the effect of distance and road quality on food collection marketing margins and traders wages evidence from the former zaire abstract food price variation is typical of the food economies of many low income countries the presence or absence of road infrastructure is perceived to be one of the main determinants of this variation this analysis shows that in the case of the former zaire food price dispersion is significant both across products and across regions it is demonstrated that transportation costs explain most of the differences in food prices between producer regions and that road quality is an important factor in the transportation costs however food prices decrease relatively faster than transportation costs increase and traders wages are higher on bad roads

the exchange rate and fiscal consolidation episodes in emerging market economies abstract an analysis of fiscal consolidations in emerging market economies during 1970 2004 suggests that exchange rate depreciation raises the probability of a fiscal consolidation being successful including when controlling for debt growth the composition of the consolidation and degree of democracy

effects of fiscal contractions the importance of preceding exchange rate movements we examine the importance of exchange rate and money supply movements for the macroeconomic outcome of fiscal contractions and find i contractions associated with a favorable macroeconomic outcome have been preceded by significantly higher real depreciations as compared to contractions associated with a less favorable macroeconomic outcome and ii contractions preceded by real depreciations improve expectations about future income and generate higher private consumption growth we discuss policy implications for countries both outside and inside the emu

starting even job mobility and the wage gap between young single males and females standard econometric analysis of male female earnings differentials ignores job mobility despite its vital role in theories of discrimination and its demonstrated importance in explaining the earnings of young men this paper develops a model of male and female earnings and job mobility and estimates it for young single men and women in canada using the 1981 survey of work history the results corrected for sample selection bias arising from job mobility suggest that male and female earnings determination differs considerably by job mobility status returns to mobility are much greater for males than for females the results also show significantly different mobility behaviour for men and women but if anything females are more mobile than males faced with the same earnings opportunities thus differential job mobility behaviour does not appear to account for any portion of the male female earnings gap

unpacking the meaning of market access evidence from rural kenya summary this paper critically examines the dimensions of market access using farm panel survey data from kenya we investigate changes in ten indicators of market access during the 1997 2010 post liberalization period we find major improvements in certain market access conditions and little change in others there is generally low correlation between alternative indicators of market access all purpose indicators may not accurately reflect specific market access conditions of interest distances to physical infrastructure are often not representative of farmers access to markets changes in specific market access conditions may have more to do with the behaviors of marketing agents we consider the implications of these findings for agricultural marketing policies and for research methods

tales of fiscal adjustment fiscal adjustments why they can be expansionary this paper examines the evidence on fiscal adjustments in oecd countries from the early 1960s to today the results shed light on the recently observed phenomenon of fiscal tightening that produces non keynesian expansionary effects one interpretation is that a serious fiscal tightening increases demand wealth rises when future tax burdens decline and when interest rates decline credibility is restored and inflation or default risks abate both consumption and investment rise for this effect to produce an expansion the tightening must be sizeable and occur after a period of stress when the budget is quickly deteriorating and public debt is building up another interpretation emphasizes the supply side typically a fiscal consolidation based on tax increases is short lived to be long lasting it must include cuts in public employment transfers and government wages to be politically possible such a policy must be supported by trade unions these measures result in more efficient labour markets and boost the supply side based both on statistical evidence and on a detailed analysis of ten cases of major fiscal adjustment this article provides cautious support to the supply side view without denying a more limited role for the demand side channel alberto alesina and silvia ardagna

success and failure of fiscal consolidation in the oecd a multivariate analysis this paper tests five hypotheses explaining the success and failure of fiscal consol idation in a multivariate regression framework these hypotheses concern i the composition of the consolidation programme ii its size and persistence iii the gravity of the debt situation iv the influence of the international macroeconomic environment and v the con tribution of a preceding devaluation to test for composition effects we use cyclically adjusted data although many conclusions of the existing empirical literature are confirmed some do not survive a popular hypothesis that to succeed consolidation should rely on cutting the government wage bill is rejected a new empirical result is that the contribution of a devalu ation to the success of fiscal consolidation depends on the composition of the consolidation programme

technological change and managerial ability evidence from a malaysian artisanal fishery technological progress can improve economic development but its role in the harvest of common resources has received little attention we study the relationship between skill and the use of electronic and mechanical innovations in the productivity of malaysian artisanal fishers surprisingly electronics users do not define the frontier and mechanical winch adopters produced well inside it we show that if technology is a skill substitute rather than a complement then it helps less efficient users catch up to the production frontier policy makers must balance the implications for participation rates and resource depletion against gains for the least skilled participants

networks distance and trust telecommunications development and changing trading practices in ghana summary ghana liberalized its telecommunications sector in 1995 this article examines the impact of the phenomenal growth in access to cell phones on informal traders business practices the study demonstrates how these telecommunication pioneers have changed their mode of operation to reduce both transportation and transaction costs it is argued that traders with access to tools for more efficient communication over long distances provide better services and create a higher profit potential than others it is further argued that adoption of new technology enhances trust building in trade networks thus facilitating a higher number of transactions in an uncertain economic environment

the benefits of privatization evidence from mexico critics of privatization often argue that its benefits come at a high cost to society the authors test the validity of this criticism for mexico s privatization program one of the world s largest case by case programs assessing the performance of newly privatized firms in such areas as profitability and efficiency they find that these firms quickly close the gap with their peers in the private sector their findings suggest that the firms profit gains come from productivity gains 52 percent layoffs 33 percent and higher prices 15 percent

information efficiency and welfare in agricultural markets information and communications technologies icts have spread rapidly in the developing world there has been considerable interest in the potential role icts particularly mobile phones have begun to play in the marketing of agricultural outputs in these countries in this article we discuss the potential impacts icts may have on welfare both in terms of potential efficiency gains via improved arbitrage and welfare transfers among agents in the supply chain via reduced informational asymmetries and market power we also review the recent empirical evidence for such effects

union wage differentials in the public and private sectors a simultaneous equations specification the paper attempts to integrate new approaches to estimating union wage effects with the analysis of public private sector wage differentials estimates of the union differential in both public and private sectors allowing for the endogeneity of union status are presented the hypothesis that the recently measured rents to public sector employment primarily reflect the recent increase in unionization in that sector is examined and receives considerable empirical support there was evidence of positive selection into the union sector especially for private sector workers union status appears to be strongly influenced by the expected wage gain from joining the union sector

searching for non linear effects of fiscal policy evidence from industrial and developing countries several recent studies suggest that the response of national saving to scal policy may be non linear in this paper we use two data sets to search for the circumstances in which such non linear response may arise a sample of oecd countries already used in previous studies and a sample of developing countries using more recent world bank data we nd that in both samples non linear e ects tend to be associated with large and persistent scal impulses in the oecd sample the non linearity of the response is stronger for scal contractions than for expansions an increase in net taxes has no e ect on national saving during large scal contractions while it has a positive e ect in less pronounced contractions high or rapidly growing public debt does not appear to be a good predictor of non linear e ects in the world bank sample of developing countries non linearities in the response national saving to scal policy are not limited to large scal contractions and also tend to occur in periods in which debt is accumulating rapidly regardless of its initial level 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classixcation e21 e62 h31

trust and inter firm relations in developing and transition economies the role of trust in facilitating economic growth has been highlighted in previous contributions to this journal in order to take this debate forward this article argues 1 that more attention needs to be given to the relationship between sanctions and trust and 2 that it is worth distinguishing between the minimal trust for making markets effective and the extended trust required for deeper kinds of inter firm co operation to work the article goes on to ask why minimal trust is lacking and so hard to construct in the republics of the former soviet union it then examines how extended trust grows or can be made to grow in industrial supply chains and clusters in developing countries

fiscal stabilizations when do they work and why abstract this paper studies the determinants and channels through which fiscal contractions influence the dynamics of the debt to gdp ratio and gdp growth using data from a panel of oecd countries the paper shows that the success of fiscal adjustments in decreasing the debt to gdp ratio depends on the size of the fiscal contraction and less on its composition the rate of growth of output matters too but higher gdp growth does not drive the success of a fiscal stabilization in contrast whether a fiscal adjustment is expansionary depends largely on the composition of the fiscal maneuvre in particular stabilizations implemented by cutting public spending lead to higher gdp growth rates the effects of the composition on growth work mostly through the labor market rather than through agents expectations of future fiscal policy finally the evidence suggests that successful and expansionary fiscal contractions are not the result of accompanying expansionary monetary policy or exchange rate devaluations

can agricultural traders be trusted evidence from coffee in ethiopia summary traditional food marketing systems in developing countries are often not trusted in consequence policy makers frequently try to regulate them and modern marketing arrangements are increasingly emerging to address some of their presumed deficiencies however it is unclear how trustworthy these markets actually are the purpose of this study is to look at these issues in the case of coffee marketing in ethiopia coffee markets in ethiopia present an interesting case study due to the high price and quality differentiation linked to a number of both easily and not so easily observable characteristics moreover modern marketing practices such as modern retail branding and packaging are becoming increasingly common in ethiopia s urban coffee markets when we define and examine trustworthiness in the addis ababa coffee market as a function of weights and quality we find that traditional traders are relatively trustworthy on observable quality characteristics and weights however there is a consistent pattern of over representation of not so easily verifiable quality characteristics we further find that modern marketing outlets or formats including modern domestic retail and branded packaged products deliver higher quality at a higher price but are not more trustworthy than traditional marketing arrangements in terms of these dimensions of trade transactions

impact of sms based agricultural information on indian farmers this study estimates the benefits that indian farmers derive from market and weather information delivered to their mobile phones by a commercial service called reuters market light rml we conduct a controlled randomized experiment in 100 villages of maharashtra treated farmers associate rml information with a number of decisions they have made and we find some evidence that treatment affected spatial arbitrage and crop grading but the magnitude of these effects is small we find no statistically significant average effect of treatment on the price received by farmers crop value added crop losses resulting from rainstorms or the likelihood of changing crop varieties and cultivation practices although disappointing these results are in line with the market take up rate of the rml service in the study districts which shows small numbers of clients in aggregate and a relative stagnation in take up over the study period jel codes o13 q11 q13 the purpose of this study is to ascertain whether agricultural information distributed through mobile phones generates economic benefits to farmers we implement a randomized controlled trial of a commercial service entitled reuters market light rml offered by the largest and best established private provider of agricultural price information in india at the time of the experiment operating in maharashtra and other indian states rml distributes price weather and crop advisory information through sms messages we offered a one year free subscription to rml to a random sample of farmers to test whether they obtain higher prices for their agricultural output

analysis of part time pay in canada this paper analyses the difference between part time and full time wages in canada using the 1981 survey of work history since part time and full time workers are distinguished by hours worked and since hours worked and wages are interdependent selectivity bias occurs if ordinary least squares regression is used a modification of heckman s procedure to account for the fact that part time hours are doubly truncated is used to correct this problem the results indicate that adjusting for differences in characteristics the wage differential between part time and full time workers is 10 per cent or one third the unadjusted differential results vary somewhat by sex and marital status analyse de la remuneration du travail d temps partiel au canada ce memoire analyse les differences entre les salaires pour le travail a temps plein et a temps partiel au canada a partir des resultats de l enquete sur l activite en 1981 puisque les travailleurs a temps plein et a temps partiel sont definis par le nombre d heures de travail et puisque le nombre d heures de travail et les niveaux de salaire sont interdependants il y a biais de selectivite quand on utilise la methode des moindres carres ordinaires dans l analyse de regression l auteur utilise une modification de la technique de heckman pour tenir compte du fait que le nombre d heures de travail a temps partiel est doublement tronque pour corriger le probleme les resultats montrent que apres avoir tenu compte des differences dans les caracteristiques des personnes on observe un differentiel de niveau de salaire de 10 pourcent entre les travailleurs a temps plein et a temps partiel soit le tiers du differentiel brut avant les ajustements pour tenir compte de caracteristiques differentes ces resultats varient quelque peu selon le sexe et selon la situation familiale the trend towards part time employment has generally escaped the attention and scrutiny of economists part time employment in canada grew at an annual rate of 4 1 per cent between january 1972 and january 1984 compared 1 one exception is nakamura and nakamura 1983 who examine related labour supply issues for married females canadian journal of economics revue canadienne d economique xix no 4 november novembre 1986 printed in canada imprim6 au canada 0008 4085 86 798 807 1 50 0 canadian economics association this content downloaded from 207 46 13 159 on sat 22 oct 2016 04 29 38 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms analysis of part time pay in canada 799 with a growth rate of only 2 4 per cent for full time employment as a result 15 4 per cent of jobs were part time as of january 1984 compared with 13 per cent in january 1972 2 the growth of part time employment raises a number of issues in particular labour canada 1983 argues that the hourly wage differential between full time and part time workers reached 26 3 per cent in 1981 it is not clear however that this gross wage differential between full time and part time workers is a useful figure a number of accepted measurable characteristics that determine wage differentials among workers may confound this comparison unless full time and part time workers have identical characteristics it would therefore be useful from a policy standpoint to eliminate these effects to identify part time effects and the gravity of the part time pay problem per se this paper analyses the differences between part time and full time wages to try to distinguish part time effects whatever the source from other established bases for differentials in the first section a standard model for wage comparison among workers is considered the source of selectivity bias is identified and a consistent estimation technique is described the second section uses this technique to analyse the differences in part time and full time wages using microdata from the 1981 survey of work history used by labour canada 1983 the third section summarizes the results and provides suggestions for further research a model for wage comparison with selectivity bias consider a standard model used extensively for union and non union wage comparisons lee 1978 duncan and leigh 1980 robinson and tomes 1984 simpson 1985 let wf be a vector of observations on the natural logarithm of hourly wages paid to full time workers and let x be a matrix of observations on measurable worker characteristics commonly used in such models namely educational attainment age sex union status public vs private sector status and region let wp and x be the corresponding observations for part time workers let h be the maximum hours of work permitted for classification as a part time worker then we specify wf xff3f if if h h 1

the importance of composition of fiscal policy evidence from different exchange rate regimes abstract we study the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policies in an open economy we emphasize two transmission mechanisms the cost channel by which wage government spending and labor taxes raise the real wage firms must pay and the exchange rate channel by which the nominal exchange rate shifts induced by fiscal policy have real effects if some prices and wages are sticky the latter channel implies that changes in wage government spending or in labor taxation should have different effects under flexible than under fixed exchange rates in a 1964 93 panel of oecd countries we find significant evidence for both channels moreover we find that the real product wage and profitability are more responsive than quantities employment and output to fiscal policy innovations

canadian union nonunion wage differentials using extensive canadian longitudinal data from the years 1969 71 the authors estimate union nonunion wage differentials of 12 14 percent for 1969 and 13 16 percent for 1970 these estimates are not adjusted for selectivity because three different tests to identify selectivity yield no evidence of selectivity bias the authors argue that although testing for selectivity is often essential selectivity adjustments have resulted in greatly inflated estimates of union nonunion wage differentials in some studies and should therefore be used with caution

look who s talking the impacts of the intrahousehold allocation of mobile phones on agricultural prices abstract using data from the philippines we study the impact of mobile phones on the prices agricultural producers receive for their cash crop we first look at the impact on price of mobile phone ownership at the household level because this masks a considerable amount of heterogeneity we then look at the impact on price of the intrahousehold allocation of mobile phones we find that whether the household owns a mobile phone has no impact on price but whether a farmer or spouse owns a mobile phone is associated with a 5 to 8 per cent increase in price

unions industrial concentration and wages a re examination market structure or industrial concentration has long been recognized as an important influence on industrial output employment and profits it has also been recognized that some proportion of the profits from concentration may be diverted into wages through collective bargaining yet the precise nature of these relationships has received little attention although it has important implications for the evaluation of wage structure and the welfare loss arising from monopoly empirical studies of the impact of unions and industrial concentration on wages weiss 1966 jones and laudadio 1975 dalton and ford 1977 long and link 1983 follow a similar format after a brief verbal justification for the ability of unions to win higher wage increases when the employer is earning oligopoly profits these studies specify a wage equation of the general form

trust networks and norms the creation of social capital in agricultural economies in ghana this paper contributes to the continuing debate over the multifaceted concept of trust and its ability to provide a richer explanation of processes of economic activity using case studies of agricultural production marketing and financing systems in brong ahafo region of ghana the analysis documents the means by which trust is created among farmers traders and agricultural input suppliers the mechanisms include formal and informal networks of working relations customer friendships pre existing networks and intermediaries the study shows that trust is necessary for the development of a vibrant private sector based on microenterprises in conditions where actors cannot rely on formal legal institutions at present

fiscal policy in good times and bad in the 1980s several countries with large government debt or deficit implemented substantial and in some cases drastic deficit cuts contrary to widespread expectations in many cases private consumption boomed rather than contracted this paper shows that in times of fiscal stress shocks to government revenues and especially expenditure have very different effects on private consumption than in normal times

the political economy of fiscal consolidations in the context of recent research in political economy this paper addresses the policy problem of fiscal consolidation in terms of three types of issues i the macroeconomic effects of alternative strategies to consolidate ii the institutional setups conducive to a consolidation and iii the best strategy for implementing a consolidation in order to maximize its political feasibility one methodological feature of this survey is an emphasis on policy feasibility one methodological feature of this survey is an emphasis on policy issues in order to bridge the gap between the level of abstraction of politico economic models of fiscal policy and the issues faced by a policymaker when attempting a fiscal consolidation

unionism in a competitive industry this article explores a model in which a union confronts many competitive workers firms and consumers under monopoly unionism union coverage may be incomplete then union wages and employment are insensitive to product demand variation under efficient unionism coverage can never be incomplete some union variables necessarily vary with product demand preliminary evidence on the demand independence under incomplete coverage hypothesis is presented also more structure is imposed and further hypotheses are derived and the manner in which the model can be enriched to allow for a variety of union related issues within a consistent framework is set out