the choice of an optimum currency peg for a small open country abstract this paper explores the choice of an optimal exchange rate system in a monetary context with rational expectations it is related to the problem of the choice of an exchange rate regime heller 1978 and some trade oriented solutions black 1976 branson and katseli papaefstratiou 1978 lipschitz 1979 lipschitz and sundararajan 1980 but differs from these in that broad monetary considerations are stressed it assumes that a country must choose to peg to one of two major currencies or to a basket of the two but cannot float independently for optimum currency reasons mundell 1961 mckinnon 1963 in particular the approach puts the accent on the notion of international competition between national monies tullock 1973 klein 1975 in a rational expectations framework with national money demands and supplies causing changes in relative prices connolly and taylor 1979 dornbusch 1978 the specific question asked is to which if any of two reserve currencies say the us dollar and the pound sterling should a small open country peg in order to best insure domestic monetary stability e g stable home prices or in general is a basket peg composed of the two currencies preferable to a single currency peg

do formula or competitive grant funds have greater impacts on state agricultural productivity this article examines the impact of public agricultural research and extension on agricultural total factor productivity at the state level the objective is to establish whether federal formula or competitive grant funding of agricultural research has a greater impact on state agricultural productivity a pooled cross section time series model of agricultural productivity is fitted to annual data for forty eight contiguous states over 1970 1999 our results show that public agricultural research and agricultural extension have statistically significant positive impacts on state agricultural productivity in addition hatch formula funding has a larger impact on agricultural productivity than federal competitive grant funding and a reallocation of hatch formula funds to competitive grant funding would lower agricultural productivity this seems unlikely to be a socially optimal policy furthermore from a cost benefit perspective our study shows that the social marginal annualized real rate of return to public resources invested in agricultural research is 49 62 and to public agricultural extension the rate is even larger

the strength and stability of the relationships between monetary variables and exchange market pressure reconsidered an earlier empirical study by hodgson and schneck 3 hereafter h s tested the applicability of the monetary approach to seven advanced economies operating a regime of managed floating exchange rates h s used a monetary approach model which incorporated the asset market view of exchange rate determination to derive an estimating equation for exchange market pressure in evaluating their results the authors distinguished between strong and weak versions of the monetary approach the strong version views certain relationships in the model as fixed and predictable the weak version does not predict specific magnitudes for the coefficients in the model a domestic credit coefficient with a value significantly different from zero but not in the neighborhood of 1 0 or even a coefficient that shifts over time could be interpreted as offering evidence for a weak but not a strong version of the monetary approach 3 942 in the equation estimates presented by h s for the seven countries the money demand variables were almost invariably insignificant two of the domestic credit coefficients were insignificant and the remaining five estimates although correctly signed and significant were of smaller absolute magnitude than predicted by the strong version moreover six of the seven individual country equations displayed instability as measured by the browndurbin test based on forward and backward recursive regressions respectively these findings together with more period to period variation in the time profiles of the offset coefficients based on forward recursive regressions than one might expect 3 953 led h s to conclude that the relationship between monetary variables and exchange market pressure is more consistent with a weak than a strong version of the monetary approach 3 956

competition for advertisers and for viewers in media markets standard models of advertising financed media assume consumers patronise a single media platform precluding effective competition for advertisers such competition ensues if consumers multi home the principle of incremental pricing implies that multi homing consumers are less valuable to platforms then entry of new platforms decreases advertisement prices while a merger increases them and advertisement financed platforms may suffer if a public broadcaster carries advertisements platforms may bias content against multi homing consumers especially if consumers highly value overlapping content and or second impressions have low value

on the political economy of public good inputs in agriculture the paper analyzes two elements in explaining and prescribing the level of costreducing public good inputs in agriculture the distribution of political influence and the economic properties of markets the incidence of costs benefits of alternative costsharing arrangements between taxpayers and producers is compared to the social optimal and competitive outcomes although one group could lose we focus only on situations of a pareto improvement the model predicts why some sectors have relatively more public versus private research funding and why the degree of underinvestment varies across sectors the observed underinvestment in agriculture may be due to the political power of farmers inelastic demand and highly productive public good inputs

impact of income on nutrient intakes implications for undernourishment and obesity the relationship between income and nutrient intake is explored nonparametric panel and quantile regressions are used engle curves for calories fat and protein are approximately linear in logs with carbohydrate intakes exhibiting diminishing elasticities as incomes increase elasticities range from 0 10 to 0 25 with fat having the highest elasticities countries in higher quantiles have lower elasticities than those in lower quantiles results predict significant cumulative increases in calorie consumption which are increasingly composed of fats though policies aimed at poverty alleviation and economic growth may assuage hunger and malnutrition they may also exacerbate problems associated with obesity

measuring and estimating exchange market pressure in the eu abstract this paper estimates a model of exchange market pressure for several eu currencies vis a vis the german mark over the period 1980 94 it differs from previous work in that we use principal components analysis to derive a measure of exchange market pressure rather than adding exchange rate and reserves changes or using ad hoc weighting schemes secondly we also try to explain movements in our measure of exchange market pressure by a wealth augmented monetary model the results suggest that exchange market pressure can indeed be explained by differential money growth the change in the long term interest rate differential real depreciation budget deficit and the current account for five members of the eu s exchange rate mechanism

distortionary taxes and the provision of public goods economists have long been concerned with finding an efficient level of public expenditure the classic statement of the problem was given by paul samuelson 1954 an optimal level of expenditure is where the sum of the marginal rates of substitution between the public good and a reference good equals the marginal rate of transformation between the public good and the reference good mrs mrt however samuelson s formula assumes that all of the revenue needed to finance public goods can be raised with lump sum taxes since this is not generally possible the formula must be modified to account for the distortionary effects of the tax system an appropriate modification is to multiply the cost side of the equation by a term that is commonly called the marginal cost of public funds mcf in the case of samuelson s formula where government is entirely financed with lump sum taxes the mcf would be exactly 1 0 in the traditional view of economists distortionary taxes cause the mcf to be greater than one thus raising the cost of providing public goods in this paper we discuss some cases where the mcf may be less than one we will illustrate this possibility using numerical examples for labor taxes

decomposing intergenerational income elasticity the gender differentiated contribution of capital transmission in rural philippines summary using longitudinal data from rural philippines we decompose intergenerational income elasticity ige into five distinct pathways intergenerational transmissions of health education land and spouse education capital plus residual correlation in productivity intergenerational human capital transmissions from mothers are stronger than those from fathers maternal education is the parental capital most strongly associated with ige while naive ige estimates are indistinguishable for sons and daughters the pathways that generate these results differ strikingly for sons ige is entirely explained by parent to child capital transmission by contrast strong income correlation exists between daughters and parents even after controlling for parent and child capital endowments

the private sector in agricultural research systems will it fill the gap abstract this article examines whether the private sector can fill the gap of declining public research in developing countries economic theory suggests private for profit research will focus on areas where returns to research are appropriable and reasonable profits are generated actual private for profit research activities concentrate on countries and industries with large markets appropriable returns strong science infrastructure and favorable government policies governments and donors can promote private research by easing constraints to private entry and operations but if governments stop funding research on public goods and technologies with limited market potential the private sector is unlikely to fill the gap completely

exchange market pressure in paraguay 1963 88 monetary disequilibrium versus global and regional dependency the relevance of the monetary approach to exchange market pressure for paraguay s small open economy is compared to that of two competing keynesian structural approaches which emphasize respectively global and regional dependency effects estimation results for the three models including formal comparisons using nonnested hypothesis tests and forecast accuracy staistics suggest that the explanatory power of the monetary model is dominated by that of the regional dependency model with the global dependency model having an intermediate degree of applicability this result is intuitive given the extreme dependency of the paraguayan economy on argentina and brazil

agriculture in the global economy agriculture is diverse and full of contradictions the sector accounts for a griculture is diverse and full of contradictions the sector accounts for a comparatively small share of the global economy but remains central comparatively small share of the global economy but remains central to the lives of a great many people in 2012 of the world s 7 1 billion to the lives of a great many people in 2012 of the world s 7 1 billion people an estimated 1 3 billion 19 percent were directly engaged in farming people an estimated 1 3 billion 19 percent were directly engaged in farming but agriculture including the relatively small hunting fi shing and forestry sectors but agriculture including the relatively small hunting fi shing and forestry sectors represented just 2 8 percent of overall income world bank 2012 however in represented just 2 8 percent of overall income world bank 2012 however in today s middle and low income countries where most of the world s farmers are today s middle and low income countries where most of the world s farmers are to be found agriculture accounts for a much greater share of national income and to be found agriculture accounts for a much greater share of national income and employment for instance in india agriculture represents 18 percent of national employment for instance in india agriculture represents 18 percent of national income and 54 percent of employment income and 54 percent of employment 1

causal relationships between public sector agricultural research expenditures and output allocative decisions concerning public sector agricultural research appear to be driven by both supply and politically mediated demand forces in sample granger tests along with post sample predictive tests suggest that simultaneity issues should not be ignored when modeling the research expenditure output relationship the results also provide strong evidence that the impact of research expenditures on agricultural output may persist for as long as thirty years these lags are substantially longer than those commonly used for agricultural research to date the lagged effect of output on research appears to be shorter though still between ten and twelve years in this article we analyze the empirical relationship between public sector agricultural research and agricultural output our interest in this question was spurred on two fronts first emphasis of the contemporary economic literature has shifted from an analysis of the consequences of technical change to an explanation of the observed rate and direction of inventive activity a substantial proportion of this literature has focused on appropriable technologies originating in the private sector and remained largely silent on related issues in the public sector here we analyze the dynamics of public sector research in particular publicly sponsored agricultural research in the

a monetary approach to the crawling peg system theory and evidence this paper develops and estimates a model of the joint determination of the exchange rate international reserves and the rate of inflation under a crawling peg system the framework presented which is an extension of previous work on the monetary approach generates short run deviations from purchasing power parity that occur simultaneously with movements in both international reserves and the exchange rate the model is estimated by full information maximum likelihood on the basis of quarterly data for brazil

is the united states really underinvesting in agricultural research that the level of public investment in u s agricultural research is too low is widely accepted this paper argues that there are two important limitations to the evidence assembled in support of the underinvestment hypothesis a many authors have compared the social rate of return to public investments with the private rate of return to private investments b costs of public expenditures on agricultural research have been underestimated by a failure to account for the marginal excess burden of the tax collection system taking these two factors into account evidence in support of the underinvestment hypothesis is weakened considerably

an economic analysis of expenditures on agricultural experiment station research experiment station research expenditures are responsive to economic and institutional forces a four equation model of resources allocation to state agricultural experiment station research consisting of demand and supply equations for research an equation allocating state governmental revenues to station research and an expenditure identity is presented a reduced form expenditure equation derived from this model is fitted to cross sectional data for forty eight u s states pooled together for 1960 1965 and 1970 a large share of the variance in per capita expenditures of state agricultural experiment stations is explained by the variables included in the model

market provision of broadcasting a welfare analysis this paper presents a theory of the market provision of broadcasting and uses it to address the nature of market failure in the industry advertising levels may be too low or too high depending on the nuisance cost to viewers the substitutability of programs and the expected benefits to advertisers from contacting viewers market provision may allocate too few or too many resources to programming and these resources may be used to produce programs of the wrong type monopoly ownership may produce higher social surplus than competitive ownership and the ability to price programming may reduce social surplus

valuing product innovation genetically engineered varieties in us corn and soybeans we develop a discrete choice model of differentiated products for us corn and soybean seed demand to study the welfare impact of genetically engineered ge crop varieties using a unique data set spanning the period 1996 2011 we find that the welfare impact of the ge innovation is significant in the last five years of the period analyzed our preferred counterfactual indicates that total surplus due to ge traits was 5 18 billion per year with seed manufacturers appropriating 56 of this surplus the seed industry obtained more surplus from ge corn whereas farmers received more surplus from ge soybeans

the search for a new paradigm for the development of national agricultural research systems this paper first reviews trends in the recent evolution of investment in national agricultural research systems it then synthesizes the major elements of an emerging paradigm for viewing the future evolution of research systems this paradigm has arisen in response to the funding crisis in public research organizations in the 1990s and the declining capacity of many of these organizations key elements of this new paradigm are a pluralistic institutional structure a growing role for the private sector new mechanisms for research funding improved efficiency and effectiveness of public research organizations and strengthening of global scientific links

accessing modern science policy and institutional options for agricultural biotechnology in developing countries the paper highlights the complexity of the challenge in developing forms of collaboration between a variety of actors in the biotechnology area in developing countries national research systems with diverse capacities in biotechnology international research centers local private research and development companies and advanced research institutes in both industrialized and developing countries case studies are provided from strong programs such as india china and brazil which will be tool developers as well as users programs that are developing an adaptive capacity in biotech to use tools and methods in a large number of countries whose research systems have virtually no capacity in molecular biology each type program presents challenges and opportunities for accessing new technologies based on facilitation of private investments public private partnerships and local capacity to design proprietary technologies working with the consultative group on international agricultural research centers as intermediaries and partners and with regional consortia policy and institutional issues for accessing modern science are then discussed and many of the challenges involve developing strategies in intellectual property management while pubic research organizations will need to develop innovative means of segmenting markets to complement private sector interests

monetary policy and exchange market pressure evidence from sub saharan africa the purpose of this study was to assess the impact of monetary policy on foreign exchange market pressure emp in developing country contexts for some selected countries in sub saharan africa ssa and to measure the ability of monetary policy to significantly address currency pressures that arise from trading on the global market this study was motivated by the fact that most of the ssa countries are developing economies that have negative net export positions and stand to lose significantly from consistently deteriorating foreign exchange position the study therefore employs a dynamic panel model to test the hypothesis that a tighter monetary policy stance lends strength to a currency and vice versa using 20 ssa economies for the period from 1991 to 2010 this study finds a negative and significant relationship between monetary policy and emp implying an easing of emp in the face of contractionary monetary policy the findings also point to significant relations between aggregate output levels o

selected policy issues in international agricultural research on striving for international public goods in an era of donor fatigue abstract international agricultural research is a small but critically important part of the global research system its importance derives from the extent of international spillovers the efficiencies of working across national boundaries for many research products and the productivity boosting collegiality and cost reducing benefits thereof of sharing information and materials while fostering the advance of agricultural science generally financial difficulties pervade the international as well as national elements of the global system so it is an appropriate time to examine some of the threats to effective functioning of an international system that is needed for its key contributions to productivity growth suggestions are made for boosting efficiency of the international agricultural research centers and strengthening their support of national research efforts in the developing world

economic principles and incentives structure management and funding of agricultural research in the united states the problems faced by public agricultural research and land grant system in the us is discussed in the context of its response to public pressure and criticism several proposals are put forward to address these problems which are related to the following issues grant funding versus formula funding breakdown of organized science in agriculture privatization of the land grant system harnessing the efficiencies of competition in public agricultural research and long term social productivity modelling

exploring the dynamics of water innovation foundations for water innovation studies the urgent need for innovation to address multifaceted and intertwined water related challenges is becoming increasingly clear acknowledged and responded to with cumulating sources and amounts of funding nevertheless the water sector has been claimed to be less innovative than other sectors this special volume on the dynamics of water innovation is based on the realization that in general there is a striking absence of academic studies on the dynamics of water innovation this sv is therefore designed to lay the foundations for the field of water innovation studies in an effort to integrate the emerging insights together the contributions in this sv capture the current understanding of the dynamics of water innovation and provide insights into how the water innovation process can be fostered the purpose of this introductory article is threefold namely to frame the discussion on water innovation dynamics in order to contextualise the contributions of this sv to provide systematic guidance for studying water innovation dynamics and to suggest the way forward for water innovation studies it captures the extent of the field of water innovation studies with a review of the literature of the last three decades and frames water innovations based on five decades of innovation research and drawing on three areas management strategy and policy we provide an innovation studies taxonomy that consists of four organising dimensions type of innovation stage of innovation level of analysis and measurement this taxonomy enables researchers to study the dynamics of water innovation from different combinations of conceptual and thematic angles drawing on the field of innovation studies in a systematic fashion finally we reflect on the way forward for water innovation studies with suggestions for future research 2017 the authors

encouraging private sector research for tropical agriculture summary agricultural needs in poor tropical countries differ significantly from those in temperate rich countries yet little agricultural research is performed on products for the tropics private research is particularly concentrated in rich countries this is a result of significant failures in the market for research and development r d in particular the difficulty of preventing the resale of seed in developing countries to encourage private r d in tropical agriculture traditional funding of research may be usefully supplemented by a commitment to reward developers of specific new agricultural technologies rewards tied to adoption may be especially useful in increasing up take an illustration of how a commitment to reward developers of new agricultural technologies might work is provided

informative advertising with differentiated products in this paper we study the role of promotional expenditures by sellers in a model of product differentiation advertising conveys full and accurate information about the characteristics of products heterogeneous consumers who have no source of information other than advertisements seek to purchase the products that best fit their needs despite the roles played by advertising in improving the matching of products and consumers and in increasing the elasticity of demand faced by each firm we find that the market determined levels of advertising are excessive given the extent of diversity in the market we derive a promotional equilibrium based on a specific information transmission technology paying explicit attention to the structure of consumer information and its impact on firms demand curves this allows us to study the effects of changes in the advertising technology including an increased ability to target messages to specific groups of consumers on the equilibrium in the product market we find that decreased advertising costs may reduce profits by increasing the severity of price competition

media market concentration advertising levels and ad prices standard media economics models imply that increased platform competition decreases ad levels and that mergers reduce per viewer ad prices the empirical evidence however is mixed we attribute the theoretical predictions to the combined assumptions that there is no advertising congestion and that viewers single home allowing for crowding in viewer attention spans for ads may reverse standard results as does allowing viewers to multi home jel classification d11 d43 l13

quantity restrictions on advertising commercial media bias and welfare abstract we study the welfare effect of a quantity restriction on advertising in free to air television and other advertising financed media in the presence of commercial media bias broadcasters face a trade off between increasing the number of viewers by sending content that is highly valued by viewers and increasing the price of advertising by choosing advertiser friendly content a cap on advertising drives the per viewer price of ads up thus content improves for viewers therefore the cap can be welfare enhancing even when viewers are not ad averse competition among broadcasters makes it more likely that a cap on advertising improves welfare thus there is a complementarity between regulation and competition on this market we also show that a tax on advertising revenues has quite different effects than a cap on advertising quantity

persistent underinvestment in public agricultural research abstract it is often argued that public support of agricultural research is inadequate however the empirical papers that support this hypothesis rarely reflect formal behavioral theory capable of explaining this phenomenon this paper presents a theory that explains underfunding namely that funding agencies respond too slowly to secular changes in the value of research a model of farmer and funding agency behavior is presented and shown to imply that actual research funding will be consistently smaller than optimal funding the assumptions and results of the model are explained in terms of the institutional literature on public agricultural research agencies

economic growth population theory and physiology the bearing of long term processes on the this lecture sketches a theory of the secular decline in morbidity and mortality that takes account of changes induced in physiological functioning since 1700 the synergism between technological and physiological improvements has produced a form of human evolution biological though not genetic rapid culturally transmitted and not necessarily stable which is still ongoing in both oecd and developing countries thermodynamic and physiological aspects of economic growth are defined and their impact on growth rates is assessed implications of this theory for population forecasting measurement of national income demand for leisure pension policies and demand for health care are considered excerpt

public financing of innovation new questions economic theory justifies policy when there are concrete market failures the article shows how in the case of innovation successful policies that have led to radical innovations have been more about market shaping and creating through direct and pervasive public financing rather than market fixing the paper reviews and discusses evidence for this in three key areas i the presence of finance from public sources across the entire innovation chain ii the concept of mission oriented policies that have created new technological and industrial landscapes and iii the entrepreneurial and lead investor role of public actors willing and able to take on extreme risks independent of the business cycle we further illustrate these three characteristics for the case of clean technology and discuss how a market creating and shaping perspective may be useful for understanding the financing of transformative innovation needed for confronting contemporary societal challenges

defense related r d as a model for grand challenges technology policies national defense represents a significant share of most oecd governments r d budgets and an even higher share of their mission oriented r d spending this public r d investment has focused on research and innovation supporting defense missions and in many cases the military services of these governments have purchased weapons systems incorporating the resulting technologies defense related r d investment has influenced innovation in the broader civilian economy of several oecd nations including the united states the united kingdom and france the scope and nature of this influence remains uncertain and subject to considerable debate nonetheless policymakers throughout the industrialized economies have expressed interest in applying the lessons of defense related and other mission oriented r d programs to such challenges as climate change this paper examines the characteristics of defense related mission r d programs in the industrial economies with particular attention to the subset of nations for which reliable longitudinal data on defense r d spending are available i highlight the characteristics that distinguish mission oriented r d in this field from mission oriented r d in other sectors and to point out some significant differences among oecd economies in the structure of their defense related r d programs the discussion also emphasizes the ways in which the unique structure of defense related r d limit its utility as a model for mission oriented r d programs aimed at other goals

competition between networks a study of the market for yellow pages this paper estimates the importance of network effects in the market for yellow pages i estimate three simultaneous equations consumer demand for usage of a directory advertiser demand for advertising and a publisher s first order condition derived from profit maximizing behaviour estimation shows that advertisers value consumer usage and that consumers value advertising implying a network effect i find that internalizing network effects would significantly increase surplus as an application i consider whether the market benefits from monopoly which takes advantage of network effects or oligopoly which reduces market power i find that a more competitive market is preferable copyright 2004 wiley blackwell

agricultural research effort conceptual clarity and measurement abstract this paper emphasizes the need for basic conceptual clarity regarding the measures of research effort in econometric analyses this conceptual clarity could help reduce the misinterpretation of historical and institutional contexts underlying agricultural research effort after a brief review of econometric studies estimating the returns to and determinants of research the centrality of the conceptual contextual and causal significance of this measure is examined conceptualized and measured at the input frontier of the research process an expenditure measure of research reveals the institutional features and changes in the research process in india over time this basic understanding is essential to develop appropriate econometric specifications and correspondingly effective research policy statements

on the microeconomics of food and malnutrition under endogenous discounting abstract this paper explores the microeconomics and dynamics of food and nutrition it examines the linkages between malnutrition and the incentive to invest and accumulate capital the analysis focuses on a dynamic model where preferences about the future depend on nutrition and health situations of malnutrition cover both ends of the spectrum from nutrient deficiency to obesity the model involves preferences that are not time additive and exhibit endogenous discounting this provides a framework to investigate the factors affecting consumption and investment behavior the adverse investment incentives of malnutrition are examined

balance of payments dynamics and exchange rate management abstract this paper studies the dynamics of the balance of payments in response to policy disturbances under the assumption that the central bank devalues the country s currency over time at a constant pre announced rate depending on the magnitudes of the parameters of the model i find that a given disturbance may result in qualitatively different short run behavior of the balance of payments accounts in each case however the adjustment process will lead the economy to a stable long run equilibrium provided the government finances its spending according to a certain set of rules

exploring the present through the past claudia goldin is one of the world s leading economists and economic historians and has made a series of outstanding and original contributions particularly to the cliometric or the new economic history literature in this interview professor goldin discusses with brian snowdon who first provides a background introduction several important issues relating to her research on economic history and cliometrics the economics of slavery us economic history corruption in america the role of human capital and education in us economic development wage inequality female labour force participation and the quiet revolution the influence of the contraceptive pill women s surnames the reversal of the college gender gap and women in the economics profession

the political economy of public research investment and commodity policies in agriculture an empirical study the paper tests a political economy theory of simultaneous government decision making on income redistribution through commodity policies and on public research investment in agriculture we use data from 37 countries on agricultural protection and public agricultural research expenditures pari the empirical results are consistent with the political economy hypotheses the analysis suggest that structural changes in the economy have important effects on the political incentives for governments not only to subsidize or tax farmers but also to invest in public agricultural research furthermore the analysis supports the hypotheses that the impact of such structural changes on government decision making on pari is non linear and conditional on other factors regarding the impact of political institutions the results suggest that more democracy neither leads to more distortionary transfers agricultural protection nor to lower investment in public goods pari

how important is economic growth for reducing undernourishment in developing countries abstract there is intense debate in the literature about how important economic growth is for solving the problem of undernourishment this paper focuses on the rate of change in the prevalence of undernourishment and looks at whether higher economic growth speeds up reductions in undernutrition in developing countries the analysis uses panel data analysis on data spanning 22 years 1991 2012 and covering 27 developing countries results reveal that faster annual economic growth leads to larger annual improvements in undernourishment rates both annual and long term economic growth are relevant sustained economic growth has a greater positive impact on undernutrition than short term economic growth in addition to economic growth investments in health education and access to drinking water are also enabling factors for reducing undernourishment in conclusion increased income growth can hasten the effects of food policies aimed at reducing undernourishment but not to the extent that sustained growth and better access to health education and drinking water can

poverty and survival a recent literature highlights the uncertainty concerning whether economic growth has any causal protective effect on health and survival but equal rates of growth often deliver unequal rates of poverty reduction and absolute deprivation is more clearly relevant using state level panel data for india we contribute the first estimates of the impact of changes in poverty on infant survival we identify a significant within state relationship which persists conditional upon state income indicating the size of survival gains from redistribution in favour of households below the poverty line the poverty elasticity declines over time after 1981 it is invariant to controlling for income inequality but diminished upon controlling for education fertility and state health expenditure and eliminated once we introduce controls for omitted trends

the heart kuznets curve understanding the relations between economic development and cardiac conditions abstract as countries turn wealthier some health indicators such as child mortality seem to have well defined trends however others including cardiovascular conditions do not follow clear linear patterns of change with economic development abnormal blood pressure is a serious health risk factor with consequences for population growth and longevity as well as public and private expenditure in health care and labor productivity this also increases the risk of the population in certain pandemics such as covid 19 to determine the correlation of income and blood pressure we analyzed time series for the mean systolic blood pressure sbp of men s population mmhg and nominal gross domestic product per capita gdppc for 136 countries from 1980 to 2008 using regression and statistical analysis by pearson s correlation r our study finds a trend similar to an inverted u shaped curve or a heart kuznets curve there is a positive correlation increase gdppc increase sbp in low income countries and a negative correlation in high income countries increase gdppc decrease sbp as country income rises people tend to change their diets and habits and have better access to health services and education which affects blood pressure however the latter two may not offset the rise in blood pressure until countries reach a certain income investing early in health education and preventive health care could avoid the sharp increase in blood pressure as countries develop and therefore avoiding the heart kuznets curve and its economic and human impacts

external shocks and fiscal deficits in a monetary model of international reserve determination honduras 1960 83 results from single equation estimation of a standard monetary model suggest that central bank credit growth in excess of growth of money demand was the main source of international reserve losses in honduras during the 1960 83 period further 3 sls estimates suggest that increases in central bank credit growth were largely in response to rising external interest rates and decreases in the income terms of trade in addition income growth hence growth of money demand shows a strong positive response to the income terms of trade the fiscal deficit is found to have an insignificant impact on central bank credit growth

health nutrition and economic growth today the most remarkable instances of rapid economic growth are in asian and latin american countries which together represent more than half of the population of the world this vast expansion of modern economic growth did not get under way until after world war ii but since then has proceeded with lightning speed these changes first became evident in the improvement in life expectancy in the case of india for example life expectancy at birth increased from 29 years in 1930 to 60 years in 1990 an increase of that magnitude required two and a half centuries in england and france the sharp drop in the death rates of developing nations led to an enormous surge in the growth of population which in turn led to widespread fears that the food supply could not keep up with population growth and that industrialization would be thwarted excerpt

monetarist perspectives of papua new guinea s hard currency strategy abstract this paper analyzes the performance of the hard currency strategy hcs which was the centerpiece of papua new guinea s png s post independence macroeconomic stabilization policies the main aims of the hcs were the maintenance of the convertibility and the purchasing power of the domestic currency whilst averting imported inflation and excessive foreign indebtedness the exchange market pressure variant of the monetary model augmented by a policy sensitivity variable yielded meaningful empirical results for png these results differ markedly from those observed for other countries the png results indicated that up to 1980 the hcs was more or less effective but thereafter a configuration of several adverse economic factors undermined the hcs active monetary policy failed to prop up the ailing hcs critics of hcs contended that hcs although a qualified success as an inti inflationary device failed to deliver growth and development in png these adverse aspects of the hcs have led to the recent calls to abandon it

an empirical inquiry into the short run dynamics of output prices and exchange market pressure abstract in this paper we develop a short run disequilibrium model for the interaction of output prices and exchange market pressure in this model we consider the trade off between movements in exchange rates and movements in international reserves and we also incorporate and test purchasing power parity as a long run hypothesis the specification adopted preserves the properties of the monetary approach to exchange rates and the balance of payments in the long run the theoretical model is applied to the small open economy of greece for the period 1975 1981

exchange market pressure in postwar brazil an application of the girton roper monetary model this study applies lance girton and don roper s hereafter g r monetary model of exchange market pressure to the postwar brazilian monetary experience the model was designed specifically for the canadian managed float during the period 1952 62 the object of their model is to explain what they term exchange market pressure that is the pressure on foreign exchange reserves and the exchange rate when there exists an excess of domestic money supply over money demand in a managed floating exchange rate regime the basic theoretical proposition is that any such excess supply of money can be relieved by an exchange depreciation a loss in foreign reserves or in the context of a managed float by some combination of the two in this sense the g r managed float model used here is firmly rooted in the modern monetary approach to exchange rates and the balance of payments brazil provides a particularly good example for testing this approach not only because it is in many senses a unique example of a postwar managed float system but also because it can be treated as a small open economy in the sense that world prices and monetary conditions faced by brazil are taken as given this particularly suits the purpose of most modern monetary models which make this assumption and obviates the problems of monetary dependence and neutralization dealt with in the pioneering g r paper specifically the small country assumption permits us to devise a simple one country equation of managed floating which depends upon four essential ingredients 1 money demand 2 money supply 3 purchasing power parity and 4 monetary equilibrium 2 furthermore in brazil a much greater proportion of exchange market pressure was absorbed by exchange rate depreciation than in the canadian case where changes in reserves were large relative to exchange rate movements in short postwar brazil provides a singularly good opportunity to test the monetary model of exchange market pressure section i briefly states the essential elements of the monetary model and derives the equation to be tested for the brazilian experience from 1955 to 1975 section ii reports empirical results for the exchange market pressure model and section iii examines the applicability of the relative version of purchasing power parity for the time period considered section iv summarizes the results and discusses the merits of the monetary approach in light of the brazilian experience

endogenous local public extension policy a model of competitive pressure groups is proposed for explaining public provision of agricultural extension services and tested against county data from four midwestern u s states the allocation of extension staff time is explained by variables representing the average wealth position and membership size of farm and nonfarm pressure groups also farmers schooling is shown to have a large negative relationship to the provision of county agricultural extension services which suggests that they are substitutes

exchange rate indexation in a monetary model theory and evidence abstract using a familiar monetary model with nontraded goods we derive the stability properties of the price level and reserve stock when the exchange rate is partially or completely indexed to the home price level divided by foreign prices in the stable case it is shown that indexing results in a system with properties of both fixed and flexible regimes our method is to impose conditions of short run but not long run equilibrium in a discrete period model the model is tested with monthly data from brazil

financing agricultural research international investment patterns and policy perspectives abstract for much of the post wwii period governments in rich and poor countries alike have increased public spending on and performance of agricultural research the public involvement in and policies toward agricultural research and development r d have undergone a sea of change in more recent years in this article we document these changes focusing on the public and rapidly evolving private roles in financing agricultural r d and the international dimensions of these funding and policy issues we restate the principles for government intervention in research and highlight the financing aspects of these interventions before concluding the paper with some reflections on the implications of all these changes for internationally conceived and funded public agricultural r d

the distribution of gains from technological advance when input quality varies empirical evidence about new corn production technology in illinois supports the hypothesis that yield and output enhancing effects vary depending on whether technology is input here land quality dependent or independent in turn these differences affect the distribution of economic surplus from technology adoption across geographic regions with varying land quality a competitive market clearing model for a traded commodity is used to estimate the gains in economic surplus from technological advance

the stability of household production technology a replication our article develops and estimates a structural model of household health production that jointly determines the demand for leisure and the demand for consumption for elderly males we use a stochastic dynamic programming framework based on the

the incidence of agricultural policies abstract a general equilibrium model is used to analyze agricultural policy incidence in the presence of distortionary income taxation the incidence of lump sum transfers to farmers supply control through input retirement and production subsidies are considered partial equilibrium incidence calculations are shown to systematically overstate the benefits farmers receive from farm programs kaldor s compensation test is used to judge the relative efficiency inefficiency of alternative farm programs at the margin supply control through input retirement may dominate decoupled lump sum transfers if the tax system is very inefficient and subsidy payments are high

grand missions of agricultural innovation abstract this paper discusses three related examples of mission oriented agricultural institutional innovations associated with substantial crop yield increases in the 20th century it begins with the implementation of the united states land grant system and then discusses in turn the planning and implementation of the two grand missions that led successively to the yield increases in wheat and rice that heralded the onset of the green revolution it notes the remarkable role of the rockefeller foundation in identifying these two missions and selecting personnel developed within the land grant system to execute them with remarkable effectiveness

advertising competition and entry in media industries this paper presents a model of media competition with free entry when media platforms are financed both from advertising receipts and customers subscriptions we establish a relationship between the equilibrium levels of prices advertising and entry the welfare maximizing levels and the advertising technology under constant or increasing returns to scale in the audience size we find an excessive level of entry and an insufficient level of advertising we then extend the analysis along several dimensions the price as a strategic variable on the market for advertising free media platforms and the media quality dimension

dynamics of monetary intervention under managed floating abstract this paper studies the dynamics of the money stock in the presence of official intervention under fixed exchange rates and certain types of managed floating in response to an external disturbance the long run change in the stock of domestic currency is found to be the largest in magnitude under fixed rates however in the context of the present model managed floating may entail relatively larger short run movements this is the case when foreign disturbances originate in the commodity market and under certain conditions even if they originate in the asset market

exchange market pressure in korean an application of the girton roper monetary model note korea s exchange rates have been changing daily since its adoption of the flexible exchange rate system in february 1980 the purpose of this paper is to examine the simultaneous adjustment of both exchange rates and the balance of payments in korea the girton roper 1977 model of exchange market pressure is applied the model draws on a combination of the monetary approach to the balance of payments johnson 1972 and to exchange rate determination frenkel and johnson 1978 the main theoretical proposition of the girton roper hereafter g r model states that an excess domestic supply of money will cause some combination of currency depreciation and an outflow of foreign reserves the g r model of exchange market pressure was designed for the canadian managed float during the period from 1952 to 1962 connolly and silveira 1979 took the g r model and applied it to the brazilian experience for the period from 1955 to 1975 modeste 1981 used the same model to explain the monetary experience of argentina in the 1970s korean experience provides another good opportunity to test theoretical propositions of the g r version of the monetary approach to managed floating first of all korea fits the model of exchange market pressure because the country can be treated as a small open economy which takes foreign prices as given in addition changes in korea s exchange rates can be considered to be the product of market pressure since the korean won is linked to a multicurrency basket the exchange rate of the korean won is determined largely by the exchange rate formula which relies on both the special drawing right sdr basket and korea s own currency basket it is according to this formula that the bank of korea establishes daily the exchange rate in terms of the intervention currency the u s dollar l

a note on the exchange market pressure the korean experience 1980 1987 this paper applies the exchange market pressure emp model to korea under a managed floating exchange rate we show that the emp model is superior to one concentrating solely on foreign reserve or exchange rate changes given that the balance of paymnets in korea experienced a drastic turn to surplus during the estimated period we checked the stability of the coefficients the results show that the coefficients have remained stable

accounting for the effect of health on economic growth i use microeconomic estimates of the effect of health on individual outcomes to construct macroeconomic estimates of the proximate effect of health on gdp per capita i employ a variety of methods to construct estimates of the return to health which i combine with cross country and historical data on height adult survival rates and age at menarche using my preferred estimate eliminating health differences among countries would reduce the variance of log gdp per worker by 9 9 percent and reduce the ratio of gdp per worker at the 90th percentile to gdp per worker at the loth percentile from 20 5 to 17 9 while this effect is economically significant it is also substantially smaller than estimates of the effect of health on economic growth that are derived from cross country regressions

evaluating the effects of optimally distributed public programs child health and family planning interventions this paper develops and tests an optimizing model determining the distribution of family planning and health subsidies across heterogeneous households and assesses the biases in cross area estimates of the health effects of such subsidies due to public resource optimization the model incorporates both health externalities and the endogenous response of the size of the recipient population to program subsidies longitudinal data describing child health and publicly provided family planning and health programs in 20 barrios in laguna province in the philippines are used to estimate the effects of such programs on child health and the relationships between the distribution of the programs and preprogram health levels the impact of a program on a particular childs health status is viewed as dependent upon the childs length of exposure to the program a basic feature of the model is the presence of health externalities which is shown to be sufficient along with plausible features of household behavior to make selective subsidization of fertility control either alone or in combination with health investment subsidies pareto efficient the model suggests that subsidization of fertility control is likely to be pareto efficient in the presence of health or human capital externalities when human capital and family size are gross substitutes and or when any per child human capital subsidies may substitute for direct subsidies to health investment and an equalizing distribution of the subsidies the highest family planning subsidies to the lowest health recipient households is efficient when both health and family planning subsidies are used fertility control subsidies minimize the subsidy burden for donors and are highest when total subsidy expenditures per child are greatest

intergenerational persistence in health in developing countries the penalty of gender inequality this paper is motivated to investigate the often neglected payoff to investments in the health of girls and women in terms of next generation outcomes this paper investigates the intergenerational persistence of health across time and region as well as across the distribution of maternal health it uses comparable microdata on as many as 2 24 million children born of about 0 6 million mothers in 38 developing countries in the 31 year period 1970 2000 mother s health is indicated by her height bmi and anemia status child health is indicated by mortality risk and anthropometric failure we find a positive relationship between maternal and child health across indicators and highlight non linearities in these relationships the results suggest that both contemporary and childhood health of the mother matter and that the benefits to the next generation are likely to be persistent averaging across the sample persistence shows a considerable decline over time disaggregation shows that the decline is only significant in latin america persistence has remained largely constant in asia and has risen in africa the paper provides the first cross country estimates of the intergenerational persistence in health and the first estimates of trends