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

effects of family background on earnings and returns to schooling evidence from brazil we investigate whether omitted family background variables are responsible for high returns to schooling estimated in brazil returns to schooling fall by about one third when parental schooling is added to wage equations surprisingly the schooling of fathers in law has larger effects on wages than the schooling of fathers on the basis of a model of assortative mating we interpret this as evidence that parental characteristics represent unobservable worker attributes rather than nepotism in the labor market we conclude that the family background bias in returns to schooling is modest and need not imply returns to family connections

third world indebted industrialization international finance and state capitalism in mexico brazil algeria and south korea the past fifteen years have seen two important developments in the international economic system the rapid industrialization of many less developed countries ldcs and their increasing indebtedness to private financial institutions massive bank loans have been used to fund industrial growth in many ldcs international financial markets have replaced multinational corporations as the third world s most important source of private foreign capital in four major borrowing countries mexico brazil algeria and south korea the process of indebted industrialization has its roots in the internationalization of finance the increasing role of the state and the use of funds raised on the international capital markets to finance industrial development the results include rapid expansions of ldc industrial production and ldc exports of manufactured products as well as the formation of an implicit partnership between private financial institutions and state capitalist elites in the third world

why is stabilization sometimes delayed reevaluating the regime type hypothesis existing work on the politics of stabilization has failed to find compelling evidence of a regime type effect this article reformulates and reevaluates the regime type hypothesis it is argued tha

regimes and the limits of realism regimes as autonomous variables two distinct traditions have developed from structural realist perspectives the first the billiard ball version focuses purely on interaction among states the second the tectonic plates version focuses on the relationship between the distribution of power and various international environments it is the latter tradition that suggests why regimes may be important for a realist orientation however it also opens the possibility for viewing regimes as autonomous not just as intervening variables there may be lags between changes in basic causal variables and regime change there may be feedback from regimes to basic causal variables both lags and feedback suggest an importance for regimes that would be rejected by conventional structural arguments

external debt capital flight and political risk abstract this paper explains the simultaneous occurence of large external debts private capital outflows and low domestic capital formation we consider a general equilibrium model in which two government types with conflicting distributional goals randomly alternate in office uncertainty over the fiscal policies of future governments generates capital flight and small domestic investment and induces the government to overaccumulate external debt the model also predicts that left wing governments are more inclined to restrict capital outflows than right wing governments finally we examine how political uncertainty affects the risk premium and how debt repudiation may occur after a regime change

lessons from the past capital markets during the 19th century and the interwar period on friday 13 august 1982 finance minster jesus silva herzog of mexico made a series of visits to the international monetary fund the federal reserve and the u s treasury his message to each was the same mexico could no longer continue to service its debt thus began a dramatic weekend of negotiations that marked the end of the preceding decade s buoyant expansion of developing country debt and the start of a still continuing response to the sudden collapse

the influence of elections on imf programme interruptions using panel data for 104 countries between 1975 and 1998 this article tries to explain interruptions of imf programmes around election dates in the recipient countries on average programmes seem to be more likely to break down before elections this increase in interruption probabilities is however less severe in more democratic countries in true democracies interruption frequencies are even lower prior to elections while no other political variables than elections and democracy were found to influence compliance systematically programme interruptions are significantly more likely in countries with high government consumption high levels of short term debt and low gdp per capita at programme initiation

is it better to be a boy a disaggregated outlay equivalent analysis of gender bias in papua new guinea the demographic evidence of gender bias in many countries has provided an impetus for finding ways to study the status of women in developing countries because of the lack of accurate intra household data deaton 1989 introduced a method for using household expenditure data to infer discrimination in the allocation of goods between boys and girls few studies of discrimination using the method however have detected bias even though alternative indicators suggest it is a serious problem in this paper we study the case of papua new guinea a country in which there are many indicators of severe gender bias discrimination in the allocation of goods between boys and girls within households in papua new guinea is examined using deaton s outlay equivalent ratio method adding a boy to the household reduces expenditure on adult goods by as much as would a nine tenths reduction in total outlay per member but girls have no effect on adult goods expenditure the hypothesis of haddad and reardon 1993 that

urban wages and labor market agglomeration abstract using the 5 public use micro sample of the 1990 u s census we find that observationally equivalent workers in the manufacturing sector earn higher wages when they are in urban labor markets that have a larger share of national or metropolitan employment in their same occupation and industry groups quantitatively the effect is large with an elasticity measured at the means of between 1 2 and 3 6 for these effects we interpret the willingness of firms to pay more for equivalent workers in dense markets as evidence of an agglomeration economy in urban labor

implementing economic policy reforms policies and opportunities for donors abstract african countries trying to cope with crippling economic problems by liberalizing their economies are facing major problems in implementing the reforms international organizations are responding by offering technical assistance typically however the assistance is based on limited and technocratic models that overlook the fact that many of the reforms are unimplementable reforms are complex and uncertain they impose significant political costs their values are generally incompatible with the prevailing political philosophy they involve changing roles they alter power relations within the government and they are identified with outsiders the dominant approaches to implementation privatization training and enhanced control by central ministries underestimate the extent to which the reforms undermine traditional practices the study recommends a fourth approach to address these challenges it relies on designing reforms in collaboration with those who will be in charge of implementing them

financial crises theory history and policy 1 introduction charles p kindleberger and jean pierre laffargue part i theory 2 the financial instability hypothesis capitalist processes and the behaviour of the economy hyman p minsky part ii history 3 the 1907 financial crisis in italy a peculiar case of the lender of last resort in action franco bonelli 4 central banking and foreign trade the anglo american cycle in the 1830s maurice levy leboyer 5 domestic and foreign expectations and the demand for money during the german inflation 1920 1923 carl l holtfrerich 6 the sterling system and financial crises before 1914 l s pressnell part iii policy 7 policy in the crises of 1920 and 1929 d e moggridge 8 central banks and foreign exchange crises today paul coulbois 9 less developed countries rising indebtedness and the lender of last resort in international context joel metais 10 on the lender of last resort robert m soloit 11 financial fragility and instability monetary authorities as borrowers and lenders of the last resort warren d mcclam

human capital pricing equations with an application to estimating the effect of schooling quality on earnings this paper formulates and estimates alternative models for the pricing of labor services we present economic models that rationalize empirical specifications in the literature and we offer evidence on the validity of those specifications widely used efficiency units models of labor services are inconsistent with evidence from the u s labor market a model of heterogeneous skills provides a more accurate description of earnings data we present evidence that the pursuit of comparative advantage and selective migration are important features of the u s labor market when these features are included in the model the only support for an effect of schooling quality on earnings is through the return to college education three interactions are empirically important in explaining log wage equations a between schooling quality and education b between regional labor market shocks and education and c between region of residence and regionof birth because of this third interaction which can arise from comparative advantage in the labor market no unique quality effect on returns to education can be defined independently of the market in which it is used

the political performance of third world governments and the debt crisis l he developing countries suspension of payments on their external debt is as much a consequence of the political weakness of their governments and the excessive politicization of their economic policies as it is a result of unfavorable structural changes in the international economy differences in debtor governments political performances are treated as an explicit variable rather than as residuals to an economic explanation in estimating the probability of developing countries suspending their external debt service payments using a logit model i analyze fifty eight developing countries for the years 1970 1984 the results show that political capacity can be decisive in correctly predicting the probability of a government s suspending its external debt service payments the model predicts 96 of the total outcomes correctly and 80 of the debt payment suspension cases correctly

international debt and linkage strategies some foreign policy implications for the united states the global debt problem influences the foreign policy capabilities of the united states through its impact on the government s linkage strategies in foreign affairs in some circumstances policy makers are forced to make connections between different policy instruments or issues that might not otherwise have been felt necessary in others opportunities for connections are created that might not otherwise have been felt possible the polish debt crisis of 1981 82 the latin american debt crisis of 1982 83 and the imf quota increase in 1983 are suggestive in this regard linkage strategies bred by the debt issue are more apt to be successful when the interest shared by the united states with other countries in avoiding default is reinforced by other shared economic or political interests they will also be more successful to the extent that the government can supplement its own power resources by relating bank decisions to foreign policy considerations power in such situations however is a wasting asset even when employed indirectly through the intermediation of the imf

the international organization of third world debt third world debt grew very rapidly in the 1970s many states faced with sharply higher costs for energy and manufactured imports borrowed aggressively in unregulated offshore capital markets but what constrains sovereign states to repay this debt to commercial banks creditors do not turn to their home states to enforce payment rather the supervision of sovereign debt is largely a function of commercial banking arrangements especially lenders syndicates and the international monetary fund s conditional lending this political structure which involves unified private sanctions has ensured that no state defaults unless it is insolvent or is willing to accept a radical rupture in its international commercial relationships when the problem is insolvency creditors routinely convene ad hoc conferences in conjunction with an imfapproved stabilization program creditors can renegotiate debt service schedules and provide new financing if necessary these arrangements are distinctive among international economic regimes because they rely on nonstate actors as the primary source of rules norms and procedures

protecting capital from itself u s attempts to regulate the eurocurrency system in 1979 and 1980 the u s government attempted to regulate the eurocurrency system in order to stabilize the international monetary and financial systems and for u s domestic monetary purposes the conflict between the u s government especially the treasury department and the federal reserve board and u s based transnational banks tnbs illustrates tnbs contradictory interests which are neither self evident nor easily discernible even to tnbs themselves the state comes to play a mediating role vis a vis tnbs in an only partially successful attempt to transform contradictory interests into coherent policy resulting in conflict between the state and tnbs the origins of u s regulatory initiatives are rooted in multilateral attempts to supervise banks between 1974 and 1978 and the failure of such coordination during the 1978 dollar crisis from the conflict between u s officials and u s tnbs emerge varying concepts of tnbs interests after examining the reasons for the failure of the u s proposals i conclude by suggesting some implications of tnbs contradictory interests for statist and social conflict theories of the advanced capitalist state few theories of the state have adequately taken into account the complexity and contradictory interests of transnational capital

in the shadow of law or power consensus based bargaining and outcomes in the gatt wto this article explains how consensus decision making has operated in practice in the general agreement on tariffs and trade world trade organization gatt wto when gatt wto bargaining is law based consensus outcomes are pareto improving and roughly symmetrical when bargaining is power based states bring to bear instruments of power that are extrinsic to rules invisibly weighting the process and generating consensus outcomes that are asymmetrical and may not be pareto improving empirical analysis shows that although trade rounds have been launched through law based bargaining hard law is generated when a round is closed and rounds have been closed through power based bargaining agenda setting has taken place in the shadow of that power and has been dominated by the european community and the united states the decision making rules have been maintained because they help generate information used by powerful states in the agenda setting process consensus decision making at the gatt wto is organized hypocrisy allowing adherence to the instrumental reality of asymmetrical power and the sovereign equality principle upon which consensus decision making is purportedly based

explaining institutional change policy areas outside options and the bretton woods institutions i propose and test a theoretical framework that explains institutional change in international relations like firms in markets international institutions are affected by the underlying characteristics of their policy areas some policy areas are prone to produce institutions facing relatively little competition limiting the outside options of member states and impeding redistributive change in comparison institutions facing severe competition will quickly reflect changes in underlying state interests and power to test the theory empirically i exploit common features of the bretton woods institutions the international monetary fund and world bank to isolate the effect of variation in policy area characteristics the empirical tests show that despite having identical membership and internal rules bargaining outcomes in the bretton woods institutions have diverged sharply and in accordance with the theory

bank heterogeneity reputation and debt renegotiation this paper examines a process of debt renegotiation in which banks possess divergent interests and there is asymmetric information the authors assume that large banks must exert pressure on small banks in order to obtain participation of these in the provision of new money and in debt forgiveness making use of a reputational model they argue that the effect of asymmetric information as to the amount of pressure that large banks can exert on small banks makes the debtor countries worse off than absent these asymmetries in information this also provides a rationale for the growing popularity of exit bonds copyright 1992 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

an investigation of the household economy coffee production and gender relations in papua new guinea using two years of intra household data from one area of the papua new guinea highlands this article examines the impact of gender relations on household coffee production poor relative labour returns for women and the unequal distribution of tasks within the household were found to exert considerable influence on the level of household success in cultivating coffee the article concludes with the construction of a model linking the intra household distribution of economic benefits determinants of household resource allocation and underdevelopment

the attenuation of human capital spillovers abstract this paper uses 2000 census data to estimate the relationship of agglomeration and proximity to human capital to wages the paper takes a geographic approach and focuses on the attenuation of agglomeration and human capital effects differencing and instrumental variable methods are employed to address endogeneity in the wage agglomeration relationship and also to deal with measurement error in our agglomeration and human capital variables three key results are obtained first the spatial concentration of employment within five miles is positively related to wage second the benefits of spatial concentration are driven by proximity to college educated workers an instance of human capital spillovers third these effects attenuate sharply with distance

debt arrears in latin america do political variables matter political instability and debt problems characterise latin america in the last two decades this article estimated a logit model of debt arrears including economic as well as political variables our results suggested that both economic and political indicators affected debt repayment in latin america during 1971 86 we also cast a shadow on the viewpoint that authoritarian and military regimes have an advantage over democratically elected governments with regard to debt related issues

stabilization policies in developing countries what have we learned abstract the paper reviews the recent experience with stabilization programmes in latin america in the light of traditional and monetarist models of inflation and the exchange rate the traditional model links both inflation and payments problems to budget deficits the monetarist model too believes that inflation is caused by fiscal deficits but it takes a more optimistic view of stabilization full purchasing power parity and perfect capital mobility make stabilization just a question of the appropriate exchange rate policy and the proper rate of domestic credit creation the traditional view is substantially right as a long run model but it fails in the dynamics the monetarist model is as we know now fundamentally wrong as a short run description of the possibilities of inflation control there is need and room for a paradigm that places emphasis on the debt money mix in financing the budget on the stickiness of inflation rates and on the place of short run real exchange rate and real interest rate variations that these are key features of the transition phase is amply borne out by the devasting and unsuccessful experiences with monetarist stabilization in argentina chile and brazil

the newly industrializing countries in the international system explanations of the growth of the newly industrializing countries nics by neoclassical economists and dependency theorists neglect the role of politics in shaping development strategies different social configurations state structures and ideas about development help explain the divergent policy choices made by the export oriented east asian nics korea and taiwan and the more inward looking countries of latin america particularly mexico and brazil these different strategic choices in turn account for variations in the patterns of external dependency that characterize countries in the two regions

governance structures and the durability of economic reforms evidence from inflation stabilizations abstract this paper investigates the relationship between a country s political economic and institutional environment and its ability to implement sustainable economic reform programs the policy issue on which the study focuses is inflation stabilization it consists principally of econometric estimations of the relationship between the success of stabilizations in a large sample of countries and several political and economic explanatory variables the hypotheses tested are drawn both from the recent macroeconomic literature on policy credibility and from political science the major findings include the following 1 a despite the conventional wisdom to the contrary political repression does not appear to be an effective means for implementing sustainable stabilization policies durable economic reforms and political freedoms appear to be complementary 2 b as has been previously argued theoretically and demonstrated empirically political instability is detrimental to policy reform 3 c the political will and popular consensus for stabilization policies are enhanced during a severe economic crisis 4 d there is weak evidence that intervention by the international monetary fund rather than supporting reform programs can undermine their credibility

political repression and economic doctrines the case of argentina recent studies linking political repression to free market economic policy have failed to explain fully the relationship to uncover important theoretical linkages this article will examine the principles behind policy and argue that increases in governments use of force are principally a function of 1 shifts in economic stabilization doctrines from structuralist to orthodox which are prompted by severe economic crises and 2 strengthened alliances between ruling elites and international financial institutions partial to orthodox deflationary strategies multiple regression analysis on time series data from argentina over a 23 year period provides a strong statistical confirmation for these suppositions even when holding constant for particular regime types a historical narrative has been provided to buttress these results by establishing the precise timing and sequence of events that precipitated the use of coercion by state leaders

two tales on human capital and knowledge spillovers the case of the us and brazil this article uses a quasi mincerian approach to verify whether the concentration of college educated individuals employed in the business support services sector and in the own sector contributes to increased productivity in other sectors of the economy we estimate the returns to education using data from the 2008 us current population survey march supplement and from the 2008 brazilian household survey this article finds evidence of a positive and significant human capital sectorial spillover effect which is consistent with acemoglu s 1996 conjecture the sectorial concentration of highly educated workers contributes to increase wages for all workers this study also finds evidence of increasing returns to education in brazil and diminishing returns to education in the united states this finding may be explained by differences in supply of skilled workers in both economies in addition the short supply of highly skilled workers in brazil likely explains the importance of the spillover effect fro

politics and the international lending decisions of banks it is widely believed that a country s foreign policy can influence the behavior of economic agents we examine the extent to which political relationships between a bank s home country and a borrowing country affect the lending behavior of banks analysis of cooperative as well as conflictive events shows that banks consider mostly the former in their decision making process the study points to a need for an interdisciplinary approach for explaining the international behavior of economic entities

identifying human capital externalities theory with applications the identification of aggregate human capital externalities is still not fully understood the existing mincerian approach confounds positive externalities with wage changes due to a downward sloping demand curve for human capital as a result the mincerian approach yields positive externalities even when wages equal marginal social products we propose an approach that identifies human capital externalities whether or not aggregate demand for human capital slopes downward another advantage of our approach is that it does not require estimates of the individual return to human capital applications to u s cities and states between 1970 and 1990 yield no evidence of significant average schooling externalities copyright 2006 wiley blackwell

international institutions and domestic compensation the imf and the politics of capital account liberalization certain governments have been faster than others in relaxing their restrictions on the cross border movement of capital how can we explain the timing and extent of financial liberalization across countries since the 1970s we argue that imf stabilizationprogramsprovideawindowofopportunityforgovernmentstoinitiatefinancialreforms butthatpolicymakers are more likely to seize this opportunity when welfare expenditures are high large loans from the imf shield policy makers from the costs of financial reform while welfare expenditures provide credibility to the government s ex ante promises of compensation to individuals who are harmed by the reforms we test this hypothesis on data for 87 countries from 1975 to 2002 we employ a spatial autoregressive error sample selection model which accounts for the nonrandom participation of countries in imf programs as well as the processes of international policy diffusion the results provide strong support for the interactive effect of imf programs and domestic welfare expenditures on financial liberalization

smart cafe cities testing human capital externalities in the boston metropolitan area abstract existing studies have explored only one or in some cases two mechanisms by which human capital externalities percolate at the macrogeographic levels this study however uses the 1990 massachusetts census data to test four mechanisms at the microgeographic levels in the boston metropolitan area labor market we propose that individual workers can learn from their occupational and industrial peers in the same local labor market through four channels depth of human capital stock marshallian labor market externalities jacobs labor market externalities and thickness of the local labor market we find that all types of human capital externalities are significant across census blocks different types of externalities attenuate at different speeds over distances for example the effect of human capital depth decays rapidly beyond three miles away from block centroids we conclude that knowledge spillovers are very localized within a microgeographic scope in cities that we call smart cafe cities

the medium run effects of educational expansion evidence from a large school construction program in indonesia this paper studies the medium run consequences of an increase in the rate of accumulation of human capital in a developing country from 1974 to 1978 the indonesian government built over 61 000 primary schools the school construction program led to an increase in education among individuals who were young enough to attend primary school after 1974 but not among the older cohorts 2sls estimates suggest that an increase of 10 percentage points in the proportion of primary school graduates in the labor force reduced the wages of the older cohorts by 3 8 10 and increased their formal labor force participation by 4 7 i propose a two sector model as a framework to interpret these findings the results suggest that physical capital did not adjust to the faster increase in human capital

the politics of adjustment lessons from the imf s extended fund facility the international debt crisis has forced painful economic adjustments on the developing world in the short run it has forced governments to seek to correct payments imbalances through stabilization programs usually undertaken with conditional assistance from the international monetary fund imf the crisis has also revealed deeper weaknesses in many third world economies weaknesses demanding more basic reforms in the structure of incentives prices and investment

politics of economic liberalization in india abstract attempts at liberalizing india s import substitution model of development have had a mixed record some success in changing the policy regime highlights the role of a new technocratic leadership that has received support from both indian business groups and from external aid agencies conversely popular sectors within india including the rank and file of the ruling party the organized workers in the public sector and the numerically significant middle and lower peasantry have registered their opposition while the government remains committed to liberalizing the economy the momentum has slowed down and given the pressures of electoral politics a populist economic program has been simultaneously readopted it appears that the marriage of political and economic liberalism may not be an easy one in countries like india

population distribution effective area and economic growth the usual measure for the factor land is the total area but total area is a flawed measure because land is of unequal quality to account for land quality we use an alternative measure called effective area effective area is based on spatial population distribution which captures both natural conditions and human activity theoretically effective area explains economic growth better than total area that biases the measure of total factor productivity tfp growth empirically on the basis of 40 years of panel data for the united states an increase of 10 in effective area is associated with an economic growth of 5 and the omission of effective area undervalues the growth of tfp by 8 1

after the decision implementing policy reforms in developing countries abstract implicit in many reform proposals is a model of the policy process that is roughly linear a proposed reform gets on the agenda for government action a decision is made on the proposal and the new policy or institutional arangement is implemented either successfully or unsuccessfully this article presents an alternative interactive model of implementation that focuses on the conflict and reactions that are evoked by efforts to bring about changed policy or institutional contexts for development and the resources that policy makers and managers are likely to require to sustain a reform in the face of such reactions central to the analysis is the assertion that characteristics of the reform being implemented will largely determine the kind of conflict it engenders where such reaction is likely to become manifest and what resources are needed for sustainability the analysis suggests a framework for the strategic management of reform initiatives

the unconditional most favored nation clause and the maintenance of the liberal trade regime in the postwar 1870s international institutions within the past thirty years become the subject of renewed interest as scholars vigorously dispute their utility neorealists draw on the post world war ii era to advance sweeping general claims of institutional inefficacy this study by contrast deploys the same hard test method grieco applied to the 1970s tokyo round negotiations to the crisis rife 1870s to construct a unique methodological objective a rigorous hard test of nineteenth century institutional autonomy three principal findings emerged first the maintenance of a liberal world economy in the turbulent 1870s is explained by an unlikely commercial instrument and the unprecedented regime design of an unexplored international institution respectively the unconditional most favored nation mfn clause and the informal conventional tariff system cts regime it underpinned not british hegemony second the international trade regime was not a public good unilaterally provisioned by hegemonic britain via the 1846 corn laws repeal the regime was instead a private good that was collectively provisioned by all its constituent member states via the unprecedented interstate practices institutionalized in the 1860 cobden chevalier treaty and then autonomously maintained by a negarchical and self enforcing sanctioning mechanism finally the informal cts regime s enforcement mechanism autonomously altered the interests and behaviors of states in directions incongruent with executive preferences solely through the brute force of rational calculations imposed by decentralized international institutional constraints both the french and british executives in the 1870s believed the regime was normatively inappropriate and unsuccessfully attempted to exit amid eight system threatening crises nonetheless the mfn based regime s self enforcing sanctioning mechanism autonomously induced compliance conceptualized as unitary states behavior deviating from executives first order preference the extraordinarily turbulent 1870s therefore provide an unexplored historical vantage point to make strong institutionalist claims in an era issue area and under conditions that they are least likely to be validated

the division of labor by sex in agriculture a peruvian case study explores the relationship between womens participation in familial agricultural labor and the process of agrarian class formation among a group of andean peasants in the province of cajamarca peru the study area is characterized by a large independent sector of peasants most of whom have insufficient land to produce their subsistence requirements causing them to participate in local and regional labor markets several reasons why census data underestimate peasant womens participation in agricultural production are advanced survey data from the study area show that a minimum of 21 of the total number of agricultural labor days employed on peasant agricultural units were contributed by women the data show that there is a significant difference in the agricultural division of labor by sex in different strata of the peasantry with women from near landless and smallholder households participating more and in more different tasks than women from middle and rich peasant families the upper strata of the peasantry conform to boserups observation that participation of women in the familial agricultural labor force is less where a sizable rural proletariat exists