challenges to proponents of common property recource systems despairing voices from the social forests of zimbabwe abstract there is a fair degree of misplaced optimism about common property resource cpr management in investigating common property issues for woodlands in communal areas in zimbabwe we are struck by the numerous case studies showing a breakdown of local institutions for cpr management and the lack of any emerging alternative institutions for such management there are a number of contributing economic social and ecological factors to this phenomenon we argue that the formal rule based systems that form the cornerstones of the proposed cpr systems are far removed from the current institutional systems rooted in norm based controls we suggest that advocacy of cpr systems has to be tempered with critical analysis

the gender gap fertility and growth changes in fertility have long been recognized as important correlates of economic growth with the relationship between the level of fertility and the level of income per capita being one of the strongest observable correlations in cross country data this paper examines the linkages between fertility and growth theory the structure of the model is presented in sections on production couples decision making system dynamics and steady state equilibria the first component of the model is that increases in capital per worker raise womens relative wages since capital is more complementary to womens labor input than to mens the second component is that increasing womens relative wages reduces fertility by raising the cost of children more than household income finally lower fertility raises the level of capital per worker a positive feedback loop generates demographic transition a rapid decline in fertility accompanied by accelerated output growth

what explains the industrial revolution in east asia evidence from the factor markets this paper presents dual estimates of total factor productivity growth tfpg for east asian countries while the dual estimates of tfpg for korea and hong kong are similar to the primal estimates they exceed the primal estimates by 1 percent a year for taiwan and by more than 2 percent for singapore the reason for the large discrepancy for singapore is because the return to capital has remained constant despite the high rate of capital accumulation indicated by singapore s national accounts this discrepancy is not explained by financial market controls capital income taxes risk premium changes and public investment subsidies jel o11 o16 o47 o53

hiv status and labor market participation in south africa abstract we use econometric methods based on the propensity score to estimate the causal effect of hiv status on employment outcomes in south africa relying on rich data from a national survey which included hiv testing we control for systematic differences between hiv positive and hiv negative individuals we provide the first nationally representative estimates of the impact of hiv status on employment outcomes for southern africa being hiv positive is associated with an increase of 6 to 7 percentage points in the likelihood of unemployment overall and 10 to 11 percentage points for those who are less educated this disadvantage reinforces existing inequalities in south africa

productivity health and inequality in the intrahousehold distribution of food in low income countries a model is formulated incorporating linkages among nutrition labor market productivity health heterogeneity and the intrahousehold distribution of food and work activities in a subsistence economy empirical results based on a sample of households from bangladesh indicate that despite considerable intrahousehold disparities in calorie consumption households are averse to inequality furthermore consistent with the model the results also indicate that both the higher level and greater variance in the calories consumed by men relative to women reflect in part the greater participation by men in activities in which productivity is sensitive to health status copyright 1990 by american economic association

on the enforcement of territorial use rights regulations a game theoretic approach territorial use rights commonly known as turfs in the literature consists in the allocation of fishing rights to individuals and or groups to fish in certain geographical locations a requisite for these communities to be granted fishing rights is the formulation of a management and exploitation plan mep while thus far the literature on turfs has been centred on the biological and technical aspects of it to our knowledge there is no work squarely dealing with the issue of enforcement of the mep that the community once granted the fishing use rights have to comply with we formally explore this issue from an economic perspective by formulating a static game of norm compliance in a regime of common property resource exploitation the key characteristic of this game is a monitoring and sanctioning mechanism where fishermen monitor and sanction one another we found that in the absence of any endogenous regulation from the part of the fishing community turfs can not avoid the economic overexploitation of the fishery we discuss the importance of economic incentives and disincentives in the formulation of endogenous regulations aimed at ensuring compliance of the mep our results on the

rules and games this paper reconsiders the relationship between the rules of a game and its outcomes we develop a notion of rule reform that leads to the selection of pareto improved equilibria points we then apply this notion to a series of naturally occurring fishing rules including examples from malaysia india brazil turkey and canada we show that reforming a game is conceptually akin to reforming an economy

disease and development revisited acemoglu and johnson 2007 present evidence that improvements in population health do not promote economic growth we show that their result depends critically on the assumption that initial health has no causal effect on subsequent economic growth we argue that such an effect is likely primarily because childhood health affects adult productivity in our augmented model which includes initial health the instrumental variable proposed by acemoglu and johnson has no significant predictive power for improvements in health and does not identify the effect of contemporaneous improvements in health on economic growth this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

power distribution the external environment and common property forest governance a local user groups model abstract this paper presents a recursive model that links power distribution imbalances with collective benefits and costs related to local common property forest governance using cross sectional analysis of 38 local common property forest user groups ejidos and comunidades in la sierra tarahumara mexico we test the impacts of power inequalities on different common property forest governance outcomes three measures of power inequality are used intra group power disparities links between the ejido authority and external political forces and asset disparities between the authority and the group average the proxies of power were found to be a key determinant of forest change and other collective action related variables the findings provide evidence in favour of the hypothesis that with greater power inequalities within the group agents with more power are able to impose higher costs on those with less power powerful leaders may provide positive externalities to the group in the form of norms however results indicate that greater power inequality tends to lead to more illegal logging and more forest degradation

coping with asymmetries in the commons self governing irrigation systems can work many analysts presume that the appropriators of a common pool resource are trapped in a hobbesian state of nature and cannot themselves create rules to counteract the perverse incentives they face in managing the resource the logical consequence of this view is to recommend that an external authority the government take over the commons but considerable empirical evidence from field and experimental settings holds that appropriators frequently do constitute and enforce their own rules and that these rules work our research agenda is to develop a coherent understanding of the set of conditions that enhance or detract from self organizing capabilities when individuals differ substantially from one another for the sake of concreteness this paper focuses on the asymmetry present in most irrigation systems between those who are physically near the source of water the head enders and those who are physically distant from it the tail enders this paper first explores the interaction between head end and tail end farmers particularly their decisions about whether to devote resources to the upkeep of the irrigation system and how bargaining between the parties can benefit all sides finally we examine empirical evidence from a study of irrigation institutions in nepal and discuss the broader practical significance of our findings

endogenous childlessness and stages of development abstract although developing countries are characterized by high average fertility rates they are as concerned by childlessness as developed countries beyond natural sterility there are two main types of childlessness one driven by poverty and another by the high opportunity cost of child rearing we measure the importance of the components of childlessness with a structural model of fertility and marriage deep parameters are identified using census data from 36 developing countries as average education increases poverty driven childlessness first decreases to a minimum and then the opportunity driven part of childlessness increases we show that neglecting the endogenous response of marriage and childlessness may lead to a poor understanding of the impact that social progress such as universal primary education may have on completed fertility the same holds for family planning closing the gender pay gap and the eradication of child mortality

fatter attraction anthropometric and socioeconomic matching on the marriage market we construct a marriage market model of matching along multiple dimensions some of which are unobservable in which individual preferences can be summarized by a one dimensional index combining the various characteristics we show that under testable assumptions these indices are ordinally identified and that the male and female trade offs between their partners characteristics are overidentified using psid data on married couples we recover the marginal rates of substitution between body mass index bmi and wages or education men may compensate 1 3 additional units of bmi with a 1 percent increase in wages whereas women may compensate two bmi units with 1 year of education

efficient intra household allocations a general characterization and empirical tests the neoclassical theory of demand applies to individuals yet in empirical work it is usually taken as valid for households with many members this paper explores what the theory of individuals implies for households that have more than one member we make minimal assumptions about how the individual members of the household resolve conflicts all we assume is that however decisions are made outcomes are efficient we refer to this as the collective setting we show that in the collective setting household demands must satisfy a symmetry and rank condition on the slutsky matrix we also present some further results on the effects on demands of variables that do not modify preferences but that do affect how decisions are made we apply our theory to a series of surveys of household expenditures from canada the tests of the usual symmetry conditions are rejected for two person households but not for one person households we also show that income pooling is rejected for two person households we then test for our collective setting conditions on the couples data none of the collective setting restrictions are rejected we conclude that the collective setting is a plausible and tractable next step to take in the analysis of household behavior

kantian optimization a microfoundation for cooperation abstract although evidence accrues in biology anthropology and experimental economics that homo sapiens is a cooperative species the reigning assumption in economic theory is that individuals optimize in an autarkic manner as in nash and walrasian equilibrium i here postulate a cooperative kind of optimizing behavior called kantian it is shown that in simple economic models when there are negative externalities such as congestion effects from use of a commonly owned resource or positive externalities such as a social ethos reflected in individuals preferences kantian equilibria dominate the nash walras equilibria in terms of efficiency while economists schooled in nash equilibrium may view the kantian behavior as utopian there is some perhaps much evidence that it exists if cultures evolve through group selection the hypothesis that kantian behavior is more prevalent than we may think is supported by the efficiency results here demonstrated

the value of life and the rise in health spending over the past half century americans spent a rising share of total economic resources on health and enjoyed substantially longer lives as a result debate on health policy often focuses on limiting the growth of health spending we investigate an issue central to this debate is the growth of health spending a rational response to changing economic conditions notably the growth of income per person we develop a model based on standard economic assumptions and argue that this is indeed the case standard preferences of the kind used widely in economics to study consumption asset pricing and labor supply imply that health spending is a superior good with an income elasticity well above one as people get richer and consumption rises the marginal utility of consumption falls rapidly spending on health to extend life allows individuals to purchase additional periods of utility the marginal utility of life extension does not decline as a result the optimal composition of total spending shifts toward health and the health share grows along with income in projections based on the quantitative analysis of our model the optimal health share of spending seems likely to exceed 30 percent by the middle of the century

intra household resource allocation an inferential approach if household income is pooled and then allocated to maximize welfare then income under the control of mothers and fathers should have the same impact on demand with survey data on family health and nutrition in brazil the equality of parental income effects is rejected unearned income in the hands of a mother has a bigger effect on her family s health than income under the control of a father for child survival probabilities the effect is almost twenty times bigger the common preference or neoclassical model of the household is rejected if unearned income is measured with error and income is pooled then the ratio of maternal to paternal income effects should be the same equality of the ratios cannot be rejected there is also evidence for gender preference mothers prefer to devote resources to improving the nutritional status of their daughters fathers to sons

changing world prices women s wages and the fertility transition sweden 1860 1910 this time series analysis examines during 1860 1910 the impact of changes in local prices of agricultural commodities on wages among men and women in sweden and the impact of changes in wages on fertility decline child mortality urbanization and improved social conditions linear ordinary least squares models are set up to determine whether demand induced increases in womens wages relative to mens are significant factors in explaining swedish total fertility rates data are obtained from 25 counties and the city of stockholm among pooled observations for six time periods during 1860 64 and 1910 14 this period is marked by a total fertility decline of 28 a marital fertility decline of 26 and a child mortality decline of 52 explanatory variables are the relative prices of main agricultural outputs employment outside of agriculture the proportion of urban population and the child mortality rate findings indicate a significant relationship between child mortality and total fertility and specific fertility rates among women aged 20 39 years a doubling of the male real wage rate was significantly associated with earlier marriage higher birth rates among women aged 15 29 years and lower birth rates among women aged 35 49 years the ratio of male wages to female wages was associated with a decline in birth rates at all ages with the exception of teenagers 66 of fertility increase was due to declines in child mortality but this increase was counterbalanced by fertility decline among older women child mortality and urbanization depressed marital fertility male wages increased the proportion married a 10 increase in the male female wage rate was associated with a 25 reduction in the total fertility rate another 25 increase in the male female wage rate was associated with a 50 reduction in child mortality it is concluded that the value of womens time had a key impact on the swedish fertility transition

gender inequality endogenous cultural norms and economic development this research focuses on the role played by cultural norms in the long run persistence of gender inequalities cultural norms about gender roles are considered to be endogenous and can generate gender inequality and low development traps indeed when the gender gap is internalized it leads to inegalitarian views about gender roles due to these inegalitarian beliefs boys receive more education and the initial gender gap is reinforced the existence of gender inequality traps is pointed out by the world bank as a major obstacle for economic development wdr 2006 the present article allows for a better understanding of the persistence of such traps and the means to escape

contracting problems and regulation the case of the fishery the inefficiencies of common property fisheries are of continuing concern to economists the early work by scott gordon 1954 and anthony scott 1955 outlined the problem and later studies by james crutchfield and giulio pontecorvo 1969 and frederick bell 1972 provided empirical estimates of the losses that result those studies were followed by the dynamic models of colin clark 1976 and james quirk and vernon smith 1970 of optimal harvest rates and the use of corrective taxes or quotas to achieve them but in spite of a large and growing literature and the persuasiveness of the outlined efficiency criteria most fisheries retain common property aspects with overcapitalization and excessive labor input why those conditions persist and the failure of the regulatory response to them are the issues addressed in this paper we examine a number of fisheries but focus on the texas shrimp industry which is one of the nation s most valuable fisheries for a single species and which shares the common property characteristics observed elsewhere it is considered overcapitalized and catch per unit of effort is falling 2 examination of the fishery reveals the many margins along which rent dissipation occurs and the nature of the regulations necessary for controlling fishing effort to avoid those losses the regulatory environment in texas is complicated by conflict within the fishery between inshore and offshore fishermen the latter assert that bay shrimping reduces the number of shrimp that successfully migrate to the gulf the inshore fishery is highlighted by another issue the recent resettlement of some 30 45 000 vietnamese refugees including many fishermen along the texas coast marine advisory service paul starr their entry has been met by hostility and violence from existing shrimpers who recognize that they are in an environment characterized by the absence of property rights bay shrimpers have lobbied the texas legislature for broad limits on new entrants yet ironically the sale of additional boats by individual shrimpers to the vietnamese has facilitated entry of the refugees into the fishery regulations in the texas shrimp and other fisheries are incomplete leaving many options for rent dissipation uncontrolled because of high contracting costs among fishermen and political factors that mold government actions contracting costs are high among heterogeneous fishermen who vary principally with regard to fishing skill 3 montana state university and texas a m university respectively we benefitted from comments by terry anderson raymond c battalio gardner brown oscar burt micha gisser wade griffin john r moroney anthony d scott peter temin and participants in workshops at texas a m university and the university of washington research assistance was provided by scott barnhart and phil mizzi funding was provided by sea grant texas a m university throughout this paper we use the terms common property and open access interchangeably here the terms describe a situation where no property rights group or individual exist s for the resource 2catch per unit of effort in the inshore texas gulf and federal gulf waters is presented for 1963 77 by w l griffin c g tydlacka and w e grant they show catch per unit of effort generally falling in inshore and offshore waters while catch per unit of effort fluctuates from year to year it falls from approximately 360 kg shrimp per unit of effort to 220 kg from 1963 to 1977 the common property nature of the fishery is reflected in the following statistics since 1975 the number of vessels has grown by 23 percent nelson swartz for fish houses the record of entry is similar between 1970 a d 1977 the number of firms grew from 259 to 287 though during that period many left the industry as others entered the number of fish houses was calculated from license data supplied by the texas parks and wildlife department the record of entry by fish houses suggests that monopsony as discussed by colin clark and gordon munro is absent in the fishery 3there may be minor differences in labor leisure choices and capital but our statistical evidence and discussions with fishermen indicate that catch variations are largely due to skill government regulations in the texas bays restrict capital and our empirical evidence shows boats to be relatively homogeneous

majoritarian management of the commons yong j yoon this article analyzes usage of a common property resource the commons under collectivization as compared with more familiar privatization institutional arrangements particular emphasis is on majority decision rules when separate majority coalitions may authorize simultaneous usage of a common resource total value is dissipated but the interdependencies introduced by possible membership in differing coalitions to an extent reduce the incentives for exploitation the formal analysis is analogous to that familiar in cournot nash duopoly oligopoly models but with differing efficiency implications the argument has relevance for differential benefit public spending from general tax sources as well as other applications jel d7 h00 02 i introduction the operation and management of common property resources the commons have been exhaustively examined in economics and political science both in formal analyses and in practical application 1 however the full range of institutional alternatives has not been covered even at a level of stylized interaction models our purpose in this article is to fill in at least some of the gaps here and specifically to examine the predicted results that emerge when usage decisions are collectivized under majoritarian voting rules to our knowledge this analysis has not been undertaken we shall in section ii first summarize the classic analysis along with the familiar institutional reform suggested as a solution to the tragedy this solution privatization is analyzed under several institutional variants in section iii we then shift attention in section iv to arrangements under which usage of the commonly shared resource or facility is chosen by some predesignated collective decision rule specifically we concentrate analysis on the predicted results in several majority rule environments we analyze thoroughly the case in which different majority coalitions make usage decisions separately and simultaneously the analysis incorporates recognition on the part of any member of a specific majority of the prospect for membership in alternative majority coalitions we demonstrate that instead of full dissipation the level of usage that emerges in the limit is structurally analogous to the outcome in the cournot nash duopoly model even if the efficiency implications differ in the two settings ii the classic model summarized the familiar tragedy of the commons lends itself to stylized illustration an immobile but renewable resource exists a common pasture aquifer fishing ground and has economic value if used effectively through the application of units of complementary mobile resources that are themselves valued in their alternative market opportunities there are no assigned ownership rights to the immobile resource or facility free and open access may dissipate most or even all of the potential value consider figure 1 the productivity of mobile complementary resource units as applied elsewhere in the economy e g steers grazed on the open range beyond the commons is set at w a value assumed constant the quantity of such inputs applied on the commonly used facility is measured along the abscissa in figure 1 the marginal and average productivity curves for the units of applied complementary resource are shown as mp and ap total value is maximized when q sub m units are applied at which point marginal product values are equalized as between this usage and other opportunities the maximal value of the commonly used resource is the area under the mp curve above w if entry to usage is open and if the institutional structure is such as to allow for decentralized decisions on the part of many potential users rational choices made separately will generate a full behavioral equilibrium at q sup where average product per unit of the complementary resource is equalized as between the commons and other uses

fatal fluctuations cyclicality in infant mortality in india this paper investigates the impact of aggregate income shocks on infant mortality in india and investigates likely mechanisms a recent oecd dominated literature reports the provocative finding that mortality at most ages is pro cyclical similar analyses for poorer countries are scarce and both income risk and mortality risk are greater in poor countries this paper uses data and methods designed to avoid some of the specification problems in previous studies and it explores mechanisms and extensions that have not been previously considered it uses individual data on infant mortality for about 150 000 children born in 1970 1997 merged by cohort and state of birth with a state panel containing information on aggregate income identification rests upon comparing the effects of annual deviations in income from trend on the mortality risks of children born at different times to the same mother conditional upon a number of state time varying covariates including rainshocks and state social expenditure rural infant mortality is counter cyclical the elasticity being about 0 33 this is despite the finding that relatively high risk women avert birth or suffer fetal loss in recessions it seems in part related to recessions stimulating distress labor amongst mothers in contrast to the case in richer countries where they discourage labor market participation health care seeking declines in recessions and this appears to be related to the opportunity cost of maternal time disaggregation reveals that the average results are driven by rural households in which the mother is uneducated or had her first birth in teenage and that it is only girls that are at risk boys are protected from income shocks exposure to poor conditions in the fetal and neonatal period appears to have a larger effect on infant mortality than similar exposure in the postneonatal period

missing women and the price of tea in china the effect of sex specific earnings on sex imbalance economists have long argued that the sex imbalance in developing countries is caused by underlying economic conditions this paper uses exogenous increases in sex specific agricultural income caused by post mao reforms in china to estimate the effects of total income and sex specific income on sex differential survival of children increasing female income holding male income constant improves survival rates for girls whereas increasing male income holding female income constant worsens survival rates for girls increasing female income increases educational attainment of all children whereas increasing male income decreases educational attainment for girls and has no effect on boys educational attainment

differential fertility human capital and development using micro data from 48 developing countries this paper studies changes in crosssectional patterns of fertility and child investment over the course of the demographic transition before 1960 children from larger families obtained more education in large part because they had richer and more educated parents by century s end these patterns had reversed consequently fertility differentials by income and education historically raised the average education of the next generation but they now reduce it while the reversal is unrelated to changes in gdp per capita women s work sectoral composition or health roughly half is attributable to rising aggregate education in the parents generation the results support a model in which rising skill returns lowered the minimum income at which parents invest in education

trade foreign direct investment and economic growth in asian economies despite the increasing role of foreign direct investment fdi in economic development very limited research has been carried out on the causal links between trade fdi and economic growth in asian economies this study examines empirically the inter play between exports imports fdi and economic growth for nine asian economies by conducting multivariate causality tests in the vector error correction model vecm framework the results reveal two way causal connections between trade inward fdi inward merger and acquisitions m as and growth for most of the sample economies there is a unidirectional causal link running from outward m as to growth and trade these findings suggest that export expansion import liberalization fdi inflows and inward m as are integral elements of the growth process in asian economies

head enders as stationary bandits in asymmetric commons comparing irrigation experiments in the laboratory and the field abstract the emergence of large scale irrigation systems has puzzled generations of social scientists since they are particularly vulnerable to selfish rational actors who might exploit inherent asymmetries in the system e g simply being the head ender or who might free ride on the provision of public infrastructure as part of two related research projects that focus on how subtle social and environmental contextual variables affect the evolution and performance of institutional rules several sets of experiments have been performed in laboratory settings at arizona state university and in field settings in rural villages in thailand and colombia in these experiments participants make both a decision about how much to invest in public infrastructure and how much to extract from the resources generated by that public infrastructure with both studies we find that head enders act as stationary bandits they do take unequal shares of the common pool resource but if their share is very large relative to downstream participants shares the latter will revolt therefore for groups to be successful head enders must restrain themselves in their use of their privileged access to the common pool resource the comparative approach shows that this result is robust across different social and ecological contexts

what explains collective action in the commons theory and evidence from the philippines summary i examine the factors that influence collective action in the commons using econometric analyses on a data set of 1958 irrigation associations in the philippines i find that collective action is associated with water scarcity proximity to markets group size farm size and governance structure water scarcity has a curvilinear effect on collective action and is mediated by the governance structure the results suggest the need for a diagnostic approach in the analysis of institutional arrangements in diverse socio ecological settings these also suggest that collective action in the commons is more complex than is conventionally assumed in the decentralization literature

public versus private investment in human capital endogenous growth and income inequality in this paper we present an overlapping generations model with heterogeneous agents in which human capital investment through formal schooling is the engine of growth we use simple functional forms for preferences technologies and income distribution to highlight the distinction between economies with public education and those with private education we find that income inequality declines more quickly under public education on the other hand private education yields greater per capita incomes unless the initial income inequality is sufficiently high we also find that societies will choose public education if a majority of agents have incomes below average

the demographic transition and the sexual division of labor this paper presents a theory in which increases in female labor force participation and reductions in the gender wage gap are generated as part of a single process of demographic transition initially characterized by reductions in mortality and fertility the paper suggests a relationship between gains in life expectancy and changes in the role of women in society that has not been identified before in the literature mortality reductions affect the incentives of individuals to invest in human capital and to have children with implications for female labor force participation and the wage differential between men and women the paper also presents some empirical evidence to support the predictions of the theory

women empowerment and economic development women empowerment and economic development are closely related in one direction development alone can play a major role in driving down inequality between men and women in the other direction empowering women may benefit development does this imply that pushing just one of these two levers would set a virtuous circle in motion this paper reviews the literature on both sides of the empowerment development nexus and argues that the interrelationships are probably too weak to be self sustaining and that continuous policy commitment to equality for its own sake may be needed to bring about equality between men and women

disease and development evidence from hookworm eradication in the american south this study evaluates the economic consequences of the successful eradication of hookworm disease from the american south the hookworm eradication campaign c 1910 began soon after i the discovery that a variety of health problems among southerners could be attributed to the disease and ii the donation by john d rockefeller of a substantial sum to the effort the rockefeller sanitary commission rsc surveyed infection rates in the affected areas eleven southern states and found that an average of forty percent of school aged children were infected with hookworm the rsc then sponsored treatment and education campaigns across the region follow up studies indicate that this campaign substantially reduced hookworm disease almost immediately the sudden introduction of this treatment combines with the cross area differences in pre treatment infection rates to form the basis of the identification strategy areas with higher levels of hookworm infection prior to the rsc experienced greater increases in school enrollment attendance and literacy after the intervention this result is robust to controlling for a variety of alternative factors including differential trends across areas changing crop prices shifts in certain educational and health policies and the effect of malaria eradication no significant contemporaneous results are found for adults who should have benefited less from the intervention owing to their substantially lower prior infection rates a long term follow up of affected cohorts indicates a substantial gain in income that coincided with exposure to hookworm eradication i also find evidence that eradication increased the return to schooling

heterogeneity and collective management evidence from common forests in himachal pradesh india summary this paper conducts a statistical investigation into the impact of differences in economic benefits wealth and social classes within the community on collective management of forests there are two key results first social parochialism is not a pre requisite for collective management of forests moderate levels of social diversity are associated with low collective management but at high levels of social diversity collective management is high second moderate wealth heterogeneity is beneficial however at high levels and in the presence of benefit heterogeneity it decreases collective management similarly benefit heterogeneity reduces collective management if wealth heterogeneity also exists these results run counter to the dominant understanding of heterogeneity but may be seen as alternate explanations under a specific socioeconomic context

women s liberation what s in it for men the nineteenth century witnessed dramatic improvements in the legal rights of married women given that these changes took place long before women gained the right to vote they amounted to a voluntary renouncement of power by men in this paper we investigate men s incentives for sharing power with women in our model women s legal rights set the marital bargaining power of husbands and wives we show that men face a tradeoff between the rights they want for their own wives namely none and the rights of other women in the economy men prefer other men s wives to have rights because men care about their own daughters and because an expansion of women s rights increases educational investments in children we show that men may agree to relinquish some of their power once technological change increases the importance of human capital we corroborate our argument with historical evidence on the expansion of women s rights in england and the united states

from stagnation to sustained growth the role of female empowerment this paper explores the role of gender equality over a long run economic and demographic development path of industrialized countries our unified cliometric growth model of female empowerment suggests that changes in gender relations are a key ingredient of economic development the economy evolves from a malthusian regime with slow technological progress low income and low fertility to a modern growth regime with high living standards and low fertility the rise in technological progress together with improvements in gender equality generates a positive feedback loop that engages the process of human capital accumulation economic transition and triggers the demographic transition

water communities in the republic of macedonia an empirical analysis of membership satisfaction and payment behavior summary utilizing primary survey data we investigate the performance of water communities wcs a form of self managing organization for irrigation in the bregalnica region of the republic of macedonia while their introduction improved cost recovery only modest changes occurred in the cost of irrigation water and many farmers remain indifferent to the wcs econometric analysis focuses on the decision of farmers to join a wc determinants of farmers satisfaction with wcs and factors associated with changes in payment behavior key determinants identified include transparency and trust regarding the conduct of wcs cost recovery rates farm size and irrigation costs membership satisfaction is an important determinant of payment behavior

gender wage inequality and economic growth is there really a puzzle a comment seguino 2000 shows that gender wage discrimination in export oriented semi industrialized countries might be fostering investment and growth in general while the original analysis does not have internationally comparable wage discrimination data we replicate the analysis using data from a meta study on gender wage discrimination and do not find any evidence that more discrimination might further economic growth on the contrary if anything the impact of gender inequality is negative for growth standing up for more gender equality also in terms of wages is good for equity considerations and at least not negative for growth

how much of cross country income variation is explained by health we use development accounting techniques to assess the contribution of health to differences in income per capita among countries rather than rely on regressions in aggregate data we build up estimates of the effect of health starting from microeconomic data we examine both a particular condition anemia and a proxy for general health the adult survival rate we find that differences in anemia explain 1 3 percent of the log variance of income per capita and that differences in adult survival explain 19 percent of the log variance of income per capita the latter figure is almost one third of the variation in output that is left unexplained by other in this paper we examine quantitatively the effect of health on income per capita as well as the contribution of health to differences in income among countries understanding the effect of health on income is important for two reasons first if health does have a large effect on income per capita then this would be an important additional benefit of health improvement beyond the direct effect on the quality of life that should be taken into account when tallying up the costs and benefits of health interventions in developing countries second for economists trying to understand differences in income per capita among countries a proper accounting of the role of health is essential both for telling the complete story of economic growth and for evaluating the role of other factors that affect income specifically accounting for health differences will reduce the size of the unexplained residual variance in income among countries that is currently attributed to productivity in this paper we examine both a single condition anemia and a measure of overall health the adult survival rate figure 1 shows the relationship between income per capita and our two health measures both measures are strongly correlated with income but using this data to infer the effect of health on economic outcomes presents two problems first health is itself endogenous

does participation in common pool resource management help the poor a social cost benefit analysis of joint forest management in jharkhand india abstract joint forest management jfm has succeeded in halting forest degradation in india but its poverty reduction objective has not fully been evaluated previously this paper compares jfm forests and government managed forests to assess their respective net social benefits to different groups of local villagers it shows that the jfm regime reflects the social preference of the rural nonpoor and that the poor are net losers over a 40 year time horizon future plans for jfm need to include suitable compensatory mechanisms to reduce the poverty of the poorest within a village

property rights externalities and resource degradation locating the tragedy abstract resource degradation in the third world is largely driven by the demands of farm households for fuelwood and land for agriculture since resources are often controlled through indigenous systems of property the tragedy of the commons has been used to explain resource degradation as a result private property is suggested as a solution to resource degradation a dynamic model capable of examining household incentives for resource use under private and common property is developed results of the model reject the conventional wisdom that gives rise to the presumed optimality of private individual property in natural resources and the correlated indictment of group management regimes

aggregate income shocks and infant mortality in the developing world health and income are strongly correlated both within and across countries yet the extent to which improvements in income have a causal effect on health status remains controversial the authors investigate whether short term fluctuations in aggregate income affect infant mortality using an unusually large data set of 1 7 million births in 59 developing countries the authors show a large negative association between per capita gdp and infant mortality female infant mortality is more sensitive than male infant mortality to negative economic shocks suggesting that policies that protect the health status of female infants may be especially important during economic downturns

social capital in community level environmental governance a critique social capital is often claimed to facilitate collective action regarding the management of complex environmental goods and services however there is little systematic analysis in the literature that explains the way social capital aids in fostering collective action the paper integrates ideas from institutional ecological economics sociology and anthropology to argue that power relations involving struggle and resistance should be acknowledged as they affect collective action we address the question of why social capital should not be straightforwardly associated positively with common property resource management to unravel the complexity of the links between social capital collective action and common property resource management the concepts of common knowledge and symbolic power are introduced

optimal aging and death understanding the preston curve does prosperity lead to greater longevity if so what is the strength of the income channel to address these questions we develop a life cycle model in which households are subject to physiological aging in modeling aging we draw on recent research in the elds of biology and medicine the speed of the aging process and thus the time of death are endogenously determined by optimal health investments a calibrated version of the model accounts well for the observed non linear cross country link between longevity and income also known as the preston curve

the costs of missing the millennium development goal on gender equity abstract at the millennium summit the world community pledged to promote gender equality and chose as a specific target the achievement of gender equity in primary and secondary education by the year 2005 in every country of the world based on the findings from a growing empirical literature that suggests that gender equity in education promotes economic growth reduced fertility child mortality and undernutrition we estimate what the costs in terms of growth and forgone fertility mortality and undernutrition reduction will be for the 45 countries that are on current projections unlikely to meet the target our estimates suggest that by 2005 the countries that are off track are likely to suffer 0 1 0 3 percentage points lower per capita growth rates as a result will have 0 1 0 4 more children per woman and by 2015 an average of 15 per 1 000 higher rates of under five mortality and 2 5 percentage points higher prevalence of underweight children under five sensitivity analyses suggest that the results are quite robust to using different specifications and approaches to estimating these losses

optimal retirement with increasing longevity we develop an optimizing life cycle model of retirement with perfect capital markets we show that longer healthy life expectancy usually leads to later retirement but with an elasticity less than unity we calibrate our model using data from the us and find that over the last century the effect of rising incomes which promote early retirement has dominated the effect of rising lifespans our model predicts continuing declines in the optimal retirement age despite rising life expectancy provided the rate of real wage growth remains as high as in the last century

life expectancy and human capital investments evidence from maternal mortality declines longer life expectancy should encourage human capital accumulation since a longer time horizon increases the value of investments that pay out over time previous work has been unable to determine the empirical importance of this life expectancy effect due to the difficulty of isolating it from other effects of health on education we examine a sudden drop in maternal mortality risk in sri lanka between 1946 and 1953 which creates a sharp increase in life expectancy for school age girls without contemporaneous effects on health and which also allows for the use of boys as a control group using additional geographic variation we find that the 70 reduction in maternal mortality risk over the sample period increased female life expectancy at age 15 by 4 1 female literacy by 2 5 and female years of education by 4 0 authors

mortality reductions educational attainment and fertility choice this paper develops a model where reductions in mortality are the main force behind economic development the model generates a pattern of changes similar to the demographic transition where gains in life expectancy at birth are followed by reductions in fertility and increases in the rate of human capital accumulation the onset of the transition is characterized by a critical level of life expectancy at birth which marks the movement of the economy from a malthusian equilibrium to an equilibrium with investments in human capital and the possibility of long run growth

improving the performance of small scale irrigation systems the effects of technological investments and governance structure on irrigation performance in nepal abstract technological fixes and government management have often been assumed to be the most effective policy tools in improving the performance of small scale irrigation systems in asia many intervention efforts based upon that assumption however have brought about counterintuitive and counterintentional outcomes using irrigation management in nepal as the context this paper argues that technological investments might exacerbate the asymmetries of interests and endowments among irrigators which often dampens their incentives to contribute to infrastructure maintenance in addition irrigators in agency managed systems are usually given few incentives to engage in irrigation management their collective inaction often leads to low levels of performance

das human kapital a theory of the demise of the class structure this paper suggests that the demise of the capitalists workers class structure was a socio economic transformation orchestrated by the capitalists in reaction to the increasing importance of human capital in sustaining their profit rates physical capital accumulation in the process of industrialization enhanced the importance of human capital in production and generated incentives for capitalists to support the provision of public education for the masses triggering the demise of the existing class structure the implications of the theory are consistent with the voting patterns on england s education reform of 1902

evolution of cooperation in asymmetric commons dilemmas abstract field experiments with asymmetric commons dilemmas have shown that groups who are able to derive high social efficiency also had higher equity compared to groups who were not able to derive significant levels of social efficiency these findings resemble the high productivity in long lasting irrigation systems based on self governance we present an agent based model based on cultural group selection that shows that the patterns observed in the field experiments can be evolved in cases where agents participate regularly in less challenging symmetric public good dilemmas these results indicate that cooperation in asymmetric dilemmas can evolve and persist when the agents contend with other social dilemmas than the asymmetric dilemmas

common pool resource appropriation under costly cooperation abstract in addition to the usual fixed costs we introduce variable costs in a community s effort to cooperate in extracting from a common pool resource using a standard supervision mechanism these variable costs are shown to be an increasing function of individual members incentives to default the model explains why we frequently observe communities that all cooperate and have relatively similar resource endowments and yet achieve very different levels of extraction

labor income taxation human capital and growth the role of childcare in this paper we examine the effects of labor income taxation on growth in an overlapping generations model in which schooling and childcare play a role in the production of human capital we compare such effects with those obtained in a model in which only schooling matters for skill formation we show that the omission of childcare from the technology of skill formation can bias the results related to the impact of labor income taxation on growth

climate and the emergence of global income differences the latitude gradient in comparative development is a striking fact as one moves away from the equator economic activity rises while this regularity is well known it is not well understood in the present paper we take a step towards unpacking this gradient perhaps the strongest correlate with absolute latitude is the intensity of ultraviolet radiation uv r which epidemiological research has shown to be a cause of a wide range of diseases we establish that uv r is strongly and negatively correlated with economic activity both across and within countries we propose and test a mechanism that links uv r to current income differences via the impact of disease ecology on the timing of the take off to sustained growth

causality between exports and economic growth abstract this paper utilizes granger causality tests in investigating the relationship between exports and national income from a consistent data set for 47 developing countries in africa new empirical results as well as suggestions for future research are presented

causality between export growth and industrial development empirial evidence from the nics abstract this paper investigates the causal relationship between export growth and industrial development in eight newly industrializing countries nics results of sims causality test show that for most of the nics there is a strong bidirectional causality between the growth of exports and industrial development these findings support the export led growth strategy in that expansion in exports not only promote the growth of national income but also lead to structural transformation of the developing countries

does it pay to participate in decision making survey evidence on land co management in jiangsu province china member participation in decision making is a critical part of resource co management however little is known about the welfare consequences of participation this paper analyzes the impact of cooperative member participation in decision making on their incomes using data from 364 members of china s land cooperative program we distinguish two levels of participation in decision making voting and obtaining financial information and use a bivariate probit model and propensity score matching to estimate their impact the results indicate that household head s age gender and education and family size wealth and political affiliation determine participation in decision making participation in either voting or obtaining financial information has a positive impact on cooperative members land income there is also a strong joint effect of voting and obtaining information with an increase in land income of 16 we conclude that broad participation can ensure more equitable access to land income for members

population technology and growth from malthusian stagnation to the demographic transition and beyond this paper develops a unied growth model that captures the historical evolution of population technology and output it encompasses theendogenous transitionbetween three regimes that have characterized economic development the economy evolves from amalthusianregime wheretechnologicalprogressis slow andpopulationgrowthprevents anysustainedriseinincomepercapita intoapost malthusianregime wheretechnological progress rises and population growth absorbs only part of output growth ultimately a demographic transition reverses the positive relationship between income and population growth andtheeconomyentersamoderngrowthregimewithreducedpopulationgrowth

inequality and growth why differential fertility matters we argue that inequality and growth are linked through differential fertility and the accumulation of human capital we build an overlapping generations model in which dynasties differ in their initial endowment with human capital growth the income distribution and fertility are endogenous due to a quantiy quality tradeoff families with less human capital decide to have more children and invest less in education when initial inequality is high large fertility differentials lower the growth rate of average human capital since poor families who invest little in education make up a large fraction of the population in the next generation a calibrated model shows that this fertility differential effect is quantitatively important we also provide empirical evidence to confirm the links between inequality differential fertility and growth suggested by the model

economic appraisal of profitability and sustainability of peri urban agriculture in bangkok abstract promoters of urban and peri urban agriculture generally stress its positive role in terms of food security income employment and improvement of the urban environment unfortunately competition with agricultural and non agricultural uses of peri urban farm land often translates into intensive farming systems that are detrimental to the environment based on two original surveys of peri urban farms in the area of bangkok this paper ranks four cropping systems fish shrimp rice and fruits according to their economic profitability a second step of the analysis aims at taking into account the cost of water into the analysis so as to assess whether the hierarchy formerly established is modified although all environmental costs are not introduced and environmental benefits are ignored this work paves the way for further research in the area of taking into account the environmental impact of farming activities

coping with change a study of local irrigation institutions in taiwan abstract this paper examines how taiwan s local irrigation institutions have evolved and changed amid rapid political economic development in the last decade based upon the literatures of institutional analysis and common pool resource management i discuss and compare how local irrigation institutions in three areas in the country have responded or failed to respond to the changing environment a major finding is that local self governing irrigation institutions are not doomed to fail amid economic development several variables affect the incentives and capacity of farmers to redesign their local institutions to cope with the changes in the macro setting particularly flexible status quo institutions and a conductive governance regime can better facilitate farmers rule crafting efforts

the ambiguous impact of inequality on local resource management abstract the impact of inequality on the ability of human groups to undertake successful collective action is investigated with special reference to overexploitation of common property resources in voluntary provision problems on the one hand inequality has an ambiguous impact on the feasibility of the efficient outcome even though better endowed agents contribute more to collective action in regulated settings on the other hand inequality tends to reduce the acceptability of available regulatory schemes and therefore to make collective action more difficult

local common property exploitation with rewards this paper analyzes coalition formation in a livestock pasture system where livestock are privately owned and the pasture is a common property while standard models predict rather low prospects of cooperation this paper introduces a cost advantage of cooperation based on saami reindeer herding that may explain higher coalition participation in contrast to the existing fishery literature on coalition formation all players are assumed ex ante homogenous but may differ ex post due to the cost advantage a stable equilibrium with cooperation can be reached and a moderate exploitation level can be sustained compared to the tragedy of the commons outcome

endogenous gender power household labor supply and the demographic transition abstract we present a microeconomic model of the household in which there exists no difference in spousal preferences but childrearing is more time costly for women bargaining between the wife and the husband forms the basis of household decisions marital bargaining power is determined according to the incomes of the spouses which in turn help to determine their reservation utility levels outside the marriage the endogeneity of bargaining power introduces a non cooperative element to the couples decision making problem because both the husbands and the wives take into account how their pre marital education decisions affect their marital power and the share they extract from household resources in the future the model predicts that wives invest more than is pareto efficient in their education in order to increase their bargaining power in marriage as a consequence couples have fewer children and consume more when exogenous structural changes lead women to invest more in education a corollary of the model is that empowering women directly through social reforms such as a lower gender wage gap leads to lower fertility and higher spousal consumption and leisure

sex equality and growth abstract we set up a model of economic and demographic long run development where inequality in income and reproductive success polygynous mating plays a central role the model generates a slow and gradual compression of the income gap between landholders and landless together with rising levels of human capital this process spurts at some stage as society endogenously transits into sustained growth simultaneously inequality in income and reproductive success drops society becomes monogamous

enforcement for sale lobbying for water in pakistan s indus basin abstract surface irrigation is a common pool resource subject to over exploitation by upstream users we ask to what extent state enforcement of de jure water allocations designed to ensure adequate irrigation to downstream users is up for sale unique data on the land ownership of nearly a quarter million irrigators in pakistan s vast indus basin watershed provide a measure of political influence consistent with an influence driven model the decline in water availability and land values from head to tail is accentuated along channels having greater lobbying power at the head and attenuated along channels having greater lobbying power at the tail our paper shows how power disparities can be leveraged through the administrative state to capture valuable common resources

a model of the demand for longevity and the value of life extension we specify a demand function for longevity or quantity of life along with corresponding demand functions for indicators of quality of life and a value of health and life extension function we show that the demand for health must be derived in conjunction with that for longevity and the related consumption plan and that all choices depend on initial individual endowments and terminal conditions our comparative dynamics predictions indicate that optimal health and longevity are increasing functions of endowed wealth rather than necessarily current income that improvements in opportunities to produce health can accentuate the differences between endowed health and attained longevity levels and that the value individuals ascribe to their health may be increasing over a good portion of their life cycle we use this model to analyze observed empirical variations in levels and trends of life expectancy and in exposure to health risks across different population groups

the contribution of female health to economic development we analyze the economic consequences for less developed countries of investing in female health we do this through developing and calibrating a novel micro founded dynamic general equilibrium model in which parents trade off the number of children against investments in their education and in which we allow for health related gender differences in productivity we show that better female health speeds up the demographic transition and thereby the take off toward sustained economic growth by contrast male health improvements delay the transition and take off because ceteris paribus they raise fertility investing in female health is therefore a potent lever for promoting development

power distribution the environment and public health a state level analysis abstract this paper examines relationships among power distribution the environment and public health by means of a cross sectional analysis of the 50 us states a measure of inter state variations in power distribution is derived from data on voter participation tax fairness medicaid access and educational attainment we develop and estimate a recursive model linking the distribution of power to environmental policy environmental stress and public health the results support the hypothesis that greater power inequality leads to weaker environmental policies which in turn lead to greater environmental degradation and to adverse public health outcomes

unit roots and cointegration in estimating causality between exports and economic growth empirical evidence from the asean countries abstract this paper utilizes cointegration and error correction representation methodology in estimating the long run behavioral relationship between exports and economic growth in the asean countries

growth and exchange rate volatility a panel data analysis the aim of this article is to assess the role of real exchange rate rer volatility on long run economic growth for a set of 82 advanced and emerging economies using a panel data set ranging from 1970 to 2009 with an accurate measure for exchange rate volatility the results for the two step system generalized method of moments gmm panel growth models show that a more less volatile rer has a significant negative positive impact on economic growth the results are also robust for different model specifications

intergenerational persistence in health in developing countries the penalty of gender inequality this paper is motivated to investigate the often neglected payoff to investments in the health of girls and women in terms of next generation outcomes this paper investigates the intergenerational persistence of health across time and region as well as across the distribution of maternal health it uses comparable microdata on as many as 2 24 million children born of about 0 6 million mothers in 38 developing countries in the 31 year period 1970 2000 mother s health is indicated by her height bmi and anemia status child health is indicated by mortality risk and anthropometric failure we find a positive relationship between maternal and child health across indicators and highlight non linearities in these relationships the results suggest that both contemporary and childhood health of the mother matter and that the benefits to the next generation are likely to be persistent averaging across the sample persistence shows a considerable decline over time disaggregation shows that the decline is only significant in latin america persistence has remained largely constant in asia and has risen in africa the paper provides the first cross country estimates of the intergenerational persistence in health and the first estimates of trends

irrigation as a historical determinant of social capital in india a large scale survey analysis summary it is widely understood that the same policy interventions can have different outcomes depending on the social structures they are implemented in much less clear though is what fundamentally determines communities social capital or the way individuals in a society interact this study analyzes how irrigation practices a key feature of agricultural organization in india affect different indicators of social capital to this end an informative household survey is combined with detailed historical agricultural statistics on irrigation and grain cultivation the depth of the datasets allows for fine grained analysis of effects of different kinds of irrigation on groups with varying degrees of involvement in the agricultural production process i show a significant negative influence of specific types of irrigation on the prevalence of conflict and an increased likelihood for attendance of public meetings yet it is not possible to establish a broad and consistent relationship between agricultural indicators and social capital which contradicts previous research furthermore specific groups with varying incentive structures based on their land holding status and agricultural engagement appear to be affected by different kinds of irrigation the results underline the need for a multidimensional analysis of both social capital and agricultural organization as well as their interaction i do not find evidence supporting the rice theory of culture

re examining export led growth hypothesis a multivariate cointegration analysis for india this paper re examines the export led growth elg hypothesis using a vector autoregressive var model by considering the relationship between real gdp real exports and terms of trade for india during the period 1961 93 in re examining the elg hypothesis this study perhaps for the first time employs a multivariate framework using johansen s model selection and maximum likelihood cointegration procedure the results sugest that there is one long run equilibrium relationship among the three variables and the causal relationship flows from the growth in gdp and terms of trade to the growth in exports the causality from exports to gdp appears to be a short run phenomenon suggesting that the recent export promotion strategies adopted in india have the potential of bearing growth in the future

exports growth and causality in developing countries abstract previous empirical studies have interpreted results in regressions of output variables on export variables as providing support for an export promotion development strategy such an interpretation is questionable since these regressions provide no means of determining the direction of causality this paper performs causality tests between exports and growth for 37 developing countries the results cast considerable doubt on the validity of the export promotion hypothesis

health nutrition and economic development the relationship between health and economic development is explored focusing on nutrition based health indicators the spotlight is placed on the inter related feedbacks between the influence of health on productivity on one hand and the influence of income on health status on the other disentangling causality in these relationships has preoccupied much of the literature we evaluate different empirical strategies that have been adopted and assess the results there is now a body of evidence based on careful empirical studies that demonstrates a causal relationship between health and labor productivity there is also evidence that at least among the very poor additional income is spent on improved nutrition there are two issues that have received little attention although we argue they are likely to be very important first measurement of health is discussed in detail evidence is presented on how taking into account differences in the extent of measurement error is critical for interpreting the impact of health on wages the same theme emerges in studies of the effect of income on health specifically calorie intake the key role of non linearities in these relationships is highlighted and we demonstrate that a good deal of the variation in estimates of income elasticities of demand for calories can be ascribed to the role of measurement and functional form authors

the effect of health on economic growth a production function approach abstract we estimate a production function model of aggregate economic growth including two variables that microeconomists have identified as fundamental components of human capital work experience and health our main result is that good health has a positive sizable and statistically significant effect on aggregate output even when we control for experience of the workforce we argue that the life expectancy effect in growth regressions appears to be a real labor productivity effect and is not the result of life expectancy acting as a proxy for worker experience

exports economic growth and structural invariance evidence from some asian nics in this paper we use the exogeneity techniques developed by engle and hendry journal of econometrics 1993 56 pp 119 39 and data from three asian nics to test the invariance assumption of the export led growth hypothesis

more power to the pill the impact of contraceptive freedom on women s life cycle labor supply the release of enovid in 1960 the first birth control pill afforded u s women unprecedented freedom to plan childbearing and their careers this paper uses plausibly exogenous variation in state consent laws to evaluate the causal impact of the pill on the timing of first births and extent and intensity of women s labor force participation the results suggest that legal access to the pill before age 21 significantly reduced the likelihood of a first birth before age 22 increased the number of women in the paid labor force and raised the number of annual hours worked

accounting for the effect of health on economic growth i use microeconomic estimates of the effect of health on individual outcomes to construct macroeconomic estimates of the proximate effect of health on gdp per capita i employ a variety of methods to construct estimates of the return to health which i combine with cross country and historical data on height adult survival rates and age at menarche using my preferred estimate eliminating health differences among countries would reduce the variance of log gdp per worker by 9 9 percent and reduce the ratio of gdp per worker at the 90th percentile to gdp per worker at the loth percentile from 20 5 to 17 9 while this effect is economically significant it is also substantially smaller than estimates of the effect of health on economic growth that are derived from cross country regressions

malthus to solow a unified growth theory is developed that accounts for the roughly constant living standards displayed by world economies prior to 1800 as well as the growing living standards exhibited by modern industrial economies our theory also explains the industrial revolution which is the transition from an era when per capita incomes are stagnant to one with sustained growth the authors use a standard growth model with several technologies the first denoted the malthus technology requires land labor and reproducible capital as inputs the second denoted the solow technology does not require land the authors show that in the early stages of development only the malthus technology is used and due to population growth living standards are stagnant despite technological progress eventually technological progress causes the solow technology to become profitable and both technologies are employed at this point living standards improve since population growth has less influence on per capita income growth in the limit the economy behaves like a standard solow growth model excerpt