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on Central and Western Asia |
| By: | Katsushi S. Imai |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:man:sespap:0914&r=cwa |
| By: | Pillarisetti, Satish; Mehrotra, Nirupam |
| Abstract: | Indian agriculture is characterized by the predominance of smallholders. This paper seeks to examine the access of small holders to agriculture credit in the context of financial sector reforms in India in the nineties. It explores the role of institutional and non institutional agencies in extending agriculture credit to the smallholder and the ground realities as revealed by recent data sets. The nineties also saw the unfolding of the largest microfinance programme in the world in India. While this was very successful in bringing micro enterprises under the credit purview, it was unable to cater to the need for agriculture credit. This paper examines the reasons for this and suggests that newer kinds of institutional innovations in the Pilot stage like, Joint Liability Groups, VDC- Farmers Club Model, SHG-Contract Farming Linkage model which seek to overcome the difficulties faced by smallholders in accessing agriculture credit are effective. They need to be upscaled and mainstreamed in order to bring about vibrancy in the rural credit market in India. |
| Keywords: | Agriculture credit, Farm Size, Land Economics/Use, Q1, Q15, |
| Date: | 2009–08–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:eaa111:52858&r=cwa |
| By: | Ali, Muhammad |
| Abstract: | This essay was written for an essay competition organised by Pakistan council for Research in Water Resources. It explains the current water scenario and prediction about future condition. |
| Keywords: | Water; scarcity; irrigation; water supply; pakistan |
| JEL: | Q25 |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:17151&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 economicattributes in arranged marriages among middle-class Indians. We use a unique dataset on individuals who placed matrimonial advertisements in a major newspaper,the responses they received, how they ranked them, and the eventual matches. Weestimate the preferences for caste, education, beauty, and other attributes. We thencompute a set of stable matches, which we compare to the actual matches that weobserve in the data. We find the stable matches to be quite similar to the actualmatches, suggesting a relatively frictionless marriage market. One of our keyempirical 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 thegroups are fairly homogeneous in terms of the distribution of other attributes, inequilibrium, the cost of wanting to marry within-caste is low. This allows caste toremain a persistent feature of the Indian marriage market |
| Date: | 2009–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:stieop:009&r=cwa |
| By: | Mittal, Surabhi; Gandhi, Sanjay; Tripathi, Gaurav |
| Abstract: | Telecommunication and more specially mobile phones have the potential to provide solution to the existing information asymmetry in various lagging sectors like Agriculture. Indiaâs agricultural sector suffers from low growth rates and low productivity. Issues in access to information is a week point at every stage of the agrisupply chain. For small farmers base economy like India, access to information can possible enable better incomes and productivity to the farmers. This paper through focus group discussions and in-depth interview with farmers in villages of India, has tried to find answers to the use and impact of mobile and mobile enabled services on agricultural productivity. The answers to these questions are of relevance to develop better policy environment conducive for the small and medium farmers and has implications for mobile operators, for information service providers, and for policy-makers. The results show that although, mobiles can act as catalyst to improving productivity and rural incomes, the quality of the information, the timeliness of the information and trustworthiness of the information are the three important aspects that has to be delivered to the farmers, to meet there needs and expectations. There exist critical binding constraints that restricts the ability of the farming community to realise gains at full potential and this is more for the small than to large farmers. |
| Keywords: | Mobile and Agriculture, India, Productivity, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Marketing, Production Economics, Q13, Q16, Q18, |
| Date: | 2009–08–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:eaa111:52809&r=cwa |
| By: | Sambit Bhattacharyya; Raghbendra Jha |
| Abstract: | In Is corruption influenced by economic growth? Are legal institutions such as the ‘Right to Information Act (RTI) 2005’ in India effective in curbing corruption? Using a novel panel dataset covering 20 Indian states and the periods 2005 and 2008 we estimate the causal effects of economic growth and law on corruption. To tackle endogeneity concerns we use forest share to total land area as an instrument for economic growth. We notice that forest share is a positive predictor of growth. This is in line with the view that forestry contributes positively to economic growth. To capture the effect of law on corruption we use the ‘difference-in-difference’ estimation method. Our results indicate that economic growth reduces overall corruption as well as corruption in banking, land administration, education, electricity, and hospitals. Growth however has little impact on corruption perception. In contrast the RTI Act reduces both corruption experience and corruption perception. Our basic result holds after controlling for state fixed effects and various additional covariates. It is also robust to alternative instruments and outlier sensitivity tests. |
| Keywords: | Economic Growth; Law; Corruption |
| JEL: | D7 H0 K4 O1 |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pas:asarcc:2009-15&r=cwa |
| By: | Ali, Muhammad; Arifullah, Syed; Memon, Manzoor Hussain |
| Abstract: | This study is an attempt to analyze the impact of Edible Oil Deficit on Food Expenditure in Pakistan for the period 1971-2008. Edible oil deficit is one of the major concerns for the policy makers in Pakistan. Despite of having agriculture based economy; Pakistan is unable to fulfil her domestic demand of edible oil by local production. This situation forces the government to import edible oil and oil seeds from other countries. This import not only increases our balance of payment deficit but also it negatively affects the ability to finance the external debt repayments. Autoregressive Distributed Lag model has been used to analyse the long run relationship amongst the variables. Other important determinants of food expenditure along with edible oil deficit were also used to check for their collective long run impact. It was found that long run negative relationship exists between edible oil deficit and food expenditure and hence the result derives the policy implication that there is a need to boost up the efforts in the agriculture sector to steadily increase the local production of oil seeds in the country. The relationship between the per capita GDP and food expenditure is found to be positive and significant with elasticity of 0.261 suggesting that 1 percent increase in per capita GDP will cause food expenditure to increase by 0.26 percent. The relationship between food subsidy and food expenditure is found to be insignificant suggesting that due to improper targeting and consumer’s perception about quality and accessibility of subsidized food, Government’s food support programs are not effective. |
| Keywords: | Edible Oil; Production; Imports; Trade Deficit; Balance of Payments; International Trade; Oilseed Crops; Agriculture; Pakistan; Edible oil deficit; demand function; food; inflation; food inflation; household expenditure. |
| JEL: | I31 Q11 E23 D20 E00 Q18 |
| Date: | 2009–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:17149&r=cwa |
| By: | Kivilcim Metin-Ozcan; Koray Kalafatcilar |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bil:bilpap:0901&r=cwa |
| By: | Ghosh, Saibal |
| Abstract: | The study exploits 2-digit level industry data for the period 1981-2004 to ascertain the interlinkage between a monetary policy shock and industry value added. Accordingly, we first estimate a Vector Auto Regression (VAR) model to ascertain the magnitude of a monetary policy shock on industrial output. Subsequently, we try to explain the observed heterogeneity in terms of industry characteristics. The findings indicate that (a) industries exhibit differential response to a monetary tightening and (b) both interest rate and financial accelerator variables tend to be important in explaining the differential response. |
| Keywords: | industry; monetary policy; interest rate channel; financial accelerator; vector auto regression; cross section regression |
| JEL: | E52 L60 |
| Date: | 2009–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:17307&r=cwa |
| By: | Armagan, Goksel; Ozden, Altug |
| Abstract: | Dairy farms are quite important to transform Turkish livestock sector into being more productive and competitive in the process of EU integration. The purpose of this study is to determine the socio economic features of dairy farms in Turkey and to determine producersâ individual and management goals in the future. In addition, farmersâ level of participation related to the attitudes, behaviors and subjective norm components are determined and an entrepreneurship index is constructed to determine the factors that influence social economic characteristics of entrepreneurship. The material of the study consists of 167 surveys obtained from Cattle Breeders Association of Turkey in 17 cities through the postal mail in 2007. A five âLikert Scaleâ was used to determine behaviors and attitudes of farmers as well as descriptive statistics. In each category, factor weights were calculated based on factor analyses. Then, the social economic factors that determine entrepreneurship index were estimated using âLogistic Regressionâ. The results indicate that the primary goals of farmers are high income, enjoying the job, better life conditions, earning respect, utilizing the resources, better image, and producing high quality products. When entrepreneurial behaviors and attitudes are examined it was found that most of the farmers aim at earning high profit as a main goal and value dairy milk farming. The logistic regression shows that the factors that determine entrepreneur index are age, experience and area of feed crops. |
| Keywords: | Small-Scale Dairy Farms, Entrepreneur Index, Theory of Planned Behavior, Turkey, Consumer/Household Economics, Livestock Production/Industries, Production Economics, Q12, Q16, |
| Date: | 2009–08–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:eaa111:52813&r=cwa |
| By: | Ali, Muhammad |
| Abstract: | This essay was written for the Essay competition organized by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority on World Telecommunication and Information Society Day May 2009. It discusses the issues faced by children while they surf online, including harrassment, exposure to adult material, behavioural and cultural issues. It also provides recommendations to provide safe access to the internet for children. |
| Keywords: | Cyberspace; internet; cyber crimes; children; adult; online; internet crimes |
| JEL: | L86 K14 |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:17150&r=cwa |
| By: | Kulsoom, Rafia |
| Abstract: | Child labor is one of the problems that occur as a result of responses to the economic problems faced by vulnerable children. Keeping in view the theoretical background of existence of child labor across the world, the study analyzes the incidence of child labor from Rawalpindi city of Pakistan. It also empirically investigates the household demographics and incidence of child labor. The earning and participation functions were estimated for a sample of 150 children. All the coefficients and overall model was observed to be statistically significant. |
| Keywords: | Child Labor, Labor Supply |
| JEL: | J0 |
| Date: | 2009–09–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:17224&r=cwa |
| By: | Rao, B. Bhaskara; Hassan, Gazi |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a framework to analyse the determinants of the long term growth rate of Bangladesh. It is based on the Solow (1956) growth model and its extension by Mankiw, Romer and Weil (1992) and follows Senhadji’s (2000) growth accounting procedure to estimate total factor productivity (TFP). Our growth accounting exercise shows that growth rate in Bangladesh, until the 1990s was primarily due to factor accumulation. Since then, however, TFP has made a small positive contribution. An analysis of the determinants of TFP shows that remittances by emigrant workers has no significant long run growth effect. Using our results on the determinants of TFP we examine policy options to double per capita income of Bangladesh in about 15 years. |
| Keywords: | Solow Growth Model; Total Factor Productivity; Growth Accounting; South Asia; Bangladesh. |
| JEL: | O11 |
| Date: | 2009–09–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:17302&r=cwa |
| By: | Bignebat, Celine; Koc, Ali; Lemeilleur, Sylvaine |
| Abstract: | A wide range of the empirical studies shows to what extend the rise of supermarkets in developing countries deeply transform domestic marketing channels. In particular, the exclusion of small producers from the so-called dynamic marketing channels (that is remunerative ones) is at stake. Based on original data collected in Turkey in 2007 at the producer and the wholesale market levels, we show that the intermediaries are decisive in order to understand the impact of downstream restructuring (supermarkets) on upstream decisions (producers). The results show first that producers are not aware of the final buyer of their produce, as intermediaries hinder the visibility of the marketing channel, their choice is restricted to that of the first intermediary. Moreover, the econometric results conclude that producers who are indirectly linked to the supermarkets are more sensitive to their requirements in terms of quality and packaging than to the price premia they set accordingly to the effort made to meet their standards. Therefore, the results question the role of the wholesale market agents who act as a buffer in the chain and protect small producers from negative shocks, but who stop positive shocks as well, and reduce incentives. |
| Keywords: | supermarkets, small farmers, fresh fruit and vegetables, Turkey, Agribusiness, Production Economics, Q13, L14, D24, |
| Date: | 2009–08–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:eaa111:52856&r=cwa |
| By: | Hoff, Karla; Kshetramade, Mayuresh; Fehr, Ernst |
| Abstract: | Well-functioning groups enforce social norms that restrain opportunism, but the social structure of a society may encourage or inhibit norm enforcement. This paper studies how the exogenous assignment to different positions in an extreme social hierarchy - the caste system - affects individuals'willingness to punish violations of a cooperation norm. Although the analysis controls for individual wealth, education, and political participation, low-caste individuals exhibit a much lower willingness to punish norm violations that hurt members of their own caste, suggesting a cultural difference across caste status in the concern for members of one’s own community. The lower willingness to punish may inhibit the low caste’s ability to sustain collective action and so may contribute to its economic vulnerability. |
| Keywords: | Gender and Social Development,Corruption&Anitcorruption Law,Anthropology,Access to Finance,Social Inclusion&Institutions |
| Date: | 2009–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5040&r=cwa |
| By: | Malek, Mohammad Abdul; Usami, Koichi |
| Abstract: | The study aims at estimating comprehensive effects of non-farm employments (NFEs) on poverty based on an intensive field survey conducted in 2008 on about 175 small landholding households in developed four villages of Comilla Sadar Upazila. We analyze participating factors of small household workers in NFEs and their effects on household production (farming and non-farm activities) and consumption (both food and non-food). For estimating consumption effects (poverty), we focus on food adequacy, income poverty and education poverty (as a part of human poverty). At each level of estimation, we depend on appropriate econometric regressions. Results find the significant positive role of overall NFEs on household NFAs rather faming. Remittance incomes do not contribute in household production either farming or non-farm activities and food adequacy; and thus, these must be spent on non-food consumption. Education-poverty levels are worse than income poverty levels among small households. The increasing NFI is reducing some income poverty, but it is yet to realize in achieving household education; however, access to formal sector employments by the small household workers is significantly reducing education poverty. Therefore, qualitative diversification of the poor household workers and productive use of household remittance incomes deserve special attention. |
| Keywords: | Non-farm employments, household economy, production, consumption, income poverty, education poverty, Bangladesh, Consumer/Household Economics, Labor and Human Capital, Land Economics/Use, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, J43, O15, Q12, Q17, R15, |
| Date: | 2009–08–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:eaa111:52811&r=cwa |