rational household labor supply traditionally household behavior is derived from the maximization of a unique utility function in this paper we propose an alternative approach in which the household is modeled as a two member collectivity taking pareto efficient decisions the consequences of this assumption are analyzed in a three good model in which only total consumption and each member s labor supply are observable if the agents are assumed egoistic i e they are only concerned with their own leisure and consumption it is possible to derive falsifiable conditions upon household labor supplies from both a parametric and nonparametric viewpoint if alternatively agents are altruistic restrictions obtain in the nonparametric context useful interpretation stems from the comparison with the characterization of aggregate demand for a private good economy

gambian women unequal partners in rice development projects agricultural development projects usually channel inputs to male household heads on the assumption that they control the land labour crops and finances this assumption is challenged for the mandinka women cultivate rainfed rice having ownership or use rights to rice land while men control upland and grow groundnuts and millets both cultivate household and personal crops three development projects introduced irrigated rice to men who therefore control this land and crop failure to involve women in rice development schemes has not only increased their economic dependence on men but is also a major reason for deficiencies in these projects and low national rice production

specific experience household structure and intergenerational transfers farm family land and labor arrangements in developing countries data from indian rural household survey was used to test th hypothesis that the coexistence in traditional rural societies of extended intergenerational families infrequent land sales and high reliance on family members as farm laborers is the result of the economic advantages which accrue from the knowledge gained by farming a particular ploy of land over a long period of time the land specific experience of elderly members of a intergenerational household who farmed the land as a child and then as an adult are expecially critical in adverse weather years most previous investigators attributed the existence of multigenerational households the use of family members rather than hired laboreds and the infrequency of land sales to deficiencies in the market i e labor market imperfections and an absence of capital insurance and asset markets in the present investigations these same characteristics are viewed as having an economic advantages a model for estimating the contribution of the experience of the elderly household members to agricultural profits was developed and applied to data from a 3 year panel study of 2900 indian rural farm households the data was collected between 1968 71 by the national council of applied economic research the survey collected information on farm profits farm inputs demographic characteristics and the effects of weather conditions on profits a major limitation of the study was a lack of information on the duration of land ownership age of household members was substituted as a proxy for duration of ownership findings were consistent withe the hypothesis in poor agricultural years gross returns for households which contained an elderly household member were greater than the gross returns for comparable households which did not contain an elderly member the economic advantages of specific knowledge embodied in the experienced elderly farmer were comparable to the economic advantages which accrued to households whose members were more educated the hypothesis cannot fully explain the existence of intergenerational families since there is a relatively large proportion of such families among nonfarm families in many countries including india findings suggest that intergenerational families may provide for more occupational diversity and thereby reduce income risks the specific experience hypothesis has policy implications if technological changes are introduced the value of specific experience may be lost and the frequency of intergenerational households may decline the hypothesis may also explain why farmers are reluctant to agree to land redistribution and consolidation schemes this reluctance may disappear after sufficient technological change has occurred

reprint of price and quantity collars for stabilizing emission allowance prices laboratory experiments on the eu ets market stability reserve abstract we report on laboratory experiments with financially motivated participants comparing alternative proposals for managing the time path of emission allowance prices in the face of random firm specific and market level structural shocks market outcome measures such as social surplus and price variability are improved by the use of a price collar auction reserve price and soft price cap comparable performance enhancements are not observed with the implementation of a quantity collar that adjusts auction quantities in response to privately held inventories of unused allowances in some specifications the quantity collar performed worse than no stabilization policy at all the experiment implemented a specific set of structural elements and extrapolation to other settings should be done with caution nevertheless an examination of the observed behavioral patterns and deviations from optimal behavior suggests that a price collar has an important although perhaps not exclusive role to play in constructing an effective market stability policy

green revolution land reform and household income distribution in the philippines income of agricultural households consists of returns to labor capital and land from farming supplemented mainly by labor earnings from nonfarm sources agricultural technology affects farmers income through its effect on factor demands and factor prices which in turn induce changes in the allocation of farmers own resources to different uses income from farming is also affected by village institutions such as land tenure which governs the distribution of income between landlords and tenants as well as resource allocations

an expository note on individual risk without aggregate uncertainty abstract in economies where agents bear some risk the analysis would often be facilitated by the assumption that the risks are i i d and disappear in the aggregate a formal appeal to the law of large numbers requires the consideration of a sequence of finite economies in an economy with a continuum of agents there are countable families of sets for which it is impossible for a law of large numbers to be valid with countably many agents and a finitely additive measure independence is compatible with the law of large numbers

intergenerational transfers in philippine rice villages gender differences in traditional inheritance customs abstract this paper examines education land and nonland asset transfers from parents to children in five rice villages in the philippines a model with family fixed effects explains transfers better than either individual heterogeneity or observed parent and child characteristics without family fixed effects families facing different land constraints exhibit significantly different patterns of educational investment in children in a subsample with completed inheritance daughters receive less education land and total inheritance but are compensated with nonland assets parents also exhibit preferential behavior towards children of the same gender daughters of better educated mothers receive more land nonland assets and total inheritance better educated fathers give land preferentially to sons but favor daughters in education

the strategic bequest motive although recent research suggests that intergenerational transfers play an important role in aggregate capital accumulation our understanding of bequest motives remains incomplete we develop a simple model of strategic bequests in which a testator influences the decisions of his beneficiaries by holding wealth in bequeathable forms and by conditioning the division of bequests on the beneficiaries actions the model generates falsifiable empirical predictions that are inconsistent with other theories of intergenerational transfers we present econometric and other evidence that strongly suggests that bequests are often used as compensation for services rendered by beneficiaries

productivity health and inequality in the intrahousehold distribution of food in low income countries a model is formulated incorporating linkages among nutrition labor market productivity health heterogeneity and the intrahousehold distribution of food and work activities in a subsistence economy empirical results based on a sample of households from bangladesh indicate that despite considerable intrahousehold disparities in calorie consumption households are averse to inequality furthermore consistent with the model the results also indicate that both the higher level and greater variance in the calories consumed by men relative to women reflect in part the greater participation by men in activities in which productivity is sensitive to health status copyright 1990 by american economic association

program interventions intrahousehold distribution and the welfare of individuals modelling household behavior abstract in this essay the implications for the intrahousehold distribution of resources derived from economic models of household behavior that treat the household as maximizing a single welfare function are reviewed particular attention is paid to the within family allocation of time and food and to the effects of these resources on the schooling earnings and health status of individuals as they are affected by direct food intervention and female employment schemes and price altering policies empirical applications are provided from data sets from india indonesia and the philippines to illustrate the power and limitations of such models for illuminating household interventions and for placing restrictions on data

theory experiment and the federal communications commission spectrum auctions abstract the fcc uses the simultaneous multi round auction sma to assign spectrum licenses congress mandated that the sma be compared to an auction that allows combinatorial bids we review the theoretical and experimental evidence relevant to the sma procedures and their inherent defects results from experiments evaluating the sma in comparison to a combinatorial auction designed by charles river and associates show that several of the sma rules hinder efficiency and create a trade off between efficiency and auction length the combinatorial auction outperforms the sma when license values are superadditive but requires more time to complete and is not robust

schooling search and spouse selection testing economic theories of marriage and household behavior the implications of the economic theories of marriage and of household fertility behavior are tested in a framework in which educational investment marital search and marital matches are responsive to marriage market conditions and the personal traits of individual agents some of which are unobserved by the econometrician implications are also derived and tested for the effects of longevity attractiveness preferences and labor and marriage market conditions on schooling marriage age and spouse choice the empirical results indicate that inattention to heterogeneity and martial selection leads to a false rejection of the economic theory of marriage but to a false acceptance of the value of time fertility hypothesis

horizontal product differentiation in auctions and multilateral negotiations we experimentally compare first price auctions and multilateral negotiations after introducing horizontal product differentiation into a standard procurement setting both institutions yield identical surplus for the buyer a difference from prior findings with homogeneous products that results from differentiation s influence on sellers pricing behaviour the data are consistent with this finding being driven by concessions from low cost sellers in response to differentiation reducing their likelihood of being the buyer s surplus maximizing trading partner further analysis shows that introducing product differentiation increases the intensity of price competition among sellers which contrasts with the conventional wisdom that product differentiation softens competition

property rights and intra household bargaining abstract this paper examines whether an individual level transfer of property rights increases the individual s bargaining power within the household the question is analyzed in the context of a housing reform that occurred in china that gave existing tenants the opportunity to purchase the homes that they had been renting from their state employers the rights to each housing unit were granted to a particular employee so property rights were defined at the individual level rather than the household level the results indicate that transferring ownership rights to men increased household consumption of some male favored goods and women s time spent on chores transferring ownership rights to women decreased household consumption of some male favored goods

male female differences in agricultural productivity methodological issues and empirical evidence abstract most estimates of male female differences in technical efficiency from production function studies show that male and female farmers are equally efficient farm managers controlling for levels of inputs and human capital there is some evidence however of allocative inefficiency within households marginal products of labor depend on the relative scarcities of labor and the gender division of labor in specific farming systems many of these studies however are methodologically flawed greater attention needs to be given to appropriate estimation methods endogenous input choice the use of headship as a stratifying variable and the implications of intrahousehold resource allocation

estimating the intrahousehold incidence of illness child health and gender inequality in the allocation of time in this paper the authors develop and implement a method for estimating the effects of infant morbidity on the differential allocation of time of family members based on discrete indicators of health and activity participation commonly available in survey data and within the context of a household model in which health is determined endogenously their estimates that take into account the simultaneity of health activity associations indicate that increased levels of infant morbidity significantly exacerbate existing differentials in the accumulation of human capital across teenage boys and girls in indonesia copyright 1990 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

extended families and child well being studies of household behavior have established the distribution of resources among household members predicts spending and savings patterns however there is a paucity of evidence on the relationship between the well being of individual family members and the distribution of resources within an extended family including non co resident family members given the central role the family plays in many models of economic behavior this is an important gap in the literature using rich longitudinal survey data from the indonesia family life survey ifls evidence is presented on the relationship between three measures of health and education related human capital of children and the distribution of resources among extended family members ifls is ideally suited for this research since the survey collects detailed information about income and wealth from both coresident and non co resident family members the empirical model is founded on a natural extension of the collective model of household decision making chiappori 1988 1992 to the extended family the model is particularly appealing in this context because it places few restrictions on preferences of individual family members and does not specify a specific bargaining mechanism that underlies negotiations the collective model yields empirical tests of whether the behavior of family members is pareto efficient a special case of the model allows all family members to be completely altruistic which is observationally equivalent to a unitary model of family behavior that special case is rejected by the data however the restrictions of the efficient model are not rejected indicating that non co resident family members are able to co ordinate allocation decisions with respect to child human capital investments in such a way as to make no family member better off without another member being worse off

motivations to remit evidence from botswana in this article a theory of motivations to send remittances is described and tested with data from botswana altruism is one of the motivations tested and found to be an insufficient explanation for remittances among migrants in botswana a refinement of the model stipulates a modified altruism or enlightened self interest in this model the relationship between the migrant and family is tempered by an implicit understanding of mutual benefit the household strategy may be to encourage some members to migrate as a means of spreading risk and sharing gains the household strategy is similar to an insurance policy where migration is to places where market potential is high the risks incurred might be high the example is given of migration during a drought in botswana migrant remittances were greater in households with more cattle or households with more to lose drought alone was not statistically related to remittances increases in remittances were related to increased levels of education it is suggested that repayment was the motive for parents investment in migrants education migrants gains are identified as the potential for an inheritance the security of channeling investments through a trusted family member and security in having a home to return to it is pointed out that the altruism and family remittances from urban migration were strategies that bridged the simple dynamic of either urban development or rural development impacting on family welfare it is suggested that household models of economy adopt some measure to express the relationship of household wealth to remittances from urban migrants

fairness concepts and the intrahousehold allocation of resources abstract how do parents allocate scarce resources among their children while much research has focused on investment strategies parents preferences for equity may also play a role in the household allocation of resources while the studies that incorporate equity define it in limited terms in this paper several fairness concepts are applied to the problem of intrahousehold distribution comparing food allocations and health outcomes across fairness concepts indicates that each concept results in a different allocation of food and a different health outcome the implications of this result for empirical studies of intrahousehold distribution and policy interventions are discussed

the optimum quantity of money in a stochastic economy individuals in a monetary economy face both economy wide and individualspecific risks friedman s 1969 assertion that the price level should fall at the rate of time preference must be modified when such risks are present bewley s 1983 conjecture that the modified deflation should proceed at a rate greater than the rate of time preference is demonstrated to be true in special cases but false in general moreover the indeterminacy of equilibrium bewley found is eliminated by the inclusion of a transactions demand for money

on the road marriage and mobility in malaysia migration choices of husbands and wives in a dynamic and developing country are studied in the context of an economic model of the household data are drawn from the second wave of the malaysia family life survey exploiting the retrospective histories we compare moves that take place before marriage with those made during the marriage among the latter moves that are made with the spouse are distinguished from those made alone the evidence indicates that male mobility is primarily economic in motivation and related to labor market factors moves by women however seem to be more closely related to fertility or family considerations migration is apparently not simply an individual decision the attributes of the spouse are an important influence on mobility albeit in an asymmetric manner moving toward a broader definition of the household we find the characteristics of the parents parents in law and also the relative age and gender of siblings all influence mobility in a rich if complex way

a sequential study of migration and job search this paper designs a multiarmed bandit mab sequential model for the analysis of the migration job search process the implications either are compatible with well known migration behavior or when novel are also plausible for example regions with large wage variability attract migrants and regions with large nonpecuniary returns increase both in migration and out migration a major advantage of this approach is the relative ease with which martingale estimators can be derived from the martingale structure of the model these martingale methods are exemplified for the return migration phenomenon

the effects of migration on collective action in the commons evidence from rural china summary over the past three decades scholars have studied the effects of more than three dozen factors on collective action in the commons but little is known about the effects of rural to urban migration we examine this question with the case of china which has the world s most extensive levels of rural to urban migration using ols logit and probit models and data from a survey of 1 780 households from 18 provinces we find that migration has a statistically significant adverse effect on collective irrigation controlling for a large number of theoretically relevant variables the effects of migration on collective action in the commons are possibly mediated by a number of factors frequently identified in the literature including leadership social capital sense of community economic heterogeneity and dependence on resources we speculate that massive out migration partly explains the significant drop in the use of collective canal irrigation and exacerbated the significant increase in groundwater irrigation since the start of reforms in 1980s these findings have important policy implications for commons governance in china given that massive rural to urban migration will continue in the next decade because of the increasing rural to urban migration worldwide especially in developing countries the findings could also partly explain the deteriorating state of rural village infrastructure natural common pool resources and ecological systems in many developing countries

as a husband i will love lead and provide gendered access to land in ghana summary improving women s access to land is high on the agricultural policy agenda of both governmental and non governmental agencies yet the determinants and rationale of gendered access to land are not well understood this paper argues that gender relations are more than the outcomes of negotiations within households it explains the importance of social norms perceptions and formal and informal rules shaping access to land for male and female farmers at four levels 1 the household family 2 the community 3 the state and 4 the market the framework is applied to ghana using the results from qualitative field work norms on household and family organization and on men s and women s responsibilities and capabilities play a key role in gendered allocation of resources however these norms and perceptions are dynamic and evolve jointly with the development of markets and changes in values of inputs such as labor and land theoretical models that represent the gendered distribution of assets as the result of intrahousehold bargaining should be revised and extrahousehold factors should be included from a policy perspective laws that ensure gender equality in terms of inheritance and a more gender equitable distribution of property upon divorce can play a key role in improving women s property rights yet their impact may be limited where customary rights dominate and social norms and rules continue to discriminate according to gender

efficiency in a pure currency economy with inflation individuals who are buffeted by stochastic shocks will wish to substitute consumption intertemporally to effect this substitution they can enter into insurance contracts or they can use money this paper investigates the connection between optimum insurance and friedman s 1969 concept of the optimum quantity of money using a simplified version of lucas s 1980 pure currency economy monetary efficiency and efficient insurance are equivalent here an example is presented in which an efficient monetary equilibrium exists contrary to bewley s 1983 conjecture in the example the efficient rate of return on real balances is less than the internal rate of discount

land tenure and agricultural productivity in africa a comparative analysis of the economics literature and recent policy strategies and reforms summary this paper examines the convergence and divergence of results from economic studies of the relationships between land tenure security and agricultural productivity in africa and how these results have been incorporated into recent agricultural poverty alleviation and land policy documents the paper finds that there are both areas of convergence and divergence in the economics literature similarly the attention given to land tenure and its perceived effects on productivity varies considerably in the policy literature the significant heterogeneity in findings itself suggests that policy responses must pay attention to local context and the overarching macro and sectoral conditions within which tenure systems operate

speculation and demand reduction in english clock auctions with resale many auctions are followed by a resale market which occurs when the winner of the auction resells the item won to one of the participants from the original auction the existence of such transactions may initially appear counter intuitive however this paper will show that active inter bidder resale results from payoff maximizing decisions in the auction that take into account the incentives of a resale opportunity specifically i examine how the existence of an inter bidder resale opportunity impacts bidder behavior in an english clock auction and to what extent altering the bargaining power of the final buyer and reseller in the resale market determines the strategies followed in the initial auction in an attempt to understand the existence of these inter bidder transactions theoretical and behavioral analysis is used to develop hypotheses of speculation bidding above value and demand reduction bidding below value which are directly tested in a controlled experimental setting while value bidding is a dominant strategy in a standard english clock auction without resale when resale is allowed this theoretical claim is weaker demand reduction is observed when the bargaining power is shifted to the final buyer in resale and when the bargaining power is shifted toward the reseller speculation is observed the revenue achieved in the initial auction depends on the behavior observed in the auction regardless of bargaining power revenue is shown to decrease below what would have been earned in an english auction without resale due to demand reduction when the reseller has the bargaining power and speculation is observed this loss in revenue is somewhat mitigated by increased speculation

seller beware supply and demand reduction and price manipulation in multiple unit uniform price auctions we experimentally compare under revelation of supply and demand across alternative variations of ascending and descending two sided price clock auctions we find that buyers reduce demand more when the price is ascending but sellers behavior is consistent across clock directions as a result the clock price rule has empirical effects on efficiency even though it is theoretically neutral

tradeable carbon permit auctions how and why to auction not grandfather abstract an auction of carbon permits is the best way to achieve domestic carbon caps designed to limit global climate change to minimize administrative costs permits would be required at the level of oil refineries natural gas pipe lines natural gas liquid sellers and coal processing plants to maximize liquidity in secondary markets permits would be fully tradable and bankable the government would conduct quarterly auctions a standard ascending clock auction in which price is gradually raised until there is no excess demand would provide reliable price discovery an auction is preferred to grandfathering giving companies permits based on historical output or emissions because it allows reduced tax distortions provides more flexibility in distribution of costs provides greater incentives for innovation and reduces the need for politically contentious arguments over the allocation of rents

sequential migration theory and evidence from peru abstract the standard human capital model of labor migration has been successful in explaining several empirical regularities of the migration process however there are a number of empirical facts that have not yet been explained or empirically tested among them that migrants usually perform more than one move in their lifetime return migration accounts for a very important share of total migration rates and there is a high positive correlation between in and out migration rates in the more advantageous regions this paper presents both a simple model explaining these facts and an empirical analysis using data from peru

women and structural transformation development is at a relatively early stage 2 analysis of women s role as economic actors as distinct from being part of the labor force in general is still rudimentary 3 the extent to which and the conditions under which gender may influence a variety of economic outcomes are not well researched the nature and the extent of segmentation of economic activity between males and females and their changing roles in different socioeconomic settings and during the course of economic development are inadequately investigated in economic literature 4 consequently whether the efficiency and welfare losses from women s low participation in economic activity are significant in static and dynamic contexts is inadequately articulated much of the research on women in developed countries has been in a comparative static context 5 the changes in incomes technology demography and tastes with regard to women s roles however are not only much more rapid but also simultaneous in developing countries making research in a comparative static context of relatively little value the implications of the dynamic factors are analytically complex to handle but are critical for public policy even where policy implications are obvious from the existing limited research however these have not always been effectively incorporated by governments in their actions this article first summarizes the major themes of the various types

household composition labor markets and labor demand testing for separation in agricultural household models this paper tests the separation of farm labor supply and labor demand decisions using the observation that household composition is an important determinant of farm labor use with nonseparation after assessing the conditions under which the test has power against several alternatives an empirical model is developed to test the proposition that farm employment is independent of family composition the model is estimated on a data set from rural java the null hypothesis that farm labor allocation decisions are independent of household structure is not rejected the results are robust to different specifications of the labor demand function copyright 1992 by the econometric society

the equivalence of lending equilibria and signalling based insurance under asymmetric information i present a model in which a continuum of individuals have stochastic idiosyncratic income shocks complete insurance is physically feasible but unattainable due to an information asymmetry income shocks are observable only by the individuals receiving them any insurance institution must therefore rely on self reporting of income innovations two ways of achieving incentive compatible self reporting are presented the first is a debt market with an explicit lending restriction the second is an insurance contract that linearly filters a signal transmitted by individuals the two are then demonstrated to be identical equilibrium consumption fluctuates in a random walk which is inefficient given the physical potential for complete insurance but is efficient given the information constraints the results are complementary to those of green 1987 but permit more general stochastic processes of income to be analyzed serial correlation of income reduces the efficiency of the insurance

property rights regimes and natural resources a conceptual analysis the term common property resource is an example of a term repeatedly used to refer to property owned by a government or by no one it is also used for property owned by a community of resource users such usage leads to confusion in scientific study and policy analysis in this paper we develop a conceptual schema for arraying property rights regimes that distinguishes among diverse bundles of rights ranging from authorized user to claimant to proprietor and to owner we apply this conceptual schema to analyze findings from a variety of empirical settings including the maine lobster industry

gender property rights and natural resources abstract attention to gender differences in property rights can improve the outcomes of natural resource management policies and projects in terms of efficiency environmental sustainability equity and empowerment of resource users although it is impossible to generalize across cultures and resources it is important to identify the nature of rights to land trees and water held by women and men and how they are acquired and transmitted from one user to another the paper particularly examines how the shift from customary tenure systems to private property in land trees and water has affected women the effect of gender differences in property on collective action and the implications for project design

money and interest in a cash in advance economy the authors analyze an aggregative general equilibrium model in which the use of money is motivated by a cash in advance constraint applied to purchases of a subset of consumption goods the system is subject to both real and monetary shocks which are economy wide and observed by all they develop methods for verifying the existence of characterizing and explicitly calculating equilibria copyright 1987 by the econometric society

auction institutional design theory and behavior of simultaneous multiple unit generalizations of the dutch and english auctions historically english and dutch auctions have been used for the exchange of single objects such as works of art or single lots of a good such as produce fish or cut flowers where these institutions have been used for the exchange of multiple units such as the australian wool auction using english rules successive lots of the good are sometimes sold sequentially at auction in some but not all instances this is because the goods are not identical even though the various lots may be close substitutes see penny burns 1985 where the goods are accepted universally as being homogeneous as in the securities markets multiple units are often commonly auctioned simultaneously in the securities industry orders are batched for simultaneous execution in multiple unit auctions in what are referred to as call markets that is the security is called for auction at a particular point in time this type of market is used on the stock exchanges of austria belgium france germany and israel some of these are verbal and some are sealed bid auctions although the u s organized exchanges are predominantly continuous rather than call markets except that call markets are used each day to open trading in each listed security there is a growing number of exceptions such as the proliferation since 1984 of auction preferred stock goldman sachs and co october 1984 and money market preferred stock lehman brothers july 1984 we now have dutch auction rate transferable securities called darts stated rate auction preferred stock or straps and many more after the initial subscription offering of this type of security the market is called every 49 days to reset the preferred dividend rate using a multiple unit auction the exchange of shares and the dividend determination is based on the array of stated dividend rates at which existing holders and potential new holders are willing to sell and or buy corresponding quantities the dividend rate and exchange of shares every 49 days is executed using the uniform price or competitive sealed bid mechanism vernon l smith et al 1980 the discussion to follow will be confined to this sealed bid form of the call market call markets provide temporal consolidation of trade orders or other forms of expressing the desire to buy and sell by comparison with continuous trading call markets offer both advantages and disadvantages robert a schwartz 1988 pp 442 6 the cited advantages include low cost of operating the exchange information aggregation and presumed pricing efficiency price stability individual trades which are thought to have a small impact on price reduced price uncertainty and finally nondiscriminatory pricing however there are offsetting disadvantages 1 the market is inaccessible except at the time of call 2 no bid offer contract or price information is available until the results of the call are announced and 3 there is transaction uncertainty because a submitted bid offer may be too low high to execute inside the supply demand cross these conditions are only partially alleviated if there is a secondary market between calls these disadvantages may be significant in september 1988 the wall street journal published an article on the failure of a call market for the auction rate preferred stock economic science laboratory university of arizona tucson arizona this material is based upon work supported by the national science foundation under grant no ses 8320121

on migration and risk in ldcs the authors develop the hypothesis that aversion to risk rather than expectations of higher income is the primary motivation for rural urban migration in developing countries this hypothesis maintains that an optimizing risk averse small farmer family will try to place a family member in the urban sector in order to diversify its income portfolio an additional hypothesis related to risk is also considered at the individual rather than the family level annotation

auction format and auction sequence in multi item multi unit auctions an experimental study we experimentally study the effect of auction format sealed bid versus closed clock versus open clock and auction sequence simultaneous versus sequential on bidding behaviour and auction outcomes in auctions of multiple related multi unit items prominent field applications are the sale of emission permits fishing rights and electricity we find that when auctioning simultaneously clock auctions outperform sealed bid auctions in terms of efficiency and revenues this advantage disappears when the items are auctioned sequentially in addition auctioning sequentially has positive effects on total revenues across all auction formats resulting from fiercer competition on the item auctioned first

the optimum quantity of money in a stochastic economy a comment in a 1989 paper b taub showed contrary to t bewley s conjecture that when income is subject to an aggregate shock inflation may be the optimal policy this paper shows that the inflation result is due to an algebraic mistake in the calculation of the first order condition when income is subject to an aggregate shock deflation is always the optimal policy if the driving process has an ar 1 representation moreover for a stationary ar 1 process the rate of deflation exceeds the rate of time preference as bewley conjectured copyright 1992 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

motives for private income transfers private income transfers are becoming increasingly recognized as a key aspect of the u s economy the majority of private income transfers occur inter vivos i e between living persons but very little is known about this type of transfer behavior this paper tests alternative hypotheses concerning motivation for inter vivos transfers two motives are considered altruism and exchange evidence presented here casts doubt on the altruistic model of transfer behavior observed patterns for inter vivos transfers are more consistent with exchange related motives this finding has important implications for the effects of public transfer programs on the distribution of economic well being

intra household resource allocation an inferential approach if household income is pooled and then allocated to maximize welfare then income under the control of mothers and fathers should have the same impact on demand with survey data on family health and nutrition in brazil the equality of parental income effects is rejected unearned income in the hands of a mother has a bigger effect on her family s health than income under the control of a father for child survival probabilities the effect is almost twenty times bigger the common preference or neoclassical model of the household is rejected if unearned income is measured with error and income is pooled then the ratio of maternal to paternal income effects should be the same equality of the ratios cannot be rejected there is also evidence for gender preference mothers prefer to devote resources to improving the nutritional status of their daughters fathers to sons

marriage and the city search frictions and sorting of singles this paper develops and tests a model where cities play an important role as marriage markets the idea is simple cities are dense areas where singles can meet more potential partners than in rural areas to enjoy those benefits they are willing to pay a premium in terms of higher housing prices once married the benefits from meeting more potential partners vanish and married couples move out of the city attractive singles benefit most from a dense market and are therefore more likely to move to the city those predictions are tested and confirmed with a unique danish data set

the family inheritance and the intergenerational transmission of inequality unequal inheritance of material wealth is commonly considered a major cause of inequality in consumption however theoretical models of the intergenerational transmission of inequality by becker blinder and ishikawa imply that unequal inheritance may either increase or reduce consumption inequality differences in inherited wealth resulting from unequal parental incomes increase inequality in recipients consumption however unequal bequests caused by differences among families in the endowed ability of children or the costs of producing human capital are equalizing empirical results confirm these predictions the inheritance received by children is inversely related to both children s income and parental education thus bequests are compensatory in that ceteris paribus low income children inherit more than their advantaged contemporaries

testing the neoclassical model of family labor supply and fertility the mcelroy horney nash bargaining model of family demand behavior relaxes the restriction that nonearned income of husband and wife has the identical effect on family labor supply and commodity demands this restriction of the neoclassical model offamily behavior is tested for the determination of husband and wife labor supply andfertility based on the 1981 socioeconomic survey of thailand the neoclassical restriction is rejected for female labor supply andfertility another unexplored limitation offamily demand studies due to the sample self selection of intact marriages is empirically treated through alternative estimation strategies in this case a more sharply focused theory of marital behavior is needed to identify family demand models

the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior in households whose allocation decisions can be represented as nash bargained household decisions extrahousehold environmental parameters eeps serve as pure shifters of the threat points the comparative statics of changes in demands due to changes in these eeps are given these are incorporated into a comprehensive statement of the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior including a nash generalization of barten s 1966 fundamental matrix equation of the theory of consumer demand estimation and data requirements are discussed along with nested testing of the following structure the neoclassical model is nested in the nash bargained model which in turn is nested in an unrestricted model of household demands emphasized throughout is the enriched menu of explanatory variables for demand analysis provided by the nash model as well as the model s ability to jointly analyze i household formation and ii intrahousehold allocation decisions

the mobilization of women s labor for cash crop production a game theoretic approach in the last decade or so economists have modeled phenomena such as household labor supply fertility behavior and child survival rates using the household as the unit of analysis this paper presents data that call into question the assumption that the household is a joint decision making unit which maximizes a neoclassical household utility function the data come from a study of the mobilization of women s labor by their husbands for irrigated rice production in north cameroon the first section of this paper describes briefly the massa rice and sorghum farming system and then considers the relationship between the amount of compensation women receive from their husbands for their labor on rice production and the amount of labor they allocate to rice production the findings suggest that a bargaining model may describe the intrahousehold relations of production and distribution better than the neoclassical model the second section specifies a nash bargaining model and contrasts it with the neoclassical model of the household using the bargaining framework the third section explores in more detail possible explanations of the allocative inefficiency which seems to characterize many of the rice cultivating households

gender and property formalization conventional and alternative approaches securing property rights in both rural landholdings and urban housing is a much debated feature of current development policy providing title for the household does not guarantee security for women and legal equality may fail to prevent gender differences in property ownership a pro active approach to women s property rights is needed disenchantment with state programs delivering individual titles has led to calls for alternative strategies emphasizing local or customary authorities and procedures this paper questions the ability of either approach to address gender inequalities effectively without affirmative action but suggests that informal responses within state institutions can help c 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

migration unemployment and development a dynamic two sector analysis abstract a time minimizing problem of attaining a full employment state is solved in a dual economy model with harris todaro migration mechanism and with a positive level of urban unemployment in the starting period it appears that the optimum solution lies in the specialization of investment in the urban sector at least in the initial stage of development if the per capita capital stock in the urban sector is very small in the starting period

the design testing and implementation of virginia s nox allowance auction we report on the design and testing of three auction mechanisms to maximize revenue and efficiency in the sale of two vintages of nitrous oxide emission allowances by the commonwealth of virginia in 2004 the three mechanisms considered were a combinatorial sealed bid csb auction a sequential english clock sec auction and a combinatorial english clock cec auction we find the sec and cec mechanisms to be superior the csb when demand is relatively elastic 2008 elsevier b v all rights reserved

mexico after the debt crisis is growth sustainable the story of mexico s involvement in international capital markets is one of riches to rags and back to riches again four periods can be distinguished stable steady international borrowing through the 1950s and 1960s heavy reliance on international loans through commercial bank syndicates from the mid 1970s until 1982 massive capital flight zero access to private lenders and complete reliance on official sources from 1982 to 1990 and massive return of flight capital a continued drought in syndicated loans but heavy expansion of foreign direct investment portfolio investment and bond placement easing the transition from the third to the fourth period was the restructuring of mexico s external debt under the brady deal which ultimately reduced and smoothened the net transfer to foreign creditors the authors argue that smoothening the external transfer had far more impact on the domestic economy than the reduction of debt and debt servicing per se the financing of the expansion that ensued in the fourth period differs dramatically from what was observed earlier in mexico s history foreign capital inflows were dominated by foreign direct investment and especially portfolio investment and unlike in the second period most inflows financed the domestic private sector are the current rate and pattern of borrowing at levels unforeseen at the time of the brady deal a cause for concern is growth sustainable to answer these questions the authors analyze the domestic macroeconomic counterpart of the large capital inflows and high current account deficits of the early 1990s whether growth is sustainable depends on the level of domestic saving but even if domestic saving increases the transition to sustainable growth is unlikely to be smooth because the slowdown in consumption growth associated with improved saving is likely to be contractionary the outcome depends on how investment and net exports respond the authors analyze cyclical and structural factors of investment and the external sector and their interactions with mexico s exchange rate and monetary policy to interpret the recession in the second half of 1993 they emerge from their analysis with cautious optimism about mexico s medium term prospects

subdividing the commons distributional conflict in the transition from collective to individual property rights in kenya s maasailand summary this paper suggests that explanations of property rights transformation need to move beyond models of relative price change and state enforcement to include accounts that accommodate conflict and competition among actors and the possibility that state actors may not provide the enforcement that is often taken for granted the transition from collective to individualized holdings in kenya s maasailand is burdened with politics and procedural problems that can undermine the gains anticipated in that move moreover in semi arid ecological settings individualization results in unstable land holdings necessitating re contracting and reaggregation by individual parcel owners

globalization and the connection of remote communities a review of household effects and their biodiversity implications abstract the remote regions of the world provide refuge to a disproportionate amount of the earth s biodiversity as globalization continues isolated human communities in these regions are increasingly connected to global market migration and technology networks we review the diffuse literature on the household effects of changing market access migration and technology adoption in remote regions and implications for native biodiversity market access affects biodiversity in remote communities through changes in household economics and social networks migration either to or from remote settlements affects biodiversity through changes in population remittances human capital and social networks finally we consider effects due to production public infrastructure and information and communication technologies there is much ambiguity surrounding these causal pathways and thus we also examine the roles of various ecological household community and institutional mediating factors in determining the impacts of global connection finally we explore the limitations of our current knowledge and research practices and propose directions for future work to address key uncertainties in theory and evidence as well as weaknesses in methodological approaches we recommend a broad and interdisciplinary mode of inquiry as the best means toward clarifying globalization s impacts on human settlements and the biodiversity harbored in the earth s remaining remote regions

a downward spiral research evidence on the relationship between poverty and natural resource degradation abstract many observers have conceptualised the link between rural poverty and environment as a downward spiral with population growth and economic marginalisation leading to environmental degradation recent micro scale empirical research challenges this model showing striking heterogeneity in environmental management by the rural poor their success in adapting to environmental change and the efficacy of policies in influencing outcomes local endowments conditions affecting the adoption of resource conserving technologies and local institutions supportive of the poor are key factors that condition poverty environment interactions and outcomes in relation to agriculture the main strategies to jointly address poverty and environmental improvement are to increase poor people s access to natural resources enhance the productivity of poor people s natural resource assets and involve local people in resolving public natural resource management concerns research is needed to support these strategies particularly to explore poverty environment agriculture interactions develop technologies for poor farmers and partner with local communities for action research on policies and programmes

water from basic need to commodity a discussion on gender and water rights in the context of irrigation abstract this paper examines the implications of changing water policies for women s water rights and access to water in irrigation systems with growing water scarcity and programs to increase the efficiency of water allocation and delivery the allocation of water rights becomes critical although women often have informal means and mechanisms to obtain and secure access to water in most systems studied there is no recognition of women s specific water needs especially for production as opposed to domestic consumption current policies to privatize and devolve management of irrigation need to increase responsiveness to specific women s water needs and interests if they are to address efficiency as well as equity concerns

aggregate fluctuations interest rates and repeated insurance under private information using a linear quadratic framework i show i the formal equivalence of lending and optimal insurance when information about states is private ii that lending equilibria induce the serial correlation patterns of aggregate and individual stochastic processes of consumption to be identical even if the corresponding income processes differ iii the influence of the interest rate and the underlying serial correlation of the aggregate income process on potential insurance available in lending markets iv the breakdown of individual rationality of the repeated private information contract and corresponding equilibria via defection to autarky as an initial exploration of the force needed by an external mechanism that might prevent this defection i analyze the average gain from defection finding that the average gain from defection increases with the serial correlation of idiosyncratic income associating defection with low interest rates

consumption smoothing migration and marriage evidence from rural india a significant proportion of migration in low income countries particularly in rural areas is composed of moves by women for the purpose of marriage we seek to explain these mobility patterns by examining marital arrangements among indian households in particular we hypothesize that the marriage of daughters to locationally distant dispersed yet kinship related households is a manifestation of implicit interhousehold contractual arrangements aimed at mitigating income risks and facilitating consumption smoothing in an environment characterized by information costs and spatially covariant risks analysis of longitudinal south indian village data lends support to the hypothesis marriage cum migration contributes significantly to a reduction in the variability of household food consumption farm households afflicted with more variable profits tend to engage in longer distance marriage cum migration the hypothesized and observed marriage cum migration patterns are in dissonance with standard models of marriage or migration that are concerned primarily with search costs and static income gains

moving forward looking back the impact of migration and remittances on assets consumption and credit constraints in the rural philippines abstract this paper investigates the impact of migration and remittances on asset holdings consumption expenditures and credit constraint status of households in origin communities using a unique longitudinal data set from bukidnon philippines taking into account the endogeneity of the number of migrants and remittances received a larger number of migrant children reduces the values of nonland assets and total expenditures per adult equivalent however remittances have a positive impact on housing consumer durables nonland assets total expenditures per adult equivalent and educational expenditures enabling asset accumulation and investment in human capital neither migration nor remittances affects current credit constraint status