micro incentives and municipal behavior political decentralization and fiscal federalism in argentina and mexico summary this article analyzes the mixed results of political and fiscal decentralization in latin america by comparing taxing and spending policies in six cities in argentina and mexico consistent with previous studies we find that decentralization has been frustrated by overconcentration of power at the provincial level and large vertical fiscal imbalances though we characterize these as functional elements in a system of redistributive policy making that benefits a wide array of provincial and municipal actors we seek to add a new dimension to the literature by arguing that micro level incentives conditions and circumstances particular to specific places are more important determinants of municipal behavior than macro level structures those policy and institutional changes intended to make officials more responsive to local conditions federalism local elections intergovernmental transfers and own source revenues we conclude that the theory of decentralization relies on a flawed conception of the causal mechanisms that are hypothesized to create responsiveness in local officials

a note on discount rate policy and the variability of discount window borrowing abstract the purpose of this note is to evaluate the appropriate discount rate policy rules consistent with minimization of the variability of borrowing at the federal reserve discount window in the context of goodfriend s 1983 model of the bank borrowing decision it is demonstrated that either a penalty rate or a subsidy rate policy will produce minimized variability of borrowing so long as the subsidy rate adjusts point for point to changes in the value of the federal funds rate these policy rules are compatible with a policy procedure designed to target borrowed or non borrowed reserves if the fed does not adhere to one of these specific rules minimization of borrowing variability requires an open market procedure in which the fed pegs the federal funds rate

food insecurity poverty and the malawian starter pack fresh start or false start abstract chronic food insecurity and chronic poverty are closely related in malawi since independence in 1964 national food security has been a key policy objective however until the 1990s less emphasis was placed on the household dimensions of food security and its links with chronic poverty in the last decade a number of initiatives have been used in malawi to tackle the issue of household food insecurity one of the most controversial has been the starter pack programme launched in 1998 initially consisting of a free handout of packs of improved maize seed legumes and fertiliser to every small holder farm household in malawi the scheme under donor pressure was subsequently scaled down to become a form of targeted social safety net programme this paper analyses the strengths and weakness of both the original programme and its scaled down version and assesses the reason for the considerable opposition to the programme from malawi s donor community although starter pack is no longer operative in malawi the malawian experience is used to derive lessons for other countries where household food insecurity is an important dimension of chronic poverty

credit market constraints consumption smoothing and the accumulation of durable production assets in low income countries investments in bullocks in india in this paper we formulate and estimate a finite horizon structural dynamic model of agricultural investment behavior that incorporates the major features of low income agricultural environments income uncertainty constraints on borrowing and rental markets and the use of investment assets to generate income and smooth consumption the model is fit to longitudinal indian household data on farm profits bullock stocks and pump sets the estimated structural parameters are used to assess the effects on the life cycle accumulation of bullocks agricultural profits and welfare associated with complete markets and bullock liquidity and with second best policies that provide assured sources of income to farmers and weather insurance

the economy wide impacts and risks of malawi s farm input subsidy program we estimate the impact of malawi farm input subsidy programme using an economywide approach we find potentially substantial net benefits with indirect benefits accounting for about two fifths of total benefits due to these indirect benefits the cut off

expenditures and receipts testing for causality in state and local government finances the results of our tests indicate similarities between the expenditure tax receipt relations of state governments to those previously reported for the federal government in manage and marlow 1986 the results reported here indicate support for the hypothesis that tax receipts cause expenditures at the state level of government for tests utilizing symmetric lag structures ranging from three to five years state expenditures appear to follow state tax receipts for the shortest lag length 2 2 the determination of bidirectional causality does not make us reject the hypothesis that higher spending levels result from higher revenue levels rather the causality appears to be in both directions for the shortest lag length

cash crop liberalization and poverty alleviation in africa evidence from malawi this article uses the case of burley tobacco liberalization in malawi to investigate the efficacy of cash crop liberalization as an instrument for poverty alleviation in sub saharan africa the principal justification for cash crop liberalization is that markets allow farm households to increase their incomes by producing that which provides the highest return to their productive resources and use the cash to buy consumption goods using a latent welfare model we find that households that selected to grow cash crops had higher incomes than those that did not grow cash crops however we also find that due to the lumpiness and seasonality of cash crop incomes higher household incomes while increasing food purchases did not significantly affect per capita food intake irrespective of participation in cash crops for much of the cropping season rural households seem to rely more on nonfarm income for expenditure and consumption smoothing

the federal funds market under bank deregulation the introduction of competitive interest rates on deposits is shown to effect the optimal decisions of banks by altering their optimal forecast of the federal funds rate the movement toward co mpetitive deposit rates increases the size of the monetary base neces sary for the fed to maintain its deposit targets when deposits and the monetary base are substitutes in addition there is less uncertainty in the federal funds market under competitive deposit rates when deposits and the monetary base are substitutes and the source of uncertainty is not from the supply of deposits copyright 1987 by ohio state university press

discount window borrowing across federal reserve districts evidence under contemporaneous reserve accounting abstract in recent years bank borrowing at the discount window has been less reliably related to the spread between the federal funds rate and the discount rate complicating the implementation of the borrowed reserves targeting procedure of the federal reserve this paper investigates borrowing across federal reserve districts to see if there are significant differences in borrowing behavior across bank size and discount window administrations the results suggest that borrowing behavior does differ across districts that standard borrowing models are least satisfactory in explaining the borrowing of large banks and that borrowing behavior changed after the 1987 stock market crash the gains in explanatory power from disaggregation however are not large

the demand for borrowed reserves a switching regression model a microeconomic model of bank demand for borrowed reserves from the federal reserve is developed based upon constrained cost minimization the derived demand function was found to correspond to behavior appropriate to the unknown switchpoint switching regression problem when estimated parameters generally conformed to theoretical expectations the model was also tested for existence of switching regression behavior against a model similar to goldfeld and kane 12 significance exceeded 99 in all cases with the advent of reserve intermediate targeting it appears especially necessary to reinvestigate the behavior determining this important source of reserves with the advent of reserve intermediate targeting as of october 6 1979 it appears especially necessary to reinvestigate the behavior determining one source of these reserves borrowings from the discount window although the behavior of borrowed reserves has concerned researchers since the 1920s interest in the subject generally waned after 1970 the reason has much to do with the studies of polakoff 21 and goldfeld and kane 12 polakoff develops a structural model for discount window borrowing based upon the individual bank minimizing its costs among alternative borrowing sources adapting the seminal work of turner 29 goldfeld and kane extend and estimate polakoff s original model because of their well developed microeconomic theory seemingly accurate empirical adjustments and proxy variables and excellent all around empirical results goldfeld and kane s study is widely hailed as a leading study in the field of borrowed reserve demand evidence exists through studies such as keir 18 that the federal reserve continues to use this same basic model in this study a borrowed reserve demand function is derived using a constrained minimum cost setup included in the cost of discount window borrowing is an implicit cost function reflecting bank reluctance to borrow from the discount window caused by federal reserve surveillance the derived demand function found in section i conforms to behavior appropriate to a switching regression model in this case switching occurs dependent upon the size of the interest rate spread relative to an unknown switchpoint after making minor adjustments in section ii the model is estimated employing monthly data from 1955 78 these results and the tests for the existence of

politicians as experts electoral control and fiscal restraints we propose an argument for fiscal restraints that is based on the premise that the services of politicians are credence goods politicians are experts who specialize in observing the true state of the economy budget maximizing politicians are better informed than the electorate about the level of public spending necessary to manage public affairs voters who are able to observe the size of the budget but not the necessary level of spending affect the government s spending behavior via electoral control a fiscal restraint limits the maximum spending a government can choose we identify conditions under which such a fiscal restraint improves voter welfare and discuss the role of the political opposition as a second expert in situations in which the state of the economy requires a level of spending which exceeds the fiscal restraint

committee assignments constituent preferences and campaign contributions committee assignments constituent preferences and campaign constributions the familiar economic model of regulation as developed by stigler 1971 peltzman 1976 and becker 1983 posits an essentially frictionless market process for regulatory policy formation in which a single regulator legislator chooses policy to maximize net support from competing groups in this paper we extend the supply side of this model by considering the effect of legislative institutions and unorganized constituent preferences on the ability of incumbents in the house of representatives to serve specific interest groups we then test this formulation by examining the recent history of interest group campaign contributions to these legislators our theoretical model concentrates on how a legislator allocates time between serving specific interest groups outside his district and serving his constituency we do not model interest group decisions directly assuming simply that they purchase their desired amount of service from the lowest cost suppliers our model sorts legislators by the supply price at which they can serve a particular group this price depends on the preferences of the voters in the legislators district and the productivity of the legislator in producing policy service for each group 1 the empirical section tests the model by examining the pattern of interest group campaign contributions to house incumbents from 1978 through 1984 our regression analysis tends to confirm both implications of the theory first the pattern of campaign contributions from specific interest groups to legislators is shaped by the division of substantive legislative and regulatory jurisdictions represented by the system of house standing committees second voter preferences influence the pattern of contributions by affecting the supply price at which a legislator can offer policy to interest groups legislators with sympathetic or indifferent constituencies are able to offer a lower price and are therefore able to attract larger sums than those with hostile constituencies these results are important for two reasons first the influence of congressional institutions such as committees on policy is not widely accepted while several studies faith levins and tollison 1982 weingast and moran 1983 weingast 1984 grier 1989 and robert 1990 have documented the effects of changes in a particular committee on policies under its jurisdiction this work considers the jurisdiction of only a single committee in each case 2 by examining the linkages between congressional committees and political action committees pacs we investigate whether interest groups act as if committees have power second while the chicago model of regulation emphasizes correctly in our view that policy is the result of vote maximizing calculations and the incremental balancing nature of any equilibrium the model is imprecise about which sets of preferences are most important in determining the levels of policy or the size of changes in policies focusing on committees promotes a parsimonious specification of both the political players members of the relevant committee rather than the entire congress and the pivotal voters committee members constituencies more than the nation determining specific policy outcomes the paper is organized as follows section i reviews some issues on the nature and sources of committee influence in the u s congress the second section incorporates committee assignments into a theory of decision making by interest group investors sections iii and iv describe our data and estimation technique and present the empirical results the fifth and final section discusses some implications and conclusions of this research i committee power in congress legislators differ substantively by virtue of their committee assignments committees in congress and particularly in the house of representatives possess disproportionate power over the policy areas in their respective jurisdictions have the right to hold hearings and recommend budget allocations for the bureaus in their jurisdiction goodwin 1970

using evidence of household income diversification to inform study of the rural nonfarm labor market in africa abstract the labor market literature in developing countries has seldom drawn on the studies of rural household income diversification this paper draws on such studies to inform future study of the rural nonfarm labor market in africa the review of evidence provides some surprising departures from traditional images of nonfarm activities of rural households among the most striking is the dominant importance in the majority of case study areas of nonfarm wage labor as compared to self employment of nonfarm sector earnings as compared to farm sector wage earnings and of local nonfarm earnings as compared to migration earnings the most worrying finding was the poor distribution of nonfarm earnings in rural areas despite the importance of these earnings to food security and farm investments this poor distribution implies significant entry barriers and market segmentation it is probable that this will lead over time to an increasingly skewed distribution of land and other assets in rural africa

administering the window abstract this paper presents a game theoretic model of nonprice rationing at the discount window it focuses on the federal reserve s use of frequency guidelines and harassment to deter excessive use of the discount window by banks the model investigates the role of the discount officer the effect of uncertainty and the credibility of threats used by the discount officer to deter excessive borrowing by banks

establishing property rights establishing secure property rights in transition economies amounts to solving two problems inefficiency structures of control rights over assets and poor contract enforcement politicians and bureaucrats still wield excessive control over assets which results in inefficient underinvestment by entrepreneurs corruption is one way of getting around political control but the drawbacks are considerable particularly the limited enforceability of corruption contracts more workable strategies for establishing property rights in transition economies are giving equity to the bureaucrats and other parties that have control reforming the civil service and removing bureaucratic control rights through privatization russia s experience shows how privatization combined with equity incentives for enterprise insiders transfers control rights from the bureaucrats and stimulates political and economic pressures to protect private property rights

measuring food insecurity the frequency and severity of coping strategies abstract defining and interpreting food security and measuring it in reliable valid and cost effective ways have proven to be stubborn problems facing researchers and programs intended to monitor food security risks this paper briefly reviews the conceptual and methodological literature on food insecurity measurment describes a particular method for distinguishing and measuring short term food insecurity at the household level and discusses ways of generalizing the method the method developed enumerates the frequency and severity of strategies relied on by urban households when faced with a short term insufficiency of food this method goes beyond more commonly used measures of caloric consumption to incorporate vulnerability elements of food insecurity as well as the deliberate actions of household decision makers when faced with food insufficiency

another look at yield spreads the role of liquidity liquidity plays an important role in explaining how banks determine their allocation of funds this paper examines whether this fact can explain yield spreads and the term structure of interest rates the paper models banks demand for liquidity in a manner similar to that used to study household need for liquidity namely by using a cash in advance type model the paper finds that the shadow price of the cash in advance constraint plays an important role in determining yield spreads the empirical part of the paper shows that the expectations hypothesis might be salvaged under the maintained hypothesis concerning the liquidity premium and risk premium

political decentralization and corruption evidence from around the world abstract how does political decentralization affect the frequency and costliness of bribe extraction by corrupt officials previous empirical studies using subjective indexes of perceived corruption and mostly fiscal indicators of decentralization have suggested conflicting conclusions in search of more precise findings we combine and explore two new data sources an original cross national data set on particular types of decentralization and the results of a firm level survey conducted in 80 countries about firms concrete experiences with bribery in countries with a larger number of government or administrative tiers and given local revenues a larger number of local public employees reported bribery was more frequent when local or central governments received a larger share of gdp in revenue bribery was less frequent overall the results suggest the danger of uncoordinated rent seeking as government structures become more complex

coping and resilience during the food fuel and financial crises how and how well have people with low incomes been coping with global economic volatility since 2008 this question is addressed through a synthesis of qualitative research in 17 countries on how selected groups of people coped with the local effects of the global food fuel and financial crises from 2008 2011 the data are a uniquely large body of qualitative evidence that afford insights into how people affected by a common global economic shock coped as it transmitted to their diverse social and economic contexts the paper describes and categorizes the impacts of coping responses used analyzing the distribution of the costs of coping the effects on social and gender relations and the sources of support including public policy non state support and informal social support the paper is organized as follows section one gives introduction section two sets out conceptual approaches to analyzing crisis coping section three describes the approach setting out the methodological advantages and limitations section four describes and categorizes the impacts and coping responses section five analyzes sources and types of support identified by the research section six draws concludes

near integration bank reluctance and discount window borrowing abstract this study puts forth stationarity considerations in explaining the observed breakdown between aggregate discount window borrowing and the spread between the federal funds rate and the discount rate during the post 1987 period tests with biweekly data indicate stationarity for adjustment borrowing but cannot reject the unit root for the spread the goodfriend dutkowsky dynamic implicit cost formulation can accommodate the contrasting stationarity properties structural restrictions are compatible with stationary borrowing and a stationary or near integrated spread while empirical findings from the static model indicate greater bank reluctance to borrow over time the dynamic model gives considerably less support

rights equity and economic efficiency the adelman morris premise that economic development and equity are incompatible is not supported by the evidence of a strong relationship between equality of rights and the income distribution the premise that equity requires the denial of individual rights and the affirmation of state control is an oxymoron what has been overlooked in the literature on growth and equity is the effect of the rights structure on both economic efficiency and on the income distribution the evidence is that free societies have much larger shares of income going to the middle 60 percent of the distribution than is observed in societies where men are not free to choose in politically open societies compared to politically closed regimes the share of income to the middle three quintiles is q2 10 7 vs 8 0 q3 16 0 vs 11 5 and q4 22 9 vs 17 9 in the aggregate the shares to the middle quintiles are 49 6 vs 37 4 in nations that obey the rule of law compared to regimes in which the rights of the state relative to the individual are paramount the comparisons are q2 11 2 vs 7 4 q3 16 3 vs 10 6 q4 23 0 vs 17 3 summing the three quintiles yields a comparison of 50 5 vs 35 3 in countries that have private property market allocation of resources and minimum intervention by the state compared to command economies the shares of income to the middle quintiles are q2 10 8 vs 8 0 q3 16 0 vs 11 1 and q4 22 8 vs 17 7 aggregated the shares of the middle class in regimes with high levels of economic liberty are 49 6 vs 36 8 for regimes with restricted private economic rights

assessing the relative performance of u k university technology transfer offices parametric and non parametric evidence abstract we present evidence on the relative performance of u k university technology transfer offices ttos using data envelopment analysis dea and stochastic frontier estimation sfe u k ttos are found to exhibit low levels of absolute efficiency there also appear to be decreasing returns to scale implying that ttos may need to be reconfigured into smaller units the development of regionally based sector focused ttos is also advised consistent with qualitative evidence from u s ttos we find that there is a need to upgrade the business skills and capabilities of u k tto managers and licensing officers

exploring seasonal poverty traps the six week window in southern malawi conventional wisdom in malawi holds that seasonal food deficits force smallholders to hire out their labour to buy food during the critical first six weeks after planting thereby reducing maize yields on their own fields and reinforcing poverty this model was tested empirically for the blantyre shire highlands using evidence from a panel survey and household case studies results showed no significant relationship between the supply of hired labour ganyu and the timeliness of weeding for maize and that timely weeding was not a significant determinant of household maize deficits this puzzle is explained by the diversification of the rural economy that has allowed households to develop alternative livelihood strategies to cope with maize deficits livelihood diversity helped poor households avoid the seasonal poverty trap and also helps explain the paradox of why the poorest region in malawi escaped the 2001 2002 famine

a probit analysis of the senate vote on gramm rudman the leviathan theory of government was seemingly contradicted when the u s congress passed the gramm rudman deficit reduction law this study analyzes the senate vote on gramm rudman to try to determine whether legislators acted in their own self interest a prisoner s dilemma argument explains how senators made themselves better off by limiting their own spending abilities a probit analysis shows how voting for deficit reduction was consistent with the personal incentives faced by individual legislators the eventual failure of gramm rudman to eliminate the deficit reveals a need to consider institutional as well as constitutional means of controlling government

discount window borrowing monetary policy and the post october 6 1979 federal reserve operating procedure abstract a demand schedule for discount window borrowing based on profit maximizing bank behavior is derived a feature of non price rationing at the discount window making longer duration borrowing more costly is shown to make lagged borrowing and expected future spreads between the federal funds rate and the discount rate relevant to the current borrowing decision consequently both the size of the coefficients in the borrowing functions as well as the form of the function itself depend on expected fed policy toward the spread the demand function for discount window borrowing provides the critical link by which non borrowed reserve control affects short term interest rates and ultimately the money supply under post october 6 1979 reserve targeting the analysis suggests some reasons why the fed has experienced difficulty in specifying estimating and utilizing a discount window borrowing function in the non borrowed reserve operating procedure

the power to tax analytical foundations of a fiscal constitution preface 1 taxation in constitutional perspective 2 natural government a model of leviathan 3 constraints on base and rate structure 4 the taxation of commodities 5 taxation through time income taxes capital taxes and public debt 6 money creation and taxation 7 the disposition of public revenues 8 the domain of politics 9 open economy federalism and taxing authority 10 toward authentic tax reform prospects and prescriptions epilogue notes selected bibliography index

leviathan in a dual economy this paper studies the policies of a leviathan state with an ambition to make money and to stay in power the economic framework is a developing country characterized by dual markets government revenue is raised by taxing the agricultural sector part of this revenue is offered to the politically influential urban population in the form of low productive but well paid public sector employment i calculate the optimal level of rural taxation from the point of view of the leviathan and investigate its effects on migration industrialization public sector employment and urban unemployment in different political scenarios

optimal central banker contracts and common agency this paper considers the contracting approach to centralbanking in a simple common agency model we suggest thatcentral banker contracts that do not consider the possibilityof more than one principal existing are incomplete contracts such incomplete contracts can be a poor form ofmonetary policy delegation under common agency we develop amodel with two principals society government and ageneric interest group whose objective conflicts withsociety s ex ante preferences by incorporating an inflationarybias we determine when the government offered orinterest group offered contract dominates the central banker sdecision the results largely depend on whether theinterest group offered contract is written in terms of outputor inflation

gender weather shocks and welfare evidence from malawi this paper explores the gender differentiated effects of weather shocks on households welfare in malawi using panel data aligned with climatic records results show that temperature shocks severely affect household welfare reducing consumption food consumption and daily caloric intake the negative welfare effects are more severe for households where land is solely managed by women a finding that sheds light on the gender unequal impact of temperature shocks our evidence also suggests that women s vulnerability to temperature shocks is linked to women s land tenure security as temperature shocks impact significantly women s welfare only in patrilineal districts where statistics show that investment in agricultural technologies is lower

interdependencies between transport fuel demand efficiency and quality an application to austria abstract this paper focuses on the interdependencies between technical efficiencies and energy demand which are often either treated in isolation or do not get the sufficient attention in the literature more precisely this paper uses technical efficiencies as one crucial determinant of energy demand in order to integrate at least two issues that are usually investigated separately from each other the rebound effect resulting from improved technical efficiencies and the asymmetry of energy demand in this regard our paper sets out a theoretical framework which has the following implications higher efficiency increases service demand first order rebound low fuel prices and higher efficiency increases the demand for quality second order which in turn increases service demand further third order ceteris paribus energy price shocks should increase scrapping rates fuel prices direct the rd those on engine efficiency are irreversible which has the consequence that energy price elasticities depend on the history of energy prices rather than being asymmetrical derived implications are subsequently tested on austrian data in particular the purchasing decision diesel versus gasoline powered cars allows to refute the myth that consumers apply high implicit rates for discounting the future benefit from efficient cars

is the conventional view of discount window borrowing consistent with the behavior of weekly reporting banks discount window borrowing by weekly reporting banks disaggregated by federal reserve district is used to estimate marvin goodfriend s 1983 model of borrowed reserves little evidence is found to support the argument that a bank s borrowing decision is determined by the spread between the funds rate and the discount rate and by prior bank borrowing a weekly reporting bank has only a 2 7 percent chance of visiting the discount window during any given maintenance period this result is consistent with the presence of considerable harassment costs imposed by the discount window officer copyright 1994 by mit press

can income programs reduce tropical forest pressure income shocks and forest use in malawi summary seasonal household data from malawi are used to study links between income shocks and forest use a tobit model is estimated to examine whether household forest use responds to receipt of a positive income shock delivered as a technology assistance package and the characteristics of households reliant on forests for shock coping results show households experiencing an income boost had lower forest extraction compared to households that did not receive such a shock ceteris paribus we find households most dependent on forests for natural insurance are those located near woodlands and headed by an individual who is relatively young and male 2005 published by elsevier ltd

agricultural commercialisation and food security in rural economies malawian experience this paper contributes to the debate on the nutrition related outcomes of cash crop adoption by using a model with essential heterogeneity and a semi parametric estimation technique the model expl

reviving leviathan fiscal federalism and the growth of government this article revisits the influential leviathan hypothesis which pos its that tax competition limits the growth of government spending in decentralized countries i use panel data to examine the effect of fiscal decentralization over time within countries attempting to distinguish between decentralization that is funded by intergovernmental transfers and local taxation first i explore the logic whereby decentralization should restrict government spending if state and local governments have wide ranging authority to set the tax base and rate especially on mobile assets in countries where this is most clearly the case decentralization is associated with smaller government second consistent with theoretical arguments drawn from wel fare economics and positive political economy i show that governments grow faster as they fund a greater portion of public expenditures through intergovernmental transfers

rising food prices and coping strategies household level evidence from afghanistan this paper investigates the impact of rising wheat prices on household food security in afghanistan exploiting a unique nationally representative household survey the authors find evidence of large declines in the real value of per capita food consumption smaller price elasticities with respect to calories than with respect to food consumption suggest that households trade off quality for quantity as they move away from nutrient rich foods such as meat and vegetables toward staple foods the authors work improves upon country level simulation studies by providing estimates of actual household food security during a price shock in one of the world s poorest most food insecure countries

does better nutrition raise farm productivity household level data from sierra leone are used to test whether higher caloric intake enhances family farm labor productivity this is the notion behind the efficiency wages hypothesis which has found only weak empirical support a farm production function is estimated accounting for the simultaneity in input and calorie choice instruments include prices household demographic characteristics and farm assets the latter two sets of instruments are later dropped to explore the robustness of the results to different specifications of exogeneity the exercise shows a highly significant effect of caloric intake on labor productivity providing solid support for the nutrition productivity hypothesis the marginal effect on productivity falls drastically as calorie consumption rises but remains positive at moderately high levels of intake one result is a fall in the effective price of food a decline that is larger for households that consumer fewer calories

the growing reluctance to borrow at the discount window an empirical investigation federal reserve regulation a imposes formal guidelines on borrowing from the discount window and ensures that the facility is used for appropriate purposes in a way this regulation imposes a nonprice mechanism that compels depository institutions to be more prudent in exercising their borrowing privileges in the 1980s however banks became increasingly more reluctant to borrow adjustment credit from the discount window this behavior is puzzling because discount window guidelines have not changed this paper investigates the reasons behind the weakened demand for borrowed reserves our empirical findings suggest that the growing reluctance to borrow stems from the deteriorating financial position of banks during this period in particular banks avoided the discount window because they feared that market participants might have interpreted their visits as a signal of serious funding difficulties

municipal annexation and local monopoly power we have found that the fiscal power of a city can be increased by extension of its borders within a land area that is homogeneous with respect to earning opportunities even when numerous rival jurisdictions exist in the area we hypothesized that extending municipal boundaries will have a positive effect on discretionary outlays and on expenditures per capita the evidence presented supports these hypotheses furthermore municipal wages appear to be significantly increased in cities experiencing annexation growth therefore we would expect to find that municipal employees are more inclined to favor annexation than the rest of the electorate from a policy standpoint this study suggests that significant perverse effects on fiscal efficiency may follow adoption of legal reforms that facilitate the ability of municipalities to extend their borders or that restrict the formation of new municipalities

seasonal food crises and policy responses a narrative account of three food security crises in malawi summary this paper examines seasonal food price crises in malawi in the 2000s malawi experienced three episodes in which seasonal maize prices rose in 2001 02 2004 05 and 2007 09 by 354 218 and 395 respectively these extreme price spikes resulted from a sequential interaction of economic and political events a repeated pattern of cause inapt response and adverse outcome is identified the relative neglect in vulnerability analysis of staple food price movements as lead indicators of impending food crises is emphasized and implications are drawn for price stabilisation public private coordination and social protection policies

the model structure of discount window borrowing this article investigates the specification of discount window borrowing the author establishes empirically that the borrowing function is heteroskedastic and nonlinear subsequently he proceeds to propose a simple theoretical framework that generates endogenously these anomalies in particular the author demonstrates that such phenomena are precipitated by the response of depository institutions to discount credit rationing and federal reserve collateral limitations copyright 1991 by ohio state university press

urban bias in price risk the geography of food price distributions in low income economies the geography of agricultural marketing has important implications for the stochastic distribution of agricultural commodity prices this article proposes that objective food price risk differs between rural and urban areas of infrastructure poor economies characterised by spatially concentrated patterns of foodgrains storage this difference implies an urban bias having adverse welfare effects for peasants who seasonally switch between net food seller and net food buyer positions empirical analysis of rice price data from madagascar suggests that price variability and skewness indeed differ between rural and urban areas in ways that adversely influence the relative welfare of rural peasants

central bank secrecy fed watching and the predictability of interest rates abstract a common criticism of central bank secrecy is the assertion that it will lead to lower forecast accuracy on the part of private agents the model considered here demonstrates that reducing central bank secrecy can actually reduce the forecasting accuracy of many of the private agents in the economy when it is recognized that some agents engage in fed watching and others do not this result comes about because the interest rate process depends in part on the information that agents use in forecasting future interest rates

political economy of mechanisms we study the optimal mirrlees taxation problem in a dynamic economy in contrast to the standard approach where the taxation mechanism is operated by a benevolent planner with full commitment power we focus on economies in which policy decisions are made by self interested politicians who cannot commit to policies the society controls politicians using elections we show that the provision of incentives to politicians can be partly separated from redistribution across agents and that political economy constraints can be modeled as introducing additional aggregate distortions in the dynamic mirrlees problem we provide conditions under which the political economy distortions persist or disappear in the long run if the politicians are as patient as the agents the best sustainable mechanism leads to an asymptotic allocation where the aggregate distortions arising from political economy disappear in contrast when politicians are less patient than the citizens positive aggregate labor and capital taxes remain even asymptotically we conclude by providing a brief comparison of centralized

relating seasonal hunger and prevention and coping strategies a panel analysis of malawian farm households relative to chronic hunger seasonal hunger in rural and urban areas of africa is poorly understood this paper examines the extent and potential correlates of seasonal hunger in malawi using panel data from 2011 2013 we find that both urban and rural households report seasonal hunger in the pre harvest months certain strategies to smooth consumption including crop storage and livestock ownership are associated with fewer months of hunger in addition we find that malawian households that experience seasonal hunger harvest their crops earlier than average a short term coping mechanism that can reduce the crop s yield and nutritional value possibly perpetuating hunger

seasonal hunger and its mitigation in north west bangladesh seasonal hunger may result from seasonality of agriculture when households fail to smooth income and consumption using household survey data from the northwest region of bangladesh this paper examines alternative measures of seasonal hunger and provides some evidence to support policies and programs needed to mitigate seasonal hunger the results suggest that a large majority of food vulnerable households are the perpetual poor as opposed to a small percentage of households who are subject to food deprivation only during the lean period findings suggest that government safety net programs and microcredit provide a cushion for the poor to stave off seasonal hunger