Does the Ricardian Equivalence Proposition Hold in Less Developed Countries?

The objective of this paper is to assess whether the Ricardian Equivalence Proposition (REP) holds in developing countries. Prima facie, since the REP requires a number of assumptions that might not appear to be satisfied in developing countries, it seems that the REP should not hold. However, the empirical evidence provided so far is mixed. In this paper, the validity of the REP will be tested using panel data for ten developing countries: Burundi, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, India, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Zimbabw1e. The countries were chosen for the availability of data and should reflect the various circumstances of low-income countries. Despite the obvious limitation of the data available and the diversity of the countries, the results provide some tentative support for the REP for developing countries, at least warranting further research.     

Economies of Scale in Land Development in Australia

It is based on a paper presented to the 1st Conference of Australian and New Zealand Economists in Melbourne, May 1970.     

Learning from toys: Reflections on the 2007 recall crisis

The year 2007 will be remembered as the year the toy industry was shaken by a seemingly endless stream of recalls. The scope of this recent wave of recalls associated with lead‐tainted toys coming from China has focused the attention of parents and others responsible for ers who sell these toys, companies who import these toys, and numerous government officials on the problem of toys that have been painted with lead‐tainted paint. Much of the focus of this crisis is on China and its contractors. This is counterproductive and reactive. The problem of lead‐tainted imports is not new. The fact that China is currently in the crosshairs is to a large degree a function of their growth in importance as a preferred site for outsourced manufacturing. It is a volume issue. Lead‐tainted imports have many causes, and these will be explored in this article. This article concludes with a discussion of lessons that managers can take from this crisis. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Woman to women: Social marketing an idea to the new world

In 1971, Kotler and Zaltman developed a formal planning process for social marketing. But this article highlights the marketing of the idea of Britain's moral cause to American women in 1939–41, a clever example of social marketing thinly disguised to avoid the abhorrence attached to propaganda. The authors show how Ruth Drummond's letters in Ladies' Home Journal contain an effective mix of communication elements dedicated to winning women to a way of thinking that they had rejected initially. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Determining the appropriate deflation of nominal magnitudes in the UK consumption function: a non-nested test approach

This paper is concerned with the deflator(s) used to obtain series measured in real terms in ‘the’ consumption function. Since the precise deflator(s) to be used in any particular specification is not uniquely determined by theoretical considerations alone we consider ways of approaching the issue empirically. The starting point is to rearrange any given specification of ‘the’ consumption function so that a nominal consumption variable is explained. This implies that different deflators for consumption, and other variables in the initial specification which are expressed in real terms, define non-nested models. We therefore examine the issue of the appropriate method of deflation used non-nested tests. We consider the Davidson, Hendry, Srba and Yeo specification of the quarterly UK non-durable consumption function and find that the preferred method of deflating consumption and income variables is to use the total (durable and non-durable) consumption deflator. We also examine the quarterly UK consumption function of Carruth and Henley, based on the work Hendry and Von Ungern-Sternberg. In this case a prefered deflator does not emerge from the alternatives considered. We conclude by noting that the approach adopted in this paper should be useful in areas other than the consumption function literature.     

Tenants’ land access in the rental market: evidence from northern Ethiopia

The purpose of this study is to investigate the allocation efficiency in the tenancy market, and thereby the potential of the market to facilitate operational farm size adjustment that can help land‐poor tenant households to transform into smallholder commercial farms. We analyzed three rounds of balanced panel data for the production seasons 2005–2006, 2009–2010, and 2014–2015 collected from 320 smallholder farms in Tigrai region in northern Ethiopia. Random effects dynamic probit and tobit models are used to assess how land‐poor tenants’ access and extent of access to land are affected by state dependency (earlier participation in the market), kinship ties, climate shocks, and legal restrictions. The results indicate that state dependency and kinship ties with the landholder had strong positive effects on participation and intensity of participation. Climate shocks significantly affected the intensity of participation of tenants already in the rental market. Tenants’ overall access to rented land had not improved from 2005–2006 to 2014–2015. The amount of land accessed by those already in the market was insufficient for them to become commercial farmers. The important policy implication is that orchestrated interventions at community level are needed to reduce transaction costs and thereby improve land access of entrepreneurial tenants.     

On the Existence of Linear Equilibria in Models of Market Making

We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for a linear equilibrium in three types of competitive market making models: Kyle type models (when market makers only observe aggregate net order flow), Glosten–Milgrom and Easley–O'Hara type models (when market makers observe and trade one order at a time), and call markets models (individual order models when market makers observe a number of orders before pricing and executing any of them). We study two cases: when privately informed (strategic) traders are symmetrically informed and when they have differential information. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions on the distributions of the random variables for a linear equilibrium. We also explore those features of the equilibrium that depend on linearity as opposed to the particular distributional assumptions and we provide a large number of examples of linear equilibria for each of the models.     

Assessing the maintenance of savings sufficiency over the first decade of retirement

The goal of securing adequate resources in retirement dominates the ongoing debate regarding social security reforms designed to accommodate the demographic transformation and to provide minimum income security to retired workers. Policy proposals concerned with the implication of future public sector costs emphasize greater individual responsibility for meeting retirement resource goals. Proposals seeking minimum living standards imply expansion of public fiscal liabilities. We contribute to this discussion by examining the extent to which a cohort of US retirees were able to meet resource adequacy standards at the time of retirement, and to maintain initial levels of resources over the first decade of retirement. We compare annuitized wealth, including social security and pension wealth, to two adequacy standards—a household’s preretirement earnings (reflecting the goal of maintaining preretirement consumption) and the US poverty threshold (reflecting the goal of meeting minimum consumption standards). We analyze the relationship of individual characteristics to changes in resource adequacy over time, and identify the characteristics of those who gain and lose resources over the first decade of retirement. Finally, we simulate the effects on adequacy and public sector benefit costs of four social insurance policy proposals. This research was partially supported by a grant from the Social Security Administration. Additional support was provided by the Institute for Research on Poverty, the Graduate School and the Center for Demography and Ecology all at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Conclusions represent those of the authors alone and not of the funding agencies.