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on Central and Western Asia |
| By: | Naschold, Felix |
| Abstract: | Although identifying the existence and the nature of household-level poverty traps would have important implications for the design of poverty reduction policies empirical evidence is still scant. A small, but growing empirical literature has begun testing for poverty traps as thresholds in non-linear welfare dynamics. Employing a variety of quantitative methods it has produced a variety of conclusions. This paper uses a uniquely long household panel from three villages in rural India to examine whether the detection of poverty traps may be contingent on the quantitative method used to model household welfare dynamics. It then employs a novel semiparametric panel data estimator that combines the advantages of the existing methods. Since in the context of dynamic poverty traps we are primarily concerned with expected, structural well-being it measures household welfare in assets. Structural immobility in these Indian villages is pervasive. Household asset holdings are stagnant over time. Absent any structural changes, the currently poor are likely to remain poor, suggesting a strong type of poverty trap that is qualitatively different from a dynamic thresholds-type poverty trap. While all types of households face static asset holdings, higher castes, larger landholders and more educated households are significantly less likely to be poor. |
| Keywords: | Household Welfare Dynamics, Semiparametric Estimation, Penalized Splines, India, Panel Data, Asset Poverty, International Development, I32, C14, O12, |
| Date: | 2009–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea09:49396&r=cwa |
| By: | Bhandari, Amit Kumar (Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management) |
| Abstract: | Financial inclusion is the broad based delivery of banking and other financial services at affordable cost to the poorest sections of society. In India, financial inclusion emphasizes to include maximum number of people under formal financial systems. The most important part of financial services in a region is typically measured by number of people who have access to bank accounts. The present study investigates the drive to financial inclusion in the form of the growth in bank accounts of scheduled commercial banks and the changes in below poverty line population. The result suggests that the growth in bank accounts is not significantly associated with the reduction in below poverty line population across states. Providing banking services to maximum number of people is unsuccessful as a poverty reduction strategy. As a poverty reduction strategy, developing inclusive financial systems should give priority, which is financially and socially sustainable. |
| Keywords: | banking, financial inclusion, poverty |
| JEL: | G24 G21 I32 |
| Date: | 2009–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4132&r=cwa |
| By: | Li, Shanjun; Liu, Yanyan; Deininger, Klaus |
| Abstract: | We quantify the importance of peer effects in group lending by estimating a static game of incomplete information. In our model, group members make their repayment decisions simultaneously based on their household and loan characteristics as well as their expectations on other membersâ repayment decisions. Exploiting a rich data set of a microfinance program in India, our estimation results suggest that the likelihood of a member making a full repayment would be 15 percent higher on average if all the other follow members make full repayment compared to the case where none of the other members repay in full. We also find that large inconsistencies exist in the estimated effects of other variables in models that do not incorporate peer effects and control for unobserved heterogeneity. |
| Keywords: | Peer effects, group lending, joint liability, self-help groups in India, International Development, |
| Date: | 2009–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea09:49497&r=cwa |
| By: | Abhijit Banerjee; Esther Duflo; Maitreesh Ghatak; Jeanne Lafortune |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the role played by caste, education and other social and economic attributes in arranged marriages among middle-class Indians. We use a unique data set on individuals who placed matrimonial advertisements in a major newspaper, the responses they received, how they ranked them, and the eventual matches. We estimate the preferences for caste, education, beauty, and other attributes. We then compute a set of stable matches, which we compare to the actual matches that we observe in the data. We find the stable matches to be quite similar to the actual matches, suggesting a relatively frictionless marriage market. One of our key empirical findings is that there is a very strong preference for within-caste marriage. However, because both sides of the market share this preference and because the groups are fairly homogeneous in terms of the distribution of other attributes, in equilibrium, the cost of wanting to marry within-caste is low. This allows caste to remain a persistent feature of the Indian marriage market. |
| JEL: | D10 J12 O12 |
| Date: | 2009–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14958&r=cwa |
| By: | Kandpal, Eeshani; McNamara, Paul E. |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we use quantile regressions on data from the 2005-06 wave of the Indian National Family Health Survey to study the determinants of child body-mass-index, height-for-age, and hemoglobin at different points of the conditional distribution. Our results show that only considering the conditional mean of the entire distribution can yield misleading results. In light of compelling evidence on sex-selective abortion and infanticide, we use a Heckman correction for our quantile regression to control for the âunderreportingâ of female births documented by Rose (1999). We find that household maternal health and education have larger effects at the lower end of the distribution than on the upper end, for all three child nutritional indicators. Results show that iron supplements are less effective at increasing hemoglobin levels in the worst-off children. We argue that policy interventions must account for socioeconomic diversity or have little hope of meeting their target. |
| Keywords: | Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, International Development, |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea09:49415&r=cwa |
| By: | Borchert, Ingo; Mattoo, Aaditya |
| Abstract: | Much attention has focused on the impact of the current crisis on goods trade; hardly any on its impact on services trade. Using new trade data from the United States, and more aggregate data from other OECD countries, the authors show that services trade is weathering the current crisis much better than goods trade. As of February 2009, the value of US goods imports had declined year-on-year by 33 percent and the value of goods exports by 21 percent; services imports and exports each had declined by less than 7 percent. Within services, interesting patterns are emerging. Trade in goods-related transport services and crisis-related financial services has shrunk, as has expenditure on tourism abroad. But trade in a range of business, professional, and technical services is still increasing, with US exports growing even faster (at 10 percent) than US imports (at 7 percent). Developing countries like India, which are relatively specialized in business process outsourcing and information technology services, have suffered much smaller declines in total exports to the United States than countries like Brazil and China and regions like Africa, which are specialized in exports of goods, transport services, or tourism services. On the basis of new evidence from Indian services exporters, the authors suggest that services trade is buoyant relative to goods trade for two reasons: demand for a range of traded services is less cyclical, and services trade and production are less dependent on external finance. Even though few explicitly protectionist measures have so far been taken in services, the changing political climate and the widening boundaries of the state in crisis countries may introduce a national bias in firms'procurement and location choices. |
| Keywords: | Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Trade Policy,Economic Theory&Research,ICT Policy and Strategies,Commodities |
| Date: | 2009–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4917&r=cwa |
| By: | Jennifer Hunt; Marjolaine Gauthier-Loiselle |
| Abstract: | We measure the extent to which skilled immigrants increase innovation in the United States by exploring individual patenting behavior as well as state-level determinants of patenting. The 2003 National Survey of College Graduates shows that immigrants patent at double the native rate, and that this is entirely accounted for by their disproportionately holding degrees in science and engineering. These data imply that a one percentage point rise in the share of immigrant college graduates in the population increases patents per capita by 6%. This could be an overestimate of immigration's benefit if immigrant investors crowd out native investors, or an underestimate if immigrantes have positive spill-overs on investors. Using a 1950-2000 state panel, we show that natives are not crowded out by immigrants, and that immigrants do have positive spill-overs, resulting in an increase in patents per capita of about 15% in response to a one percentage point increase in immigrant college graduates. We isolate the causal effect by instrumenting the change in the share of skilled immigrants in a state with the initial share of immigrant high school dropouts from Europe, China and India. In both data sets, the positive impacts of immigrant post-college graduates and scientists and engineers are larger than for immigrant college graduates. |
| Date: | 2008–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mcl:mclwop:2008-07&r=cwa |
| By: | Kandpal, Eeshani |
| Abstract: | The Indian Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) aims to improve the physical and psychological well-being of children younger than ve. However, previous evaluations nd that ICDS fails to signicantly impact child stunting and that program placement is faulty. My results contradict the lack of a signicant treatment eect, but are consistent with problematic program placement. Previous analyses of ICDS used probit to study placement, but the dis- tribution of state-wise ICDS coverage is negatively skewed violating the normality assumption of probit. To address this, I use beta regression to study placement and compare results with probit analysis. In addition, using Propensity Score Matching (PSM) I nd evidence of a sig- nicant, positive average and quantile treatment eects on stunting. Data are from the most recent Indian Family and Health Survey (NFHS-3). |
| Keywords: | Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea09:49578&r=cwa |
| By: | Kitov, Ivan; Kitov, Oleg |
| Abstract: | Labor productivity in Turkey, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, and New Zealand has been analyzed and modeled. These counties extend the previously analyzed set of the US, UK, Japan, France, Italy, and Canada. Modelling is based on the link between the rate of labor participation and real GDP per capita. New results validate the link and allow predicting a drop in productivity by 2010 in almost all studied countries. |
| Keywords: | productivity; labor force; real GDP; prediction; modelling |
| JEL: | J21 O4 |
| Date: | 2009–05–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:15152&r=cwa |
| By: | Md. Shafiul Azam; Katsushi Imai |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:man:sespap:0905&r=cwa |
| By: | Khandker, Shahidur R. |
| Abstract: | Seasonal poverty in Bangladesh, locally known as monga, refers to seasonal deprivation of food during the pre-harvest season of Aman rice. An analysis of household income and expenditure survey data shows that average household income and consumption are much lower during monga season than in other seasons, and that seasonal income greatly influences seasonal consumption. However, lack of income and consumption smoothing is more acute in greater Rangpur, the North West region, than in other regions, causing widespread seasonal deprivation. The analysis shows that agricultural income diversification accompanied by better access to micro-credit, irrigation, education, electrification, social safety net programs, and dynamic labor markets has helped reduce seasonality in income and poverty in regions other than Rangpur in the recent past. Hence, government policies should promote income diversification through infrastructure investments and provide income transfers to the targeted poor to contain income seasonality and poverty in this impoverished part of Bangladesh. |
| Keywords: | Rural Poverty Reduction,Safety Nets and Transfers,Economic Theory&Research,Inequality |
| Date: | 2009–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4923&r=cwa |
| By: | Robert W. Fogel |
| Abstract: | This paper, divided into seven sections, considers the development of economic growth theory in light of the spectacular advances of the economies of China, India, and Southeast Asia. Section 1 reviews the debate over the sources of technological change and the measurement of total factor productivity that emerged during the second half of the 1950s. Section 2, “Convergence and Divergence,†deals with the closing of the economic gap between the U.S. and other OECD nations that existed after World War II and the increasing economic gap between OECD and Third World nations. Section 3, “The Asian Miracle,†describes the new recognition among Western economists that the sustained, very rapid growth in China and Southeast Asia was changing the global economic balance. Section 4, “Endogenous Economic Growth,†deals with the work of a group of mainly verbal theorists, including Simon Kuznets and T.W. Schultz, who sought to define social, political, demographic, religious, and ideological conditions that preceded the epoch of modern economic growth, which began in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. That line of thought was extended by more mathematical economists who studied the invention and modeled the diffusion of new technologies in agriculture (Zvi Griliches) and industry (Edwin Mansfield). Section 5, “Bridges between Two Cohorts of Theorists on Technological Change,†compares the work of Griliches, Richard Nelson, and Dale W. Jorgenson, whose quantitative analysis of endogenous technological change spanned the period from the mid-1950s to the new cohort of growth theorists that emerged during the mid- to late-1980s. Section 6, “The Economic Historians,†focuses on their investigations of the interrelationships of the evolution of social, economic, and political institutions and on findings about the impact of institutional changes on invention, innovation, the process of technological change, and economic growth. Section 7, “The Impact of the Asian Economic Miracle on Growth Theory,†focuses on the theorizing about the likely impact of the rapidly expanding Asian economies on the shaping of the global economy over the next several decades. |
| JEL: | B2 O4 O53 |
| Date: | 2009–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14967&r=cwa |
| By: | Yamauchi, Futoshi; Yohannes, Yisehac; Quisumbing, Agnes |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impacts of disasters on dynamic human capital production using panel data from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Malawi. The empirical results show that the accumulation of biological human capital prior to disasters helps children maintain investments in the post-disaster period. Biological human capital formed in early childhood (long-term nutritional status) plays a role of insurance with resilience to disasters by protecting schooling investment and outcomes, although disasters have negative impacts on investment. In Bangladesh, children with more biological human capital are less affected by the adverse effects of floods, and the rate of investment increases with the initial human capital stock in the post-disaster recovery process. In Ethiopia and Malawi, where droughts are rather frequent, exposure to highly frequent droughts in some cases reduces schooling investment but the negative impacts are larger among children embodying less biological human capital. Asset holdings prior to the disasters, especially the household's stock of intellectual human capital, also helps maintain schooling investments at least to the same degree as the stock of human capital accumulated in children prior to the disasters. |
| Keywords: | Natural Disasters,Hazard Risk Management,Access to Finance,Economic Theory&Research,Health Monitoring&Evaluation |
| Date: | 2009–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4910&r=cwa |