Does Ignoring Heterogeneity in Impacts Distort Project Appraisals? An Experiment for Irrigation in Vietnam

Could the simplifying assumptions made in project appraisalbe so far from the truth that the expected benefits of publicinvestments are not realized? Using data for Vietnam, commonlyused estimates of the benefits from irrigation investments basedon means are compared with impacts assessed through an econometricmodeling of marginal returns that allows for household and areaheterogeneity using integrated household-level survey data.The simpler method performs well in estimating average benefitsnationally but can be misleading for some regions, and, by ignoringheterogeneity, it overestimates gains to the poor and underestimatesgains to the rich. At moderate to high cost levels, ignoringheterogeneity in impacts results in enough mistakes to eliminatethe net benefits from public investment. When irrigating aslittle as 3 percent of Vietnam's nonirrigated land, the savingsfrom the more data-intensive method are sufficient to coverthe full cost of the extra data required, ignoring other benefitsfrom that data.     

Derivation of Long-run Factor Demands from Short-run Responses

The concept of the restricted cost function provides a dual approach to the analysis of short-run technology. It allows also, under curvature restrictions, inference of the different possible equilibria, according to constraints on the firms. Moreover, in this paper, the properties of the restricted cost function are spelled out. Substitution possibilities related to the different regimes are also derived from the restricted cost function. This theoretical framework is applied to characterize the French cereal-producing sector by using a cross-section of farms.     

Opportunities for Revitalizing Stagnant Markets: An Analysis of Household Appliances

For many durable consumer products, the conditions needed for sustained growth in sales seem to have disappeared. Some of these products have reached saturation levels of ownership; others seem to have plateaued at lower levels of ownership. The authors of this article, Professors Clark, Freeman, and Hanssens, have taken a multidisciplinary approach to the analysis of one portion of the consumer durables market—household appliances—to detect the underlying components of demand. They speculate on how these demand components will fare in the coming years and draw implications for the way these markets can be stimulated.     

The profit rate: where and how much did it fall? Did it recover? (USA 1948–2000)

This study is devoted to the empirical investigation of the gravitation of profit rates among industries around a single value in the United States since World War II. The framework of analysis is that developed by classical economists and Marx, and used in many contemporary studies. The gravitation of profit rates around a single value results from the mobility of capital seeking a maximum profit rate. A preliminary concern is to determine the field in which this mobility of capital is likely to occur. A segment of the economy is excluded because of its deficient capitalist nature. After this exclusion, it appears that the profit rates of industries do tend to gravitate around a common value. An important finding of this study is that this gravitation is not observable within a subset of industries, such as Transportation or Public Utilities, which utilize very large amounts of fixed capital in comparison to employment or output.     

Does rising landlessness signal success or failure for Vietnam's agrarian transition?

In the wake of reforms to establish a free market in land-use rights, Vietnam experienced a pronounced rise in rural landlessness. To some observers this is a harmless by-product of a more efficient economy, while to others it signals the return of the pre-socialist class structure, with the rural landless at the bottom of the economic ladder. We study the issue empirically using four household surveys spanning 1993–2004. Although we find rising landlessness amongst the poor, the post-reform landlessness rate tends to be higher for the non-poor. We find no support for the claim that the process of rising landlessness has been poverty-increasing in the aggregate.     

Marketing,violence and social cohesion: first steps to a conceptual approach to the understanding of the normalising role of marketing

ABSTRACT

This paper answers a call for contributions ‘dedicated to revealing how markets and marketing make violence culturally acceptable and socially normalised’. Such an investigation has to involve some in-depth conceptualisation with respect to the meanings of both marketing and violence. The market is an institution related to other institutions which altogether are – as in all societies – trying to cope with violence. Today our societies are based on both markets and democracy, but those institutions tend to be mutually contradictory. When marketing tends to replace politics and to almost religiously convert citizens into consumers it is social cohesion that is at stake. This paper aims at contributing to a deeper understanding of social/historical trends. As it highlights the importance of ideas (representations and motivations) and their links with changing institutions, it might help researchers and marketers to a broader understanding of their role and towards a more conscious social behaviour.     

Co-producing cyber protest: mesomobilization in the digital age

This article examines how mesomobilization deploys on the web to foster online resistance. We focus on a particular cyber protest targeting a governmental campaign against illegal downloading and show how webzines, as meso-level actors, managed to turn their readers’ comments into appealing frames around cultural legitimacy, Internet freedom and morality. In this instance, web users initiated the diagnostic framing and provided webzines with motives to launch a call to arms. This took the form of parody that produced a disruption and a set of grievances against the official campaign. Our fieldwork reveals the existence of online dormant networks – pre-existing fluid cultural groups sharing common interests – that meso-level actors readily mobilize when a crisis arises. Our study extends our understanding of consumer resistance by highlighting the dynamics of online networks in organizing overt protest and political challenge.     

On the Use of the Susenas for Modelling Consumer Behaviour

Indonesia's National Socio-Economic Survey (SUSENAS) is a potentially important source of data for econometric modelling of consumer demands. The paper attempts to clarify aspects of the SUSENAS which have not been widely appreciated by past users of the data, particularly concerning its interpretation, internal consistency, and the valuation methods used. Specific issues discussed include price and quality valuation, the pricing method for consumption goods, and inconsistencies in the household expenditure aggregates, the quantity units, and the commodity classification. It is argued that these issues have econometric implications for modelling consumer behaviour.     

Measuring long-run marketing effects and their implications for long-run marketing decisions

This paper discusses the role of agents’ beliefs and their implications for the economic modeling of their behavior, in particular, their behavior over time. The paper also discusses the corresponding planning problems facing both firms and consumers in their current decision making. After a general discussion of the consumer and firm problem, we discuss recent examples of some of the emerging empirical literature on dynamic choice behavior in marketing.