smallholders land access in sub saharan africa a new landscape while scholars long recognized the importance of land markets as a key driver of rural non farm development and transformation in rural areas evidence on the extent of their operation and the nature of participants remains limited we use household data from 6 countries to show that there is great potential for such markets to increase productivity and equalize factor ratios while rental markets transfer land to land poor and labor rich producers their operation and thus impact may be constrained by policy restrictions their functioning may also be constrained by ill defined or insecure rights that may arise from failure to fully compensate existing rights in cases of expropriation a failure to implement more broadly land policies or to do so in a gender sensitive manner methodological and substantive conclusions are derived

can falling supply explain the rising return to college for younger men a cohort based analysis although the college high school wage gap for younger u s men has doubled over the past 30 years the gap for older men has remained nearly constant in the united kingdom and canada the college high school wage gap also increased for younger relative to older men using a model with imperfect substitution between similarly educated workers in different age groups we argue that these shifts reflect changes in the relative supply of highly educated workers across age groups the driving force behind these changes is the slowdown in the rate of growth of educational attainment that began with cohorts born in the early 1950s in all three countries

the stochastic convergence of co2 emissions a long memory approach in response to equity concerns surrounding the spatial distribution of co2 emissions and assumptions of co2 convergence within some climate models this paper examines the convergence of co2 emissions within the oecd over the period 1870 2004 more specifically using the local whittle estimator and its variants we examine whether relative per capita co2 emissions are fractionally integrated that is they are long memory processes which although highly persistant may revert to the mean trend in the long run our results suggest that co2 emissions within 13 out of 18 oecd countries are indeed fractionally integrated implying that they converge over time albeit slowly interestingly though the countries whose emissions are not found to be fractionally integrated are some of the highest polluters within the oecd at least in per capita terms our results have implications both for future studies of co2 convergence and for climate policy

labor market returns to two and four year college the paper examines labor market returns to a two and four year college education analysis of the 1972 national longitudinal survey of youth observation that the average person who attended a two year college earned about 10 percent more than those without any college education comparison with the wages of those who attended a four year college education

is social capital green cultural features and environmental performance in the european union this paper analyses the relationship between social capital and environmental performance in the european union in a first stage environmental performance is measured by an index of eco efficiency at the country level computed using data envelopment analysis techniques and data for the year 2013 in a second stage the influence of social capital and other relevant control variables on eco efficiency is assessed by means of truncated regressions and bootstrapping as proposed by simar and wilson j econom 136 1 31 64 2007 for several model specifications tests fail to reject the hypothesis of no effect of social capital on environmental performance and the main driver of environmental performance is found to be the level of economic development measured by gdp per capita furthermore this result is robust to different definitions of social capital and sample periods

agricultural productivity differences across countries abstract recent studies argue that cross country labor productivity differences are much larger in agriculture than in the aggregate we reexamine the agricultural productivity data underlying this conclusion using new evidence from disaggregate sources we find that for the world s staple grains maize rice and wheat cross country differences in the quantity of grain produced per worker are enormous according to both micro and macrosources our findings validate the idea that understanding agricultural productivity is at the heart of understanding world income inequality

who receives the college wage premium assessing the labor market returns to degrees and college transfer patterns using data from the 1979 national longitudinal survey of youth we estimate wage models in which college educated workers are classified according to their degree attainment college type and college transfer status the detailed taxonomy produces modest improvements in explanatory power relative to standard specifications and reveals considerable heterogeneity in the predicted wages of college educated workers we find that transfer students receive an indirect wage benefit insofar as changing colleges allows them to earn a degree some transfer students receive an additional direct wage benefit presumably because switching schools increases their skill investment opportunities

are the determinants of co2 emissions converging among oecd countries this paper studies convergence in co2emission intensity co2 emissions over gdp among oecd countries over the period 1960 2008 based on its determinants namely energy intensity energy consumption over gdp and the so called carbonisation index co2 emissions over energy consumption we apply the phillips and sul 2007 methodology which tests for the existence of convergence clubs our results highlight that differences in emission intensity convergence are more determined by differences in convergence of the carbonisation index rather than by differences in the dynamic convergence of energy intensity

in school work experience and the returns to schooling students often accumulate substantial work experience before leaving school because conventional earnings functions do not control for in school work experience their estimates of the return to schooling include the benefit of work experience gained along the way using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth i estimate wage models with and without controls for in school work experience the estimated schooling coefficients are 25 44 higher depending on how i control for ability bias when in school work experience is omitted than when it is included these findings indicate that conventional models significantly overstate the wage effects of school only

agricultural commercialization and nutrition revisited empirical evidence from three african countries the transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture is key for economic growth but what are the consequences for nutritional outcomes the evidence to date has been scant and inconclusive this study contributes to the debate by revisiting two prevailing wisdoms a market participation by african smallholders remains low and b the impact of commercialization on nutritional outcomes is generally positive using nationally representative data from three african countries the analysis reveals high levels of commercialization by even the poorest and smallest landholders with rates of market participation as high as 90 female farmers participate less but tend to sell larger shares of their production conditional on participation second we find little evidence of a positive relationship between commercialization and nutritional status as countries and international agencies prioritize the importance of nutrition sensitive agriculture better understanding of the transmission channels between crop choices and nutritional outcomes should remain a research priority

college selectivity and earnings this article shows that college performance and selectivity have significant effects on earnings it suggests that work that does not include college performance overstates the effect of college se

stochastic divergence or convergence of per capita carbon dioxide emissions re examining the evidence this paper revisits the time series literature on the convergence of per capita carbon dioxide co2 emissions and examines the robustness of previous results using a sample of oecd countries for the period 1950 2002 we employ a battery of stationarity and unit root tests including those that allow for cross sectional dependencies within the panel we also correct for inaccuracies in previous studies that could result in a trend stationary series being labelled as converging even if it were actually diverging from the international average the body of evidence provided by our analysis suggests that per capita co2 emissions have not converged among oecd countries during the period under consideration this finding is of importance to both climate change policy makers and to those who construct climate change models

agriculture in africa telling myths from facts a synthesis stylized facts drive research agendas and policy debates yet robust stylized facts are hard to come by and when available often outdated in a special issue of food policy 12 papers revisit conventional wisdom on african agriculture and its farmers livelihoods using nationally representative surveys from the living standards measurement study integrated surveys on agriculture initiative in six african countries at times the findings simply confirm the common understanding of the topic but the studies also throw up several surprises redirecting some policy debates while fine tuning others overall the project calls for more attention to checking and updating the common wisdom this requires nationally representative data and sufficient incentives among researchers and policy makers alike without well grounded stylized facts they can easily be profoundly misguided

regional green development level and its spatial relationship under the constraints of haze in china abstract this paper includes the new constraints of haze in the environmental efficiency research framework and the sbm undesirable and malmquist exponential models are used to measure and analyse the evolution characteristics and regional differences of regional green environmental efficiency of china and applied china s regional panel data and a spatial dubin model to deeply explore the impact of environmental regulation openness urbanisation industrial structure and technological innovation on regional green environmental efficiency the result show that under the constraints of smog the regional green environment efficiency of china is different with each area and shows strong spatial dependence and spatial differentiation the overall spatial distribution of the east middle northeast west gradient is decreasing environmental regulation had a major impact on the green environment efficiency of the region and demonstrated an inverted n type relationship the degree of openness urbanisation industrial structure and technological innovation play an active role in promoting regional green sustainable development economic growth corporate ownership structure fiscal policy and foreign investment dependence have hindered the progress of regional green sustainable development to a certain extent

club convergence in carbon dioxide emissions we examine convergence in carbon dioxide emissions among 128 countries for the period 1960 2003 by means of a new methodology introduced by phillips and sul econometrica 75 6 1771 1855 2007a contrary to previous studies our approach allows us to examine for evidence of club convergence i e identify groups of countries that converge to different equilibria our results suggest convergence in per capita co2 emissions among all the countries under scrutiny in the early years of our sample however there seem to be two separate convergence clubs in the recent era that converge to different steady states interestingly we also find evidence of transitioning between the two convergence clubs suggesting either a slow convergence between the two clubs or a tendency for some countries to move from one convergence club to the other

testing for convergence in carbon dioxide emissions using a bayesian robust structural model we address international convergence in carbon dioxide emissions per capita and per value added derived from emission inventories based on production and consumption patterns we propose a bayesian structural model that accounts for heteroscedasticity and endogeneity between emissions and economic growth and tests for the existence of group specific convergence via shrinkage priors we find evidence for country specific conditional convergence in all emission inventories implying a half life of 2 7 3 1 years for production based emissions and 3 6 4 7 years for consumption based emissions when testing for global convergence without allowing for individual specific convergence paths the half life of hbox co 2 per capita increases to 15 26 years whereas emission intensities show a half life of 44 45 years our results highlight the current incompatibility between emission targets and economic growth and the need for faster diffusion of green technologies moreover there is no evidence for specific convergence dynamics in the european union the oecd or the countries that are subject to binding emission constraints specified in the kyoto protocol the institutional frameworks implemented in industrialized countries did not induce faster convergence among developed economies

a literature study for dea applied to energy and environment abstract this study systematically summarizes previous research efforts on data envelopment analysis dea applied to energy and environment in the past four decades including concepts and methodologies on dea environmental assessment industrial developments are very important for all nations in terms of their economic prosperities a problem is that the development produces various pollutions on air water and other types of contaminations all of which are usually associated with our health problems and climate changes thus it is necessary for us to consider how to make a balance between economic success and pollution mitigation to maintain a high level of social sustainability in the world it is widely considered that dea is one of the methodologies to examine the level of sustainability this study examines a recent research trend on dea applications from 1980s to 2010s nowadays many researchers have paid serious attention on how to combat various difficulties in the areas of energy and environment as a result the number of articles on dea applications on energy and environment has dramatically increased particularly after 2000s however it is true that dea has strengths and drawbacks in the applications therefore it is very important for us to carefully use dea for guiding large policy issues and business strategies such as the global warming and climate change an underlying premise of this study is that technology innovation in engineering and natural science may solve various problems by linking it with political and managerial efforts the use of dea provides a methodological linkage among them so enhancing the practicality in mitigating problems due to climate change and environmental pollutions this literature study along with a summary on conceptual and methodological developments provides us with guidelines for our future research works on dea on energy and environment issues

the last mile s in modern input distribution pricing profitability and adoption increasing adoption of modern inputs remains one of the best hopes for greater agricultural production in developing countries based on unique data from northwestern ethiopia this study examines the last mile s from the input distribution center to the farmer in the chemical fertilizer and improved seed distribution system we find that increasing transaction and transportation costs over a 35 km distance along a route mainly accessible to only foot traffic lead to a 50 increase of the price of chemical fertilizer and to a 75 reduction in its use farmers who live about 10 km from the distribution center face per unit transaction and transportation costs as high as the costs needed to bring the fertilizer from the international port to the input distribution center about 1 000 km tackling the last mile s costs should thus be a priority to improve modern input adoption and use in these settings

the effects of interrupted schooling on wages data from the national longitudinal survey of youth reveal that 35 percent of white men who leave school between 1979 and 1988 return to school by 1989 this paper examines the wage effects of these nontraditional enrollment patterns i estimate a wage model which allows individuals to follow a different wage path before and after their reenrollment and an alternative model which does not account for school and work discontinuities i find that young men who delay their schooling receive wage boosts that are smaller than those received by their continuously schooled counterparts wage models that fail to account for delayed schooling tend to understate the returns to schooling received prior to the start of the career

testing for convergence in carbon dioxide emissions using a century of panel data this paper tests the convergence in per capita carbon dioxide emissions for a collection of developed and developing countries using data spanning the period 1870 2002 for this purpose three recently developed panel unit root tests that permit for dependence among the individual countries are employed the results lend strong support in favor of convergence for the panel as a whole estimates of the speed of this convergence is also provided

industrial eco efficiency regional disparity and spatial convergence of china s regions abstract in this study the industrial eco efficiency measures of 30 chinese provinces municipalities and autonomous regions from 2001 to 2015 were estimated based on a proposed data envelopment analysis dea model and the non convex metafrontier undesirable outputs super efficiency slacks based measure ncmeta us sbm which simultaneously incorporates non convex metafrontier technology undesirable outputs and super efficiency into slacks based measure subsequently dynamic spatial econometric models were employed to test the spatial convergence of industrial eco efficiency the empirical results show that 1 the average value of industrial eco efficiency was the highest in the eastern region 0 67 followed by the western region 0 30 and central region 0 27 indicating the existence of a significant regional disparity 2 strong evidence for global and club spatial convergence of industrial eco efficiency was found with regard to regional heterogeneity provinces in the eastern region converged faster than those in the central and western regions while the convergence speed of industrial eco efficiency increased after 2008 with respect to temporal heterogeneity 3 the ownership structure appeared to have a higher impact on industrial eco efficiency than other controls in the presence of spatial conditional convergence these findings are robust with regard to both spatial econometric model and spatial weighting matrix specifications based on the empirical analysis the following policies promote industrial eco efficiency in china have been recommended first relevant authorities must take effective measures to encourage the central western regions to adopt clean energy technologies the energy subsidy policies should strive to break through the technological lock in and turn to regional green development second full advantage of the spatial effects must be taken and technological exchanges and cooperation among neighboring areas must be strengthened to ensure that the industrial eco efficiency of the central and western regions converge with those of the eastern coastal areas policy implications of multidimensional heterogeneity and adjustment of industrial structure should be highlighted while promoting industrial eco efficiency finally it is crucial to emphasize factors such as foreign direct investment fdi ownership and industrial structures to attract fdi and optimize the current industrial structure

per capita carbon dioxide emissions convergence or divergence understanding and considering the distribution of per capita carbon dioxide co2 emissions is important in designing international climate change proposals and incentives for participation i evaluate historic international emissions distributions and forecast future distributions to assess whether per capita emissions have been converging or will converge i find evidence of convergence among 23 member countries of the organisation for economic co operation and development oecd whereas emissions appear to be diverging for an 88 country global sample over 1960 2000 forecasts based on a markov chain transition matrix provide little evidence of future emissions convergence and indicate that emissions may diverge in the near term i also review the shortcomings of environmental kuznets curve regressions and structural models in characterizing future emissions distributions

food prices wages and welfare in rural india this paper considers the welfare and distributional consequences of higher relative food prices in rural india through the lens of a specific factors general equilibrium trade model applied at the district level the evidence shows that nominal wages for manual labor both within and outside agriculture respond elastically to increases in producer prices that is wages rose faster in rural districts growing more of those crops with large price run ups over 2004 09 accounting for such wage gains the analysis finds that rural households across the income spectrum benefit from higher agricultural commodity prices indeed rural wage adjustment appears to play a much greater role in protecting the welfare of the poor than the public distribution system india s giant food rationing scheme moreover policies like agricultural export bans which insulate producers as well as consumers from international price increases are particularly harmful to the poor of rural india conventional welfare analyses that assume fixed wages and focus on households net sales position lead to radically different conclusions

convergence in carbon dioxide emissions among industrialised countries revisited this paper examines the existence of stochastic and deterministic convergence of carbon dioxide co2 emissions in 23 countries over the period 1960 2002 for that purpose we conduct unit root testing by employing the recently developed panel stationarity test of carrion i silvestre et al carrion i silvestre j l del barrio castro t lopez bazo e 2005 breaking the panels an application to the gdp per capita econometrics journal 8 159 175 which assumes a highly flexible trend function by incorporating an unknown number of structural breaks we accommodate general forms of cross sectional dependence as well as control for finite sample bias through bootstrap methods overall our analysis provides strong evidence supporting both stochastic and deterministic convergence in co2 emissions thus confirming strazicich and list strazicich m c list j a 2003 are co2 emission levels converging among industrial countries environmental and resource economics 24 263 271 and westerlund and basher westerlund j basher s a 2007 testing for convergence in carbon dioxide emissions using a century of panel data environmental and resource economics forthcoming findings of convergence

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

underinvestment in a profitable technology the case of seasonal migration in bangladesh hunger during pre harvest lean seasons is widespread in the agrarian areas of asia and sub saharan africa we randomly assign an 8 50 incentive to households in rural bangladesh to temporarily out migrate during the lean season the incentive induces 22 of households to send a seasonal migrant their consumption at the origin increases significantly and treated households are 8 10 percentage points more likely to re migrate 1 and 3 years after the incentive is removed these facts can be explained qualitatively by a model in which migration is risky mitigating risk requires individual specific learning and some migrants are sufficiently close to subsistence that failed migration is very costly we document evidence consistent with this model using heterogeneity analysis and additional experimental variation but calibrations with forward looking households that can save up to migrate suggest that it is difficult for the model to quantitatively match the data we conclude with extensions to the model that could provide a better quantitative accounting of the behavior

how much of the labor in african agriculture is provided by women the contribution of women to labor in african agriculture is regularly quoted in the range of 60 to 80 percent using individual disaggregated plot level labor input data from nationally representative household surveys across six sub saharan african countries this study estimates the average female labor share in crop production at 40 percent it is slightly above 50 percent in malawi tanzania and uganda and substantially lower in nigeria 37 percent ethiopia 29 percent and niger 24 percent there are no systematic differences across crops and activities but female labor shares tend to be higher in households where women own a larger share of the land and when they are more educated controlling for the gender and knowledge profile of the respondents does not meaningfully change the predicted female labor shares the findings question prevailing assertions regarding substantial gains in aggregate crop output as a result of increasing female agricultural productivity

convergence of per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the eu legend or reality abstract designing appropriate environmental and energy policies in order to meet the kyoto protocol s carbon dioxide co 2 reduction targets in the european union eu requires a detailed examination and thorough understanding of co 2 emission trends across the eu member states this paper investigates whether co 2 emissions have converged across 22 european countries over the 1971 to 2006 period the bayesian shrinkage estimation method is employed to do this work and the results reveal the following first the hypothesis of absolute convergence in per capita co 2 emissions is supported and a slight upward convergence is observed second the fact that countries differ considerably in both their speed of convergence and volatility in emissions makes it possible to identify different groups of countries third the results with respect to convergence do not vary much once the share of industry in gdp is accounted for in a conditional convergence analysis however a decreasing share of industry in gdp seems to contribute to a decline in per capita emissions these findings may carry important implications for both national and eu environmental policies

using data envelopment analysis for estimating energy saving and undesirable output abatement a case study in the organization for economic co operation and development oecd countries abstract environmental protection is one of the main concerns of the international community countries show meticulous attention to environmental issues by considering eco efficiency the eco efficiency evaluation of countries is a complex and multidisciplinary topic data envelopment analysis has widely been applied to measure the eco efficiency of organization for economic co operation and development countries in previous studies energy inputs have not been contemplated the subject becomes more important when there are non discretionary factors in this paper the eco efficiency of countries in the organization for economic co operation and development is assessed given energy inputs undesirable outputs and non discretionary factors to this end slack based and range adjusted measures are extended also new environmental indices are introduced the relationship between consumption of energy inputs and production of undesirable outputs can be addressed by two new environmental indices spearman correlation test indicates a direct and positive relationship between potential of energy saving and potential of undesirable output abatement france germany luxemburg norway sweden and the united kingdom are recognized as eco efficient countries south korea and italy have the highest and lowest potential for energy saving respectively poland and iceland are countries with the highest and lowest potential for undesirable output abatement respectively it can be concluded that countries producing high undesirable outputs may not operate eco efficiently and thus have an extreme potential to save the optimum energy moreover countries consuming low energy may operate eco efficiently and have a low potential to reduce undesirable outputs

rank dynamics and club convergence of sustainable development for countries around the world abstract assessment of country level sustainable development is a critical research topic entrenched in the global battle against climate change this study employs the frontier approach combined with convergence analysis to assess the sustainable development for a set of 121 countries over 1990 2014 focusing on analyzing the countries rank dynamics and convergence behavior the levels of the countries sustainable development are captured by data envelopment analysis a nonparametric frontier approach that can jointly assess a country s economic and environmental performance reflecting the divergent views on the importance of economic and environmental objectives in the pursuit of sustainability the proposed approach generates the countries sustainability scores by prioritizing either economic or environmental criterion this study finds that developed countries have significantly outperformed developing countries if environmental criterion takes precedence over economic criterion in performance assessment moreover regardless of the model employed there is strong evidence of club convergence i e convergence in subgroups of countries to different steady states rather than convergence in full sample we analyze the pattern of convergence paths and discuss policy implications obtained from our empirical findings

have air pollutant emissions converged among u s regions evidence from unit root tests previous studies of income distribution have found evidence indicating that incomes across u s regions have converged supporting the prediction of the neoclassical growth model a potential shortcoming in these studies is that only one measure of well being is considered a measure of wealth linked to incomes or production this paper examines whether income convergence was accompanied by air pollutant emission convergence results from unit root tests provide some evidence that indicators of environmental quality have converged across u s regions during the 1929 1994 period

economic transition and growth some extensions of neoclassical growth models are discussed that allow for cross section heterogeneity among economies and evolution in rates of technological progress over time the models oer a spectrum of transitional behavior among economies that includes con vergence to a common steady state path as well as various forms of transitional divergence and convergence mechanisms for modeling such transitions and measuring them econo metrically are developed in the paper a new regression test of convergence is proposed its asymptotic properties are derived and some simulations of its nite sample properties are reported transition curves for individual economies and subgroups of economies are estimated in a series of empirical applications of the methods to regional us data oecd data and penn world table data

agricultural factor markets in sub saharan africa an updated view with formal tests for market failure this paper uses the recently collected living standard measurement study integrated surveys on agriculture initiative data sets from five countries in sub saharan africa to provide a comprehensive overview of land and labor market participation by agrarian households and to formally test for failures in factor markets under complete and competitive markets households can solve their consumption and production problems separately so that household factor endowments do not predict input demand this paper implements a simple theoretically grounded test of this separation hypothesis which can be interpreted as a reduced form test of factor market failure in all five study countries the analysis finds strong evidence of factor market failure moreover those failures appear general and structural not specific to subpopulations defined by gender or geography

eco efficiency and convergence in oecd countries this paper assesses the convergence in eco efficiency of a group of 22 oecd countries over the period 1980 2008 in doing so three air pollutants representing the impact on the environment of economic activities are considered namely carbon dioxide text co 2 nitrogen oxides text no mathrm x and sulphur oxides text so mathrm x furthermore eco efficiency scores at both country and air pollutant specific level are computed using data envelopment analysis techniques then convergence is evaluated using the recent approach by phillips and sul econometrica 75 1771 1855 2007 which tests for the existence of convergence groups first we find that eco efficiency has improved over the period with the exception of text no mathrm x emissions second switzerland is the most eco efficient country followed by some scandinavian economies such as sweden iceland norway and denmark in contrast southern european countries such as portugal spain and greece in addition to hungary turkey canada and the united states are among the worst performers finally we find that both the most eco efficient countries and the worst tend to form clubs of convergence

soil quality and fertilizer use rates among smallholder farmers in western kenya studies of fertilizer use in sub saharan africa have been dominated by analyses of economic and market factors having to do with infrastructure institutions and incentives that prevent or foster increased fertilizer demand largely ignoring how soil fertility status conditions farmer demand for fertilizer we apply a switching regression model to data from 260 farm households in western kenya in order to allow for the possibility of discontinuities in fertilizer demand based on a soil carbon content scc threshold we find that the usual factors reflecting liquidity and quasi fixed inputs are important on high scc plots but not on those with poorer soils external inputs become less effective on soils with low scc hence the discernible shift in behaviors across soil quality regimes for many farmers improved fertilizer market conditions alone may be insufficient to stimulate increased fertilizer use without complementary improvements in the biophysical conditions that affect conditional factor demand

the efficiency of the public intervention on the environment evidence based on non parametric and parametric approaches abstract this paper evaluates the efficiency of the allocation of public resources aimed at complying with the european environmental directives a full and partial frontier data envelopment analysis dea is applied to a panel of decision making units i e a set of regions with a specific focus on the air water and biodiversity sectors the malmquist productivity index allows one to analyse regional productivity change while a post dea based upon simar wilson approach allows one to explore the factors that affect the performance overall a specific group of regions outperform for air water intervention while the reverse outcome is obtained for biodiversity the findings also show a rather low technological change especially for biodiversity the post dea indicates that an increase in the tourism and agricultural activity exerts a negative impact on the air water public efficiency while has a positive influence on biodiversity higher education in technical subjects also increases performance

does it pay to attend an elite private college cross cohort evidence on the effects of college type on earnings although a substantial and rising labor market premium is associated with college attendance in general little is known about how this premium varies across institutions of different types and across time in this paper we explicitly model high school students choice of college type characterized by selectivity and control based on individual and family characteristics including ability and parental economic status and an estimate of the net costs of attendance we estimate selectivity corrected outcome equations using data from both the national longitudinal study of the high school class of 1972 and high school and beyond which permit us to determine the effects of college quality on wages and earnings and how this effect varies across time even after controlling for selection effects strong evidence emerges of a significant economic return to attending an elite private institution and some evidence suggests this premium has increased over time

dynamic environmental performance analysis a malmquist index approach abstract this article presents a general framework for dynamic environmental performance analysis by generalizing the approach proposed by kuosmanen and kortelainen kuosmanen t kortelainen m 2005 measuring eco efficiency of production with data envelopment analysis journal of industrial ecology 9 4 59 72 from a static to a dynamic setting for this purpose we construct an environmental performance index epi by applying frontier efficiency techniques and a malmquist index approach compared to other dynamic environmental productivity and efficiency analysis approaches based on these methods our approach builds on the standard definition of eco efficiency as it is presented in the ecological economics literature recognizing the importance to analyze the sources of environmental performance changes we show how changes in overall environmental performance can be decomposed into changes in relative eco efficiency and shifts in environmental technology respectively we apply the presented technique at the macro level to dynamic environmental performance analysis of 20 member states of the european union in 1990 2003 according to the results environmental technical change mostly explains the improvement in overall environmental performance while relative eco efficiency change has been minor for most countries during the sample period

divergence in state level per capita carbon dioxide emissions this paper addresses the question of whether income convergence is sufficient for per capita carbon dioxide co2 emissions convergence by focusing on a set of advanced economies the u s states i undertake a variety of cross sectional and stochastic convergence tests with two novel measures of 1960 to 1999 state level co2 emissions per capita production pre electricity trade co2 and consumption post electricity trade co2 and with income per capita although incomes continue to converge i find stark divergence in production co2 per capita and no evidence of convergence for consumption co2 per capita forecasts of future distributions show little convergence in emissions

from tragedy to renaissance improving agricultural data for better policies abstractagricultural development is an essential engine of growth and poverty reduction yet agricultural data suffer from poor quality and narrow sectoral focus there are several reasons for this 1 difficult to measure smallholder agriculture is prevalent in poor countries 2 agricultural data are collected with little coordination across sectors and 3 poor analysis undermines the demand for high quality data this article argues that initiatives like the global strategy to improve agricultural and rural statistics bode well for the future moving from devarajan s statistical tragedy to kiregyera s statistical renaissance will take a continued long term effort by individual countries and development partners

approaching the environmental sustainable value in agriculture how factor endowments foster the eco efficiency abstract small and labor intensive farms guarantee a higher degree of environmental sustainability compared to rich capital intensive farms this paper offers a methodological contribution to the value based sustainability approach consisting in computing a modified indicator of environmental sustainable value using this approach the authors test how factor endowments such as capital land and labor contribute to environmental sustainable value using a long term panel of region representative european union farm accountancy data network farms in 2004 2015 the seminal within between specification was employed to control time variant and time in variant space heterogeneity of european regions the articles main finding is that higher capital endowment and lower labor intensity is beneficial for environmental sustainable value the result that farming with higher labor endowment might be less eco efficient contradicts the commonly known perception of this problem in light of our findings we conclude that the pro investment direction of the common agricultural policy should be followed but one size fit all policy is not working

adaptation to land constraints is africa different since the seminal works of malthus and boserup scientists have long debated the impact of population growth and land constraints on the wellbeing of rural people today these concerns are particularly relevant to africa with its rapid population growth very small farms and chronic food insecurity in this paper we examine adaptation to falling land labor ratios using a comprehensive theoretical framework in which households faced with binding land constraints can respond in three ways intensifying agricultural production diversifying out of agriculture and reducing fertility rates using cross country data and drawing upon the existing literature we reach three conclusions first population density is associated with reduced fallows and more intensive use of land but not fertilizer use or irrigation indicating major challenges in achieving sustainable intensification or agricultural productivity growth second there is little evidence of successful non farm diversification in response to land pressures in africa from domestic or international income sources third rural africans in land constrained countries desire smaller families but have thus far benefited little from family planning policies these findings underscore the need for a coordinated multi sectoral approach to sustainably reduce poverty in the region

agriculture in the process of development a micro perspective abstract this paper compares national level data from india with 40 years of household panel data from rural india to track sectoral changes in employment and income as well as examine the hypothesis of induced innovation in agricultural production in the national data india appears to be in the midst of a structural transformation the share of agriculture in gdp and employment has shrunk while agricultural output continues to grow this productivity growth appears to adhere to the induced innovation hypothesis as productivity per hectare has increased more rapidly than productivity per worker many of the same patterns exist in the household data tracking households across time i observe agricultural output has increased despite more households engaging in off farm labor household agricultural production is highly specialized and has increased its reliance on improved inputs however while agricultural income has grown industrial and service income has remained stagnant and the relative income of these households has declined in recent years

household composition labor markets and labor demand testing for separation in agricultural household models this paper tests the separation of farm labor supply and labor demand decisions using the observation that household composition is an important determinant of farm labor use with nonseparation after assessing the conditions under which the test has power against several alternatives an empirical model is developed to test the proposition that farm employment is independent of family composition the model is estimated on a data set from rural java the null hypothesis that farm labor allocation decisions are independent of household structure is not rejected the results are robust to different specifications of the labor demand function copyright 1992 by the econometric society

is increasing inorganic fertilizer use for maize production in ssa a profitable proposition evidence from nigeria inorganic fertilizer use across sub saharan africa is generally considered to be low yet the notion that fertilizer use is too low is predicated on the assumption that it is profitable to use rates higher than currently observed there is however limited empirical evidence to support this using a nationally representative panel dataset this paper empirically estimates the profitability of fertilizer use for maize production in nigeria we find that fertilizer use in nigeria is not as low as conventional wisdom suggests low marginal physical product and high transportation costs significantly reduce the profitability of fertilizer use apart from reduced transportation costs other constraints such as soil quality timely access to the product and availability of complementary inputs such as improved seeds irrigation and credit as well as good management practices are also necessary for sustained agricultural productivity improvements

how do fertilizer subsidy programs affect total fertilizer use in sub saharan africa crowding out diversion and benefit cost assessments a major determinant of input subsidy programs effects on the achievement of national policy goals is the extent to which they raise total fertilizer use this study synthesizes recent literature on how the new generation of targeted input subsidy programs has affected national fertilizer use after accounting for crowding effects and derives benefit cost bc estimates of the fertilizer subsidy programs for kenya malawi and zambia after accounting for crowding out and diversion we highlight two major findings first accounting for the illicit diversion of program fertilizer can profoundly influence estimates of how fertilizer subsidy programs affect total fertilizer use and program impacts given recent evidence that 33 or more of total program fertilizer may be diverted before being received by intended beneficiary farmers the failure to account for program diversion is shown to overestimate the contribution of the subsidy programs to national fertilizer use by 67 3 in the case of malawi by 61 6 for zambia and by 138 0 for kenya the second major finding is that the incremental value of maize output produced from these subsidy programs is considerably less than their costs in most years except under unusually high maize price assumptions conventional bc analyses that do not account for crowding out and diversion may seriously overestimate the benefits of input subsidy programs greater attention to program design and implementation details to reduce problems of crowding out and diversion can substantially raise the returns to such programs

measuring the effect of economic growth on countries environmental efficiency a conditional directional distance function approach using a recently developed probabilistic approach of a conditional directional distance function we measure the effect of economic growth on countries environmental efficiency in carbon dioxide emissions for a sample of 99 countries over the period of 1980 2010 our approach directly accounts for the exogenous factors influencing countries environmental production therefore we do not impose the separability condition on the estimated environmental efficiencies when examining the entire sample as well as the sample of developed countries our results reveal an inverted u shaped relationship between countries gdp per capita and environmental efficiency however when examining the relationship for the sample of developing countries the results reveal an n shaped form moreover our results show that countries ratifying the kyoto protocol tend to have higher efficiency scores implying that their mitigation activity is less costly

synergies between different types of agricultural technologies in the kenyan small farm sector abstractsustainable intensification of agriculture will have to build on various innovations but synergies between different types of technologies are not yet sufficiently understood we use repre

a comprehensive review of data envelopment analysis dea approach in energy efficiency the main aim of this review article is to review of dea models in regarding to energy efficiency this paper reviewed and summarized the different models of dea that have been applied around the world to development of energy efficiency problems consequently a review of 144 published scholarly papers appearing in 45 high ranking journals between 2006 and 2015 have been obtained to achieve a comprehensive review of dea application in energy efficiency accordingly the selected articles have been categorized based on year of publication author s nationalities scope of study time duration application area study purpose results and outcomes results of this review paper indicated that dea showed great promise to be a good evaluative tool for future analysis on energy efficiency issues where the production function between the inputs and outputs was virtually absent or extremely difficult to acquire

agricultural input credit in sub saharan africa telling myth from facts recent evidence shows that many sub saharan african farmers use modern inputs but there is limited information on how these inputs are financed we use recent nationally representative data from four countries to explore input financing and the role of credit therein a number of our results contradict conventional wisdom found in the literature our results consistently show that traditional credit use formal or informal is extremely low across credit type country crop and farm size categories instead farmers primarily finance modern input purchases with cash from nonfarm activities and crop sales tied output labor arrangements which have received little empirical treatment in the literature appear to be the only form of credit relatively widely used for farming

are african households not leaving agriculture patterns of households income sources in rural sub saharan africa this paper uses comparable income aggregates from 41 national household surveys from 22 countries to explore the patterns of income generation among rural households in sub saharan africa and to compare household income strategies in sub saharan africa with those in other regions the paper seeks to understand how geography drives these strategies focusing on the role of agricultural potential and distance to urban areas specialization in on farm activities continues to be the norm in rural africa practiced by 52 percent of households as opposed to 21 percent of households in other regions regardless of distance and integration in the urban context when agro climatic conditions are favorable farming remains the occupation of choice for most households in the african countries for which the study has geographically explicit information however the paper finds no evidence that african households are on a different trajectory than households in other regions in terms of transitioning to non agricultural based income strategies

improving envelopment in data envelopment analysis data envelopment analysis defines the relative efficiency of a decision making unit dmu as the ratio of the sum of its weighted outputs to the sum of its weighted inputs allowing the dmus to freely allocate weights to their inputs outputs however this measure may not reflect a dmu s true efficiency as some inputs outputs may not contribute reasonably to the efficiency measure traditionally to overcome this problem weights restrictions have been imposed this paper offers a new approach to this problem where dmus operate a constant returns to scale technology in a single input multi output context the approach is based on introducing unobserved dmus created by adjusting the output levels of certain observed relatively efficient dmus reflecting a combination of technical information of feasible production levels and the dm s value judgments its main advantage is that the information conveyed by the dm is local with reference to a specific observed dmu the approach is illustrated on a real life application 2003 elsevier b v all rights reserved

farm level pathways to improved nutritional status global national and local policies and programs for agricultural development arerecurrently justified based on their alleged role in improving food and nutrition security however strikingly little evidence is available to prove that a direct household level linkbetween agricultural production and improved nutrition exists the objective of thisspecial issue is to systematically and empirically test using data from africa and southasia whether a relationship between household agricultural production and nutrition canbe found overall the studies in this special issue support the hypothesis that householdagricultural production has direct and important linkages with dietary patterns andnutrition

is the lithuanian economy approaching the goals of sustainable energy and climate change mitigation evidence from dea based environmental performance index abstract even though lithuania has seen extensive social and political transformations there is still a gap in the literature on environmental performance of lithuanian economy specifically the environmental pressures stemming from economic activities have never been analysed in lines with the principles of production economics this paper therefore aims to estimate the environmental performance index epi for lithuanian economic sectors the paper presents the underlying trends in greenhouse gas emissions in lithuania the environmental performance index is estimated by employing the data envelopment analysis in the spirit of the hicks moorsteen indices the present analysis is based on the data from the world input output database specifically the environmental technology is defined in terms of the value added carbon and nitrous oxide emissions labour capital and energy results of the analysis imply that the analysed economic sectors can be grouped into the four clusters with respect to the mean epi and its rate of growth pulp paper and agricultural sectors fall into the best performing group featuring the highest mean epi and the highest growth rate petroleum production and air transport sectors are those featuring the lowest environmental performance therefore the latter sectors should be given an especial importance when developing strategies for increase in sustainability

food price seasonality in africa measurement and extent everyone knows about seasonality but what exactly do we know this study systematically measures seasonal price gaps at 193 markets for 13 food commodities in seven african countries it shows that the commonly used dummy variable or moving average deviation methods to estimate the seasonal gap can yield substantial upward bias this can be partially circumvented using trigonometric and sawtooth models which are more parsimonious among staple crops seasonality is highest for maize 33 percent on average and lowest for rice 16 percent this is two and a half to three times larger than in the international reference markets seasonality varies substantially across market places but maize is the only crop in which there are important systematic country effects malawi where maize is the main staple emerges as exhibiting the most acute seasonal differences reaching the sustainable development goal of zero hunger requires renewed policy attention to seasonality in food prices and consumption

is the environmental performance of industrialized countries converging a sure approach to testing for convergence abstract in this paper we test for convergence in the environmental performance of a sample of oecd countries with data ranging from 1971 to 2002 first we use data envelopment analysis dea to compute two environmental performance indicators epis in the production theory framework second we propose the use of a sequential multivariate approach to test for convergence in environmental performance these tests allow us to reconcile the time series literature with the cross sectional dimension which is basic when testing for convergence in regional blocs the sure technique is used which allows for the existence of correlations across the series without imposing a common speed of mean reversion the empirical results show that the group of countries as a whole as well as the majority of countries considered on an individual basis results for some countries vary between epis are catching up with switzerland the benchmark country

the evolving role of agriculture in poverty reduction an empirical perspective abstract the role of agriculture in development remains much debated this paper takes an empirical perspective and focuses on poverty as opposed to growth alone the contribution of a sector to poverty reduction is shown to depend on its own growth performance its indirect impact on growth in other sectors the extent to which poor people participate in the sector and the size of the sector in the overall economy bringing together these different effects using cross country econometric evidence indicates that agriculture is significantly more effective in reducing poverty among the poorest of the poor as reflected in the 1 day squared poverty gap it is also up to 3 2 times better at reducing 1 day headcount poverty in low income and resource rich countries including those in sub saharan africa at least when societies are not fundamentally unequal however when it comes to the better off poor reflected in the 2 day measure non agriculture has the edge these results are driven by the much larger participation of poorer households in growth from agriculture and the lower poverty reducing effect of non agriculture in the presence of extractive industries

are kenyan farmers under utilizing fertilizer implications for input intensification strategies and research abstract it is widely perceived that african farmers are under utilizing inorganic fertilizer however very little long term evidence from farmers fields accounting for variations in agro ecological conditions has been assembled to back this claim or determine the conditions under which it is true using five waves of nationwide household survey data from kenya covering 13 years we estimate the relative and absolute profitability of nitrogen application rates on maize fields and compare these profitability conditions to observed nitrogen use patterns over time in general we find that farmers are consistently and steadily increasing towards risk adjusted economically optimal rates of fertilizer application over time and that in the most agriculturally productive areas farmers application rates on maize sometimes exceed rates that maximize profitability fertilizer use rates may nevertheless be profitably raised in these areas but doing so will require the adoption of complementary inputs and management practices that raise maize response rates to fertilizer application this motivates a more holistic approach to input intensification strategies in the region

implications of higher global food prices for poverty in low income countries in many poor countries the recent increases in prices of staple foods raise the real incomes of those selling food many of whom are relatively poor while hurting net food consumers many of whom are also relatively poor the impacts on poverty will certainly be very diverse but the average impact on poverty depends upon the balance between these two effects and can only be determined by looking at real world data results using household data for ten observations on nine low income countries show that the short run impacts of higher staple food prices on poverty differ considerably by commodity and by country but that poverty increases are much more frequent and larger than poverty reductions the recent large increases in food prices appear likely to raise overall poverty in low income countries substantially

gender and the dynamics of technology adoption empirical evidence from a household level panel data very few empirical studies account for the dynamic nature of the agricultural technology adoption decision and none of these explores if this dynamic nature depends on the gender of the decision maker using four waves of a household level ugandan panel data this is the first empirical analysis to account for self learning one s own adoption experience in explaining current adoption decision in a developing country context and the first to study the interaction between self learning and gender technology adoption is defined as adoption of hybrid seed inorganic fertilizer or pesticides our results indicate that the dynamic panel data probit model is superior to its static counterpart in the sense that self learning captured by lagged technology adoption indicators is by far the most important determinant of technology adoption we also find a weaker impact of self learning for female headed households than male headed households female headed households face fewer learning opportunities which produce a lower self learning impact in later periods further exacerbating the gap in technology adoption among male and female headed households

the demand for and return to education when education outcomes are uncertain this article treats education as a sequential choice that is made under uncertainty a simple model is used to explore the effects of ability high school preparation preferences for schooling the borrowing rate and ex post payoffs to college on the probability of various post secondary college outcomes and the ex ante return to starting college the model motivates an empirical method of accounting for uncertainty about educational outcomes and for nonlinearity in the relationship between years of education and earnings when estimating the expected return to the first year of college

labor productivity and employment gaps in sub saharan africa drawing on a new set of nationally representative internationally comparable household surveys this paper provides an overview of key features of structural transformation labor allocation and labor productivity in four african economies new micro based measures of sector labor allocation and cross sector productivity differentials describe the incentives households face when allocating their labor these measures are similar to national accounts based measures that are typically used to characterize structural changes in african economies however because agricultural workers supply far fewer hours of labor per year than do workers in other sectors productivity gaps disappear almost entirely when expressed on a per hour basis what look like large productivity gaps in national accounts data could really be employment gaps calling into question the prospective gains that laborers can achieve through structural transformation these employment gaps along with the strong linkages observed between rural non farm activities and primary agricultural production highlight agriculture s continued relevance to structural change in sub saharan africa

the varied economic returns to postsecondary education new evidence from the class of 1972 this paper estimates the returns to postsecondary education using the national longitudinal survey of the class of 1972 with earnings measured at about age 32 the results are based on transcripts rather than self reports about the amount of education allowing postsecondary education to be more precisely described than usual the results confirm the well known returns to b a degrees other credentials associate degrees and certificates for women also lead to higher earnings and wage rates though indirectly these credentials gain individuals access to jobs where they accumulate more experience and on the job training but provide no further advantage once experience and ojt are controlled most individuals who enroll in postsecondary education but fail to complete credentials have no higher earnings than high school graduates the effects of experience high school achievement and family background are familiar the results indicate a fundamental difference between labor markets for college graduates and the sub baccalaureate labor market

consumption risk technology adoption and poverty traps evidence from ethiopia much has been written on the determinants of input and technology adoption in agriculture with issues such as input availability knowledge and education risk preferences profitability and credit constraints receiving much attention this paper focuses on a factor that has been less well documented the differential ability of households to take on risky production technologies for fear of the welfare consequences if shocks result in poor harvests building on an explicit model this is explored in panel data for ethiopia historical rainfall distributions are used to identify the counterfactual consumption risk controlling for unobserved household and time varying village characteristics it emerges that not just ex ante credit constraints but also the possibly low consumption outcomes when harvests fail discourage the application of fertilizer the lack of insurance causes inefficiency in production choices