Sending Farmers Back to School: The Impact of Farmer Field Schools in Indonesia

This paper evaluates the impact of farmer field schools, an intensive participatory training program emphasizing integrated pest management. The evaluation focuses on whether program participation has improved yields and reduced pesticide use among graduates and their neighbors who may have gained knowledge from graduates through informal communications. The study utilizes panel data covering 1991–99 in Indonesia. The analysis, employing a modified "difference-in-differences" model, indicates that the program did not have significant impacts on the performance of graduates and their neighbors. Several plausible explanations for this outcome are discussed, and recommendations for improvements are suggested.     

Real-time forecasting US GDP from small-scale factor models

We show that the single-index dynamic factor model developed by Aruoba and Diebold (Am Econ Rev, 100:20–24, 2010) to construct an index of the US business cycle conditions is also very useful to forecast US GDP growth in real time. In addition, we adapt the model to include survey data and financial indicators. We find that our extension is unequivocally the preferred alternative to compute backcasts. In nowcasting and forecasting, our model is able to forecast growth as well as AD and better than several baseline alternatives. Finally, we show that our extension could also be used to infer the US business cycles very precisely.     

A participation model with non-convex budget sets: the case of the wives of the unemployed in Great Britain

In this paper we estimate a participation model for the wives of the unemployed in Great Britain. The aim is to bring new evidence about the importance of the disincentive effect caused by the Benefit System, in particular, by Supplementary Benefit, in explaning the low probability of participation associated with the wives of the unemployed. The participation model takes into account the non convexities of the budget set which are due to the characteristics of Supplementary Benefit. The utility function is assumed to be of the CES type.     

Competency Training for Managing International Cooperation Engineering Projects

Organizations are becoming more and more aware of how important it is to strengthen the competences of their project managers. This fact acquires greater relevance in the development and international cooperation sector because of the need to have qualified professionals who can take up the challenges and address the specific demands of an ever more demanding and constantly evolving sector. This article provides the results of research that more than 100 experts in project management and administration participated in to detect which competences are the most relevant in this context.     

Equilibrium with Default and Endogenous Collateral

We study a two‐period general equilibrium model with incomplete asset markets and default. We make collateral endogenous by allowing each seller of assets to fix the level of collateral. Sellers are required to provide collateral whose first‐period value, per unit of asset, exceeds the asset price by an arbitrarily small amount. Moreover, borrowers are also required to be fully covered by the purchase, in the first period, of state‐by‐state default insurance. These insurance contracts are offered by lenders. The insurance cost or revenue is a linear charge and plays the role of a spread penalizing borrowers who will incur in default and benefiting lenders who will suffer default. Under these assumptions, equilibrium always exists.     

火热经济与忧伤的中国人

金钱能买来幸福吗？没人回答能，包括那些改革开放中出现的中国暴发户。 可以肯定的是，中国确实在很多方面值得夸耀：现在已经是世界第二大经济体，仅次于美国，人均收入从1980年的不足200美元增长到2010年的3700美元，约3亿农民摆脱了绝对贫困。公民的预期寿命延长了十年。     

BOOK REVIEWSS

Gordon, John S. and Jack R. Arnold, Profitable Exporting: A Complete Guide to Marketing Your Products Abroad, New York: John Wiley &; Sons, 1988, vii + 358 pages.

Haggard, Stephan and Chung-in Moon (Eds.), Pacific Dynamics: The International Politics of Industrial Change, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989, ix + 389 pages.

Eichengreen, Barry, and Lindert, Peter H. (Eds.), The International Debt Crisis in Historical Perspective, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989, 282 pages.

Cohen, Richard, World Trade and Payments Cycles: The Advance and Retreat of the Postwar Order, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1989, xxiii + 229 pages.

Schaffer, Matt, Winning the Countertrade War: New Export Strategies for America, New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1989, xvii + 226 pages.

Grimwade, Nigel, International Trade: New Patterns of Trade Production and Investment, New York: Routledge, 1989, xv + 459 pages.

Salvatore, Dominick, International Economics, 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1990, xxxii + 695 pages.

Hibbert, Edgar P., The Management of International Trade Promotion, London: Routledge, 1990, x + 287 pages.

United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations, Services and Development: The Role of Foreign Direct Investment and Trade, New York: United Nations, 1989, x + 181 pages.

Friedländer, Michael (Ed.), Foreign Trade in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990, xiii + 241 pages.

Rollo, J. M. C., The New Eastern Europe: Western Responses, New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1990, 137 pages.

Gill, William J., Trade Wars Against America: A History of United States Trade and Monetary Policy, New York: Praeger, 1990, xvi + 325 pages.

Destler, I. M., and C. Randall Henning, Dollar Politics: Exchange Rate Policy-making in the United States, Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1989, xi + 174 pages.

Schott, Jeffrey J. (Ed.), Completing the Uruguay Round, Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1990, x + 223 pages.     

Optimal designs for generalized linear models with biased response

This paper is concerned with the search for locally optimal designs when the observations of the response variable arise from a weighted distribution in the exponential family. Locally optimal designs are derived for regression models in which the response follows a weighted version of Normal, Gamma, Inverse Gaussian, Poisson or Binomial distributions. Some conditions are given under which the optimal designs for the weighted and original (non-weighted) distributions are the same. An efficiency study is performed to find out the behavior of the D-optimal designs for the original distribution when they are used to estimate models with weighted distributions.