Smallholder land ownership in Kenya: distribution between households and through time

This study uses panel data to demonstrate two dimensions of land ownership: the distribution between households at a given time and changes within a household over time. We note that recognizing the latter dimension is only possible when analyzing rare long‐term panel data. We estimate a model for land ownership using a version of the correlated random effects estimator to uniquely identify the determinants of both dimensions amongst Kenyan smallholders. We find life cycle effects are a key determinant of both distributions, and identify important ways in which initial conditions such as inheritance and off‐farm income relate to the dynamics of ownership. We find that population density is a key determinant of differences between households, but also that a given household's land ownership is not affected in the short term as population density increases around them. Controlling for population density, households own more land when they are closer to road networks where the economic value of land is higher. We find important vulnerabilities for the land security of widows, but this vulnerability is geographically heterogeneous.     

Income inequality,unemployment, and poverty in Nigeria: a vector autoregressive approach

The main features of poverty are low levels of consumption and income, a fact‐of‐life in most African countries. This paper analyzes the fundamental trends of per capita income, government capital expenditure, the human development index, and the rate of unemployment in the Nigeria. A vector autoregressive model finds that: A reduced unemployment rate improves human development and consequently reduces poverty. As growth in public capital expenditure rises, unemployment falls and the human development index improves. Therefore, infrastructure‐based policies, which initially reduce unemployment, will also improve the living conditions of Nigerians in the end.     

Social Interaction Effects in Disability Pension Participation: Evidence from Plant Downsizing*

We estimate the magnitude of social interaction effects in disability pension participation among older workers in Norway. The problem of omitted variable bias is addressed using the exposure of an individual's neighbors to plant‐downsizing events as an instrument for the disability entry rate among the individual's previously employed neighbors. Our instrumental variable (IV) estimates suggest that an increase of one percentage point in the participation rate of previously employed neighbors increased the subsequent four‐year entry rate of older workers by about 0.4 percentage points. Numerous robustness and specification tests appear to support the validity of the identifying assumption in our IV strategy.     

A VERY BRITISH PHENOMENON? INDUSTRIAL POLITICS AND THE DECLINE OF THE JAPANESE COAL MINING INDUSTRY SINCE THE 1950S

This paper describes how the Japanese government gradually abandoned its support for coal mining after 1945. Drawing parallels with the British experience during the 1930s, this article shows how coal miners and owners in Japan were able to slow the pace of economic adjustment from the 1950s. The government's initial reluctance to act reflected its willingness to put industrial politics to the fore, preferring to avoid alienating political support and aggravating a vocal unionised sector of the labour force. It eventually accepted and acted upon the need for draconian retrenchment.     

AID AND DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA: THE DEBATE, THE CHALLENGES AND THE WAY FORWARD

The article discusses the emerging literature and debates on aid, within the context of expected increases in aid flows to the continent. The trends in ODA flows indicate a reversal in aid flows to the continent since 2000, with subsequent increases in aid intensity and dependence. Although the more recent literature on aid is doubtful if aid only spurs growth in a in a good policy environment, the aid‐institutional debate indicates a clear aid‐institutional paradox, especially relating to the macroeconomic effects, the fiscal response, the absorptive capacity and the good governance aid debates. The literature further indicates that aid could serve as a barrier to vulnerable societies. From the donors' perspective, it is evident that quantity of aid does not imply quality and that the ultimate responsibility lies with recipient governments to ensure more efficient absorption of aid.     

Facing the Age Wave and Economic Policy: Fixing Public Pension Systems with Healthcare in the Wings*

There are two overriding problems faced by ageing societies. One is the financing of public pension (social security in US terms) programmes. The other is paying for healthcare. This paper considers the healthcare issue briefly, emphasising that the issue arises primarily because of advances in medical technology. Better medical technology will improve healthcare in the future, but more advanced technologies also cost more. The focus of the rest of the paper is on the public pension problem. The emphasis is on the early retirement incentives inherent in the provisions of most public pension programmes around the world, the reduction in the labour force participation of older people caused by these incentives, and the large fiscal implication of the inducement of older people to leave the labour force. These results are based on the Gruber–Wise ongoing international social security comparison project.     

Cash crop liberalization and poverty alleviation in Africa: evidence from Malawi

This article uses the case of burley tobacco liberalization in Malawi to investigate the efficacy of cash crop liberalization as an instrument for poverty alleviation in sub‐Saharan Africa. The principal justification for cash crop liberalization is that markets allow farm households to increase their incomes by producing that which provides the highest return to their productive resources and use the cash to buy consumption goods. Using a latent welfare model, we find that households that selected to grow cash crops had higher incomes than those that did not grow cash crops. However, we also find that due to the lumpiness and seasonality of cash crop incomes, higher household incomes, while increasing food purchases did not significantly affect per capita food intake. Irrespective of participation in cash crops, for much of the cropping season rural households seem to rely more on nonfarm income for expenditure and consumption smoothing.