consumer market segments for biofortified iron beans in rwanda evidence from a hedonic testing study an understanding of consumer market segments is important for efficient and effective targeting of new technologies such as biofortified foods in this paper we use cluster analysis to identify distinct consumer segments in rwanda for four biofortified iron bean varieties data on consumer liking of various sensory attributes of beans was collected by using a 7 point hedonic scale through the application of home use and central location tests implemented in two rural and two urban locations cluster analysis reveals the existence of several distinct consumer segments in each one of the four study locations further analysis is conducted by using multinomial probit and logit models to predict consumer segment membership based on the consumer characteristics results reveal that depending on the location consumer s source of income and whether or not they received information about nutritional benefits of the iron bean varieties have a bearing on their preference of these varieties the paper presents a profile of each one of the consumer market segments identified to assist targeting of various iron bean delivery marketing and promotion efforts in rwanda

measuring rural consumers willingness to pay for quality labels using experimental auctions the case of aflatoxin free maize in kenya aflatoxins are a common health hazard in tropical countries especially in rural areas new methods to reduce aflatoxin levels in food staples as well as cheaper test methods are being developed but consumers willingness to pay wtp for these improvements is unknown a survey was conducted with a representative sample of rural consumers 1 344 in total 63 women in all major maize production zones of kenya the survey included an experimental auction with maize products of different qualities the results showed that many rural consumers were aware of aflatoxins but few understood their health risks respondents were willing to pay a premium for maize tested for aflatoxins and labeled but asked a high discount for maize that was visibly contaminated with moldy grain the premium was higher for respondents with education and in regions with aflatoxicosis outbreaks knowledge of aflatoxins substantially reduced the overall wtp but did not increase the wtp for tested maize welfare analysis indicates that mandatory testing would result in substantial benefits if the cost of testing can be lowered to below the premium

the real effects of financial integration abstract this paper shows how correlations in gdp fluctuations rise with financial integration finance serves to increase international correlations in both consumption and gdp fluctuations which explains the persistent gap between the two in the data a quantity puzzle the positive association between financial integration and gdp correlation constitutes a puzzle as theory suggests a negative relation if anything nevertheless it prevails in the data even after the effects of finance on trade and specialization are accounted for

the caloric costs of culture evidence from indian migrants anthropologists have long documented substantial and persistent differences across social groups in the preferences and taboos for particular foods one natural question to ask is whether such food cultures matter in an economic sense in particular can culture constrain caloric intake and contribute to malnutrition to answer this question i first document that inter state migrants within india consume fewer calories per rupee of food expenditure compared to their non migrant neighbors even for households with very low caloric intake i then form a chain of evidence in support of an explanation based on culture that migrants make nutritionally suboptimal food choices due to cultural preferences for the traditional foods of their origin states first i focus on the preferences themselves and document that migrants bring their origin state food preferences with them when they migrate second i link together the findings on caloric intake and preferences by showing that the gap in caloric intake between locals and migrants is related to the suitability and intensity of the migrants origin state food preferences the most adversely affected migrants households in which both husband and wife migrated to a village where their origin state preferences are unsuited to the local price vector would consume 7 percent more calories if they possessed the same preferences as their neighbors

trade finance specialization and synchronization i investigate the determinants of business cycle synchronization across regions the linkages between trade in goods financial openness specialization and business cycle synchronization are evaluated in the context of a system of simultaneous equations the main results are as follows i specialization patterns have a sizable effect on business cycles most of this effect is independent of trade or financial policy but directly reflects differences in gdp per capita ii a variety of measures of financial integration suggest that economic regions with strong financial links are significantly more synchronized even though they also tend to be more specialized iii the estimated role of trade is closer to that implied by existing models once intra industry trade is held constant the results obtain in a variety of data sets measurement strategies and specifications they relate to a recent strand of international business cycle models with incomplete markets and transport costs and on the empir

voting power in the ec decision making and the consequences of two different enlargements abstract in this paper we study the voting power in the council of ministers of the ec the purpose of this paper is twofold first to evaluate the voting power for the member states of today s community and second to analyse the balance of power after two different enlargements of the community the analysis is based on the shapley shubik and the banzhaf power indices of simple cooperative games the modified version of the shapley shubik index is used to analyse how the sub systems of the ec can change the distribution of power in the decision making process

borders and business cycles abstract we document that business cycles of u s census regions are substantially more synchronized than those of european countries data from regions within european countries confirm a european border effect within country correlations are substantially larger than cross country correlations these results continue to hold after controlling for exogenous factors such as distance and size we consider the role of four factors that have received attention in the debate about emu sectoral specialization the level of trade monetary policy and fiscal policy we find that the lower level of trade between european countries explains most of the observed border effect

information branding certification and consumer willingness to pay for high iron pearl millet evidence from experimental auctions in maharashtra india abstract in this paper we use hedonic testing methods adopted from food science literature and the becker degroot marschak mechanism adopted from economic valuation literature to estimate consumer demand for biofortified high iron pearl millet hipm in maharashtra india unlike biofortification with provitamin a biofortification with minerals such as iron and zinc does not change the color or the appearance of the biofortified crop therefore we test the impact of both nutrition information and branding and certification as well as the nature of the brand and of the certifying authority state level versus international on consumer demand for hipm we find that even in the absence of nutrition information consumers assign a small but significant premium to the hipm variety relative to the local variety this is consistent with consumers more favorable rating of the sensory characteristics of the high iron variety nutrition information on the health benefits of hipm increases this premium substantially and regression analysis reveals that consumers prefer international branding and international certification authority to their state level counterparts

what determines eu decision making needs power or both this paper examines the determinants of power in the council of the european union it argues that quantitative power indices stemming from voting theory provide a good description of the actual distribution of power among eu members of course we cannot directly verify the accuracy of such indices since it is impossible to measure power directly instead we evaluate whether these power measures explain a quantifiable manifestation of the exercise of power namely members shares of eu budget allocation as an alternative explanation of the eu budget we also consider a needs view of the budget where members allocations are determined by principles of solidarity our empirical analysis is based on 1976 2001 data on the patterns of the eu budget shares and on measures of each member state s needs and political power our results indicate that at least 60 of the budget expenditures can be attributed to selfish power politics and the remaining 40 to the declared benevolent eu budget policies however when we apply specific voting power measures that allow correlated preferences and cooperative voting patterns between the member states our estimates indicate that the power politics view can explain as much as 90 of the budget shares we conclude that power politics can explain a major part of the council decisions and that correlated preferences and voting cooperation between eu countries potentially play significant roles in eu decision making heikki kauppi and mika widgren

consumer acceptability of yellow maize products in zimbabwe abstract this study analyzes consumers awareness of and attitudes towards yellow maize products in zimbabwe and suggests intervention strategies that will ensure increased production and consumption of the crop which is rich in provitamin a to help prevent the incidence of vitamin a deficiency prevalent among vulnerable groups data from 360 randomly selected rural and urban households show that yellow maize is known to all but few are aware of its nutritional qualities or consume it the main source of supply is imported food aid rich in oils carotenoids and fructose yellow maize easily undergoes chemical changes to produce unacceptable organoleptic properties or bad taste if poorly handled during importation these two factors are responsible for it being perceived inferior to white maize by consumers quality assurance during importation can improve consumer confidence but a long term strategy will be to vigorously promote domestic production of yellow maize varieties rich in high levels of carotene that meet the preferences of consumers drawing from a probit model regression analysis nutritional education can potentially promote yellow maize consumption especially if targeted at low income households domestic production and consumption of yellow maize will decrease vitamin a deficiency among vulnerable groups and improve food insecurity through reduced grain prices and increased incomes for farmers these results draw attention to the need for policy makers in developing countries to review their agricultural policies to ensure that they do not undermine the local production and consumption of nutritionally valuable crops

inherited trust and growth this paper develops a new method to uncover the causal effect of trust on economic growth by focusing on the inherited component of trust and its time variation we show that inherited trust of descendants of us immigrants is sig nificantly influenced by the country of origin and the timing of arrival of their forebears we thus use the inherited trust of descendants of us immigrants as a time varying measure of inherited trust in their country of origin this strategy allows to identify the sizeable causal impact of inherited trust on worldwide growth during the twentieth century by controlling for country fixed effects jel n11 n12 n31 n32 o47 z13

are consumers in developing countries willing to pay more for micronutrient dense biofortified foods evidence from a field experiment in uganda vitamin a deficiency is a major health problem in africa and in many other developing countries biofortified staple crops that are high in pro vitamin a have the potential to reduce the prevalence of vitamin a deficiency using a choice experiment with the real product in uganda we quantify the magnitude of the premium or discount in consumers willingness to pay wtp that may be associated with it results suggest that taste plays an important role in consumer acceptance and the provision of nutrition information does translate into substantial premiums for the biofortified variety there is a substantial hypothetical bias in the wtp for the new varieties and while cheap talk mitigates this bias it does not eliminate it

trade production sharing and the international transmission of business cycles countries that are more engaged in production sharing exhibit higher bilateral manufacturing output correlations we use data on trade flows between us multinationals and their affiliates as well as trade between the united states and mexican maquiladoras to measure production sharing trade and its link with the business cycle we then develop a quantitative model of international business cycles that generates a positive link between the extent of vertically integrated production sharing trade and internationally synchronized business cycles a key assumption in the model is a relatively low elasticity of substitution between home and foreign inputs in the production of the vertically integrated good

combining participatory crop trials and experimental auctions to estimate farmer preferences for improved common bean in rwanda abstract participatory crop improvement raises the prospects for developing seed varieties that meet the needs of subsistence farmers but may face challenges regarding preference elicitation particularly in complicated policy environments we integrate binding experimental auctions with participatory variety selection to elicit farmers preferences for improved common bean varieties in rwanda we find that auctions reveal farmer preferences more accurately than stated nonbinding rankings in this context and that participatory on farm crop research is essential to understanding how farmers evaluate tradeoffs between multiple crop attributes we also find that farmers highly value intercrop yield despite government policy that encourages farmers to monocrop

consumer response to maize market liberalization in urban kenya abstract the elimination of consumer food subsidies associated with structural adjustment in africa has been widely thought to exacerbate food insecurity for low income consumers this article determines how urban maize consumption and expenditure patterns have responded to the liberalization of the maize and maize meal markets in kenya the article decomposes changes in maize meal prices attributable to changes in maize grain prices and maize milling margins results are obtained through two random household surveys in nairobi the first having been conducted before and the second after liberalization the main finding of the study is that maize market liberalization has conferred substantial benefits to urban consumers the combined saving to nairobi consumers from lower maize milling costs has been roughly us 10 1 million each year about the same amount that the government of kenya allocates annually to agricultural research results also indicate that the former consumer subsidies conferred through the official marketing channel were untargeted and actually inversely related to household income the subsidies on sifted meal also served to entrench a non competitive market structure that inhibited the development of a lower cost informal milling system these findings are consistent with research results from other eastern and southern african countries showing that the negative effects of eliminating food subsidies in the state marketing system have been largely compensated by relaxing controls on private grain trade which has increased consumers access to less expensive grain products distributed through informal markets

are there cultural effects on saving some cross sectional evidence why are there such large differences in saving rates across countries conventional economic analyses have not been successful in explaining international saving differences so economists have sometimes suggested that national saving differences may be explained by cultural differences this paper tests the hypothesis that cultural factors influence saving by comparing saving patterns of immigrants to canada from different cultures using data from the canadian survey of family expenditures we find no evidence of cultural effects on saving

quinoa quandary cultural tastes and nutrition in peru abstract using a model of household food demand that incorporates regional preferences tastes for culturally appropriate food i investigate whether tastes for quinoa in the puno region of peru reduced household nutrition intakes when quinoa prices dramatically increased between 2004 and 2012 adapting a model from atkin 2013 and utilizing data from a national peruvian household survey enaho i am able to deconstruct regional changes in household nutrition over time into several general equilibrium effects in particular i isolate the effect of regional tastes for quinoa on nutrition outcomes this effect is identified by an exogenous spike in quinoa prices driven by international demand for quinoa while i find evidence that regional tastes for quinoa do exist in the puno region these tastes do not have a statistically significant impact on nutrition outcomes my results lend support to the conjecture that tastes for culturally appropriate food do not meaningfully affect household nutrition if the food in question is a sufficiently small component of a household s overall diet

international real business cycles we ask whether a two country real business cycle model can account simultaneously for domestic and international aspects of business cycles with this question in mind we document a number of discrepancies between theory and data the most striking discrepancy concerns the correlations of consumption and output across countries in the data outputs are generally more highly correlated across countries than consumptions in the model we see the opposite

welfare gains from quality certification of infant foods results from a market experiment in mali in low income countries malnutrition is often most severe among infants of six to twenty four months they need higher density foods than the family diet but density is a credence attribute we hypothesize that the premium now paid for heavily advertised brands reflects demand for quality assurance which could be provided at lower cost to competing firms through third party certification we use a new market experiment to find that mothers average willingness to pay for certification is about 1 75 kg or four times its cost so that total economic surplus gains from introducing certification to mali would be on the order of 1 million annually

bargaining over environmental budgets a political economy model with application to french water policy in decentralized water management with earmarked budgets financed by user taxes and distributed back in the form of subsidies net gains are often heterogeneous across user categories this paper explores the role of negotiation over budget allocation and coalition formation in water boards to provide an explanation for such user specific gaps between tax payments and subsidies we propose a bargaining model to represent the sequential nature of the negotiation process in water districts in which stakeholder representatives may bargain upon a fraction of the budget only the structural model of budget shares estimated from the data on french water agencies performs well as compared with reduced form estimation empirical results confirm the two stage bargaining process and provide evidence for systematic net gains from the system for agricultural water users

potential health benefits of golden rice a philippine case study abstract golden rice has been genetically modified to produce beta carotene in the endosperm of grain it could improve the vitamin a status of deficient food consumers especially women and children in developing countries this paper analyses potential impacts in a philippine context since the technology is still at the stage of r d benefits are simulated with a scenario approach health effects are quantified using the methodology of disability adjusted life years dalys golden rice will not completely eliminate the problems of vitamin a deficiency such as blindness or increased mortality therefore it should be seen as a complement rather than a substitute for alternative micronutrient interventions yet the technology could bring about significant benefits depending on the underlying assumptions annual health improvements are worth between us 16 and 88 million and rates of return on r d investments range between 66 and 133 due to the uncertainty related to key parameters these results should be treated as preliminary

trade tastes and nutrition in india this paper introduces habit formation into an otherwise standard model of international trade household tastes evolve over time to favor foods consumed as a child the opening of trade causes preferred goods to rise in price as these were relatively inexpensive in autarky neglecting the correlation between tastes and agro climatic endowments overstates the short run nutritional gains from agricultural trade liberalization and masks potential caloric losses for laborers i examine the predictions of this model of trade with habit formation using household survey data from india both by looking across indian regions and by examining the consumption patterns of inter state migrants

experimental auction procedure impact on valuation of quality differentiated goods despite increased use of experimental auctions a myriad of different procedures are being employed without formal consideration of how the procedures might affect results this study investigates the effect of several procedural issues on valuation estimates from experimental auctions results indicate the second price auction generates higher valuations than english becker degroot marschak bdm and random nth price auctions especially in latter bidding rounds and that random nth price auction yields lower valuations than english and bdm auctions we find that endowing subjects with a good prior to eliciting bids can have an impact on valuations but the effect varies across auction mechanism

the role of social capital in financial development to identify the effect of social capital on financial development we exploit social capital differences within italy in high social capital areas households are more likely to use checks invest less in cash and more in stock have higher access to institutional credit and make less use of informal credit the effect of social capital is stronger where legal enforcement is weaker and among less educated people these results are not driven by omitted environmental variables since we show that the behavior of movers is still affected by the level of social capital of the province where they were born

financial globalization and real regionalization over the period 1972 1986 the correlations of gdp employment and investment between the united states and an aggregate of europe canada and japan were respectively 0 76 0 66 and 0 63 for the period 1986 to 2000 the same correlations were much lower 0 26 0 03 and 0 07 real regionalization at the same time u s international asset trade has significantly increased for example between 1972 and 1999 united states gross fdi and equity assets in the same group of countries rose from 4 to 23 percent of the u s capital stock financial globalization we argue that these two trends are intimately related we document that the correlation of real shocks between the u s and the rest of the world has declined we then present a model in which international financial market integration occurs endogenously in response to less correlated shocks financial integration further reduces the international correlations in gdp and factor supplies we find that both less correlated shocks and endogenous financial market development are needed to account for all the changes in the international business cycle

production fragmentation and business cycle comovement abstract international trade increasingly involves trade in goods being produced in fragmentation arrangements across countries with each country specializing in different stages of a production sequence this paper examines empirically whether pairs of countries with more bilateral production fragmentation arrangements tend to have more correlated business cycles using cross country data from 30 countries we find that bilateral production fragmentation has a positive effect while the standard bilateral trade intensity indicator has a negative impact on business cycle comovement we also find that the positive effect of trade in complements captured by bilateral production fragmentation dominates the negative effect of trade in substitutes explained by bilateral trade intensity resulting in an overall positive impact of trade hence bilateral production fragmentation plays a key role underlying the positive response of business cycle comovement to increases in trade

stages of diversification this paper studies the evolution of sectoral concentration in relation to the level of per capita income we show that various measures of sectoral concentration follow a u shaped pattern across a wide variety of data sources countries first diversify in the sense that economic activity is spread more equally across sectors but there exists relatively late in the development process a point at which they start specializing again we discuss this finding in light of existing theories of trade and growth which generally predict a monotonic relationship between income and diversification

food aid and food markets lessons from mozambique abstract a consensus has emerged on food aid policy acknowledging the importance of short run relief considerations while emphasizing that such policy must be driven by a long run developmental perspective this requires explicit attention to the effects of food aid on food markets yet it has long been clear that short and long run objectives of food aid may conflict this tension stands in high relief in mozambique one of the most food aid dependent countries in the world this paper examines the factors determining the effects of yellow maize food aid on markets for yellow maize and white maize the staple crop in mozambique the paper finds that a food aid has helped fuel the growth of a competitive small scale milling industry and informal marketing system b yellow and white maize are substitutes in consumption and c continued availability of yellow maize food aid at prices well below import parity will depress incentives for producers and traders to invest in the white maize production and marketing system this paper presents recommendations for reforming the monetized food aid program and coordinating it more effectively with emergency aid

how does globalization affect the synchronization of business cycles this paper examines the impact of rising trade and financial integration on international business cycle comovement among a large group of industrial and developing countries the results provide at best limited support for the conventional wisdom that globalization has increased the degree of synchronization of business cycles the evidence that trade and financial integration enhance global spillovers of macroeconomic fluctuations is mostly limited to industrial countries one striking result is that on average cross country consumption correlations have not increased in the 1990s precisely when financial integration would have been expected to result in better risk sharing opportunities especially for developing countries this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

absolute poverty when necessity displaces desire abstract this paper proposes a new method for defining an international poverty line based on explicit budgeting the novel feature is that linear programming is used to deduce the diet that minimizes cost and guarantees survival nonfood items are also explicitly budgeted and amount to about one quarter of the cost of subsistence a series of least cost diets are calculated with increasingly demanding nutritional requirements for twenty countries using prices from icp 2011 the aim is to see which requirements rationalize the spending pattern of the poor the reduced basic model does the job when the cost of the nonfood items are added to the cost of the reduced basic diet the resulting linear programming poverty line lppl averages 1 88 per day across the poor countries in the sample the same model rationalizes both the spending pattern of the poor and the world bank poverty line the lppl has the advantages that it is 1 clearly related to survival and well being 2 comparable across time and space since the same nutritional requirements are used everywhere 3 adjusts consumption patterns to local prices 4 presents no index number problems since solutions are always in local prices and 5 requires only readily available information namely the prices in icp or equivalent

information and consumer willingness to pay for biofortified yellow cassava evidence from experimental auctions in nigeria in this article we use the becker degroot marschak mechanism to estimate consumer demand for biofortified yellow cassava varieties in two states of nigeria imo in the southeast and oyo in the southwest these two states exhibit distinct habitual product color preferences for staple food made with cassava we estimate the effect of nutrition information campaigns and nature of planting material delivery institutions on consumer demand willingness to pay estimations account for the effect of product endowment censoring in bids and nonpayment in oyo consumers are willing to pay a premium for light yellow cassava variety even in the absence of nutrition information the article finds that nutrition information results in a large and significant price premium for biofortified cassava in both states and the nature of delivery institution has no significant effect

comparing consumer preferences for color and nutritional quality in maize application of a semi double bound logistic model on urban consumers in kenya consumer preferences for white maize in east and southern africa concerns developers of maize biofortified with provitamin a carotenoids since carotenoids impart a yellow or orange coloration urban consumers willingness to pay wtp for yellow maize was estimated using a semi double bounded logistic model based on a survey of 600 maize consumers in nairobi kenya at posho mills kiosks and supermarkets consumers showed a strong preference for white maize only a minority would buy yellow maize at the same price as white maize and fewer consumers in the posho mills 24 and kiosks 19 than in the supermarkets 34 would do so on average consumers need a price discount of 37 to accept yellow maize this discount was less at the posho mills 35 and kiosks 37 than in the supermarkets 48 most respondents 76 were aware of the existence of fortified meal and the generally showed an interest the average premium for fortified maize was much less than the discount for yellow 5 9 for those aware and 7 4 for those unaware consumer preferences were influenced by socioeconomic factors such as gender education income and ethnic background women have a stronger preference for both white maize and fortified maize than men and consumers with more education have a stronger preference for white income decreases the wtp for yellow maize as well as the price elasticity but increases the wtp for fortified maize consumers originating from western kenya have a lower preference for white while those from central kenya had a stronger preference for fortified maize

estimating consumer willingness to pay for food quality with experimental auctions the case of yellow versus fortified maize meal in kenya biofortification of maize with provitamin a carotenoids is a new approach to the alleviation of vitamin a deficiencies in africa unfortunately these varieties are yellow or orange while consumers generally prefer white consumer willingness to pay for yellow and fortified maize was compared in experimental auctions in three regions in kenya the premium that consumers are willing pay for fortified maize 24 was higher than the discount they require to buy yellow maize 11 and in one zone consumers prefer yellow yellow color is therefore not an impossible obstacle for biofortified maize although it would clearly be easier to introduce this maize first in regions where yellow maize is currently grown

predicting the effects of market reform in zimbabwe a stated preference approach a stated preference approach is used to predict likely responses to market reform in zimbabwe a random utility model is estimated using data on consumers stated preferences for alternative types of maize meal the model is used to predict demand patterns resulting from market reforms predicted demand is then compared with actual demand following market reforms an analysis of the welfare effects of alternative policy scenarios shows that coupling the removal of consumer maize subsidies with improved access to a broader range of maize meal products ameliorated many of the adverse effects of subsidy removal especially for lower income groups

determinants of business cycle comovement a robust analysis abstract this paper investigates the determinants of business cycle comovement between countries our dataset includes over 100 countries both developed and developing we search for variables that are robust in explaining comovement using the approach of leamer amer econom rev 73 1983 31 variables considered are i bilateral trade between countries ii total trade in each country iii sectoral structure iv similarity in export and import baskets v factor endowments and vi gravity variables we find that bilateral trade is robust however two variables that the literature has argued are important for business cycles industrial structure and currency unions are found not to be robust

measuring consumers willingness to pay at the point of purchase abstract economists psychologists and marketing researchers rely on measures of consumers willingness to pay wtp in estimating demand for private and public goods and in designing optimal price schedules existing market research techniques for measuring wtp differ in whether they provide an incentive to consumers to reveal their true wtp and in whether they simulate actual point of purchase contexts the authors present an empirical comparison of several procedures for eliciting wtp that are applicable directly at the point of purchase in particular the authors test the applicability of becker degroot and marschak s 1964 well known incentive compatible procedure for assessing the utility of lotteries to measuring consumers wtp in three studies the authors explore the reliability validity and feasibility of the procedure and show that it yields lower wtp estimates than do non incentive compatible methods such as open ended and double bounded contingent valuation they show experimentally t

input output linkages and sectoral volatility why are some sectors more volatile than others this paper uncovers evidence of an empirical regularity in the us economy upstream sectors that are far removed from final consumers have higher levels of output volatility the relationship between volatility and upstreamness is not driven by sector size sector concentration trade openness or the level of aggregation at which sectors are defined rather the paper shows a stronger link between upstreamness and nominal output volatility than with indexes of real output volatility aggregate exports at the national level also reflect the empirical regularity of higher volatility with upstreamness export volatility is higher in economies with trade portfolios dominated by upstream sectors on average reducing the upstreamness of exports by 1 also reduces aggregate export volatility by about 10 the pattern of higher volatility for upstream sectors is explained with a model of demand shock transmission between sectors

monnet s error in entering a currency union without any political union european countries have taken a gamble will the needs of the currency unions force a political integration as anticipated by monnet or will the tensions create a backlash as suggested by kaldor friedman and many others we try to answer this question by analyzing the cross sectional and time series variation in pro european sentiments in the eu 15 countries the 1992 maastricht treaty seems to have reduced the pro europe sentiment as does the 2010 eurozone crisis yet in spite of the worst recession in recent history the europeans still support the common currency europe seems trapped there is no desire to go backward no interest in going forward but it is economically unsustainable to stay still

poverty alleviation in mozambique a multi market analysis of the role of food aid abstract the use of food aid in poverty alleviation programs has been hampered by two problems the inability to target to households in need and the disincentive effects on agriculture in this paper we present econometric estimates of in almost ideal demand system aids for households in maputo mozambique and develop a multi market model to show that in maputo imported yellow maize is not only self targeting but that owing to a combination of the low cross price elasticity with locally produced staples particularly white maize and cross border trade in food products the disincentive effects on domestic agriculture have been negligible

mothers and sons preference formation and female labor force dynamics this paper argues that the growing presence of a new type of man one brought up in a family in which the mother worked has been a significant factor in the increase in female labor force participation over time we present cross sectional evidence showing that the wives of men whose mothers worked are themselves significantly more likely to work we use variation in the importance of world war ii as a shock to women s labor force participation as proxied by variation in the male draft rate across u s states to provide evidence in support of the intergenerational consequences of our propagation mechanism

false promise or false premise the experience of food and input market reform in eastern and southern africa abstract the literature on the effects of agricultural market reform in africa is sharply divided and inconsistent this article attempts to reconcile opposing viewpoints on the effects of food and input market policy reform in eastern and southern africa drawing from studies of ethiopia kenya malawi zambia and zimbabwe we argue that a major source of the controversy stems from assumptions that countries have actually moved to a liberalized market environment we find that many of the most fundamental elements of the reform programs either remain unimplemented were reversed within several years or were implemented in such a way as to negate private sector investment incentives a framework is developed for explaining why some countries have been able to liberalize their food and fertilizer markets while others have not these findings have implications for how donor assistance and policy oriented research can more constructively contribute to an improved policy environment

designing the voting system for the council of the european union this paper examines the system of qualified majority voting used by the council of the european union from the perspective of enlargement of the union it uses an approach based on power indices due to penrose 1946 banzhaf 1965 and coleman 1971 to make two analyses 1 the question of the voting power of member countries from the point of view of fairness and 2 the question of how the threshold number of votes required for qmv should be determined it studies two scenarios for change from 2005 onwards envisaged by the nice treaty 1 no enlargement the eu comprising 15 member countries and 2 full enlargement to 27 members by the accession of all the present twelve candidates the proposal is made that fair weights be determined algorithmically as a technical or routine matter as the membership changes the analysis of how the threshold affects power shows the trade offs that countries face between their blocking power and the power of the council to act the main findings are 1 that the weights laid down in the nice treaty are close to being fair the only significant discrepancies being the under representation of germany and romania and the over representation of spain and poland 2 the threshold required for a decision is set too high for the council to be an effective decision making body

a theory of the conditional influence of the european parliament in the cooperation procedure i provide a public choice based explanation of why the european parliament is sometimes influential in the cooperation procedure while a conservative parliament can use its right of rejections to block a decision effectively whenever there is no consent in the council a parliament in favor of change can successfully use its amendment right in the second reading whenever the constraints have been changed unexpectedly since the adoption of the common position such as to create an amendment win set then the european parliament can choose its most preferred policy in this set which is supported by the commission cannot be changed by the council and is preferred against the status quo by a qualified majority in the council

european economic decision making policy progress or paralysis voting in the european union european economic decision making policy progress or paralysis using methods that determine voting power this article examines the shifting powers of member countries within the council of ministers of the european union as well as its relationship with the commission the main focus is upon the effect of enlargement of the union on individual countries influence and how they are likely to react the main result is that facing a dilution of their power countries will increasingly have an incentive to link decisions into package deals one implication of this tendency is an erosion of the independence of the commission another implication is that the package deals will reflect to a larger extent pure national interests the article explores ways of alleviating this likely evolution the obvious idea of reducing the current overrepresentation of the smaller nations will not solve the problem one solution is to apply lower majority requirements the risk is that such a move would increase the commission s power in both initiating and pushing through its own agenda this risk can be mitigated by giving member states the ability to bypass the commission and initiate their own legislation such a move would probably also require strengthening the role of the european parliament as a counterbalance to the commission alan kirman and mika widgren

will they buy it the potential for marketing organic vegetables in the food vending sector to strengthen vegetable safety a choice experiment study in three west african cities abstract considering the hazardous use of synthetic pesticides in vegetable production in urban west africa this research investigated the marketing potential of organic vegetables in the food vending sector of cotonou benin accra ghana and ouagadougou burkina faso certified organic production and marketing was examined as a potential strategy to improve chemical food safety a stratified random sampling strategy was applied to study the preferences of food vendors n 180 and consumers n 360 vegetable use risk perception choice preferences and willingness to pay wtp for organic certification were specifically analyzed the results showed that awareness of chemical contamination risks was generally low appearance of a product was central to vendor choice consumers attributed similar utility to taste and organic certification consumer wtp was calculated to be a premium of 1 04 usd per plate if the food served contained only certified organic vegetables in restaurants this would mean an average premium of 19 for a meal if certified organic vegetable production is to make a positive impact on food safety in urban west africa we suggest concentrating marketing efforts on the educated elite who frequent restaurants however considering that restaurant owners exhibited a lower preference for organic certification than lower class food vendors the marketing situation is difficult we therefore conclude that demand from the food vending sector alone will not institutionalize domestic certification mechanisms this underlines the need for public commitment to facilitating such change

the demand for food and calories we investigate nutrition and expenditure in rural maharashtra in india we estimate that the elasticity of calorie consumption with respect to total expenditure is 0 3 0 5 a range that is in accord with conventional wisdom the elasticity declines only slowly with levels of living and is far from the value of zero suggested by a recent revisionist literature in these indian data the calories necessary for a day s activity cost less than 5 percent of the daily wage which makes it implausible that income is constrained by nutrition rather than the other way around

using a discrete choice experiment to elicit the demand for a nutritious food willingness to pay for orange maize in rural zambia using a discrete choice experiment this paper estimates the willingness to pay for biofortified orange maize in rural zambia the study design has five treatment arms which enable an analysis of the impact of nutrition information comparing the use of simulated radio versus community leaders in transmitting the nutrition message on willingness to pay and to account for possible novelty effects in the magnitude of premiums or discounts the estimation strategy also takes into account lexicographic preferences of a subset of our respondents the results suggest that a orange maize is not confused with yellow maize and has the potential to compete with white maize in the absence of a nutrition campaign b there is a premium for orange maize with nutrition information and c different modes of nutritional message dissemination have the same impact on consumer acceptance

how do the trans pacific economies affect the usa an industrial sector approach this paper studies how the trans pacific region affects the us economy in terms of business cycle transmission we use a large data set consisting of disaggregated sectoral industrial production indexes from selected countries in the region and employ a factor augmented vector autoregression favar approach to analyse the transmission of shocks in different industries we find that a positive output shock in the entire trans pacific region has positive effects on the majority of us manufacturing sectors we also find that sectoral shocks in five sectors of the trans pacific region have a large impact on the overall us economy three of the five sectors displayed strong same sector responses relative to the overall response suggesting that vertical production linkages might play a key role in the transmission of shocks our results highlight the importance of examining industrial sectors in studying the transmission of shocks in the trans pacific region

skill transferability migration and development evidence from population resettlement in indonesia we use a natural experiment in indonesia to provide causal evidence on the role of location specific human capital and skill transferability in shaping the spatial distribution of productivity from 1979 1988 the transmigration program relocated two million migrants from rural java and bali to new rural settlements in the outer islands villages assigned migrants from regions with more similar agroclimatic endowments exhibit higher rice productivity and nighttime light intensity one to two decades later we find some evidence of migrants adaptation to agroclimatic change overall our results suggest that regional productivity differences may overstate the potential gains from migration

consumer willingness to pay for genetically modified food in kenya genetically modified gm crops are popular in many regions of the world but their deployment in africa is hindered by safety concerns and regulatory issues although the continent is in dire need of boosting its food production although consumers acceptance of gm food has been analyzed in many continents no such studies have been conducted in africa therefore a survey of 604 consumers was conducted in nairobi kenya in 2003 to gauge consumers awareness of gm crops their willingness to pay wtp for gm food and the factors that influence their wtp consumers knowledge of gm crops was limited and only 38 of the 604 respondents were aware of gm crops people in higher education and income groups were more aware than others regardless people were generally appreciative of the technology and a large majority 68 would be willing to buy gm maize meal at the same price as their favorite brand consumers were however concerned about possible side effects especially on the environment and biodiversity wtp was estimated using a double bounded dichotomous choice model and the mean wtp was found to be 13 8 higher than the average price of non gm maize meal perceptions of health risk and ethical and equity concerns had a negative influence on the likelihood of purchasing gm maize meal whereas trust in government to ensure food quality had a positive influence on wtp people with at least some secondary education and those in the high income category were more likely to purchase gm maize meal at the same price the study concludes that because awareness is still low appropriate communications are needed to involve the consumer in the debate consumers acceptance in this study was high but the research needs to be expanded to rural areas where most consumers live and other survey methods need to be explored