valuing the benefits of mobile mammographic screening units using the contingent valuation method the benefits of improving access to mammographic screening are estimated using a contingent valuation experiment conducted on 458 women in 19 rural australian towns the contingent valuation survey provides women with information on mammographic screening and uses a closed ended format to elicit their willingness to pay for a visit of a mobile mammographic screening unit single and double bounded versions of the discrete response contingent valuation method are employed in the estimation of willingness to pay the double bounded contingent valuation approach is shown to be biased due to respondents having a greater disposition to respond no when the bid amount in the follow up question is higher than the bid amount offered in the initial question several approaches to dealing with this bias are examined

taxing the unobservable the impact of the shadow economy on inflation and taxation summary because the shadow economy cannot be taxed it erodes the tax base and reduces tax revenues forcing governments to resort to other ways to finance their expenditures accordingly a larger shadow economy should give governments an incentive to shift revenue sources from taxes to inflation in line with the public finance motive of inflation in this paper we recall that point in a simple canonical model then empirically test it in a sample of up to 153 developed and developing countries over the 1999 2007 period in line with the model s prediction we indeed observe a positive relation between inflation and the size of the shadow economy and a negative relation between the tax burden and the size of the shadow economy we find that both relations are conditional on central bank independence and on the exchange rate regime implying that it is the strongest in institutional set ups that constrain monetary policy the least both relations are present in the sub sample of developed countries as well as the sub sample of developing countries both relations survive several robustness checks using various sets of control variables including the stock of debt controlling for endogeneity using alternative estimates of the shadow economy and estimating the two relations as a system of equations

who suffers the penalty a panel data analysis of earnings gaps in vietnam in spite of its predominant economic weight in developing countries little is known about the informal sector earnings structure compared to that of the formal sector taking advantage of the rich vhlss dataset in vietnam in particular its three wave panel data 2002 2004 2006 we assess the magnitude of various formal informal earnings gaps while addressing heterogeneity at three different levels the worker the job wage employment vs self employment and the earnings distribution we estimate fixed effects and quantile regressions to control for unobserved individual characteristics our results suggest that the informal sector earnings gap highly depends on the workers job status and on their relative position in the earnings distribution penalties may in some cases turn into premiums by comparing our results with studies in other developing countries we draw conclusions highlighting vietnam s labour market specificity

regulatory discretion and the unofficial economy johnson kaufmann and shleifer 1997 find that the share of the unofficial economy in gdp is determined by the extent of control rights held by politicians and bureaucrats in post communist economies exploring in more detail the role of bribes and using a broader data set from the oecd latin america and transition economies we find that the unofficial economy accounts for a larger share of gdp when there is more corruption and when the rule of law is weaker while these findings are consistent with the earlier results for transition economies in the larger country sample we find it is not necessarily the case that more regulation or higher taxes directly increases the size of the unofficial economy the problem appears to be not regulation or taxation per se but whether the state administrative system can operate without corruption a high level of regulatory discretion helps create the potential for corruption and drive firms into the unofficial economy

benefits of a registration policy for microenterprise performance in india this paper evaluates the effects of a voluntary registration policy with government authorities on financial performance of urban microenterprises in the indian manufacturing sector using data from the 2006 world bank survey of indian microenterprises and applying the semi parametric propensity score matching technique we find that being registered leads to significant gains in sales per employee and value added per employee large gains are also noted for male owned firms those operating with or without paid labor and those operating outside of the owner s home

one and one half bound dichotomous choice contingent valuation to reduce the potential for response bias on the follow up bid in multiple bound discrete choice cvm questions while maintaining much of the efficiency gains of the multiple bound approach we introduce the one and one half bound oohb approach despite the fact that the oohb model uses less information than the double bound db approach efficiency gains in moving from single bound to oohb capture a large portion of the gain associated with moving from single bound to db in an analysis of survey data our oohb estimates demonstrated higher consistency with respect to the follow up data than the db estimates and were more efficient as well

yea saying in contingent valuation surveys a number of recent papers have provided estimates of willingness to pay derived in contingent valuation surveys exceeding those revealed in experimental or real life markets one possible explanation for the overestimation of values is the presence of yea saying with the objective of reducing the occurrence of yea saying a new elicitation format referred to as the dissonance minimizing d m format is proposed an empirical comparison of the dm format with the conventional dichotomous choice dc format and the ambivalence reducing polychotomous choice pc format suggested by ready whitehead and blomquist 1995 is made results are encouraging for the dm

legitimacy and the benefits of firm formalization entrepreneurs in many emerging economies start their firms informally without registering with the state we examine how informality at the time of founding affected the performance of 12 146 firms in 18 countries across sub saharan africa our findings indicate that entrepreneurs who registered their firms at founding enjoyed greater success in terms of sales and employment but these benefits varied widely across countries consistent with the idea that legitimation processes account for these benefits countries in which people trust their government more had larger advantages associated with being formal

tax evasion in transition outcome of an institutional clash testing feige s conjecture in albania a field survey of households was conducted in tirana albania in 2000 a response rate of 89 3 yielded 1 340 valid questionnaires allowing me to test feige s in nelson j m tilley c walker l eds transforming post communist political economics national academy press washington dc p 21 conjecture that more tax evasion will be observed when formal and informal institutions clash respondents attitudes towards formal and informal institutions were obtained by applying factor analysis to their responses to a series of attitudinal questions the theoretical importance of the interaction between formal and informal institutions in determining tax evasion finds empirical support in the data

can informal firms hurt registered smes access to credit using firm level survey responses from 2009 to 2012 we examine whether competitors from the informal sector affect the credit constraints of registered smes in 86 countries worldwide we also investigate the role played by the quality of institutional environment in exacerbating or in alleviating such effect a weak quality of institutional environment strengthens inter linkages between the formal and the informal sectors increases the costs and decreases the benefits assumed by formal firms and reduces the costs attributed to informality moreover it also results in a large informal economy which influences perceptions about the substitutability between formal and informal goods and law evasion our findings indicate that registered smes facing competition from informal firms are more likely to be credit constrained than other formal smes that are not confronted with such competition this result is consistent with the parasite view and the entrepreneurial perspective of informality which assert that informal firms are capable of competing against registered smes and hurting the latter s profits further we find that such adverse impact manifests only in countries with weak rule of law and high degree of corruption and bureaucracy our results also show that registered micro and small firms are more likely to be affected by the presence of informal firm competitors than medium sized firms this is because the benefits of formality that include access to credit from financial institutions increase with firm size on the whole our findings suggest that governments must enhance their role in increasing access to credit to smaller firms and in providing incentives for informal firms to be integrated in the formal economy moreover in order to achieve inclusive growth our results highlight the importance of improving the business environment which affects all entrepreneurs

does formality improve micro firm performance evidence from the brazilian simples program abstract this paper exploits an extensive brazilian micro enterprise survey and the 1996 introduction of a business tax reduction and simplification scheme simples to examine three questions first do high tax rates and complex tax regulations really constitute a barrier to the formalization of micro firms second does formalization improve firm performance measured along several dimensions including revenues employment and capital stock third what are the channels through which this occurs we find that simples led to a significant increase in formality in several dimensions moreover newly created firms that opt for operating formally show higher levels of revenue and profits employ more workers and are more capital intensive only for those firms that have employees the channel through which this occurs is not access to credit or contracts with larger firms rather it appears that the lower cost of contracting labor leads to adopting production techniques that involve a permanent location and a larger paid labor force

a reassessment of kenya s rural and urban informal sector abstract the nature and role of the so called informal sector are re examined on the basis of a detailed country study using different data sources relating to kenya which have recently been published or become available specific kenyan phenomena are identified and commented upon particularly the importance of divided households obtaining their living in both agriculture and the urban informal sector and the tendency of informal sector manufacturing enterprises to form agglomerations the informal sector is seen as a heterogeneous set of activities urban or rural which have the common features of catering not uniquely to the mass of low income consumers existing competitively due to the low supply price of labor and being capable of retaining an important role in economies with widely varying levels of development so long as this supply price remains low

the energy metabolism of china and india between 1971 and 2010 studying the bifurcation abstract this paper presents a comparison of the changes in the energetic metabolic pattern of china and india the two most populated countries in the world with two economies undergoing an important economic transition the comparison of the changes in the energetic metabolic pattern has the scope to characterize and explain a bifurcation in their evolutionary path in the recent years using the multi scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism musiasem approach the analysis shows an impressive transformation of china s energy metabolism determined by the joining of the wto in 2001 since then china became the largest factory of the world with a generalized capitalization of all sectors especially the industrial sector boosting economic labor productivity as well as total energy consumption india on the contrary lags behind when considering these factors looking at changes in the household sector energy metabolism associated with final consumption in the case of china the energetic metabolic rate emr soared in the last decade also thanks to a reduced growth of population whereas in india it remained stagnant for the last 40 years this analysis indicates a big challenge for india for the next decade in the light of the data analyzed both countries will continue to require strong injections of technical capital requiring a continuous increase in their total energy consumption when considering the size of these economies it is easy to guess that this may induce a dramatic increase in the price of energy an event that at the moment will penalize much more the chance of a quick economic development of india

difficulties in valuing street light improvement trust surprise and bound effects previous empirical research has demonstrated an internal inconsistency that may occur in response strategies between the first and second valuations made to closed ended contingent valuation questions one possible explanation for this bound effect is the surprise of being asked the second valuation question which may be enhanced where there is a lack of trust this paper considers the use of closed ended contingent valuation to estimate non market benefits for an improved street lighting scheme where there is a lack of trust in the agency responsible for provision the results provide confirmation that surprise is an important determinant of bound effects however efforts to reduce such bias using a prior statement of the bid range were found to be ineffective in increasing trust and reducing surprise given the importance of this area of research directions for future research are considered

validity of open ended and payment scale approaches to eliciting willingness to pay the open ended and payment scale approaches to eliciting willingness to pay wtp valuations are compared use of the payment scale led to a higher response rate a higher rate of completion of the wtp question higher mean and median wtp values a stronger association between wtp and ability to pay and a higher r2 in regression analysis of wtp on several independent variables taking these results in combination it can be inferred that the payment scale technique leads to more valid wtp values than use of the open ended approach

uses and abuses of estimates of the underground economy ered valuable by at least a part of society narcotics production and distribution prostitution gambling these activities can be large in some countries and should be counted in the national accounts of all countries although they rarely are their omission affects the comparability of data across countries the incomes generated by illegal activities are rarely taxed many other activities such as those associated with the subsistence or informal sectors are estimated rather than measured and are generally not taxed because of the low value they generate to those who engage in them in conclusion there are many reasons beside the ones discussed in this paper why the measurements of national output may not be complete about two decades ago a few economists became convinced that many normal economic activities that should be measured and taxed were taking place underground or in the shadow thus presumably escaping the attention of the statistical offices of the tax authorities and more generally of the government regulators some of these economists also claimed that like alice in wonderland these hidden activities were growing in a ridiculous fashion see gutmann 1977 and feige 1979 by the late 1970s the role of government had grown enormously so that the level of taxation and the tax rates had risen sharply and regulations had proliferated in many countries see tanzi and schuknecht 1997 these developments had created strong incentives for individuals and enterprises to go underground to avoid taxes and regulatory restrictions thus a good case could be made that what came to be called the underground economy was a phenomenon to worry about newspaper articles were ready to accept the

designing transactions without framing effects in iterative question formats abstract several studies document that iterative question formats used in contingent valuation studies produce anomalies in respondent behavior that appear to threaten the validity of welfare estimates by decomposing iterative question formats into their ascending and descending sequences we show that these anomalies occur only in ascending sequences we describe the conditions under which comparable patterns of behavior are likely to be found in other iterative question formats that begin with a discrete willingness to pay question we then develop a unified explanation of these anomalies using our model of framing based on prospect theory we provide the first head to head test of rival explanations of these behavioral patterns by developing refutable hypotheses for the strategic behavior yea saying anchoring and cost expectations models finally based on our own statistically robust model we show how these anomalies can be eliminated without loss of the statistical efficiency of most iterative question formats

spike models in contingent valuation spike models allow for a nonzero probability of zero willingness to pay in referendum style contingent valuation experiments they include many of the often used models as special cases and allow various analyses that are not possible in standard applications in this paper the economic rationale for the spike models and their estimation techniques are discussed and empirical illustrations are provided one study suggests that mean willingness to pay is zero and both studies strongly suggest that median wtp is zero these results have some bearing on the continuing debate of the incentive properties of hypothetical surveys and the construction of scenarios in contingent valuation experiments

coastal disasters from the perspective of ecological economics natural hazards are recurrent events that frequently result in high death tolls and large economic losses because of their large impact they have concerned the international community for a long time in spite of the efforts the impact of natural hazards has increased oftentimes the role of natural ecosystems and the ecosystem services they provide to human societies are not considered in risk reduction programs how relevant are ecosystems what are the consequences of the depletion of natural ecosystems and the loss of ecosystem services provided by them would the alternative vision of ecological economics in which development and economy are seen as the whole the ecosystem daly h e and farley j 2004 ecological economics principles and applications island press washington dc 454 pp be helpful in reducing disaster risk in this paper we are set to test whether a holistic approach from the perspective of ecological economics is helpful to clarify and reduce the impact of natural hazards we focused on hurricanes because they are the most frequently reported events of all natural disasters hewitt k 1997 regions of risk longman edinburgh gate 389 pp we analyze the relationship between the components of human built social and natural capitals with the damage caused by hurricanes in terms of mortality rate we then generate a conceptual model to help envision the complexity of the system a stepwise back and forth steps linear regression analysis revealed that mortality rate was significantly and positively affected by hurricane frequency p 0 01 while area covered by semi altered ecosystems a mosaic of natural and human altered ecosystems p 0 01 and gdp p 0 05 negatively affected mortality rate r2 0 81 the proportion of natural altered ecosystems yielding the best protection results needs to be determined yet natural capital alone does not decrease number of deaths rather its complex interactions with the other capitals and the many feedback loops that are involved need to be considered to achieve effective disaster risk reduction no single capital is enough to reduce the impact and intensity of natural hazard a balance between human built social and natural capitals and an increasing awareness of the consequences of different development decisions will help human societies to live with rather than cope with coastal hazards

land titling and rural transition in vietnam abstract we examine the impact of the 1993 land law of vietnam which gave households the power to exchange transfer lease inherit and mortgage their land use rights we use household surveys before and after the law was passed together with the considerable variation across provinces in the speed of implementation of the reform to identify the impact of the law we find that the additional land rights led to statistically significant increases in the share of total area devoted to long term crops and in labor devoted to nonfarm activities however these changes are not large in magnitude and appear to be driven mainly by the increased security of tenure provided by the law rather than by increased access to credit markets or greater land market participation

shedding light on the shadow economy a nighttime light approach abstractmeasuring the shadow economy is inherently difficult but critical for understanding economic development using census data on formal and informal sectors in cambodia we document that 96 6 per cent of non farm establishments do not formally register with the government and their sales accounted for 76 6 per cent of total sales in 2011 estimating their past sales from changes in nighttime light for 1993 2010 we find that both formal and informal firms increased their estimated sales the share of informal sales increased from 68 8 per cent in 1993 to 76 6 per cent in 2011 suggesting that the informal sector increased quantitatively in both absolute and relative terms over time

taxing the informal economy the current state of knowledge and agendas for future research abstractthis paper reviews the literature on taxation of the informal economy taking stock of key debates and drawing attention to recent innovations conventionally the debate on whether to tax has frequently focused on the limited revenue potential high cost of collection and potentially adverse impact on small firms recent arguments have increasingly emphasised the more indirect benefits of informal taxation in relation to economic growth broader tax compliance and governance more research is needed we argue into the relevant costs and benefits for all including quasi voluntary compliance political and administrative incentives for reform and citizen state bargaining over taxation

do we really care about biodiversity this paper addresses from an economic perspective the issue of global biodiversity conservation it challenges the perception that the world really cares a great deal about biodiversity and is prepared to pay the full cost of maintaining this stock of natural capital despite the existence of a plethora of international agreements there still seems to be a global deficit of care surrounding efforts to combat challenges such as those posed by global warming and biodiversity conservation more light can be thrown on the degree of care by measuring both the actual expenditures and the stated willingness to pay for biodiversity conservation however actual expenditures are much lower than willingness to pay estimates recorded in the published literature using the criteria that the right amount of conservation effort is one where the marginal economic benefits from conservation just equal the marginal costs of conservation the paper explores the biodiversity conservation conundrum and concluded that on the available evidence the world does not care too much about this natural capital stock and bequests to future generations

returns to physical capital in ethiopia comparative analysis of formal and informal firms summary this paper investigates returns to capital in the formal and informal sectors in ethiopia using parametric and semi parametric regression techniques results show that there is a higher annual median return to capital in the informal sector 52 140 than the formal sector 15 21 however informal firms might benefit from working formally as their capital stock gets larger marginal returns in the informal sector increase with firm size access to reliable markets market uncertainty and owners labor supply on the other hand marginal returns to capital and overall profitability decrease with capital stock contrary to the poverty trap hypothesis

referendum models and economic values theoretical intuitive and practical bounds on willingness to pay innovations in the estimation of referendum type contingent valuation models have led to willingness to pay wtp measures inconsistent with consumer preferences and unbounded from above or below we propose a set of criteria which guarantee a bounded measure of wtp the criteria reject the traditional random utility model with unrestricted error terms in favor of the random wtp model with bounds on wtp once wtp is bounded by zero and income the form of the distribution is less consequential a new model for wtp is developed based on the beta distribution and is compared to previously estimated models

the shadow economy in transition countries friend or foe a policy perspective abstract by treating the shadow economy as a distinct entity rather than just a symptom of policy failures we are able to examine its short term and dynamic consequences for development first we construct measures of the size of the shadow economy in 25 transition countries for 1990 97 we find hysterisis suggesting that once established the shadow economy is hard to remove a dollar decline rise in official gdp is attenuated by a shadow expansion contraction of 31 25 cents we then examine whether the shadow economy prevents merely slows down or actually promotes economic growth and competitiveness and through what mechanisms we also consider implications for policymaking

energy in the development strategy of indian households the missing half there is a growing consensus that universalization of modern energy services is central to reducing major elements of poverty and hunger to increase literacy and education and to improve health care employment opportunities and lives of women and children in india as per 2011 census over 700 million people lack access to modern energy services for lighting cooking water pumping and other productive purposes devoid of these services people mostly women are forced to spend significant amounts of their time and effort on subsistence activities like firewood collection carrying these head load for miles and then burning these hard earned fuels inefficiently in traditional chullas these adversely affect the health and standard of living for women and act as a barrier to gender development here gender means women unless otherwise specified although the links between gender inequity poverty and energy deprivation have been studied by many not many practical solutions to the above problems have emerged the present paper explores the nexus among gender energy poverty highlights areas of gender concern and suggests actions we analyze how women from rural areas and low income households are at the receiving ends of energy poverty we then analyze the roles women as an important stakeholders in universalizing modern energy services we show how women self help groups can be a vital link in large scale diffusion of energy efficient and renewable technologies the paper concludes with policy pointers for sustainable development and gender empowerment through energy solutions

interfirm relationships and informal credit in vietnam trading relations in vietnam s emerging private sector are shaped by two market frictions the difficulty of locating trading partners and the absence of legal enforcement of contracts examining relational contracting we find that a firm trusts its customer enough to offer credit when the customer finds it hard to locate an alternative supplier a longer duration of trading relationship is associated with larger credit as is prior information gathering customers identified through business networks receive more credit these network effects are enduring suggesting that networks are used to sanction defaulting customers

a satisfactory benefit cost indicator from contingent valuation abstract standard economic concepts are used to develop a model of individual behavior when subject to the constraints of the contingent valuation choice context the model yields refutable consequences that are consistent with previously reported empirical findings including some that have been thought to be anomalous the model is used to show that different contingent valuation formats have predictably different performance characteristics notably the hicksian compensating measures are satisfactory benefit cost indicators when elicited using any one of several formats identified in the text of the formats examined one form of a policy referendum appears to have the most satisfactory characteristics overall we conclude that contingent valuation is a progressing research program

an experimental investigation of explanations for inconsistencies in responses to second offers in double referenda abstract this paper demonstrates the potential for induced preference experiments to test previously unverified explanations of observed behavior in contingent valuation surveys the noaa panel on contingent valuation called for experimental evidence on potential biases in the double referendum format we test carson groves and machina s incentives and informational properties of preference questions plenary address to the european association of resource and environmental economists oslo norway june 1999 simple cost uncertainty and weighted averaging explanations of inconsistent responses to follow up offers in such double referenda against a baseline of certainty and truthful preference revelation the results find evidence to support the weighted average hypothesis results regarding the cost uncertainty hypothesis are more ambiguous and merit further investigation

releasing constraints to growth or pushing on a string policies and performance of mexican micro firms abstract using firm level data from mexico this paper investigates the firm characteristics associated with participation in credit markets access to training tax payments and membership in business associations we find that firms which participate in these institutions exhibit significantly higher profits moreover firms that borrow from formal or informal sources and those that pay taxes are significantly more likely to stay in business but firms that received credit exhibit lower rates of income growth these results persist when firm characteristics that are arguably correlated with unobserved entrepreneurial ability are controlled for our findings suggest that the significant within country differences in firm productivity observed in developing economies are due in part to market and government failures that limit the ability of micro firms to reach their optimal sizes

shadow economies at times of banking crises empirics and theory this paper investigates the response of the shadow economy to banking crises our empirical analysis based on a large sample of countries suggests that the informal sector is a powerful buffer which expands at times of banking crises and absorbs a large proportion of the fall in official output to rationalise our evidence we build a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model which accounts for financial and labour market frictions and for nominal rigidities in line with the empirical literature on the shadow economy we assume that in the informal sector access to external finance is limited and the production technology is relatively more labour intensive following a banking shock in the official sector the model predicts a large negative transmission to the unofficial economy that substantially dampens the overall effect of the shock

sme credit constraints in asia s rising economic star fresh empirical evidence from vietnam this study provides a fresh look at the sme sector s economic backbone vis a vis credit constraint dichotomy in vietnam asia s rising economic star the study uses data from the survey of manufactu

the benefits of formalization evidence from vietnamese manufacturing smes summary based on unique panel data consisting of both formal and informal firms this paper uses a matched double difference approach to examine the relationship between legal status and firm level outcomes in micro small and medium manufacturing enterprises smes in vietnam controlling for determining factors and observable time variant factors that may simultaneously influence the decision to formalize and subsequent firm performance we find evidence that becoming officially registered leads to an increase in profits and investments and a decrease in the use of casual labor improved contract conditions for workers thus we conclude that formalizing is beneficial both to firms and the workers in these firms

informality and credit constraints evidence from sub saharan african mses abstractthe attributes of micro and small enterprises mses influencing access to credit in particular the level and role of firm informality are analysed in the article the puzzle is the push for mses to join the formal sector and the tug to avoid the extra burden it places on the firm it is important to know more clearly what forces are at work and the sources of the causal effects this study uses data from the world bank enterprise surveys for five low income countries lics in sub saharan africa the method is empirical and as we find informality to be endogenous to credit constraints an instrumental variable approach is estimated further to address the possibility of reverse causality an instrument for the informality variable is required not registered with inland revenue tax office is the chosen instrument variable the findings reveal that as the probability of a firm operating in the formal sector increases there is greater access to external credit the causality relationships are

mighty oaks from little acorns can microenterprise serve as the seedbed of industrialization abstract how can microenterprises foster the development of an industrial sector featuring a dynamic medium or large enterprise sector we propose two possible mechanisms graduation of microenterprises and savings by microentrepreneurs we examine the barriers to both mechanisms and reexamine policies designed to aid the sector projects aimed at the enterprise level are not likely to remove barriers to firms graduating or saving changes in macro policy may have a positive effect reforms of the legal and regulatory environment may be very important and should be rethought with the mechanisms of the seedbed role specifically in mind

procedural invariance testing of the one and one half bound dichotomous choice elicitation method the contingent valuation method for estimating willingness to pay for public goods typically adopts a single referendum question format which is relatively statistically inefficient as an alternative cooper hanemann and signorello 2002 propose the one and one half bound oohb format allowing researchers to question respondents about both a lower and higher limit on project costs thereby securing substantial gains in statistical efficiency using an experimental design we find that responses to oohb valuation questions fail crucial tests of procedural invariance we test various competing models of observed response patterns including strategic misrepresentation of standard preferences and nonstandard models of preference formation

the role of human social built and natural capital in explaining life satisfaction at the country level toward a national well being index nwi this paper investigates the contributions to life satisfaction of four basic types of capital human social built and natural life satisfaction data were available for respondents from fifty seven countries from the world values survey over the decade of the 1990s data on proxies for human social built and natural capital were available for 171 countries using data from the 1998 united nations human development report united nations development programme 1998 human development report 1998 oxford university press new york freedom house 1999 freedom house 1999 news of the century press freedom 1999 freedom house http freedomhouse org pfs99 pfs99 pdf september 30 2003 and sutton and costanza 2002 sutton p costanza r 2002 global estimates of market and non market values derived from nighttime satellite imagery land cover and ecosystem service valuation ecol econ 41 509 527 regression models show that both the un human development index hdi which includes proxies for both built and human capital and an index of the value of ecosystem services per km 2 as a proxy for natural capital are important factors in explaining life satisfaction at the country level and together can explain 72 of the variation in life satisfaction we did not find a proxy for social capital that was a significant predictor in the regression models this was due to the inadequacy of available proxy variables for social capital at the national scale and intercorrelation with other variables we discuss data limitations and a range of other problems with the existing limited data along with methods to overcome some of these limitations to improve future analyses we propose a national well being index nwi based on our findings and describe a path to improve it over time d 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

does variability in crimes affect other crimes the case of international corruption and shadow economy abstractusing data on more than 125 countries this article attempts to add to the research linking corruption and the shadow economy by examining the effect of variability uncertainty in one whi

on defining and measuring the informal sector evidence from brazil summary recent debate on the reasons for the informal sector has led to renewed focus on how to operationalize the measurement of informal employment this paper investigates congruence between three empirical measures of the rate of informality using brazilian household survey data for the period 1992 2004 sixty three percent of the economically active are informal according to at least one definition but only 40 are informal according to all three regression analysis is used to shed further light on differences in these measures appropriate measurement is therefore of high significance to policy analysis and design of appropriate strategies to reduce informality

the size and development of the shadow economy an empirical investigation from states of india abstract using the state level data from india this paper investigates the size of the hidden economy in indian states over the period 1974 75 to 1995 96 our analysis has shown that after liberalization of the indian economy in 1991 92 the growth in the size of the hidden economy has decreased on an average our results show that the growth in the size of the hidden economy is approximately 4 less in scheduled election years than in all other years we also demonstrate that the growth is significantly lower in those states where the coalition government is in power an increased growth of newspapers and the literacy rates translate to cleaner governance e g to fewer amounts of shadow economy activities in the economy

measuring the hidden economy implications for econometric modelling in this paper i support using econometric techniques to measure the size of the hidden underground economy because such information is important for the construction of certain economic models and for empirical policy analysis generally detailed information on the output of the hidden economy is unavailable even where careful measures of the underground economy have been constructed usually these data are available only periodically important exceptions are the classic results of tanzi 1983 for the united states and bhattacharyya s 1990 series for the united kingdom in the case of the new zealand economy a time series of data on the hidden economy has been generated recently giles 1997a this provides the unusual opportunity to undertake econometric modelling in a way which takes account of such activity formally moreover we can examine the policy implications arising from the linkages between hidden output and various measured economic aggregates this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

estimation using contingent valuation data from a dichotomous choice with follow up questionnaire reply abstract our original article proposed that the two yes no willingness to pay wtp responses produced by this survey format should be viewed as a pair of jointly distributed correlated discrete random variables the comparison model the conventional approach to estimation using these types of data contained a programming error correction alters the results from the comparison model but our original claim that estimation by conventional methods can produce misleading inferences if ours is the appropriate specification still stands this is especially true if negative wtp is precluded when e wtp is calculated

the hidden economy as an unobserved variable abstract the technique of unobserved variables is used to estimate the relative size and development time of the hidden economy of oecd countries the burdens of taxation and regulations and the tax morality turn out to be statistically significant determinants at the end of the scandinavian and benc lux countries are expected to have a relatively large and japan and switzerland a relatively small hidden economy canada and the united states are rank in the middle the size of all hidden sectors is estimated to have increased in the period 1960 1973 relative to officially measured gnp

firm level corruption in vietnam abstractthis article uses panel data from a survey of small and medium sized enterprises in vietnam to uncover which firms pay bribes and which do not we also study how bribe paying evolved between 2005 and 2007 and test how the determinants of bribes changed between the two years three sets of insights emerge first bribe incidence is highly associated with firm level differences in visibility sunk costs ability to pay and some but not all types of interaction with public officials second the magnitudes of bribes are distinctly higher for firms which get preferential tax benefits and government contracts third the observed decrease in bribe incidence between 2005 and 2007 is largely driven by significant behavioral changes these behavioral changes seem to be associated with policy initiatives to improve law enforcement and increased media focus on punitive actions against corruption

quantifying the black economy measurement without theory yet again i shall argue that measurement without theory is a fair description of the published empirical work aimed at guestimating the size of the hidden or black economy i shall also argue that a mere guestimate of the overall size of the black economy is of limited value for the policy maker it is also important to know who is doing what where how and why then we can see what should and or can be done about legislating for or against the black economy in assessing the various attempts to measure the size of the black economy one should also be aware of a political dimension to some of this work perhaps a large and growing black economy is an indication that the economy is overtaxed and over regulated and a neo liberal adjustment is needed to free it up if a large part of the black economy is social security fraud then maybe unemployment is not really as bad as it looks clearly such political conclusions depended on having good theoretical as well as sound quantitative foundations and both these components were generally missing

the underground economy in the late 1990s evading taxes or evading competition summary this paper studies the driving forces behind the considerable expansion of the underground economy during the late 1990s i propose a novel explanation for this phenomenon the sharp increase in market competition worldwide which reduces prices and profits and drives firms into the shadow economy empirical evidence from a panel covering 45 countries from 1995 to 2000 shows that increased competition is indeed correlated with an expansion of the underground economy the effect is strongest in low tax high corruption countries that do not provide the public services which make it worthwhile for firms to remain official despite growing competitive pressure

informality and development in developing countries informal firms account for up to half of economic activity they provide livelihood for billions of people yet their role in economic development remains controversial some like hernando de soto 1989 2000 see informal firms as an untapped reservoir of entrepreneurial energy held back by government regulations in this view unleashing this energy by reducing entry regulations or improving property rights would fuel growth and development others like levy 2008 take a more cynical view stressing the advantages enjoyed by informal firms and workers from avoiding taxes and regulations a report from the mckinsey global institute describes informal firms as parasites competing unfairly with law abiding formal firms farrell 2004 in this view informality should be suppressed not unleashed still others follow the development tradition of lewis 1954 harris and todaro 1970 and more recently rauch 1991 and see informality as a byproduct of poverty from this dual perspective formal and informal firms are fundamentally different productive formal entrepreneurs pay taxes and bear the cost of government regulation to reach new customers raise capital and access public goods these entrepreneurs are often educated and find it more profitable to run bigger formal firms rather than the smaller informal ones in contrast informal entrepreneurs are typically uneducated and unproductive and they run small businesses producing low quality products for low income customers using little capital and

sovereign debt markets in light of the shadow economy we investigate the controversial role of the informal sector in the economy of 64 countries between 2003 and 2007 by focusing for the first time on the impact it has on sovereign debt markets in addition to a standard ordered probit regression we employ two nonparametric neural network modeling techniques in order to capture possible complex interactions between our variables results confirm our main hypothesis that the informal sector has significant adverse effects on credit ratings and lending costs mlp neural networks offer the best fit to the data followed by the rbf neural networks and probit regression respectively the results do not change with respect to the stage of economic development of a country and contradict views about the possibility of significant economic benefits arising from the informal sector our study has important implications especially in the context of the ongoing sovereign debt crisis since it suggests that a reduction in the informal sector of financially challenged countries is likely to help in relaxing credit risk concerns and cutting down lending costs finally a decision tree analysis is used to exploit the inherent discreteness in the data and derive intuitive rules with respect to the level of the informal sector

formal measures of the informal sector wage gap in mexico el salvador and peru using comparable micro level data from three countries we ask what type of person works in the informal sector and whether informal workers earn lower wages than observationally equivalent workers in the formal sector the characteristics of informal workers are similar across countries surprisingly when we control for these personal characteristics we find a significant wage premium associated with formal employment in el salvador and peru but a premium associated with work in the informal sector in mexico a model of endogenous selection offers little help in explaining the differences in wage patterns the research casts doubt on the received wisdom that the informal sector always and everywhere is a poorly paid but easily entered refuge for those who have no other employment opportunities this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

analyzing the determinants of the shadow economy with a separate approach an application of the relationship between inequality and the shadow economy this paper suggests a separate approach to analyze the determinants of the shadow economy se it is applied to investigate the relationship between inequality and the se on a cross section of 118 countries we disentangle the effect of inequality on the se ratio by estimating both direct and indirect effects on both the numerator and denominator of the ratio separately we find that an increase in inequality increases the se ratio this positive correlation is primarily due to a reduction in the official gdp rather than an increase in the se

shadow economies size causes and consequences using various methods the size of the shadow economy in 76 developing transition and oecd countries is estimated average size varies from 12 percent of gdp for oecd countries to 23 percent for transition countries and 39 percent for developing countries increasing taxation and social security contributions combined with rising state regulations are driving forces for the increase of the shadow economy especially in oecd countries according to some findings corruption has a positive impact on the size of the shadow economy and a growing shadow economy has a negative effect on official gdp growth

towards a new approach in measuring energy poverty household level analysis of urban india abstract measurement of energy poverty has been a missing priority in energy research there is hardly any consensus regarding whether to consider energy as a resource or capacity output or outcome and quantity or service in this paper we revisit major approaches in literature to assess energy poverty economic engineering and access based including others we critique the economic and engineering approaches for the arbitrariness of cut offs and the misplaced emphasis on less meaningful energy quantity finding the access based approach most suitable we propose a method of assessing energy poverty based on deprivation in modern cooking and lighting fuels we divide the energy poor into three groups transitional moderate and extreme energy poor we apply the method to india s urban areas of different states and union territories using the national sample survey data the results reveal energy poverty to be primarily dictated by deprivation in cooking and a greater incidence of energy poverty in larger states in contrast to conventional measures we compute the depth and severity of energy poverty only for energy poor as opposed to for the entire population these complementary measures depict energy poverty of energy poor more accurately and therefore will direct the attention of pro poor energy policies and programmes appropriately

sustainability of nations by indices comparative study between environmental sustainability index ecological footprint and the emergy performance indices abstract the present work makes a comparison between the two most used environmental sustainability indices of nations ecological footprint and environmental sustainability index with two emergy ratios renewability and emergy sustainability index all of them are gaining space within the scientific community and government officials despite the efforts for obtaining an index that adequately represents the sustainability of a region according to the result of this research nowadays there is not yet a completely satisfactory index we consider that all of them need to be improved but the results point out the possibility of obtaining one better index of sustainability through the junction of ecological footprint with renewability emergy index

access to modern energy services an economic and policy framework abstract affordable and accessible modern energy services are a pre requisite for development economic environmental or social and are crucial to reduce poverty and sustain growth hence there is a need to promote the uptake of modern energy the present study investigates the issue of accessibility of modern energy services in relation to three indicators availability affordability and reliability and suggest practical ways of evaluating them and identifies various strategies to provide them to the needy households in a cost effective manner promoting the development of small rural enterprises is a key contributor to achieve this goal and a central aspect in this promotion is the large scale diffusion of sustainable energy technologies which provide affordable and reliable services the suggested framework helps the policymakers to identify technologies that are better than others under the present conditions implementing and scaling up the energy demand requires collaboration among various actors like households local bodies energy utilities governments entrepreneurs research organisations non governmental organisations community groups financial institutions and international agencies

inference and optimal design for a welfare measure in dichotomous choice contingent valuation this paper considers the use of contingent valuation to estimate non market benefits from separately valued nested goods survey respondents were asked referendum wtp questions regarding either a scheme to protect the whole area of a wetland or a

efficiency gains afforded by improved bid design versus follow up valuation questions in discrete choice cv studies interval data analysis of cv dis crete choice responses delivers efficiency gains which must be weighed against the risk of intro ducing strategic response bias efficiency gains are also achievable by improved bid design we assess these gains on median wtp estimates first in an empirical application then by means of a monte carlo experiment comparing three differ ent bid designs improved but sub optimal bid design delivers comparable gains to those achieved by one and two follow up questions the first follow up captures more than 50 of the efficiency gain provided by a second follow up jel q26

statistical approaches to the fat tail problem for dichotomous choice contingent valuation if a cumulative density function esti mated from dichotomous choice data has an unre alistically fat right hand tail mean willingness to pay wtp will be overestimated truncating the range of integration results in a lower bound esti mate of the true mean wtp a normalization pro cedure proposed by boyle welsh and bishop 1988 unnecessarily depresses the estimate further a new statistical approach is presented that allows a best guess estimate of mean wtp because this estimate involves extrapolation beyond the range of the data it tends to be highly variable jel q21

does marketing activity contribute to a society s well being the role of economic efficiency does the level of marketing activity in a country contribute to societal well being or quality of life does economic efficiency also play a positive role in societal well being does economic efficiency also moderate or mediate the marketing activity effect on societal well being marketing activity refers to the pervasiveness of promotion expenditures and number of retail outlets per capita in a country economic efficiency refers to the extent to which the economy is unhampered by corruption burdensome government regulation and a large informal economy we used secondary data from the world bank and other statistical sources to answer these questions our study findings suggest that both marketing activity and economic efficiency contribute positively to societal well being and that economic efficiency plays more of a mediator than moderator role between marketing activity and societal well being the public policy implication of this study is that increases in marketing activity and economic efficiency in countries characterized as low on both dimensions should significantly increase the quality of life in those countries

credit constraints and determinants of the cost of capital in vietnamese manufacturing this paper examines the extent to which borrowing constraints restrict firm access to credit and identifies individual firm and loan characteristics which determine the cost of capital in vietnamese manufacturing using direct information from a vietnamese enterprise survey the paper shows that between 14 and 25 of the enterprises are credit constrained and these enterprises would increase their debt holdings by between 40 and 115 if borrowing constraints were relaxed moreover it emerges that informal credit markets play an important role for fast growing firms enterprises do not appear to have the necessary time to go through the many administrative difficulties in the formal credit system if they want to seize the day finally collateralized loans face larger interest rates explained by the significant influence of policy lending in vietnamese credit markets

labor turnover and labor legislation in brazil one of the main characteristics of the brazilian labor market is its impressively high job and worker turnover rates although labor legislation in brazil is very restrictive dismissal costs are not high when compared with other latin american countries moreover many authors argue that the design of some job security programs creates perverse incentives that generate labor turnover the objective of this paper is twofold first we describe brazilian labor legislation with emphasis on job security provisions and their incentives on workers reallocation then after reviewing the most recent evidence on labor turnover in brazil we investigate the effects of changes in job termination costs implemented in the 1988 constitution and in a labor law of september 2001 on employment duration both legislation changes increased firing costs and should have therefore reduced turnover for formal workers affected by them a simple differences in differences methodology is applied to monthly individual data from pesquisa mensal de emprego pme ibge which has information on previous employment spells for those currently unemployed the results establish that both changes reduced turnover for formal workers affected by the legislation a significant increase in average employment duration of affected workers relative to not affected workers was observed after both legislation changes we also provided evidence that the 1988 constitutional change reduced the probability of fake layoffs although there are still a high number of such agreements being made between workers and their employers

statistical efficiency of double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation the statistical efficiency of conventional dichotomous choice contingent valuation surveys can be improved by asking each respondent a second dichotomous choice question which depends on the response to the first question if the first response is yes the second bid is some amount greater than the first bid while if the first response is no the second bid is some amount smaller this double bounded approach is shown to be asymptotically more efficient than the conventional singlebounded approach using data from a survey of californians regarding their willingness to pay for wetlands in the san joaquin valley we show that in a finite sample the gain in efficiency can be very substantial

bias and efficiency of single vs double bound models for contingent valuation studies a monte carlo analysis the dichotomous choice contingent valuation method can be used either in the single or double bound formulation the former is easier to implement while the latter is known to be more efficient we analyse the bias of the ml estimates produced by either model and the gain in efficiency associated to the double bound model in different experimental settings we find that there are no relevant differences in point estimates given by the two models even for small sample size the greater efficiency of the double bound is confirmed although differences tend to reduce by increasing the sample size provided that a reliable pretest is conducted and the sample size is large use of the single rather than the double bound model is warranted

night lights in economics sources and uses1 night lights as detected by satellites are increasingly used by economists typically as a proxy for economic activity the growing popularity of these data reflects either the absence or the presumed inaccuracy of more conventional economic statistics like national or regional gdp further growth in use of night lights is likely as they have been included in the aiddata geo query tool for providing sub national data and in geographic data that the demographic and health survey links to anonymised survey enumeration areas yet this ease of obtaining night lights data may lead to inappropriate use if users fail to recognize that most of the satellites providing these data were not designed to assist economists and have features that may threaten validity of analyses based on these data especially for temporal comparisons and for small and rural areas in this paper we review sources of satellite data on night lights discuss issues with these data and survey some of their uses in economics

disaggregated economic impact analysis incorporating ecological and social trade offs and techno institutional context a case from the western ghats of india economic valuation of ecosystem benefits and their aggregation in a benefit cost analysis bca framework is the norm in mainstream environmental economics but valuation and bca have also attracted criticisms internal criticisms point to the absence of alternative scenarios in valuation overlooking of ecological trade offs and dis services and inattention to context others criticize aggregation across diverse stakeholders and the problem of non monetizable benefits and dismiss bca as fatally flawed they suggest approaches such as deliberative decision making and multi criteria analysis we propose a middle path that uses the strengths of economic analysis for decision support while avoiding the pitfalls we disaggregate economic impacts by stakeholder groups link ecosystem changes to benefits as well as dis benefits and examine how socio technological context shapes the magnitude of economic impact we illustrate this approach by studying the impact of creating the biligiri rangaswamy temple wildlife sanctuary in the western ghats forests of southern india our analysis shows that while some stakeholders are net beneficiaries others are net losers changes in forest rights irrigation technologies and ecosystem dynamics influence the magnitude of benefits and sometimes convert gainers into losers such disaggregated analysis can provide useful information for deliberative decision making and important academic insights on how economic value is generated

estimating worldwide life satisfaction abstract whilst studies of life satisfaction are becoming more common place their global coverage is far from complete this paper develops a new database of life satisfaction scores for 178 countries bringing together subjective well being data from four surveys and using stepwise regression to estimate scores for nations where no subjective data are available in doing so we explore various factors that predict between nation variation in subjective life satisfaction building on vemuri and costanza s vemuri a w costanza r 2006 the role of human social built and natural capital in explaining life satisfaction at the country level toward a national well being index nwi ecological economics 58 119 133 four capitals model the main regression model explains 76 of variation in existing subjective scores importantly this includes poorer nations that had proven problematic in vemuri and costanza s vemuri a w costanza r 2006 the role of human social built and natural capital in explaining life satisfaction at the country level toward a national well being index nwi ecological economics 58 119 133 study natural human and socio political capitals are all found to be strong predictors of life satisfaction built capital operationalised as gdp did not enter our regression model being overshadowed by the human capital and socio political capital factors that it inter correlates with the final database presents a stop gap resource that until robust surveys are carried out worldwide allows comparisons of subjective life satisfaction between nations to be made with reasonable confidence

the failure of china s energy development strategy 2050 and its impact on carbon emissions china is the world s largest energy consumer and emitter of carbon china s energy development strategy is thus of great significance to the world s energy security and global carbon reduction target in this study the implementation of china s energy development strategy 2050 eds2050 which has been in operation since 1985 is investigated this study analyzes the causes of the failure of eds2050 and the impacts of that failure on carbon emissions the results show the following 1 eds2050 basically failed in 2010 and the strategic planning values of primary energy consumption and production were underestimated compared with the actual values by 39 and 67 respectively 2 comparing the predicted values of basic parameters in eds2050 with the actual values in the production field the main causes of failure were the underestimation of the economic growth rate and the proportion of non agricultural industries while in the living field the main causes were the underestimation of urbanization and per capita energy consumption in rural areas further analyses of various provinces demonstrated that the major factors leading to eds2050 failure include the economic growth rate urbanization population growth and the growth in car ownership 3 eds2050 failure resulted in an increase in carbon emissions in 2010 of 583 50 x 10 6 tc and increases of per capita carbon emissions reached 46 49 47 04 carbon emissions per unit of output demonstrated a reduction which was as a result of technological progress improving energy efficiency optimizing energy utilization and promoting national energy conservation should be highly emphasized in china s future sustainable energy development strategy c 2015 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

household labor supply in urban areas of bolivia we analyze labor supply behavior and the choice between formal and informal sector work of the two spouses in families in urban areas of a developing country using cross section data from bolivia drawn in 1989 the model generalizes the neoclassical family labor supply model nonmonetary returns of formal sector employment capture the fact that the choice between sectors is not exclusively based on wage differentials wage equations nonmonetary returns equations and labor supply equations are estimated jointly by smooth simulated maximum likelihood we find substantial cross wage elasticities of working hours of both partners and large substitution elasticities between the two sectors

on the short and medium term effects of formalisation panel evidence from vietnam abstractthis paper analyses the consequences of formalisation on the performance of informal firms using a panel dataset from vietnam we find that switching firms before switching have higher profit and value added compared to non switching firms suggesting heterogeneity becoming formal leads to an additional increase in switching firms profit and value added the benefits of formalisation materialise in the short term one year and persist in the longer term three or more years these benefits run through various channels such as better access to powered equipment or higher business association membership but not better access to credit

aid and growth at the regional level this paper brings the aid effectiveness debate to the sub national level we hypothesize the non robust results regarding the effects of aid on development in the previous literature to arise due to the effects of aid being insufficiently large to measurably affect aggregate outcomes using geo coded data for world bank aid to a maximum of 2 221 first level administrative regions adm1 and 54 167 second level administrative regions adm2 in 130 countries over the 2000 2011 period we test whether aid affects development measured as nighttime light growth our preferred identification strategy exploits variation arising from interacting a variable that indicates whether or not a country has passed the threshold for receiving ida s concessional aid with a recipient region s probability to receive aid in a sample of 478 adm1 regions and almost 8 400 adm2 regions from 21 countries controlling for the levels of the interacted variables the interaction provides a powerful and excludable instrument overall we find significant correlations between aid and growth in adm2 regions but no causal effects acknowledgements this paper is part of a research project on macroeconomic policy in low income countries supported by the u k department for international development dfid the views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the imf imf policy or dfid we thank andrea presbitero seminar participants at the development research group meeting at the university of goettingen the conference on financing for development geneva 2015 and the centre for the studies of african economies conference oxford 2015 for helpful comments and jamie parsons for proofreading

modelling willingness to pay responses from dichotomous choice contingent valuation surveys with zero observations modelling household behaviour with the data from dichotomous choice contingent valuation dccv surveys is often complicated by zero willingness to pay wtp responses in the sample to deal with the zero responses a two equation model is considered which incorporates a two level decision structure a decision on whether to participate in having wtp and a decision on the wtp amount conditional on deciding to participate and two separate stochastic processes that determine the probability and conditional level of wtp are featured the model is empirically applied to household survey data in which the dccv questions concerned the benefits of air quality improvement in korea to put the issue of the two equation model in perspective this paper also experiments with economic and econometric specifications utility theoretic restriction and heteroscedasticity it is shown how failure to allow for the restriction distorts aggregate benefit estimates and the existence of heteroscedasticity in error term is

regulation of entry labor market institutions and the informal sector abstract this paper develops a two sector matching model that incorporates the main features of latin american labor markets it has an innovation in its matching structure that makes it more consistent with some key stylized facts of the informal sector in these countries the model is numerically solved using brazilian data and several policy simulations are performed reducing formal sector s entry cost significantly reduces the size of the informal sector and improves overall labor market performance increasing enforcement significantly reduces informality but has strong adverse effects on unemployment and welfare thus the results indicate that the tradeoff between lower informal employment and higher unemployment rates is not present when one looks at policies that aim at reducing the costs of being formal as opposed to policies that simply increase the costs of being informal

modelling zero values and protest responses in contingent valuation surveys in contingent valuation surveys the category of zero bidders refers to individuals that are not willing to pay anything for the programme under analysis specific questions can help to identify true zero values coming from people that are indifferent to the programme separately from protest responses the latter are generally excluded from the analysis this paper introduces a mixture sample selection model that takes into account both zero values and protest responses in the estimates the model is applied to the valuation of a traffic calming scheme aimed at reducing risks for residents in three villages in the north east of england

economic shocks and civil conflict at the regional level we study the effects of economic shocks on civil conflict at the subnational level using a panel dataset of 5689 administrative regions from 53 african countries with yearly observations from 1992 to 2010 we find that economic shocks measured by nighttime light intensity and instrumented by lagged rainfall levels and droughts increase the probability of civil conflict

experimental evidence on returns to capital and access to finance in mexico a strong theoretical argument for focusing on access to finance is that financial market imperfections can result in large inefficiencies as firms with productive investment opportunities underinvest lack of access to finance is a frequent complaint of microenterprises which account for a large share of employment in developing countries however assessing the extent to which a lack of capital affects their business profits is complicated by the fact that business investment is likely to be correlated with a host of unmeasured characteristics of the owner and firm such as entrepreneurial ability and demand shocks in a randomized experiment that gave cash and in kind grants to small retail firms providing an exogenous shock to capital the shock generated large increases in profits with the effects concentrated among firms that were more financially constrained the estimated return to capital was at least 20 33 percent a month three to five times higher than market interest rates

global estimates of market and non market values derived from nighttime satellite imagery land cover and ecosystem service valuation we estimated global marketed and non marketed economic value from two classified satellite images with global coverage at 1 km2 resolution gdp a measure of marketed economic output is correlated with the amount of light energy le emitted by that nation as measured by nighttime satellite images le emitted is more spatially explicit than whole country gdp may for some nations or regions be a more accurate indicator of economic activity than gdp itself can be directly observed and can be easily updated on an annual basis as far as we know this is the first global map of estimated economic activity produced at this high spatial resolution 1 km2 ecosystem services product esp is an important type of non marketed value esp at 1 km2 resolution was estimated using the igbp land cover dataset and unit ecosystem service values estimated by costanza et al valuing ecosystem services with efficiency fairness and sustainability as goals nature s services island press washington dc pp 49 70 the sum of these two gdp esp sep is a measure of the subtotal ecological economic product marketed plus a significant portion of the non marketed the ratio esp sep 100 esp is a measure of proportion of the sep from ecosystem services both sep and esp were calculated and mapped for each 1 km2 pixel on the earth s surface and aggregated by country results show the detailed spatial patterns of gdp esp and sep also available at http www du edu psutton esiindexisee ecoleconesi htm globally while gdp is concentrated in the northern industrialized countries esp is concentrated in tropical regions and in wetlands and other coastal systems esp ranges from 1 for belgium and luxembourg to 3 for the netherlands 18 for india 22 for the united states 49 for costa rica 57 for chile 73 for brazil and 92 for russia while gdp per capita has the usual northern industrialized countries at the top of the list sep per capita shows a quite different picture with a mixture of countries with either high gdp capita high esp capita or a combination near the top of the list finally we compare our results with two other indices 1 the 2001 environmental sustainability index esi derived as an initiative of the global leaders of tomorrow environment task force world economic forum and 2 ecological footprints of nations how much nature do they use how much nature do they have developed by mathis wackernagel and others while both of these indices purport to measure sustainability the esi is actually mainly a measure of economic activity and is correlated with gdp while the eco footprint index is a measure of environmental impact the related eco deficit national ecological capacity minus national footprint correlates well with esp

the effects of irregular markets on macroeconomic policy some estimates for belgium abstract the paper aims at evaluating the efficiency of traditional keynesian demand or neo classical income policies in the presence of an irregular sector the analysis is applied to the belgian economy for which it is shown that the objectives of increasing output and employment and reducing the importance of the irregular economy will often lead to conflicting policy prescriptions in addition keynesian multipliers may be lowered by as much as 40 though the irregular market only represents some 10 to 15 of total activity