tax base effects and fiscal externalities of local capital taxation evidence from a panel of german jurisdictions abstract this paper provides empirical evidence on the tax base effects of local capital taxation using a large panel of german municipalities it tests whether both the local tax rate and the tax rate in adjacent jurisdictions affect the local tax base the results obtained from a spatial gmm approach confirm a strong negative impact of the local tax rate whereas the average tax rate of neighboring municipalities proves insignificant only if interacted with the relative population size of neighbors a significant positive impact is found indicating that externalities from taxing decisions of adjacent jurisdictions are experienced only by relatively small municipalities

local government efficiency determinants and spatial interdependence we analyse the determinants of local government efficiency taking into account the presence of spatial interactions among neighbouring municipalities to do so first we estimate an efficiency inde

assessing the functioning of land rental markets in ethiopia although a large theoretical literature discusses the possible inefficiency of sharecropping contracts the empirical evidence on this phenomenon has been ambiguous at best household level fixed effect estimates from about 8 500 plots operated by households that own and sharecrop land in the ethiopian highlands provide support for the hypothesis of marshallian inefficiency at the same time a factor adjustment model suggests that the extent to which rental markets allow households to attain their desired operational holding size is extremely limited our analysis points towards factor market imperfections no rental for oxen lack of alternative employment opportunities and tenure insecurity as possible reasons underlying such behavior suggesting that rather than worrying almost exclusively about marshallian inefficiency it is equally warranted to give due attention to the policy framework within which land rental markets operate

an empirical analysis of intergovernmental tax interaction the case of business income taxes in canada both federal and provincial governments in canada levy corporate taxes on busi nesses in their jurisdictions which potentially gives rise to horizontal and vertical tax exter nalities within the federation using a simple model of interdependent tax choices we estimate tax setting functions for the federal government ontario quebec and an aggregate of the remaining eight provinces we find evidence of significant vertical and horizontal tax inter actions provincial tax rates respond negatively to the federal tax rate while at least some provinces increase their tax rates in response to increases in the tax rates of other provinces

can mobile phones improve agricultural outcomes evidence from a randomized experiment in niger the widespread growth of mobile phone coverage worldwide has offered new potential for increasing rural households access to information and public and private transfers yet despite the proliferation of mobile phone based interventions in the agricultural sector there is mixed evidence on their impact we report the results of a randomized evaluation in niger in which rural households increased their access to information technology and their capacity to use it we find that households in treated villages planted a more diverse basket of crops particularly marginal cash crops grown by women this did not increase the likelihood of selling these crops or the farm gate price received suggesting that other market failures need to be addressed to improve farmers welfare

spatial patterns in local taxation tax mimicking or error mimicking this paper tests for mimicry in local tax setting by using a panel data set of the english non metropolitan districts in the 1980s when property tax rate variability across districts was highest the results confirm the presence of large and significant spatial interactions among districts even after allowing for district specific and time effects a district appears to be significantly affected by its neighbours policies a 10 increase in the local property tax rate of a district s neighbours leads to an increase of 4 5 in its own property tax rate on the other hand the absence of correlation in tax rates between lower tier district authorities and upper tier county authorities suggests that the spatial pattern in district tax rates is not simply driven by spatially auto correlated shocks

the digital provide information technology market performance and welfare in the south indian fisheries sector when information is limited or costly agents are unable to engage in optimal arbitrage excess price dispersion across markets can arise and goods may not be allocated efficiently in this setting information technologies may improve market performance and increase welfare between 1997 and 2001 mobile phone service was introduced throughout kerala a state in india with a large fishing industry using microlevel survey data we show that the adoption of mobile phones by fishermen and wholesalers was associated with a dramatic reduction in price dispersion the complete elimination of waste and near perfect adherence to the law of one price both consumer and producer welfare increased

how is the liberalization of food markets progressing market integration and transaction costs in subsistence economies we propose a modification of baulch s parity bounds model to measure the market integration of food markets in developing countries instead of extrapolating a single observation of transaction costs we estimate transaction costs predicted transaction costs compare well with survey data of traders probabilities of market regimes computed on the basis of predicted transaction costs fluctuate significantly and do not support fixed regime probabilities over time the probability of market integration with trade decreases consistently during food shortages increasing either the probability of no trade or loss making trade or the probability of profitable but unexploited trade opportunities the data further support a negative trend in market integration with trade

mobile money remittances and household welfare panel evidence from rural uganda access to financial services is crucial for development as it enhances resource mobilization needed for productive investment and facilitates consumption smoothing with a vast majority of adult ugandans having no access to formal financial services mobile money is expected to bridge this gap especially in rural areas this financial product allows users to make financial transactions using their mobile phones within five years of its inception in uganda since 2009 the mobile money service has been used by over 35 of the adult population and the rate of penetration is rapidly increasing we investigate its impact on household welfare using panel data covering 846 rural households using a combination of household fixed effects instrumental variable and propensity score matching methods we find a positive and significant effect of mobile money access on household welfare measured by real per capita consumption the mechanism of this impact is the facilitation of remittances user households are more likely to receive remittances receive remittances more frequently and the total value received is significantly higher than that of non user households we attribute this impact on the reduction in transaction transport and time costs associated with mobile phone based financial transactions our results are robust to changes in model specifications and alternative explanations

the determinants of municipal tax rates in british columbia in this paper we study the regional pattern of municipal business property tax rates in the province of british columbia reduced form tax setting equations produce some evidence that municipal governments respond to tax changes in neighbouring jurisdictions a joint investigation of the determinants of tax base and municipal taxation decisions however reveals that it is difficult to interpret this response as arising primarily out of competition over tax base there is also some evidence that municipal tax rates are sensitive to taxes set on the same base by super municipal bodies jel classification c33 h71 les determinants des taux d imposition municipale en colombie britannique dans ce memoire les auteurs etudient le pattern regional des taux d imposition municipale sur la propriete fonciere commerciale dans la province de la colombie britannique on montre a l aide d un modele en forme reduite d equations de definition des taux d imposition que les gouvernements municipaux reagissent aux changements dans les taux d imposition dans leur voisinage cependant un examen conjoint des determinants de la base d imposition et des decisions municipales montre qu il est difficile d interpreter cette reaction comme emanant d une concurrence fiscale on montre aussi que les taux d imposition municipale sont sensibles aux niveaux de fiscalite imposes sur la meme base par les autorites supra municipales

does federalism lead to excessively high taxes the relative strengths of vertical and horizontal tax externalities turn on the balance between the interest responsiveness of the supply of savings and demand for capital the extent to which immobile factors are taxed by the states and the strength of preferences between federal and state expenditures the vertical externality will dominate if the aggregate tax base of the federation is responsible to the state tax instrument tax interactions in federations are more complex than has often been supposed

social networks and factor markets panel data evidence from ethiopia we investigate the role of an indigenous social network in ethiopia the iddir in facilitating factor market transactions among smallholder farmers we use detailed longitudinal household survey data and employ fixed effects estimation approaches to identify the effect of iddir membership on factor market transactions among farmers we find that joining an iddir network improves households access to land labour and credit transactions our findings also hint that iddir networks may crowd out borrowing from local moneylenders locally referred as arata abedari a relatively expensive credit source these results suggest that non market institutions can play crucial roles in facilitating market transactions

mobile money agricultural marketing and off farm income in uganda mobile money mm services can contribute to welfare gains in smallholder farm households previous research showed that one important pathway for these mm related welfare gains is through higher remittances received from relatives and friends here the role of other impact pathways is examined especially focusing on agricultural marketing and off farm economic activities the analysis builds on panel data from smallholder coffee farmers in uganda regression models show that the adoption of mm technology has contributed to higher household incomes and consumption levels off farm income gains are identified to be an important pathway also beyond remittances typical off farm income sources are small businesses in trade transport and handicrafts which benefit from novel savings and money transfer opportunities through mm in terms of agricultural marketing mm users sell a larger proportion of their coffee as shelled beans to buyers in high value markets instead of selling to local traders immediately after harvest mm services help to reduce cash constraints and facilitate transactions with buyers from outside local regions in conclusion mm can contribute to rural development through various important pathways analysis of adoption patterns suggests that mm services are socially inclusive

interaction between federal taxation and horizontal tax competition theory and evidence from canada the aim of this paper is to determine to what extent and how federal taxes affect local tax decisions testing the impact of an increase in the federal tax on horizontal tax competition with canada us data for 1984 1994 it finds evidence that an increase in federal tax makes horizontal tax reactions weaker this is because an increase in federal tax raises the cost in terms of utility of income of a unit increase in the province s tax rate on the methodological side it is possible to estimate the impact of the federal tax on the fiscal policy of the province without neglecting control for year effects which cannot be used in the empirical literature because they are perfectly collinear with the federal tax

local fiscal competition an application to sales taxation with multiple federations abstract local sales tax rates influence the location of retail activity this paper develops a theory and empirical identification strategy for studying sales tax competition with multiple federations as exemplified by multiple counties each containing several cities in addition to strategic interactions with nearby cities and a city s own county city tax rates are influenced by the tax rates of neighboring counties cities react heterogeneously to own county sales tax rates depending on distance to the county border using data on the driving time to county borders and a comprehensive cross section of local sales tax rates i exploit variation in proximity to county borders to identify vertical fiscal competition cities located near county borders react more intensely to their county s tax rate in comparison to towns at the interior an increase in the neighboring county tax rate raises city tax rates in nearby counties

new ways to assess and enhance land registry sustainability evidence from rwanda summary rwanda has recently implemented a nation wide program of first time land regularization ltr that many believe set new standards for the region we use administrative data combined with household survey and program rollout information to explore sustainability of the infrastructure created in this process including the impact of public efforts to increase registration of subsequent transactions we find that the program provided significant benefits in terms of gender equality and credit access while opening up new opportunities in terms of land taxation or land use planning but that high level of rural informality may undermine these in the medium to long term while public efforts to decentralize service provision helped to significantly reduce informality additional efforts are likely to be needed to ensure sustainability of the registry we discuss how rwanda can further move in this direction and draw out implications for other countries considering first time adjudication and registration of property rights

productivity effects of land rental market operation in ethiopia evidence from a matched tenant landlord sample as countries increasingly strive to transform their economies from agriculture based into a diversified one land rental will become of greater importance it will thus be critical to complement research on the efficiency of specific land rental arrangements such as sharecropping with an inquiry into the broader productivity impacts of the land rental market plot level data for a matched landlord tenant sample in an environment where sharecropping dominates allow us to explore both issues the author fined that pure output sharing leads to significantly lower levels of efficiency that can be attenuated by monitoring while the inefficiency disappears if inputs are shared as well rentals transfer land to more productive producers but realization of this productivity advantage is prevented by the inefficiency of contractual arrangements suggesting changes that would prompt adoption of different contractual arrangements could have significant benefits

analysing agricultural land markets as organisations an empirical study in poland abstract analysing markets as organisations governed by a network of relational contracts that establish rules for market participants increases our understanding of exchange processes on the basis of three land market case studies in poland it is shown that market rules are shaped by the identity as well as constellation of actors and are designed to serve the common objectives of the members of the organisation market by decreasing transaction costs and protecting group interests

can mobile phones improve gender equality and nutrition panel data evidence from farm households in uganda abstract since 2000 mobile phone technologies have been widely adopted in many developing countries existing research shows that use of mobile phones has improved smallholder farmers market access and income beyond income mobile phones can possibly affect other dimensions of social welfare such as gender equality and nutrition such broader social welfare effects have hardly been analyzed up till now here we address this research gap using panel data from smallholder farm households in uganda regression results show that mobile phone use is positively associated with household income women empowerment food security and dietary quality these results also hold after controlling for possible confounding factors in addition to the household level analysis we also look at who within the household actually uses mobile phones gender disaggregation suggests that female mobile phone use has stronger positive associations with social welfare than if males alone use mobile phones we cautiously conclude that equal access to mobile phones cannot only foster economic development but can also contribute to gender equality food security and broader social development further research is required to corroborate the findings and analyze the underlying causal mechanisms

adoption of improved wheat varieties and impacts on household food security in ethiopia this article evaluates the impact of the adoption of improved wheat varieties on food security using a recent nationally representative dataset of over 2000 farm households in ethiopia we adopted endogenous switching regression treatment effects complemented with a binary propensity score matching methodology to test robustness and reduced selection bias stemming from both observed and unobserved characteristics we expand this further with the generalized propensity score gps approach to evaluate the effects of continuous treatment on the response of the outcome variables we find a consistent result across models indicating that adoption increases food security and farm households that did adopt would also have benefited significantly had they adopted new varieties this study supports the need for vital investments in agricultural research for major food staples widely consumed by the poor and efforts to improve access to modern varieties and services policies that enhance diffusion and adoption of modern wheat varieties should be central to food security strategies in ethiopia

does sharecropping affect long term investment evidence from west bengal s tenancy reforms in india land reform has been high on the political agenda since independence in 1947 and early efforts at abolishing intermediaries are widely credited with having brought about significant social benefits the most prominent type is tenancy reform as it does not extinguish landlords ownership rights tenants who may have benefited from rent ceilings and cannot be evicted still have to pay annual share rent this weakness of rights may fail to create the incentives for effort supply and long term investment that have underpinned the success of land reforms elsewhere effectively adding a dynamic inefficiency to the disincentives created by the marshallian inefficiency of sharecropping this could imply that despite the high political price of implementing land reform in india the schemes so far have failed to reach their productivity and poverty reduction potential

impact of tissue culture banana technology on farm household income and food security in kenya while tissue culture tc technology for vegetative plant propagation is gradually gaining in importance in africa rigorous assessment of broader welfare effects for adopting smallholder farm households is lacking using survey data and accounting for selection bias in technology adoption we analyze the impact of tc banana technology on household income and food security in kenya to assess food security outcomes we employ the household food insecurity access scale hfias a tool that has not been used for impact assessment before estimates of treatment effects models show that tc banana adoption combined with improved crop management causes considerable increases in farm and household income technology adoption also reduces relative food insecurity in a significant way these results indicate that tc technology can be welfare enhancing for adopting farm households adoption should be further promoted through upscaling appropriate technology delivery systems

gender agricultural production and the theory of the household virtually all models of the household assume that the allocation of resources is pareto efficient within many african households agricultural production occurs on many plots controlled by different members of the household pareto efficiency implies that factors should be allocated efficiently across these plots i find in contrast that plots controlled by women are farmed much less intensively than similar plots within the household controlled by men the estimates imply that about 6 percent of output is lost because of inefficient factor allocation within the household the paper suggests a new approach to modeling intrahousehold allocation consistent with the empirical results

in search of yardstick competition a spatial analysis of italian municipality property tax setting this paper uses italian local government data to test for fiscal interaction arising from yardstick competition to discriminate yardstick competition from competing theories of strategic interaction we account for the incentives and constraints generated by the electoral system in particular for the presence of term limits and the size of the majorities supporting the mayors estimation of a local property tax setting equation uncovers positive spatial auto correlation in local tax rates of jurisdictions where the mayors run for re election in uncertain contests while interaction is absent where either mayors face a term limit or are backed by large majorities

do countries compete over corporate tax rates this paper tests whether oecd countries compete with each other over corporate taxes in order to attract investment we develop two models with firm mobility countries compete only over the statutory tax rate or the effective average tax rate while with capital mobility countries compete only over the effective marginal tax rate we estimate the parameters of reaction functions using data from 21 countries between 1983 99 we find evidence that countries compete over all three measures but particularly over the statutory tax rate and the effective average tax rate this is consistent with a belief amongst governments that location choices by multinational firms are discrete we also find evidence of concave reaction functions consistent with the model outlined in the paper

is it enough evidence from a natural experiment in india s agriculture markets access to information and communication technologies icts such as mobile phone networks is widely known to improve market efficiency in this paper we examine whether access to timely and accurate information provided through ict applications has any additional impact using a detailed data set from reuters market light rml a text message service in india that provides daily price information to market participants we find that this information reduces the geographic price dispersion of crops in rural communities by an average of 12 over and above access to mobile phone technology and other means of communication to identify the effect of information on price dispersion we exploit a natural experiment where bulk text messages were banned unexpectedly across india for 12 days in 2010 we find that besides reducing geographic price dispersion rml also increases the rate at which prices converge across india over time we discuss the implications of this for development organizations and informat

pigou tiebout property taxation and the underprovision of local public goods abstract pigou s proposition that the use of distorting taxes rather than neutral head taxes reduces public service levels is examined in this paper a simple model with a national system of competing local governments is utilized to demonstrate that the use of a distorting property tax on mobile capital decreases the level of residential public services the case where public services are an intermediate producer good is also considered

face value information and signaling in an illegal market author affiliation trevon d logan the ohio state university and nber 410 arps hall 1945 north high street columbus oh 43210 usa e mail logan 155 osu edu corresponding author manisha shah dagger university of california los angeles and nber 3250 public affairs building los angeles ca 91195 e mail manishashah ucla edu acknowledgment we would like to thank george akerlof rodney j andrews raj arunachalam andrea a cann lisa d cook brahima coulibaly scott cunningham angus deaton avinash dixit claudia d goldin karla hoff joseph kaboski simon loertscher joseph m newhard christina paxson john pepper ruth peterson patricia reagan seth sanders ebonya washington nathan woodfork three anonymous referees and numerous seminar participants who provided helpful suggestions the usual disclaimer applies 1 introductionformal enforcement is often seen as the cornerstone of contract design while information can overcome the problems of asymmetric information akerlof 1970 spence 1973 principals are unlikely to engage agents unless the information conveyed is credible and verifiable while the use of formal institutions such as courts is rare relative to the volume of transactions the standard argument is that the presence of formal institutions gives contracts their authority in schelling s 1960 classic terminology the power to sue and be sued gives parties the ability to make credible enforceable commitments a prerequisite to most transactions without means of redress the information that principals and agents share would a priori have little value numerous studies have documented how informal networks long term relationships and reputations overcome problems of asymmetric information indeed researchers have developed large literatures that look at limited contractibility hart 1995 tirole 1999 and situations in which formal enforcement is costly greif 1993 to consider the additional mechanisms that must be in place if existing institutions are lacking or unable to mediate disputes however the literature has not developed an empirical answer to whether the value of information without formal enforcement approaches its value when formal enforcement is present in this article we ask two questions i are formal enforcement mechanisms necessary for the information that principals and agents share to have value ii if not then what is the value of information in an environment without formal enforcement ideally we would like to analyze an illegal market to answer these questions illegal markets rule out the possibility that market function or variation in the information environment is due to the presence of formal enforcement similarly in an illegal market the information that principals and agents convey to one another may not be credible or verifiable and misrepresentation is not likely to be punished the problem is that most illegal markets have coarse information environments it is therefore challenging to obtain information on prices quantities and consumer and producer behavior making empirical answers to these questions especially difficult we overcome these problems by analyzing an illegal market with a rich information structure the online market for male sex work we begin with a general description of this seldom studied market we then document the ways in which the clients of male sex workers informally police the market by informing other clients of deceptive sex workers and by reviewing sex workers on independent client owned web sites the informal policing in the market raises the cost of misrepresentation for would be fraudulent escorts and rewards the truthful self disclosure of honest escorts encouraging truthful self disclosure we further exploit this institutional knowledge to identify the specific information clients treat as signals of escort quality

identifying local tax mimicking with administrative borders and a policy reform abstract this paper exploits an exogenous reform of the local fiscal equalization scheme in the german state of north rhine westphalia nrw in 2003 to identify tax mimicking by municipalities in the neighboring state of lower saxony nds the reform caused municipalities in nrw to increase their business and property tax rates i study within the difference in difference dd and the spatial lag sl frameworks whether municipalities in nds bordering nrw did react to the exogenous tax increases by nrw municipalities the dd and sl results suggest that there are no interactions in tax rates in contrast traditional sl regressions that rely on variation in neighbors demographic and political characteristics for identification provide strong evidence for immediate strategic interactions these results indicate that most of the existing literature overestimates the importance of local tax mimicking

consumer s surplus without apology the purpose of this paper is to settle the controversy surrounding consumer s surplus and by so doing to validate its use as a tool of welfare economics i will show that observed consumer s surplus can be rigorously utilized to estimate the unobservable compensating and equivalent variations the correct theoretical measures of the welfare impact of changes in prices and income on an individual i derive precise upper and lower bounds on the percentage errors of approximating the compensating and equivalent variations with consumer s surplus these bounds can be explicitly calculated from observable demand data and it is clear that in most applications the error of approximation will be very small in fact the error will often be overshadowed by the errors involved in estimating the demand curve the results in no way depend upon arguments about the constancy of the marginal utility of income consequently this paper supplies specific empirical criteria which can replace the apologetic caveats frequently employed by those who presently apply consumer s surplus moreover the results imply that consumer s surplus is usually a very good approximation to the appropriate welfare measures to preview below i establish the validity of these rules of thumb for a

infrastructure and rural development insights from a grameen bank village phone initiative in bangladesh abstract the intention of the present paper is to evaluate the role of telecommunications within the contexts of rural development in general and of poverty reduction in particular bangladesh has been selected as a case study due to the uniqueness it displayed in an innovative program for expanded telecom infrastructure in which grameen bank gb of bangladesh the village based micro finance organisation leased cellular mobile phones to successful members gb calls these phones village pay phones vpps the effects of vpps are assessed from two angles sellers of services telephone lessees owners and buyers of services villagers the findings of the study lead to two basic conclusions first pursuance of pragmatic policies can turn telephones into production goods especially through lowering transaction costs and second the services originating from telephones in villages are likely to deliver even more benefits to the poor than to the non poor the vpps also seem to have perceptible and positive effects on the empowerment and social status of phone leasing women and their households for villagers in general phones offer additional non economic benefits such as improved law enforcement more rapid and effective communications during disasters stronger kinship bonding etc gb s style of managing communications can help significantly to expand access to this vital information input for all segments of the population reduce inequality and thus enhance the broad based pro poor orientation of rural development activities

strategic fiscal interaction across borders evidence from french and german local governments along the rhine valley abstract this article contributes to the literature on local tax interactions its novelty lies in its focus on the interactions of local governments across national borders we use panel data for the french and german municipalities in the rhine valley for the period 2000 2007 the local governments of each country influence firms overall tax burdens but the tax instruments available at the local level differ we estimate panel models that distinguish between the effects of competing municipalities belonging to the same country and belonging to the other country our empirical model shows that local jurisdictions along borders choose their business tax rates based on those of their domestic neighbors and that foreign fiscal policy does not have an impact on the local domestic tax setting behavior in these contexts

sustainability standards gender and nutrition among smallholder farmers in uganda abstractsustainability standards are gaining in importance in global markets for high value foods while previous research has shown that participating farmers in developing countries may benefit through income gains nutrition impacts have hardly been analysed we use survey data from smallholder coffee farmers in uganda certified under fairtrade organic and utz to analyse impacts on food security and dietary quality estimates of instrumental variable models and simultaneous equation systems show that certification increases calorie and micronutrient consumption mainly through higher incomes and improved gender equity in certified households women have greater control of coffee production and monetary revenues from sales

risk coping land tenure and land markets an overview of the literature over the last decades a significant amount of literature has been published on informal risk coping in developing countries in this paper we review how informal risk coping has been addressed in the land tenure literature from two main perspectives a first stream of research looks at how customary tenure and communal property perform key informal risk coping functions a second subset of this literature analyses how informal risk coping creates land market imperfections through sharecropping or distress sales the segmentation of the literature results from the demsetzian property rights framework further research on risk coping and land tenure would benefit from examining recent work on property regimes

incumbent behavior vote seeking tax setting and yardstick competition this paper develops a model of the political economy of tax setting in a multijurisdictional world where voters choices and incumbent behavior are determined simultaneously voters are assumed to make comparisons between jurisdictions to overcome political agency problems this forces incumbents into a yardstick competition in which they care about what other incumbents are doing we provide a theoretical framework and empirical evidence using u s state data from 1960 to 1988 the results are encouraging to the view that vote seeking and tax setting are tied together through the nexus of yardstick competition

off the hook measuring the impact of mobile telephone use on economic development of households in uganda using copulas it is now widely understood that mobile phone use has beneficial effects on development in developing countries but little is known about the effects at the household level we examine the impact of mobile telephone use on household income using a unique cross sectional data set from uganda we use a novel econometric technique to handle endogeneity which models the correlation between the endogenous regressor and the error term with copulas to the best of our knowledge this is the first time that the copula method has been applied in the economic development literature we find a positive impact of mobile phone use on income

the effects of politics on local tax setting evidence from france this paper investigates the hypothesis that local politics has an impact on local taxation in the french public sector by using a cross sectional dataset on departments in 1999 political variables are included in a tax setting equation to provide empirical evidence whether local governments in france adopt business taxation behaviour closer to the leviathan government hypothesis with higher tax rates when political competition decreases or to the partisan government hypothesis with differences in tax rates according to partisan variables it is shown that the wider the seat s margin the lower the tax rates and that this cut is weaker in the case of a left wing local majority than a right wing majority it is therefore concluded that the partisan government hypothesis is more supported by the french data than the leviathan one even after controlling for tax interdependencies between departments

a transaction level analysis of spatial arbitrage the role of habit attention and electronic trading despite the central role of arbitrage in finance and economic theory there is limited evidence of the factors that create and eliminate arbitrage opportunities how often arbitrage occurs and how profitable it is we address these gaps via a transaction level analysis of spatial arbitrage in the wholesale automotive market we investigate why arbitrage opportunities are created by analyzing how sellers choose where to sell vehicles we find that the attention sellers pay to the distribution of a vehicle is negatively related to the probability that it is arbitraged arbitrage occurs in approximately 1 of transactions although electronic trading is making arbitrage less prevalent by improving buyer seller matching across locations arbitrage yields a 5 6 return on average although arbitrageurs take a loss 14 of the time our results contribute to the literature on arbitrage the effect of attention allocation on market outcomes and the effect of information technology on market efficiency this paper was accepted by brad barber teck ho and terrance odean special issue editors

credit and land contracting a test of the theory of sharecropping author s das n de janvry a sadoulet e abstract 2019 the author s 2019 published by oxford university press on behalf of the agricultural and applied economics association all rights reserved for permissions please email journals permissions oup com choice of a share vs fixed rent land rental contract has figured prominently in the theory of industrial organization this theory tells us that while a share contract is inefficient in a first best world it may be the preferred option under second best conditions it has thus predicted the existence of sharecropping as the potentially preferred contract under conditions of liquidity constraint rigorous empirical evidence is however still lacking on this basic contribution of theory we use a randomized experiment in a credit program for landless workers and marginal farmers organized by brac in bangladesh to show that increased access to credit has a large positive effect on the choice of fixed rent over share rent contracts both in terms of number of contracts and area contracted as predicted by theory the magnitude of this shift away from sharecropping is enhanced when the tenant is less exposed to risk development programs that facilitate access to credit to potential tenants can thus help them take more efficient land rental contracts

trading off nutrition and education a panel data analysis of the dissimilar welfare effects of organic and fairtrade standards millions of smallholder farmers in developing countries participate in different types of sustainability standards a growing body of literature has analyzed the welfare effects with mixed results yet there are important knowledge gaps first most existing studies have looked at the effects of one standard in one country when comparing between studies it is unclear whether dissimilar outcomes are the result of different standards or different local conditions second most studies have used cross section data so that selectivity issues remain a challenge third existing work has primarily analyzed effects in terms of purely economic indicators such as prices and income ignoring other dimensions of household welfare we address these shortcomings using panel data from small scale coffee producers in uganda and comparing the effects of two of the most popular sustainability standards namely organic and fairtrade welfare effects are analyzed in terms of household expenditures child education and nutrition results show that organic and fairtrade both have positive effects on total consumption expenditures however notable differences are observed in terms of the other outcomes organic contributes to improved nutrition but has no effect on education for fairtrade it is exactly the other way around we explore the mechanisms behind these differences

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

vertical externalities in tax setting evidence from gasoline and cigarettes abstract a common feature of federal systems is that tax bases are joint property consequently state and federal tax setting decisions are interdependent our aim here is to put forward a rudimentary theoretical analysis of this phenomenon and to use the theory as a framework for econometrically estimating the magnitude of the responses we find that when the federal government increases taxes there is a significant positive response of state taxes for example a 10 cent per gallon increase in the federal tax rate on gasoline leads to a 3 2 cent increase in the state tax rate

expected product market reforms and technology adoption by senegalese onion producers author s bernard t de janvry a mbaye s sadoulet e abstract the authors 2017 we assess the responsiveness of senegalese onion producers to their knowledge of expected changes in product market conditions whereby onions would no longer be sold based on volume but rather on weight and with labeling certifying quality a village level randomized information campaign on the upcoming introduction of these reforms induced significant investments by farmers into quality enhancing inputs delays in the actual introduction of scales enabled us to rigorously identify positive price effects from these investments our results point to the importance of farmers expectations regarding the improved functioning of product markets in triggering technology adoption

measurement of consumer gains from market stabilization for most cases of practical significance in which partial equilibrium analysis is appropriate there is little difference between exact measures of consumer gains from market stabilization and approximations such as expected change in marshallian or hicksian consumer surplus careful specification of the nature of stabilization is more crucial than the choice of welfare measure it is important to represent correctly the demand curvature and supply response and to determine whether general equilibrium responses can be ignored in any event an improved analytical approximation and a simple numerical method for calculating the exact measures make it unnecessary to rely on suspect measures

personal networks and nonagricultural employment the case of a farming village in the philippines abstract this article based on an intensive village survey in the philippines analyzes the effects of personal networks on rural villagers access to nonagricultural occupations and the terms of employment given to them a key finding is that personal networks are selectively used to reduce transaction costs and their impacts on employment conditions vary by size and by location of enterprises we find that when villagers are employed in unskilled work at small enterprises those who use family relative networks receive wage premiums however if we limit our sample to small enterprises located near our study village the family relative network premiums become insignificant presumably because of the overriding influence of the community wide network within a narrow local community contrary to the case of small enterprises unskilled workers wages at large enterprises are not much affected by personal networks but are largely determined by years of schooling and work experience the recent developmen

identifying strategic interactions in swedish local income tax policies abstract this paper uses data on swedish local governments to test for strategic interaction in local tax setting we make use of a number of indirect predictions from the theories of tax competition and yardstick competition in order to test for the presence of strategic interaction in these forms using such additional predictions of the theories serves a twofold purpose first it helps us establish if the spatial coefficient is due to strategic interactions or merely reflecting spatial error correlation and second it helps identify the source of interaction the analysis provides strong evidence for spatial correlation in tax rates among swedish local governments moreover we find weak evidence of tax competition effects in the setting of tax rates

getting prices right the impact of the market information service in uganda the market information service project in uganda collected data on prices for the main agricultural commodities in major market centers and disseminated the information through local fmradio stations in various districts exploiting the variation across space between households with and without access to a radio we find evidence suggesting that better informed farmers managed to bargain for higher farm gate prices on their surplus production

tax competition and tax structure in open federal economies evidence from oecd countries with implications for the european union tax competition arguments suggest that governments that operate in an open economy such as local governments should not and will not rely on non benefit taxes such as the income tax yet we observe reliance on income taxes by local governments in many countries and such reliance changes over time evidence from a panel data set of 13 oecd countries over the period 1975 1984 suggests that competition between levels of government resulting in a vertical fiscal externality and between levels of government at the same level resulting in a horizontal fiscal externality provide some economic rationale for these changes moreover the evidence indicates that the vertical and horizontal fiscal externalities interact these results have some interesting implications for fiscal policy in the european union particulary as the eu continues to evolve one implication for the eu is that enlargement that increases tax base disparities within the eu and is not accompanied by an eu level income tax will tend to lower national income tax rates although this must be qualified because it also depends on the mobility of the population a second implication is that fiscal expansion of the eu to include an eu levelincome tax may tend to lower the reliance of national governments on income taxes through the vertical externality but may also tend to equalize tax bases across countries and so increase reliance on national income taxes through the horizontal externality

the meaning of kinship in sharecropping contracts analysis of a household survey from the philippines shows that the behavior of sharecroppers with a kinship relation with their landlord is not affected by the disincentive effects of product and factor sharing while behavior of the other sharecroppers responds to the contract terms we characterize the meaning of kinship ties through a survey of opinion conducted among tenants the survey shows that kin landlords help or are expected to help more frequently in case of emergency than other landlords and they do so with a wider range of instruments providing the incentive for cooperative behavior in sharecropping contracts among kin

local and personal networks in employment and the development of labor markets evidence from the cut flower industry in ethiopia summary we examine the roles of local and personal networks in the employment process and the emergence and development of the labor market in ethiopia s growing cut flower industry using primary survey data of 320 workers randomly sampled from all 64 farms we find that workers who were recruited informally using the social ties were paid less than the formally recruited workers at hiring however these workers quickly increased their productivity and the effect of social ties on wages disappeared over time further we find that the development of labor market for this newly emerged industry took place particularly within the industrial cluster

insecure land rights and share tenancy evidence from madagascar most studies of tenurial insecurity focus on its effects on investment this paper studies the hitherto unexplored relationship between tenurial insecurity and land tenancy contracts based on distinct features of formal law and customary rights in madagascar this paper augments the canonical model of sharecropping by making the strength of the landlord s property right increasing in the amount of risk she bears within the contract using data on landlords subjective perceptions in rural madagascar empirical tests support the hypothesis that insecure property rights drive contract choice but offer little support in favor of the canonical risk sharing hypothesis