再论公共食堂退出权在"大跃进"饥荒中的作用

针对杨涛和范子英的评论意见,本文沿着"大跃进"饥荒爆发、加剧及结束的先后顺序再次厘清以下问题:1958年粮食产量及需要高体力消耗的各种大型工程是否导致饥荒爆发、公共食堂在庐山会议前后的解散和恢复如何分别减轻和加剧了饥荒、公共食堂制度的度量问题及饥荒的结束是缘于达尔文效应还是政策转向等.本文提出,赋予个人自由选择权是解决类似饥荒这样的人类社会矛盾冲突的可行方法.     

中国"大跃进"饥荒成因再辩-政治权利的视角

针对杨涛和范子英提出的评论意见,本文再次澄清以下问题:森的食物获取权理论是否适用于计划经济下的饥荒分析,"大跃进"运动中农村人民公社的集体高积累是否减少了农民口粮消费,大饥荒成因实证研究中的计量问题.最后,本文提出,发展一个包括政治权利在内的饥荒理论,是深入理解社会主义计划经济下饥荒问题的钥匙.     

Human capital and the quantity–quality trade-off during the demographic transition

This paper provides an empirical test of the child quantity–quality (QQ) trade-off predicted by unified growth theory. Using individual census returns from the 1911 Irish census, we examine whether children who attended school were from smaller families—as predicted by a standard QQ model. To measure causal effects, we use a selection of models robust to endogeneity concerns which we validate for this application using an Empirical Monte Carlo analysis. Our results show that a child remaining in school between the ages of 14 and 16 caused up to a 27 % reduction in fertility. Our results are robust to alternative estimation techniques with different modeling assumptions, sample selection, and alternative definitions of fertility. These findings highlight the importance of the demographic transition as a mechanism which underpinned the expansion in human capital witnessed in Western economies during the twentieth century.     

On statistical inference for inequality measures calculated from complex survey data

We examine inference for Generalized Entropy and Atkinson inequality measures with complex survey data, using Wald statistics with variance?Ccovariance matrices estimated from a linearization approximation method. Testing the equality of two or more inequality measures, including sub-group decomposition indices and group shares, are covered. We illustrate with Indian data from three surveys, examining pre-school children??s height, an anthropometric measure that can indicate long-term malnutrition. Sampling involved an urban/rural stratification with clustering before selection of households. We compare the linearization complex survey outcomes with those from an incorrect independently and identically distributed (iid) assumption and a bootstrap that accounts for the survey design. For our samples, the results from the easy to implement linearization method and the more computationally burdensome bootstrap are typically quite similar. This finding is of interest to applied researchers, as bootstrapping is currently the method that is most commonly used for undertaking statistical inference in this literature.     

"大跃进"运动与中国1958-1961年饥荒-集权体制下的国家、集体与农民

1958-1961年中国发生人类历史上最为严重的饥荒,现有研究从粮食供给下降、公共食堂、城市偏向政策、缺粮区偏向、政治激进主义、政府救济不力及饥荒的历史记忆角度对大饥荒成因提出了不同的解释.在赶超战略及"大跃进"运动的背景下,本文考察了人民公社内部分配制度,发现"大跃进"运动时期人民公社大幅度提高集体积累,农民个体可消费粮食急剧下降,这可能是"大跃进"饥荒的另一重要成因.本文利用1953-1966年省级面板数据证明了上述假说,并提出集权体制下农民个体政治权利的缺失是传统社会主义饥荒频发的主要原因.     

Medicaid managed care: effects on children's Medicaid coverage and utilization

We use data from the National Health Interview Surveys (NHIS) to measure the effects of the growth of Medicaid managed care on children. We examine both the probability that individual children were Medicaid-covered and their utilization of care. We find that managed care penetration has significant effects on the composition of the Medicaid caseload: Young children are less likely to be covered, while poor school-age children are more likely to be covered. When we examine coverage by race, we find that black children are less likely to be covered where Medicaid managed care organizations (MMCOs) are more prevalent. These lower Medicaid enrollment rates are linked to increases in the numbers of young children who go without any doctor visits in a year. These results suggest that it is important to examine the potential effects of changes in Medicaid on selection into the Medicaid program, rather than focusing exclusively on the effects of managed care on those who are enrolled. In addition, among those enrolled in Medicaid, higher managed care penetration is associated with an increase in the number of black children with chronic conditions who go without doctor visits, but with decreases in the number of Hispanic children and poor teens who go without care.     

Food Availability, Entitlements and the Chinese Famine of 1959–61

Food availability decline and Sen's entitlement are two leading approaches in understanding causes of famine. Previous research based on case studies has given independent support to each approach. This paper analyses the Chinese famine of 1959–61 by considering jointly the urban bias and the decline in food availability as causes. We find that both factors contributed significantly to the increase in death rates during this famine. To our knowledge, this paper is the first econometric study to assess the importance of famine causes using the entitlement approach.     

Did Partial Globalization Increase Inequality? The Case of the Latin American Periphery, 1950-2000

Inequality is an important threat to the globalization of theworld economy that we experience today. This contribution usesthe coefficient of height variation as a measure of inequality.This indicator covers not only wage recipients, but also theselfemployed, the unemployed, housewives, children, and othergroups who may not participate in a market economy, for theperiod 1950–79, for which income inequality data is mostlyunavailable or inconsistent. It turns out that within-countryinequality is higher in time periods of greater openness. Thisresult is confirmed for the time period 1950–2000, anda much broader model. (JEL I12, I32, N33)     

Selective Mortality and Malnutrition in India

India presents itself as a paradox with low infant mortality and high malnutrition. This paper provides survival bias as an explanation of the paradox. Using pooled health surveys from 1993 to 2005 and a pseudo-panel selection model, this study finds that the change in Height-for-Age Z-Scores (HAZ scores) can be explained by mortality selection. Specifically, children with sample average characteristics that survive have 17.4% less HAZ scores than a child randomly drawn from the population indicating an overestimation of malnutrition in India. This is consistent with the hypothesis of weaker children surviving due to skilled delivery which pulls down the overall HAZ scores. The results are robust to controls for unobservable characteristics of groups of women. Son preference is also apparent in the results. The selection is more evident among male children and in the states where sex selection is historically seen as a problem in India.

     

The Social Gene

Synopsis Skew selection is a multiple-selection model (not to be confused with a multi-level selection model) that explains the inherent duality of social behavior from an individualistic, self-preservation point of view. The dual behaviors of social beings are greed and sharing. Greed produces resource stockpiles. Stockpiles buffer an individual from famine. Sharing aggregates individuals into groups. Groups buffer an individual from predation through safety-in-numbers. In this paper, skew selection is applied to genes as a potential solution for two genomic puzzles: (1) junk DNA; and (2) the C-value enigma. Junk DNA refers to the large number of non-coding DNA sequences within a genome. Skew selection hypothesizes that, when genes are exposed to agents of predation such as point mutations, viral infections or chromosomal crossovers, genes that share resources with a large number of junk DNA sequences will survive longer than genes that do not share. The C-value enigma refers to the lack of relationship between genomic size and animal complexity. Skew selection hypothesizes that genomic size and animal complexity evolve independently of each other. Genomic size (i.e., junk DNA) shields genes from agents of mutation, viruses or chromosomal crossovers. Animal complexity (i.e., gene diversity) buffers genes from resource scarcity by allowing organisms to exploit diverse resources. In conclusion, by viewing gene survival through the lens of skew selection, molecular biologists gain insight into the evolution of genomic size and animal complexity as independent survival strategies of self-interested genes facing multiple agents of selection.JEL classification: P50     

Famine: Adam Smith and Foucauldian Political Economy

It is often assumed that the attitudes of the early political economists, such as Smith, to issues of scarcity and famine were dogmatically laissez‐faire. This view has been given fresh impetus by Michel Foucault's recently published lectures on the history of political economy. The article challenges this view. By examining Smith's texts and analyzing the way that Smith was received by critics in the century following the publication of the Wealth of Nations, the article argues that contemporary interpretations of Smith's views on scarcity and famine must be nuanced.     

禁止土地调整与妇女土地权利保障-基于浙江和陕西的经验

本文发现1958年两个重要的政策变化导致了粮食主产区的饥荒:工业"大跃进"和粮食"包干制".在大跃进的背景下,包干制诱导粮食主产区在正常年份通过高征购发展本地工业,当面临1959年和1960年粮食连续减产时,这些地区遭受饥荒的冲击也越大.本文利用历史数据证实了上述假说,工业化进程越快的地区的粮食销售也越多,对本地粮食的征购也越彻底,进而死亡率也越高,并且这些效应在饥荒年份更加明显.     

Child malnutrition and school performance in China

Data on the height, weight, age and grade level of over 3,000 children in five quite different locations in China allow computation of how far behind in school each child is, relative to where he should be given his age, as well as of the nutritional status variables of height-for-age, weight-for-age and weight-for-height. This paper uses these data to estimate the impact of the nutritional variables on the available measure of school performance. Children tend to be about one grade further behind in rural areas than in the provincial capitals, and about one-half a grade further behind in the provincial capitals than in Beijing. Even after controlling for location, however, lower nutritional status (particularly height-for-age) was found to affect school performance adversely; a one standard deviation reduction in height-for-age, for example, would result in a child's being about one-third of a year further behind. Though results from a geographically limited sample should be generalized only with substantial caution, and alternative interpretations of the data are possible, it does appear likely that malnutrition in rural China remained sufficiently prevalent in 1979 to retard the school advancement of large numbers of children.     

The Economic Contributions of Amartya Sen

This paper examines the major economic contributions of Amartya Sen. Sen's contributions fall into three main areas: a philosophical critique of traditional economic assumptions, an attempt to build a more realistic economic science based on the notion of entitlements and human capabilities, and a long series of practical contributions to welfare economics that follow from the capabilities approach - how to measure poverty and inequality better, how to understand famine and hunger, the importance of gender in economic development, and the differences between economic development and economic growth. The paper concludes with a brief assessment of the significance of Sen's work.     

On selecting a measure of labour activity: evidence from registered nurses, 1981 and 1989

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the effects of the selection of measures of labour activity on the conclusions that are derived from the analysis of individual labour supply. The results of the analysis using three commonly specified single measures (Annual Hours Worked, Hours Worked per Week, and Weeks Worked per Year) as the dependent variable in TOBIT equations are compared with those obtained using a PROBIT-2SLS in which the individual labour supply is measured by Hours Worked per Week and Weeks Worked per Year. The RHS variables are those that are used in earlier individual labour supply studies and are the same in all of the models analysed. Among the findings are (1) wage rate effects that are quite strong in single equation models and disappear when a multi-equation approach is used, (2) the effects of children on labour supply is more complex than in indicated in single equation results and (3) duration dependence is much stronger than indicated results using a single measure of individual labour supply. These results suggest that using a single measure of labour supply will lead to inappropriate conclusions as to the effects of such variables as wage rates, number and ages of children, spouse's employment state, and income from other sources on individual labour supply.     

A global measure of child health-related quality of life: reliability and validity of the Child Health and Illness Profile - Child Edition (CHIP-CE) global score

SUMMARY

As the treatment of children with medical and psychiatric disorders becomes increasingly reliant on pharmacological agents, it has become critical to assess the overall effects of these interventions on the health and well being of the children. The Child Health and Illness Profile - Child Edition (CHIP-CE) is a validated health-related quality of life (HRQoL) measure with five core domains: Satisfaction, Comfort, Resilience, Risk Avoidance and Achievement. The domain scores are valuable for identifying the area(s) of HRQoL in which children are most affected by an illness and its treatment. For some purposes, however, it would be desirable to

measure overall HRQoL, as no single domain score effectively describes the whole child. A global score encompassing all domains could provide such a measure of HRQoL and could be an efficient outcome for evaluating the overall effect of an intervention. This article presents the development and validation of a global score for the CHIP-CE based on parents' reports. The investigations demonstrated that the CHIP-CE global score is a reliable measure of children's HRQoL. Tests of validity supported the use of the CHIP-CE global score, indicating that it is an additional tool to monitor and evaluate the outcomes of interventions in groups of children.     

对阿马蒂亚·森的饥荒理论的理解及验证:来自中国的数据

本文对阿马蒂亚·森的食物获取权理论与传统的解释饥荒的食物供给量下降(FoodAvailabilityDecline,FAD)理论的关系进行分析,得出:在解释饥荒的发生时两者都具有解释能力,但在解释饥荒的分布上,FAD不具解释力度,本文实证检验了这一结论。在林毅夫和杨涛提出的城市偏向基础上,指出缺粮区的划分才是决定饥荒分布的真正原因,饥荒的分布是阶层性的,各自食物获取权的优先顺序才是遭受饥荒影响程度的直接因素。     

WELFARE REFORM AND CHILDREN'S EARLY COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

In this paper, we use a dynamic structural model to measure the effects of (1) single mothers' work and welfare use decisions and (2) welfare reform initiatives on the early cognitive development of the children of the NLSY79 mothers. We use PIAT‐Math scores as a measure of attainment and show that both the mothers' work and welfare use benefit children on average. Our simulation of a policy that combines a time limit with work requirement reduces the use of welfare and increases employment significantly. These changes in turn significantly increase children's cognitive attainment. This implies that the welfare reform was not only successful in achieving its stated goals, but was also beneficial to welfare children's outcomes. In another policy simulation, we show that increasing work incentives for welfare population by exempting labor income from welfare tax can be a very successful policy with some additional benefits for children's outcomes. Finally, a counterfactual with an extended maternal leave policy significantly reduces employment and has negative, though economically insignificant, impact on cognitive outcomes. (JEL I38, J22, J18)     

Terrain ruggedness and limits of political repression: Evidence from China’s Great Leap Forward and Famine (1959-61)

Chairman Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward development plan strongly affected food security in rural China at the time, given that many of the associated policies exploited rural labor and extracted resources. A few months after the plan’s initial implementation in August 1958, food shortages were reported; by the spring of 1961, more than 30 million citizens had died of starvation and famine-related illnesses. However, as the national plan was rolled out and then upheld over three years, on-the-ground implementation was nonuniform. Using georeferenced terrain ruggedness data which captures small-scale topological irregularities and information on provincial leadership attitudes towards Mao’s plan, I provide evidence on forces underlying the famine’s intensity and distribution. The analysis is based on a differential effect, in which a fear-based incentive structure characterizing the plan’s implementation is implicitly embedded. The baseline results indicate that rugged terrain protected more than 4.6 million rural Chinese from dying in the famine. By identifying an additional benefit of ruggedness to health and well-being in some rural communities, I show that not only does a causal relationship exist at a local level between Great Leap policies and famine mortality, but also that the lethality of the policies varied per state power at the time.     

Complex ballot propositions,individual voting behavior,and status quo bias

One concern about direct democracy is that citizens may not be sufficiently competent to decide about complex policies. This may lead to exaggerated conservatism in the voting decision (status quo bias). To investigate how complexity affects individual voting behavior, we develop a novel measure of proposition complexity (using official pre-referendum booklets) and combine it with post-referendum survey data from Switzerland. Using Heckman selection estimations to account for endogenous variation in participation rates, we find that an increase in proposition complexity from the 10th to the 90th percentile would decrease voters' approval by 5.6 ppts, which is often decisive: an additional 12% of the propositions in our sample would be rejected.