend the theoretical literature on crowding out of private donations by government grants for one type of nonprofit firm namely charter schools the theoretical model leads us to focus on the key relationships among fundraising effort enrollment which is tied to federal and state funding and donations using a dataset on texas charter schools we adopt a two stage approach to examine the empirical relationship between changes in nondonor revenues and the donations received by charter schools like the extensive empirical estimates of the effects of government grants on donations for other types of nonprofit firms we find evidence of crowding out with respect to our sample of charter schools we also find a significant positive effect of fundraising on donations with a 1 increase in fundraising associated to a 0 58 increase in donations a pattern consistent with overinvestment in fundraising enrollments exhibit a robust inverse relationship to changes in nondonor revenues jel h00 h32 h50

the latte revolution regulation markets and consumption in the global coffee chain abstract coffee is a truly global commodity and a major foreign exchange earner in many developing countries the global coffee chain has changed dramatically as a result of deregulation new consumption patterns and evolving corporate strategies from a balanced contest between producing and consuming countries within the politics of international coffee agreements power relations shifted to the advantage of transnational corporations a relatively stable institutional environment where proportions of generated income were fairly distributed between producing and consuming countries turned into one that is more informal unstable and unequal through the lenses of global commodity chain analysis this paper examines how these transformations affect developing countries and what policy instruments are available to address the emerging imbalances

fair trade organic coffee production in nicaragua sustainable development or a poverty trap abstract this article assesses the impact of fair trade organic coffee production on the well being of small scale farmers in nicaragua studying the results of organic management is crucial for evaluating the advantages of fair trade because approximately half of all fair trade coffee is also organically certified a wide range of farmers representatives of cooperatives and export companies in nicaragua were interviewed during seven months of field work between 2005 and 2008 fair trade organic production raises farmer income when low intensity organic farming is an alternative to low intensity conventional farming however low intensity farming produces very little coffee in the case of the most marginalized farmers keeping these farmers in poverty with higher intensities of management the economic advantages of fair trade organic production largely depend on prices in the mainstream market

the cyclical behavior of strategic inventories this paper presents a model in which inventories are used by a duopoly to deter deviations from an implicitly collusive arrangement higher inventories allow firms to punish cheaters more strongly and can thus help to maintain collusion we show that when demand is high the incentive to deviate increases so that increases in inventories may be optimal for the duopoly this rationalizes the observed positive correlation between inventories and sales in our empirical section we show that as our model predicts this correlation is more important in concentrated industries we also provide several examples where inventories have been a factor in cartel behavior

food security and storage in the middle east and north africa in times of highly volatile commodity markets governments often try to protect their populations from rapidly rising food prices which can be particularly harsh for the poor a potential solution for food deficit countries is to hold strategic reserves which can be called on when international prices spike but how large should strategic stockpiles be this paper develops a dynamic storage model for wheat in the middle east and north africa mena region where imported wheat dominates the average diet the paper uses the model to analyze a strategy that sets aside wheat stockpiles which can be used when needed to keep domestic prices below a targeted price this paper shows that if the target is set high and reserves are adequate the strategy can be effective and robust contrary to most interventions strategic storage policies are counter cyclical and when the importing region is sufficiently large a regional policy can smooth global prices this paper shows that this is the case for the mena region nevertheless the policy is more costly than the pro cyclical policy of a targeted intervention that directly offsets high prices with a subsidy similar to food stamps

rent seeking and international commodity agreements the case of coffee although quotas are known to create opportunities for rent seeking such effects have not been examined in the context of international commodity agreements we hypothesize that export quotas imposed by the international coffee agreement ica by creating quota rents in coffee exporting countries encourage directly unproductive dup behavior by domestic groups seeking to capture such rents such behavior can cause substantial economic waste and undesirably alter income distribution the allocational and distributional effects of even moderate rent seeking behavior could be sufficient to transform a coffee exporting country s expected welfare gain from ica quotas into a welfare loss an understanding of these effects and a measure of their magnitude is crucial to any evaluation of the ica the classic analyses of international commodity agreements have focused on how such agreements affect the commodity terms of trade and export revenue instability 2 surprisingly little work exists on the welfare effects of commodity agreements within exporting countries particularly on the income distribution effects or dup activity the agreements might engender 3 the papers by g mcmahon and h dick and colleagues are partial exceptions 4 mcmahon shows that kenya s response to ica quotas the government banned new coffee plantings in an effort to control output was inefficient and had regressive income effects dick and colleagues compare the effects of buffer stocks and export quotas on a domestic economy using a general equilibrium model and find that quotas are better because they shift resources from

return migration wage differentials and the optimal migration duration in simple static models migration increases with the wage differential between host and home country in a dynamic framework and if migrations are temporary the size of the migrant population in the host country depends also on the migration duration this paper analyses optimal migration durations in a model which rationalises the decision of the migrant to return to his home country despite persistently higher wages in the host country the analysis shows that if migrations are temporary the optimal migration duration may decrease if the wage differential grows larger using micro data for germany the second part of the paper provides empirical evidence which is compatible with this hypothesis

the effect of specialty coffee certification on household livelihood strategies and specialisation abstract farm certification is rapidly becoming a sine qua non for access to specialty coffee markets at the centre of these changes are smallholder coffee producers responsible for 80 of global coffee production although rural households are known to depend on more than agricultural production alone the literature on specialty coffee and certification has rather narrowly focused on coffee income and production in this study broader impacts are explicitly taken into account household income was decomposed into categories corresponding to specific income generating activities and coffee income was broken down into price yield and area effects results show that coffee certification encourages farmers to specialise in coffee production increasing coffee income but not total household income at least not in the short run the time and effort required to attain the higher coffee income offered by certified production means farmers have to give up other activities this substitution effect cancels out the income effect such that there is no increase in total household income the lack of an effect on total household income suggests the return to the additional labour effort required for certified coffee production is not higher than in other activities questioning the benefits of certification for small scale producers

do high income or low income immigrants leave faster we estimate the impact of the income earned in the host country on return migration of labor migrants from developing countries we use a three state correlated competing risks model to account for the strong dependence of labor market status and the income earned our analysis is based on administrative panel data of recent labor immigrants from developing countries to the netherlands the empirical results show that intensities of return migration are u shaped with respect to migrants income implying a higher intensity in low and high income groups indeed the lowest income group has the highest probability of return we also find that ignoring the interdependence of labor market status and the income earned leads to an overestimating the income effect on departure keywords migration dynamics labor market transitions competing risks immigrant assimilation

the impact of the international coffee agreement on producing countries the main objective of this article is to analyze the impact of the international coffee agreement s export system on the world coffee market focusing on increases in real export revenues transfer benefits and reductions in income variability risk benefits in each exporting country over the recent period of operation of the international coffee agreement s export quota system the authors find that the quota system had a stabilizing effect on world coffee prices the quotas reduced real export revenues for most small exporting countries but large producers gained most small countries gained however in terms of risk reduction if a brief suspension of the quota occurs from time to time caused for example by adverse weather which results in a shortfall in world supply the quota system works like a buffer stock scheme on average producing countries as a whole lose transfer benefits but gain risk benefits

managerial rewards and the behavior of for profit governmental and nonprofit organizations evidence from the hospital industry abstract studies of mixed industries frequently focus on differential behavior between for profit and either nonprofit or governmental producers substantially less is known about differences among governmental religious nonprofit and secular nonprofit organizations we examine the compensation of hospital ceos to assess the extent to which these three organizational forms pursue similar objectives compensation levels the use of salaries versus bonuses as proxies for weak versus strong incentives and the criteria organizations use to determine bonuses are analyzed we conclude that the ceo incentive contracts at religious nonprofit secular nonprofit and governmental hospitals imply substantive differences in the behavior of these organizations

market power in international commodity trade the case of coffee this paper studies the impact of market power on international commodity prices i use a standard oligopoly model and exploit historical variations in the structure of the international coffee bean market to assess the impact of a cartel treaty on coffee prices and its global welfare consequences the results suggest that the international coffee agreement ica 1965 89 raised its price by 75 above the cournot competitive level annually transferring approximately 12 billion from consumers to exporting countries and its lapse in 1989 explains four fifths of the subsequent price decline that is the coffee crisis

the welfare implications of brazil s coffee export price subsidies during the ica to increase coffee export revenues during the international coffee agreement brazil provided selected purchasers with export rebates that could be used to pay for future coffee purchases this subsidy mutated and grew over time encouraged by rent seeking the subsidy had huge cost to the brazilian treasury 9 8 billion in constant 1982 us dollars or about 13 of coffee export revenues as exports were usually quota constrained the subsidy increased brazil s international coffee price particularly during 1980 1986 absolutely and relative to its competitors prices the unexpected variation in brazil s price also caused the new york coffee sugar and cocoa exchange to terminate trading in brazilian coffee futures making it more costly to hedge brazilian coffee until today the econometric evidence is mixed but it seems likely the subsidy reduced brazil s net economic welfare and redistributed income from the treasury to foreign roasters domestic exporters and government bureaucrats

agency problems and unrelated business income of non profit organizations an empirical analysis nonprofit organizations are traditionally assumed to dislike commercial activities in the usa they are however allowed to engage in commercial activities but the income they derive from these activities is then subject to the so called unrelated business income tax if npos do indeed dislike commercial income then why do they engage in these activities using a data set of 2103 us npos this study suggests that the presence of agency problems inside the organization can at least provide an explanation for the occurrence of unrelated business income

economic growth sustainable development and food consumption evidence across different income groups of countries abstract considering that high population and income growths will lead the coming decades an increase in global food demand is expected livestock products such as meat are closely related to this trend but also associated with impacts on the environment and public health from land and water depletion to greenhouse gases emissions and higher risks of non communicable diseases this trend raises doubts about the sustainability of the food industry and thus a solution is needed for the problem how to feed the world population without compromising present and future generations the literature suggests that meat consumption should be reduced for the sake of the environment and global population however without considering the effects that such reduction would have on the economy inspired by these facts this paper empirically analyses the interactions between food consumption economic growth and sustainable development measured by the index of sustainable economic welfare more specifically the paper assesses the effect that food consumption has on the economy the econometric analysis applies the autoregressive distributed lag model for 77 countries further distinguished by their income group from 1995 to 2013 the findings support that meat consumption has different impacts on economic growth and sustainable development considering different income groups however there is an evident dilemma between economic growth and sustainable development since meat consumption has contradictory effects on each thus it is crucial to understand how to promote sustainability i e reducing the environmental externalities and chronic health diseases without compromising economic growth

commodity agreements and commodity markets lessons from tin in what follows we study the history of the tin market over the period i982 5 important questions this exercise will help to answer are was the collapse of the tin market a failure of the buffer stock operation and was it inevitable was the activity of the buffer stock a commodity market manipulation was there a deficiency in the drafting of the tin agreement was there a failure of commodity market regulation more generally while it has long been recognised that stabilisation schemes are vulnerable to speculative attacks the interconection between buffer stock managements and futures markets has not been explored in this sense our historical analysis will

linking globalization to local land uses how eco consumers and gourmands are changing the colombian coffee landscapes market trends are becoming prominent forces shaping local landscapes the increasing demand for high quality and sus tainable coffees is driving land use decisions among colombian farmers a value chain analysis shows that farmers who sell to differen tiated markets significantly captured a larger portion of the value added and faced lower volatility than mainstream producers consequently regions apt for producing differentiated coffees experienced the greatest increase in area planted tracing the value chain reveals how land use decisions increasingly depend on the pressures and opportunities created by global markets with detectable impacts on livelihoods and landscapes

why do migrants return to poor countries evidence from philippine migrants responses to exchange rate shocks abstract this paper distinguishes between target earnings and life cycle motivations for return migration by examining how philippine migrants return decisions respond to major unexpected exchange rate changes in their overseas locations due to the asian financial crisis overall the evidence favors the life cycle explanation more favorable exchange rate shocks lead to fewer migrant returns a10 improvement in the exchange rate reduces the 12 month return rate by 1 4 percentage points however some migrants appear motivated by target earnings considerations in households with intermediate foreign earnings favorable exchange rate shocks have the least effect on return migration but lead to increases in household investment

charity donations in the uk new evidence based on panel data abstract this paper presents a set of panel data estimates for 159 of the most prominent uk charities for the period 1983 1990 in evaluating alternative specifications we settle on a fixed effects estimation social welfare charities are shown to fund raise short of the point at which net revenues are maximized whereas health and overseas charities are found to net revenue maximize religious charities maximize total revenues estimates of price and fund raising elasticities are presented for charities overall and for four cohorts for alternative income sources no evidence of crowding out is found

corporate investments in supply chain sustainability selecting instruments in the agri food industry abstract private investments to address environmental issues are perceived as a powerful engine of sustainability for the agri food sector multiple instruments have been developed to green supply chains yet little is known about the underlying process and conditions under which green sourcing concerns lead to the adoption of specific sustainability instruments among agri food companies this study i offers a synthesis of the most commonly used instruments agri food companies adopt to promote sustainability in their supply chains ii proposes an analytical framework to elucidate how those decisions are made based on the competitive environment in which firms operate with respect to location of their raw materials technologies available to their suppliers leverage over upstream suppliers and end markets characteristics and iii presents seven case studies illustrating the decision making process leading to the adoption of a specific instrument by a particular company companies that do not have sustainable technologies available to improve their environmental practices but operate in highly sensitive places are better off taking their operation somewhere else but companies with available cleaner technologies effective law enforcement and control over the supply chains as well as a brand to protect can capitalize on their environmental efforts by introducing strict standards such as third party certifications enforcement of social and environmental regulations at countries of origin is a key factor that deters companies form adopting very strict standards even if they have a brand value to enhance the multiplication of private labels and initiatives are in most cases not driven by a desire to disorient the consumer but rather by a careful consideration of the complex conditions under which agri food supply chains operate with minor adaptations the framework could be applied to other economic sectors that have environmental impacts from mining and energy generating industries to apparel and electronics

the robustness of kingma s crowd out estimate evidence from new data on contributions to public radio we revisit kingma s kingma 1989 journal of political economy 97 1197 1207 widely cited study of charitable contributions to public radio kingma s estimate of partial but statistically significant crowd out remains a benchmark in the literature because he was able to match household level contributions data with station level data on revenue including revenue from government grants to the best of our knowledge no comparable data have become available until now we replicate kingma s estimates with the original data and then apply the same methodology to very similar data from 1996 kingma s estimates are not robust to the use of the newer data

international commodity agreements an obituary notice abstract it is widely believed that international commodity agreements have lapsed because they have failed the reality is more complex the tin agreement did collapse but for sugar and cocoa adverse market conditions and lack of general support made stabilization impractical control of the coffee market ceased largely because of disagreements both between and within the producing countries on the division of the benefits resulting from higher prices overall commodity control fits uneasily in an increasingly globalized and competitive world and this perception has resulted in a diminished willingness to resolve the practical difficulties of price stabilization

has regulation of charitable foundations thrown the baby out with the bath water abstract regulations to curb tax avoidance and evasion through charitable foundations have been in place since the tax reform act of 1969 newly compiled longitudinal data makes it possible to estimate the effects of these regulations by comparing affected and unaffected foundations before and after the reform donations and entry dropped precipitously proxy variables suggest significant deterrence of abuses but half of the decline in donations can be explained by the increased cost of running a foundation the results highlight the potential for large reductions in the benefits of regulation when the cost of compliance affects externality producing actions such as charitable giving

immigrant and emigrant earnings a longitudinal study this paper analyzes the relationship between earnings and the extent of assimilation cohort quality change and return migration experienced by the foreign born population the study uses the longitudinal data available in the survey of natural and social scientists and engineers the analysis reveals that there was a sizable decline in the skills of this population over the last two decades in addition the study shows that return migration is more likely among immigrants who did not perform well in the u s labor market

the economics of temporary migrations many migrations are temporary a fact that has often been ignored in the economic literature on migration such omission may be serious in that expected migration temporariness can impart a distinct dynamic element to immigrants economic behavior generating possible consequences for nonmigrants in both home and host countries in this paper we provide a thorough examination of the various aspects of temporary migrations that matter for the analysis of economic phenomena we demonstrate the extent of temporary migrations in population movements we show how temporariness can affect the various economic choices and how better data have improved both the measurement of nonpermanent migrations and the analyses of various aspects of migrant behavior we propose a general theoretical framework for modeling temporary migration decisions based on which we outline the various motives for temporariness while simultaneously reviewing related literature and available data sources we discuss the possible consequences of migration temporariness for nonmigrants in both home and host countries jel f22 f24 j11 j61 k37 o15

private donations government grants commercial activities and fundraising cointegration and causality for ngos in international development cooperation ngos could help scale up foreign aid efforts by mobilizing private donations however fundraising activities do not necessarily result in higher donations and substitution effects between different sources of revenue may diminish the overall pool of ngos resources this paper examines the determinants of private donations to us based ngos engaged in international development cooperation we employ panel cointegration and causality techniques to analyze the interactions between private donations government grants commercial revenues and fundraising expenditures according to our results a marginal dollar spent on fundraising yields almost five dollars in new donations in the long run government grants crowd in private donations in the long run whereas commercial revenues crowd out donations in the long run moreover our panel vector error correction model reveals complex short run dynamics

compensatory aid and debt relief a case study of uganda abstract we propose a contingency financing framework to assist low income countries in the achievement of debt sustainability the framework relies on an accounting method to quantify external shocks to the balance of payments and provides compensatory financing to offset their impact we apply the framework to the case of uganda during the period 1988 2002 and find that it would have been highly effective in identifying and offsetting the adverse liquidity implications of shocks to the country s trade balance

coffee market liberalisation and the implications for producers in brazil guatemala and india the standard approach to modelling the relationship between world and producer prices of coffee does not incorporate the effects of changing government policies and market structures these changes have led to large structural breaks in the relationship between the prices implying the standard estimates are biased we model coffee prices in brazil guatemala and india allowing for the structural breaks and show that the liberalisation of coffee markets has benefited producers substantially both in terms of a higher share of the world price of coffee and higher real prices this suggests that calls to re regulate coffee markets may be misplaced

do tax incentives affect charitable contributions evidence from public charities reported revenues this paper estimates the effect of the charitable contribution tax deduction on charities donation revenue from charities tax filings a one percent increase in the tax cost of giving causes charitable receipts to fall by about four percent an effect three times larger the consensus in the literature further analysis reveals substantial heterogeneity in the tax response by subsector health care and home care are more tax sensitive than other charities while higher education and arts are less tax sensitive the results are consistent with substantial tax response heterogeneity within the sample and between sampled and unsampled charities implying that the mean tax elasticity of charitable contributions is a poor predictor of tax incentive effects for individual charities

balance sheet insolvency and contribution revenue in public charities abstract using form 990 data reported by public charities we document significant bunching of nonprofits at near zero net assets the threshold for insolvency bunching occurs despite the fact that creditors cannot force insolvent nonprofits into involuntary bankruptcy we show that the extent of bunching is greater among organizations that rely more heavily on contribution revenue and that by inflating their net assets bunching organizations are able to increase their contribution revenue relative to firms that report negative net assets charitable donors appear to use the net assets threshold as a heuristic for a charity s financial health nonprofit managers in turn respond to the preferences of their donors

global talent flows the global distribution of talent is highly skewed and the resources available to countries to develop and utilize their best and brightest vary substantially the migration of skilled workers across countries tilts the deck even further using newly available data the paper first reviews the landscape of global talent mobility which is both asymmetric and rising in importance next the determinants of global talent flows at the individual and firm levels are presented and some important implications are sketched third the national gatekeepers for skilled migration and broad differences in approaches used to select migrants for admission are reviewed looking forward the capacity of people firms and countries to successfully navigate this tangled web of global talent will be critical to their success

westernization of asian diets and the transformation of food systems implications for research and policy abstract rapid economic and income growth urbanization and globalization are leading to a dramatic shift of asian diets away from staples and increasingly towards livestock and dairy products vegetables and fruit and fats and oils while the diversification of diets away from the traditional dominance of rice with rising incomes is expected and observed current food consumption patterns are showing signs of convergence towards a western diet the diet transition is characterized by increased consumption of wheat temperate fruit and vegetables and high protein and energy dense food globalization and the consequent global interconnectedness of the urban middle class is the driving force behind the convergence of diets the rapid spread of global supermarket chains and fast food restaurants is reinforcing the above trends the growing demand for diet diversity cannot be met solely by the traditional food supply chain it requires the modernisation of the food retail sector and the vertical integration of the food supply chain in effect linking the consumers plate to the farmers plow as a consequence asian agriculture is on an irreversible path leading away from its traditional pre occupation with cereal crop production especially rice towards a production system that is becoming increasingly commercialized and diversified this paper describes the determinants and trends in the diversification and westernization of asian diets implications of the evolving demand trends for food supply and retail systems are presented the paper discusses the prospects for small farmer participation in the emerging food supply system with a particular emphasis on asian rice production systems finally the paper considers emerging challenges for food policy small holder welfare and agricultural research and development priorities

partners in giving the crowding in effects of uk government grants abstract this study examines the determinants of voluntary donations to uk charities using empirical specifications that combine error component and simultaneous equations methods in a series of tests we identify the one way fixed effects endogenous representation for government grants as the best empirical model when this endogeneity is taken into account government grants cause significant crowding in for the full sample and the two largest cohorts price coefficients are negative and fund raising coefficients are positive religion charities are net revenue maximizers whereas other charity cohorts fund raise short of net revenue maximization

impure altruism in dictators giving abstract we design an experiment to test whether incomplete crowding out in dictator games can be rationalized by the impurely altruistic preferences by giving the recipients an endowment of varying levels we create an environment in which crowding out may occur we find that the behavior of 66 of the dictators can be rationalized by the impurely altruistic utility function

does negative advertising affect giving behavior evidence from campaign contributions abstract this paper contributes to a growing literature that explains why individuals contribute to political campaigns we build a panel dataset that follows contributors from primary to general elections to quantify the persistence of giving in political contests those who gave to winning candidates in the primary were most likely to contribute again in the general election next we use an instrumental variable strategy to document that within party negative advertising decreases the probability that individuals contribute to their preferred party in the general election regardless of whether they initially contributed to a winning or losing primary candidate

the impact of labour market dynamics on the return migration of immigrants using administrative panel data on the entire population of new labour immigrants to the netherlands we estimate the effects of individual labour market spells on immigration durations using the timing of events method the model allows for correlated unobserved heterogeneity across migration unemployment and employment processes we find that unemployment spells increase return probabilities for all immigrant groups while re employment spells typically delay returns

optimal food price stabilisation policy this paper proposes a framework for designing optimal food price stabilisation policies in a self sufficient developing country it uses a rational expectations storage model with risk averse consumers and incomplete markets government stabilises food prices by carrying public stock and by applying a state contingent subsidy tax to production the policy rules are designed to maximise intertemporal welfare the optimal policy under commitment crowds out all private stockholding activity by removing the profit opportunity from speculation the countercyclical subsidy tax to production helps price stabilisation by subsidising production in periods of scarcity and by taxing it in periods of glut it contributes little to welfare gains most of which come from stabilisation achieved through public storage

economic development and food production consumption balance a growing global challenge abstract rising affluence in major developing countries principally china and india and increasing diversion of agricultural resources for energy production usa and brazil sharply increase agricultural resource demand food consumption and production changes during development are analyzed using resource based cereal equivalent measures diet upgrades to livestock products require fivefold increases in per capita food resource use reflecting a consistent pattern which is only marginally affected by land base food consumption increases exceed production during early development leading to imports consumption eventually stabilizes at high incomes but production falls short in land scarce countries pork and poultry consumption increase the most less efficient beef and dairy production command a majority of agricultural resources

nonprofits with distributional objectives price discrimination and corner solutions abstract we characterize the patterns of pricing and rationing when paternalistic nonprofit organizations either private or governmental care about the level and distribution of consumer surplus provided to their clients equilibrium depends upon marginal cost the organization s distributional weights exogenous income levels and cream skimming by competing for profit firms in equilibrium some consumers pay their reservation price or a lower price above marginal cost some pay less than marginal cost some obtain the good for free and some are not permitted to buy the good at any acceptable price comparative statics here differs from that for output or profit maximizers with discontinuous price schedules shifting abruptly when exogenous income changes

consumption patterns and their effects on land required for food abstract vast amounts of land are required for the production of food but the area suitable for growing crops is limited in this paper attention is paid to the relationship between food consumption patterns and agricultural land requirements land requirements per food item that were determined in a previous study are combined with data on the per capita food consumption of various food packages varying from subsistence to affluent leading to information on land requirements for food large differences could be shown in per capita food consumption and related land requirements while food consumption expenditure and the physical consumption of specific foods change rapidly over time a difference of a factor of two was found between the requirements for existing european food patterns while the land requirement for a hypothetical diet based on wheat was six times less than that for an existing affluent diet with meat it is argued that in the near future changes in consumption patterns rather than population growth will form the most important variable for total land requirements for food trends towards the consumption of foods associated with affluent lifestyles will bring with them a need for more land lifestyle changes changes in consumer behavior on a household level can be considered as powerful options to reduce the use of natural resources such as agricultural land

how do nonprofit hospitals manage earnings abstract we hypothesize that unlike for profit firms nonprofit hospitals have incentives to manage earnings to a range just above zero we consider two ways managers can achieve this they can adjust discretionary spending hoerger t j 1991 profit variability in for profit and not for profit hospitals journal of health economics 10 259 289 and or they can adjust accounting accruals using the flexibility inherent in generally accepted accounting principles gaap to test our hypothesis we use regressions as well as tests of the distribution of earnings by burgstahler and dichev burgstahler d dichev i 1997 earnings management to avoid earnings decreases and losses journal of accounting and economics 24 99 126 on a sample of 1 204 hospitals and 8 179 hospital year observations our tests support the use of discretionary spending and accounting accrual management like hoerger 1991 we find evidence that nonprofit hospitals adjust discretionary spending to manage earnings however we also find significant use of discretionary accruals e g adjustments to the third party allowance and allowance for doubtful accounts to meet earnings objectives these findings have two important implications first the previous evidence by hoerger that nonprofit hospitals show less variation in income may at least partly be explained by an accounting phenomenon second our findings provide guidance to users of these financial statements in predicting the direction of likely bias in reported earnings

rules versus discretion in food storage policies this article compares various policies in a rational expectations food storage model with risk averse consumers and missing insurance markets calibrated to represent a developing country i consider an optimal storage policy under discretion and two optimal simple rules a constant private storage subsidy and a price band the storage subsidy achieves welfare gains similar to the discretionary policy the price band maximizing social welfare is a price peg scheme the floor and ceiling prices are the same and the capacity constraint represents 11 of the steady state production level this price band achieves three quarters of the gains from the optimal policy under discretion

the rise and decline of rent seeking activity in the brazilian coffee sector lessons from the imposition and removal of coffee export quotas summary brazil the world s largest coffee exporter encouraged efforts in the 1960s to form the international coffee agreement ica which restricted total coffee exports via country export quotas the quotas led to significant domestic quota rents in producing countries this paper analyzes the effects of rent seeking in brazil the brazilian institute of coffee ibc which was responsible for coffee policy was the focus of rent seeking the paper models the policy instruments used by the ibc shows how rent seeking affected policy industry efficiency and the distribution of rents explains the causes and effects of ibc reforms in the late 1980s and draws lessons from the experience

international commodity agreements design and performance abstract this article traces the design and performance of the five currently or recently active international commodity agreements icas in cocoa coffee natural rubber sugar and tin following detailed discussion of each of these the author makes three observations that icas can only be successful provided that they command a consensus in their industries that existing agreements are not robust enough with regard to exchange rates and that existing agreements are poorly drafted the author argues that the collapse of the tin agreement in october 1985 may have marked the end of the postwar chapter in the commodity intervention story he finds it improbable that new icas will emerge and suggests instead that more of the existing agreements will lapse

goodwill bazaar ngo competition and giving to development this paper builds a model of competition through fundraising between horizontally differentiated ngos ngos allocate their time resource between working on the project and fundraising which attracts private donations if the market size is fixed the fundraising levels increase with the number of ngos and the free entry equilibrium number of ngos can be larger or smaller than the socially optimal number depending on the efficiency of the fundraising technology if the market size is endogenous and ngos cooperate in attracting new donors fundraising levels decrease with the number of ngos and the free entry equilibrium number of ngos is smaller than the one that maximizes the welfare of donors and beneficiaries if ngos can divert funds for private use multiple equilibria with high diversion and no diversion of funds appear

standards as a new form of social contract sustainability initiatives in the coffee industry abstract in the former age of national capitalism the achievement of market fairness was embedded in a normative framework generated by government labor unions and perhaps religious authority in the current age of global capitalism new actors such as ngos industry associations and public private partnerships provide the normative framework that corporations use for social legitimacy in this context standard setting processes operate as new forms of social contract where the state rather than being directly involved between the parties provides a form of basic guarantee while more or less accountable ngos and firms are in charge of hammering out the bargains this article examines the dynamics of this new configuration through the case study of sustainability initiatives in the coffee sector it addresses four questions 1 are these standards effective in communicating information and creating new markets 2 to what extent do they embed elements of collective and private interests 3 is sustainability content actually delivered to their intended beneficiaries and 4 what is the role of public policy in addressing their shortcomings

the prebish singer hypothesis in the post colonial era evidence from panel cointegration abstract we test the hypothesis that commodity prices tend to decline relatively to manufactured goods prices using a panel cointegration bootstrap test the hypothesis does not hold for 1950 1980 and it does for 1950 2011 for agricultural products but not for metals

the probability of return migration migrants work effort and migrants performance abstract this paper demonstrates that differences in earnings between migrants and the native population may reflect differences in incentives rather than differences in characteristics the analysis indicates that in the presence of a positive probability of return migration migrants work effort is higher than that of comparable native born workers this differential may explain why even if all workers are perfectly homogeneous in skills migrants often outperform the native born workers in the receiving economy

comparative advantage and the gains from financial trade a reappraisal emerging market crises have suggested that a national benefit cost assessment of external financial liberalisation could well pro ve unfavourable this paper re examines the principle of comparative advantage in its application and international migration we distinguish between those arising in f inancial trade from the net transfer of capital and those deri ving from the contemporaneous exchange of f inancial claims or services of equivalent is on the contractual risk return characteristics of the financial claims exchanged this perspective is applied firstly to portfolio diversification gains arising from further international stock market integration secondly price risk management for developing countries in international primary commodity trade is discussed both applications imply the need for significant institutional development but could reali se approximately contemporaneous gains reminiscent both of those involved in merchandise trade and in the skills and product or service flows that baloo has emphasis ed in relation to fdi and international migration