occupational choice and the process of development this paper models economic development as a process of institutional transformation by focusing on the interplay between agents occupational decisions and the distribution of wealth because of capital market imperfections poor agents choose working for a wage over self employment and wealthy agents become entrepreneurs who monitor workers only with sufficient inequality however will there be employment contracts otherwise there is either subsistence or self employment thus in static equilibrium the occupational structure depends on distribution since the latter is itself endogenous we demonstrate the robustness of this result by extending the model dynamically and studying examples in which initial wealth distributions have long run effects in one case the economy develops either widespread cottage industry self employment or factory production employment contracts depending on the initial distribution in the other example it develops into prosperity or stagnation

understanding heterogeneous preferences in random utility models a latent class approach a finite mixture approach toconditional logit models is developed in whichlatent classes are used to promoteunderstanding of systematic heterogeneity the model is applied to wilderness recreationin which a branded choice experiment involvingchoice of one park from a demand system wasadministered to a sample of recreationists the basis of membership in the classes orsegments in the sample involved attitudinalmeasures of motivations for taking a trip aswell as their stated preferences overwilderness park attributes the econometricanalysis suggested that four classes of peopleexist in the sample using the model toexamine welfare measures of some hypotheticalpolicy changes identified markedly differentwelfare effects than the standard singlesegment model and provided insight into thedifferential impact of alternative policies

the dynamic cost and persistence of asset inequality in an agrarian economy abstract a growing literature suggests that asset inequality can be economically costly in the presence of agency costs that constrain labor and capital markets unclear in this literature is whether asset markets and optimal individual accumulation of self finance capacity suffice to eliminate costly inequality over time this paper uses numerical dynamic programming methods to explore this question with a model of an initially inegalitarian agrarian economy while an egalitarian asset distribution emerges over time the process involves sufficiently great productivity losses along the way that a redistributive policy could improve on the market s performance by both equity and efficiency criteria

asset inequality matters an assessment of the world bank s approach to poverty reduction the fight against poverty has been adopted by the multilateral development banks as their principal objective almost three decades after robert mcnamara announced that the world bank s fundamental work was to improve the lives of the poor its new president james wolfensohn has reiterated that poverty reduction is the world bank s principal purpose similarly in 1994 the inter american development bank set social progress and social equity as its central objective the emphasis in the international institutions contrasts with disappointing results in the real world although life expectancy school enrollmuent and other indicators of social wellbeing have improved dramatically across the developing world and although the proportion of the poor has declined in the last few decades the absolute number of poor people in the world has actually increased today about 1 3 billion people in less developed countries still subsist on less than 1 per day world bank 1980 1990 1996 the case of latin america is dramatic while in the 1970 s the number of poor fell it nearly doubled in the 1980 s increasing from about 80 to almost 150 million and in the last few years the number of poor now 33 percent of the total population has failed to fall despite economic recovery birdsall and londofio 1997 the contrast between the multilateral banks goals and these disappointing results suggests the need for a critical reassessment of their approach to poverty reduction in this paper we describe the approach reflected in the work of world bank economists and based on new empirical work assess its relevance for latin america

the welfare impact of land redistribution evidence from a quasi experimental initiative in malawi summary land reform may be an effective means of reducing poverty in many developing countries where policy efforts have recently embraced a decentralized market based approach to land redistribution we use household panel data combined with a quasi experimental program to assess the impact of a joint malawi world bank land program on household well being double difference and matching methods are used to address identification sources of bias results point to average positive effects on several productive outcomes of beneficiaries while no effects are found with respect to access to social services there is also evidence of heterogeneous effects by gender and inheritance systems

poverty and landownership the author studies how landownership affects labor allocation income distribution and poverty in less developed countries he focuses on three prototypes of ownership classes landlords smallholders and landless people agents are identical except for their ownership of assets on the basis of optimizing behavior they divide into urban workers in the modern sector urban workers in the informal sector agricultural laborers subsistence farmers and landlords the impact of land reform on production and poverty depends on the amount of fertile land per capita a more egalitarian distribution of landownership reduces poverty where land is scarce but not where land is abundant copyright 1992 by american economic association

can unobserved land quality explain the inverse productivity relationship abstract an inverse relationship between both farm productivity and labor intensity and farm size is a common empirical finding in developing country agriculture the traditional explanation has been imperfect labor markets recently it has been suggested instead that the inverse relationship is a statistical artifact resulting from omitted land quality using a farm level data set from java i investigate whether omitted variable bias can explain the inverse relationship i show that the inverse relationship and accompanying wage responses are inconsistent with a model of neoclassical farm behavior that ignores omitted variable bias instrumental variables techniques yield parameter estimates in which the inverse relationship is eliminated and the estimated wage elasticities are more in line with economic theory further econometric investigation hints that a model of omitted land quality may be a possible source of the inverse relationship these results emphasize the importance of considering the sources of cross sectional variation in estimating microeconomic relationships

oligarchy democracy inequality and growth abstract this paper analyses the dynamics of inequality democratization and economic development in a political economy model of growth where education is both the engine of growth and a determinant of political participation in a context with imperfect capital markets we investigate the incentives for an educated oligarchy to subsidize the poor s education and to initiate a democratic transition we characterize the equilibrium patterns of political institutions income distribution and growth as a function of the initial income and inequalities in particular we identify circumstances under which the elite promotes the endogenous emergence of a middle class for purely political economy reasons a simple linear infinite horizon framework is then presented in this setting we discuss the importance of historical dependence for long run social stratification and redistribution

can redistributive reform be achieved via market based voluntary land transfer schemes evidence and lessons from the philippines this article examines market led agrarian reform mlar and its variants in the form of voluntary land transfer schemes under the comprehensive agrarian reform program carp in the philippines analysis of mlar variants in the philippines offers a preview of what is likely to happen when the mlar model currently being pushed by the world bank is implemented in the real world not only do mlar and mlar like schemes fail to promote redistributive reform they also undermine potentially redistributive state led land reform policies

can land market reform mitigate the exclusionary aspects of rapid agro export growth abstract agro export growth has been associated with land concentration and employment instability in the wake of exclusionary agro export booms land market reform has been proposed as a way to improve peasant land access through the market developing a model of the economic competitiveness of different classes of producers this paper evaluates the likely effectiveness of land market reform while the model itself gives ambiguous answers numerical simulation identifies a large gap between market price and peasants abilty to pay for land among the components of land market reform policy progressive land taxation appears unlikely to close that competitiveness gap while farm land mortgage banks appear more likely to mitigate exclusionary aspects of growth

credit constraint and human capital investment an empirical analysis using brazilian household budget survey abstractthis article is a first step towards understanding the relationship between credit market imperfections and inequality of opportunity in skill formation the main goal is to investigate the effects of the credit constraint on the optimal human capital decision in terms of degree of schooling taking into account the household preferences for education our starting point is a theoretical model of human capital investment decision with credit constraint following a previous model in the literature we propose a reduced form approach that estimates the relation between education decision and initial wealth in brazil our empirical analysis is conducted using data from a brazilian household budget survey pesquisa de orcamentos familiares for years 2002 2003 and 2008 2009 our results point out that education decision is in fact credit constrained the empirical results show a strong and highly significant effect of wealth on educational level of children teenagers and adults even controlling b

the effect of commodity price shocks on public lands distribution evidence from colombia abstract how do commodity shocks impact the privatization of public lands this paper examines this question through the lens of the establishment of private property rights over public lands in colombia which has had one of the western hemisphere s largest public land distribution programs during the last century using data on exogenous international coffee price shocks along with data on land suitability for coffee production as determined by agro climatic conditions and roughly 250 000 public land grants i find that coffee price increases generate more public land grants in municipalities where land is more suited to coffee production additional tests suggest that the findings are driven by the power of organized cultivators to steer the land grant process in their favor the findings shed light on the role of organized actors in the countryside extending private extension of control over public territory a phenomenon that has drastically diminished public lands and natural spaces in numerous countries over the last two centuries

determinants and consequences of land reform implementation in the philippines abstract unlike the experience of other developing countries land reform in the philippines has been successful in converting many of share tenants to land reform beneficiaries this study indicates that the implementation of land reform is positively associated with yield growth made possible by the adoption of modern seed fertilizer technology a major reason underlying such association is considered to be an increased economic interest of tenants in land reform arising from divergence of rental value of land from leasehold rent and amortization fees prescribed by law

economic benefits and costs of land redistribution in zimbabwe in the early 1980s summary evidence on the performance of zimbabwe s early land reform effort is mixed in this paper we use a unique micro data set with information on land reform beneficiaries and a control group of nonbeneficiaries and employ propensity score matching to examine household and per capita benefits associated with land reform combining this information with estimates on the cost of land reform we find that the economic return is positive but modest its magnitude depends on assumptions about the opportunity costs of land and the reasons for the observed increase in the size of resettled households

demand for beef from cattle administered growth hormones or fed genetically modified corn a comparison of consumers in france germany the united kingdom and the united states we compare consumer valuations of beef ribeye steaks from cattle produced without growth hormones or genetically modified corn in france germany the united kingdom and the united states results suggest that french consumers place a higher value on beef from cattle that have not been administered added growth hormones than u s consumers however valuations of non hormone treated beef are statistically indistinguishable across germany the united kingdom and the united states results also suggest that european consumers place a much higher value on beef from cattle that have not been fed genetically modified corn than u s consumers copyright 2003 oxford university press

production technology option value the case of rbst in michigan agricultural producers are increasingly required to adjust production practices to satisfy retailer and ultimately consumer preferences this article highlights the option value that underlies decisions related to production technologies using the case of michigan dairy farmers and recombinant bovine somatotropin rbst welfare impacts were calculated for dairy producers when milk production systems which allowed the use of rbst were eliminated from the producer choice set those dairy producers using rbst just before its elimination realized a higher welfare loss than those not using the technology however significant welfare impacts were found for all dairy producers indicating that all producers valued the option to use this production technology

land reforms poverty reduction and economic growth evidence from india recognition of the importance of institutions that provide security of property rights and relatively equal access to economic resources to a broad cross section of society has renewed interest in the potential of asset redistribution including land reforms empirical analysis of the impact of such policies is however scant and often contradictory this paper uses panel household data from india together with state level variation in the implementation of land reform to address some of the deficiencies of earlier studies the results suggest that land reform had a significant and positive impact on income growth and accumulation of human and physical capital the paper draws policy implications especially from the fact that the observed impact of land reform seems to have declined over time

are choice experiments incentive compatible a test with quality differentiated beef steaks this study compares hypothetical and nonhypothetical responses to choice experiment questions we test for hypothetical bias in a choice experiment involving beef ribeye steaks with differing quality attributes in general hypothetical responses predicted higher probabilities of purchasing beef steaks than nonhypothetical responses thus hypothetical choices overestimate total willingness to pay for beef steaks however marginal willingness to pay for a change in steak quality is in general not statistically different across hypothetical and actual payment settings

the limits to land reform the land acts in ireland 1870 1909 ireland experienced two great waves of land reform during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries land reform was a central demand of irish political factions of the time and by acceding to this demand successive british governments hoped to pacify ireland this article reconsiders the economic significance of the several irish land reform measures by examining them in the context of economic theory and by comparing them to other land reform episodes in currently developing countries and in european history the irish reforms contained little that could better the allocation of resources and so had little impact on economic efficiency even though the end result was the creation of a class of peasant proprietors operating in a free market the analysis focuses on the structure of the laws and their relation to irish institutions although we also discuss the aggregate evidence on the evolution of agricultural efficiency following the reforms moreover the irish legislation missed an important opportunity to improve smallholders access to credit some facets of the land legislation interacting with some unusual institutional features of land tenure in ireland made credit conditions worse land reform in ireland was much more a wealth redistribution program financed by britain than a serious effort to improve the efficiency of agriculture land tenure and land reform occupy central roles in both the history and historiography of the political struggles that culminated in the partition of ireland in the 1920s successive waves of irish politicians sought to harness essentially nationalist ambitions to the more mundane dissatisfactions of the irish farmer convincing the latter that economic prosperity required alterations to or complete abolition of an agrarian system

income distribution and macroeconomics this paper analyzes the role of wealth distribution in macroeconomics through investment in human capital it is shown that in the presence of credit markets imperfections and indivisibilities in investment in human capital the initial distribution of wealth affects aggregate output and investment both in the short and in the long run as there are multiple steady states this paper therefore provides an additional explanation for the persistent differences in per capita output across countries furthermore the paper shows that cross country differences in macroeconomic adjustment to aggregate shocks can be attributed among other factors to differences in wealth and income distribution across countries

new ways of looking at old issues inequality and growth abstract the paper uses new cross country data on income and asset land distribution to show that i there is a strong negative relationship between initial inequality in the asset distribution and long term growth ii inequality reduces income growth for the poor but not for the rich and iii available longitudinal data provide little support for the kuznets hypothesis policies that increase aggregate investment and facilitate acquisition of assets by the poor might thus be doubly beneficial for growth and poverty reduction

dis accords the politics of market assisted land reforms in chiapas mexico abstract in spring 2003 the world bank published a major statement on land reform policy reflecting powerful new institutional support for market assisted land reforms this article uses the case of land conflicts in chiapas mexico and their resolution through market assisted agrarian accords to critically examine this new policy current using fine grained case studies and ethnography rather than the national crossnational studies typically used to assess market assisted land reform this article finds no grounds for the foundational claim that decentralized market assisted land reforms are inherently less politicized than state led land reforms despite claims to the contrary proponents of the new policy deploy one dimensional understandings of politics and the political construction of markets that gloss the ways community and markets are highly politicized sites where actors play out multiple territorial projects

premature deagriculturalisation land inequality and rural dependency in limpopo province south africa cross national regressions reveal abnormally low agricultural workforce shares given gnp in developing countries that had historically concentrated land into large capital intensive farms we argue that such deagriculturalisation was premature since its concomitant labour shedding has undesirable outcomes in a new south african survey a large proportion of rural households and working age persons was dependent relying for income almost wholly on either migrant remittances or pensions a separate group with less poverty and unemployment relied mainly on local including own farm income the group was heavily over represented in one of the three regions where many more households had significant land

the diversity of land markets and regulations in europe and some of its causes abstractthe creation of optimal land institutions attracted renewed attention in the 1990s because of its central role in the transition process in former communist countries in the former soviet union and eastern europe and more recently because of large scale land investments in developing countries this article documents the existence of large variations in land institutions markets and regulation using current and historical data from western and eastern europe it then offers explanations for these differences and draws implications for the role and optimality of land institutions in development with special reference to the current debate on large scale land acquisitions

applied welfare economics with discrete choice models economists have been paying increasing attention to the study of situations in which consumers face a discrete rather than a continuous set of choices such models are potentially very important in evaluating the impact of government programs upon consumer welfare but very little has been said in general regarding the tools of applied welfare economics indiscrete choice situations this paper shows how the conventional methods of applied welfare economics can be modified to handle such cases it focuses on the computation of the excess burden of taxation and the evaluation of quality change the results are applied to stochastic utility models including the popular cases of probit and logit analysis throughout the emphasis is on providing rigorous guidelines for carrying out applied work this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

property rights and the political organization of agriculture we propose a general equilibrium model where the economic organization of agriculture and the political equilibrium determining the security of property rights are jointly determined in particular because the form of organization may affect the probability and distribution of benefits from future property challenges it may be shaped in anticipation of this impact property rights security may then be secured at the expense of economic efficiency the model provides a framework for understanding why in some contexts land is redistributed primarily via land sales and tenancy markets but via politics and conflict in others we test some implications of the theory using a five decade panel dataset that traces changes in the extent of tenancy and tenancy reform across 15 indian states

explaining international and intertemporal variations in income inequality this paper explores the propositions that income inequality is relatively stable within countries and that it varies significantly among countries a new and expanded data set provides broad support for both propositions drawing on a political economy and capital market imperfection arguments to explain the intertemporal and international variation in inequality the empirical analysis shows that the predicted variables associated with the first argument a measure of civil liberties and the initial level of secondary schooling and the second argument a measure of financial depth and the initial distribution of land are indeed important determinants of inequality this paper explores two propositions regarding income inequality they are first income inequality is relatively stable within countries and second it varies significantly across countries to illustrate note that the gini coefficient in india remained almost constant for forty years 1951 92 with mean 32 6 and standard deviation 2 0 2 in contrast the variation in gini coefficients across countries is large 61 9 in honduras in 1968 compared with 17 8 in bulgaria in 1976 if substantiated these propositions have potentially significant implications for poverty the significance of the first is obvious barring any fundamental socio political change poverty reduction will depend crucially on the rate of economic growth given this the significance of the second is that in inegalitarian economies the poor will enjoy a smaller share of any national increment in income than in more egalitarian ones drawing on a new and expanded data set on inequality deininger and squire 1996a the first of the paper s three sections conducts standard statistical tests of the two propositions the sample comprises 573 observations on the most common measure of inequality the gini coefficient for 49 developed and developing countries covering the period 1947 94 the results broadly confirm our two propositions specifically analysis of variance anova shows that about 90 of the total variance in the gini coefficients

asset smoothing consumption smoothing and the reproduction of inequality under risk and subsistence constraints abstract a growing literature asks whether low wealth agents can accumulate assets over time or whether they are trapped in poverty this paper develops a stochastic dynamic programming model with endogenous asset price risk to explore savings and portfolio decisions in a resource poor environment characterized by risk and subsistence constraints optimal portfolio strategies are found to bifurcate despite divisible assets and fully rational agents wealthier agents acquire a higher yielding portfolio and pursue conventional consumption smoothing poorer agents acquire a less remunerative portfolio and pursue asset smoothing rather than consumption smoothing asset based risk coping thus results in positive correlation between initial wealth and portfolio rate of return

income smoothing and consumption smoothing one way that risk averse households protect consumption levels is to borrow and use insurance mechanisms another way common in low income economies is to diversify economic activities and make conservative production and employment choices households thus tend toward limiting exposure only to shocks that can be handled with available credit and insurance typically both types of mechanisms are studied independently but much more can be learned by studying them together first we obtain a more complete picture of risks costs and insurance possibilities second it opens the way to considering biases in standard tests of credit and insurance

government failure social capital and the appropriateness of the new zealand model for public sector reform in developing countries abstract the policy problems posed by a lack of state capacity in developing societies now attract the attention of a growing number of scholars both the government failure paradigm with its top down emphasis and the social capital theory with its stress on bottom up approaches provide analytical frameworks that can be used to comprehend the symptoms of state incapacity reported by the much broader literature on policy implementation this paper seeks to determine the implications of the government failure and social capital models for policy implementation more specifically the paper considers the contractualist approach to public management reform in new zealand as the epitome of a top down solution to government failure it will also evaluate this model from a social capital perspective and suggest ways in which a balanced approach to public sector reform can take into account elements of both paradigms

the new economics of organization over the last ten years or so an important new approach to the study of organizations has emerged within economics it is perhaps best characterized by three elements a contractual perspective on organizational relationships a theoretical focus on hierarchical control and formal analysis via principal agent models this paper provides political scientists with an overview of the new economics of organization and explores its implications for the study of public bureaucracy so far positive political theory has not contributed much to our understanding of public bureaucracy in part this is due to the unsympathetic treatment that rational modeling and most other modes of quantitative analysis have long received from students of public administration the other side of the coin however is that positive theorists have not made much of an effort to develop theories of bureaucracy their concerns have centered around two basic mechanisms of social choice voting and markets and they have devoted little systematic attention to a third mechanism that is clearly important for understanding how societies and other aggregates make collective decisions this third and relatively unexplored mechanism is hierarchy movement toward a positive theory of hierarchies would fill a serious gap in the social choice literature while at the same time making a theoretical contribution that strikes to the essence of public bureaucracy indeed of all organizations in fact significant steps toward a positive theory of hierarchies have very recently been taken but by economists not political scientists in small numbers of course economists made contributions to the study of public bureaucracy some time ago with the pioneering works of downs 1967 tullock 1965 and niskanen 1971 but this new wave of theoretical work is different it is already a large complex body of literature that is the focus of innovation and excitement among a growing number of economists and it reflects an unusual degree of theoretical coherence and cumulative effort work in this tradition tends to receive orientation from a distinctive economic approach to the analysis of organizations an approach perhaps best characterized by three elements a contractual perspective on organizational relationships a focus on hierarchical control and formal analysis via principal agent models this approach has emerged from recent attempts to move beyond the neoclassical theory of the firm which assumes away all organizational considerations to a theory of economic organizations that can explain why firms corporations and other enterprises behave as they do propo

making land rights accessible social movements and political legal innovation in the rural philippines abstract in recent years rule of law and legal reform has grown to be a major concern of national governments international financial institutions development agencies and donor organisations part of this concern has focused on expanding access to justice for the poor however little effort has gone into understanding the role of justice sector institutions in shaping the opportunities and limits of redistributive justice little attention has been paid to the actual workings of obstacles entrenched within the justice sector to land reform for example instead pro market scholars cite difficult legal problems as a reason to turn away from state led land reform and toward market oriented land policies yet as this paper shows a closer look at the details of dynamics around land reform in the philippines suggests that political legal problems associated with implementation of the agrarian reform law can be overcome under certain conditions it is argued that for rural poor claimants it is important

history institutions and economic performance the legacy of colonial land tenure systems in india we analyze the colonial land revenue institutions set up by the british in india and show that differences in historical property rights institutions lead to sustained differences in economic outcomes areas in which proprietary rights in land were historically given to landlords have significantly lower agricultural investments and productivity in the post independence period than areas in which these rights were given to the cultivators these areas also have significantly lower investments in health and education these differences are not driven by omitted variables or endogeneity problems they probably arise because differences in historical institutions lead to very different policy choices

the effects of compulsory schooling on growth income distribution and welfare abstract in this paper we consider an olg model with productive capital and human capital affecting the quality of labor in each generation parents invest in their children s education but disregard its external effect on the aggregate production function government intervention in providing compulsory schooling increases economic growth along the equilibrium path while the intragenerational income distribution becomes more equal also in the long run the majority of individuals in each generation are better off due to compulsory schooling

the role of land reform in economic development policies and politics as the extensive literature on the subject attests the issue of land reform has been and remains heatedly debated 1 the latest massive demonstration of interest came with the 1979 world conference on agrarian reform and rural development where representatives of no less than 145 nations and three liberation movements agreed that equitable distribution and efficient use of land are indispensable for rural development for the mobilization of human resources and for increased production for the alleviation of poverty fao at one time or another but especially since 1960 virtually every country in the world has passed land reform laws yet the record is far more modest than the promise a in spite of decades if not centuries tuma of land reform activities landownership remains extremely skewed concentration of landownership is almost universally increasing the mass of landless is growing rapidly and the extent of rural poverty and malnutrition has reached horrendous proportions and b in spite of widespread agreement on the need for land reform there are virtually no significant ongoing land reform programs except under extreme political pressures revolutionary in el salvador and postrevolutionary in nicaragua mozambique and angola in several countries the progressive gains achieved by land reform programs are being either eroded by the forces of economic growth mexico venezuela and south korea or purposefully canceled by public policies chile the question i want to explore in this paper is why this blatant discrepancy between rhetoric and reality or to put it another way why is land reform no longer a significant policy issue even though it remains an important political issue in most countries of the world 2 to answer we need first to explore in a positive sense what has been the nature of different land reforms that occurred in the past what were their purposes achievements and limits this will be done by developing a typology of land reforms in the third world because it is essential to distinguish carefully among a wide variety of reforms following the approach of political economy i will do this in the context of modes of production social class structure and types of land tenure

measuring public sector capacity abstract this paper explores the possibility of creating an index of public sector capacity which is policy neutral and relies on information already available it defines public sector capacity in terms of three elements policy capacity implementation authority and operational efficiency the paper also proposes a parallel index of enabling conditions environmental factors which lie beyond the control of the public sector but which profoundly influence its capacity construction of the index is feasible provided it is considered acceptable to rely on subjective ratings as well as hard statistics the index would need to be used with caution on account of the inevitable data limitations

land reform as commenced business the evidence against stopping abstract in the new paradigm institutions are long term endogenous thus the aims of land reform must be compatible with replace or substitute for initial incentives and power structures many reforms e g compulsory collectives are not redefinition of land reform is therefore needed yet the case for private land redistribution with ceilings remains the inverse relationship rests firmly on lower cost labor transactions in small farms though large but competitive transport or processing firms which enjoy lower cost capital transactions may be needed crucial is the impact of the postreform structure on livelihoods especially for the growing rural majority near landless workers new style market based reforms have potential probably best combined with old style ceilings substantial compensation with urban taxpayers sharing costs alternative off farm prospects and progressive taxes on large landholdings or bequests

land reform income redistribution and agricultural production in korea jeon yoong deok kim young yong january 2000 land reform income redistribution and agricultural production in korea articles chicago u s university of chicago 18

understanding economic policy reform one of the eventual consequences of the global debt crisis was a wave of market oriented economic reforms this paper discusses the state of our knowledge on the political economy of this process why were inefficient and often unsustainable policies maintained for so long why are so many governments reforming now after decades of adherence to policies of an opposite kind have the reformers internalized the correct lessons from the east asian experience finally are there any helpful rules for reformers to follow in guiding their policies through complicated political terrain

inequality as a determinant of malnutrition and unemployment policy this paper explores the policy implications that are obtained once it is recognized that at low nutrition intakes a person s productivity is an increasing function of intake in the context of a fully general equilibrium model it is shown that if aggregate assets in an economy are neither large nor small certain patterns of lorenz improving asset redistributions or nutrition transfers increase aggregate output and reduce the volume of involuntary unemployment and the incidence of undernourishment copyright 1987 by royal economic society

south african land policy the legacy of history and current options abstract the highly dualistic farm structure of south africa and the low productivity of native african farmers have been the result of systematic distortions in land allocation output markets the provision of infrastructure agricultural credit and services the dualistic structure did not emerge because of genuine economies of scale in the large commercial sector other countries in latin america and africa that once supported a dualistic farm size structure through similar distortions have either implemented large scale land reforms or have experienced decades of peasant revolts and civil war the paper compares these international experiences to south africa and outlines judicial and market assisted approaches to south african land reform

the dynamics of agricultural biotechnology adoption lessons from series rbst use in wisconsin 1994 2001 this article exploits panel data from wisconsin dairy farmers to examine the dynamics of recombinant bovine somatotropin rbst adoption and to identify the characteristics that distinguish among nonadopters disadopters and early and late adopters panel methods are used to control for omitted variables and endogenous regressors that call into question coefficient estimates derived from cross section adoption models the results however confirm previous findings that larger farms with complementary feeding technologies are more likely to adopt rbst nonadopters appear quite unlikely to become adopters and rbst adoption will remain at rather moderate levels in wisconsin

growth is good for whom when how economic growth and poverty reduction in exceptional cases summary economic growth and liberal economic policies often help the poor but what about the numerous cases in which they do not this article analyzes two types of cases those in which income growth of the poor was significantly lower than expectations negative exceptions and those in which income growth of the poor significantly exceeded expectations positive exceptions insights from these cases inform our theoretical understanding of poverty reduction in addition this article contributes a typology of strategies used in these cases including alternative pathways to economic growth and neoliberal prescriptions for poverty reduction

revisiting forever gained income dynamics in the resettlement areas of zimbabwe 1983 96 this study examines income dynamics for a panel of households resettled on former white owned farms in the aftermath of zimbabwe s independence there are four core findings i over a 13 year period 1983 96 there has been an impressive accumulation of assets and a dramatic increase of crop incomes ii the rise of crop incomes is partly due to asset accumulation but largely to increased asset returns hi differences between households in initial conditions such as previous farming experience have few persistent effects and iv income growth has been widely shared income inequality has fallen sharply and the largest percentage increases in incomes are recorded by households that initially had the lowest incomes

a study in resistance to institutional change the lost game of latin american land reform abstract this paper seeks an explanation of the limited success of land reforms in redistributing land in latin america during the 1960s and 1970s in spite of their widespread implementation a rational choice model of farmer behavior incorporating transaction costs on labor and credit and a game theoretical approach between landlords and the state are used for that purpose we show that land reform failed to be redistributive because it sought to first modernize large farms which allowed landlords to reinforce their power over the state this in turn enabled them either to obtain credible commitments of nonexpropriation if they would modernize or to successfully use rent seeking to externalize the cost of modernization and make expropriation with compensation no longer feasible

rural wages labor supply and land reform a theoretical and empirical analysis land reform is one of the most mentioned of the theoretical policy instruments discussed in the development literature yet relatively little attention has been paid to the wage rate consequences of such a program despite the fact that perhaps more than one half of rural families in a developing country receive a substantial proportion of their income from wage earnings in agriculture one reason for this lacuna may be that the determination of wages and family labor supply in the agricultural sector of ldcs has also been somewhat neglected particularly in the context of a heterogeneous labor force 2 the subsistence or institutional wage models of w arthur lewis john fei and gustav ranis and gerald rodgers for instance offer no theory of how rural wage levels or differentials are set and thus provide little guidance on how wage rates would be affected by changes in land ownership patterns more recently pranab bardhan and t n srinivasan david newbery and clive bell and pinhas zusman who formulate general equilibrium market or bargaining models determining endogenously the rental share paid by tenant sharecroppers have assumed that agricultural wage rates are exogenous or determined only by nonagricultural factors all of these models assume that rural labor is homogeneous another reason why the potential wage impact of a land reform program may have received little attention is that models of peasant family behavior such as those of a k sen dipak mazumdar and robert mabro typically embody two restrictive assumptions which would tend to make the equalization of landholdings appear wage augmenting although this implication has never been formally derived these assumptions are that 1 agriculture is dualistic with small farm families facing lower shadow prices of labor leisure than large farm landlords because of impediments to labor mobility and 2 agricultural households are dichotomous small farmers employ family labor and maximize utility while large farms only utilize wage labor and maximize profits data from a 1970 71 allindia survey of over 5 000 households collected by the national council of applied economic research3 indicate however that almost all cultivator households large and small participate actively in the labor market as either buyers or sellers of labor services with almost 88 percent of households cultivating a gross cropped area less than 1 5 acres utilizing some hired labor seventynine percent of these small farm households associate professor yale ujniversity the research embodied in this paper was supported in part by a grant from the ford and rockefeller foundations program in support of social science and legal research on population policy and with funds from the u s agency for international development under order no aid otr 1432 helpful suggestions and comments were provided by james l mccabe mark gersovitz an anonymous referee the managing editor and members of the economic growth center yale university i am also grateful to the members of the research program in development studies princeton university for the use of their facilities research assistance was provided by james devine anne morgan and roberta robson inotable exceptions are r albert berry mark gersovitz and m a rahman all of these authors however employ geometric analyses with differing assumptions leading to wholly different predictions regarding wage effects none consider the heterogeneity of agricultural labor pay attention to questions of stability or attempt to apply their models to data 2lnformation on the differential impact of alternative agricultural policies including land reform on sex or age specific wage rates is not only important in settling income distribution and equity issues but as suggested in an article by the author and robert evenson may have significant implications for population growth and schooling as well 3for a more detailed discussion of these data see the author

precautionary saving credit constraints and irreversible investment theory and evidence from serniarid india this article investigates the extent to which poor households are discouraged from making a non divisible but profitable investment using data on irrigation wells in india we estimate the parameters of a structural model of irreversible investment results show that poor farmers fail to undertake a profitable investment that they could in principle self finance because the nondivisibility of the investment puts it out of their reach irreversibility constitutes an additional disincentive to invest simulations show that the availability of credit can dramatically increase investment in irrigation and that interest rate subsidization has little impact

rural organization and land reform in brazil the role of nonagricultural benefits of landholding abstract this article examines the effects of nonagricultural land use on agrarian organization and land reform in an economy characterized by limited credit and land rental markets the nonagricultural demand for land under credit constraint generates a potential mismatch between the distribution of land and the distribution of farming skills this disparity reduces the agricultural output if the land rental market is absent a perfect land rental market is shown to determine the highest possible agricultural output policy implications from the model include in addition to market improvements the fact that small farmers rather than landless people should be the target of redistributive land reform programs

poverty and land redistribution abstract despite a theoretical literature that promises that land transfers will have large impacts on the well being of poor households well identified empirical evidence on the efficacy of land redistribution is scarce in an effort to fill this gap this paper examines south africa s land redistribution for agricultural development lrad program we exploit features of lrad program implementation to extract exogenous variation in whether and for how long applicant households enjoyed land transfers binary treatment estimates which compare treated with untreated households show that beneficiary households on average experienced a 25 increase in per capita consumption our preferred continuous treatment estimates which analyze only the subset of treated households identify the impact time path of land transfers on consumption these estimates show that living standards initially drop and then after 3 4 years rise to 150 of their pre transfer level these results are statistically significant and robust to a statistically more conservative identification strategy

agricultural productivity growth rural economic diversity and economic reforms india 1970 2000 a salient theme in d gale johnson s work is the importance of agricultural development for general prosperity and for economic diversification e g johnson 2000 johnson has also noted that most of the world s poor are engaged in farming so that a key focus of development policy is to raise the incomes of farmers from a global perspective increasing the productivity of agriculture given the fixity of land is necessary for both poverty reduction and the development of the nonagricultural sector at the level of the world agricultural productivity gains poverty reduction and the growth of the nonfarm sector are complements however the question remains whether these observations imply that every poor country should focus its public resources on agricultural development in order to raise the incomes of people now engaged in farming and whether such a policy is necessary for obtaining economic diversity in this article we use the experience of india over the past 30 years to address the issue of whether agricultural technical change actually leads to economic diversification and income growth within the rural sector in the context of an open economy country in which there are cross area trade and capital flows we focus in particular on the rural sector because this is the sector in which linkages between agricultural and nonagricultural sectors are thought to be the strongest we exploit the fact that india has maintained a policy of openness with respect to agricultural technology over this period permitting and actively supporting agricultural development and has moved to a reformed regime in which goods are traded and capital is more mobile in the 1990s evidence on the relationship between agricultural growth and nonfarm

characteristics and performance of resettlement programs a review abstract this review suggests that settlement programs are too often designed with the assumption that all settlers will succeed this has led to centralized administration and rigid designs rather than decentralized approaches flexibility in implementation support for spontaneous settlement and reliance on settlers own investment capacity collective farms have failed cropland is best allocated to individual families and their land rights must be clearly defined as ownership or long term leases farm sizes have to be flexibly adjusted to skills availability of family labor and the capital assets of the families settlers should therefore be allowed to sell or rent their land to other beneficiaries if poor settlers are to succeed settlement cannot be based solely on credit finance and provision must be made for grant elements paternalistic constraints on crop choice technology marketing or labor market participation have usually not been enforceable or have had adverse effects

how much do farmers value their independence a farmer s decision to contract or produce independently depends on the distribution of income and the nonpecuniary attributes associated with both business arrangements the benefits to growers from contracting such as risk reduction may be overestimated if the nonpecuniary benefits enjoyed by independent producers such as the right to make management decisions and own the commodity produced are not accounted for this study uses data from a u s national survey of hog producers to estimate 1 the difference in expected net returns between contracting and independent production 2 the premium a representative farmer would pay for the risk reduction provided by a contract and 3 the premium a farmer would pay for the nonpecuniary benefits associated with independent production results indicate that growers have a strong preference for autonomy with moderately risk averse growers being willing to pay more for the attributes of independent production than they would for the risk reducing benefits of a contract

comparative advantage information and the allocation of workers to tasks evidence from an agricultural labour market we use data from an agricultural labour market in which workers receive both time and piece rate wages and shift frequently among employers and tasks to assess the roles of comparative advantage information problems and preferences in determining the allocation of workers the estimates which impose minimal structure not implied by economic theory are consistent with a one factor productivity model and indicate that information asymmetries are present but workers are sorted according to comparative advantage in particular the disproportionate presence of female workers in weeding activities is due not to worker or employer preferences but to comparative advantage and statistical discrimination

recreation demand models with taste differences over people we estimate random parameter logit models of anglers choice of fishing site the models generalize logit by allowing coefficients to vary randomly over anglers rather than being fixed the models do not exhibit the restrictive independence from irrelevant alternatives property of logit and can represent any substitution pattern estimation explicitly accounts for the fact that the variation in coefficients over anglers induces correlation in unobserved utility over trips by the same angler willingness to pay for improved fish stock and the value to anglers of specific sites are calculated from the models and compared with the estimates obtained from a standard logit model

understanding the role of leadership in economic policy reform abstract a demand for coherent policy leadership characterized by its commitment to advance a consistent set of policy principles arises from the various sources of governance failure that account for the observed unevenness in implementing the washington consensus this paper examines how a conspiratorial network established itself as a collective source of such leadership in new zealand by interacting in a way which developed a high level of mutual trust and by penetrating and reconstituting a fragmented structure of insulated policy networks

a theory of trickle down growth and development this paper develops a model of growth and income inequalities in the presence of imperfect capital markets and it analyses the trickle down effect of capital accumulation moral hazard with limited wealth constraints on the part of the borrowers is the source of both capital market imperfections and the emergence of persistent income inequalities three main conclusions are obtained from this model first when the rate of capital accumulation is sufficiently high the economy converges to a unique invariant wealth distribution second even though the trickle down mechanism can lead to a unique steady state distribution under laissez faire there is room for government intervention in particular redistribution of wealth from rich lenders to poor and middle class borrowers improves the production efficiency of the economy both because it brings about greater equality of opportunity and also because it accelerates the trickle down process third the process of capital accumulation initially has the effect of widening inequalities but in later stages it reduces them in other words this model can generate a kuznets curve

making negotiated land reform work initial experience from colombia brazil and south africa abstract the paper describes background initial experience and future challenges associated with a new negotiated approach to land reform this approach has emerged as following the end of the cold war and broad macroeconomic adjustment many countries face a second generation of reforms to address deep rooted structural problems and provide the basis for sustainable poverty reduction and economic growth it reviews possible theoretical links through credit market or political channels between asset ownership and economic performance program characteristics in each country as well as lessons for implementation and implications for monitoring and impact assessment are discussed

empowerment and efficiency tenancy reform in west bengal the paper analyzes the effect of agricultural tenancy laws offering security of tenure to tenants and regulating the share of output that is paid as rent on farm productivity theoretically the net impact of tenancy reform is shown to be a combination of two effects a bargaining power effect and a security of tenure effect analysis of evidence on how contracts and productivity changed after a tenancy reform program was implemented in the indian state of west bengal in the late 1970s suggests that tenancy reform had a positive effect on agricultural productivity there

the impact of structural adjustment and property rights conflicts on nicaraguan agrarian reform beneficiaries abstract in nicaragua structural adjustment policies under the new government have led to sharply reduced agricultural producer credit and tighter conditions for its use along with conflicts over property rights that emerged from the sandinista era land confiscations the effect has been to speed a process of parceling and land sales among the population of agrarian reform beneficiaries which was the main recipient of redistributed lands faced with imperfect capital markets and tenure uncertainty small scale producers have resorted to distress sales of their parcels that could lead to a restratification of land ownership patterns

state led land reform and local institutional change land titles land markets and tenure security in mexican communities summary this article focuses on the interactions between state and community mechanisms in the design and delivery of a titling program and a land market reform in rural mexico whereas the titling program did provide a greater sense of tenure security among landholders legalizing transactions has unexpectedly generated an informal land market resulting in tenure insecurity for the corresponding buyers these contrasting outcomes are not a matter of technical failure unaffordable fees or rent seeking rather they can be traced back to differentiated processes of policy delivery by the administration officials with regard to acknowledging prevailing local institutions and managing local information

household returns to land transfers in south africa a q squared analysis abstract the south african land reform programme has been widely criticised for its slow pace as well as its apparent lack of contribution to poverty reduction however there is little systematic evidence of the impact of land transfers on their beneficiaries due to data scarcity this paper combines econometric evidence based on official household surveys with qualitative data collected specifically to triangulate and complement the econometric analysis the qualitative data analysis confirms the plausibility of the econometric finding that on average beneficiaries do not gain from participation and suggests that the main reason for the disappointing impact of participation is the incompatibility of consultant led land use plans to land grantees skills

new perspectives on farm size and productivity abstract the farm size and productivity debate has been limited by the focus on land or labor productivity generally showing respective productivity advantages to smaller or larger sized farms our purpose is to provide new perspectives on the debate by bringing together evidence from a set of novel case studies in both rich and poor countries common to them are the adoption of total factor productivity tfp as the comparative performance measure and the reliance on panels of farm micro data the present article presents a synthesis of findings from five case studies in i malawi tanzania and uganda ii bangladesh iii brazil iv australia and v the united states the preponderance of evidence from these studies suggests that there is no single economically optimal agrarian structure rather it appears to evolve with the stage of economic development certain farm sizes face relative productivity advantages such as small farms in africa but with economic and market growth that smallholder advantage will likely attenuate moving toward constant and eventually increasing returns to size yet importantly small farms may be quite dynamic and need not be a drag on agricultural growth until perhaps well into the development process

land rights gender equality and household food security exploring the conceptual links in the case of india this paper seeks to critically examine the conceptual linkages between the issue of land rights for women with household food security on the one hand and gender equality on the other after a brief analysis of shifts in both international and national policy discourse and practice in terms of control over land as vital for food security it seeks to analyse the implications of this for gender relations the paper argues that in a context of diversified rural livelihoods the contribution of agricultural production to household subsistence has been declining this trend has been reinforced by a decline in public investment stagnant growth and fluctuating prices for agricultural products men have been able to access the better paid non farm jobs while leaving women behind to manage agricultural production the renewed link between production and food security in agricultural policy has however meant allowing men not to have responsibility for household food security while a right to land for women is a positive development it appears also to be leading to an enhancement of work burdens without much change in terms of status or decision making authority

the relation between farm size and farm productivity the role of family labor supervision and credit constraints abstract the paper shows that if the performance of hired farmhands is affected by supervision from family members and if the availability of credit is dependent on the amount of land owned then a systematic positive or negative relationship between per acre yields and farm size will prevail a model with no supervision effects on labor productivity would predict that yields are unaffected by farm size the paper also investigates the relation between land utilization and owned holding size when land rental possibilities are limited results are shown to be compatible with various observed patterns in ldcs