informal investment in transition economies individual characteristics and clusters this paper investigates the factors driving informal investment in croatia hungary and slovenia using global entrepreneurship monitor gem data we find that the low rates of informal investment activity and the small amounts of investments in these countries are driven by entrepreneurial behaviors consistent with limited market economy experience we extend prior studies by investigating the role of business ownership and identify significant differences between individuals with and without business ownership experience in terms of having start up skills knowing an entrepreneur and fearing failure cluster analysis identifies seven distinct groups of informal investors and reveals the heterogeneity in terms of investors age gender level of education amount of investment start up skills ownership status income opportunity perception and country of residence

the political economy of urban food security in sub saharan africa abstract sub saharan african cities in the late 1990s face a daunting set of problems including rapid growth increasing poverty deteriorating infrastructure and inadequate capacity for service provision even as a renewed debate is shaping up around issues of urban development there is little attention given to the question of urban food security whereas in the 1970s and 1980s urban food problems in africa commanded political attention the nature of urban food insecurity in the 1990s is such that it has tended to lose political importance this is largely because in the 1970s the problem was one of outright food shortages and rapid price changes that affected large portions of the urban population simultaneously the impact of structural adjustment continued rapid growth and an increase in poverty make urban food insecurity in the 1990s primarily a problem of access by the urban poor under circumstances where the urban poor spend a very large portion of their total income on food urban poverty rapidly translates into food insecurity the lack of formal safety nets and the shifting of responsibility for coping with food insecurity away from the state towards the individual and household level has tended to atomize and muffle any political response to this new urban food insecurity this paper briefly reviews urban food insecurity and generates a set of empirical questions for an analysis of food and livelihood security in contemporary urban sub saharan africa and then examines historical and contemporary evidence from kampala uganda and accra ghana to suggest some tentative conclusions

adaptation and distress in the urban economy a study of kampala households abstract though uganda underwent fairly rapid economic growth after independence in 1962 the civil strife and external shocks of the 1970s and 1980s led to rapid decline the impacts on kampala households reflect in many ways those on the rest of the country and have led to extensive diversification of incomes mainly to reduce the risks perceived in today s unstable environment a decrease in the share of wages in total incomes compensated by allowances of various types increased engagement in informal sector activities and even farming in the urban sector the main tasks of economic management are twofold to stabilize wage employment and to ameliorate the social misery caused by the decline the limited resource base and the continued external disturbances make the prospects for sustained recovery precarious

entrepreneurship entrepreneurial training and x efficiency theory abstract a basic motivational component of entrepreneurship is an individual s commitment to overcome gaps and obstacles in imperfect markets research associated with n achievement theory indicates the possibility of the selection and training of potential entrepreneurs and therefore a means to increase the supply of entrepreneurs a tendency to glorify entrepreneurship and the use of a tight equilibrium concept make it difficult to integrate entrepreneurship into standard economic theory despite the desirability of doing so x efficiency theory accommodates a non heroic view of entrepreneurs which in turn allows for the inclusion or entrepreneurial training in the model

the economic theory of agrarian institutions introduction alternative approaches to the theory of institutions in economic development pranab bardhan rational peasants efficient institutions and a theory of rural organization methodological remarks for development economics joseph e stiglitz part 1 land and labour theories of sharecropping nirvikar singh a comparison of principal agent and bargaining solutions the case of tenancy contracts clive bell contracts with eviction in infinitely repeated principal agent relationships bhaskar dutta et al production relations in semi arid african agriculture hans binswanger et al part 2 credit and interlinked transactions rural credit markets the structure of interest rates exploitation and efficiency kaushik basu credit and agrarian class structure mukesh eswaran and ashok kotwal credit rationing tenancy productivity and the dynamics of inequality avishay braverman and joseph e stiglitz on choice among creditors and bonded labour contracts t n srinivasan some aspects of linked product and credit market contracts among risk neutral agents clive bell and t n srinivasan a note on interlinked rural economic arrangements pranab bardhan interlinkages and the pattern of competition debraj ray and kunal sengupta part 3 marketing and insurance agricultural institutions for insurance and stabilization david m newbery peasants risk aversion and the choice of marketing intermediaries and contracts a bargaining theory of equilibrium marketing contracts pinhas zusman part 4 co operatives technology and the state agricultural producer co operatives louis putterman institutional analysis of credit co operatives avishay braverman and j luis guasch agrarian structure technological innovations and the state alain de janvry et al

internal adjustments to falling civil service salaries insights from uganda abstract real basic salaries of civil servants in many developing countries have fallen during the past 15 years little is known however as to how the civil service personnel structure and pay system have responded to the salary cuts civil service basic salaries fell drastically in uganda during 1975 1988 the adaptive responses of the civil service are identified allowances have not increased to cushion the salary cuts as is alleged to have happened in many developing countries the adaptive responses have had negative effects on efficiency and equity within the civil service they have reversed the decline in the public wage bill the raison d etre for deep salary slashes in the first place

does lack of access to formal credit constrain agricultural production evidence from the land tenancy market in rural india while it is commonly believed that lack of access to government subsidized formal credit underlies observed differences in farm productivity in rural india there is little empirical evidence on this issue in this paper i address this issue by examining whether households use the farm land rental market to equilibrate their access to formal credit as they are known to do in the case of other imperfectly marketable inputs this research reveals however that the advantage formal borrowers enjoy in the tenancy market does not reflect their access to formal credit per se but their greater ownership of inputs such as irrigated land

unemployment and female labour supply the definition of labour force participation in the standard labour supply model stands in sharp contrast to that used in compiling the labour force statistics in the labour supply models only those supplying positive hours of work are considered to be labour force participants on the other hand participation in the labour force statistics is often defined to include not only those supplying positive hours but also those actively searching for work this paper is an attempt to reconcile these concepts by allowing unemployed workers to enter a generalisation of the standard labour supply model this turns out to be a convenient way to enter demand side factors directly into the determination of an individual s labour market position the model is applied with some success to the working behaviour of married women in the uk family expenditure survey

a solution to the problem of externalities when agents are well informed the author describes a class of simple two stage mechanisms that implement efficient allocations as subgame perfect equilibria for economic environments involving externalities these mechanisms known as compensation mechanisms solve a wide variety of externalities problems including implementation of lindahl allocations regulation of monopoly and efficient solutions to the prisoner s dilemma copyright 1994 by american economic association

property rights and the political organization of agriculture we propose a general equilibrium model where the economic organization of agriculture and the political equilibrium determining the security of property rights are jointly determined in particular because the form of organization may affect the probability and distribution of benefits from future property challenges it may be shaped in anticipation of this impact property rights security may then be secured at the expense of economic efficiency the model provides a framework for understanding why in some contexts land is redistributed primarily via land sales and tenancy markets but via politics and conflict in others we test some implications of the theory using a five decade panel dataset that traces changes in the extent of tenancy and tenancy reform across 15 indian states

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

a note on government policy and the new intrapreneurship in bulgaria i have attempted in this paper to highlight the recent emergence and rapid growth of a particular type of intrapreneurship in the bulgarian economy this intrapreneurship involves the creation of new smaller establishments within existing large scale industrial firms these semi autonomous auxiliary plants are exempt from part of the bureaucracy which constrains the larger addition they have provided a higher rate of technological advance a better supply of consumer goods a greater utilization of labor resources and a higher return to human capital

microeconomic issues in the transition to a market economy evidence from developing countries suggests that a one sided preoccupation with macroeconomic issues may be unfortunate as macro stabilization programs tend to unravel in the presence of an inadequate micro adjustment for example kiguel and liviatan 1990 this finding is important because the socialist system introduced microeconomic distortions that probably transcend those observed in the third world the recent developments in poland yugoslavia and the soviet union also support the hypothesis that macro stabilization will be difficult to achieve in the transforming socialist economies in the absence of adequate micro adjustments in this paper i address what i consider to be the most important micro issues related to the transition from socialist to market economies i first summarize the initial microeconomic conditions and then describe the main changes that have taken place in the early stages of the transition finally i discuss the micro policy agenda that needs to be addressed if the transition is to be successful

food production urban areas and policy responses summary a growing literature under the heading of urban agriculture extols the virtues for urban food security and poverty reduction of farming in urban areas of developing countries this paper critically examines this literature with particular reference to the spread of food production in and around sub saharan african cities and towns the paper sets out a disaggregated view of food production in urban areas emphasizing the analytical and policy importance of rural urban interactions in resource and output markets as well as in income transfers the scope and limits of useful policy intervention in this area are considered the paper concludes that food production in urban and periurban areas certainly has a role to play in the food security of a proportion of urban dwellers but its contribution to the welfare of the poor in developing countries should not be exaggerated nor therefore should its claims for scarce development resources 0 1998 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

the role of small firms in the industrial development and transformation of czechoslovakia this article presents an analysis of the role of small firms in the formation and reform of the czechoslovak manufacturing sector it attempts to give an understanding of the industrial structure formed under the past regime within the framework of the mass production paradigm as manufacturing productivity gradually declined over the past 25 years and small firms have been virtually eliminated systemic preference has been given to the development of large monopolies consequently a monolithic coalition structure of enterprise managers state bureaucrats and political nomenklatura has arisen and continues to present itself as a serious hindrance to economic transformation while small firms have the potential to play a critical role in the democratic marketization of czechoslovakia current government preoccupation with the rapid privatization of the state sector risks damaging the development of a balanced distribution of firm size and in turn the revitalization of the society

human capital and economic development abstract this paper develops a general equilibrium model of fertility and human capital investment with young adult mortality because young adult mortality is negatively related to average young adult human capital human capital accumulation lowers mortality inducing demographic transition and industrial revolution data confirm that young adult mortality is related negatively to schooling and the rate of return to schooling and positively to fertility the data indicate a negative relationship between tfp growth and schooling accumulation the model fits the data on country populations per capita incomes human capital total fertility rates infant mortality life expectancy and conditional life expectancy

are agricultural markets more developed around cities testing for urban heterogeneity in separability in tanzania abstract a key question for policymakers concerned about feeding sub saharan africa s ssa rapidly growing cities is whether or not nearby farms benefit from improved agricultural markets evidence from case studies and agricultural location theory suggest so but urban heterogeneity has not yet been found in a common economic test of functioning agricultural markets the separability result the test is based on a key insight of the agricultural household model which finds that a farm s profit should be maximized independently from household utility given perfect factor markets i e separability but not so if the household faces at least two market failures i e non separability in this paper i test for geographic heterogeneity in separability between rural peri urban and urban districts using 2014 15 data from the world bank s living standards measurement study and integrated surveys on agriculture lsms isa from tanzania i find strong evidence that the correlation between pre harvest labor demand and household size implying non separability in rural areas is significantly weaker in three of tanzania s five largest cities dar es salaam arusha and mbeya given certain assumptions this can be interpreted as evidence of increased agricultural market functionality around these cities relative to rural areas overall these results contribute to the debate on how to achieve urban food security in ssa and give some validity to agricultural location theory and the separability test as tools to help policymakers characterize the nature of agricultural factor markets

subgame perfect implementation this paper examines the use of stage mechanisms in implementation problems and provides a partial characterization of the set of subgam e perfect implementable choice rules it is shown that in many economic environments virtually an y choice rule can be implemented to illustrate the power of this approach the paper discusses a number of models in which it is possible to implement the first best although it wouldn t have been possible to do so without using stage mechanisms the diversity of these models suggests that subgame perfect implementation may find wide application copyright 1988 by the econometric society

the evolution of manufacturing technology and its impact on industrial structure an international study this paper shows that plant and firm size in manufacturing and especially in engineering industry in several western industrial countries has declined since the early 1970s two hypotheses explaining the decline are advanced one is de glomeration or specialization the divestiture of non core businesses in order to free up scarce resources particularly management time to defend and nurture core business activities the second hypothesis is that the emergence of new computer based technology has improved the quality and productivity of small and medium scale production relative to standardized mass production techniques which dominated previously

credit layering in informal financial markets abstract informal lenders with access to markets or capital often find it attractive to delegate loan provision to downstream lenders who have an information or enforcement advantage in dealing with particular borrowers in this paper we examine the conditions under which such an arrangement is preferred by two informal lenders a landlord and a merchant who compete in loan provision to tenant farmers differentiated by wealth we show that credit layering is preferred only when tenants are sufficiently poor in this case the trader lends to tenant farmers via a contract with their landlord otherwise only the trader lends as a consequence a pattern of borrowing emerges in which relatively wealthy tenants borrow from merchants while poor tenants borrow mainly from their landlords interlinkage between land and credit thus arises only for a subset of tenants and purely as a consequence of credit layering this pattern is shown to be supported empirically

two tier land tenure system and sustained economic growth in post 1978 rural china abstract the two tier land tenure system has been widely blamed for the problems in land allocation and in land specific investment observed in the postreform rural china greater privatization of property rights in land has been proposed to enable productive farmers to acquire more land to promote land circulation to improve farmers access to credit and to encourage farm investment it is argued here that in the presence of multiple market distortions land privatization is unlikely to provide a solution to the agricultural problems rather an approach which refines the existing framework of the two tier ownership system offers more promise

implementation of individually rational social choice functions with guaranteed utilities abstract a simple mechanism is presented that allocates an indivisible object between two agents for almost any possible compensation rule furthermore the equilibrium strategy guarantees a level of utility not less than e where e can be arbitrarily small

meso economic filters along the policy chain understanding the links between policy reforms and rural poverty in latin america abstract the paper clarifies the meso economy concept by defining it as comprising both the market mechanisms and administrative procedures through which policy decisions and market signals trickle down to the household level three main bodies of literature are reviewed the policy oriented literature in which the meso economy was initially considered the transaction cost approach analyzing market and policy failures and the micro economy level of agricultural household models the paper develops a synthesis of macro meso and micro economic perspectives which focuses on the roles played by three levels of filters intervening along the policy chain implications for policy and research are drawn

bringing water markets down to earth the political economy of water rights in chile 1976 1995 abstract for 15 years chile has been the leading international example of pro market policies for water resources and its 1981 water code has recently been touted as a model for other countries to follow water markets are controversial in both theory and practice their potential benefits include greater efficiency and flexibility of water use and less state intervention and expenditure while their drawbacks include social and environmental externalities vulnerability to high transactions costs and other common examples of market failure no country has taken the experiment as far as chile since its water code privatized water rights reduced state administration and attempted to stimulate a free market in water rights the results have been mixed and uneven the lesson of the chilean case is that setting up water markets is harder and more complicated than it may seem even in the fairly simple arena of irrigation transfers

promoting entrepreneurship in eastern europe the past decade has seen a revival of entrepreneurship in the modern industrial economies characterized by a wave of enterprise restructuring and of new developments in business and technology in this paper we argue that market transitions of the post socialist economies of eastern europe cannot be successful without similar entrepreneurial restructuring to address the massive structural distortions that still plague the post reform economies the governments of the region must promote entrepreneurship through policies that 1 make use of all possible sources of entrepreneurship including in particular the former state and social sectors and 2 establish a macroeconomic environment and property rights framework conducive to entrepreneurship a successful promotion strategy will need to operate on several fronts by 1 redirecting entrepreneurial activities into legal productive activities 2 increasing the supply and effectiveness of entrepreneurs 3 developing markets for complementary inputs and 4 increasing the demand for entrepreneurship an unsuccessful approach we argue will be one that regards the pre reform small private sector as the only source of entrepreneurship and as the only arena for its productive use

urban agriculture poverty and food security empirical evidence from a sample of developing countries urban agriculture may have a role to play in addressing urban food insecurity problems which are bound to become increasingly important with the secular trend towards the urbanization of poverty and of pop ulation in developing regions our understanding of the importance nature and food security implica tions of urban agriculture is however plagued by a lack of good quality reliable data while studies based on survey data do exist for several major cities much of the evidence is still qualitative if not anec dotal using a recently created dataset bringing together comparable nationally representative house hold survey data for 15 developing or transition countries this paper analyzes in a comparative international perspective the importance of urban agriculture for the urban poor and food insecure some clear hints do come from our analysis on the one hand the potential for urban agriculture to play a sub stantial role in urban poverty and food insecurity reduction should not be overemphasised as its share in income and overall agricultural production is often quite limited on the other hand though its role should also not be too easily dismissed particularly in much of africa and in all those countries in which agriculture provides a substantial share of income for the urban poor and for those groups of households to which it constitutes an important source of livelihoods we also find fairly consistent evidence of a positive statistical association between engagement in urban agriculture and dietary adequacy indicators

deagrarianization and rural employment in sub saharan africa a sectoral perspective abstract sub saharan africa is steadily becoming less rural in character for decades development thinking has prescribed industrialization as the virtuous path leading away from economic dependence on agriculture but africa s industrial record has been plagued with underperformance an alternative perspective centered on the process of deagrarianization and attendant rural employment generation may offer more explanatory power and policy direction this paper outlines key theoretical components and practical concerns of a deagrarianization approach the nature and incidence of deagrarianization in sub saharan africa is contrasted with that experienced in developed industrial countries conceptual approaches dealing with rural non agricultural employment are identified within different social science disciplines through a thematic review of the literature the conclusion highlights the need for more focused study of the deagrarianization process and rural service sector development

agricultural workers credit rationing and family networks in rural mexico abstractwe use mixed methods and first hand household data in mexico to investigate credit practices by households engaged in agricultural wage employment quantitative analysis shows evidence of rationing in the formal sector but also suggests the existence of mitigating mechanisms qualitative analysis provides additional insights first income patterns associated with agricultural wage generate income smoothing needs that are sometimes better met by the informal sector second family networks can perform key functions as gateways to the formal sector through specific informal arrangements that inject flexibility into formal rules and procedures

implementing the efficient allocation of pollution we provide simple mechanisms to implement the efficient allocation of pollution first assuming complete information across firms and then allowing for incomplete information both mechanisms operate by inducing firms to monitor one another using firms reports to determine pollution allotments and transfers the complete information mechanism determines a firm s transfer according to a linear pollution price set by other firms both mechanisms can be modified to be budget balanced in and out of equilibrium the complete information mechanism implements the efficient allocation even when firms are allowed to use mixed strategies under a single crossing condition the same holds for the incomplete information mechanism this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

a complete implementation of the efficient allocation of pollution abstract this paper presents a simple twofold mechanism that attains a complete implementation of the efficient allocation of pollution the first component is adopted from duggan and roberts duggan j roberts j 2002 implementing the efficient allocation of pollution american economic review 92 1070 1078 the second new component takes care of the moral hazard problem

using markets to allocate pollution permits and other scarce resource rights under limited information abstract we consider the design of government policy to ration such scarce resources as water or pollution permits in the presence of limited information when government policy is formulated some informed agents e g established public utilities know how highly they value the resource other uninformed agents e g potential independent power producers only learn their valuations at some later date the government allows uninformed agents to trade the resource rights they receive on a competitive market informed agents may or may not have the same privilege the optimal initial distribution of resource rights differs significantly according to whether informed agents can trade the rights they receive

subdividing the commons distributional conflict in the transition from collective to individual property rights in kenya s maasailand summary this paper suggests that explanations of property rights transformation need to move beyond models of relative price change and state enforcement to include accounts that accommodate conflict and competition among actors and the possibility that state actors may not provide the enforcement that is often taken for granted the transition from collective to individualized holdings in kenya s maasailand is burdened with politics and procedural problems that can undermine the gains anticipated in that move moreover in semi arid ecological settings individualization results in unstable land holdings necessitating re contracting and reaggregation by individual parcel owners

the distinctiveness of entrepreneurship in transition economies this paper is concerned with the distinctiveness of entrepreneurship and small business development in countries that are at different stages of transformation to market based economies following a discussion of the potential relevance of selected conceptualisations of entrepreneurship to transition conditions the authors present original empirical data referring to the characteristics of entrepreneurs and their businesses from countries at different stages of market reform distinctive features of entrepreneurial behaviour identified reflect the unstable and hostile nature of the external environment and the scarcity of key resources particularly capital in an unstable and weakly structured environment informal networks often play a key role in helping entrepreneurs to mobilise resources win orders and cope with the constraints imposed by highly bureaucratic structures and often unfriendly officials moreover the social context inherited from the former socialist period appears to affect both the attitudes and behaviour of entrepreneurs and the attitudes of society at large towards entrepreneurship

collective agricultural production a solution for transition economies abstract the paper examines theoretical reasons and provides examples for productivity differences between agricultural service cooperatives and collectives service cooperatives can utilize economies of scale enhance competitiveness and provide technical information advantages that often outweighed problems of free riding low investment and excessive political intervention agricultural collectives while not adding substantial advantages are in addition associated with problems of supervision and effort supply tendencies to substitute casual workers or mechanization for regular members and low investment incentives while collective forms of organization in transition economies respond to high risk and market imperfections they do so inefficiently policies that create conditions for service cooperatives to compete may lead to large productivity gains