Horticultural exports,female wage employment and primary school enrolment: Theory and evidence from Senegal

In this paper we analyse the indirect effects of the boom in horticultural exports in Senegal on child schooling. The export boom has caused a dramatic increase in female off-farm wage employment, which led to increased female bargaining power in the household. We investigate the causal effect of female wage income on primary school enrolment. We develop a collective household model with endogenous bargaining power to show that, if women have higher preferences for schooling than men, the impact of female wage income on school enrolment will be the result of a positive income effect, a negative labour substitution effect and a positive empowerment effect. We address the question empirically using original household survey data from Senegal. We use different econometric techniques and show that female off-farm wage income has a positive effect on primary school enrolment for both boys and girls, and that female empowerment is specifically important for the schooling of girls. Our results imply that the horticultural export boom in Senegal has indirectly contributed to the second and third Millennium Development Goals of universal primary education and elimination of gender disparities in primary education.     

Non-farm income,gender, and inequality: evidence from rural Ghana and Uganda

This paper examines how the distribution of earnings in rural Ghana and Uganda differs by income type and by gender. We find that non-farm earnings contribute to rising inequality, but that lower income groups also benefit due to strong overall growth in non-farm earnings. The inequality-inducing effect is driven by self-employment income; wage income, on the other hand, reduces inequality. The tendency of non-farm income to contribute to inequality is greater among female-headed households for whom self-employment is important and non-farm opportunities more constrained. Determinants of non-farm income are estimated and appear to be strongly related to location, education, age, and distance to market. Estimates of the linkages to agriculture in Ghana are weaker than expected, showing the non-farm sector to be functioning more as an alternative activity to agriculture than as a complement.     

人工智能技术会诱致劳动收入不平等吗——模型推演与分类评估

学术界近期开始关注人工智能技术对收入不平等的影响,但其收入分配效应的形成机理研究尚处于初始阶段,而且定量评估明显不足,尤其缺乏来自发展中国家的经验证据。本文基于Acemoglu and Restrepo(2018a)的人工智能技术模型,引入高技术与低技术两部门分类,推演人工智能技术的收入分配效应,结合中国2001—2016年全国及省级层面数据,分类测算其劳动收入分配的岗位更迭效应和生产率效应。结果发现:①人工智能技术在引发劳动岗位更迭的同时,非对称地改变不同技术部门生产率影响劳动收入分配,诱致高、低技术部门劳动收入差距年均扩大0.75%。②人工智能技术的岗位更迭效应倾向于在低技术部门通过自动化扩张、在高技术部门以新岗位创造方式,加剧收入不平等,而生产率效应存在门槛特征。③人工智能技术在资本和非技术密集型地区的收入分配效应更为突出,且对劳动和技术密集型地区的影响不断增大。为应对人工智能技术对劳动力市场就业结构和收入不平等的冲击,政府应健全就业培训和失业保障制度,制定差异化的区域政策,积极引导人工智能技术朝人机协作和收入平等方向发展。     

Common Agricultural Policy effects on dynamic labour use in agriculture

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of direct payments and rural development measures of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) on employment in agriculture. We work with a dynamic labour demand equation augmented by the full set of policy instruments of the CAP, which is estimated on a panel dataset of 69 East German regions. We present results for four estimators which differ in how they eliminate the fixed effects and how they address the endogeneity of the lagged dependent variable. The results suggest that there were few desirable effects on job maintenance in agriculture. While there is some indication that investment subsidies have halted labour shedding on farms, a rise in the general wage level reduced labour use in agriculture. Changes in direct payments had no employment effects. Generally, labour adjustment exhibits a strong path dependency.     

Do private standards create exclusive supply chains? New evidence from the Peruvian asparagus export sector

Developing countries are increasingly exporting fresh horticultural products to high-income countries. These exports increasingly have to comply with stringent public and private standards, as well as other quality and safety issues. There is an ongoing debate on the effect of private standards on the inclusion of small-scale farmers in export supply chains. With this paper, we contribute to this debate by providing new evidence from the Peruvian asparagus export sector, and by addressing several important methodological shortcomings and gaps in the existing literature. We describe export dynamics using a unique firm level dataset on 567 asparagus export firms from 1993 to 2011 and the evolution of certification to private standards using own survey data from a stratified random sample of 87 export firms. We use an unbalanced panel of the surveyed companies on 19 years and several methods, including fixed effects and GMM estimators, to estimate the causal impact of certification to private standards on companies' sourcing strategy. We find that certification leads to vertical integration and significantly reduces the share of produce that is sourced from external producers, with a larger effect for small-scale producers. When distinguishing between production and processing standards, and between low-level and high-level standards, we find that especially high-level production standards have a negative impact on sourcing from (small-scale) producers.     

Supply chains and economic development: Insights from the Indian dairy sector

With almost three quarters of the labor force depending on agriculture in India, kick-starting agricultural growth is considered crucial for pro-poor development. More specifically, dairy production – which is labor-intensive but does not heavily rely on access to land – is generally expected to offer better prospects for income growth to the poorest among rural households. However, most policies aimed at increasing dairy production are based on ad hoc observations, with hardly any micro-level evidence. Using a unique primary dataset on 1000 rural households in Andhra Pradesh, this paper investigates the dairy production system, addressing three main research questions: First, we look at the typical profile of a dairy farmer and we find that both family traditions in dairy and owning (even a small piece of) land play a role in determining participation in dairy – while land size does not matter. Second, we show that dairy production is strongly and positively associated with improvement in rural livelihoods, in terms of income per capita, but that this positive relation only holds for larger dairy farms. In a third step, we look at the determinants of farm growth and we find that households having higher shares of graded dairy animals have grown more after 2005.     

The Effects of Minimum Wages on Low‐Skilled Immigrants’ Wages,Employment, and Poverty

Raising the minimum wage has been advanced as complementary policy to comprehensive immigration reform to improve low‐skilled immigrants’ economic well‐being. While adverse labor demand effects could undermine this goal, existing studies do not detect evidence of negative employment effects. We re‐investigate this question using data from the 1994 to 2016 Current Population Survey and conclude that minimum wage increases reduced employment of less‐educated Hispanic immigrants, with estimated elasticities of around –0.1. However, we also find that the wage and employment effects of minimum wages on low‐skilled immigrants diminished over the last decade. This finding is consistent with more restrictive state immigration policies and the Great Recession inducing outmigration of low‐skilled immigrants, as well as immigrants moving into the informal sector. Finally, our results show that raising the minimum wage is an ineffective policy tool for reducing poverty among immigrants.     

外部关税变动对中国区域劳动力就业的影响

本文利用UNCTAD数据和中国人口普查微观数据,基于地区就业的行业结构和贸易对象国对中国征收的行业层面的进口关税,构建地区层面外部关税变动指标,研究外部关税变动对中国区域劳动力就业的影响。研究发现:(1)外部关税下降幅度越高的地区,总体就业、可贸易部门和不可贸易部门的就业增加也越多;(2)出口和内销规模扩张的就业创造效应、生产率提升的就业破坏效应,是外部关税下降影响地区可贸易部门就业的重要渠道;(3)外部关税下降带来的地区可贸易部门出口扩张、就业增加和工资上涨,通过产业关联和消费驱动等正向溢出效应增加地区不可贸易部门就业,通过就业的部门间再配置效应减少地区不可贸易部门就业;(4)外部关税下降对地区不可贸易部门就业的影响呈现出先抑制后促进的动态演进过程,这与外部关税变动下中国区域劳动力供给的调整紧密相关。此外,外部关税变动对地区不同属性劳动力就业的影响效果存在显著差异。本文的研究结论对于外部关税变动下稳定区域劳动力就业的相关政策制定具有一定的参考意义。     

High rural population density Africa – What are the growth requirements and who participates?

A large and increasing proportion of agricultural growth in Africa must come from continuous gains in land productivity in areas of high population density and hence with already relatively high yields. What that requires is analogous to the green revolution in Asia. Several features differentiate the African situation. Those include greater diversity in cropping pattern including a historically larger and more widespread tropical commodity export sector. The physical infrastructure in rural Africa is far inferior to that of most Asian countries. While the greater diversity of agriculture calls for a larger and more diverse institutional structure the reality is that the research systems, the ancillary education systems to spread innovation and the rural financial systems are generally greatly inferior to those of Asia at the beginning of the green revolution. Ethiopia’s record of a steady six to seven percent growth for agriculture and nearly halving of rural poverty demonstrates that with the right policies and investments a very poor country starting with poor physical and institutional infrastructure can bring a major contribution from agriculture growth to increased GDP and reduced poverty. As in Asia, the bulk of accelerated agricultural growth will come from small commercial farmers. They have sufficient farm income to reach or exceed the poverty level. Those are farms with, depending on the country, as little as 0.75 hectares to a few tens of hectares of land. They comprise up to half the rural population and produce on the order of 70–80 percent of agricultural output. They are in general not poor. The poor have inadequate land to reach the poverty level, initially with much underemployment, and with substantial non-farm employment. The primary driver of poverty reduction is the small commercial farmer spending on the order of half of increased income on nontradable, employment intensive goods and services from the rural non-farm sector.     

非工资性收入分配：国有部门收入调控的新视角

本文基于"中国居民健康和营养调查"(CHNS)数据,研究所有制性质与非工资性收入分配问题。通过对中国非工资性收入结构和差异格局的长时段考察、研究发现,在津贴、补贴和医疗保险等非工资性收入方面,国有部门都明显高于其他部门,非工资性收入差异造成了我国不同所有制部门间收入差距的扩大,非工资性收入的不平等程度高于工资收入,而且呈不断上升的趋势。进一步利用Panel Data模型及Logit模型分析非工资性收入差异扩大的原因,研究表明,受教育程度、年龄和职业等因素对非工资性收入的影响程度较低,引起非工资性收入差异扩大的主要原因是所有制性质因素。因而,防止非工资性收入差异扩大,规范国有部门非工资性收入应成为当前收入分配制度改革的重点。     

Distributional effects of agricultural cooperatives in China: Exclusion of smallholders and potential gains on participation

This paper examines the treatment effects of the agricultural cooperative and publicly funded extension services on individual household economy, using data collected by the author from watermelon-producing farm households in rural Nanjing. The cooperative addressed in this study restricts the participation of small-scale farmers, implying that selection into the program must be taken into consideration for an accurate assessment of the treatment effect. The econometric analysis revealed that government extension services have a modest effect on farm income. In contrast, the treatment effect of the agricultural cooperative is robust and substantially large, accounting for nearly 70% of the pre-matching difference. This suggests that the agricultural cooperative system is an important avenue for farmers to improve their economic status. The treatment effect of the agricultural cooperative is highly heterogeneous; the economic benefits arising from the cooperative are significant only for small-scale farms. We can argue that a coexistence of smallholder exclusion and the treatment effect in favor of small-scale farms poses serious challenges to pro-poor agricultural growth in China.     

Minimum Wages and Youth Employment: Evidence from the Finnish Retail Trade Sector

Following an agreement between the trade unions and the employer organizations in 1993, Finnish employers could temporarily pay less than the existing minimum wage for young workers. We examine the effects of these minimum wage exceptions by comparing the changes in wages and employment of the groups whose minimum wages were reduced with simultaneous changes among slightly older workers for whom the minimum wages remained unchanged. Our analysis is based on payroll record data and minimum wage agreements from the retail trade sector. The results show that average wages in the eligible group declined only modestly. We find no significant effects on employment.     

Does farm structure affect rural household incomes? Evidence from Tanzania

Many African countries have recently experienced rapid growth in the numbers of medium- and large-scale farms. These developments have generated considerable speculation about the impacts of farmland concentration and inequality on smallholder households and communities. This study exploits inter-district variation in farm landholding patterns in Tanzania to determine how differences in localized farmland structure affect rural household incomes using nationally representative household panel survey data. Because farm structure is a multifaceted concept, five alternative indicators of farmland structure are defined for 142 districts in Tanzania: (i) the Gini coefficient; (ii) skewness; (iii) coefficient of variation; (iv) share of controlled farmland under medium-scale farms; and (v) share of controlled farmland under large farms. These alternative farm structure variables are included in models of rural household income to test their effects after controlling for available household and community covariates. The study highlights four main findings. First, most indicators of farmland concentration are positively associated with rural household incomes. Second, household incomes from farm and non-farm sources are positively and significantly associated with the share of land in the district controlled by farms in the 5–10 and 5–20 ha category. Third, these positive spillover benefits are smaller and less statistically significant in districts with a relatively high share of farmland controlled by farms over 20 ha in size. Fourth, poor rural households are least able to capture the positive spillovers generated by medium-scale farms and by concentrated farmland patterns.     

Tipped Wage Effects on Earnings and Employment in Full‐Service Restaurants

We exploit more than 20 years of changes in state‐level tipped wage policy and estimate earnings and employment effects of the tipped wage using county‐level panel data on full‐service restaurants (FSR). We extend earlier work by Dube, Lester, and Reich ( 2010 ) and compare outcomes between contiguous counties that straddle a state border. We find a 10‐percent increase in the tipped wage increases earnings in FSRs about 0.4 percent. Employment elasticities are sensitive to the inclusion of controls for unobserved spatial heterogeneity. In our preferred models, we find small, insignificant effects of the tipped wage on FSR employment.     

Entry deregulation,firm organization,and wage inequality

This paper identifies a causal link between changes in product market competition, firm reorganization and within-firm wage inequality. We exploit a unique episode of comprehensive firm entry deregulation as a quasi-natural experiment and use exceptionally detailed linked employer-employee data for the universe of private sector firms and workers in Portugal. Following deregulation affected firms flatten their hierarchies: the number of layers is reduced and managers’ span of control increased. Dropping a hierarchy layer is accompanied by a significant reduction in wage inequality within the firm, by 8% for the average pay ratio between the top and the bottom layer and 4.4% for the 90-50 percentile wage ratio, showing that there are real changes arising from firm reorganization. Overall wage dispersion, measured by the standard deviation of hourly pay, is also reduced. We discuss mechanisms and interpretations for these changes.     

Can information and communication technologies be pro-poor?

There is over 20 years of accumulated cross-country evidence on the link between telecommunications provision and economic growth. Looking at micro-studies from a range of countries including Bangladesh, Botswana and Zimbabwe, there is also some evidence that provision of telephony has a dramatic effect on the income and quality of life of the rural poor. This paper examines cross-country evidence to discover if teledensity (the number of telephones per capita) has a pro-poor growth impact—fostering increased average incomes while reducing inequality. It also examines the impact of telecommunications rollout on quality of life variables including infant mortality and literacy. It finds that, historically, telecommunications rollout has had a positive and significant impact on increasing inequality and little impact on quality of life variables. A reason for this is tested and preliminarily confirmed that rollout has (historically) only benefited the wealthy. The paper will then turn to emerging evidence on the role of the Internet in poverty relief and statistics on the access gap in provision between rich and poor, suggesting that this new ICT will also be a force for income divergence. Using the results of the cross-country analysis on telecommunications, the paper will conclude with a discussion of potential policy responses (such as sector reform and universal access programs) to turn telecommunications from a source of growth that also increases inequality to a source of growth that diminishes it.     

Detecting Effects of Living Wage Laws

We estimate the effects of living wage laws on wages of low-wage workers, focusing on the timing of policy, spurious associations, and the type of living wage law passed in a city. Our estimates point to sizable positive wage effects in cities with broad living wage laws that cover employers receiving business assistance from the city. We also explore disemployment effects of living wage laws and find evidence consistent with tradeoffs between wages and employment.     

Minimum Wage Impacts from a Prespecified Research Design: Canada 1981–1997

Neumark (2001 ) used the novel methodology of a prespecified research design to estimate the employment effect of minimum wage changes. We conducted our analysis in the “spirit” of this methodology based on Canadian data from 1981 to 1997. Our minimum wage elasticities are substantial, typically in the range of ?0.14 to ?0.44, with ?0.30 being a reasonable point estimate, and with the effects being larger after lagged adjustments.     

How does population density influence agricultural intensification and productivity? Evidence from Malawi

This article uses nationally representative household-level panel data from Malawi to estimate how rural population density impacts agricultural intensification and household well-being. We find that areas of higher population density are associated with smaller farm sizes, lower real agricultural wage rates, and higher real maize prices. Any input intensification that occurs seems to be going to increasing maize yields, as we find no evidence that increases in population density enable farmers to increase gross value of crop output per hectare. We also find evidence that households in more densely populated areas increasingly rely on off-farm income to earn a living, but there appears to be a rural population density threshold beyond which households can no longer increase off-farm income per capita.