economic growth comparative advantage and gender differences in schooling outcomes evidence from the birthweight differences of chinese twins abstract data from two surveys of twins in china are used to contribute to an improved understanding of the role of economic development in affecting gender differences in the trends in levels of and returns to schooling observed in china and in many developing countries in recent decades in particular we explore the hypothesis that these phenomena reflect differences in comparative advantage with respect to skill and brawn between men and women in the context of changes in incomes returns to skill and or nutritional improvements that are the result of economic development and growth

the effect of fair trade affiliation on child schooling evidence from a sample of chilean honey producers we evaluate the impact of fair trade ft affiliation on child schooling within a sample of chilean honey producers with a retrospective panel data approach from a theoretical point of view we argue that ft should have a positive effect on child schooling since it generates a short run pure income effect together with a medium run productivity effect on both adult and child wages on the other hand because of the higher productivity generated by the medium run effect the opportunity cost of child education increases if they work with their parents the direction of the impact of ft affiliation on child schooling is therefore uncertain and requires empirical testing our econometric findings document a positive and significant impact of affiliation years on child schooling after controlling for endogeneity and heterogeneity between the treatment and control sample

the cost of poverty alleviation transfer programs a comparative analysis of three programs in latin america summary a common criticism of antipoverty programs is that the high share of administrative nontransfer costs substantially reduces their effectiveness yet there is surprisingly little rigorous empirical evidence on program costs improved information and a better understanding of the costs of such programs are crucial for effective policymaking this study proposes and implements a replicable methodology for a comparative cost analysis of three similar poverty alleviation programs in latin america and assesses their cost efficiency the findings underscore that any credible assessment of cost efficiency requires a detailed analysis of program cost structures that goes well beyond simply providing aggregate cost information

agricultural reforms in central and eastern europe and the former soviet union status and perspectives the current status of the agricultural sector in central and eastern europe and the former soviet union is described in the context of reforms undertaken during the transition from a centrally planned economy to a market based one sectoral performance is analyzed focussing especially on general trends in production and emerging trading patterns five critical basic elements of reform are described and a table is presented rating each country in the study on progress in completing each type of reform overall conclusions are presented indicating that in each basic element of reform the cee countries have achieved considerably more success than those of the cis the paper concludes with a discussion of prospects for development in the region

the double marginalization problem of transfer pricing theory and experiment in this paper we find that the idea of using optional two part tariffs as a basis for tariff renegotiations in a bilaterally monopoly setting is a solution to the double marginalization problem that theoretically 1 creates a stable equilibrium 2 at the overall efficient level 3 without the presence of a central management through experimental testing we find that the efficiency of this mechanism is significantly higher than the efficiency of simple direct negotiation both under symmetrically and asymmetrically distributed information

regulating horizontal diversification abstract this paper investigates the optimal design of diversification rules for regulated enterprises diversification generates profit in non core markets that can be shared with core customers however a diversified firm may divert its attention and effort to non core operations causing consumer welfare in core markets to decline diversification generally results in lower prices and higher powered reward structures in core markets surprisingly diversification is not always directed into the non core markets where the expected contribution of the regulated firm is most pronounced furthermore diversification may be permitted more often as the potential losses from effort diversion increase

quality coordination and complementary products this article models the choice of price and quality where products are complementary and components can be provided by either one or two monopolists the firms have to choose price and quality simultaneously but can coordinate in the latter dimension we consider two specifications for the quality of the composite good bottleneck and additive set ups in both cases a single monopolist may produce lower quality as compared to dual ownership if the latter is modelled as a single stage quality and price setting game when separate markets for components of the composite good are added to the model we provide an example where dual ownership leading to higher quality also yields higher consumer surplus but not total welfare than a single monopolist

information and participation in social programs participation in social programs such as clubs and other social organizations results from a process in which an agent learns about the requirements benefits and likelihood of acceptance related to a program applies to be a participant and finally is accepted or rejected we propose a model of this participation process and provide an application of the model using data from a social program in mexico our empirical analysis illustrates that decision at each stage of the process are responsive to expectations about the decisions and outcomes at the subsequent stages and that knowledge about the program can have a significant impact on participation outcomes

price and quality competition the effect of differentiation and vertical integration abstract this paper studies an instance of price and quality competition between firms as seen in the recent internet market consumers purchase a product based on not only its price but also its quality level therefore two firms compete in determining their prices and quality levels to maximize their profits characterizing this competition from a microeconomic viewpoint we consider two possible business strategies that firms can utilize to overcome the competition the differentiation and the vertical integration with another complementary firm we show an interesting result not seen in the well known bertrand price competition not only does the differentiation always increase the firms profits but also it can increase the consumer s welfare in a quality sensitive market we further derive that under some mild conditions the monopolistic vertical integration that excludes the combination purchase with a competitor s product is beneficial for both the integrated firm and its consumers

rising inequality in mexico household characteristics and regional effects we use an empirical framework to identify the contributions of microeconomic factors to the sharp rise in household per capita income inequality in mexico between 1984 and 1994 results indicate that changes in returns to household characteristics in particular changes in returns to education are responsible for about half of the increase in the gini coefficient the deteriorating conditions in rural areas relative to the urban areas and of the southern region relative to other regions account for another fourth of the increase in the gini

complementary goods creating capturing and competing for value this paper studies the strategic interaction between firms producing strictly complementary products with strict complements a consumer derives positive utility only when both products are used together we show that value capture and value creation problems arise when such products are developed and sold by separate firms nonintegrated producers although the firms tend to price higher for given quality levels their provision of quality is so low that in equilibrium prices are set well below what an integrated monopolist would choose when one firm can mandate a royalty fee from the complementor producer as often occurs in arrangements between hardware and software makers we find that the value capture problem is mitigated to some extent and consumer surplus rises however because royalty fees greatly reduce the incentives of the firm paying them to invest in quality the arrangement exacerbates the value creation problem and leads to even lower total quality surprisingly this result can reverse with competition specifically when the firm charging the royalty fee faces a vertically differentiated competitor the value creation problem is greatly reduced opening the door for the possibility of a pareto improving outcome in which all firms and consumers benefit it is worth noting that this outcome cannot be achieved by giving firms the option of introducing a line of product variants competition serves as a necessary commitment ingredient

examining the reliability of self reported data on school participation abstract many studies evaluate the impacts of conditional cash transfer cct programs on schooling using self reports on enrollment and attendance even though there are reasons to doubt the reliability of these data in this paper we examine the extent to which school age girls overstate their school participation using administrative data from a cash transfer experiment in malawi and school attendance ledgers collected as part of the impact evaluation we find that while all study participants overstate their enrollment and attendance rates the extent to which this happens is significantly higher in the control group than the cct arm this finding implies that exclusive reliance on self reported school participation data can lead to a serious underestimation of actual program impacts we recommend that self reports be supplemented using alternative sources of data on school participation that are appropriate to the experiment at hand even if such efforts are likely to increase evaluation costs

in the same boat but not equals the heterogeneous effects of parental income on child labour this paper examines the impact of parental income on child labour the empirical literature has found conflicting results regarding whether poverty leads parents to send their children to work mos

education choices in mexico using a structural model and a randomized experiment to evaluate progresa in this paper we evaluate the effect of a large welfare program in rural mexico for such a purpose we use an evaluation sample that includes a number of villages where the program was not implemented for evaluation purposes we estimate a structural model of education choices and argue that without such a framework it is impossible to evaluate the effect of the program and especially possible changes to its structure we also argue that the randomized component of the data allows us to identify a more flexible model that is better suited to evaluate the program we find that the program has a positive effect on the enrollment of children especially after primary school we also find that an approximately revenue neutral change in the program that would increase the grant for secondary school children while eliminating for the primary school children would have a substantially larger effect on enrollment of the latter while having minor effects on the former

neighborhood effects in integrated social policies when potential beneficiaries share their knowledge and attitudes about a policy intervention their decision to participate and the effectiveness of both the policy and its evaluation may be influenced this matters most notably in integrated social policies with several components in this article spillover effects on take up behaviors are investigated in the context of a conditional cash transfer program in rural mexico these effects are identified using exogenous variations in the local frequency of beneficiaries generated by the program s randomized evaluation a higher treatment density in the areas surrounding the evaluation villages is found to increase the take up of scholarships and enrollment at the lower secondary level these cross village spillovers operate exclusively within households receiving another component of the program and do not carry over larger distances while several tests reject heterogeneities in impact due to spatial variations in program implementation evidence is found suggesting that spillovers stem partly from the sharing of information about the program among eligible households

supply quality management with wholesale price and revenue sharing contracts under horizontal competition abstract in a number of industries e g the airplane industry aerospace industry auto industry or computer industry certain suppliers essentially have a monopoly on the production technology for key components and inevitably manufacturers in these industries have common suppliers a key part of manufacturers work with suppliers concerns improving the quality of their respective products which gives rise to a collaborative activity usually termed as supply quality management when the manufacturers are competitors they do not wish to see a common supplier dividing his involvement in quality improvement unequally between themselves and their rivals however as the suppliers collaborate with several manufacturers it is highly questionable whether their efforts will be strictly equivalent for each manufacturer in this paper a non cooperative dynamic game is formulated in which a single supplier collaborates with two manufacturers on design quality improvements for their respective products the manufacturers compete for market demand both on price and design quality the paper analyzes how each party should allocate resources for quality improvement over time in order to take into account the potential coordinating power of the compensation scheme adopted in this type of decentralized setting we compare the possible outcomes under a wholesale price contract and a revenue sharing contract

the impact of conditional cash transfers on marriage and divorce abstracta growing number of less developed countries have introduced conditional cash transfer programs in which funds are targeted to women economic models of the family suggest that these transfer programs may lead to marital turnover among program beneficiaries data from the experimental evaluation of the progresa program in mexico is used to provide new evidence on the short run impacts of targeted transfers on couples union dissolution and individuals new union formation decisions we find that although the overall share of women in union does not change as a result of the program marital turnover increases intact families eligible for the transfers experienced a modest 0 32 percentage points increase in separation rates with most of the effect concentrated among young and relatively educated women households in contrast young single women with low educational attainment levels experienced a substantial increase in new union formation rates the marital transition patterns are consistent

competition and integration among complements and network market structure this article analyzes the competition and integration among complementary products that can be combined to create composite goods or systems the model generalizes the cournot duopoly complements model to the case in which there are multiple brands of compatible components it analyzes equilibrium prices for a variety of organizational and market structures that differ in their degree of competition and integration the model applies to a variety of product networks including automatic teller machines real estate multiple listing services and airlines crs as well as to nonnetwork markets of compatible components such as computer cpus and peripherals hardware and software and long distance and local telephone services copyright 1992 by blackwell publishing ltd

optimal pricing and quality choice of a monopolist under knightian uncertainty abstract this paper analyzes a simple vertical product differentiation model with demand uncertainty and derives a risk neutral monopolist s optimal market entry timing her optimal pricing and optimal quality choice by incorporating knightian uncertainty irreversibility and flexibility in quality enhancing investment into a continuous time stochastic model it is shown that an increase in knightian uncertainty induces decreases in the optimal price the optimal quality and the value of undertaking the quality enhancing investment by the monopolist the social optimal entry timing pricing and quality are also analyzed

fair trade organic coffee rural livelihoods and the agrarian question southern mexican coffee families in transition summary we use a random sample of coffee producing households in southern mexico to compare opportunities associated with government subsidies and migration to the role of fair trade organic coffee in household livelihoods although land and labor returns among fair trade organic coffee growers are higher than for conventional growers differences in yields are more important than price premiums moreover investment in education and labor opportunities outside coffee dominate those in fair trade organic coffee the results highlight the value of an integrated approach to the agrarian question that improves productivity and prices and supports other pathways for improving incomes

revisiting electricity liberalization and quality of service empirical evidence from new zealand abstractwhat effect does the firm structure have on the quality of service delivered by networks and infrastructure industries we answer this question by empirically assessing the impacts of complete vertical separation such as ownership unbundling on the quality of service delivered by a liberalized network industry electricity distribution utilities in new zealand are considered for this purpose and are analysed using panel data econometrics the results show robust evidence that ownership unbundling contributed to a fall in the duration and frequency of supply interruptions in electricity distribution however the results also show that unbundling has no effect on reducing distribution network losses these results overall highlight the nonsimple impacts of ownership unbundling on the quality of electricity distribution we suggest that the quality of service may largely improve when considered in the economic regulation of electricity networks than completely relying on specific reform measures

household income as a determinant of child labor and school enrollment in brazil evidence from a social security reform abstractthis article studies the effects of household income on labor participation and school enrollment of children aged 10 14 in brazil using a social security reform as a source of exogenous variation in household income i find that increased benefits are associated with increases in school enrollment for girls as well as a smaller reduction in their labor participation but i find no effects for boys i also uncover evidence that the gender of the benefit receiver matters for girls labor variables only benefits received by females reduce girls work

efficiency and total factor productivity in ukrainian agriculture in transition this article analyzes efficiency and total factor productivity tfp change of large agricultural enterprises during their transition to a market economy in ukraine efficiency is calculated by data envelopment analysis and productivity change is measured by the malmquist productivity change index in the period between 1990 and 1999 on average tfp declined by 6 annually dropping a total 42 the main reason for the observed tfp decline is a decrease in technical efficiency which is found to be remarkably significant at the same time there is a high variation among individual enterprises the distribution of efficiency scores widens which indicates that the farms diverge with respect to their economic performance a tobit regression analysis is conducted in which efficiency scores are related to factors such as farm type farm size initial conditions and legal form

the effect of economic opportunity and family background on adolescent cohabitation on adolescent cohabitation and childbearing among low income blacks this article uses a hazards model permitting continuous covariates and fixed effects to estimate the effect of local employment opportunity and family background on the cohabitation and childbearing of black youths from low income households support is found for w j wilson s hypothesis that employment opportunity encourages the formation of cohabitational unions as well as for the opportunity cost hypothesis that employment opportunity discourages childbearing outside such unions however the latter effect appears to be larger suggesting that the opportunity cost hypothesis is the primary channel through which higher employment rates result in lower rates of illegitimacy among underclass youths

school attendance and child labor a model of collective behavior this paper theoretically investigates how community approval or disap proval aects school attendance and child labor and how aggregate behavior of the community feeds back towards the formation and persistence of an anti or pro schooling norm the proposed community model continues to take aggregate and idiosyncratic poverty into account as an important driver of low school attendance and child labor but it provides also an explanation for why equally poor villages or regions can display dierent attitudes towards schooling distinguishing between three dierent modes of child time allocation school attendance work and leisure the paper shows how the time costs of schooling and child labor productivity con tribute to the existence of a locally stable anti schooling norm it proposes policies that eectively exploit the social dynamics and initiate a permanent escape from the anti schooling equilibrium an extension of the model explores how an education contingent subsidy paid to the poorest families of a community manages to initiate a bandwagon eect towards education for all the optimal mechanism design of

highway robbery complementary monopoly and the hold up problem abstract we analyze the hold up problem in the context of the cournot ellet theory of complementary monopoly the strategic interaction among travelers and two distinct owners of successive segments of a segment road is used as a metaphor for complementary goods that are traded sequentially it is shown that when trade occurs double marginalization is eliminated furthermore allowing for strategic placement of the tollbooths simultaneous trade avoids the hold up problem but not double marginalization thus this analysis suggests the endogenous creation of institutions among complementary monopolistic suppliers that assure their customers of not being held up whenever it is strategically possible

child labour in indonesian small industries abstract we analyse the geographic incidence of child labour in small manufacturing firms in indonesia at the village level our unique data set covers virtually all indonesian villages and urban neighbourhoods it allows us to distinguish between demand and supply side determinants of child labour we show by correcting for sample selection that a number of counterintuitive results child labour being unaffected by credit access and school proximity are the result of an interplay between supply and demand side determinants credit access and school proximity reduce child labour supply but simultaneously constitute positive location factors for firms thereby increasing the demand for child labourers to effectively reduce child labour growth oriented policies such as enhancing school and credit facilities should be complemented by policies specifically geared towards increasing school attendance

spatial dynamic analysis of productivity growth of agri food companies this study analyzes the spatial dynamics in productivity growth and its components for a sample of agri food companies in murcia spain over the period 2005 2014 we find that productivity growth of a company is related to productivity growth of neighboring companies in both the short and long term the marginal effects of the different factors on productivity growth are stronger in the short run rather than in the long run land characteristics and economic territorial conditions have the largest marginal effect on productivity growth and its components this study contributes to the existing literature by including spatial interactions in the analysis of productivity growth

school subsidies for the poor evaluating the mexican progresa poverty program abstract this paper evaluates how the progresa program which provides poor mothers in rural mexico with education grants has affected enrollment poor children who reside in communities randomly selected to participate in the initial phase of the progresa are compared to those who reside in other control communities pre program comparisons check the randomized design and double difference estimators of the program s effect on the treated are calculated by grade and sex probit models are also estimated for the probability that a child is enrolled controlling for additional characteristics of the child their parents local schools and community and for sample attrition to evaluate the sensitivity of the program estimates these estimates of program short run effects on enrollment are extrapolated to the lifetime schooling and the earnings of adults to approximate the internal rate of return on the public schooling subsidies as they increase expected private wages

governmental interventions and household behavior in a developing country anticipating the unanticipated consequences of social programs abstract estimates of the joint effects of governmental health education and family planning programs as well as sources of water on fertility child mortality and schooling are obtained from combined district level and household level data from rural india the estimates are used both to test the implications of a model of household decision making and to assess the effectiveness of the joint public provision of such services in shifting resources from increasing family size to augmenting human capital per person the results appear consistent with household optimizing behavior and suggest that reductions in the costs of medical services contraceptives and schooling and the improvement of water sources are mutually reinforcing alternatives for implementing the joint policy goals of reduced population growth and increased human capital formation

making conditional cash transfer programs more efficient designing for maximum effect of the conditionality conditional cash transfer programs are now used extensively to encourage poor parents to increase investments in their children s human capital these programs can be large and expensive motivating a quest for greater efficiency through increased impact of the programs imposed conditions on human capital formation this requires designing the programs targeting and calibration rules specifically to achieve this result using data from the progresa randomized experiment in mexico this article shows that large efficiency gains can be achieved by taking into account how much the probability of a child s enrollment is affected by a conditional transfer rules for targeting and calibration can be made easy to implement by selecting indicators that are simple observable and verifiable and that cannot be manipulated by beneficiaries the mexico case shows that these efficiency gains can be achieved without increasing inequality among poor households

can drought increase total calorie availability the impact of drought on food consumption and the mitigating effects of a conditional cash transfer program abstract this study uses the panel data of a randomized experiment from the mexican progresa program to evaluate the impact of drought on total calorie availability and the mitigating effects of progresa on food consumption in periods of drought drought reduced total expenditures and total food expenditures but increased the total availability of calories this paradox can be explained by the impact of drought on the composition of calories that is it reduced the consumption of expensive calories in such foods as vegetables fruits and animal products but increased calories consumed from cheaper sources such as grains this study finds that progresa can completely mitigate the negative effects of drought on calorie availability from vegetables fruits and other sources however progresa cannot mitigate the impact of drought on calories available from grains the analysis also shows that during drought households who increase their consumption of grains get them mainly from purchased sources rathe

child labor and schooling in bolivia who s falling behind the roles of domestic work gender and ethnicity summary we analyze the role of gender and ethnicity in the work school tradeoff among school aged children we observe domestic chores in bolivian data and consider them work finding that girls are 51 more likely than boys to be out of school and working mostly in domestic activities for indigenous children the probability is 60 higher than non indigenous and indigenous girls are 23 more likely than boys to be out of school and working a more comprehensive measure of child labor reveals that in countries with large indigenous populations indigenous girls are most vulnerable to future poverty and exclusion due to low education

migration and farm technical efficiency evidence from kosovo this article investigates the effect of migration on farm technical efficiency drawing on a large and representative sample of agricultural households in kosovo a two stage estimation procedure is applied a frontier technique to estimate the effect of migration on farm efficiency followed by a propensity score based matching approach to robustly estimate the sample average effect on efficiency for different levels of migration intensity migration is found to have an efficiency decreasing effect which is amplified for better educated workers the observed negative effect of migration on efficiency is evident even at low levels of migration intensity

the impact of bolsa familia on schooling summary we use longitudinal household data and propensity score weighting methods to assess the impact of brazil s bolsa familia conditional cash transfer program on schooling outcomes of children aged 6 17 years weak aggregate effects mask considerable heterogeneity among girls the program significantly increases school participation by 8 percentage points and grade progression by 10 percentage points with large significant effects across both younger and older girls in rural areas but concentrated among girls aged 15 17 years in urban areas few significant impacts are found among boys we discuss implications and potential mechanisms for differential impacts by sex age and location

marital status and fertility in the united states welfare and labor market effects the incidence of marriage and the proportion of childbearing that occurs within marriage have decreased sharply in the united states in the last several decades this paper examines whether the probability that a woman is currently married and the number of children she has borne as reported in the 1980 u s census are related to two identifiable factors the variation in welfare programs across states specifically afdc and medicaid benefits and afdc up expenditures or the variation in the market wage opportunities available to women and to their potential husbands afdc and medicaid benefit levels are associated with fewer women being currently married medicaid benefits are related to lower fertility levels for both black and white women whereas afdc benefits in cash and food are associated with lower fertility among white women ages 15 24 those states that extend afdc benefits to families with unemployed parents in other words fathers in intact poor families do not have significantly more women married or higher fertility rates contrary to what might be expected from economic incentives men s market wages are associated with more frequent marriage and higher fertility whereas higher market wage opportunities for women have substantial effects in the opposite direction all of which are consistent with standard models of gender specialization and the demand for marriage and fertility

the use of structural models in econometrics costas meghir has been supported by the cowles foundation and the institution for social and policy studies isps at yale university

capital market imperfections in economic transition empirical evidence from ukrainian agriculture this article investigates the link between financing and investment in ukrainian agriculture during economic transition the main contribution of the study is to provide empirical evidence for the coexistence of financial constraints and soft budget constraints sbcs this is of particular importance because credit constraints and sbcs have completely different economic effects the lack of differentiation between these forms of capital market imperfections yields overlapping effects of financing on investment and may therefore cause a misinterpretation of econometric results our empirical analyses are based on an econometric estimation of the euler investment equations for 529 large farms from three ukrainian regions between 2001 and 2005 the results confirm that financial variables significantly influence farms investment providing empirical evidence of an imperfect capital market in ukrainian agriculture it turns out that credit constraints in the ukrainian agricultural sector are more important than sbcs we show that the estimated level of financial constraints for profitable farms with access to loans is higher if both types of capital market imperfections are appropriately distinguished

agricultural spillover effects of cash transfers what does lewie have to say lewie simulations suggest that there are positive production spillovers fromsctprograms in nominal terms total production multipliers are always significantly greater than zero and income multipliers are always greater than one however real impacts depend on supply elasticities and market closure assumptions to date studies do not point to inflationary impacts of scts opm 2012a opm 2012b although the evidence on price effects is very limited this suggests that simulation 2 best characterizes the production impacts of scts which target poor economies with under utilized factors this simulation reveals a minimal inflationary impact and real production value added multipliers of 1 58 ksh per shilling transferred a key finding of lewie is that the production impacts are concentrated in nonbeneficiary households this is not surprising given the program s eligibility criteria which target the most asset and labor constrained households rcts focusing on treated households are likely to miss many or most of the productive impacts of social cash transfer programs this finding reaffirms the importance of a local economy wide approach if we wish to capture the transfers full impact finally our findings underline the importance of local supply constraints in shaping the impacts of transfer programs in the high unemployment environment characterizing rural kenya we believe it unlikely that there are significant labor constraints on production nevertheless production constraints limit program benefits particularly in nonbeneficiary households which are far and away the main source of new supply when production bottlenecks generate inflation transfers may even negatively affect some households interventions focusing on local production constraints in nonbeneficiary as well as beneficiary households may be needed to unlock the productive potential of scts

does child labour displace schooling evidence on behavioral responses to an enrollment subsidy this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled does child labour displace schooling evidence on behavioral responses to an enrollment subsidy conducted between 1995 and 1996 in bangladesh the study observed that the subsidy increases schooling but its effect on child labour is ambiguous the subsidy increased schooling by far more than it reduced child labour substitution effects helped protect current incomes from the higher school attendance induced by the subsidy substitution effects helped protect current incomes from the higher school attendance induced by the subsidy the reduction in the incidence of child labour by boys girls represents about one quarter eighth of the increase in their school enrollment rate

consumption and investment in resource pooling family networks this paper examines a novel motive for resource pooling in family networks in rural economies to relax credit constraints and facilitate investment in non collateralizeable assets for which credit market imperfections are most binding we thus complement established literatures examining risk sharing motives for resource transfers within family networks as well as motives based on kinship tax obligations we do so exploiting the progresa program data in which family networks can be identified households are subject to large exogenous resource inflows and detailed responses on consumption and an array of investments can be tracked in a household panel over five years we find that for every dollar that accrues to the family network through progresa transfers food consumption expenditures increase by around 65c for both households eligible for progresa and ineligible members of the same family network hence the marginal propensity of families to invest save out of every dollar is around 35 and we document how this is channelled towards easing credit constraints poorer network members face in financing non collateralizable investments into their children s human capital we show these consumption and investment benefits of being embedded within a family network are sustained five years after households first experience resource transfers from progresa hence the interplay between resource inflows and resource pooling by family networks can place network members on sustained paths out of poverty this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

do investments in specialized knowledge lead to composite good industries we try to understand why firms producing goods by means of complementary components do not merge especially in industries in which investments in component based knowledge matters as audretsch we state that these activities are developed by individuals who do their best to appropriate the return from their knowledge and whose effort is non contractible the organization of the industry into firms is identified to a partition of the set of individuals in this context we prove that an organization in which each individual hold his own firms is both stable with respect to unilateral deviation and optimal in the line of the property right approach if the returns are high enough this structure is even the only one which shares both properties

the twin instrument fertility and human capital investment twin births are often used as an instrument to address selection of women into fertility however recent work shows selection of women into twin birth such that while ols estimates tend to be downward biased twin iv estimates will tend to be upward biased this is pertinent given the emerging consensus that fertility has limited impacts on women s labour supply or on investments in children using data for developing countries and the united states to estimate the trade off between fertility and children s human capital we demonstrate the nature and size of the bias in the twin iv estimator and estimate bounds on the true parameter

should transfers to poor families be conditional on school attendance a household bargaining perspective this article considers the welfare implications of transfers to poor families that are conditional on school attendance and other forms of investment in children s human capital family decisions are assumed to be the result of generalized nash bargaining between the two parents we show that as long as bequests are zero conditional transfers are better for children than unconditional transfers the mother s welfare may also be improved by conditional transfers thus conditioning transfers to bequest constrained families have potentially desirable intergenerational and intragenerational welfare effects conditioning transfers to unconstrained families make every family member worse off

how does child labor affect the demand for adult labor evidence from rural mexico do employers substitute adults for children or do they treat them as complements using data from a mexican schooling experiment i find that decreasing child farmwork is accompanied by increasing adult labor demand this increase was not caused by treatment money reaching farm employers there were no significant increases in harvest prices and quantities nonlabor inputs or nonfarm labor supply furthermore coordinated movements in price and quantity can distinguish this increase in demand from changes in supply induced by the treatment s income effects thus declining child supply caused increasing adult demand employers substituted adults for children

intergenerational transmission of poverty and inequality parental resources and schooling attainment and children s human capital in ethiopia india peru and vietnam abstractacademic and policy literatures on intergenerational transmissions of poverty and inequality suggest that improving schooling attainment and income for parents in poor households will lessen poverty and inequality in their children s generation through increased human capital accumulated by their children however magnitudes of such effects are unknown we use data on children born in the twenty first century in four developing countries to simulate how changes in parents schooling attainment and consumption would affect poverty and inequality in both the parents and their children s generations we find that increasing minimum schooling or income substantially reduces poverty and inequality in the parents generation but does not carry over to reducing poverty and inequality substantially in the children s generation therefore while reductions in poverty and inequality in the parents generation are desirable in themselves to improve welfare among current adults they are not likely to have

is there a farm size productivity relationship in african agriculture evidence from rwanda whether the negative relationship between farm size and productivity that is confirmed in a large global literature holds in africa is of considerable policy relevance this paper revisits this issue and examines potential causes of the inverse productivity relationship in rwanda where policy makers consider land fragmentation and small farm sizes to be key bottlenecks for the growth of the agricultural sector nationwide plot level data from rwanda point toward a constant returns to scale crop production function and a strong negative relationship between farm size and output per hectare as well as intensity of labor use that is robust across specifications the inverse relationship continues to hold if profits with family labor valued at shadow wages are used but disappears if family labor is rather valued at village level market wage rates these findings imply that in rwanda labor market imperfections rather than other unobserved factors seem to be a key reason for the inverse farm size productivity relationship

teenage school attendance and cash transfers an impact evaluation of panes proquest denotes formulae omitted three years after a severe economic crisis the uruguayan government launched a temporary antipoverty plan the national plan for social emergency assistance panes which took place from april 2005 to december 2007 lasting for thirty four months this program included a cash transfer component citizen income which was in fact the main intervention of the plan in the short run the primary objective of this intervention was to provide cash assistance to indigent households in the long run it aimed at promoting social integration in many ways such as carrying out educational and labor interventions for adults encouraging households to foster child schooling and promoting health checks to pursue this objective in the original design program participation was conditional on school enrollment for those households with children and health checks for all beneficiaries however in practice conditionalities were not controlled owing to lack of administrative coordination among the involved institutions although promoting schooling was not the main objective of the plan the cash transfer might have affected school attendance and child labor through a direct income effect and also through the influence of the announced conditionalities the provision of conditional cash transfers as a means to break the intergenerational transmission of poverty has entailed a redesign of latin american social protection systems over the past two decades the abundant literature on impact evaluations of conditional cash transfers indicates that many programs have successfully increased child schooling particularly in the age group six to thirteen and in some cases have reduced child labor with no major undesirable effects on adult labor supply eclac 2006 fiszbein and schady 2009 bouillon and tejerina 2007 saavedra and garcia 2012 yet the design and implementation of these programs varies a great deal across different instances and baseline situations also differ across countries according to the existing literature baseline enrollment rates design issues such as payments scheme and timing type of conditionalities complementary supplyside interventions and the generosity of the transfer are strongly associated with the magnitude of the effects on schooling fiszbein and schady 2009 bouillon and tejerina 2007 saavedra and garcia 2012 this paper seeks to contribute to the accumulating literature about the impacts of cash transfers on teenage schooling and labor by providing evidence from a middle income country in which the initial enrollment rates were above the average of the countries where these programs have been previously launched we analyze program effects on school attendance and child labor for children aged fourteen to seventeen this group concentrates the main problems of the uruguayan educational system as it exhibits persistently high drop out rates owing to this circumstance it is important to find out to what extent cash transfers can contribute to overcome this problem we also explore the role of some of the potential channels highlighted in the cash transfer literature household income adult labor supply and labor income and conditionalities this evaluation is based on two data sets the official administrative records from panes applicants baseline data and two waves of a follow up survey that was specifically designed to carry out the impact evaluation of the program the first gathered eighteen months after the program started and the second two months after the program ended we provide evidence using two identification strategies a regression discontinuity design rdd using separately the data from each wave of the evaluation survey and a difference in differences dd approach that exploits the longitudinal nature of the collected data the questionnaire from the first wave of the follow up survey allows us to partially explore the role of conditionalities

the impact of conditional cash transfers on consumption and investment in nicaragua abstract this article examines the impact of a nicaraguan conditional cash transfer programme on measures of expenditures and productive investment despite clear evidence from a randomised evaluation that the programme increased current expenditures there is little evidence that it increased agricultural or non agricultural investment an estimated marginal propensity to consume out of the transfers of nearly one combined with no effect of cumulative past transfers on current consumption corroborate the direct evidence on investment in contrast to gains made in human capital investment the potential for long term increases in consumption as a result of other forms of increased investment may be limited

fertility transitions along the extensive and intensive margins this paper examines the fertility transition through a new lens the extensive margin parents with high levels of children might substitute quality for quantity as the constraints on quality relax or those on quantity tighten however along the extensive margin the quantity quality trade off cannot operate at low levels of fertility we expect quality and quantity to be essential complements we apply these insights to a large school construction program in the american south during the early 20th century the rosenwald rural schools initiative we find that increased schooling opportunities lead to reductions in fertility among women with high fertility levels while at the same time inducing higher levels of fertility among women with low levels of fertility the magnitude of the fertility changes induced in the parent generation is however small compared to the changes in fertility induced by the rosenwald intervention among women that were themselves treated by the intervention the evidence from the rosenwald intervention therefore suggests that changes in female opportunity costs induced by increased educational attainment might be among the most important driving forces of the fertility transition

welfare marital prospects and nonmarital childbearing the roles of the entitlements of the afdc program and marital prospects in the fertility and marriage choices of young women are assessed in the context of a model incorporating heritable endowment heterogeneity assortative mating concern for child quality and potential parental and public support alternatives estimates based on data describing the fertility and marital experience up to age 23 of the eight birth cohorts of women in the nlsy provide evidence that higher afdc benefit levels and lower marital prospects induce young women to choose to have a child outside of marriage

optimal quality and quantity provisions for centralized vs decentralized distribution market size uncertainty effects abstract we provide insights on how market size uncertainty affects the optimal quality quantity provision in distribution channels when consumers are heterogeneous in their willingness to pay for product quality in this context we denote the difference between the manufacturer s optimal quality quantity provision for a centralized channel and its optimal analog for a decentralized channel as the quality quantity differential we find that market size uncertainty creates or increases the quantity differential but it does not affect the differential s polarity in contrast market size uncertainty decreases the quality differential and it does so to the extent that depending on the level of consumer heterogeneity it reverses the differential s polarity moreover we find that the higher the inherent uncertainty level the more pronounced are the effects we likewise find that the effects of market size uncertainty are amplified if the notion of consumer heterogeneity is replaced with retail level competition

how responsive is investment in schooling to changes in redistributive policies and in returns this paper uses an unusual pay reform to test the responsiveness of investment in schooling to changes in redistribution schemes that increase the rate of return to education we exploit an episode where different israeli kibbutzim shifted from equal sharing to productivity based wages in different years and find that students in kibbutzim that reformed earlier invested more in high school education and in the long run also in post secondary schooling we further show that the effect is mainly driven by students in kibbutzim that reformed to a larger degree our findings support the prediction that education is highly responsive to changes in the redistribution policy

sri lanka can conditional cash transfer programs serve as safety nets in keeping children at school and from working when exposed to shocks this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study can conditional cash transfer cct programs serve as safety nets in keeping children at school and from working when exposed to shocks conducted the program started in 1997 and still exists today in sri lanka the study observed that income shocks on poor households are known to induce parents to take their children out of school and send them to work when other risk coping instruments are insufficient cct programs where the condition is on school attendance have been shown to be effective in increasing educational achievements and reducing child work shocks are highly prevalent and children have irregular periods of school enrollment children who are taken out of school are less likely to re enroll

quality choice and vertical integration abstract we show that despite coordination in the quality level of the components that they provide independent vertically related disintegrated monopolists will provide products of lower quality level than a sole integrated monopolist further the integrated monopolist achieves higher market coverage higher consumer surplus and higher profits we establish these results for any distribution of preferences in the standard model of quality differentiation despite the lower quality we also show that for a wide class of cost functions price will be higher in a market of independent vertically related monopolists all results are the effects of the interaction of double marginalization occurring in the market of independent monopolists with the choice of quality