loose fruit mamas creating incentives for smallholder women in oil palm production in papua new guinea summary this paper presents a case study of the introduction of a more gender equitable payment scheme for oil palm smallholders in papua new guinea women are now paid separately from their husbands for their work on family oil palm plots thereby increasing the economic incentives for women to commit labor to oil palm production the study incorporates broader local cultural and economic processes in the analysis of intra household gender and labor relations to explain how the new payment systems successfully resolved intra household disputes over labor and income the paper highlights the critical role export firms can play in enhancing women s access to commodity crop income further the paper demonstrates that by widening the framework of household analysis insights can be gained into two key questions that have received only limited attention in the literature the question of why men do not share a greater proportion of cash crop income with other family members and the apparent inability of families to resolve intra household conflicts over income

trouble in the tails what we know about earnings nonresponse thirty years after lillard smith and welch earnings nonresponse in household surveys is widespread yet there is limited knowledge of how nonresponse biases earnings measures we examine the consequences of nonresponse on earnings gaps and

overwork and the slow convergence in the gender gap in wages despite rapid changes in women s educational attainment and continuous labor force experience convergence in the gender gap in wages slowed in the 1990s and stalled in the 2000s using cps data fr

hearts and spades paradigms of household economics abstract this paper explains why the feminist critique of inequalities within the family poses a serious challenge to conventional economic theories of the household but it also discusses those aspects of both neoclassical and marxian theory that are useful to an analysis of conflict within the family arguing that the bargaining power models being developed by some neoclassical theorist are complementary to marxist influenced structural accounts

the transition to modern agriculture contract farming in developing economies recent years have seen considerable interest in the impact of contract farming on farmers in developing countries motivated out of belief that contract farming spurs transition to modern agriculture in this article we provide a thorough review of the empirical literature on contract farming in bo

program interventions intrahousehold distribution and the welfare of individuals modelling household behavior abstract in this essay the implications for the intrahousehold distribution of resources derived from economic models of household behavior that treat the household as maximizing a single welfare function are reviewed particular attention is paid to the within family allocation of time and food and to the effects of these resources on the schooling earnings and health status of individuals as they are affected by direct food intervention and female employment schemes and price altering policies empirical applications are provided from data sets from india indonesia and the philippines to illustrate the power and limitations of such models for illuminating household interventions and for placing restrictions on data

wage gaps large and small author affiliation barry t hirsch barry t hirsch is the w j usery chair of the american workplace department of economics andrew young school of policy studies georgia state university atlanta ga 30302 3992 and research fellow iza bonn germany bhirsch gsu eduthis presidential address was presented at the annual meeting of the southern economic association new orleans la on november 20 2007 acknowledgment i thank the many economists with whom i have interacted or coauthored over the years in particular john addison chris bollinger bill breit bill johnson dave macpherson and ed schumacher barry t hirsch w j usery chair of the american workplace department of economics andrew young school of policy studies georgia state university 2007 president of the southern economic association figure omitted see article image 1 introductionin the wealth of nations adam smith posited theory and institutional explanations for why wages differ modern labor economics has retained a focus on wage differentials although much of the literature is unabashedly empirical it is informed by theory neoclassical economics including human capital theory remains the principal approach although labor economists recognize the role played by human nature workplace incentives institutions and public policy in wage determination in this address i highlight several topics i have studied all involving wage gaps 1 these include census imputation methods union premiums product market regulation wages in male and female jobs the wage effects of military service and interarea wages and cost of living the purpose is not to trumpet my work although it may appear as such but to draw broader conclusions about labor economists understanding of wage determination 2 equalizing differentials and the law of one wagethe theory of equalizing differentials states that in competitive labor markets workers with similar skills working in similarly attractive jobs and locations should receive similar compensation long run wage differentials are explained by differences in skill and job disamenities with a single price wage conditional on worker and job attributes 2 the law of one wage equal compensation for equivalent workers and jobs follows naturally from competitive theory empirical studies attempt to test the law of one price in product markets industrial organization economists focus on a narrow set of homogeneous goods in markets with low cost information and similar transportation costs i e purchases of electronics and books at internet sites international economists test for purchasing power parity for homogeneous goods i e big mac prices across countries for a recent paper see parsley and wei 2007 even in these markets there is considerable deviation from the law of one price one does not see an equivalent literature in labor economics yes there is a vast literature on wage gaps but authors rarely characterize such work as a test of a law of one wage because there is little expectation that there should be wage equality even conditional on controls why not first as emphasized in personnel economics pay schemes that maximize profits often involve wages deviating from spot marginal products thus creating competitive wage differences across similar workers in similar jobs lazear and oyer 2007 second unions or other institutions can affect wages third there are rigidities in labor markets owing to imperfect mobility say from information and search costs firm specific training personal job attachment or tied household decisions regarding jobs location and housing manning 2003 mortensen 2003 fourth are problems of measurement leading to apparent variation in wages even when there is none and fifth even if data are error free we cannot hope to measure all the multitude of worker and job attributes that influence wages

labor market returns to the ged using regression discontinuity analysis we evaluate returns to general educational development ged certification for high school dropouts using state administrative data we apply a fuzzy regression discontinuity method to account for test takers retaking the test for women we find that ged certification has no statistically significant effect on either employment or earnings for men we find a significant increase in earnings in the second year after taking the test but no impact in subsequent years ged certification increases postsecondary school enrollment by 4 8 percentage points our results differ from regression discontinuity approaches that fail to account for test retaking

does a municipal electric s supply of communications crowd out private communications investment an empirical study abstract there are 2007 municipalities across the united states providing electricity service to their constituents of these over 600 provide some sort of communications services to the community an important policy question is whether or not public investment in communications crowds out private investment or whether such investment encourages additional entry by creating wholesale markets and economic growth we test these two hypotheses the crowding out and stimulation hypotheses using a recent dataset for the state of florida we find strong evidence favoring the stimulation hypothesis public investment in communications network increases competitive communications firm entry by a sizeable amount

schools skills and synapses american society is polarizing proportionately more american youth are graduating from college than ever before at the same time american born youth are graduating from high school at lower rates than 40 years ago this paper reviews and interprets these trends the origins of inequality are examined and policies to alleviate it are analyzed families play a powerful role in shaping adult outcomes the accident of birth is a major source of inequality recent research by cunha and heckman 2007a 2008b shows that about half of the inequality in the present value of lifetime earnings is due to factors determined by age 18 compared to 50 years ago relatively more american children are being born into disadvantaged families where investments in children are smaller than in advantaged families policies that supplement the child rearing resources available to disadvantaged families reduce inequality and raise productivity

match bias from earnings imputation in the current population survey the case of imperfect matching this article examines match bias arising from earnings imputation wage equation parameters are estimated from mixed samples of workers reporting and not reporting earnings the latter assigned earnings of donors regressions including attributes not used as imputation match criteria e g union are severely biased match bias also arises with attributes used as match criteria but matched imperfectly imperfect matching on schooling age flattens earnings profiles within education age groups and creates jumps across groups assuming conditional missing at random a general analytic expression correcting match bias is derived and compared to alternatives reweighting a respondent only sample proves an attractive approach

is earnings nonresponse ignorable abstract earnings nonresponse in the current population survey is roughly 30 in the monthly surveys and 20 in the march survey if nonresponse is ignorable unbiased estimates can be achieved by omitting nonrespondents little is known about whether cps nonresponse is ignorable using sample frame measures to identify selection we find clear cut evidence among men but limited evidence among women for negative selection into response wage equation slope coefficients are affected little by selection but because of intercept shifts wages for men and to a lesser extent women are understated as are gender gaps selection is least severe among household heads

comparing contracts an evaluation of contract farming schemes in africa abstract the sufferings of so many small farmers in africa who produce on contract have been well recorded and analyzed yet it seems that such production will continue to expand can governments and nongovernment organizations ngos take any action to reduce the suffering we examine our own experience of contract farming in nigeria and south africa in the context of earlier research and draw attention to important issues which have received little attention in the literature notably staffing of schemes farmers previous experience with multinational national companies mncs water control and labor issues we make recommendations toward codes of practice which could be issued to companies regulators and small farmers

as a husband i will love lead and provide gendered access to land in ghana summary improving women s access to land is high on the agricultural policy agenda of both governmental and non governmental agencies yet the determinants and rationale of gendered access to land are not well understood this paper argues that gender relations are more than the outcomes of negotiations within households it explains the importance of social norms perceptions and formal and informal rules shaping access to land for male and female farmers at four levels 1 the household family 2 the community 3 the state and 4 the market the framework is applied to ghana using the results from qualitative field work norms on household and family organization and on men s and women s responsibilities and capabilities play a key role in gendered allocation of resources however these norms and perceptions are dynamic and evolve jointly with the development of markets and changes in values of inputs such as labor and land theoretical models that represent the gendered distribution of assets as the result of intrahousehold bargaining should be revised and extrahousehold factors should be included from a policy perspective laws that ensure gender equality in terms of inheritance and a more gender equitable distribution of property upon divorce can play a key role in improving women s property rights yet their impact may be limited where customary rights dominate and social norms and rules continue to discriminate according to gender

contract farming smallholders and rural development in latin america the organization of agroprocessing firms and the scale of outgrower production abstract this paper demonstrates how contract farming functions as an economic institution and explores the causes of the observed variation in the scale of outgrower production in latin america we outline how market imperfections and transaction costs influence the decision of agroprocessing firms to contract out vertically integrate or use spot markets to obtain raw product the paper demonstrates how market conditions are likely to be associated with particular outgrower characteristics under contract farming an analysis of the mexican frozen vegetable industry illustrates determinants of successful and unsuccessful small scale contracting and suggests alternative policies to promote contract farming with smallholders

the american high school graduation rate trends and levels abstract this paper applies a unified methodology to multiple data sets to estimate both the levels and trends in u s high school graduation rates we establish that a the true rate is substantially lower than widely used measures b it peaked in the early 1970s c majority minority differentials are substantial and have not converged for 35 years d lower post 1970 rates are not solely due to increasing immigrant and minority populations e our findings explain part of the slowdown in college attendance and rising college wage premiums and f widening graduation differentials by gender help explain increasing male female college attendance gaps

gender and trade within the household observations from rural guatemala abstract a household model proposed by carter and katz 1992 assumes that resource exchanges and the division of expenditure responsibilities among household members are directly observable and important to their individual and collective responses to new opportunities and constraints this paper illustrates that it is possible to observe the complex processes that characterize the domestic economy by examining several examples of intrahousehold resource transfers and expenditure flows among a sample of rural households in the central highlands of guatemala it is found that women transfer significant labor time to a new male income generating activity with the greatest single source of variation in the value of this intrahousehold resource transfer being the availability of older daughters to perform the domestic labor that is normally the responsibility of the female head it is also shown that the transfer of female land to her husband is in some cases compensated for or reciprocated by the transfer of tradeable goods at the end of the agricultural season with regard to women s remunerated labor activities older daughters enable their mothers to pursue these either by relieving them of some of their domestic responsibilities and or by directly contributing their labor to their mother s income generating endeavors nonfood expenditures are analyzed in light of the relative responsibilities of men and women in decision making finance and purchase it is found that increased male agricultural income is largely spent on male goods affecting women s ability to purchase food and domestic technology the paper concludes by arguing that the results obtained from direct observation of intrahousehold transfers are useful for the prediction and interpretation of microlevel policy impacts not obtainable from aggregate household information

bias corrected estimates of ged returns using three sources of data this article examines the direct economic return to general educational development ged certification for both native and immigrant high school dropouts one data source the current population survey cps is plagued by nonresponse and allocation bias from the hot deck procedure that biases the estimated return to the ged upward correcting for allocation bias and ability bias there is no direct economic return to ged certification an apparent return to ged certification with age found in the raw cps data is due to dropouts becoming more skilled over time these results apply to both native born and immigrant populations

property rights versus public spirit ownership and efficiency of u s electric utilities prior to rate of return regulation for over a century american economists have been engaged in a vigorous theoretical and empirical debate over the economic performance of publicly owned versus privately owned electric utilities the authors review the historical debate and use micro data collected by the u s commissioner of labor in 1897 98 to construct efficiency measures based on a nonparametric frontier production function since this is prior to state rate of return regulation regulatory effects do not confound the analysis the authors find that publicly owned electric utilities were significantly more efficient than their privately owned counterparts copyright 1991 by mit press

wages for wives renegotiating gender and production relations in contract farming in the dominican republic abstract this study analyzes the intersection of gender and production relations in small scale contracting in nontraditional agriculture the case of the processing tomato industry in the dominican republic exemplifies patterns found throughout the region building on a critique of unitary household models i analyze the gendered relations mobilizing resources for contract farming as appears common contracting has heightened demand for women s farm labor contracting has simultaneously provided women with openings for contesting the appropriation of their unpaid labor and many women are claiming payment for work in contract farming this case demonstrates the importance of gender issues in informing contract farming debates and policy interventions

preference heterogeneity power and intrahousehold decision making in rural malaysia abstract this paper examines conjugal household responsibilities roles preference heterogeneity and intrahousehold power relations in rural malay families its three major contributions are to provide an effective initial indicator of separate spheres within the family develop and implement a method for measuring the extent of conjugal preference heterogeneity and illustrate the value of combining this direct measure of preference heterogeneity with a measure of power in estimating household expenditure patterns for three major items food schooling and housing improvement these three measurement innovations applied to the rural malaysia context demonstrate the potential for more direct efforts to model and measure intrahousehold decisions

testing among models of intrahousehold resource allocation households are the locus for much economic decision making households function as producers investors in human and physical capital managers of risk and as consumers many resources are allocated within households and the effects of many policies depend on the dynamics of household decision making for example household decisions about allocating food among individual household members may determine who benefits from programs to improve health nutrition or welfare in many microeconomic studies the household is treated as an individual for analytical purposes in other words it is assumed that a household acts as a single entity with a single set of preferences recently however a number of economists have recognized that households are sites of conflict as well as cooperation and have begun to use new classes of models to explain how resources are allocated among household members this literature has especially improved our understanding of households in which income is not completely pooled in such a setting standard household models may offer misleading conclusions about the effects of policies on individual household members i this paper goes beyond recent surveys of intrahousehold issue by explicitly examining the assumptions predictions and empirical implications of different intrahousehold models in particular it analyzes empirical tests that distinguish among competing models by clarifying the similarities and differences among alternative models this paper also clarifies what has actually been demonstrated and what has not been demonstrated by previous empirical studies in so doing the paper points to specific topics in need of further research this paper is organized as follows section 2 analyzes the assumptions and predictions of each of the five main classes of intrahousehold resource allocation models section 3 describes empirical tests of these assumptions along with an analysis of empirical work that has been generated sections 4 and 5 discuss the questions that remain unanswered and directions for future research

smallholder participation in contract farming comparative evidence from five countries summary supermarkets specialized wholesalers processors and agro exporters are transforming the marketing channels into which smallholder farmers sell produce in low income economies we develop a conceptual framework with which to study contracting between smallholders and a commodity processing firm we then synthesize results from empirical studies of contract farming arrangements in five countries ghana india madagascar mozambique and nicaragua the resulting meta narrative documents patterns of participation the welfare gains associated with participation reasons for nonparticipation the significant extent of contract noncompliance and the considerable dynamism of these value chains as farmers and firms enter and exit frequently

the mobilization of women s labor for cash crop production a game theoretic approach in the last decade or so economists have modeled phenomena such as household labor supply fertility behavior and child survival rates using the household as the unit of analysis this paper presents data that call into question the assumption that the household is a joint decision making unit which maximizes a neoclassical household utility function the data come from a study of the mobilization of women s labor by their husbands for irrigated rice production in north cameroon the first section of this paper describes briefly the massa rice and sorghum farming system and then considers the relationship between the amount of compensation women receive from their husbands for their labor on rice production and the amount of labor they allocate to rice production the findings suggest that a bargaining model may describe the intrahousehold relations of production and distribution better than the neoclassical model the second section specifies a nash bargaining model and contrasts it with the neoclassical model of the household using the bargaining framework the third section explores in more detail possible explanations of the allocative inefficiency which seems to characterize many of the rice cultivating households

the effect of child health insurance access on schooling evidence from public insurance expansions although a sizable literature analyzes the effects of public health insurance programs on short run health outcomes little prior work has examined their long term effects we examine the effects of public insurance expansions among children in the 1980s and 1990s on their future educational attainment we find that expanding health insurance coverage for low income children increases the rate of high school and college completion these estimates are robust to only using federal medicaid expansions and mostly are due to expansions that occur when the children are not newborns our results indicate that the long run benefits of public health insurance are substantial

separate spheres bargaining and the marriage market this paper introduces the separate spheres bargaining model a new model of distribution within marriage it differs from divorce threat bargaining models e g manser brown mcelroy horney in that the threat point is not divorce but a noncooperative equilibrium within marriage this noncooperative equilibrium reflects traditional gender roles the predictions of our model thus differ from those of divorce threat bargaining models in the separate spheres model cash transfer payments to the mother and payments to the father can but need not imply different equilibrium distributions in existing marriages in the long run the distributional effects of transfer policies may be substantially altered by changes in the marriage market equilibrium

match bias in wage gap estimates due to earnings imputation about 30 of workers in the current population survey have earnings imputed wage gap estimates are biased toward zero when the attribute being studied e g union status is not a criterion used to match donors to nonrespondents an expression for match bias is derived in which attenuation equals the sum of match error rates attenuation can be approximated by the proportion with imputed earnings union wage gap estimates with match bias removed are presented for 1973 2001 estimates for recent years are biased downward 5 percentage points bias in gap estimates accompanying other non match criteria public sector industry etc is examined

do volatile firms pay volatile earnings evidence from linked worker firm data abstractdespite the importance of earnings instability little is known about its correlates or causes this article seeks to better understand earnings instability by studying whether volatile firms pay volatile earnings and is the first to directly test the relationship using us linked employer employee data the article finds a positive and statistically significant relationship using within firm variation in addition this article finds that lower earning workers are passed significantly more volatility from their employing firms than are higher earning workers