risk private information and the family in the last fifteen years our understanding of the behavior of households in both highand low income countries has increased significantly econometric studies contributing to this body of knowledge concerned with the determinants of such behavior as labor supply fertility health and food consumption however have generally taken the structure of the household as exogenously given while some progress has been made concerning how changes in the legal structure alter patterns of family formation and breakup the wide variety of family organizations observed across countries of the world or the evolution of family structure within countries cannot be readily explained by existing models while some economists have suggested that organizations based on kinship can be understood in terms of transaction economies yoram ben porath 1980 robert pollak 1985 there are now few precise implications of this approach and little or no evidence of its usefulness for predicting or explaining the existence of any particular family structure in specific settings characterized by their natural endowments and or legal structure in this paper i discuss some recent studies of family and household organization in one specific context rural india that have sought to formulate a model of household structure based on the need for individuals in lowincome private information settings to protect themselves against intertemporal fluctuations in resources arising from the natural vagaries of water supply i also present some new evidence on the relationship between family arrangements and measured risk characteristics of the agricultural environment in these settings while many economists have highlighted risk and information consideration in the study of such formal rural institutions as sharecropping permanent servitude and contractual interlinking studies of these individual contractural arrangements have ignored the family itself as a risk mitigating institution moreover much of this literature has been solely concerned with ex ante measures to reduce risk contractual instruments or production factors that reduce the effects of variability in the exogenous production input rainfall on income mechanisms serving to preserve consumption stability ex post in the face of variability in realized income have been neglected

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

the determinants of migrant remittances this article explores the factors that account for variation in remittance flows why do some immigrants send much more money to their country of origin than others this is a question that in the aggregate has implications for national economies and migration related policy the analysis departs from the classic studies of remittances and considers how the context of contemporary migration in europe is likely to affect remittance patterns possible influences on remittance sending are disaggregated into nine domains and each is discussed with reference to theoretical arguments and empirical findings the temporal aspects of remittance sending are discussed separately the final section of the article considers implications of the micro level analysis for aggregate remittance flows and policy it is argued that the focus on altruism versus self interest in the literature has partly diverted attention from explaining the actual variation that is important in a policy perspective

when does elastic labor supply cause an inverted u effect of patents on innovation this study analyzes how patent protection affects innovation in an r d based growth model with elastic labor supply we find that increasing patent breadth may generate an inverted u effect on innovation depending on whether the model features the knowledge driven or lab equipment innovation process this result highlights an important interaction between elastic labor supply and the innovation process through which patent protection has an inverted u effect as documented in recent empirical studies

transfer behavior in the health and retirement study measurement and the redistribution of resources within the family recent work by a number of economists has opened a debate about the role played by intergenerational transfers using the new health and retirement study hrs we are better able to address the issues involved contrary to the current literature on bequests we do not find that parents give transfers equally to all children rather we find that in the case of inter vivos transfers respondents give greaterfinancial assistance to their less well off children than to their children with higher incomes financial transfers to elderly parents are also found to be negatively related to the potential recipient s income these results hold both for the incidence of transfers and for the amounts in addition we allow for unobserved differences across families by estimating fixed effect models and find our results to be robust to these specifications a comparison of the hrs transfer data to other survey data demonstrates that the hrs is potentially quite useful for research on transfer behavior

migration remittances and the family remittances by migrants along with migration itself are elements in a migrant familys intertemporal contractual arrangement the reasons why the migrant and his family voluntarily enter into a mutually beneficial contractual arrangement with each other rather than with a 3rd party are discussed and the conditions under which the contractual arrangement is self enforcing are identified both parties can usually benefit from a number of pareto efficient mutual contractual arrangements this gives rise to an indeterminacy problem solved through a bargaining process between the parties who consequently converge to a contractual arrangement implying a specific flow of migrant to family remittances the chosen contractual arrangement reflects the relative bargaining powers of the parties and variables impinging upon these powers thus bear upon remittances in the light of these arguments tests are conducted on observed remittance behavior across individual migrants in botswana authors

remittances and inequality in this paper the authors propose a framework and develop techniques for analyzing the impact of migrant remittances on the distribution of rural income by size and subsequently its impact on rural welfare household data are used to assign numerical coefficients to the impact of net remittances from both internal and international migrants on income inequality in 2 mexican villages the impact of migrant remittances on the distribution of rural income by size depends critically on the degree to which migration opportunities become diffused through the village population on the returns to human capital embodied in remittances and on the distribution of potentially remittance enhancing skills and education across village households our empirical findings demonstrate that in a village where many households contain internal migrants but few have experience migrating to the u s remittances from mexico to us migrants have an unequalizing impact on village incomes while remittances from internal migrants have a favorable effect on the village income distribution by contrast in a village with a long historyh of sending migrants to the us and hence a more ready access to us labor markets us to mexico remittances have an equalizing impact on incomes remittances from internal migrants in this village however embody a large human capital component and are highly correlated with household income hence internal migrant remittances account for a comparatively large share of inequalities in the 2nd village the overall effect of remittances on income inequality is favorable in both villages migration type migration stage and interaction terms all appear to play a role in this context the effects of small changes in remittances upon income inequality and rural welfare in the 2 villages are explored and some implications for migration and rural development policy are considered authors modified

inter vivos transfers and intergenerational exchange the surge of interest in intergenerational transfers in the past decade has sparked a debate over the motivation for them are transfers given out of altruism or part of an exchange while each motive is probably at work to some extent we know little about whether one motive predominates the question is relevant for issues concerning public income redistribution and inequality in the family but despite its importance empirical evidence about motives is scarce because of limited data we investigate a new data set the national survey of families and households which remedies many of the shortcomings of other data sets containing private transfer information we find that empirical patterns for inter vivos transfers i e transfers between living persons are more consistent with exchange than altruism

effects of patent policy on income and consumption inequality in a r d growth model what are the effects of strengthening patent protection on income and consumption inequality to analyze this question this paper incorporates heterogeneity in the initial wealth of households into a canonical quality ladder growth model with endogenous labor supply in this model i firstly show that the aggregate economy always jumps immediately to a unique and stable balanced growth path given the balanced growth behavior of the aggregate economy and an exogenous distribution of initial wealth i then show that the endogenous distribution of assets in subsequent periods is stationary and equal to its initial distribution the model predicts that strengthening patent protection increases a economic growth by stimulating r d investment and b income inequality by raising the return on assets however whether it also increases consumption inequality depends on the elasticity of intertemporal substitution if and only if this elasticity is less greater than unity strengthening patent protection increases decreases consumption inequality for standard parameter values strengthening patent protection leads to a larger increase in income inequality than consumption inequality

the development of urban labour markets china s urban wage curve 1980 92 this study explores the effect of china s economic reforms and growth on a critical outcome of labour market interactions wage levels provincial data from 1980 to 1992 are used to analyse changes in interregional wage differentiation and the relationship between average and real wages and a variety of economic variables the results illuminate the increasing role of market forces particularly labour demand variables such as economic growth and foreign investment in determining wage levels and explaining the pattern of first declining and then sharply rising interregional wage differentials in the 1980s and early 1990s at the same time the empirical results highlight the persistence of barriers to labour mobility across regions and enterprises of different ownership types these findings suggest that the evolution of china s urban labour market to date is marked by a combination of unprecedented flexibility as well as old and new forms of rigidity

migration remittances and inequality a sensitivity analysis using the extended gini index abstract this paper uses the extended gini inequality index to examine the sensitivity of measurements of impacts of migrant remittances on the distribution of household income by size to different value judgements when measuring inequality the results illustrate the robustness of earlier findings that the impacts of migration on village income distributions differ for different types of migration and for different periods in a village s migration history the magnitude of these impacts however appears to be quite sensitive to the weights attached to incomes at different points in the village income distribution for example in a village with considerable mexico to u s migration experience remittances from mexico to u s migrants have a favorable effect on the village income distribution however the extended gini analysis shows that this favorable impact decreases as more weight is attached to incomes in the poorest households this finding is consistent with the view that barriers to high paying mexico to u s migration work exist for households at the bottom of the village income distribution

testing for sample selection bias a simple regression test of the null hypothesis of no sample selection bias has been suggested by j j heckman because of its computational simplicity this test is widely used by applied researchers this paper shows that heckman s test is equivalent to the lagrange multiplier test of the null hypothesis this allows us to readily deduce that the simple regression test also has desirable large sample properties

a theory of remittances as an implicit family loan arrangement abstract the idea of an implicit and informal loan agreement between family members to explain migrants remittances is not new but its implications have not been fully explored in the theoretical literature many empirically testable propositions may be derived from this hypothesis when trying to explain why emigrants remit what the time profile of remittances is how it depends on the intent to stay on the expected length of stay and on interest rates what use people make of remittances and how the home family consumption behavior is affected by the economic prospects in the receiving country furthermore this theory yields many interesting policy prescriptions for less developed countries wishing to maximize the remittance flow from emigrants

the welfare cost of one size fits all patent protection to analyze the welfare gain from allowing for differentiated patent protection across sectors this study develops a two sector quality ladder growth model in which patent breadth is a policy variable and derives optimal patent breadth under two patent regimes we show that a uniform optimal patent breadth is a weighted average of sector specific optimal patent breadth and b sector specific optimal patent breadth is larger in the sector that has a larger market size and more technological opportunities to derive the optimal policy we allow for an arbitrary path of patent breadth and derive the optimal path by solving a stackelberg differential game we find that the optimal path of patent breadth under each patent regime is stationary time consistent and subgame perfect finally we perform a numerical investigation and find that even a moderate degree of asymmetry across sectors can generate a significant welfare cost of uniform patent protection

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

the check in the mail household characteristics and migrant remittance from the us to mexico we develop a household model of migrant remittance that supports testable hypotheses about the effect of migrant income family composition and distribution transaction costs associated with remittance mode income and residence security and other household characteristics on remittance levels and frequency we test these hypotheses using survey data on individual mexican migrants in the united states the results are broadly consistent with our hypotheses

a theory of rational addiction we develop a theory of rational addiction in which rationality means a consistent plan to maximize utility over time strong addiction to a good requires a big effect of past consumption of the good on current consumption such powerful complementarities cause some steady states to be unstable they are an important part of our analysis because even small deviations from the consumption at an unstable steady state can lead to large cumulative rises over time in addictive consumption or to rapid falls in consumption to abstention our theory also implies that cold turkey is used to end strong addictions that addicts often go on binges that addicts respond more to permanent than to temporary changes in prices of addictive goods and that anxiety and tensions can precipitate an addiction

estimating remittance functions for pacific island migrants there is concern that pacific island economies dependent on remittances of migrants will endure foreign exchange shortages and declining living standards as remittance levels drop due to lower migration rates and the belief that migrants willingness to remit decreases over time the empirical validity of the remittance decay hypothesis has never been tested from survey data on tongan and western samoan migrants in sydney this paper estimates remittance functions using tobit regression analysis it is found that the remittance decay hypothesis has no empirical validity and migrants are motivated by factors other than altruistic family support including asset accumulation and investment back home c 1997 elsevier science ltd

patent protection and strategic delays in technology development implications for economic growth we present an endogenous growth model in which both the investment to develop a new technology that upgrades the quality of machines and entry of imitators are determined endogenously according to the model how soon the new technology machine is launched after the patent is granted is influenced by two factors returns to scale in technology development and strategic delays strategic delays in technology development are most likely to occur when earlier dates of success enable imitators to enter an industry i e when imitation is swift and relatively cheap and or patent protection is relatively lengthy we then explore the link between the optimal patent length and economic growth and find that the equilibrium investment in technology development and thus the expected rate of technological progress exhibit an inverted u shape relationship with respect to the legal patent length our results further suggest that in order to minimize the strategic delays in technology development and spur technological progress legal patent lengths should be shorter in industries where barriers to entry are relatively low

do national patent laws stimulate domestic innovation in a global patenting environment a cross country analysis of pharmaceutical patent protection 1978 2002 this paper evaluates the effects of patent protection on phar maceutical innovations for 26 countries that established pharmaceutical patent laws during 1978 2002 controlling for country characteristics through matched sampling techniques to establish two proper comparison sets among 92 sampled countries and through country pair fixed effects regressions this study yields robust results national patent protection alone does not stimulate domestic innovation as estimated by changes in citation weighted u s patent awards domestic r d and pharmaceutical industry exports however domestic innovation accelerates in countries with higher levels of economic development educational attainment and economic freedom additionally there appears to be an optimal level of intellectual property rights regulation above which further enhancement reduces innovative activities

collateral free lending with risk contingent credit for agricultural development indemnifying loans against pulse crop price risk in india this article addresses the problem of collateral free lending in the context of agricultural development we investigate a viable alternative to traditional credit products through the development of risk contingent credit for operating loans and farm mortgages and apply the concept to agricultural loans for pulse crops in india risk contingent credit mitigates business and financial risk by reducing debt obligations depending on the embedded commodity options whose payoffs are linked with commodity price fluctuations we analyze daily commodity spot prices for pulse crops in india and show how risk contingent structured financial instruments can be priced in practice

income transfers of chinese rural migrants some empirical evidence from jinan this paper explores the determinants of migrant remittances to rural households using data on male migrant workers drawn from the jinan municipality in shandong province in the summer of 1995 the majority of migrants are found to retain close links with their rural households with 85 remitting some income in the 12 months preceding the survey date the transfers accounted for over a third of urban labour earnings a number of models are used to undertake the estimation of remittance functions no evidence of altruistic behaviour is uncovered and evidence for exchange and coinsurance theories is mixed labour earnings proved the most robust determinant of the level of remittance and the remittance wage elasticity calculated is found to be at the top end of the range of estimates obtained in the literature

motives for private transfers over the life cycle an analytical framework and evidence for peru abstract this paper tests for the motives for private income transfers we consider two motives altruism and exchange the question of private transfer motives is important because such motivation can influence the effects of public income transfers on the distribution of income using a household survey for peru we find that transfer amounts received increase with recipient pre transfer income which contradicts a key prediction of the strong form of the altruism hypothesis but is consistent with exchange we also find that capital market imperfections are likely to be an important cause of private transfers and that social security benefits crowd out the incidence of private transfers

private monetary transfers in rural china are families altruistic monetary transfers between relatives may be motivated by altruism or they may represent payments for services rendered data from a large 1988 household survey are used to test these hypotheses and to study the size and direction of transfers in rural china the analysis suggests that altruism alone cannot explain the observed transfers and that exchange may be involved most of the money flows appear to be transfers from adult children to elderly parents and remittances from migrants child care is likely to be one of the main services that parents render to adult children in exchange for money

interest rates collateral and de interlinkage a micro study of rural credit in west bengal this study based on a primary field survey in rural west bengal analyses the terms and conditions of the differentiated structure of rural credit with the advent of capitalist agriculture within the interventionist state the sample households are classified according to the economic classes of patnaik as well as the standard acreage criterion the possibility of interlinkage between credit and all other structures is remote the average rate of interest is inversely related to ascending class status there is a systematic association between rate of interest and the value of collateral on the one hand and marketability of collateral and interest rates on the other

intellectual property protection and innovation an inverted u relationship abstract this paper shows in an endogenous growth model without scale effects that the relationship between intellectual property protection and innovation can be inverted u shaped the inverted u relationship emerges from an interaction between learning driven and r d driven technological advances

segmentation collateral undervaluation and the rate of interest in agrarian credit markets some evidence from two villages in south india this paper examines certain issues pertaining to the structure of agrarian credit markets in developing countries using empirical evidence on credit transactions from two villages in south india first the bases for the segmentation between formal and informal sectors of the credit market are identified as being 1 the type of collateral offered on credit contracts and 2 the purpose for which credit is taken secondly the paper shows the occurrence of a systematic association between rates of interest and types of collateral the evidence supports the hypothesis that lower marketability of collateral security and hence higher undervaluation increases the rate of interest charged on a loan thirdly the evidence shows an inverse relationship between the value of land owned by a borrower and the rate of interest on a credit contract copyright 1991 by oxford university press

microfinance and investment a comparison with bank and informal lending summary comparing the impact of different types of credit on households investment in bangladesh we find that loans from microfinance institutions are likely to be channeled toward non agricultural activities while both informal and bank lending are associated to a higher expenditure in agricultural inputs estimated effects are net of the differences in the amount borrowed interest rates and collateral results suggest that features which are specific to microfinance such as tight repayment schedules and land based eligibility rules may reduce the suitability of this source of funds for the farming sector

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

remittances and the use of formal and informal financial services summary while recent literature has pointed to a positive effect of migrants remittances on the financial development of receiving countries findings with respect to access to and the use of loans have been ambiguous this paper investigates the effect of remittances on the use of formal and informal financial services using mexican household data and finds positive and statistically significant effects of remittances on the ownership of savings accounts the existence of debts and on recent borrowing the fact that the effect of remittances on borrowing is driven by informal finance rather than by traditional bank loans points to deficiencies of the formal financial sector in addressing the financial needs of remittance receiving households we address methodological concerns of selection bias and reverse causality through household fixed effects and an instrumental strategy that exploits distance to train lines and labor market conditions in the us as exogenous determinants of remittances

implicit interest rates usury and isolation in backward agriculture the unusually high interest rates in many backward agricultural regions have been a source of some puzzlement to economists adding to this puzzle is the fact that these rates can take on a wide range of values often within the same region one important question is why arbitrage between sectors does not lead to more homogeneous and lower interest rates the traditional answer to this is in terms of lender s risk it is argued that moneylenders in backward regions face a great risk of default and once this is taken into account the effective interest rate turns out to be no higher than its counterpart in the organised sector consequently there is no real room for arbitrage and the high interest rates are equilibrium prices while this explanation may be of use in some situations it is in general inadequate and can even be misleading the reason which novelists describing rural india have repeatedly written about is that in these financial transactions the lender s risk frequently ranges from minimal to non existent because the personalised relation between the borrower and the lender enables the latter to extract the defaulted loan in the form of asset transfers from the borrower in a somewhat stylised manner these deals could be thought of as follows a peasant takes a loan from his employer keeping some of his assets like land a standing crop or even the promise of labour services as security or collateral a collateral price is then fixed this is the conversion price used to calculate the amount of collateral that has to be relinquished to the lender given a certain amount of default clearly the lower the collateral price the larger the quantity of collateral that the peasant has to forfeit hence the underpricing of collateral amounts to the charging of an implicit interest a widespread feature of rural credit markets reported in many diverse studies bardhan and rudra 1978 myint 1964 raj 1981 roth 1979 and sivakumar 1978 to mention just a few is the underpricing of collateral an interesting attempt to bring collateral explicitly into a model of usury was made by bhaduri 1977 see also 1983 who argued that one of the reasons why landlords raise interest rates is in fact to encourage default and to claim ownership of the asset kept as collateral a sharp contrast to the lender s risk model this hypothesis has deservedly received much attention 1

the struggle to survive in the r d sector implications for innovation and growth by allowing for investment activities by research and development r d firms to prevent product obsolescence we show that if legal patent protection is too strong a higher r d subsidy rate delivers insufficient investments for survival in the r d sector depressing innovation and growth in the long run

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

parental altruism and inter vivos transfers theory and evidence this paper uses psid data on the extended family to test whether inter vivos transfers from parents to children are motivated by altruism specifically the paper tests whether an increase by one dollar in the income of parents actively making transfers to a child coupled with a one dollar reduction in that child s income results in the parents increasing their transfer to the child by one dollar this restriction on parental and child transfer income derivatives is derived for the standard altruism model augmented to include uncertainty and liquidity constraints these additional elements pin down the timing of inter vivos transfers the method used to estimate income transfer derivatives takes into account unobserved heterogeneity across families in the degree of altruism the findings strongly reject the altruism hypothesis redistributing one dollar from a recipient child to donor parents leads to less than a 13 cent increase in the parents transfer to the child far less than the one dollar increas

unemployment insurance and unemployment spells this paper tests the effects of the level and length of unemployment insurance benefits on unemployment durations the paper particularly studies individual behavior during the weeks just prior to when benefits lapse higher unemployment insurance benefits are found to have a strong negative effect on the probability of leaving unemployment however the probability of leaving unemployment rises dramatically just prior to when benefits lapse individual data are used with accurate information of spell durations and the level and length of benefits the semiparametric estimation techniques used in the paper yield more plausible estimates than conventional approaches and provide useful diagnostics copyright 1990 by the econometric society

market institutions trust and norms exploring moral economies in nigerian food systems informal market institutions and small scale traders are responsible for feeding nigerian cities this study analyses a range of economic relationships and institutions that have evolved in the context of inadequate formal institutions such as banks and legal contracts through examining both personal relationships and institutional based trust the paper explores the role of moral norms trust is shown to be related to sanctions information on other parties and a range of norms that are drawn on both calculatively and habitually the perceived moralities of different forms of institution such as credit systems trader associations and commission agents are also examined

interactions between institutional and informal credit agencies in rural india in an attempt to expand rural credit and displace the village moneylender india created a system of rural cooperatives in the 1950s and expanded branch banking into rural areas in the 1970s this article examines how these measures affected the rural market it begins with the question of how large the expansion of institutional credit has been and the extent to which it has dislodged the village and nonresident moneylenders a detailed comparison of three major surveys of the indian rural credit market suggests that in various guises the moneylender is still a major source of loans the article also examines the weak evidence on intermediation between the formal and informal sectors a formal model of the interaction between the informal moneylender and institutional lender is constructed under a variety of assumptions about the exclusivity of loan contracts and the competitive structure of the informal sector the conclusions are drawn together in the form of five proposals for public policy

drivers and dynamics of internal and international remittances this article analyses whether and how intra household remittance volumes vary with the length of a migrant s absence and whether the drivers and dynamics of remittance decay depend on the migrant s destination we address these questions by using data from the 64th round of the indian national sample survey conducted between july 2007 and june 2008 we find that the average intra household remittance function follows a curvilinear trajectory that is best approximated by a quartic m shaped specification the volatility of intra household remittances is distinct across migration destinations with international remittance flows being more volatile than internal intra state or inter state flows

an exogeneity test for a simultaneous equation tobit model with an application to labor supply a test of weak exogeneity in the simultaneous equation tobit model is proposed and illustrated using a female labour supply model estimated using cross section data the test statistic can be simply output from any standard tobit maximum likelihood package and is asymptotically efficient the procedure provides consistent estimators for the simultaneous tobit model whose asymptotic covariance matrix is a simple extension of the usual tobit formula we also provide the lagrange multiplier test of weak exogeneity this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item