Is literacy shared within households? Theory and evidence for Bangladesh

A member of a collective-action households may or may not share the benefits of literacy with others in that household; the shared gains from doing so may well be offset by a shift in the balance of power within the family. Using household survey data for Bangladesh, we find strong external effects of education on individual earnings. Holding a range of personal attributes constant, an illiterate adult earns significantly more in the non-farm economy when living in a family with at least one literate member. These effects are strongest, and most robust, for women. Omitted-variable bias cannot be ruled out but would also be consistent with an intra-household externality of literacy.     

Child labor and household wealth: Theory and empirical evidence of an inverted-U

Some studies on child labor have shown that, at the level of the household, greater land wealth leads to higher child labor, thereby casting doubt on the hypothesis that child labor is caused by poverty. This paper argues that the missing ingredient may be an explicit modeling of the labor market. We develop a simple model which suggests the possibility of an inverted-U relationship between land holdings and child labor. Using a unique data set that has child labor hours it is found that, controlling for child, household and village characteristics, the turning point beyond which more land leads to a decline in child labor occurs around 4 ac of land per household.     

The Global Child Labor Problem: What Do We Know and What Can We Do?

The problem of child labor has moved from a matter of regionaland national concern to one of international debate and possibleglobal persuasion and policy intervention. In crafting policyfor mitigating this enormous problem of our times, it is importantto start with a proper theoretical and empirical understandingof the phenomenon. What gives rise to child labor, and whatare its consequences? What interventions might end child laborwithout hurting children? A well-meaning but poorly designedpolicy can exacerbate the poverty in which these laboring childrenlive, even leading to starvation. The article surveys the largeand rapidly growing literature on this subject, focusing mainlyon the new literature based on modern economic theory and econometrics.It also looks at some of the broad policy implications of thesenew findings, with the objective of contributing to better informeddiscussion and policy design.     

The structure of coalitional power under probabilistic group decision rules

The paper extends the work of S. Barbera and H. Sonnenschein on probabilistic social welfare functions by permitting quasi-transitive and/or acyclic probabilistic social preferences. Allowing for quasi-transitivity it is shown that the social decision rule is characterized by a subadditive veto power structure. Gibbard's result on oligarchy is shown to be a special case. Similarly, Sen's theorem on Paretian Liberals is shown to be implied by the power structure in the acyclic case.     

International credit and welfare: A paradoxical theorem and its policy implications

This paper considers a developing nation that faces a foreign exchange shortage and hence its demand for foreign goods is limited both by its income and its foreign exchange balance. Availability of international credit relaxes the second constraint. We develop a simple model of strategic interaction between lending institutions and firms, and show that the availability of international credit at concessionary rates can leave the borrowing nation worse off than if it had to borrow money at higher market rates. This ‘paradox of benevolence’ is then used to motivate a discussion of policies pertaining to international lending and the Southern government's method of rationing out foreign exchange to the importers.     

Controls as a Sharable Knowledge Commodity: An Architecture for Open Exchange

The world seems to be getting more dangerous: terrorists; fraudulent corporations; money laundering; hurricanes; pandemics. Governments and organizations respond with a flurry of new controls. In some cases these are centrally mandated (e.g. Sarbanes Oxley). In others, organizations struggle to find their own control solutions. Seldom, however, do organizations work together as a community of common interests to share solutions to their control threats. In this paper we consider how an open exchange of control solutions might be supported electronically. We assume a community of similar organizations that wish to exchange detailed knowledge about organizational control techniques. These might be non-competing institutions, such as libraries, customs agencies, and even universities; or, they may in fact be competing organizations, wishing to exchange control solutions in dimensions where they do not compete – e.g. the airlines exchanging best practice about safety and security. The main point is to propose an information technology architecture that permits a view of organizational controls as shareable, exchangeable knowledge commodities.     

RCA indices,multinational production and the Ricardian trade model

The practice of using Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) Indices to determine the flow of goods trade among countries is well established. But an important issue that demands attention is whether the RCA indices reflect the essentials of comparative advantage theory. Deb and Basu Foreign Trade Rev 46(3):3–28, (2011) examined the consistency of alternative RCA indices with the Heckscher-Ohlin theory of comparative advantage, leaving scope for re-examination of the indices in the context of the Ricardian comparative advantage theory, which insists on relative factor productivity differences among countries contrary to Heckscher-Ohlin’s relative factor endowment differences. The other issue which has been overlooked in much of the existing literature is the importance of value-added trade. With the growing importance of global production chains, RCA indices based on gross export values may not portray an accurate picture of the underlying comparative advantage of countries. In this context, adjusting the RCA indices to incorporate domestic value-added in exports seems to be quite relevant. This paper explores the consistency of RCA indices based on domestic value-added in exports with the Ricardian theory of comparative advantage using a panel data approach. A brief review on the structures of alternative RCA indices is also provided. The Log-of-Balassa index is found to be the best performer in this empirical examination, although the deficiencies of the index for cross-country or cross-commodity comparison must be acknowledged. The index of Yu et al. Ann Reg Sci 43(1):267–282, (2009) does possess the latter feature but in our study its performance is quite poor and hence its consistency with the Ricardian theory of comparative advantage is questionable.     

The impact of brand experience,service quality and perceived value on word of mouth of retail bank customers: investigating the mediating effect of loyalty

The purpose of this research is to study the impact of the antecedents—brand experience, service quality, and perceived value on word of mouth (WOM) recommendations by retail banking customers in an emerging market. The paper also investigates the mediating effect of loyalty on WOM with respect to the abovementioned antecedents. A survey of 412 retail customers of various banks in India was undertaken using a structured questionnaire developed using existing constructs. The results show that brand experience, service quality, and perceived value have a significant impact on WOM recommendations of customers of retail banks. Further, the relationships between the abovementioned antecedents and WOM are mediated by loyalty. This study makes several contributions to the academic literature. First, it establishes the importance of brand experience, service quality, and perceived value as antecedents of WOM in the context of retail banks in an emerging market. Second, it also establishes that loyalty plays a mediating role for the abovementioned antecedents for WOM recommendations by retail customers of banks in an emerging market.     

What drives customers toward proximity payment services? An integrated theory of planned behavior perspective

Proximity mobile payment (PMP) services facilitate mobile payments between payer and payee who are at same location thorough a proximity technology such as QR codes, Bluetooth, and near-field communication. It has potential to drastically change consumers' payment methods in developing countries where traditional finance infrastructure is lacking. However, there are various challenges to adopting PMP in such countries. This study aims to explore users' opinions on and motivations for using PMP by proposing an extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) model. It also seeks to resolve inconsistencies in PMP adoption studies regarding the role of user's trust in PMP services. A survey instrument was used to collect data from PMP users in a developing country. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. This study highlights trust as a mitigator of the negative effect induced by the perceived risk of using PMP services. It also validates that the TPB, coupled with other contextual factors, explains the adoption of PMP services in developing countries.     

Do Competition Improve Persistence in Innovation Effort? Sectoral Patterns and Evidence from India

Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade - This paper studies the persistence of innovation efforts by Indian manufacturing firms and how the innovation effort gets affected by the extent of...