crisis or opportunity economic degrowth for social equity and ecological sustainability introduction to this special issue abstract this article reviews the burgeoning emerging literature on sustainable degrowth this is defined as an equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level in the short and long term the paradigmatic propositions of degrowth are that economic growth is not sustainable and that human progress without economic growth is possible degrowth proponents come from diverse origins some are critics of market globalization new technologies or the imposition of western models of development in the rest of the world all criticize gdp accounting though they propose often different social and ecological indicators degrowth theorists and practitioners support an extension of human relations instead of market relations demand a deepening of democracy defend ecosystems and propose a more equal distribution of wealth we distinguish between depression i e unplanned degrowth within a growth regime and sustainable degrowth a voluntary smooth and equitable transition to a regime of lower production and consumption the question we ask is how positive would degrowth be if instead of being imposed by an economic crisis it would actually be a democratic collective decision a project with the ambition of getting closer to ecological sustainability and socio environmental justice worldwide most articles in this issue were originally presented at the april 2008 conference in paris on economic degrowth for ecological sustainability and social equity this conference brought the word degrowth and the concepts around it into an international academic setting articles of this special issue are summarized in this introductory article hueting d alessandro and colleagues van den bergh kerschner spangenberg and alcott discuss whether current growth patterns are un sustainable and offer different perspectives on what degrowth might mean and whether and under what conditions it might be desirable matthey and hamilton focus on social dynamics and the obstacles and opportunities for voluntary social action towards degrowth lietaert and cattaneo with gavalda offer a down to earth empirical discussion of two practical living experiments cohousing and squats highlighting the obstacles for scaling up such alternatives finally van griethuysen explains why growth is an imperative in modern market economies raising also the question whether degrowth is possible without radical institutional changes

sustainable de growth mapping the context criticisms and future prospects of an emergent paradigm article i nfo sustainable de growth is both a concept and a social grassroots northern movement with its origins in the fieldsofecologicaleconomics socialecology economicanthropologyand environmentalandsocialactivistgroups this paper introduces the concept of sustainable de growth by mapping some of the main intellectual influences fromthese fields with special focus on the francophone and anglophone thinking about this emergent notion we propose hypotheses pertaining to the appeal of sustainable de growth and compare it to the messages enclosed within the dominant sustainable development idea we scrutinize the theses contradictions and consequences of sustainable de growth thinking as it is currently being shaped by a heterogeneous body of literature and as it interacts with an ample and growing corpus of social movements we also discuss possible future paths for the de growth movement compared to the apparent weakening of the sustainable development paradigm

global feminization through flexible labor abstract the emphasis on structural adjustment and labor flexibility in both developing and industrialized economies is rapidly altering the nature of employment women are being substituted for men and many forms of work are being converted into the kinds of jobs traditionally geared to women international data on recent trends in female economic activity reveal that new types of labor data are needed to highlight the mechanisms of control over workers and the actual economic forms of vulnerability to which women are exposed the paper concludes by posing questions that challenge the traditional concerns of donors and policy makers in many developing countries

deforestation land use and women s agricultural activities in the ecuadorian amazon abstract migrant women s participation in agricultural activities in the ecuadorian amazon frontier is examined using 1990 household survey data a recursive model is developed to test women s participation in agriculture as a function of household s land use and land area cleared deforested women s characteristics use of hired labor and household income results suggest that both hired labor and off farm income substitute for women s labor in agriculture women who have more young children are more likely to be involved in agriculture conversely women are less likely to work in agriculture the larger the proportion of the cleared area in pasture versus crops partly because raising cattle requires less labor than crops some implications of these results for policies to develop the frontier provide better infrastructure and services and conserve the rainforest are discussed in the conclusion and suggestions are provided for improved future data collection and analysis to examine the linkages between women s work frontier agriculture and land use

sdg 8 decent work and economic growth a gendered analysis abstract sdg 8 calls for promoting sustained inclusive and sustainable economic growth full and productive employment and decent work for all even as it highlights the importance of labour rights for all it also makes visible some significant tensions we note for example that despite many critiques of narrow economic measures of growth the focus here remains on gdp and per capita growth this is problematic we argue because the gdp productive boundary excludes much of social reproductive work this puts sdg8 in tension with sdg 5 which calls for the recognition of the value of unpaid care and domestic work there has been a significant increase in the rate of working women in the formal and informal sector however there has not been a subsequent gender shift in the doing of social reproductive work in this paper we argue sdg 8 s focus on decent work and economic growth is inadequate that productive employment and decent work for all men and women by 2030 needs to take into account the value and costs of social reproduction we trace key historical debates on work to argue that both gender and labour rights have to underpin sdg 8 if its promise of inclusive sustainable and decent work is to be realized

corporate social responsibility and worker rights institutionalizing social dialogue through international framework agreements international framework agreements ifas represent a new generation of transnational agreements between multinational companies and global trade union federations this paper analyzes the impact of such an agreement on a successful union organizing campaign in colombia in 2012 we argue that management strategies towards corporate social responsibility and social dialogue influence the impact of ifas on worker rights however this relationship is mediated by the capacity of managers and worker representatives at multiple levels to mobilize their capabilities the results highlight the importance of institutionalized dialogue between managers and worker representatives of the dissemination of capabilities across multilevel coordination structures and most importantly of their complementarities at various levels

exploring income inequality in rural coastal viet nam income inequality has been rising in parallel with the economic liberalisation process in the former centrally planned economies the opportunities for non agricultural income associated with the market liberalisation process in former centrally planned economies would seem to be important in determining inequality within the rural sector this article reviews the trends in inequality in viet nam examining differential trends and hypothesised causes inequality is important because of its relationship to other factors in the evolution of the agricultural economy such as the incidence of poverty and the sustainability of emerging income sources this article analyses income inequality based on data collected by the author in two districts in coastal northern viet nam the results demonstrate that non agricultural income sources specifically aquaculture and wage and remittance contribute more to present inequality than any other income source simulation shows that the emergence of aquaculture since the l

technical change and intra household welfare a case study of irrigated rice production in south sulawesi indonesia in this article the effect of an agricultural technical change on intra household welfare is discussed existing theories of the household suggest that the distribution of resources within the household is a function of household members employment the differences in male and female employment levels under rainfed and irrigated rice production are investigated in a case study of two villages in south sulawesi indonesia it is concluded that the pattern of labour allocation in the irrigated area involves higher absolute labour requirements for both men and women compared to the rainfed area but that women s agricultural labour relative to men s is lower furthermore women s participation in the cash economy is relative to men s lower in the irrigated than in the rainfed area it is argued that these differences can be seen as a response to the different agricultural production technologies being used this suggests that the levels of inequality within the household are greater in the irrigated than

labor markets as gendered institutions equality efficiency and empowerment issues abstract labor markets are gendered institutions operating at the intersection of the productive and reproductive economies participation in labor markets does not automatically empower women reduction in gender differentials in earnings may be the result of harmonizing down rather than up discrimination against women may persist because in the absence of institutional changes it is profitable it is important to distinguish between static and dynamic and micro and macro efficiency labor market regulation has an important role to play in the institutional transformation needed to reconcile goals of efficiency and equality

is women s ownership of land a panacea in developing countries evidence from land owning farm households in malawi our analysis of a rich representative household survey for malawi where patrilineal and matrilineal institutions coexist suggests that in matrilineal societies the likelihood of high value crop cultivation by a household increases with the extent of land owned by males while the income generated from high value crop production decreases with the amount of land owned by females and the cultivation of high value crops increases household welfare the policy implication is that facilitating female ownership of assets through informal and formal institutions does not on its own increase welfare when appropriate complementary resources and institutions are absent

the economics of development a survey i the subject our definition of the subject will be the use of economic analysis to understand the economies of poor or developing countries this includes in particular how standards of living in the population are determined and how they change over time and further how policy can or should be used in the influence of these processes the definition contains in principle much or most of analytical methods in economics insofar as they can be put to use in the examination of the issues of interest this is as it should be but it poses a problem for a survey in a journal a comprehensive treatment is infeasible so we shall follow a different route the survey will focus on what i take to be the major themes and approaches which characterise the productive aspects of the subject there is therefore no pretence at being exhaustive the purpose is rather to highlight some of the advances many of these have been of real substance there are a number of possible purposes for a survey and it is important to be clear at the outset for whom it is intended what it is and what it is not this survey is addressed to economists and students of economics who know the tools of their trade but not necessarily how they have been applied to and fashioned for the analysis of the economics of developing countries it is a description of the ways in which problems can be productively formulated and approached in terms of examples chosen for their intrinsic importance and interest the vastness of the subject means that we have to be highly selective it does not seek to provide a summary evaluation of the current view of the appropriate response to immediate policy questions it is not a history of thought nor a research manifesto nor an attempt to adjudicate or settle the major debates where they arise naturally from the major purpose some judgements on these subjects will be offered but they do not themselves constitute the primary intent of this survey there are three lines of enquiry or sets of questions which have i suggest been distinctive of the most fruitful work in development economics they will

hearts and spades paradigms of household economics abstract this paper explains why the feminist critique of inequalities within the family poses a serious challenge to conventional economic theories of the household but it also discusses those aspects of both neoclassical and marxian theory that are useful to an analysis of conflict within the family arguing that the bargaining power models being developed by some neoclassical theorist are complementary to marxist influenced structural accounts

oil consumption and economic efficiency a comparative analysis of advanced developing and emerging economies abstract this paper investigates the economic efficiency oil consumption relationship in 42 countries during the period 1986 2006 in a first stage by using dea window analysis countries economic efficiencies are obtained in a second stage an econometric analysis based on robust gmm estimators reveals an inverted u shape relationship between oil consumption and economic efficiency in order to capture heterogeneities among countries development stages the analysis has been separated into two groups advanced economies and developing emerging economies the results show that advanced economies have much higher turning points compared to emerging and developing economies it appears that oil consumption increases countries economic efficiency in addition the consumption patterns of oil products and its derivatives have changed through years and among countries the different turning points from the econometric analysis indicate the dependence of oil consumption in advanced economies higher turning points is driven mainly by household purchasing activities and their standards of living transport housing and water food etc finally it appears that oil consumption is the main driver behind the progress of industrialization and urbanization regardless of the country s development stage

oil exploitation and the environmental kuznets curve abstract this study refers to a panel estimation of an environmental kuznets curve ekc for oil to determine the factors most affecting oil exploitation in 38 oil producing countries during 1990 2000 control variables such as oil reserves oil price population political rights and the gini index were used to determine its contribution to the main ekc model the empirical results fully support the existence of an ekc for oil exploitation furthermore the result indicates that the proved oil reserves has a significant and positive role in oil production but oil price and population do not significantly affect crude oil production also increased freedoms and a better income distribution will reduce the rate of oil exploitation thus policies aiming at enhancing democratic society and better income distribution would be more compatible with sustainability

work and wellbeing in informal economies the regulative roles of institutions of identity and the state summary the larger part of the economy in most developing countries is outside the regulative control of the state when defined in this way it has two types of expression first self employment with some wage work in unregistered or unincorporated small enterprises second unregistered and unregulated activity and workers inside and around large registered organizations such as firms public sector enterprises and the state itself this paper reviews the literature mainly but not exclusively from india with three objectives first it questions what brings order to such economic activity and how economic and social insecurity is instituted second it examines the counter intuitive proposition that social security rights are de facto if not de jure dependent upon work rights third it explores the dynamics of and responses to informalization

gender and say a model of household behaviour with endogenously determined balance of power the evidence that the same total income can lead a household to choose different consumption vectors depending on who brings in how much of the income has led to an effort to replace the standard unitary model of the household with the collective model which recognizes that the husband and the wife may have different preferences and depending on the balance of power between them the household may choose differently one weakness of this new literature is that it fails to recognize that the household s choice could in turn influence the balance of power once this two way relation between choice and power is recognized we are forced to confront some new questions concerning how to model the household this paper tries to answer these by defining a household equilibrium examining its game theoretic properties and drawing out its testable implications it is shown for instance that once we allow for dynamic interaction a household can exhibit inefficient behavior and that for a certain class of parameters children will be less likely to work in a household where power is evenly balanced than one in which all power is concentrated in the hands of either the father or the mother the paper also draws out the implications for female labor supply

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

child labor cause consequence and cure with remarks on international labor standards although the literature on child labor is enormous it lacks a common theoretical foundation in this paper analytical survey of this field is provided keeping in mind that this is an area where the primary reason for theorizing is ultimately to influence policy overall it is noted that the literature on child labor is an illustration of abundance and anarchy although empirical writings on child labor are numerous they are not usually founded on theory it is argued that there is much that can be done in curbing the issue of child labor several theories were studied in this paper including collaborative intervention such efforts include public action which alters the economic environment such that the parents of their own accord prefer to withdraw the child from labor force another strategy involves the government a legal intervention is enforcing a total ban on the subject although such interventions have good intentions some of them may not be feasible in general it is better to take economy wide measures against child labor and if there is to be a sector specific ban it should be based on the working conditions of that sector rather than the destination of the goods

project evaluation for sustainable rural development plan sierra in the dominican republic abstract a methodology of project appraisal combining the criteria of economic feasibility acceptability and sustainability is developed and applied to plan sierra a watershed development project in the dominican republic feasibility is measured by the change in sustainable income due to the project acceptability by the change in average annual income for the present generation and sustainability by the difference between changes in sustainable and charges in average annual incomes these three criteria may be achieved by schemes of tax and subsidy between project and non project households and between present and future generations

gender inequality and economic growth a cross country analysis abstract this paper investigates empirically the determinants of economic growth for a set of semi industrialized export oriented economies in which women provide the bulk of labor in the export sector the primary hypothesis tested is that gender inequality which contributes to women s relatively lower wages was a stimulus to growth via the effect on exports during 1975 95 empirical analysis shows that gdp growth is positively related to gender wage inequality in contrast to recent work which suggests that income inequality slows growth evidence also indicates that part of the impact of gender wage inequality on growth is transmitted through its positive effect on investment as a share of gdp

predictive power of weekly money stock announcements abstract the objective of this study is to test if the weekly money stock can help to predict the monthly money stock using the data in the period of 1974 to 1985 pitman s nearness measure and a statistic which is similar to the linear feedback statistic are used respectively for the qualitative and quantitative investigations other variables such as interest rates and stock prices are also considered in the model the results indicate that the weekly money supply provides little information concerning the monthly money stock

in defence of degrowth abstract this article defends the proposal of sustainable degrowth a starting premise is that resource and co2 limits render further growth of the economy unsustainable if degrowth is inevitable the question is how it can become socially sustainable i e a prosperous and stable rather than a catastrophic descent pricing mechanisms alone are unlikely to secure smooth adaptation a full ensemble of environmental and redistributive policies is required including among others policies for a basic income reduction of working hours environmental and consumption taxes and controls on advertising policies like these that threaten to harm the economy are less and less likely to be implemented within existing market economies whose basic institutions financial property political and redistributive depend on and mandate continuous economic growth an intertwined cultural and political change is needed that will embrace degrowth as a positive social development and reform those institutions that make growth an imperative sustainable degrowth is therefore not just a structuring concept it is a radical political project that offers a new story and a rallying slogan for a social coalition built around the aspiration to construct a society that lives better with less

the economic and demographic status of female headed households in rural botswana analyzes the economic and demographic status of female headed households in botswana where insufficient economic opportunities force many men to live and work away from home the analysis is based on the rural income distribution survey conducted in 1974 75 by the central statistical office of botswana in which 957 households containing 6475 individuals were interviewed once a month for 23 months the relevant items surveyed were age and sex of household nembers amount and sources of income identity and value of assets use of time extent of education and sex of perceived head of household the analysis recognizes 4 types of households male head with male aged 20 64 present 452 male head with no male 20 64 present 77 female head with male aged 20 64 present 131 and female head with no male aged 20 64 present 277 the primary analysis consists of a comparison of the 1st and 4th of these groups categories 2 and 3 are intermediate positions and their characteristics are less clear cut the income distribution in rural botswana is more unequal than in many other developing countries with female headed households faring especialy poorly on a per adult equivalent basis the welfare attained by members of female headed households is nearly 25 lower than that attained in male headed households such is the case despite the fact that women in botswana have been shown to compare favorably with men in regard to education willingness to work agricultural know how and entrepreneurial ability reasons for womens lower economic status in this country are discussed and policy suggestions to overcome this discrepancy are made

quantifying the external cost of oil consumption within the context of sustainable development the concept of sustainability implies that the flow of services derived from the use of natural capital must be constant over time and should be obtained at a constant price for a depletable resource such as oil the future generations are highly impacted due to the consumption behavior of the current generation since the ultimate oil stock within the earth declines with cumulative consumption excessive consumption of oil now reduces the availability of oil for future needs moreover since oil reserves are normally extracted in the order of ascending cost and descending quality excessive consumption of relatively high quality cheap oil reserves by the current generation raises the cost at which future generations can meet their needs of oil and hence imposes an external cost on the future generations this study aims to quantify the external cost of consuming a barrel of oil within the context of sustainable development an option pricing model is developed to quantify this external cost assuming that the external cost of consuming a barrel of oil now equals the value of the option to get a barrel of oil in the future at the same current cost then the total cost of consuming a barrel of oil now that should be used in lifecycle costing to design more sustainable products is the summation of the oil price and the external cost

small differences that still matter cross border regions and work place governance in the southern ontario and us great lakes automotive industry rutherford t d and holmes j small differences that still matter cross border regions and work place governance in the southern ontario and us great lakes automotive industry regional studies workplace governance is a critical element in determining regional competitiveness while contemporary rescaling of economic and social relations has produced new territorial configurations including cross border regions cbrs there is little research on the reshaping of workplace governance within such regions it is argued that changes in cbr workplace governance are contingent upon 1 firms ability to transfer corporate employment practices across national borders 2 labour law and other employment regulatory institutions and 3 the response of labour organizations using this framework workplace governance change in the automotive industry in the southern ontario and us great lakes states cbr is examined rutherford t d and holmes j

household production in the philippines a non neoclassical approach the starting point of any economic analysis is a microeconomic theory of the decision making unit by providing a set of explicit assumptions regarding individual choices a microeconomic theory lays the necessary foundation for the explanation of economic behavior just as a theory of the firm underlies analyses of market production a theory of the family underlies analyses of household production explanations of long run trends such as fertility decline grow out of assumptions regarding the nature of household decision making developing what they term the economic approach to human behavior gary becker and other neoclassical economists forcefully argue that household behavior is motivated primarily by a collective concern for economic efficiency they assume that households seek to maximize exogenously given joint utility functions and they hypothesize that differences in household behavior represent efficient responses to differences in the prices and incomes which households face this approach provides the foundation for an explanation of fertility decline based on long run changes in relative prices associated with economic development simply stated the argument runs as follows as the rate of return to human capital rises and levels of education increase the cost of rearing children goes up as higher wages draw women out of the household into the labor force the opportunity cost of mothers time goes up further increasing the cost of children the demand for children decreases and fertility levels gradually adjust 2 the assumption that joint utility functions are exogenous constant over time and vary randomly if at all across households is crucial to this argument systematic differences in unobservable joint utility functions could seriously confound the interpretation of observed relationships between changes in household behavior and changes in rela

market wages family composition and the time allocation of children in agricultural households this article draws upon a time allocation survey of a four year panel of households from six villages in semi arid tropic rural india the inter relationships among adult male female and child market wage rates and time allocated to domestic activities leisure and schooling by boys and girls are analysed the results based on the pooled time series and cross section individual observations suggest that adult and child wage rates play an important role in the time allocation of both boys and girls

welfare impacts of technological change on women in southern mali abstract it has often been hypothesized that new agricultural technologies could have an adverse impact on women because additional labor required of them reduces the time spent and therefore income earned from private field activities this study shows that the expansion of cotton cultivation on the household communal fields in southern mali associated with the introduction of new technologies results in increased payments to women for their increased labor on the cotton fields unfortunately these payments are small compared to the loss of revenue from private plot production thus the net effect of the expansion of household cotton cultivation is a reduction in incomes of women who cultivate private plots short run policy implications of this study are that improving women s income requires concern with their private plot earnings for example profitability of the private field crops could be increased with higher input use in the long run as land becomes even more constrained emphasis needs to be placed on institutional changes to increase women s bargaining power so that they obtain larger shares of the new income streams resulting from technological change on the communal field institutional changes already occurring in the region with the apparent objective of increasing women s and non household head men s bargaining power include organized work teams and the movement toward smaller nuclear families

gender and rural livelihoods in kenya this article considers the implications for gender relations of different rural livelihoods while many rural areas in kenya have been drawn into intensive commercial production others formerly dependent on remittances from migrant labour have seen these diminish recent empirical studies of gender and livelihoods in kenya are compared commercial production and the drying up of remittances set up quite different processes in rural households these may lead to greater corporateness to conflict or even to fragmentation the outcome depends on the potential rewards of co operation but also on domestic authority relations and on ideologies of common or divided interest

the market for public office why the indian state is not better at development abstract how and why officials are transferred from one post to another can in india does have far reaching consequences for the effectiveness of public service organizations such as irrigation agriculture forestry and soil conservation departments the transfer mechanism used in many departments of indian states involves a kind of internal labor market a truer market than in the way that term is often used by labor market economists it allows pressures for corrupt behavior to bear down on the incumbents of certain posts and itself amplifies those pressures frequently the pressures on officials to be corrupt cause them to behave in ways contrary to the ostensible objectives of their departments why is the indian state not better at promoting development to an important degree because of the corruption transfer mechanism and its effects on bureaucratic initiatives

feminization of the labor force the effects of long term development and structural adjustment abstract using crosscountry data pooled for 1985 and 1990 we analyze the relationship between women s share of the labor force and the processes of long term economic development and macroeconomic changes associated with structural adjustment we find that the relationship between long term development and women s share of the labor force is u shaped controlling for the feminization u we also find that structural adjustment policies have led to an increase in feminization of the labor force via worsening income distribution and increased openness

the un framework on business and human rights a workers rights critique the protect respect remedy framework along with the un guiding principles on business and human rights is the current global standard regarding corporate conduct this article analyses the un framework from the vantage point of labour rights in india by looking at the garment supply chain it argues that it can do little to induce states and businesses to bring substantive improvements to working conditions in a largely informal economy like india without the state performing its duty to protect human rights the secondary responsibility of corporations can do very little in realising the rights of workers nonetheless its tallest contribution is that it has given a platform for civil society to push for better conduct from all businesses and marks the beginning of a unified international business and human rights agenda

modeling the effects of trade on women at work and at home abstract foreign trade affects women s wages and jobs their household work and their leisure this paper develops a model which covers not only all the sectors of the market economy but also social reproduction and leisure activities for women and men separately the model which in other respects is a standard cge computable general equilibrium model is applied to a simplified set of data for bangladesh its use is illustrated by simulating the gendered effects of changes in trade policies and capital flows

preliminary data errors and their impact on the forecast error of simultaneous equations models econometric models especially when designed for forecasting purposes tend to use updated economic series the last figures s of which embed first published or preliminary data errors this article identifies and assesses the contribution of errors in preliminary data to the forecast error and to the forecast error variance of linear dynamic simultaneous equation models the effect of preliminary data errors is shown to be pervasive although not necessarily weighty the suggested decomposition of the forecast error is applied to a small macroeconometric model of the italian economy

shifting theories partial perspectives on the household there is a neglect of networks within cooperative conflict models which arises because of the patriarchal households assumed but households are not the same everywhere because their structure is dependent upon social context and they are a sub system of wider social relations and realities understanding households in this paper female headed households requires us to study the varied contexts in which households are situated and the social relations of individuals within these institutions using contributions from feminist economics and realist social theory this paper shows how these frameworks can explain the diversity of social reality in household formations and relations

resource depletion and sustainability in small open economies abstract exogenous price changes affect the amount that a small country exporting natural resource commodities must invest to sustain its consumption level the necessary amount is given by the difference between hotelling rent and the discounted sum of future terms of trade effects capital gains the latter term is found to be large relative to the former in the case of petroleum depletion in indonesia this suggests that resource rich countries will need to invest more than previously expected to sustain their consumption levels if natural resource prices continue their long term historical decline

radical political economy and the economics of labor markets this essay is the result of a long process involving many drafts and revisions i am grateful to duncan foley for the careful and constructive criticisms offered throughout the project the following people read the manuscript at different stages and although they often disagreed with me they generously provided helpful comments two anonymous referees for this journal samuel bowles william dickens greg dow robert drago richard edwards kathleen engel richard freeman james galbraith herbert gintis jody hoffer gittel sandfordjacoby tom kochan david levine lisa lynch paul osterman michael piore bob rebitzer gil skilman dan slesnick robert thomas and tsuyoshi tsuru comments from participants in seminars at the massachusetts institute of technology university of massachusetts at amherst and hitotsubashi university are also gratefully acknowledged

household production reconsidered gender labor conflict and technological change in malaysia s muda region abstract the notion of the farm household as a bounded unit of production and consumption has become enshrined as a category of analysis and as a policy ideal this article points to the limitations of the neoclassical theory of the farm household for understanding technological and economic change and suggests an alternative politicized approach that focuses on gender relations within and among households evidence to illustrate these arguments comes from the muda region of malaysia often regarded as the archetypical farm household economy

market opportunities genetic endowments and intrafamily resource distribution child survival in rural india the authors examine how intrafamily resource allocations respond to changes in economic conditions and to genetic differences in children by estimating the determinants of variations in the sex specific survival differentials of rural indian children based on standard census and household survey data they explore in particular the hypothesis that such differences are related to the relative returns to survival with households selectively allocating resources to children in response to variation in sex differences in their expected earnings opportunities as adults data are from the 1961 census and a 1971 household survey excerpt

work intensity gender and sustainable development abstract is labour intensive employment compatible with social justice and environmental sustainability this paper examines the question of how far small scale intermediate technology based on energy intensive human work which is central to prescriptions for poverty alleviation and sustainable development is compatible with development objectives emphasizing gender equity work intensity is a neglected characteristic of labour but significant in the determination of human well being and in the intra household distribution of welfare the intensification of energy expenditure does not affect men and women in a uniform way and needs to be gender disaggregated in order to reveal potential trade offs between development strategies based on labour intensive growth and the well being of men and women the paper draws upon the experience with treadle pumps for irrigation in bangladesh as an illustration of such potential trade offs and argues for more rigorous analyses of gender divisions of labour which include work intensity in combination with time allocation

the development benefits of maternity leave summary within developing countries studies addressing the effects of maternity benefits on fertility infant child health and women s labor force participation are limited and provide contradictory findings yet knowledge regarding the implementation of maternity provisions is essential as such policies could significantly improve women and children s well being we add to this literature using fixed effects panel regression from 1999 to 2012 across 121 developing countries to explore whether different types of maternity leave policies affect infant child mortality rates fertility and women s labor force participation and whether those effects are shaped by disparities in gdp per capita and secondary school enrollment our findings demonstrate 1 both infant and child mortality rates are expected to decline in countries that institute any leave policy policies that last 12 weeks or longer and policies that increase in duration and payment as a percentage of total annual salary 2 fertility is expected to decline in countries that have higher weekly paid compensation 3 maternity leave provisions decrease fertility and infant child mortality rates most in countries with lower gdp per capita and countries with middle range secondary enrollment rates and 4 labor force participation does not increase our results suggest that policy makers must consider the duration compensation and goals addressing fertility versus mortality rates of a policy alongside a country s economic development and secondary school enrollment when determining which maternity leave provisions to apply within developing country contexts

cleaning house new perspectives on households and economic development abstract this paper provides a critical review of the recent literature on households and economic development three related points are developed 1 household activities can be analyzed in economic terms particularly if these terms are broadly defined to encompass such factors as risk and uncertainty 2 significant differences between the economic position of men women and children within the patriarchal household mean that it cannot be treated as an undifferentiated unit of analysis 3 microeconomic analysis of the household must be situated within a larger structural analysis of gender and age based inequalities and their interaction with class structure and national position within the world capitalist system

supply response in an agrarian economy with non symmetric gender relations abstract there is a growing recognition that gender relations matter for supply response to devaluation and other structural adjustment policies in sub saharan africa but most household models that introduce gender differentiation nevertheless preserve an essential symmetry between male and female household members and do not capture elements of subordination or coercion in male female relations this paper seeks to contribute by developing a model based on stackelberg type equations in which the husband occupies the position of firstmover reflecting his power to set the parameters for women s choices the model is contextualized with reference to tanzania

preliminary data error and monetary aggregate targeting preliminary monetary aggregate data are subject to subsequent revision because of errors from seasonal and nonseasonal sources that will only be known later this article examines the characteristics of these revision errors and analyzes their possible effect on monetary policy it is found that false signals in the sense that the preliminary m1 growth rate falls within the tolerance band set monthly by the federal open market committee while the final revised figure lies outside the tolerance limits or vice versa occur about two fifths of the time it is shown that this proportion can be halved by the adoption of improved seasonal adjustment procedures