Son Preference and Gender Gaps in Child Nutrition: Does the Level of Female Autonomy Matter?

This paper examines the association between parental son preference and child anthropometric status, and the extent to which this relationship depends on the level of female autonomy. Results highlight the importance of maternal son preference and mothers' involvement in household decision making when gender gaps in child nutrition are considered. These findings have important policy implications.     

A note on comparative statics and dynamics of stationary states

Certain results are communicated regarding effects of parameter changes, when the stationary state is stable, on the stationary state and an optimal paths in its neighbourhood in discrete time multi-sectoral optimal growth models where period utilities are discounted.     

The Skill Profile of Central Bankers and Supervisors

Using a new database covering some 91 supervisory agencies, this paper examines how important various skilled experts are in the supervisory process and the relative usage of different kinds of such experts. We seek to explore what kind of perspective supervisors in different institutional settings may adopt: a macro-oriented perspective or a more micro-approach? The answer to this question is relevant, as there is evidence that many financial crises have been macro-induced.It is found that central banks employ more economists and fewer lawyers in their supervisory/financial stability wing than non-centralbank supervisory agencies. This result would indicate that an institutional setting with direct or indirect central bank involvement is more likely to produce a macro-approach. Next, there are significant economies of scale in financial supervision, though this can be measured by several alternative variables (e.g., the relative scale of bank intermediation). Finally, there do not appear to be major economies of scope. A more complex financial system with a well-developed stock market would need both more supervisors as well as more skilled ones.     

The economics of poverty in poor countries

This paper examines the links that have recently been studied between poverty, high fertility and undernourishment, on the one hand, and degradation of the local environmental-resource base and civic disconnection, on the other, in poor countries. An account is offered of a number of pathways involving positive feedbacks that create poverty traps, in which certain identifiable groups of people in an economy can get caught even when the economy in the aggregate experiences economic growth. The relevant policy implications are noted.     

Technological and geographic heterogeneity in broadband markets: The challenge for regulation

When the telecommunications industry was liberalised in Europe and North America in the 1980s and 1990s, it inherited a legacy of monopoly providers whose footprint was national or multi-regional in its character. The regulatory framework, particularly that adopted in EU member states, reflected this pattern of relatively homogeneous deployment achieved, in part, by decades of cross-subsidised pricing and universal service goals. Perhaps because of this legacy, telecommunications regulators have often adopted the presumption that relevant markets are national in character, unless proven otherwise Although geographically-variegated regulatory remedies have been permitted (even in the face of allegedly national relevant markets) and adopted in many member states, many regulators have never done so, and overly cautious thresholds for permitting geographically based forbearance suggest a continued bias towards presuming national markets and remedies. We find that this presumption of uniformity and the tendency to aggregate geographic markets together is not supported by first principles of antitrust analysis, although there may have been strong practical reasons to apply this presumption in the past circumstances of the telecommunications and broadband industries.On the ground, however, there has arguably never been as much heterogeneity across geographies and across technological solutions that provide effective ultra-fast broadband speeds. Both technological (i.e., product market) and geographic heterogeneity are likely to increase with the advent of mobile 5G networks. With their deployment, a cautious regulatory stance towards geographic variation and a cautious regulatory stance towards inter-technology or inter-modal competition may result in regulation that could exceed what is required to ensure effective competition and could instead distort the incentives to enter of facilities-based actors. This may also result in higher-cost and inefficient investment. A more geographically varied and technologically agnostic regulatory framework may satisfy the principle of proportionate and focused regulation—with the possibility that the locus of regulation shifts from the access network to bottleneck facilities such as fibre, ducts and poles.This discussion is especially germane when one considers the highly speculative nature of forecasts and projections about future demand, and the competing claims of proponents of 5G and fibre. While there is some scepticism about the performance of mobile networks, we note that pure mobile and fixed 5G services may have synergies in deployment, and that the idea of competing with residential broadband services is a core strategy of very influential large-scale industry actors. In terms of a future research agenda, regulatory decisions could benefit from much more research into the relationship between domestic and global bandwidth constraints and their influence on development of software and application, as well as much more quantitative research by academics on the drivers of bandwidth demand. The risks associated with promoting investment that results in large-scale wasted resources should also be central to the regulatory agenda.     

Searching for religious discrimination among childcare workers

We implement a lab‐in‐the‐field experiment among childcare workers in Chandigarh, India, to evaluate discriminatory attitudes of the Hindu workers toward Muslim children. We use a third‐party allocation game that controls for selfish payoff‐maximizing preferences across the treatments and focus exclusively on distributional attitudes. Our results indicate that the workers in our sample are primarily motivated by welfare‐based criteria in making their allocation decisions and do not practice discrimination based on religious identities.     

Does Heterogeneity Help in Overcoming the Public Goods Dilemma in a Sequential Contribution Environment?

This paper compares behavior of heterogeneous groups with homogeneous groups in public goods production. In heterogeneous groups members differ in their opportunity costs of contribution, while in homogeneous groups, members have the same opportunity costs. Members of three-player groups sequentially make all-or-nothing contributions towards the production of a public good where contribution decisions, payoffs, and opportunity costs of preceding players in the group are known to each group member. We find that heterogeneous groups perform better than homogeneous groups controlling for average opportunity costs at the group level. Our results also indicate that subjects develop an endogenous contribution norm to sustain public goods production where subjects in the first positions, and subjects with relatively low opportunity costs contribute most often.