The Tragedy of the Commons in Cote d'Ivoire Agriculture: Empirical Evidence and Implications for Evaluating Trade Policies

Expansion of cultivated land diminishes the extent of forestlandsor reduces the length of fallow periods and, hence, reducesthe amount of natural vegetation. The increase in land undercultivation has a direct output-increasing effect at the costof reducing natural capital and agricultural productivity. Theevidence for western Côte d'Ivoire is consistent with,and provides an explanation for, the declining agriculturalproductivity observed in Sub-Saharan Africa during the pastfew decades. This article uses a theoretical model to determine the levelof land cultivation that maximizes village income, using datafrom Côte d'Ivoire for 1985–87. An important partof the land is under common property, usually at the villagelevel. The results show that farmers do not internalize evena small fraction of the external cost of bio-mass in their landallocation decisions. The lack of internalization of the socialcost of the biomass resource leads to large income losses atthe village level—as much as 14 percent of village income.These losses are many times larger than the usual estimatesfor conventional distortions.     

Child Labor: A Normative Perspective

Examining child labor through the lenses of weak agency, distributiveinequality, and harm suggests that not all work performed bychildren is equally morally objectionable. Some work, especiallywork that does not interfere with or undermine their healthor education, may allow children to develop skills they needto become well-functioning adults and broaden their future opportunities.Other work, including child prostitution and bonded labor, isunambiguously detrimental to children. Eliminating these formsof child labor should be the highest priority. Blanket banson all child labor may drive families to choose even worse optionsfor their children, however. Moreover, child labor is oftena symptom of other problems—poverty, inadequate educationsystems, discrimination within families, ethnic conflicts, inadequatelyprotected human rights, weak democratic institutions—thatwill not be eliminated by banning child labor.     

贵州省工业强省战略下农村劳动力转移规模预测

2010年贵州省实施工业强省战略,解决农村劳动力转移问题是工业强省战略的主要作用之一.本文主要探讨两个问题,一是贵州省目前农村剩余劳动力的数量;二是贵州工业强省战略能够带来多大的农村劳动力转移.本文通过采集贵州省相关数据结合贵州省工业强省战略规划对上述问题进行了解答.在探讨上述问题的基础上,结合国际劳动力转移经验,本文总结了农村劳动力转移的一般规律,并认为我国在农村劳动力转移中存在转移滞后的问题,同时提出了通过承接产业转移的方式加快贵州省的农村劳动力转移,并且以贵州为例可以推及西部地区的劳动力转移问题.     

Correcting for Sampling Bias in the Measurement of Welfare and Poverty in the Cote d'Ivoire Living Standards Survey

The sampling aspects of a household data set are important toanalysts. The early years of the Côte d'Ivoire LivingStandards Survey (CILSS) had a sampling bias, which seriouslyaffected estimates of population statistics such as householdsize. The bias arose from sampling procedures that overrepresentedlarger dwellings. Assuming that samples drawn in later yearswere unbiased, a correction procedure is applied that uses weightsbased on household size. Results from the weighted data arethen compared with the unweighted findings to assess the seriousnessof the bias. Estimates of household expenditure per capita inthe early years of the survey are found to be significantlyunderestimated, resulting in an overestimation of poverty. Thesampling bias also resulted in an underestimation of the upwardtrend in poverty during 1985–88. The CILSS has been apopular and fruitful data set for policy analysis. These findings,however, cast doubt on the robustness of earlier work. Thus,the effort to trace sampling information is particularly worthwhilefor policy-oriented applied research.     

Looking for Boy-Girl Discrimination in Household Expenditure Data

The ability to test for discrimination in the allocation ofgoods between boys and girls is hampered by a lack of data onintrahousehold distribution. The analysis presented here allowsinferences about intrahousehold allocation to be made from household-levelexpenditure data. For a given level of income, families withchildren will spend less on adult goods in order to purchasechildren's goods. If household purchasing favors boys over girls,smaller expenditures on adult goods would be made by familieswith boys as compared with those with girls. A method for determining"adult" goods is described, and the procedure for detectinggender bias is applied to data from Côte d'lvoire andThailand. The data show no evidence of discrimination betweenboys and girls in Côte d'lvoire, and a small and statisticallyinsignificant bias in favor of boys in Thailand.     

Structural Adjustment and the Welfare of Rural Smallholders: A Comparative Analysis from Sub-Saharan Africa

The direction and level of changes in real incomes brought aboutby structural adjustment are determined by a variety of factors,including sources of income, patterns of expenditures, and movementsin relative prices in the wake of adjustment. An econometricmodel is used to derive an index of real income, which is employedfor data from Côte d'lvoire, Ghana, Malawi, Madagascar,and Tanzania. No systematic changes in relative prices, andespecially in the ratio of tradable to nontradable prices, werenoted after the beginning of adjustment, although the diversityof income sources implies that the implications of movementsin relative prices on smallholder welfare are indeed complex.The results indicate that there is no unequivocal pattern ofincrease or decline in the real welfare of the rural poor butthat there are marked differences among countries and regions.     

Does Participation Improve Performance? Establishing Causality with Subjective Data

Data from 121 diverse rural water projects provide strong statisticalfindings that increasing beneficiary participation directlycauses better project outcomes. Three possible econometric objectionsto these findings are addressed and answered. The subjectivenature of the data does not preclude valid, cardinal measuresof participation appropriate for statistical analysis. "Haloeffects"—changes in the measurement of one variable becauseof the observed state of another variable—do not seemto induce a strong upward bias in the measurement of participationor project performance. Reverse causation is unlikely: estimationusing instrumental variables, data on project timing, and documentationof case studies support the cause-effect relation between participationand better project performance.     

我国农村剩余劳动力转移途径及对策选择

我国农村剩余劳动力转移是解决三农问题的重中之重.现行土地制度、户籍管理制度、城市化进程以及农村剩余劳动力素质是制约农村剩余劳动力转移的主要因素.农村剩余劳动力在第一产业内部的转移和劳动力向二、三产业的转移,是我国农村劳动力转移的基本途径.坚持走农业产业化道路、推进乡镇企业二次创业、完善农村金融体系、推进城市化进程、建立和完善社会保障体系等,是推动农村劳动力转移的必然选择.     

经济增长视角下的中国劳动力数量与结构变化

我国劳动年龄人口（15-59岁）已经在2012年呈现负增长,劳动力（20-59岁）数量也将从2016年开始下降,2022年开始,我国劳动力数量则会快速下降。目前劳动供给紧平衡,农村向城镇转移劳动力速度放缓,工资快速上涨,求人倍率连续三年大于1。伴随我国劳动力数量下降,劳动市场将供小于求,影响我国经济增长。文章建议,一方面要提高劳动参与率,降低经济对劳动力数量的依赖,另一方面要提高劳动效率,采取有效措施促进农村就业人口向城镇转移,减少结构性就业矛盾。     

Adjustment with a Fixed Exchange Rate: Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, and Senegal

As members of the Communauté Financière Africaine,Cameroon, Côte d'lvoire, and Senegal cannot use the nominalexchange rate as a tool of macroeconomic adjustment. This articleconsiders these countries' responses to the commodity and oilprice shocks of the 1970s in light of this and other institutionalconstraints. Using a two-sector model, it shows that there existinstruments that, in principle, permit the real exchange ratedepreciation necessary for adjusting to macroeconomic imbalances.The authors interpret the very different adjustment experiencesof the three countries (despite their common economic structureand institutional setting) in terms of different uses of theseinstruments. Alternative assumptions about the labor marketleave the qualitative nature of the results unaltered. Statisticalanalysis of data from the three countries confirms the model'slinking of the current account and real exchange rate with theinstruments of adjustment.     

The Shadow Margins of Labor Market Slack

We use a mix of new and existing data to develop the Aggregate Hours Gap (AHG), a novel measure of labor market underutilization. Our measure differentiates individuals by detailed categories of labor market participation and uses data on their desired work hours as a measure of their potential labor supply. We show that desired hours vary widely by demographics and detailed labor force status, and that the gap between desired and actual work hours is strongly positively correlated with reported search effort. The AHG suggests a more sluggish labor market recovery since the Great Recession than either the official unemployment rate or alternative measures of labor market underutilization. Modest amounts of underutilization among the part-time employed and a substantial degree of underutilization among those out of the labor force account for the disparity. The AHG also does well in accounting for wage movements over our sample period.     

Economic Reform and Labor Unions: A General-Equilibrium Analysis Applied to Bangladesh and Indonesia

Noting the trend toward more independent trade unions in developingcountries, this article examines whether the presence of unionsstrengthens or weakens the benefits to be gained from economicpolicy reform. We show that the presence of "passive" unions—onesthat choose their wage-employment contract given the firm'scost-minimizing strategy—increases the welfare gains fromtrade liberalization, because trade reform lowers the wage premiumenjoyed by the unionized sector, reducing a distortion in thelabor market. These gains are amplified when the unions are"active", namely, when they negotiate a contract with the firmthat is off its labor demand curve. Such a contract resultsin featherbedding—paying workers more than their marginalproduct—and trade reform reduces the amount of featherbedding.The policy implication for Bangladesh—a country with strongtrade unions and a protected unionized sector—is thatthe benefits of further trade liberalization may be greaterthan otherwise predicted. In Indonesia, where both unionizationand import tariffs are low, allowing greater independence tounions may preserve flexibility and reward workers better thanthe current minimum-wage policy.     

ORGANIZED LABOR, POLITICS, AND LABOR MARKET FLEXIBILITY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Organized labor is usually viewed as an obstacle to labor marketadjustment. But unions' responses to adjustment programs infact range from militant opposition to acquiescence or evenexplicit cooperation. Three sets of variables shape these responses:the strength and characteristics of the union movement itself;economic cycles; and political institutions and their ties tounions. •Strength of the labor movement: In industrial democracies,an aggressive stance on wages tends to be associated with moderatelystrong unions. Small or weak unions are less militant, as mightbe expected; more surprisingly, large and powerful unions alsotend to be more moderate, primarily because of their greaterparticipation in consultation and decisionmaking at the nationallevel. The experience in developing countries is somewhat different:only a few of these have strong labor movements, and among these,militancy is common. The large share of wage labor in the publicsector complicates comparisons with industrial nations, sincegovernments as employers clearly behave differently from privateemployers, particularly in hard times. •Economic cycles: Depression almost invariably reducesmilitancy in developing as well as industrial nations. •Political institutions: The nature of the political regime—democraticor authoritarian—is only roughly associated with how governmentshandle labor relations, and correspondingly with the optionsavailable to unions. More important in shaping unions' behaviorare the nature of the political party system and how unionsare connected with parties. The conditions needed to gain workers'cooperation are analogous to those which encourage businessto invest: political stability, a voice in policy that affectstheir interests, and arising from these, the confidence thatcurrent sacrifices will ultimately yield a fair share of futurebenefits.      

Household Survey Data and Pricing Policies in Developing Countries

In recent years, household survey data from developing countrieshave increasingly become available and have been increasinglyused to cast light on important questions of policy. The reformof prices, whether agricultural prices, consumer taxes, subsidies,or tariffs, has consequences for individual welfare and forgovernment revenues, and these can be investigated empiricallywith household survey data. The gainers and losers from pricechanges can be identified, and the magnitudes of their gainsand losses measured. Nonparametric estimation techniques providea straightforward and convenient way of displaying this information.The procedure is illustrated for the effects of rice pricingin Thailand using data from more than five thousand rural households.Estimates of the revenue effects of price reforms are harderto obtain, because they require estimates of supply and demandelasticities, estimates that are not easily obtained for manydeveloping countries. A procedure is presented for estimatingprice elasticities of demand from spatial price variation asrecorded in household survey data. The main innovations liein the appropriate treatment of quality variations and measurementerror. Applications of the procedure in Côte d'lvoire,Indonesia, and Morocco are reviewed.     

Social Transfers and Labor Force Participation Relation in Turkey: A Bivariate Probit Analysis

This study explores the association of labor force and social assistance program participation decisions in Turkey by employing the 2011 household budget survey (HBS) data. The issue is investigated in a bivariate probit framework, where the two incidences are jointly modeled. The differences in rural and urban behavior are also explored. Empirical results indicate that the more one works, the less one participates in social transfer program, and vice versa. Additionally, age, gender, household type and composition impact decision-making process of individuals both in urban and rural areas. The negative association between labor force participation and social transfer program participation is more pronounced in urban areas compared with the rural areas.     

Child Farm Labor: The Wealth Paradox

This article is motivated by the remarkable observation thatchildren of land-rich households are often more likely to bein work than the children of land-poor households. The vastmajority of working children in developing economies are inagricultural work, predominantly on farms operated by theirfamilies. Land is the most important store of wealth in agrariansocieties, and it is typically distributed very unequally. Thesefacts challenge the common presumption that child labor emergesfrom the poorest households. This article suggests that thisapparent paradox can be explained by failures of the marketsfor labor and land. Credit market failure will tend to weakenthe force of this paradox. These effects are modeled and estimatesobtained using survey data from rural Pakistan and Ghana. Themain result is that the wealth paradox persists for girls inboth countries, whereas for boys it disappears after conditioningon other covariates.     

农村劳动力供给问题研究——以泰州市为例

随着泰州市经济发展及城市化建设的步伐,劳动力市场对劳动力的需求增加,但由于生产条件、生态环境及人口素质的差异,客观上形成了局部农村劳动力赋闲与劳动力市场供不应求并存的现象,因此,本文探讨泰州市农村劳动力供给情况,结合劳动力转移进城实际障碍,分别从劳动力素质、政府职能、权益保障方面提出农村劳动力转移的对策建议.     

兼并收购可以促进劳动力结构优化升级吗？

本文使用2000-2016年我国沪深A股上市公司数据,实证研究了公司被并购对其劳动力结构的影响。研究发现,公司被并购带来公司的劳动力结构优化升级,即公司会增加非常规高技能劳动力占比和高学历劳动力占比,降低常规低技能劳动力占比。渠道检验发现,并购会通过降低企业融资约束,促进企业生产技术升级来促进企业的劳动力结构优化升级。异质性分析发现并购对劳动力结构优化升级的影响在非完全换股并购和低绩效企业中更为显著。     

促进我国城乡就业统筹发展的税收政策

本文从乡镇企业安置农村剩余劳动力就业的视角,客观评价了税收政策对乡镇企业就业的影响,提出了促进农村剩余劳动力就近非农就业的税收政策建议。     

Would Smog Lead to Outflow of Labor Force? Empirical Evidence from China

This study examines the impact of air pollution on labor outflow and labor migration from the perspective of individual and regional heterogeneity in China. The empirical evidence shows that air pollution has a significant impact on labor outflow and labor with higher education levels, of male gender, and belonging to a younger cohort are more sensitive toward air pollution and hence more inclined to migrate. The labor force from cities and rural areas, as well as from eastern and central China, tends to migrate due to the negative impact of air pollution. The labor force in areas of north of the Huai River is more likely to migrate due to the severe air pollution caused mainly by heating systems in the winter.