price dispersion and price indexes the traditional theory of price index numbers is based on the law of one price but in the real world we frequently observe the existence of an equilibrium price dispersion instead of one price of equilibrium this article discusses the effects of price dispersion on two price indexes the cost of living index and the consumer price index with price dispersion and consumer searching for the lowest price these indexes cannot be interpreted as deterministic indicators but as stochastic indicators and they can be biased if price dispersion is not taken into account a measure for the bias of the consumer price index is proposed and the article ends with an estimation of the bias based on data obtained from the consumer price index calculated for the city of sao paulo brazil from january 1988 through december 2004 the period analysed is very interesting because it exhibits different inflationary environments high levels and high volatility of the rates of inflation with great price dispersion until

electoral cycles in savings bank lending we provide evidence that german savings banks which are controlled by county level politicians systematically adjust lending policies in response to local electoral cycles the different timings of county elections across states and the existence of a comparable group of cooperative banks that are very similar to savings banks but lack their political connectedness allow for identification of the effects of county elections on savings bank lending these effects are economically meaningful and very robust to various specifications we find that election induced lending negatively impacts savings bank profitability and is associated with an increase in credit defaults roughly three years after an election examining the political economy aspects of our findings we provide evidence that savings bank excess lending and public spending at the county level are substitute levers for county politicians finally we find indications that subpar pre election economic county performance hurts re election prospects and increases the intensity of lending cycles

voters as fiscal conservatives voters penalize federal and state spending growth this is the central result of my analysis of voting behavior in presidential senatorial and gubernatorial elections from 1950 1988 the composition of federal spending growth seems irrelevant the vote loss to the president s party from an extra dollar of defense or nondefense spending is the same however in gubernatorial elections expansion of state welfare spending exacts a disproportionate political price deficit financing of federal or state spending does not appear to matter politically i conclude by discussing the obvious question of why government budgets have grown in the face of this voter hostility

the effect of price dispersion on cost of living indexes single good search models imply that mean preserving increases in the amount of price dispersion reduce expected costs of living of searching consumers yet when many goods are consumed commodity substitution may create a de facto form of fixed sample size search this leads to the paradoxical result that an increase in price dispersion may reduce nonsearchers average costs of living more than it does searchers even in the fixed sample size search case if the searchers search only a little moreover mean and support preserving increases in price dispersion may make it optimal to forgo fixed sample size search copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

price dispersion and functional price indices let s denote a set of consumers who have identical nondecreasing ordinal quasiconcave utility functions u xs t u x t where xx t is the vector of n goods consumed by individual s at time t consumers shop at different stores and hence may pay different prices for commodities 4 let ps t and ys t denote exogenous vectors of commodity prices and income respectively faced by individual s at time t this does not preclude the existence of a subset 5 of consumers who all face the same prices i e p5 t ps t for all s s c s at each instant in time consumers attempt to

unemployment and the democratic electoral advantage this article calls into question the conventional wisdom that incumbent parties are rewarded when unemployment is low and punished when it is high using county level data on unemployment and election returns for 175 midterm gubernatorial elections and 4 presidential elections from 1994 to 2010 the analysis finds that unemployment and the democratic vote for president and governor move together other things being equal higher unemployment increases the vote shares of democratic candidates the effect is greatest when republicans are the incumbent party but democrats benefit from unemployment even when they are in control the explanation for these findings is that unemployment is a partisan issue for voters not a valence issue and that the democratic party owns unemployment when unemployment is high or rising democratic candidates can successfully convince voters that they are the party best able to solve the problem

two round elections one round determinants evidence from the french municipal elections using a new database of french municipalities that covers 821 towns and two elections 2001 and 2008 we examine how the budget structure degree of electoral competition and the economic context affect the share of votes for the incumbent we take into account the institutional details of the two round structure of the electoral process created by french electoral rules dual ballot under plurality rules we show that in the first round of the electoral process spending on equipment including infrastructures can influence the voter and that electoral competition has a strong impact on the incumbent s score in the second round the incumbent s vote is affected more by national considerations and local budget variables have no effect we show that the dynamics between the first and the second rounds are intense the results suggest that the determinants of each round s outcome in a two round electoral process are different

political uncertainty and public financing costs evidence from u s gubernatorial elections and municipal bond markets this research investigates how political uncertainty around u s gubernatorial elections in uences the borrowing costs of public debt measured by yields of municipal bonds our evidence from both the new issuance market and the secondary market shows that yields of municipal bonds increase sharply by 6 to 8 basis points before elections and then reverse afterward elections have more pronounced impact during economic downturns when outcomes are less predictable and when states have more outstanding debt several state institutions such as gaap budgeting spending limits and tax increase limits help to mitigate the adverse impact of political uncertainty

discussion of the influence of elections on the accounting choices of governmental entities kido petacchi and weber 2012 investigate whether the occurrence of a state gubernatorial election is important to understanding the accrual choices of preparers of the state s comprehensive annual financial report central to the authors argument is the idea that voters do not like budget deficits politicians in response have incentives to use accounting choices to mask deficits in the period before elections focusing on a specific accrual the changes in compensated absences liability the authors find evidence that the discretionary part of this accrual is smaller in the period before an election which is consistent with politicians attempting to improve the picture of the state s financial health in addition the authors show that accrual manipulation is positively associated with the vote share of incumbent governors in elections in my discussion i ask two questions 1 how strong are governors political incentives to manipulate accruals in the run up to elections 2 can the association between discretionary compensated absence accruals and elections be explained by forces other than politically motivated accounting manipulation i argue that the incentives to manipulate accruals might well be weak given strong disciplinary mechanisms that induce politicians to transparency what s more i document that elections might produce patterns in state employment as the compensated absences liability is linked to the payroll election induced changes in state employment might be reflected in this accrual evidence of an association between the compensated absences accrual and elections then does not necessarily imply that politicians manage accounting numbers to further illustrate this point i show empirically that gubernatorial elections have little explanatory power for state financial reporting choices that are unaffected by state employment jel classification h70 h72 m41

the slave trade and the origins of mistrust in africa in a recent study nunn 2008 examines the long term impacts of africa s slave trade he finds that the slave trade which occurred over a period of more than 400 years had a significant negative effect on long term economic development although the article arguably identifies a negative causal relationship between the slave trade and income today the analysis is unable to establish the exact causal mechanisms underlying this reduced form relationship in this article we examine one of the channels through which the slave trade may affect economic development today combining contemporary individual level survey data with historical data on slave shipments by ethnic group we ask whether the slave trade caused a culture of mistrust to develop within africa initially slaves were captured primarily through state organized raids and warfare but as the trade progressed the environment of ubiquitous insecurity caused individuals to turn on others including friends and family members and to kidnap trick and sell each other into slavery sigismund wilhelm koelle 1854 p e h hair 1965 charles piot 1996 we hypothesize that in this environment a culture of mistrust may have evolved which may persist to this day we show that current differences in trust levels within africa can be traced back to the transatlantic and indian ocean slave trades combining contemporary individual level survey data with historical data on slave shipments by ethnic group we find that individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade are less trusting today evidence from a variety of identification strategies suggests that the relationship is causal examining causal mechanisms we show that most of the impact of the slave trade is through factors that are internal to the individual such as cultural norms beliefs and values jel j15 n57 z13

the vp function a survey of the literature on vote and popularity functions after 25 years vp functions explain the support for the government at votes and polls by economic and political variables most studies analyze macro time series we also cover studies of individual voters socio economic groups and regional cross sections the theory starts from the responsibil ity hypothesis voters hold the government responsible for economic conditions it works in two party block systems but not else voters in most countries are found to be sociotropic egotropic voting also occurs voters myopia is well established voting is retrospective as expectations are static it costs the average government almost 2 of the vote to rule

a dual measure of economies of scope a derivative based measure of economies of scope is obtained by exploiting the duality between the shadow cost function and the input distance function this is a useful measure when the econometric estimation of a cost function is not viable

divided government fiscal institutions and budget deficits evidence from the states does partisan control of american state government have systematic effects on state spending and taxing levels does divided control affect the government s ability to make hard decisions do institutional rules like legal deficit carryover restrictions matter using a formal model of fiscal policy to guide empirical analysis of data covering the american states from 1968 to 1987 we conclude that 1 aggregate state budget totals are driven by different factors under democrats and republicans the net result being that democrats target spending and taxes to higher shares of state level personal income 2 divided government is less able to react to revenue shocks that lead to budget deficits particularly where different parties control each chamber of the legislature and 3 unified party governments with restricted ability to carry deficits into the next fiscal year outside the south have sharper reactions to negative revenue shocks than those without restrictions

running for office again evidence from portuguese municipal elections using a data set that covers all portuguese mainland municipalities for the period 1979 2005 this study performs an empirical analysis of the economic determinants of mayors decisions to run for another term in office the literature on the subject is mainly centered on the united states and as far as we know there are no papers addressing the economic factors influencing those choices

good bye lenin or not the effect of communism on people s preferences preferences for redistribution as well as the generosities of welfare states differ significantly across countries in this paper we test whether there exists a feedback process of the economic regime on individual preferences we exploit the experiment of german separation and reunification to establish exogeneity of the economic system from 1945 to 1990 east germans lived under a communist regime with heavy state intervention and extensive redistribution we find that after german reunification east germans are more in favor of redistribution and state intervention than west germans even after controlling for economic incentives this effect is especially strong for older cohorts who lived under communism for a longer time period we further find that east germans preferences converge towards those of west germans we calculate that it will take one to two generations for preferences to converge completely

a little fairness may induce a lot of redistribution in democracy we use a model of self centered inequality aversion suggested by fehr and schmidt 1999 to study voting on redistribution we theoretically identify two classes of conditions when an empirically plausible amount of fairness preferences induces redistribution through referenda we test the predictions of the adapted inequality aversion model in a simple redistribution experiment and flnd that it predicts voting outcomes far better than the standard model of voting assuming rationality and strict self interest

scope economies and technical efficiency of cocoa agroforesty systems in ghana a number of studies have addressed issues relating to the physiological environmental and economic values of trees in cocoa farming systems however to date little has been done to quantitatively examine the effect of crop diversity on cocoa farming efficiency this study therefore sets out to first investigate whether and to what extent crop diversity defined as the mixing of cocoa with other crop species on farmers plots affects productivity on cocoa farms secondly it sought to establish whether there are economies of scope i e cost complementarities from the sharing of farm inputs by crops on the same plots our results indicate that diversified i e multi crop cocoa farms are more efficient than single i e mono crop farms furthermore our estimate for the economies of scope parameter indicates possibilities for cost complementarities between production of cocoa and other crops on the same plot we advocate further investigation on the issue of scope economies to determine which crop combinations offer better cost complementarities and also meet biodiversity conservation objectives

price index dispersion and utilitarian social evaluation the living standard indicator in utilitarian social evaluation functions usef is the ratio of a nominal living standard and a price index we show that under weak association of price indices and nominal living standards and usual concavity conditions on utility functions utilitarian social welfare increases with price index dispersion when the aggregate price level is superior to the arithmetic mean of price indices and diminishes when it is inferior to the harmonic mean

information gathering and cost of living differences among searchers abstract this note extends recent work on cost of living index numbers for a population of individuals who face imperfect and costly information about prices it is known that individuals with identical preferences but different incomes will require different cost of living adjustments unless preferences are homothetic however this result in based on a model of consumer behavior under costless information we analyze differences in the cost of living among searchers with different incomes and show that even if preferences are homothetic expected cost of living indices will generally vary across searchers with different references standards of living the reason for the differences is that under homothetic preferences reservation prices are a decreasing function of the searcher s standard of living

how lasting is voter gratitude an analysis of the short and long term electoral returns to beneficial policy dominant theories of electoral behavior emphasize that voters myopically evaluate policy performance and that this shortsightednessmayobstructthewelfare improvingeffectofdemocraticaccountability however weknowlittleabouthow long governments receive electoral credit for beneficial policies we exploit the massive policy response to a major natural disaster the 2002 elbe flooding in germany to provide an upper bound for the short and long term electoral returns to targeted policy benefits we estimate that the flood response increased vote shares for the incumbent party by 7 percentage points in affected areas in the 2002 election twenty five percent of this short term reward carried over to the 2005 election before the gains vanished in the 2009 election we conclude that given favorable circumstances policy makers can generate voter gratitude that persists longer than scholarship has acknowledged so far and elaborate on the implications for theories of electoral behavior democratic accountability and public policy

a superpopulation theory approach to the design of price index estimators with small sampling biases this article uses simple superpopulation models to examine estimators for long and short term laspeyres price relatives based on pps samples

efficiency in new zealand sheep and beef farming the impacts of regulatory reform in this study we consider the impacts of dramatic regulatory reform during the 1980s on the efficiency of farms in new zealand using unbalanced panel data a translog distance function representing the multiple output and input technology and incorporating nonneutral regulatory impacts is used for the analysis determinants of technical inefficiency including a regulatory variable a time term and a debt equity ratio are also incorporated in a one step model estimated by maximum likelihood stochastic production frontier methods we find evidence of regulatory induced changes in output composition toward beef and deer and away from wool and especially lamb but little associated technical inefficiency these patterns motivated investment in complementary capital land and beef deer livestock inputs firms that were more flexible in their adaptation toward these new mixes adjusted to regulatory changes with less upheaval so any existing inefficiency appears linked to debt equity levels

incumbent performance and electoral control in the pure theory of electoral competition citizens compare the platforms of the candidates and vote for the one whose platform is preferred candidate strategies are identified with promises about future performance in office models of this sort have been developed in both static mckelvey 1975 and dynamic kramer 1977 i settings and all appear to have the property that if the set of alternatives is large enough in some sense equilibrium platforms rarely exist but these models have another feature that is quite as disturbing as their instability in the static setting discussed by mckelvey little attention is paid to the possibility that once in office the politician s preferences may diverge from those of his constituents and that he may therefore choose policies at variance from his platform instead it is simply assumed that promises will be kept whether or not such behavior is congruent with the interest of the officeholder it is sometimes argued that an enforcement mechanism may exist to discipline politicians for failing to keep promises but without a specification of the mechanism it is not obvious that it would be in the interests of the

analysis of the technical efficiency of state rubber farms in vietnam this study entails an analysis of the technical efficiency of natural rubber production by state farms in vietnam a time varying stochastic frontier production function model for unbalanced data is estimated for 33 farms individual farm technical efficiencies are reported and discussed one of the main results concerns the bimodal distribution of technical efficiency indices a few farms operate near the production frontier while the bulk operate well away from the frontier some implications are drawn from the results as a guide to future policy research work in the rubber industry in light of recent moves by the vietnamese government towards economic reform

a class of multiplicative estimators of laspeyres price indexes publication of indexes measuring changes in prices of retail wholesale export and import items is an important part of many governmental statistics programs one form of price index that is often used is the fixed base laspeyres in which a fixed market basket of goods is priced over time this article introduces a new class of multiplicative estimators of laspeyres indexes the optimum within the class is derived for long term price change and compared with two other members of the class when used for estimating both long term and short term change theoretical properties are derived under a model in which long term relative price changes for individual items have common within stratum means and are correlated over time theory for long term and short term change estimators is tested in a simulation study in which a large number of stratified probability samples is selected from a population extracted from items priced for the u s consumer price index

ghost house busters the electoral response to a large anti tax evasion program the incentives of political agents to enforce tax collection are key determinants of the levels of compliance we study the electoral response to the ghost buildings program a nationwide anti tax evasion policy in italy that used innovative monitoring technologies to target buildings hidden from tax authorities two million buildings were registered as a result of the program our difference in differences identification strategy exploits both variation across towns in the ex ante program scope to increase enforcement as well as administrative data on actual building registrations local incumbents experience an increase in their reelection likelihood as a consequence of the policy in addition these political returns are higher in areas with lower tax evasion tolerance and with higher speed of public good provision implying complementarity among enforcement policies the underlying tax culture and government efficiency

challenger entry and voter learning we develop a model of strategic interaction between voters and potential electoral challengers to sitting incumbents in which the very fact of a costly challenge conveys relevant information to voters given incumbent failure in office challenger entry is more likely but the threat of entry by inferior challengers creates an incentive for citizens to become more politically informed at the same time challenges to incumbents who perform well can neutralize a voter s positive assessment of incumbent qualifications how a voter becomes politically informed can in turn deter challengers of different levels of competence from running depending on the electoral environment the model permits us to sharpen our understanding of retrospective voting the incumbency advantage and the relationship between electoral competition and voter welfare while pointing to new interpretations of and future avenues for empirical research on elections

the measurement of inflation a stochastic approach the stochastic approach to index number theory views each commodity price change as an independent observation on the underlying rate of inflation so that inflation can be estimated by averaging over all the prices this article extends the approach by a allowing for sustained changes in relative prices b showing the link with divisia index numbers and c deriving standard errors for the inflation estimates the results are illustrated with australian data

state government efforts in industrial modernization using theory to guide practice gittell r j and kaufman a 1996 state government efforts in industrial modernization using theory to guide practice reg studies 30 477 492 this paper presents a theoretical framework that incorporates economic and political considerations to gain insight into state government industrial modernization efforts the discussion highlights how information asymmetries and traditional business norms may justify the organization of a public manufacturing extension service we suggest however that if left solely to private or to public means one might expect either the provision of too few or too many manufacturing extension services difficulties in calculating benefits and in sharing information can inhibit spontaneous private collective action on the other hand we suggest that public officials have incentives to institute manufacturing services independent of private demand to balance private and public incentives we suggest the need for a public private partnership along with specific recommen

population intervals and the true cost of living index with known price distributions abstract this note provides a simple closed form expression for an aggregate cost of living index when prices paid differ across consumers properties of the lognormal distribution are used to construct a population interval around the index so that a given fraction of consumers have a true cost of living index in the interval

voting retrospectively critical junctures and party identification abstract this paper provides evidence for retrospective voting in the very long term by exploiting a unique quasi natural experiment of history we trace the origins of party identification to a critical juncture in the local history of sasun a mountainous region of the ottoman empire located in eastern turkey sasun received vital support from the armenian revolutionary federation arf both during the great massacres against armenians at the end of the 19th century and during the armenian genocide 1915 1917 with the help of the arf some of the survivors from sasun were resettled in various villages in modern day armenia although the party was not active in armenia during seven decades of soviet rule we find that villages with sasun ancestry display substantially higher electoral support for the arf than other villages evidence from first names of current residents and our field work suggest that this differential support can at least in part be explained by historical gratitude and sympathy for the party we offer suggestive evidence to explain why this sympathy might have endured over generations

estimation of laspeyres price indexes using the prediction approach for finite population sampling estimators of chain and fixed base laspeyres price indexes are studied using the prediction approach to finite population sampling the estimators include some that are based on those used in several u s government index programs and others derived from prediction models biases and variances of the estimators are studied for a case in which the reference period index weights are unknown for nonsample items under a model for a one period price change in which items have common within stratum means unbiased estimators can be constructed but under a more general regression model special sample balance conditions are needed for unbiasedness of those estimators the theory for the estimators of fixed base indexes is illustrated in an empirical study using a population of items priced for the u s consumer price index

should the cost of living index provide the conceptual framework for a consumer price index in some countries the cost of living col index serves as the conceptual framework for the cpi but it has been rejected in others this paper reviews issues that have arisen in the statistical agency debate and in the economics literature on the col index including rhetorical matters which have influenced the debate i contend that col theoiy is useful as a decision making framework in estimating components of the cpi and that col index theory provides appropriate guidance for measuring consumer inflation contrary to the view that has been adopted for the european hicp and expressed by an advisory committee for the rpi in several countries the united states netherlands sweden the theory of the cost of living col index provides the conceptual framework for the country s consumer price index cpi see united states department of labor 1997 balk 1994 and dalen 1999 others reject the cost of living index framework an example is the australian bureau of statistics 1997 rejection of the col index is also explicit in an rpi advisory committee recommendation in the united kingdom in still other countries canada being an example official documents for the cpi are ambiguous about the role of the col index statistics canada 1995 the international guideline for consumer price indexes the ilo manual turvey 1989 does not even mention the col index the question has taken on heightened interest recently part of the stimulus comes from the european union s relatively new harmonised indexes of consumer prices hicp for the hicps eurostat has rejected the col

the consumer price index a research agenda and three proposals this paper argues that dealing with current concerns about the cpi within the framework of economic theory requires developing the theory of the cost of living index under more general assumptions than have thus far been standard it examines three neglected but critical issues that should rank high on the research agenda because of their practical implications for index number construction whose cost of living index why shop and what is a good it concludes by discussing the intersection between the technical problems of constructing the cpi and the political problems of indexing taxes and transfers

evidence on taxation and charitable giving from the 1983 u s treasury tax model file we have applied our model of taxation and charitable giving developed in reece and zieschang 1985 to the 1983 treasury tax model file and found no response of giving to marginal tax rates and a small response to income

consumer shopping behavior how much do consumers save this paper documents the potential and actual savings that consumers realize from four particular types of purchasing behavior purchasing on sale buying in bulk at a lower per unit price buying generic brands and choosing outlets how much can and do households save through each of these behaviors how do these patterns vary with consumer demographics we use data collected by a marketing firm on all food purchases brought into the home for a large nationally representative sample of u k households in 2006 we are interested in how consumer choice affects the measurement of price changes in particular a standard price index based on a fixed basket of goods will overstate the rise in the true cost of living because it does not properly consider sales and bulk purchasing according to our measures the extent of this bias might be of the same or even greater magnitude than the better known substitution and outlet biases

the substitution bias of the laspeyres price index an analysis using estimated cost of living indexes the most commonly used measure of the cost of living the consumer price index cpi published by the bureau of labor statistics is essentially a laspeyres price index it is well known however that a laspeyres price index provides an upward biased estimate of the cost of living because in keeping the same base period basket of goods as weights it does not take into account substitution among commodities induced by relative price changes the magnitude of the bias is an empirical question which is the focus of this study an estimate of the substitution bias may be obtained by taking the difference between the laspeyres price index and an estimated true cost of living index the true cost of living index cli is based on the theory of consumer demand it is the ratio of the minimum expenditures under two different price regimes necessary to maintain a constant level of utility as opposed to the constant basket of goods in the laspeyres index the size of the bias depends on two factors 1 the size of consumption substitution elasticities if there is no commodity substitution then the cli and laspeyres index coincide regardless of changes in relative prices and 2 the magnitude of relative price changes if all prices move together then the cli and laspeyres index again coincide regardless of the size of substitution elasticities in order to compute a true cli it is necessary to specify a particular utility function and estimate the parameters of the resulting system of demand equations see for example louis phlips p 135 several estimates of the magnitude of the substitution bias have appeared in the literature but all previous studies suffer from a common weakness they are all based on a very small number of commodities essentially because of econometric problems involved in estimating large systems of demand equations in one group of studies demand models have been estimated using highly aggregated data in which total consumption is grouped into four to nine aggregate commodites such as housing durables or clothing arthur goldberger and theodore gamaletsos for example estimate the linear expenditure system les demand model using data on five aggregate goods for several european countries and compare the resulting cli for one of the countries greece to the corresponding laspeyres price index tran van hoa estimates costof living indexes for six australian provinces using data on nine aggregate goods phlips cites work by r sanz ferrer who computed a cli for belgium from data on eight aggregate commodities in such studies using highly aggregated data the estimate of the substitution bias may be understated because the aggregation obscures substitution in consumption within categories which is perhaps more prevalent than substitution between gross aggregates another shortcoming of these three aggregate studies is the fact that they use only a single demand system and hence do not explore the sensitivity of the cli to a priori u s bureau of labor statistics the groundwork for this study was my dissertation i would like to thank the chairman and members of my committee r robert russell llad phillips and robert deacon for their support and helpful suggestions and jack triplett robert pollak richard j mcdonald and a referee for valuable comments on an earlier version the views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of the bureau of labor statistics for a theoretical discussion of cost of living indexes see robert pollak 1971b and paul samuelson and subramanian swamy

political control and public sector savings evidence from the states the right to access and ultimately spend public sector savings is determined by the party which can control the politicaloutcome this implies that anticipatedfuture changes in the state s controllingpolitical party may systematicallyadversely affect current savings extendingthe life cycle permanent income model ishow that a representative legislator willopt to forgo current saving in favor ofspending when his prospects for futurepolitical control diminish estimating apanel data model of 39 states from1973 1995 i find that an actual futurechange in the controlling party of astate s lower house significantly reducescurrent saving

diversification economies and specialisation efficiencies in a mixed food and coffee smallholder farming system in papua new guinea smallholder farming systems in papua new guinea are characterised by an integrated set of cash cropping and subsistence food cropping activities in the highlands provinces the subsistence food crop sub system is dominated by sweet potato production coffee dominates the cash cropping sub system but a limited number of food crops are also grown for cash sale the dynamics between sub systems can influence the scope for complementarity between and technical efficiency of their operations especially in light of the seasonality of demand for household labour and management inputs within the farming system a crucial element of these dynamic processes is diversification into commercial agricultural production which can influence factor productivity and the efficiency of crop production where smallholders maintain a strong production base in subsistence foods in this study we use survey data from households engaged in coffee and food crop production in the benabena district of eastern highlands province to derive technical efficiency indices for each household over two years a stochastic input distance function approach is used to establish whether diversification economies exist and whether specialisation in coffee subsistence food or cash food production significantly influences technical efficiency on the sampled smallholdings diversification economies are weakly evident between subsistence food production and both coffee and cash food production but diseconomies of diversification are discerned between coffee and cash food production a number of factors are tested for their effects on technical efficiency significant technical efficiency gains are made from diversification among broad cropping enterprises

long term evidence of retrospective voting a natural experiment from the german democratic republic abstract the paper investigates long lasting electoral punishment decades of communist socialization and the repressive rule of a single party have left their left wing fingerprint on east germany in this paper we show that voters act rationally given negative life circumstances experienced under the rule of the communist party they display retrospective voting even decades later our insight is based on the analysis of 19 years of revealed and stated party preferences we argue that life at the border region to west germany was particularly hard and find that east german voters who lived close to the inner german border before the reunification of the two states are 5 9 percentage points less likely to lean toward the successor party to east germany s communists given that over the years roughly every fifth person has revealed preferences for the communists in the east this translates to over thirty percent reduction we confirm the preferences with administrative data the electoral punishment estimated at the district level amounts to a reduction of 1 3 percentage points of votes for the party

information multiprice search and cost of living index theory this paper derives the cost of living index of an individual who faces imperfect and costly information about prices traditional cost of living in dexes assume that the consumer passively accepts prices as given the authors derive a multiprice search model in which the consumer choos es the search strategy that minimizes the expected cost of buying a g iven level of utility in contrast to existing search models the mod el allows the consumer to change the allocation of expenditures among goods as information about prices changes and enables them to constr uct a cost of living index for an agent who searches across distribut ions of offer prices unlike traditional cost of living measures that ignore search behavior the searcher s cost of living index depends on search costs copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

gender and forced labour understanding the links in global cocoa supply chains this paper investigates the gendered patterns and dynamics of labour exploitation and forced labour in the cocoa supply chain the empirical basis of our analysis is an original primary dataset pro