A SURVEY OF THE ECONOMICS OF FAIR TRADE

Fair Trade has spread in developing countries as an initiative aimed at lifting poor smallholder farmers out of poverty by providing them with premium prices, availability of credit, and improved community development and social goods. Fair Trade is also viewed as a niche market for high value products in a context of globalization and trade liberalization policies that affect smallholder farmers in developing countries. This paper provides an overview of the potential effects of Fair Trade, both theoretical and empirical, on small‐scale producers in developing countries. Our review discusses the empirical evidence on prices and income, as well as the importance of limited market access and productivity. We discuss evidence on labor markets and human capital investments as well.     

NEOCLASSICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY: AN APPLICATION TO TRADE POLICIES

Abstract. This paper starts with a review of the literature on 'neoclassical'political economy and then goes on to apply this perspective to the issue of trade liberalization. In this connection, the paper critically discusses various political economy models which have been advanced to explain patterns of trade policies in both developed and developing countries and assesses them in light of recent empirical evidence. The paper also makes a brief review of the empirical planning studies which estimate the gains from trade liberalization.     

FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDIES,INCOME INEQUALITY,AND POVERTY: EVIDENCE FROM DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

The past two decades have witnessed widespread attempts to reform fossil fuel subsidies in developing countries. If the reforms are likely to improve economic efficiency, the expected effects on income distribution and poverty are more controversial. This paper reviews the recent literature that examines the impacts of fossil fuel subsidies and their reforms on income inequality and poverty in developing countries. It identifies the different channels that have been explored in the literature and surveys the empirical evidence on the importance of these channels in practice. Drawing on diverse country experiences, it also discusses why fossil fuel subsidies are particularly challenging to reform and highlights several ways in which efforts to reform may be feasible and successful.     

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THE IMPLEMENTATION OF MONETARY AND MACROPRUDENTIAL POLICIES: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

The emergence of macroprudential policies, implemented by central banks as a means of promoting financial stability, has raised many questions regarding the interaction between monetary and macroprudential policies. Given the limited number of studies available, this paper sheds light on this issue by providing a critical and systematic review of the literature. To this end, we divide the theoretical and empirical studies into two broad channels of borrowers – consisting of the cost of funds and the collateral constraint – and financial intermediaries – consisting of risk‐taking and payment systems. In spite of the existing ambiguity surrounding coordination issues between monetary and macroprudential policies, it is argued that monetary policy alone is not sufficient to maintain macroeconomic and financial stability. Hence, macroprudential policies are needed to supplement monetary. In addition, we find that the role of the exchange rate is critical in the implementation of monetary and macroprudential policies in emerging markets, while volatile capital flows pose another challenge. In so far as how the arrangement of monetary and macroprudential policies varies across countries, key theoretical and policy implications have been identified.     

Localizing women's experiences in academia: multilevel factors at play in the Arab Middle East and North Africa

This article explores the localized experiences of women at work in higher education in the under-researched context of the Arab Middle East and North Africa. Our main research questions are: What is the current status of academic women between and across the countries of this region? How can human resources play a developmental role for women at work in academic institutions, as well as for the region in general? We adopt a two-part research method in this study. First, through a critical review of the literature, we develop a regionally relevant macrolevel hypothetical model to localize a gender perspective on women at work. Second, we engage in a focused empirical examination of publicly available university data to document the: (1) representation of women across ranks; and (2) specific content of pertinent human resource policies. On the basis of these data, we propose a more complete multilevel hypothetical model upon which we put forward a critical discussion and directions for future research on gender, human resource management and regional development more broadly.     

REAL‐TIME DATA AND FISCAL POLICY ANALYSIS: A SURVEY OF THE LITERATURE

This paper surveys the empirical research on fiscal policy analysis based on real‐time data. This literature can be broadly divided into four groups that focus on: (1) the statistical properties of revisions in fiscal data; (2) the political and institutional determinants of projection errors by governments; (3) the reaction of fiscal policies to the business cycle and (4) the use of real‐time fiscal data in structural vector autoregression (VAR) models. It emerges that, first, fiscal revisions are large and initial releases are biased estimates of final values. Secondly, strong fiscal rules and institutions lead to more accurate releases of fiscal data and smaller deviations of fiscal outcomes from government plans. Thirdly, the cyclical stance of fiscal policies is estimated to be more ‘counter‐cyclical’ when real‐time data are used instead of ex post data. Fourthly, real‐time data can be useful for the identification of fiscal shocks. Finally, it is shown that existing real‐time fiscal data sets cover only a limited number of countries and variables. For example, real‐time data for developing countries are generally unavailable. In addition, real‐time data on European countries are often missing, especially with respect to government revenues and expenditures. Therefore, more work is needed in this field.     

Supporting high-tech start-ups: Lessons from Italian technology policy

Public intervention is often advocated in high-tech sectors in order to solve market imperfections that limit the activity of new technology-based firms (NTBFs). Whilst some European countries have adopted national government support policies which explicitly target this type of firm; in Italy, as in other EU countries, there are no public support measures specifically designed for NTBFs. So, a question arises: to what extent are the NTBFs of these countries able to get funds from public administration? The paper focuses on the Italian case, and after a review of the available national public subsidies, through empirical and econometric analyses, it investigates whether horizontal general-purpose direct support mechanisms at national level permit an efficient allocation of public funds. The results highlight the need for more specific and customised policy measures towards NTBFs.     

EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY: POLICY AND MEASUREMENT PARADIGMS

Abstract Equality of opportunity is a widely accepted principle of distributive justice and it is the leading idea of most political platforms in several countries. According to this principle, a society might institute policies that secure an equal distribution of the means to reach a valuable outcome among its members. Once the set of opportunities have been equalized, which particular opportunity, the individual chooses from those open to her, is outside the scope of justice. Ex ante inequalities, and only those inequalities, should be eliminated or compensated for by public intervention. The recent literature on the opportunity egalitarianism often merges these questions introducing two different economic issues. On one side the design of a public policy intended to implement the equality of opportunity view and on the other side the problem of measuring the degree of opportunity inequality in a society. We describe the basic setting and assumptions of some different approaches derived by Roemer’s algorithm for public policy and then we discuss some theoretical and empirical studies to separate and test alternative paradigms on the measurement of inequality of opportunity. Accordingly, an extended critique on the causality issue on policies and measurements is taken into account.     

Improving the green public procurement performance of Chinese local governments: From the perspective of officials’ knowledge

Green public procurement (GPP) is one of the crucial environmental policy tools for sustainability. Although GPP has been implemented in many developing countries, its performance is in urgent need of improvement. This study focuses on the perspective of procurement officials’ knowledge and develops a new conceptual model with direct and moderating effects to explore factors that may affect Chinese procurement officials’ GPP performance. Using data collected from 139 Chinese local government officials and employing hierarchical regression analysis, this study finds that procurement officials’ awareness of GPP implementation policies exerts a positive, direct impact on their GPP performance. Procurement officials’ receiving GPP training and working in local governments included in a mature China national sustainable community (CNSC) program can positively moderate the relationships between their awareness of GPP implementation policies and GPP performance. However, awareness of GPP-related regulations does not have the same effect. Meanwhile, even the mature CNSC program cannot exert a positive, direct impact on GPP performance. This study deepens the research on influence factors of GPP performance, the policy implications can be useful for policymakers in China and other developing countries.     

Macroeconomic Adjustment and the Poor: Analytical Issues and Cross‐Country Evidence

Abstract.  This paper studies the links between macroeconomic adjustment and poverty. The first part summarizes some of the recent evidence on poverty in the developing world. The second reviews the various channels through which macroeconomic policies affect the poor, whereas the third is devoted to the specific role of the labor market. It presents an analytical framework that captures some of the main features of the urban labor market in developing countries and studies the effects of fiscal adjustment on wages, employment, and poverty. The fourth part presents cross‐country regressions linking various macroeconomic and structural variables to poverty. Higher levels and growth rates of per capita income, higher rates of real exchange rate depreciation, better health conditions, and a greater degree of commercial openness lower poverty, whereas inflation, greater income inequality, and macroeconomic volatility tend to increase it. Moreover, the impact of growth on poverty appears to be asymmetric; it seems to result from a significant relationship between episodes of increasing poverty and negative growth rates.     

Do Short‐Term Observed Income Changes Overstate Structural Economic Mobility?*

The recent empirical literature on household income dynamics in developing countries has tended to find considerable intertemporal economic mobility and thus inferred that a large proportion of poverty is transitory. This article introduces a statistical test which shows that these findings are partially driven by stochastic changes in transitory income. Estimates of total economic mobility are inversely correlated with the panel spell length. For short data spells, estimated total economic mobility is significantly greater than the underlying structural economic mobility because of short‐lived movements across the poverty line that cancel out over periods of multiple years.     

CHILD LABOUR: A REVIEW OF RECENT THEORY AND EVIDENCE WITH POLICY IMPLICATIONS

In recent years, a growing number of authors have turned their attention to the question of why children work. The purpose of this paper is to review some of the more recent theoretical and empirical research into the topic of child labour, and to illustrate the fact that no one factor on its own can account for the phenomenon of child labour. Therefore, policies aimed at eradicating child labour will need to address the broad range of underlying factors that contribute to the incidence of child labour, such as poverty, market imperfections and access to education.     

A survey of poverty research in Russia: Does it follow the scientific method?

This paper presents the first critical review of the literature on poverty published in Russia between 1992 and 2006. Using a dataset of about 250 publications in Russian scientific journals we assess whether the poverty research in Russia satisfies the general criteria of a scientific publication and if such studies could provide reliable guidance to the Russian government as it maps out its anti-poverty policies. Our findings indicate that only a small proportion of papers on poverty published in Russia in 1992–2006 follow the universally recognized principles of the scientific method. The utility of policy advice based on such research is questionable. We also suggest certain steps that could, in our view, improve the quality of poverty research in Russia.     

THE CAUSES OF CHILDHOOD OBESITY: A SURVEY

Childhood obesity rates are rapidly rising in many countries. Because it is highly likely that obesity will persist into adulthood, current rates undermine the health and future of people in developed as well as developing countries. This public health epidemic carries significant economic, social as well as individual‐level consequences and has become a research topic of significant interest in various disciplines including economics. We survey the literature in economics and related disciplines associated with the causes of childhood obesity and synthesize the results to provide a better understanding of the explanations for the rising childhood obesity rates. This is an important step in crafting effective policies to combat global childhood obesity trends.     

U.S. STATE AND LOCAL FISCAL POLICY AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITY: DO WE KNOW MORE NOW?

Early reviews of the academic literature on the economic effects of state and local taxes and expenditures suggested that not enough was known upon which to base policy. The reviews called for better data and improvements in empirical methodology. This paper reviews studies conducted since the early literature reviews to assess our current state of knowledge. The conclusion of the study is that we know more now. But our knowledge is unlikely to ever be sufficient to provide universal policy guidance. Rather, we suggest that more research is needed on specific state and local policies for specific circumstances, consistent with the general principles that guide place-based policy.     

CAUSAL INFERENCE ON EDUCATION POLICIES: A SURVEY OF EMPIRICAL STUDIES USING PISA,TIMSS AND PIRLS

The identification of the causal effects of educational policies is the top priority in recent education economics literature. As a result, a shift can be observed in the strategies of empirical studies. They have moved from the use of standard multivariate statistical methods, which identify correlations or associations between variables only, to more complex econometric strategies, which can help to identify causal relationships. However, exogenous variations in databases have to be identified in order to apply causal inference techniques. This is a far from straightforward task. For this reason, this paper provides an extensive and comprehensive overview of the literature using quasi‐experimental techniques applied to three well‐known international large‐scale comparative assessments, such as PISA, PIRLS or TIMSS, over the period 2004–2016. In particular, we review empirical studies employing instrumental variables, regression discontinuity designs, difference in differences and propensity score matching to the above databases. Additionally, we provide a detailed summary of estimation strategies, issues treated and profitability in terms of the quality of publications to encourage further potential evaluations. The paper concludes with some operational recommendations for prospective researchers in the field.     

ETHNIC DIVERSITY,PUBLIC SPENDING,AND INDIVIDUAL SUPPORT FOR THE WELFARE STATE: A REVIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL LITERATURE

We review the empirical literature that studies the effect of ethnic diversity on public spending and on individual support for the welfare state. The survey puts a particular focus on the fast‐growing literature that uses experiments to study the effects of ethnic diversity. Many of these studies have appeared since the pioneering survey by Alesina and La Ferrara and have not been covered by a survey before.     

An assessment of the role of cultural capital on sustainable mobility behaviours: Conceptual framework and empirical evidence

Several policies have been implemented by governments to reduce the use of cars in favour of other more sustainable transport modes, but empirical studies have provided extensive evidence that measures simply based on driving restrictions or monetary incentives hardly have long-term effects on individual behaviours. We extend conceptual and empirical literature on the determinants of individuals' mobility behaviour by investigating the possible role of the participation in cultural activities. Consistently with the conceptual framework presented, we find suggestive evidence that the participation to cultural activities is associated to a higher probability of relying on modes of transport alternative to cars, as it acts on individuals' behavioural and cognitive patterns, breaking the existing idiosyncrasies and lock-ins. In other words, cultural policies are an effective option to reduce the so-called “value-action” gap.     

EDUCATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP SELECTION AND PERFORMANCE: A REVIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL LITERATURE

Abstract This paper provides a review of empirical studies into the impact of formal schooling on entrepreneurship selection and performance in industrial countries. We describe the main effects found in the literature, we explain the variance in results across almost a hundred studies, and we put the empirical results in the context of related economic theory and the much further developed literature in labor economics (studying the rate of return to education among wage employees). Five main conclusions result from this meta‐analysis. First, the impact of education on selection into entrepreneurship is insignificant. Second, the effect of education on performance is positive and significant. Third, the return to a marginal year of schooling is 6.1% for an entrepreneur. Fourth, the effect of education on earnings is smaller for entrepreneurs than for employees in Europe, but larger in the USA. Fifth, the returns to schooling in entrepreneurship are higher in the USA than in Europe, higher for females than for males, and lower for non‐whites or immigrants. In conclusion, we offer a number of suggestions to move the research frontier in this area of inquiry. The entrepreneurship literature on education can benefit from the technical sophistication used to estimate the returns to schooling for employees.     

Estimation of poverty measures with auxiliary information in sample surveys

The analysis of poverty measures has been receiving increased attention in recent years. This paper contributes to the literature by developing percentile ratio estimators based on the pseudo empirical likelihood method. In practice, variances of poverty measures could be not expressible by simple formulae and consequently other techniques should be used in the variance estimation stage. Assuming percentile ratios, resampling techniques are investigated in this paper. A numerical example based on data from the Spanish Household Panel Survey is taken up to illustrate how suggested procedures can perform better than existing ones. The effect of a model-misspecification on the proposed estimators is also evaluated by using simulated populations.