learning about a new technology pineapple in ghana this paper investigates the role of social learning in the diffusion of a new agri cultural technology in ghana we use unique data on farmers communication patterns to define each individual s information neighborhood conditional on many potentially confounding variables we find evidence that farmers adjust their inputs to align with those of their information neighbors who were surpris ingly successful in previous periods the relationship of these input adjustments to experience further indicates the presence of social learning in addition applying the same method to input choices for another crop of known technol ogy correctly indicates an absence of social learning effects jel d83 013 033 q16

partial vertical integration risk shifting and product rejection in the high value export supply chain the ghana pineapple sector summary high value export supply chains hold potential to improve smallholders welfare but their relative production inefficiency and moral hazard problems can cause exporters to prefer vertically integrated plantation production however pineapple exporters in ghana produce both for their own account and purchase from smallholders we hypothesize that vertical integration is only partial because exporters face large market risks that smallholders surprisingly are better able to absorb we show empirically that exporters average rejection rate of export quality fruit is high and varies in response to unanticipated fluctuations in european demand these results support the hypothesis and are consistent with theories of partial vertical integration but not the standard principal agent paradigm

private food standards regulatory gaps and plantation agriculture social and environmental ir responsibility in the philippine export banana industry the expansion of retailer led food production standards over recent years has seen certification against such standards become a de facto condition of access to numerous supply chains globalg a p standards in particular have extended the traditional focus of retailer led standards beyond food safety to include compliance points addressing environmental protection and labour welfare this has stimulated considerable research on the implications of standards compliance for small producers however little attention has been paid either to the relationships between so called private standards and state based regulatory regimes or to the implications of standards compliance for corporate farms their employees and neighbouring communities this paper examines these relationships and implications in the context of plantation banana production in the philippines focussing in particular on gaps that emerge between the ideals of social and environmental responsibility embodied in private standards and actual practices of regulation it finds that while compliance with private standards is associated with comparatively favourable treatment of labour deference to poorly enforced national legislation conceals ongoing human rights and environmental concerns

agrifood grades and standards in the extended mercosur their role in the changing agrifood system is among the most important in terms of trade volumes in the developing world it contains global powerhouses of agroindustry and agriculture such as brazil ranked fourth worldwide and argentina and chile among the global frontrunners in meat and cereals and fruit respectively income growth and rapid urbanization are changing diets increasing the importance of processed foods and nonstaples as bennett s law predicts the most important nonstaples dairy vegetablesfruit meat and coffee have stringent export requirements with respect to g s in organization for economic cooperation and development oecd countries and mercosur domestic markets are themselves becoming more demanding in this regard the paper proceeds as follows section 2 presents definitions and theoretical hypotheses section 3 discusses policy and market determinants of changes in g s and highlights the importance of the emergence of privatized g s section 4 hypothesizes that the changes in g s are adding fuel to the forces of agrifood system concentration in the area section 5 concludes

labour chains analysing the role of labour contractors in global production networks abstract third party labour contractors are increasingly prevalent in global production networks gpns and can provide a channel for new forms of unfree labour review of case study evidence from south african and uk horticulture suggests this often emerges off site through labour intermediaries analytical approaches to labour in gpns and value chains are examined the article argues that labour contracting is driven by the commercial dynamics of global outsourcing a cascade system allows unscrupulous intermediaries to coerce vulnerable workers we examine strategies of civil society alliances and regulatory reform and argue for extending liability of all commercial actors across global boundaries

the economics of smallholder organic contract farming in tropical africa summary the paper examines the revenue effects of certified organic contract farming for smallholders and of adoption of organic agricultural farming methods in a tropical african context the comparison in both cases is with farming systems that are organic by default survey data from a large organic coffee contract farming scheme in uganda are reported and analyzed using a standard ols regression and a full information maximum likelihood fiml estimate of the heckman selection model the analysis finds that controlling for a range of factors there are positive revenue effects both from participation in the scheme and more modestly from applying organic farming techniques

agrifood supply chain private sector standards and farmers health evidence from kenya this article evaluates the impact of adoption of european union eu private sector standards on farmers health in rural kenya the study utilizes cross sectional farm household level data collected in 2006 from a randomly selected sample of 439 small scale export farmers we estimate the casual impact by utilizing a two stage poisson regression model two stage standard treatment effect model as well as by regression based on propensity score to assess the robustness of the results using these techniques we demonstrate that the pesticide ascribed incidence of acute illness symptoms and the associated cost of illness significantly decrease with the adoption of standards ceteris paribus farmers who adopt standards experience 70 lesser incidence of acute illness and spent about 50 60 less on restoring their health than nonadopters although standards can potentially prevent resource poor smallholders from maintaining their position in lucrative export markets they can also result in positive changes in the health of those farmers who do adopt them as shown by these results this implies that if adopted on a large scale standards may reduce production externalities corroborating the view that they may serve as a catalyst to transform production systems in developing countries

private agri food standards implications for food policy and the agri food system abstract this paper provides a brief introduction to the evolution and nature of private food safety and quality standards highlighting the resultant impacts on the structure and modus operandi of supply chains for agricultural and food products and the challenges posed for processes of agricultural development it serves as an introduction to a series of papers that provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge regarding private food safety and quality standards in both an industrialised and developing country context in so doing it aims to provide a catalyst for further research on this rapidly evolving field of inquiry

globalization and the gender earnings gap evidence from sri lanka and cambodia disasters in bangladesh and protests elsewhere have created an intense debate about the value particularly to women of apparel employment in developing countries this paper focuses on how the forces of globalization specifically the multi fibre arrangement mfa have affected women s wages in the apparel sector in developing countries the paper uses household and labor force surveys from cambodia and sri lanka to estimate both apparel wage premiums relative to other industries and the male female wage gap before and after the end of the mfa the approach builds on new models that apply traditional trade theory e g the heckscher ohlin and stolper samuelson theorems to analyze the effect of globalization on gender based earnings the authors find large positive wage premiums and a closing of the male female wage gap during the mfa period but smaller premiums and a widening wage gap after the end of the mfa the results suggest that the benefits of apparel exports for women in developing countries remain significant post mfa they also model an approach for studying the effects of globalization that differentiates males and females as separate factors this may be a fruitful alternative to discrimination models or those that analyze the effects of globalization on women in terms of skill further research is necessary to identify the potential development effects of post mfa apparel employment and to thoroughly compare the benefits documented in this paper with the costs that may come with apparel jobs

clusters chains and compliance corporate social responsibility and governance in football manufacturing in south asia a recent concern in the debate on corporate social responsibility csr in developing countries relates to the tension between demands for csr compliance found in many global value chains gvcs and the search for locally appropriate responses to these pressures in this context an emerging and relatively understudied area of interest relates to small firm industrial clusters local clusters offer the potential for local joint action and thus a basis for improving local compliance on csr through collective monitoring and local governance this article explores the interrelationship between global governance exercised through gvc ties and local governance via cluster institutions in ensuring compliance with csr pressures it undertakes a comparative analysis of two leading export oriented football manufacturing clusters in south asia that have both faced common challenges on child labour the article shows that both forms vertical and horizontal governance have played a part in shaping the response of the two clusters on child labour moreover these two distinct forms of governance have also led to quite differentiated outcomes in terms of forms of work organization and child labour monitoring this raises broader questions on how global csr demands can locally be better embedded and the conditions under which football stitchers labour in these new work forms

responsible retailing the practice of csr in banana plantations in costa rica during the last 10 years or so a number of corporate social responsibility csr initiatives have been introduced in global supply chains which aim to improve the conditions of workers engaged in producing goods for export this article discusses the observations of csr in practice in the costa rican united kingdom uk banana chain the banana chain makes for an interesting case study because there are dominant corporate actors at each end who are in a position to influence the conditions experienced by workers on banana plantations at the top of the chain there are four major uk supermarket groups who control access to the retail market and as self appointed guardians of consumer interest are demanding that producers adopt more socially responsible practices at the other end banana production is highly integrated and controlled by three large north american agri businesses who have developed their own social and environmental certification programmes costa rica also makes for an interesting country to locate the study as it has a tradition of state led policies to protect worker rights yet in spite of csr commitments made by both supermarkets and producers that emphasise health and safety and the country s established labour law this article shows that there are problems for workers when they are forced to meet demanding production schedules furthermore it suggests that whilst supermarkets continue to drive down consumer prices and put pressure on producers to reduce costs a downward spiral of working conditions is created regardless of the csr policies in place however this article also identifies that changes to supermarket behaviour is possible when consumer trust is at stake

making room for smallholder cooperatives in tanzanian tea production can fairtrade do that the objective of this article is to examine the different ways that smallholders are brought into fairtrade certification schemes in the tanzanian tea industry we examine the different ownership relations of processing factories and the perceived benefits of these different arrangements we use descriptive qualitative analysis based on qualitative interviews and focus groups conducted between 2008 and 2010 to identify the significance between factory ownership organization and fairtrade certification we find that there is a movement toward innovation in the organizational strategies which includes new ownership arrangements of processing factories and outgrower contracts that have been associated with certified fairtrade production we also suggest that organizational innovation is significant for obtaining scheme success yet perceived benefits of and increased information about fairtrade production is independent from ownership shares in processing

strategic use of private standards to enhance international competitiveness vegetable exports from kenya and elsewhere abstract the paper examines how european retailers are using private standards for food safety and quality as risk management and competitive tools and the strategic responses of leading kenyan and other developing country supplier exporters to such standards despite measures to harmonize a single market the european fresh produce market is very diverse in terms of consumer preferences structural dynamics and attention to and enforcement of food safety and other standards leading kenyan fresh produce suppliers have re positioned themselves at the high end including high care segments of the market precisely those that are most demanding in terms of quality assurance and food safety systems an array of factors have influenced this strategic positioning including relatively high international freight costs the emergence of more effective competition in mainstream product lines relatively low labor costs for produce preparation and strong market relationships with selected retail chains to succeed in this demanding market segment the industry has had to invest substantially in improved production and procurement systems upgraded pack house facilities and quality assurance food safety management systems

institutional change in value chains evidence from tea in nepal local conditions in developing countries have long played a part in determining whether their small scale firms can benefit from deepening their participation in global value chains gvcs institutional theory allows us to characterize these local conditions not simply as particularistic oddities but rather as elements of an institutional matrix that affects the livelihoods of chain participants however the institutional dimension of gvc analysis has been traditionally neglected in the literature to the detriment of our understanding of the impacts of upgrading in gvcs this study aims to remedy this failure by illustrating how institutional context mediates between value chain upgrading and the livelihoods of chain participants it particular it seeks to elucidate how value chain upgrading spurs a process of change in the institutions that govern the livelihoods of suppliers in developing countries this examination sheds light on the more general question of how value chain upgrading sometimes helps but sometimes hurts the welfare of chain participants this theoretical contribution to the value chain literature is based upon an institutional analysis of primary qualitative data from more than 80 small scale tea farmers in nepal some of whom had upgraded from conventional to organically certified production our study finds that value chain upgrading launches a process of institutional change that can be summarized in a general typology the typology highlights how rules strategies organizations and informal norms affect whether a given upgrading intervention yields livelihood benefits in a particular place upgrading can yield positive impacts in chain linked livelihood dimensions such as price and yet induce negative changes in other livelihood dimensions such as risk and thereby yield overall adverse livelihood implications in a process we dub immiserizing upgrading these findings contribute to advancing the conceptual literature on global value chains gvcs by suggesting a general typology for cycles of institutional change that influence livelihood outcomes the typology provides a framework to analyze such processes that is also of use to development practitioners seeking to understand the conditions under which upgrading worsens or improves the welfare of value chain participants the research findings provide an interesting window into how certification schemes interact with the daily lives of the rural poor

food standards are good for middle class farmers we estimate the causal effect of food standards on vietnamese pangasius farmers wellbeing measured by per capita consumption expenditure we estimate both the average effects and the local average treatment effects on poorer and richer farmers by instrumental variable quantile regression our results indicate that large returns can be accrued from food standards but only for the upper middle class farmers i e those between the 50 and 85 quantiles of the expenditure distribution overall our result points to an exclusionary impact of standards for the poorest farmers while the richest do not apply standards because the added gain is too small

defeating dictators electoral change and stability in competitive authoritarian regimes what explains electoral stability and change in competitive authoritarian regimes this article addresses the question by comparing eleven elections six of which led to continuity in authoritarian rule and five of which led to the victory of the opposition that took place between 1998 and 2008 in competitive authoritarian regimes countries located in the postcommunist region using interviews conducted with participants in all of these elections and other types of data and constructing a research design that allowed the authors to match these two sets of elections on a number of important dimensions they assess two groups of hypotheses those that highlight institutional structural and historical aspects of regime and opposition strength on the eve of these elections and others that highlight characteristics of the elections themselves the authors conclude that the key difference was whether the opposition adopted a tool kit of novel and sophisticated electoral strategies that made them more popular and effective challengers to the regime

incentive aligned conjoint analysis abstract because most conjoint studies are conducted in hypothetical situations with no consumption consequences for the participants the extent to which the studies are able to uncover true consumer preference structures is questionable experimental economics literature with its emphasis on incentive alignment and hypothetical bias suggests that more realistic incentive aligned studies result in stronger out of sample predictive performance of actual purchase behaviors and provide better estimates of consumer preference structures than do hypothetical studies to test this hypothesis the authors design an experiment with conventional hypothetical conditions and parallel incentive aligned counterparts using chinese dinner specials as the context the authors conduct a field experiment in a chinese restaurant during dinnertime the results provide strong evidence in favor of incentive aligned choice conjoint analysis in that incentive aligned choice conjoint outperforms hypothetical choice conjo

the impact of utility balance and endogeneity in conjoint analysis adaptive metric utility balance is at the heart of one of the most widely used and studied methods for conjoint analysis we use formal models simulations and empirical data to suggest that adaptive metric utility balance leads to partworth estimates that are relatively biased smaller partworths are upwardly biased relative to larger partworths such relative biases could lead to erroneous managerial decisions metric utility balanced questions are also more likely to be inefficient and in one empirical example contrary to popular wisdom lead to response errors that are at least as large as nonadaptive orthogonal questions we demonstrate that this bias is because of endogeneity caused by a winner s curse shrinkage estimates do not mitigate these biases combined with adaptive metric utility balance shrinkage estimates of heterogeneous partworths are biased downward relative to homogeneous partworths although biases can affect managerial decisions our data suggest that empirically biases and inefficiencies are of the order of response errors we examine viable alternatives to metric utility balance that researchers can use without biases or inefficiencies to retain the desired properties of 1 individual level adaptation and 2 challenging questions

party competition and european integration in the east and west different structure same causality how does the ideological profile of a political party affect its support or opposition to european integration the authors investigate this question with a new expert data set on party positioning on european integration covering 171 political parties in 23 countries the authors findings are a that basic structures of party competition in the east and west are fundamentally and explicably different and b that although the positions that parties in the east and west take on european integration are substantively different they share a single underlying causality

the welfare effects of trade in phytomedicines a multi disciplinary analysis of turmeric production summary international trade in medicinal herbal products is growing while value chains are becoming more complex and governed by a range of public and private standards there is a debate over the extent to which phytomedicine production can be beneficial for farmers in low and middle income countries more generally there are varied views about the extent to which small farmers are disadvantaged by stringent public health and private consumer standards in northern markets for agricultural products this paper proves a comparative analysis of value chains using case studies of turmeric production in india it marries a qualitative investigation of turmeric producing sites in india with an investigation into the chemical quality of various turmeric products the aim of the paper is to understand the way that varied structure and governance of value chains changes the benefits to both producer and consumer when production is for the organic northern market we found evidence of a captive value chain where the lead firm requires strict adherence to conditions of production and processing prices for farmers were relatively stable at a reasonably high level in contrast where farmers were producing for local markets including the major auction at erode prices were volatile and farmers bore considerable risk we found that competition and volatility in the market based chain can lead to turmeric adulteration and contamination both intentional and unintentional our case study suggests that many small turmeric farmers would find it difficult to meet both public and private health standards in contrast to some academic literature that argues that public health standards do not discriminate against small farmers more than this our study adds to the discussion of the impact of standards suggesting clear consumer benefits in northern markets however there are also indications that only larger and more dynamic farmers can participate in the lucrative phytomedicine trade as such our study tentatively supports previous literature suggesting that the application of standards in northern markets lead to increasing farmer differentiation

constitutional power and competing risks monarchs presidents prime ministers and the termination of east and west european cabinets some european constitutions give cabinets great discretion to manage their own demise whereas others limit their choices and insert the head of state into decisions about government termination in this article we map the tremendous variation in the constitutional rules that govern cabinet termination and test existing expectations about its effects on a government s survival and mode of termination in doing so we use the most extensive government survival data set available to date the first to include east and west european governments our results demonstrate that constitutional constraints on governments and presidential influence on cabinet termination are much more common than has previously been understood and have powerful effects on the hazard profiles of governments these results alter and improve the discipline s understanding of government termination and durability and have implications for comparative work in a range of areas including the survival and performance of democracies electoral accountability opportunistic election calling and political business cycles

the small sample bias of the gini coefficient results and implications for empirical research the gini coefficient is a downward biased measure of inequality in small populations when income is generated by one of three common distributions the paper discusses the sources of bias and argues that this property is far more general this has implications for i the comparison of inequality among subsamples some of which may be small and ii the use of the gini in measuring firm size inequality in markets with a small number of firms the small sample bias has often led to misperceptions about trends in industry concentration a small sample adjustment results in a reduced bias which can no longer be signed this remaining bias rises with the dispersion and falls with increasing skewness of the distribution finally an empirical example illustrates the importance of using the adjusted gini in this example it is shown that controlling for market characteristics larger shipping cartels include a set of firms that is stochastically identical in terms of relative size to those of smaller shipp

learning by doing and learning from others human capital and technical change in agriculture household level panel data from a nationally representative sample of rural indian households describing the adoption and profitability of high yielding seed varieties hyvs associated with the green revolution are used to test the implications of a model incorporating learning by doing and learning spillovers the estimates indicate that i imperfect knowledge about the management of the new seeds was a significant barrier to adoption ii this barrier diminished as farmer experience with the new technologies increased iii own experience and neighbors experience with hyvs significantly increased hyv profitability and iv farmers do not fully incorporate the village returns to learning in making adoption decisions

fair trade organic coffee production in nicaragua sustainable development or a poverty trap abstract this article assesses the impact of fair trade organic coffee production on the well being of small scale farmers in nicaragua studying the results of organic management is crucial for evaluating the advantages of fair trade because approximately half of all fair trade coffee is also organically certified a wide range of farmers representatives of cooperatives and export companies in nicaragua were interviewed during seven months of field work between 2005 and 2008 fair trade organic production raises farmer income when low intensity organic farming is an alternative to low intensity conventional farming however low intensity farming produces very little coffee in the case of the most marginalized farmers keeping these farmers in poverty with higher intensities of management the economic advantages of fair trade organic production largely depend on prices in the mainstream market

the heterogeneous impact of conditional cash transfers the honduran praf experiment randomly assigned conditional cash transfers to 40 of 70 poor municipalities within five strata defined by a poverty proxy using census data we show that eligible children were 8 percentage points more likely to enroll in school and 3 percentage points less likely to work the effects were much larger in the two poorest strata and statistically insignificant in the other three the latter finding is robust to the use of a separate regression discontinuity design heterogeneity confirms the importance of judicious targeting to maximize the impact and cost effectiveness of ccts there is no consistent evidence of effects on ineligible children or on adult labor supply

do private standards benefit workers in horticultural export chains in peru private standards are spreading rapidly in international food production and trade and are moving beyond food quality and safety aspect to address environmental and social concerns we examine how effective private standards are in improving employment conditions in global food supply chains using panel data from own company and worker surveys and different econometric techniques we analyze how the adoption of a variety of private standards that differ with respect to their focus on labor influences employment conditions in production processing and exporting companies in the horticultural export chain in peru we find that workers employed in companies adopting private labor standards are more likely to be paid a minimum wage to have a contract and to receive training but there is no effect of private standards on the level of the wage and on the employment period we conclude that labor standards are most effective in reinforcing the respect of national labor laws and when there exists a clear cut definition on the employment requirements they push forward despite the existence of labor regulations at the national level and the wide spread use of private labor standards ethical labor concerns do remain an issue in the peruvian horticultural export sector

throwing out the bums protest voting and unorthodox parties after communism the electoral rise of unorthodox parties uop s in recent east european elections raises some puzzling questions about electoral dynamics in new democracies why did the power alternation of the mid 1990s not result in party system consolidation as suggested by some earlier studies but instead give way to a much more chaotic environment in which established mainstream political parties lost considerable ground to new political formations based on personalist and populist appeals why did this reversal in eastern europe happen during a period of economic recovery remarkable western integration progress and a broad acceptance of electoral democracy as the only game in town this article suggests that these electoral dynamics can be explained by focusing on the interaction between protest voting and election sequence while protest voting to punish unpopular incumbents has been a widespread but understudied practice since the collapse of communism the beneficiaries of these protest votes have changed in recent elections whereas in the first two generations of postcommunist elections disgruntled voters could opt for untried mainstream alternatives in third generation elections defined as elections taking place after at least two different ideological camps have governed in the postcommunist period voters had fewer untried mainstream alternatives and therefore opted in greater number for unorthodox parties this explanation receives strong empirical support from statistical tests using aggregate data from seventy six parliamentary elections in fourteen east european countries from 1990 to 2006 survey evidence from twelve postcommunist elections from 1996 to 2004 and a survey experiment in bulgaria in 2008

methodologies and perspectives in research on labour relations in global agricultural production networks a review the integration of global south actors into the global agricultural economy has attracted research on labour effects this is because global south actors are often integrated at the level of produc

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

party systems and government stability in central and eastern europe after two decades of parliamentary democracy the countries of central and eastern europe cee have quite different records of government stability at the same time there continues to be turbulent fluctuation within the individual countries to explain this variation the authors draw on characteristics of parties and party systems for 138 governments in 12 cee countries the analysis is structured by two distinct logics that underlie the effect of party related attributes on government survival the logic of internal friction within the government and the logic of external pressure from the opposition the authors argue that in the difficult contexts of postcommunist party systems these two logics do not operate independently of each other instead they suggest that standard theory needs to be revised to account for the interactions of government and opposition characteristics their model of these interactions not only includes standard numeric and ideological variables but also integrates specificities of the postcommunist context the regime divide and the low degree of party system consolidation quantitative and qualitative findings demonstrate that government stability in cee is interactively determined by whole constellations of party attributes

addressing workers rights in the textile and apparel industries consequences for the bangladesh economy summary this paper applies a cge model to analyze the effects of better addressing worker s rights in bangladesh s textile and apparel industries results show that an increased minimum wage for unskilled low and medium skilled workers has negative impacts for these workers in aggregate and also for the economy in terms of export gdp and welfare this comes from the decrease in employment however labor productivity increasing improvements in factory conditions and services to workers not only increase incomes of workers but also welfare entrepreneurs also enjoy higher incomes enabling them to pay for improving the work environment

diversification into horticulture and poverty reduction a research agenda summary horticultural produce and processed products from the developing world are becoming increasingly popular both in domestic and in international markets global production and exports are rising steadily however yield increases have been smaller than area growth and have been negligible or even negative in the least developed countries while experience shows that horticulture can offer good opportunities for poverty reduction because it increases income and generates employment care must be taken that small and poor farmers are not excluded from the opportunities in these market sectors in this article we argue that development agencies must put more emphasis on horticultural research and development especially in the following priority areas genetic improvement safe production systems commercial seed production postharvest facilities and the urban peri urban environment

global value chains labor organization and private social standards lessons from east african cut flower industries summary this article examines the opportunities and challenges that private social standards pose for labor organizations it explores different labor responses to private social standards in east african cut flower industries the analysis incorporates the concept of labor agency in global value chain analysis and reveals how retailer driven chains offer more room for labor organizations to exercise their agency than the traditional cut flower value chains labor organizations have been able to influence social standard setting and implementation and to use standards to further labor representation at production sites however labor organizations ability to seriously challenge the prevailing governance structure of the cut flower value chain appears extremely limited

influence of neighbor experience and exit on small farmer market participation this research analyzes the motivations and dynamics of small farmer participation in supermarket supply chains in developing countries why some small farmers join these new markets and continue their participation why others drop out or decline the relationship from the outset drawing on insights from the technology adoption literature on learning and experimentation and also on findings from a simple two period bayesian model of farmer decisions to participate in a new market we incorporate measures of neighboring farmers experience into the decision model results suggest that farmers delay entry to observe their neighbors outcomes we find a negative relationship between the number of neighbor participants in a given period and a farmer s own decision to enter the supply chain we find evidence that farmers delay entry for strategic reasons allowing neighbors to bear the costs associated with a first wave of adjustment to the market including higher product rejection rates and lower initial annual transactions with supermarkets compared to revenues from marketing in the traditional way results are robust to definitions of neighbors using both administrative and geographic designations our results raise questions about the optimal sequence and level of farmers market participation and exit which remain largely unexplored in the literature

effects of public policy on child labor current knowledge gaps and implications for program design many policy instruments can be used to address or affect child labor even if they are implemented to achieve other objectives from a theoretical point of view however the impact of these policies on child labor is undetermined this paper discusses the evidence generated by rigorous evaluations on the impact on child labor of labor market programs conditional and unconditional transfers and microcredit among other social programs and interventions the study finds that although transfer programs generally tend to reduce child labor other policies risk increasing child labor especially if they affect households productive opportunities the findings also point to knowledge gaps that should be addressed in future evaluations while progress has been made over the past decade there is still much to learn about the effects of public policy on the labor participation of many children in developing countries

cabinet survival and competing risks we attempt to resolve a recent controversy in the study of cabinet terminations pertaining to the shape of hazard rates on the one hand warwick 1992b provides evidence that cabinets are more likely to terminate the longer they are in office alt and king s 1994 analysis on the other hand suggests that hazard rates are constant over the life time of a cabinet this issue is of particular theoretical importance since a constant hazard rate would add support to the nonstrategic model of cabinet termination due to browne et al 1986 while an increasing hazard rate would seem to favor lupia and strom s 1995 strategic approach by applying a semi parametric competing risk approach to data on cabinet durations we are able to show that through its use of theory based censoring the previous literature in effect analyzed only one mode in which cabinets terminate the case where one cabinet is replaced by another without a new election once cabinet terminations that lead to chamber dissolutions with subsequent elections are analyzed directly we can show that they are governed by a very different stochastic process hazard rates are not flat as in the case of replacements but increase over the life of the government further the covariates governing replacement terminations fail to explain dissolution terminations these findings add support to the strategic approach suggested by lupia and strom

trade standards and poverty evidence from senegal summary in the debate on trade and poverty it is argued that standards act as trade barriers and cause marginalization of the poor this paper quantifies income and poverty effects of high standards trade and integrates labor market effects by using company and household survey data from the vegetable export chain in senegal we find that exports grew sharply despite increasing standards contributing importantly to rural incomes and poverty reduction tightening standards induced a shift from smallholder contract farming to integrated estate production altering the mechanism through which poor households benefit through labor markets instead of product markets

the gendered labor market impacts of trade liberalization evidence from brazil this paper investigates gender differences in the impact of brazil s trade liberalization on labor market outcomes to identify the causal effect of trade reforms the paper uses difference in difference estimation exploiting variation across microregions in pre liberalization industry composition the analysis finds that trade liberalization reduced male and female labor force participation and employment rates but the effects on men were significantly larger thereby tariff reductions contributed to gender convergence in labor force participation and employment rates gender differences are concentrated among the low skilled population and in the tradable sector where male and female workers are most likely to be imperfect substitutes

determinants of retailers decisions to use public or private grades and standards evidence from the fresh produce market of sao paulo brazil abstract this paper models retailers choices between public and private grades and standards g s and their means of administering them it focuses on the firm specific factors influencing the decision increasing use of private g s worldwide particularly by large powerful retail chains has implications for competition participation and the effectiveness and efficiency of public policy regarding g s drawing from a study of fresh produce markets in sao paulo brazil the paper shows that the importance of the product in the firm s activities or sales market power scale of operations and investment in brand capital and reputation are key firm specific factors encouraging the use of private g s regimes over public important contextual determinants are the strategic objective of the standard the institutional environment and the characteristics of the product and market a range of formal and informal private and public methods for administering g s was found the paper discusses policy implications of the results focusing on issues of substitutability and complementarity between public and private g s regimes

public private partnerships and collective action in high value fruit and vegetable supply chains accessing developed country food markets entails meeting stringent food safety requirements food retailers impose protocols relating to pesticide residues field and pack house operations and traceability to enable smallholders to remain competitive in such a system new institutional arrangements are required in particular public private partnerships can play a key role in creating farm to fork linkages that can satisfy market demands for food safety while retaining smallholders in the supply chain furthermore organized producer groups monitoring their own food safety standards through collective action often become attractive to buyers who are looking for ways to ensure traceability and reduce transaction costs this paper compares the ways in which small producers of fruits and vegetables in kenya and india have coped with increased demands for food safety from their main export markets

work and empowerment women and agriculture in south india this article explores the implications of women s work in agriculture in telangana a region in the state of andhra pradesh india i suggest that higher capital costs for cultivators post liberalisation increased the pressure to contain wage costs in a region where women form the majority of the agricultural wage labour force under such conditions when women perform both own cultivation as well as agricultural wage work in the fields of others they face pressure to restrict bargaining for higher wages contributing to a widening gender wage gap to the extent that wages shape intra household bargaining power the empowering effect of workforce participation for such women would thus be blunted from available nss data i provide some preliminary evidence in support of this argument

economic and social upgrading in global value chains and industrial clusters why governance matters the burgeoning literature on global value chains gvcs has recast our understanding of how industrial clusters are shaped by their ties to the international economy but within this context the role played by corporate social responsibility csr continues to evolve new research in the past decade allows us to better understand how csr is linked to industrial clusters and gvcs with geographic production and trade patterns in many industries becoming concentrated in the global south lead firms in gvcs have been under growing pressure to link economic and social upgrading in more integrated forms of csr this is leading to a confluence of private governance corporate codes of conduct and monitoring social governance civil society pressure on business from labor organizations and non governmental organizations and public governance government policies to support gains by labor groups and environmental activists this new form of synergistic governance is illustrated with evidence from recent studies of gvcs and industrial clusters as well as advances in theorizing about new patterns of governance in gvcs and clusters

measuring consumer preferences for complex products a compositional approach based on paired comparisons abstract conjoint analysis has become a widely accepted tool for preference measurement in marketing research though its applicability and performance strongly depend on the complexity of the product or service therefore self explicated approaches are still frequently used because of their simple design which facilitates preference elicitation when large numbers of attributes need to be considered however the direct measurement of preferences or rather utilities has been criticized as being imprecise in many cases against this background the authors present a compositional consumer preference measurement approach based on paired comparisons otherwise known as pcpm the trade off character of paired comparisons ensures that the stated judgments are more intuitive than traditional self explicated preference statements in contrast to the latter pcpm accounts for response errors and thus allows for the elicitation of more precise preferences the authors benchmark pcpm against adaptive conjoint a

fairtrade and labour markets in ethiopia and uganda abstractdrawing on four years of fieldwork in ethiopia and uganda this paper addresses gaps in knowledge about the mechanisms linking agricultural exports with poverty reduction the functioning of rural labour markets and the relevance to the lives of the poorest people of fairtrade statistical analysis of survey evidence complemented by qualitative research highlights the relatively poor payment and non pay working conditions of those employed in research sites dominated by fairtrade producer organisations we conclude that fairtrade is not an effective way to improve the welfare of the poorest rural people

the unintended consequence of an export ban evidence from benin s shrimp sector summary the inability of benin to comply with eu standards led to a ban on its shrimp exports we show that the ban had a negative impact on the income of fishmongers and fishermen in the short run but also several years after it was lifted the impact persisted because exports to the eu did not revive and the local shrimp demand could not fully compensate for the loss of the eu market a small number of local actors coped with the ban by moving out of the sector but the large majority were locked in the local fishery sector

linking smallholder farmers to markets on extensive and intensive margins evidence from nicaragua abstract access to modern commercialization channels is key for smallholder farmers to move away from subsistence farming and overcome poverty however achieving that goal is challenging for smallholders given their lack of appropriate managerial practices production technology and infrastructure this paper examines the association between receiving trainings in two distinct entrepreneurial practices one direct at the individual and farmer association level and another indirect at the community level and commercialization in non local markets at the extensive and intensive margins we exploit a panel dataset of bean producers in nicaragua that participated in an ngo program implemented between 2007 and 2012 we find opposite results for the two market linkage activities especially on the intensive margin or volume of sales while reciving direct training on entrepreneurial practices ep is positively associated with commercialization training on municipality engagement me activities is negatively associated these correlation patterns are mainly observed among entrant farmers as opposed to those already participating in commercial markets prior to the program implementation we also find varying results for me activities by plot size and leadership position additional estimations show that training activities that are positively correlated with bean commercialization are not necessarily correlated with the commercialization of other crops and vice versa

finding missing markets and a disturbing epilogue evidence from an export crop adoption and marketing intervention in kenya in much of the developing world many farmers grow crops for local or personal consumption despite export options that appear to be more profitable thus many conjecture that one or several markets are missing this paper reports on a randomized controlled trial conducted by drumnet in kenya that attempts to help farmers adopt and market export crops drumnet provides smallholder farmers with information about how to switch to export crops makes in kind loans for the purchase of the agricultural inputs and provides marketing services by facilitating the transaction with exporters the experimental evaluation design randomly assigns pre existing farmer self help groups to one of three groups 1 a treatment group that receives all drumnet services 2 a treatment group that receives all drumnet services except credit or 3 a control group after one year drumnet services led to an increase in production of export oriented crops and lower marketing costs this translated into household income gains for new adopters however one year after the study ended the exporter refused to continue buying the cash crops from the farmers because the conditions of the farms did not satisfy european export requirements drumnet collapsed in this region as farmers were forced to sell to middlemen and defaulted on their loans the risk of such events may explain at least partly why many seemingly more profitable export crops are not adopted

sustainable and responsible supply chain governance challenges and opportunities this paper introduces the special volume on sustainable and responsible supply chain governance as globalized supply chains cross multiple regulatory borders the firms involved in these chains come under increasing pressure from consumers ngos and governments to accept responsibility for social and environmental matters beyond their immediate organizational boundaries governance arrangements for global supply chains are therefore increasingly faced with sustainability requirements of production and consumption our primary objectives for this introductory paper are to explore the governance challenges that globalized supply chains and networks face in becoming sustainable and responsible and thence to identify opportunities for promoting sustainable and responsible governance in doing so we draw on 16 articles published in this special volume of the journal of cleaner production as well as upon the broader sustainable supply chain governance literature we argue that the border crossing nature of global supply chains comes with six major challenges or gaps in sustainability governance and that firms and others attempt to address these using a range of tools including eco labels codes of conduct auditing procedures product information systems procurement guidelines and eco branding however these tools are not sufficient by themselves to bridge the geographical informational communication compliance power and legitimacy gaps that challenge sustainable global chains what else is required the articles in this special volume suggest that coalition and institution building on a broader scale is essential through for example the development of inclusive multi stakeholder coalitions flexibility to adapt global governance arrangements to local social and ecological contexts of production and consumption supplementing effective monitoring and enforcement mechanisms with education and other programs to build compliance capacity and integration of reflexive learning to improve governance arrangements over time

a gendered value chain approach to codes of conduct in african horticulture codes of conduct covering the employment conditions of southern producers exporting to european markets mushroomed throughout the 1990s especially in the horticulture sector linking uk and european supermarkets with export firms in africa the majority of employment in this sector is informal a significant proportion of which is female this paper explores the gender sensitivity of codes currently applied in the african export horticulture sector from an analytical perspective that combines global value chain and gendered economy approaches through an analysis of these two approaches it develops a gender pyramid which provides a framework for mapping and assessing the gender content of codes of conduct the pyramid is applied to codes that cover employment conditions in three commodity groups and countries exporting to european markets south african fruit kenyan flowers and zambian vegetables and flowers it concludes that the gender sensitivity of codes needs to be greatly enhanced if they are to adequately address employment conditions relevant to informal and especially women workers

agrifood industry transformation and small farmers in developing countries summary this article introduces this special issue on the rapid transformation of the agrifood industry in developing countries and its effects on small farmers we review the literature from the late 1980s to the present and find evidence first of food processing then retail transformation and mixed evidence of impacts on small farmers both inclusion particularly with resource providing contracts and exclusion sometimes from scale constraint sometimes from inadequate non land assets the special issue papers contribute to the debate by confirming the mix of cases of inclusion and exclusion the cases are main in horticulture and dairy key hopes for smallholder development

trade in occupational safety and health tracing the embodied human and economic harm in labour along the global supply chain abstract over the past years there has been enormous concern about labour conditions in developing countries particularly around work for the export market this study addresses human rights issues related to occupational safety and health for people suffering injuries from work demanded as a result of international trade arrangements here we present occupational safety and health footprints which include the number of work related accidents that occur throughout the world and that are directly and indirectly linked to the consumption of products calculated for every nation s consumption bundle oshf include fatal footprints non fatal footprints days lost footprints and wages lost footprints per given year in order to calculate the oshf we used a comprehensive multi regional input output mrio table eora in addition to data from the international labour organization asean occupational safety and health network asean oshnet and others this study finds that in 2010 there were 12 fatal and 4 8 thousand non fatal incidents 27 thousand days lost and two million us lost in wages per 100 thousand workers in supply chains worldwide the results presented in this paper show hidden accidents throughout global supply chains and hence can be used to apply pressure on international organisations governments and focal companies to improve the conditions of workers particularly in terms of osh in the workplace

food standards certification and poverty among coffee farmers in uganda summary voluntary standards are gaining in importance in global markets for high value foods we analyze and compare impacts of three sustainability oriented standards fairtrade organic and utz on the livelihoods of smallholder coffee farmers in uganda using survey data and propensity score matching with multiple treatments we find that fairtrade certification increases household living standards by 30 and reduces the prevalence and depth of poverty for the other two certification schemes no significant impacts are found several factors that can explain differential impacts are discussed overly general statements about the effects of sustainability standards on smallholder livelihoods may be misleading

supermarkets farm household income and poverty insights from kenya summary the expansion of supermarkets in developing countries may have important implications for poverty and rural development while previous studies have compared farm profits between participants and non participants in supermarket channels wider income effects have hardly been analyzed moreover most existing studies do not account for structural differences between the two groups we address these issues by using endogenous switching regression and building on a survey of vegetable farmers in kenya participation in supermarket channels is associated with a 48 gain in average household income which also contributes to poverty reduction to realize these benefits on a larger scale will require institutional support

standards as a new form of social contract sustainability initiatives in the coffee industry abstract in the former age of national capitalism the achievement of market fairness was embedded in a normative framework generated by government labor unions and perhaps religious authority in the current age of global capitalism new actors such as ngos industry associations and public private partnerships provide the normative framework that corporations use for social legitimacy in this context standard setting processes operate as new forms of social contract where the state rather than being directly involved between the parties provides a form of basic guarantee while more or less accountable ngos and firms are in charge of hammering out the bargains this article examines the dynamics of this new configuration through the case study of sustainability initiatives in the coffee sector it addresses four questions 1 are these standards effective in communicating information and creating new markets 2 to what extent do they embed elements of collective and private interests 3 is sustainability content actually delivered to their intended beneficiaries and 4 what is the role of public policy in addressing their shortcomings

combining global and local forces the case of labor rights in cambodia summary an innovative policy experiment in cambodia links improvement of workers rights with increased orders and market access for the products of the country s garment factories the policy originated with the us cambodia textile agreement which awarded cambodia higher garment export quotas into the us market in return for improved working conditions and labor regulations it has continued even after the expiration of the global garment quota system at the end of 2004 the agreement s effectiveness has depended on the international labor organization acting as a compliance monitor and government intervention preventing some apparel producers from free riding on others improvements

who governs socially oriented voluntary sustainability standards not the producers of certified products summary voluntary sustainability standards setting organizations vsssos create standards to improve the social and or environmental impacts of globalized production networks vsssos are often assumed to have multi stakeholder governance structures that include the producers of certified products e g farmers artisans and workers this article argues that including producers in governance is desirable however analysis of 33 vsssos constitutions shows two thirds do not even imply intention to include producers at most 25 ensure producers have votes seats and 18 give producers veto power the discussion examines what is lost when vsssos do not bring traditionally marginalized voices to global economic governance

confronting the coffee crisis can fair trade organic and specialty coffees reduce small scale farmer vulnerability in northern nicaragua summary this paper links changing global coffee markets to opportunities and vulnerabilities for sustaining small scale farmer livelihoods in northern nicaragua changing governance structures corporate concentration oversupply interchangeable commodity grade beans and low farm gate prices characterize the crisis in conventional coffee markets in contrast certified fair trade and organic are two alternative forms of specialty coffee trade and production that may offer opportunities for small scale producers a research team surveyed 228 farmers to measure the impact of sales on organic and fair trade markets the results suggest that participation in organic and fair trade networks reduces farmers livelihood vulnerability 2004 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

understanding developing country strategic responses to the enhancement of food safety standards this paper explores the competing concepts of standards as barriers and standards as catalysts in the context of food safety standards in international trade in agricultural and food products through a review of existing evidence of the impact of food safety standards on developing country exports of agricultural and food products and the results of a series of country and product specific case studies it is suggested that food safety standards can act as both a barrier to trade and the basis of competitive positioning for developing countries in international markets this suggests that broad conclusions about the trade effects of food safety standards on developing countries are problematic rather the level and ways in which agricultural and food exports are impacted can be product country standard and even firm specific

self employment in the developing world summary this paper analyzes heterogeneity among the self employed in 74 developing countries representing two thirds of the population of the developing world after profiling how worker characteristics vary by employment status it classifies self employed workers outside agriculture as successful or unsuccessful entrepreneurs based on two measures of success whether the worker is an employer and whether the worker resides in a non poor household four main findings emerge first jobs exhibit a clear pecking order with household income and worker education highest for employers followed by wage and salaried employees non agricultural own account workers non agricultural unpaid family workers and finally agricultural workers second a substantial minority of own account workers reside in non poor households suggesting that their profits are often a secondary source of household income third as per capita income increases across countries the structure of employment shifts rapidly first out of agriculture into unsuccessful non agricultural self employment and then mainly into non agricultural wage employment finally roughly one third of the unsuccessful entrepreneurs share similar characteristics with their successful counterparts suggesting they have the potential to be successful but face constraints to growth the authors conclude that although interventions such as access to credit can benefit a substantial portion of the self employed effectively targeting the minority of self employed with higher growth potential is important particularly in low income contexts the results also highlight the potential benefits of policies that facilitate shifts in the nature of work first from agricultural labor into non agricultural self employment and then into wage and salaried jobs

a unified model of cabinet dissolution in parliamentary democracies the literature on cabinet duration is split between two apparently irreconcilable positions the attributes theorists seek to explain cabinet duration as a fixed function of measured explanatory variables while the events process theorists model cabinet durations as a product of purely stochastic processes in this paper we build a unified statistical model that combines the insights of these previously distinct approaches we also generalize this unified model and all previous models by including 1 a stochastic component that takes into account the censoring that occurs as a result of governments lasting to the vicinity of the maximum constitutional interelection period 2 a systematic component that precludes the possibility of negative duration predictions and 3 a much more objective and parsimonious list of explanatory variables the explanatory power of which would not be improved by including a list of indicator variables for individual countries

out of the cabinet what drives defections from the government in presidential systems this article challenges a key part of the conventional view of coalitions in presidential systems that sees them as short lived and ad hoc the author shows instead that there is wide variation in the durability of governing coalitions across these regimes she develops a theory of the incentives of parties to participate in the government and the circumstances under which scholars might expect to see the existing governing coalition break down the author draws on data from 121 cabinets in 12 latin american countries between the late 1980s and the mid 2000s to show that the dissolution of the cabinet is more likely when the president places less value on coalition building as a policy making strategy and when parties find it costly to participate in the government in particular the author shows that strong unilateral institutional powers tend to diminish the incentives of presidents to compromise with other parties in contrast effective legislatures and high rates of approval for the executive contri

a race to the bottom in labor standards an empirical investigation abstract one of the concerns over globalization is that as nations compete for investment they relax labor standards to attract firms using spatial estimation on panel data for 135 countries over 17 years we find that the labor standards in one country are positively correlated with those elsewhere i e a cut in labor standards in other countries reduces labor standards in the country in question this interdependence is more evident in labor practices i e enforcement than in labor laws further while we find evidence of competition in both developed and developing countries it is strongest among developing countries with weak standards