analyzing nutritional impacts of policies an empirical study for malawi summary widespread malnutrition in developing countries calls for appropriate strategies presupposing good knowledge about nutritional impacts of policies little previous work has been carried out in this direction especially with respect to micronutrients we use representative household data from malawi and develop a demand systems approach to estimate income and price elasticities of food demand and nutrient consumption these estimates are applied for policy simulations given multiple nutritional deficiencies income related policies are better suited than price policies to improve nutrition while consumer price subsidies for maize improve calorie and mineral consumption they can worsen vitamin consumption in urban areas

toward the diffusion of rural energy technologies some lessons from the indian biogas program abstract india has committed substantial resources to construct several hundred thousand biogas plants this program is reviewed within the context of the current status of biogas systems including technical economic manpower and training and organizational issues experience with a dozen village scale systems is analyzed in detail problems with the indian biogas program show the importance of basing technology diffusion efforts on an intimate understanding of rural resource flows and the local political economy the biogas experience illustrates a broader problem in development an imbalance between technology focused and people focused development assistance some of the causes and implications of this imbalance are discussed and some suggestions are offered to help both developing countries and various donors increase the effectiveness of development efforts by stimulating the growth of local organizations

willingness of rural communities to adopt biogas systems in pakistan critical factors and policy implications abstract biogas is a methane rich gas that is produced by the anaerobic fermentation of organic material such as animal dung pakistan has the sixth largest livestock based economy in the world and thus demonstrates great potential for biogas production the government has already started the biogas support program bsp in a few selected areas of the country with that in mind this study was designed to determine a household s predicted willingness to adopt a biogas system in khyber pakhtunkhwa kp province the study is based on primary data collected from four districts peshawar nowshera charsadda and mardan data was collected from 200 livestock farming households selected through an equal allocation technique probit analysis was used to identify those factors influencing the willingness of a household to adopt a biogas system the results of the probit model reveal that the education level of the respondents total daily electric shortfall the effect of electric shortfall on childrens education and female drudgery and respondents awareness regarding the pros and cons of using biogas were statistically significant factors on the basis of p

a general equilibrium theory of firm formation based on individual unobservable skills abstract a model of firm formation is built along the lines of knight 1921 contrary to kihlstrom and laffont 1979 the individuals are risk neutral but have different productive efficiencies we suppose that the individuals who are the more efficient workers are also the more efficient entrepreneurs each agent chooses the activity which gives her the larger expected income in equilibrium the more efficient people become entrepreneurs and under a special kind of increasing returns to scale assumption this is also what is implied by efficiency considerations however we show that the equilibrium number of entrepreneurs is always larger than the pareto optimal one a simple uniform lump sum tax on firms together with redistribution of the tax revenue to workers is nevertheless sufficient to restore efficiency

alternative policies to subsidize rural household biogas digesters existing policies of household biogas projects focus mainly on supports on construction but less consider management and maintenance resulting in high scrap rate and waste of resources alternative policies must be explored to balance construction and operation taking the costs and benefits from a typical rural household biogas project this paper assesses the economic performance at three different subsidy levels i e no subsidy existing standard and positive externality based standard furthermore three subsidy alternatives one time annual and combined option are applied to the externality based standard the results show that household biogas digesters have unsatisfactory economic performance without any subsidy and even in current subsidy policies environmental benefits of the digester were estimated as 2732 chinese yuan significantly larger than existing subsidy standard to keep continuous work during the 20 year lifespans of digesters the income disparity of farmers among regions must be considered for policy application with the increasing of labor costs the ratio of initial subsidies must be reduced these results provide policy implications to the future development of biogas projects in terms of both their construction and follow up management reuse of the abandoned digesters as well as the exploitation of other emerging renewable energy projects

market based biogas sector development in least developed countries the case of cambodia in many of the least developed countries the energy security conundrum is how to provide affordable safe and clean energy to a low income rural population household level generation of biogas from animal waste for both cooking and lighting while producing high quality organic fertiliser is increasingly proposed as a viable part of the solution for farming households since the early 1990s international development organisations often in cooperation with the national government have attempted to introduce biogas technologies in many least developed countries but most initiatives failed in this landscape of failed biogas development programmes the national biodigester programme nbp cambodia started in 2006 with the aim to establish a permanent market oriented and self financed biogas sector the results show the development of a sustainable domestic biodigester sector a rapid diffusion of biodigesters among poor rural households but still ambivalences on financial independency from external funding and carbon finance the conclusion is that a pure market model for biogas development in the rural area of the least developed countries will not easily work governmental regulation and coordination will remain needed and carbon finance will not easily fully replace oda and governmental financial support

calories conflict and correlates redistributive food security in post conflict iraq war torn iraq manifests itself as an ideal laboratory for food policy experimentation due to availability of unique data surrounding intra household calorie consumption and the presence of selected correlates including but not restricted to substantial disruptions to social infrastructure and fundamental public policy intervention among other findings expenditure elasticities are mostly positive and dramatically curvilinear with respect to wealth and lump sum redistribution of the iraqi public distribution system emerges as a feasible policy intervention extensions are discussed

incentives contracts and markets a general equilibrium theory of firms1 this paper takes steps toward integrating firm theory in the spirit of alchian and demsetz 1972 and grossman and hart 1986 contract theory in the spirit of holmstrom 1979 and general equilibrium theory in the spirit of arrow and debreu 1954 and mckenzie 1959 in the model presented here the set of firms that form and the contractual arrangements that appear the assignments of agents to firms the prices faced by firms for inputs and outputs and the incentives to agents are all determined endogenously at equilibrium agents choose consumption but they also choose which firms to join which roles to occupy in those firms and which actions to take in those roles agents interact anonymously with the large market but strategically within the small firms they join the model accommodates moral hazard adverse selection signaling and insurance equilibria may be pareto ranked

wealth effects distribution and the theory of organization abstract we construct a general equilibrium model of firm formation in which organization is endogenous firms are coalitions of agents providing effort and investment capital effort is unobservable unless a fixed monitoring cost is paid and borrowing is subject to a costly state verification problem because incentives vary with an agent s wealth different types of agents become attractive firm members under different circumstances when borrowing is not costly firms essentially consist of one type of agent and are organized efficiently but when the costly state verification problem is sufficiently severe firm organization will depend on the distribution of wealth with enough inequality it will tend to be dictated by incentives of rich agents to earn high returns to wealth even if the chosen organizational form is not a technically efficient way to provide incentives journal of economic literatureclassification numbers d2 d31 j41 l2

diffusion of renewable energy technologies in developing countries a case study of biogas engines in india abstract this paper presents a case study of promoting biogas engines in india using an analytic framework involving i characteristics of the technology ii characteristics of the users iii macro environment iv role of government and other organizations and v structure of the market the case study shows that although the technology was economic from the viewpoint of society it was not adopted by the farmers on a large scale due to the unfavorable macro environment created by the government and because of an inappropriate pricing policy by the manufacturer

an empirical analysis of self employment in the u k the paper formulates a self employment paid employment choice problem that draws upon knight s notion that the individual responds to the risk adjusted relative earnings opportunities in each sector based on a development of such choice theoretic considerations an econometric model is developed with the purpose of empirically examining the determinants of self employment the model features simultaneous determination of employment status and earnings which allows for self selectivity the model is estimated using a sample of 4762 individuals from the general household survey for 1978 the estimation of the earnings equation enables a calculation of the self employment paid employment earnings differential and the estimated probit equation for self employment paid employment status facilitates the prediction of the probability of self employment the paper finds that there is positive selection bias in the observed earnings of employees that the probability of self employment depends positively on the earnings difference between the two sectors and that education and age are significant determinants of self employment

entrepreneurship human capital and labor demand a story of signaling and matching in contrast to employee qualifications there is no clear evidence that entrepreneurs qualifications positively affect their income in this study we propose that entrepreneurs can benefit from using their qualification as a signal during the process of recruiting employees this is assumed to follow a process of matching equals among equals we confirm a matching of qualification levels for highly skilled employees in denmark and an indication of this in germany partial support for matching among medium skilled employees was only found in germany with no consistent evidence of matching for low skilled employees in neither country this suggests that as skill levels of employees decrease their probabilities of working for different founders converge founders qualifications are the most reliable predictor of recruitment choices over time our findings are robust to numerous control variables as well as across industries and firm age

marketed surpluses of agricultural households in sierra leone an agricultural household model is used with household level data from sierra leone to estimate elasticities of marketed surplus for several outputs and for labor with respect to price and nonprice variables positive own price elasticities are found with magnitudes considerably above own price output elasticities changes in household characteristics and production technology also affect marketed surpluses but not always in anticipated directions elasticities are reported for households when grouped by their total expenditure not just for the sample mean the differences are important showing that low expenditure households respond as much as high expenditure households

assessing demand when introducing a new fuel natural gas on java the indonesian government is investing in a gas transmission system on java for the evaluation of this investment a forecast of the demand for natural gas by the manufacturing sector is needed to obtain this forecast the manufacturing sector is divided into subsectors according to energy use in production processes on the level of production processes the opportunities for natural gas are based on net present value evaluations of its future benefits in production this results in the desired fuel mix for manufacturing subsectors from which the gas intensity ratios per subsector for existing production and new investments are calculated gas demand can then be forecast by combining the gas intensity ratios with subsectoral growth in gross value added this approach leads to a flexible forecasting tool that can readily account for changes in economic structure and energy prices as encountered by rapidly developing economies

developing effective policies for the sustainable development of ecological agriculture in china the case study of jinshan county with a systems dynamics model abstract this paper focuses on a search for concrete policy measures to facilitate the overall sustainability of ecological agricultural development at a county level for this purpose a system dynamics model aiseem has been developed to explore the potential long term ecological economic institutional and social interactions of ecological agricultural development through a case study of jinshan county in china the model provides an experimental platform for the simulation and analysis of alternative policy scenarios the results indicate that the diversification of land use patterns government low interest loans and government support for training are important policy measures for promoting the sustainable development of ecological agriculture at least in the case study context in addition the study reveals that environmentally sound technology e g biogas project alone cannot sufficiently induce farmers to adopt ecological agricultural practices limited availability of information risk aversion and high transaction costs are major barriers to the adoption of alternative agricultural practices in this regard the importance of capacity building and institutional arrangements are emphasised through the development of an improved policy making process on agricultural sustainability this case study highlights the importance of combining the ecological economics analytical framework with the system dynamics modelling approach as a feasible integrated tool to provide insight into the policy analysis of ecological agriculture and thus set a solid basis for effective policy making to facilitate its sustainable development on a regional scale

diffusion of rural innovations some analytical issues and the case of wood burning stoves abstract the literature on the diffusion of rural innovations in third world countries reveals a spectrum of approaches to the diffusion process it is argued here that the effectiveness of a particular approach in the diffusion of particular innovations would depend on the technical the economic and the social characteristics of the innovations a typology of innovations in terms of these characteristics has been drawn up this provides the analytical framework within which the instance of wood burning stoves is concerned a priori the characteristics of this innovation are seen to be such as to necessitate the close involvement of the users in the design process itself they point to the likely inappropriateness of the usual top down approach to diffusion available evidence relating to actual experience with promoting wood burning stoves is seen to bear this out

entrepreneurship and organization design we model entrepreneurship and the emergence of firms as an outcome of simultaneous bidding for labor services among heterogeneous agents what distinguishes our approach from prior work is that occupational choice and job matching are determined simultaneously so that the opportunity costs of entrepreneurs are accounted for those who are relatively unmanageable while possibly excellent managers themselves become entrepreneurs entrepreneurs compete and create value by building efficient organizations and offering potentially well paid jobs to others while the entry of an additional entrepreneur typically reduces some individual wages we show that it always raises the average wage and depresses the average income of incumbent entrepreneurs this result may help explain the empirically low returns to entrepreneurship

an intertemporal model of industrial exit a finite horizon model of industrial exit is developed after an initial lag most exits are by young firms the duration of the lag is positively related to sunk entry costs but not due to the fallacy of sunk costs the conception of entry differs from previous research as a result not all entrants are identical and firm size affects the rate of learning on average larger new firms last longer entrepreneurs in declining firms act more lazily as the firm declines a number of empirical observations about declining firms are organized by the model

estimating labor supply and production decisions of self employed farm producers abstract this paper proposes a model oriented towards integrating farm households production and consumption decisions into a unified theoretical and econometric framework it is argued that in contrast with other forms of economic organization farm households utility and profit maximization decisions are not likely to be independent econometric estimation of a farm household model using canadian data suggests that utility and profit maximizing decisions are not indeed independent and moreover that there are significant gains in explanatory power and efficiency by estimating the consumption and production equations jointly

agricultural non wage production and health status a case study in a tropical environment abstract to date it has rarely been possible to assess the effect of health status on the productivity of agricultural workers particularly among non wage earning peasants in this paper the author uses observations gathered in the course of four successive inquiries among rice growers working on one of the major programmes of agricultural development undertaken in the cameroons two groups of rice growers were identified and studied separately the estimation of a production function on pooled cross section and time series observations makes it possible to measure the influence of health status on paddy output a 10 percent reduction in the incidence of urinary bilharziasis could result in a 4 percent increase in production

are estimates of calorie income fxelasticities too high a recalibration of the plausible range abstract the wide range of calorie income elasticities in the literature results in large part from the particular calorie and income variables used for estimation elasticities across four estimation techniques and four calorie income variable pairs for a sample of philippine farm households ranged from 0 03 to 0 59 estimates associated with calorie availability are biased upwards first because random errors in measuring food purchases are transmitted by construction both to calorie availability and total expenditures and second because the residual difference between family calorie intake and household calorie availability will often increase with income the calorie intake total expenditure variable pair gives the preferred elasticity estimate in the 0 08 0 14 range

distributional implications of climate change in rural india a general equilibrium approach we develop a general equilibrium framework based on a specific factors trade model to quantify the medium term household welfare impacts of global warming in rural india using an hedonic approach grounded in the theory combined with detailed microdata we estimate that three decades of warming will reduce agricultural productivity in the range of 7 13 with the arid northwest of india especially hard hit our analysis shows that the proportional welfare cost of climate change is likely to be both modest and evenly distributed across percentiles of the per capita income distribution but this latter conclusion emerges only when the flexibility of rural wages is taken into account

the effect of income on demand for food in poor countries are our food consumption databases giving us reliable estimates abstract cross section estimates of income elasticities for food staples in the aggregate based on quantity information from household food expenditure surveys are often in the 0 3 0 6 range it is shown that differences in per capita calorie intakes across income groups implied by these income elasticities are grossly inconsistent with observed differences in bodyweights moreover time series data frequently indicate that national per capita consumption of food staples in the aggregate remains constant even as per capita gross national product rises substantially cross section income elasticity estimates are biased upwards due to the failure of food expenditure surveys to undertake an accurate accounting of food transfers from high to low income groups biases which are not generated by survey techniques which record food intakes directly

the impact of war on calorie food demand in bangladesh daily per capita calorie intake in bangladesh averaged almost 2 100 kilo calories in the 1960s but fell to 1 840 in 1972 following the war of independence in 1971 and only by 1987 did it reach 2 000 again this article examines the long run relationship between per capita income food prices and per capita calorie intake using aggregate data for bangladesh for 1962 97 and the recent cointegration procedure of johansen et al which permits structural breaks results show that a long run relationship exists and that the war reduced average calorie intake permanently by 10 per cent impulse responses show that income granger causes calorie intake but not vice versa

sources of innovation in agricultural technology abstract this paper focuses attention on environmental and biological characteristics of agriculture which shape the process of technical innovation the interaction of natural selection and human purposive selection and experimentation is shown to result in a continuous process of innovation placing farmers in the informal r and d systems as well as scientists in formal r and d systems in an innovative treadmill the importance and limitations of informal r and d are reviewed a discussion of the characteristics and potential of formal r and d systems leads to the identification of some major problems of policy inherent in and specific to the organization and management of agricultural research resources these include genetic vulnerability choices between environmentally specific or widely adapted technologies the location of research activity the linkages between agricultural producers and scientists and methods for maintaining and strengthening informal r and d systems

matching with contracts comment the theory of two sided matching markets has interested researchers for its theoretical appeal and its relevance to the design of real world institutions the medical residency matching mecha nism in the united states the national resident matching program nrmp and student assign ment systems in new york city and boston are important mechanisms designed by economists using the theory 1 hatfield and paul r milgrom 2005 present a unified framework of matching with contracts which includes the two sided matching and package auction models as well as a simplified version of a labor market model of alexander kelso and vincent p crawford 1982 as special cases they introduce the substitutes condition of contracts which is an adaptation of the substitutability condition in the matching literature roth and marilda a oliveira sotomayor 1990 to matching with contracts they show that there exists a stable allocation if contracts are substitutes for hospitals and that a number of other results in matching generalize to problems with contracts they further claim that the substitutes condition on individual hospitals prefer ences is necessary to guarantee the existence of a stable allocation for all possible singleton preferences of others that is if contracts are not substitutes for a hospital then there exists a preference profile of other hospitals with single job openings and doctors such that there exists no stable allocation we show that this last claim of hatfield and milgrom 2005 does not hold in general the counterexample we present involves a hospital which has two different kinds of positions and the preferences of the hospital are a combination of preferences of these two positions while the substitutes condition does not hold for that hospital we adopt a technique developed by bettina klaus and flip klijn 2005 and show that there exists a stable allocation we then present the weak substitutes condition which we show is necessary to guarantee existence of stable allocations the modified result we present as well as the original contribu tion of hatfield and milgrom 2005 suggest a connection between the substitutes condition and stability 2

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

estimating the demand for calories in india this article examines the long run relationship between per capita calorie intake per capita income and food prices using aggregate data for india 1961 1992 cointegration analysis yields an income elasticity of calorie intake of 0 34 while the food price elasticity is insignificant thus economic growth in india as measured by increasing per capita income has significantly improved calorie intake future income growth can alleviate further inadequate nutrition however significant improvements in calorie intake cannot be made directly by food subsidies a further result is that calorie intake is granger caused by income and not vice versa income generation is unconstrained by calorie intake

nutrient demand and the allocation of time evidence from guam this paper presents an econometric study of nutrient intake in guam which explicitly accounts for household time allocation and household capital variables the empirical framework is based on a household production model of nutrient consumption food expenditure and the allocation of time between labour leisure and food preparation activities the study finds evidence that 1 capital and wage variables have significant impacts on households nutrient demands 2 income wage and educational status have very different effects on the nutrient choices of low calorie households than on the nutrient choices of high calorie households and 3 a family s participation in the food stamp programme leads to higher levels of food expenditure but this impact is attributable to the purchase of more costly taste characteristics in food rather than to the purchase of more nutritious foods

household own consumption and grain marketable surplus in china this paper explores the interrelationships between chinese grain prices farm households income their own consumption of grain and their marketable surplus supply during the rural reform era a gorman polar indirect utility function is employed from which a set of household grain supply and consumption functions are estimated the integrated modelling approach recognizes the interdependence of household supply and consumption decisions a set of compensated elasticities are derived to show the effects of grain prices farm income and full household income on grain consumption and on farm labour supply the impact of own consumption on marketable surplus supply is then gauged by estimating conditional and unconditional price elasticities of marketable surplus supply the results point to the relatively strong positive effect of off farm income on household s own consumption of grain and the negative influence this has had on the marketable surplus of grain in china during the reform era

nutrient consumption and household income in rural mexico we estimate the income elasticity for a variety of macro and micronutrients using a sample of poor rural households in mexico the nutrientincome elasticity is estimated using both parametric and semiparametric methods a special focus is placed on the nonlinearity of the relationship between nutrient intake and income and on measurement error and endogeneity issues one major finding is that income elasticity for calories is close to zero when we control for measurement error issues for some nutrients namely fats vitamin a and c calcium and heme iron we find a sizeable positive income elasticity robust to the choice of the estimator and percentiles at which it is evaluated these nutrients are also those for which we find the largest deficiency in our sample in addition we find that for the poorest households in our sample the deficiency of total energy protein and zinc is not accompanied by a positive income elasticity

why have improved cook stove initiatives in india failed summary an estimated 2 7 billion people cook meals on biomass fueled brick stone and clay stoves scarcity of wood and negative impacts on health and environment have motivated efforts to design and distribute improved cook stoves in developing countries in india adoption is limited despite massive promotion over many decades existing research suggests that many rural women in india do not want improved stoves and those who do face obstacles to adoption we step back from the many good case studies to examine the broader story of improved cook stoves ics in india we do so by bringing together technical research of applied science and narrative critique of social science rather than assuming a priori that traditional stoves require replacement we ask why indian cook stoves been a magnet for so much attention why adoptions rates have remained low and what lessons might be learned from a broad multi disciplinary perspective our approach is critical and reflexive given our own involvement in ic efforts and puts gender at the center our big picture review shows that the indian chulha for all its problems is a remarkably successful technology which also satisfies several important household needs hence targeting this device for obsolescence has profound implications that cannot be reduced to energy consumption or environmental hazards rural women do not prioritize ics but addressing their priorities requires either capital intensive investment or challenging powerful institutions in contrast ic interventions are relatively cheap decentralized mechanical and seemingly apolitical hence their popularity in development programs our review of chulha research leads us to reject both the optimism of development planners who frame such problems as technical and the antagonistic pessimism of their critics searching for a middle ground requires stepping back from the dogma of efforts to improve biomass cook stoves

and a vision appeared unto them of a great profit evidence of self deception among the self employed evidence is presented that the self employed expect better financial outcomes than do employees but experience worse realisations this is consistent with theories that entrepreneurship is driven by unrealistic optimism

review of barriers to the dissemination of decentralized renewable energy systems abstract this paper reviews the available literature dealing with the barriers to the dissemination of decentralized renewable energy systems decentralized renewable energy systems may face a range of technical economic institutional socio cultural and environmental barrier to their dissemination in the paper barriers impeding the dissemination of decentralized renewable energy systems have been identified and assessed in addition appropriate remedial measures and corresponding responsibility centers as reported in the literature have also been discussed inappropriateness of technology unavailability of skilled manpower for maintenance unavailability of spare parts high cost lack of access to credit poor purchasing power and other spending priorities unfair energy pricing lack of information or awareness and lack of adequate training on operation and maintenance of decentralized renewable energy systems are found to be the most critical barriers long term conducive policies appropriate regulatory framework financial incentives capital subsidies and soft loans to users technology and skill development internalization of externalities in the cost of energy withdrawal of subsidies presently being given to fossil fuels development of specialized institutions cooperation with international agencies participation of local community and awareness generation have been recommended for increased dissemination of decentralized renewable energy systems

the credit market and rural development a model of a land resettlement scheme abstract many markets in developing countries are imperfect and governments often attmept to eliminate imperfections the policy implications of completing an incomplete market have not however been considered theoretically in the literature this paper fills the gap using a model of the credit market in a land resettlement scheme the major conclusion contradicts a common assumption of the credit rural literature namely that freely available credit will achieve development objectives opening the credit market will contribute to broad objectives such as increasing the options available to settlers but it will not necessarily achieve narrower objectives such as raising the output of a particular crop

joint determination of food consumption and production in rural sierra leone estimates of a household firm model abstract this paper investigates the determination of food consumption for rural households in sierra leone that produce the foods which they consume a household firm model is estimated with seven commodities including five foods non foods and labor as compared to three commodities in past studies such food disaggregation permits tracing of the effects of socioeconomic variables on household nutrient availability household specialization in production is such that censored data is a problem a tobit approach is used to correct for this for most crops the own price effects on consumption remain negative when a price change is allowed to shift the budget constraint by effecting the profits from home production elasticities of calorie availability with respect to toal expenditure are found to be sizeable varying little by expenditure group the price elasticities of calorie availability are generally positive however an important exception occurs for price of the staple food rice this exception has several important policy implications which are explored

stability of matchings when individuals have preferences over colleagues in the standard two sided matching models agents on one side of the market the institutions can each be matched to a set of agents the individuals on the other side of the market and the individuals only have preferences defined over institutions to which they can be matched we explicitly study the consequences for stability when the composition of one s coworkers or colleagues can affect the preferences over institution

extended exergy based sustainability accounting of a household biogas project in rural china biogas has been earmarked as one of the leading renewable energy sources capable of mitigating environmental emissions in rural areas thus developing an accounting technique is of particular importance in coping with increasing problems related to renewable agriculture and rural energy supply in this study extended exergy was generalised for the sustainability evaluation of biogas projects furthermore a series of extended exergy based indicators was presented as benchmarking from the perspectives of resources economics and greenhouse gas ghg emissions the sustainability of a three in one biogas production system in southern china was thereby evaluated based on the proposed framework the results show that economic costs concentrate in the construction phase ghg emissions are mainly derived from bricks and cement with proportions of 36 23 and 34 91 respectively the largest resource depletion occurs during the consumption of feedstock 87 06 in the operation phase compared with other renewable energy conversion systems the biogas project has a higher renewability 0 925 and economic return on investment ratio 6 82 and a lower ghg emission intensity 0 012 with the merit of bridging thermodynamics and externality the extended exergy based approach presented in this study may effectively appraise the energy and environmental performance of biogas projects

can drought increase total calorie availability the impact of drought on food consumption and the mitigating effects of a conditional cash transfer program abstract this study uses the panel data of a randomized experiment from the mexican progresa program to evaluate the impact of drought on total calorie availability and the mitigating effects of progresa on food consumption in periods of drought drought reduced total expenditures and total food expenditures but increased the total availability of calories this paradox can be explained by the impact of drought on the composition of calories that is it reduced the consumption of expensive calories in such foods as vegetables fruits and animal products but increased calories consumed from cheaper sources such as grains this study finds that progresa can completely mitigate the negative effects of drought on calorie availability from vegetables fruits and other sources however progresa cannot mitigate the impact of drought on calories available from grains the analysis also shows that during drought households who increase their consumption of grains get them mainly from purchased sources rathe

positive externalities of domestic biogas initiatives implications for financing domestic biogas programs are often justified on the basis of the private benefits and costs accruing to the individual households in terms of providing a superior cooking fuel improved indoor air quality and saving of time spent on collecting firewood this paper contends however that the economic surpluses from domestic biogas programs are realized beyond such narrowly defined project boundaries the paper maintains that economic value addition from the consumptive use of the biogas for cooking and the non consumptive and indirect value derived from the biogas plant providing feedstock for other processes and other such benefits as greenhouse gas mitigation positive externalities need to be accounted for the process approach adopted by this paper would enable an integrated view of the value chain and consequently a mechanism to reallocate costs and to distribute such surpluses

effects of subsidized wheat consumption by state in india this paper reports the results of a study of the effects of the indian government s consumer subsidies on wheat demand results indicate consumption of subsidized wheat is higher in urban areas than in rural areas the public distribution of wheat in most states had little effect on demand in the commercial market which suggests the government is effective in targeting subsidized wheat to poor consumers

the effects of rwanda s biogas program on energy expenditure and fuel use summary dependence on biomass to meet domestic energy needs raises several socio environmental concerns in contrast cattle manure which may be used to generate biogas is considered a cleaner and cheaper energy source despite several initiatives toyears of education promote biogas systematic analyses of its effects are limited this paper uses data from rwanda to examine the effects of participating in a biogas program on energy related expenditures and consumption of traditional fuels we find evidence of substantial reductions in firewood use and large savings however the attractiveness of the program is hampered by a long payback period and low rates of return

roles and potentials of renewable energy in less developed economies the case of nepal increasing the share of renewable energy in the national energy mix remains one of the major energy policy goals across many economies this paper assesses the roles and potentials of renewable energy sources in less developed economies while citing nepal as an example renewable energy has a significant role to play in the electrification of rural areas in developing economies and contribute towards sustainable development realizing full potentials of renewable however requires addressing both the associated demand side and supply side constraints innovative subsidies and tax incentives adequate entrepreneurial support strengthening institutional arrangement and promoting local community based organizations such as the cooperatives are the necessary factors in promoting the green technologies in countries like nepal international factors such as large scale investment and adequate technology transfer are equally crucial to create a rapid spread and increase affordability of decentralized renewable energy technologies in less developed economies

determinants of food consumption in rural sierra leone abstract this paper reports the application of a quadratic expenditure system with demographic variables to the household consumption leisure choice component of a household firm model a system of seven commodities is estimated including five foods non food and leisure appropriate for such a level of disaggregation a demand system is used the quadratic expenditure system which allows for a flexible relationship between full income and commodity expenditures without sacrificing parsimony in parameters demographic data on households are explicitly incorporated into the model allowing for a richer specification than can be achieved by using per capita variables the data are from a cross section survey of households in rural sierra leone price variation exists by region permitting estimation of a complete demand system engel curves are found to be significantly non linear with marginal expenditure on rice the major staple declining with higher income most foods are found to be reasonably price responsive with sizeable own price substitution effects declining with higher income aggregate labor supply is found to be price inelastic

food price changes and household welfare what do we learn from two different approaches the use of a marginal approach can significantly distort the predicted effects of large price variations on monetary welfare over the medium to longer term this paper aims at shedding some light

does increase in women s income relative to men s income increase food calorie intake in poor households evidence from nigeria this article addresses the important but not widely investigated question of how calorie consumption in african low income households would respond to intrahousehold redistribution of income from men to women specifically i use survey data on a sample of 480 households from semirural areas of south western nigeria to analyze the response of per capita calorie intake to changes in women s share of household income after controlling for per capita income and demographic characteristics at individual household and community levels i also examine the effect of marginal increases in household income on per capita calorie intake conditional on the income distribution factor women s share of income my results suggest that redistributing household income from men to women would neither raise per capita food energy intake nor increase the quality of food calorie source of households in rural south western nigeria i also find that while the income elasticity of quantity of calorie intake is close to zero income elasticity for quality of calorie intake is substantially positive i conclude that neither gender neutral household income increases nor redistribution of household income in favor of women would substantially motivate increased amounts of food energy intake within households in the population under study however gender neutral increase in household income is likely to substantially increase the household demand for high quality food calorie sources

health and hunger nutrient response to income depending on caloric availability in nepal using data from nlss iii we estimate nutrient income elasticities for macronutrients vitamins and minerals we further allow for differential nutrient demand response to income depending on where a household is in the caloric availability distribution we find that some nutrients are income inelastic indicating that they are necessity goods while others are relatively income elastic we further test and reject equivalent nutrient income elasticities across the caloric availability distribution households in the lowest calorie quintile have highly income elastic nutrient demand leaving them vulnerable to income fluctuations moreover as households meet their first order caloric needs they substitute away from cheap calorie dense staples toward more expensive nutrient dense foods finally for most nutrients households in the highest calorie quintile exhibit more elastic nutrient demand similar to households in the lowest quintile our results suggest that policies aimed at improving income will likely also improve household nutrient availability particularly for the most calorie poor households they further suggest that policies aimed at protecting poor households from negative income shocks will also likely yield nutritional benefits

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

job matching and coalition formation with utility or disutility of co workers abstract this paper studies the job matching market in kelso and crawford 1982 econometrica50 1483 1504 with one exception that co workers may generate utility or disutility in the workplace we provide a simple idea to show how a great number of sufficient conditions for a nonempty core in the literature can be extended to this labor market a generalized competitive equilibrium with a tax subsidy system is also discussed journal of economic literature classification number d71

food demand studies in sub saharan africa a survey of empirical evidence abstract the recent empirical food demand studies on sub saharan africa show significant advances in demand specification and methodology especially in the application of less restrictive and theoretically consistent flexible functional forms the findings to date establish some broad patterns on effect of income household demography and life cycle location and prices on food demand patterns however the numerical values of the demand estimates are less generalizable because of an insufficient number of data points to separate the true demand component from other confounding factors which are linked to differences in modeling and estimation of demand relations the priority for future research is to generate sufficiently detailed demand estimates that have a high utility for disaggregated policy analysis but are based on a theoretically consistent and comparable methodology

the effects of data collection methods on calorie expenditure elasticity estimates a study from the dominican republic abstract using data from a nationally representative household survey in the dominican republic we find that the estimates of calorie expenditure elasticity vary widely depending upon the form of calorie variable used estimated elasticity is lower for calories purchased than for calories prepared for consumption in the home the divergence between the estimates increases at higher income levels there is a downward bias in the estimates obtained from purchase data due to some missing information on infrequent bulk purchases and greater memory lapse in recalling purchases we conclude that surveys undertaken to estimate calorie income elasticity should measure calories from consumption data if purchase data are used the period of recall should be flexible and defined by the respondent for each commodity so that infrequent purchases are captured survey methods should be standardized if elasticity estimates are to be compared across populations

learning to lend for off grid solar power policy lessons from world bank loans to india indonesia and sri lanka abstract the world bank has sought to advance the diffusion of solar photovoltaic pv technology for off grid applications in the developing world as these systems are fundamentally different to centralised power stations and conventional rural electrification the world bank has been learning how best to lend for such technology this study seeks to highlight the lessons learnt from the world bank s first loans for off grid pv to india indonesia and sri lanka it uses lifetime cost analysis to justify continued intervention in this sector and it draws on theories of innovation diffusion to guide analysis and ultimately policy recommendations because of the special role of entrepreneurial start up companies in the rural pv sector the paper also uses a company cash flow model to demonstrate the efficacy of various supply side policies finally the study concludes with a checklist of policy lessons and a consideration of the role of the international finance corporation in this sector

protecting energy intakes against income shocks whether and how changes in economic circumstances or household income affect individuals diet and nutritional intakes is of substantial interest for policy purposes this paper exploits a period of substantial income volatility in russia to examine the extent to which as well as how individuals protect their energy intakes in the face of unanticipated shocks to household income using rich data from the russia longitudinal monitoring survey our results suggest that households use substitution disproportionally cutting back spending on non foods to protect spending on foods change the composition of the consumption basket and increase the consumption of cheaper calories taken together however we find that total energy intakes as well as the nutritional composition of the diet are almost fully protected against income shocks specifically we find that 12 16 of the effect of permanent income shocks on food expenditures is transmitted to energy intakes with 84 88 protected through insurance mechanisms

matching with contracts we develop a model of matching with contracts which incorporates as special cases the college admissions problem the kelso crawford labor market matching model and ascending package auctions we introduce a new law of aggregate demand for the case of discrete heterogeneous workers and show that when workers are substitutes this law is satisfied by profit maximizing firms when workers are substitutes and the law is satisfied truthful reporting is a dominant strategy for workers in a worker offering auction matching algorithm we also parameterize a large class of preferences satisfying the two conditions

diffusion and innovation in the chinese biogas program abstract the history of biogas developments in china is described and a contrast drawn between the early phases particularly in 1958 and 1970 which emphasized the construction of large numbers of plants and the current phase in which high quality plants are built by professionals the paper reports the results of a microeconomic analysis of 58 biogas plants in tongliang and compares this with data produced by other researchers in 242 plants in hubei the analysis shows high rates of return on investments in biogas and short pay back periods of between one and four years the current developments in the biogas program are greatly affected by the major institutional reforms in china these reforms are described together with the major consequences in particular the number of plants built each year has fallen dramatically as a result of the reduction in subsidies the emphasis on quality rather than quantity and the growth of rural incomes with a consequent switching from biogas to coal as a fuel 1 i the diffusion of rural energy technology in china mimeo beijing itesa tsinghua university september 1986 41 pages 2 ii a survey report for rural energy and its technologies in tongliang county report of retain project mimeo beijing itesa tsinghua university october 1986 29 pages every care has been taken to reflect the style and content of the original papers and the resulting text was approved by the chinese authors

poverty and pollution abatement evidence from lead phase out abstract an extensive literature suggests that poverty prevents nations from abating many forms of pollution considerable research also proposes a competing claim that poverty delays but does not prevent pollution abatement neither position enjoys persuasive empirical support data describing the phase out of leaded gasoline allow for empirical investigation and they support the latter claim that poverty delays but does not prevent pollution abatement many poor nations have solved the problem of vehicular lead pollution and they have tended to follow rich nations in doing so the phase out achievements of richer nations have generated much of the ability and will that has enabled poor countries to solve the problem the pattern of abatement sequencing and its root causes present important implications for environmental policy and research

technological innovation and dispersion environmental benefits and the adoption of improved biomass cookstoves in tigrai northern ethiopia this paper empirically analyzes adoption and fuel savings efficiency of improved biomass cookstove technology using survey data from a cross section of 200 farm households from the highlands of tigrai northern ethiopia results indicate that these farm households are willing to adopt improved biomass cookstove innovations if this leads to economic savings moreover results suggest significant positive environmental externalities on a per household basis we found that adopters collect about 70 kg less wood and about 20 kg less dung each month the adoption of improved biomass cookstoves reduces harvest pressure on local forest stands assuming an average of 120 metric tons of biomass per ha we find the potential reduction in deforestation amounts to some 1400 ha per year an important saving further the reduced use of dung as a fuel has a positive impact on soil productivity in agriculture

clubs and the market large finite economies abstract this paper builds a general equilibrium model of finite economies with exchange and club formation agents trade multiple private goods widely in the market can belong to several clubs and care about the characteristics of other club members because club memberships are indivisible and choices of club memberships must be coordinated across the population the core of such an economy may be empty and equilibrium may not exist however for large finite club economies an approximate core is not empty and states in this approximate core can be approximately decentralized by prices for private goods and for club memberships the arguments use convexification tools familiar from the literature on private goods economies and a new tool of some independent interest that addresses the special problems created by the nature of club memberships journal of economic literature classification numbers d2 d5 h4

overconfidence and excess entry an experimental approach psychological studies show that most people are overconfident about their own relative abilities and unreasonably optimistic about their futures e g shelly e taylor and j d brown 1988 neil d weinstein 1980 when assessing their position in a distribution of peers on almost any positive trait like driving ability ola svenson 1981 income prospects or longevity a vast majority of people say they are above the average although of course only half can be if the trait is symmetrically distributed this paper explores whether optimistic biases could plausibly and predictably influence economic behavior in one particular setting entry into competitive games or markets many empirical studies show that most new businesses fail within a few years for example using plant level data from the u s census of manufacturers spanning 1963 1982 timothy dunne et al 1988 estimated that 61 5 percent of all entrants exited within five years and 79 6 percent exited within 10 years most of these exits are failures see also dunne et al 1989a 1989b d shapiro and r s khemani 1987

the economic rationale for investing in nutrition in developing countries abstract studies of experimental and socioeconomic survey data on the direct productivity effects of nutrition indicate growing though qualified evidence of positive direct effects of nutrition on labor productivity of poorer individuals in developing countries greater productivity effects for nutrition than for formal schooling studies on the indirect productivity effects of nutrition through cognitive achievement schooling and preschool ability also indicate positive productivity effects through these channels therefore for productivity reasons alone policies that favor better nutrition among the poorer members of society merit serious consideration that productivity and equity concerns are in harmony is an important plus

clubs and the market this paper defines a general equilibrium model with exchange and club formation agents trade multiple private goods widely in the market can belong to several clubs and care about the characteristics of the other members of their clubs the space of agents is a continuum but clubs are finite it is shown that i competitive equilibria exist and ii the core coincides with the set of equilibrium states the central subtlety is in modeling club memberships and expressing the notion that membership choices are consistent across the population

productivity of men and women and the sexual division of labor in peasant agriculture of the peruvian sierra abstract this paper estimates the productivity of men and women in the peasant agriculture of the peruvian sierra using recent household survey data a sexual division of labor on the farm implies that male and female labor are not perfectly substitutable evidence is found for female specialization on livestock production a translog production function reveals that the use of animal traction and land affect the marginal productivity of male and female labor differently suggesting that the two types of labor cannot be aggregated overall adult male labor is found to contribute more to farm output at the margin than adult female labor though the extent of the difference is sensitive to how farm output and the labor inputs are measured

green preferences as regulatory policy instrument abstract we examine here the suggestion that if consumers in sufficient numbers are willing to pay the premium to have power generated using low emission technologies tax or permit policies become less necessary or stringent while there are implementation difficulties with this proposal our purpose is more fundamental can economics make sense of using preferences as a regulatory instrument if green preferences are exogenously given to what extent can or should they be regarded as a substitute for other policies even with green preferences production and consumption of polluting goods continue to impose social costs not borne in the market moreover if green preferences are regarded as a policy instrument the no policy baseline would require a problematic specification of counterfactual non green preferences viewing green preferences as a regulatory policy instrument is conceptually sensible if the benchmark for optimal emissions is based on value judgments apart from the preferences consumers happen to have if so optimal environmental protection would be defined by reference to ethical theory or even less favorably by prescriptions from policy advocates who give their own preferences great weight while giving those of the public at large and the costs they bear very little consideration

agricultural production dietary diversity and climate variability nonseparable household models outline the links between agricultural production and household consumption yet empirical extensions to investigate the effect of production on dietary diversity and diet composition are limited although a significant literature has investigated the calorie income elasticity abstracting from production this paper provides an empirical application of the nonseparable household model linking the effect of exogenous variation in planting season production decisions via climate variability on household dietary diversity using exogenous variation in degree days rainfall and agricultural capital stocks as instruments the effect of production on household dietary diversity at harvest is estimated the empirical specifications estimate production effects on dietary diversity using both agricultural revenue and crop production diversity significant effects of agricultural revenue and crop production diversity on dietary diversity are estimated the dietary diversity production elasticities imply that a 10 percent increase in agricultural revenue or crop diversity results in a 1 8 percent or 2 4 percent increase in dietary diversity respectively these results illustrate that agricultural income growth or increased crop diversity may not be sufficient to ensure improved dietary diversity increases in agricultural revenue do change diet composition estimates of the effect of agricultural income on share of calories by food groups indicate relatively large changes in diet composition on average a 10 percent increase in agricultural revenue makes households 7 2 percent more likely to consume vegetables and 3 5 percent more likely to consume fish and increases the share of tubers consumed by 5 2 percent

analyzing nutritional impacts of price and income related shocks in malawi simulating household entitlements to food the 2007 2008 food price crisis and the following global economic recession has temporarily increased the number of people to suffer from hunger while the impacts can be measured with precision only ex post for policy makers it is critical to get a sense of likely impacts ex ante in order to plan approaches to mitigate these impacts in this paper we adopt a very simple micro based simulation approach to analyze how changes in prices of specific food groups such as maize prices or prices for staple foods as well as how negative short term household level income shocks affect the entitlements to calorie consumption of individuals and how these changes affect overall food poverty we illustrate our approach using household survey data from malawi we find that food poverty is of serious concern with large within country variations we find that price shocks for staple foods have a considerable impact on food security with particularly strong effects on poor net food buyers in rural and urban areas this paper demonstrates that it is possible to estimate food security impacts of price and income shocks ex ante in a relatively straightforward fashion that can be done relatively quickly and that is suitable for cross country assessments of the likely impacts of shocks on food security and the design of appropriate response measures

reducing dependence on chemical fertilizers and its financial implications for farmers in india the fertilizer intensive technology so long promoted in agriculture produced a green revolution but has brought long term damages to soil quality the technology now appears unsustainable for future agricultural development in india both on account of its ecological implications and the burden on the budget there is now a need to revisit the traditional methods once used in agriculture and to look for a judicious blend of chemical fertilizer based technology with organic manure since manures are relatively less productive in the short run there is an alarm that a shift in technology away from the chemical fertilizer towards organic manure may mean a compromise in production or may hurt the incomes of farmers this paper emphasizes the environmental benefits of a possible shift in agricultural technology while keeping in view the importance of sustaining crop yield levels and protecting farmers incomes considering two major crops in india in specific states the paper finds that over time while fertilizer use intensified several times over the use of manure in agriculture either stagnated or declined the manure market remained localized limited and unorganized and its price was significantly higher than fertilizer in terms of nutrients in contrast to the organized and state supported fertilizer market the paper estimates quadratic yield functions based on cross section household level data and using the prices faced by farmers as reported by official survey finds that in majority of the cases there will not be any financial loss resulting from a small shift in technology towards organic manure such a shift can however be considered feasible if the losing households are compensated and if manure price is kept in control by promoting a more dynamic manure market d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

more evidence on nutrition demand income seems overrated and women s schooling underemphasized abstract malnutrition is widespread in the developing world controversy continues concerning the roles of income household size and women s schooling on nutrient demand empirical estimates for nicaragua suggest that income elasticities are small and inversely associated with income levels there are some economies of scale in household size the elasticity for women s schooling is higher than those for income or household size and women s backgrounds are important the results cast doubt on the strong emphasis the world bank and others have placed on income and suggest that schooling may be working through tastes not only through productivity

a model of an agricultural household in a multi crop economy the case of korea it is the purpose of this paper to describe one method of extending the empirical applicability of the theory of the farm household to multi crop economies by integrating the econometric and linear programming models already available in the literature section i introduces the subject in section ii the theoretical model is presented in section iii korean data are used to assess the quantitative significance of the approach by calculating and comparing household response to changes in input and output prices for two different specifications of the models first the household is analyzed from the consumption side on the assumption that farm profits are exogenous this corresponds to the standard approach in consumer demand theory and second results are presented for a model in which consumption and production responses are integrated in a theoretically consistent fashion and farm profits are allowed to reflect production responses to price changes the results from this and other studies that use an integrated approach to production and consumption decisions highlight the need to change perceptions concerning agricultural household response to economic incentives in developing countries and to revise the design of economic projects and policies accordingly