THE RETURNS TO ENDOGENOUS HUMAN CAPITAL IN PAKISTAN'S RURAL WAGE LABOUR MARKET

This paper estimates the private returns to human capital in Pakistani rural labour markets. The rich data used permit inclusion of several dimensions of human capital and control for endogeneity resulting from investment in human capital. The results suggest that, without data on determinants of human capital, it would not be possible to disentangle the separate effect of each dimension of human capital on wage differentials nor to distinguish human capital explanations for wage differentials from signalling and credentialist models. With control for endogeneity of human capital and selectivity into wage employment, cognitive achievement, but not schooling attainment separate from cognitive achievement nor long-run health status, affects wage differentials.     

Multi-Tier Targeting of Social Assistance: The Role of Intergovernmental Transfers

Albania provides a small amount of social assistance to nearly20 percent of its population through a system that allows somecommunity discretion in determining distribution. This studyinvestigates how well this social assistance program is targetedto the poor. Relative to other safety net programs in low-incomecountries, social assistance in Albania is fairly well targeted.Nevertheless, the system is hampered by the absence of a clear,objective criterion to determine the size of the grants fromthe central government to communes as well as limited informationthat could be used to implement this criterion. Substantialgains in targeting could be achieved if the central governmentbetter allocated transfers to local governments, even holdinglocal targeting at base levels.     

Management training in small and medium-sized enterprises: methodological and conceptual issues

The paper examines the impact of management training and development on the organisation and performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), via a variety of quantitative and qualitative research techniques and including both crosssectional and longitudinal approaches to analysis. The paper demonstrates the value of management training and development in SMEs and demonstrates a series of one-off and longer lasting effects on their organization and performance. The paper also highlights the conditions under which management development projects are likely to be more successful. Finally, the paper extends the schema developed by Arthur and Hendry (1990) and Hendry et al. (1991), indicating the factors influencing training within businesses, and shows the indirect and complex links between management training and firm performance.     

Attributing technological bias to public goods

This note reports a modification of one use of the translog production function reported by Binswanger (1973, 1978). The method employed in this study recognizes that changes in factor shares over time are affected by a variety of decision variables including research and extension. In addition, some of the changes attributed to technical change may in fact be due to a change in the resource environment the individual decision maker faces, including the stock of public goods infrastructure. The study also investigates shifts in technological change which may be attributed to changes in the political climate.     

Following the story: narrative mapping as a mobile method for tracking and interrogating spatial narratives

Museums and heritage tourism sites are highly curated places of memory work whose function is the assembling and ordering of space and narrative to contour visitors’ experiences of the past. Variations in such experiences within and between sites, however, necessitates a method that: (1) captures how guides, visitors, and exhibits interact within spaces when representing and performing history and (2) allows researchers to document those variations. We developed narrative mapping, a mobile and geographically sensitive form of participant observation, to enable museum scholars and professionals to systematically capture, visualize, and interpret tendencies and variations in the content, affective qualities, and spatial arrangements of museum narratives over multiple sites and across multiple tours at the same site. Two antebellum plantation museum case studies, Laura Plantation in Louisiana and Virginia’s Berkeley Plantation, demonstrate the method’s utility in documenting how stories are spatially configured and materially enlivened in order to analyze the ways enslaved persons are placed within these narratives.     

The Potential and Limitations of Self-Targeted Food Subsidies

Can self-selection ofsubsidized commodities be used as a mechanismto transfer income to the poor? Evidence from two self-targetingprograms, one in South Africa and one in Tunisia, shows thatalthough self-targeting can clearly improve the distributionof food subsidies to the poorest members of society, its powerto alleviate poverty and reduce income disparities is limitedby preference patterns, income inequality, and the size of theindividual subsidies. Self-targeting through quality and productdifferentiation can be a useful means to reform existing universalsubsidy schemes, but it should be considered a transitionaltool while the capacity for implementing more precise mechanisms is developed.      

Reducing the Incidence of Low Birth Weight in Low-Income Countries Has Substantial Economic Benefits

Reducing the incidence of low birth weight not only lowers infantmortality rates but also has multiple benefits over the lifecycle. This study estimates the economic benefits of reducingthe incidence of low birth weight in low-income countries, boththrough lower mortality rates and medical costs and throughincreased learning and productivity. The estimated economicbenefits, under plausible assumptions, are fairly substantial,at about $510 per infant moved from a low-birth-weight status.The estimated gains are primarily from increases in labor productivity(partially through more education) and secondarily from avoidingcosts due to infant illness and death. Thus there may be manyinterventions to reduce the incidence of low birth weight thatare warranted purely on the grounds of saving resources or increasingproductivity.