Revisiting constraints to smallholder participation in high-value markets: A best-worst scaling approach

We show how policymakers in developing regions can generate richer insights from using the choice experiment method best-worst scaling (BWS) method when ranking policy priorities on an importance scale. More specifically, we adopt BWS to provide an update on constraints that limit the participation of Kenyan horticultural smallholder farmers in modern agricultural value chains. In addition to traditional constraints posed by input market failures and missing institutions, we considered constraints such as trust and familiarity with buyers shown by recent empirical studies to inform smallholders’ market choices. Ascertaining the relevance of these constraints highlights our contribution to the existing literature. We find that farmers consistently rate access to high-quality inputs as their main constraint followed by concerns about access to credit, the high cost of meeting food standards, missing cooperatives, and exploitative intermediaries. Respondents considered insufficient labor, small farmlands, and weak tenure rights as the least important constraints. Age, location, gender, household income, and education influence the relative importance various segments of smallholders place on these constraints. For example, constraints are economic rather than personal for low-income farmers. Counterintuitively, rural smallholders are less likely to perceive poor transportation network as a constraint. Smallholders’ distrust of buyers they interact with is informed by their location and income. In designing intervention initiatives, policies that focus on segments of smallholders are needed for improving smallholder participation in modern agricultural value chains.     

Conflict heterogeneity in Africa

The economic development literature widely concurs that conflicts have adverse economic consequences that contribute to poverty, disinvestment and lower human capital leading to widespread inequality and lower economic growth. As such, understanding the nature of conflict has been an important focus for political leaders, policymakers and researchers alike. However, the existing literature does not typically distinguish between the effects of conflict determinants on conflicts by type of actor or aggressor (i.e. state, group and civilian-based). Using panel data analysis for 46 African countries from 1997 to 2017, and a comprehensive geo-referenced Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) conflict dataset, we find evidence of variation in the determinants' effects on conflicts by actor types. For the full sample of countries, we find that military expenditure decreases civilian-based conflicts; globalisation increases both state- and civilian-based conflicts while state fragility increases group-based conflicts. On the other hand, income per capita increases all three types of conflicts. At regional level, we find variation in the effects of military expenditure and globalisation on state- and civilian-based conflicts. However, we find little variation in the effects of the determinants on group-based conflicts across the regions. The findings highlight the nuances in conflicts by actor types and their causes which need to be accounted for when formulating conflict resolution policies.     

Capitalization of land development rights in rural China: A choice experiment on individuals’ preferences in peri-urban Shanghai

The capitalization of land development rights is acknowledged as the key to improving compensations for rural landholders and ameliorating land-related social conflicts in peri-urban China. Investigations into reasonable as well as feasible compensation standards and the capitalization mechanism are yet to be done. This study uses a survey-based choice experiment to empirically estimate the value of land development rights in peri-urban Shanghai for three forms of rural land conversion – acquisition, consolidation and (informal) sale. The results show that heterogeneity across individuals’ preferences translates into different utilities from land development, which affects individual’s willingness to participate in this process. This effect is found to be the strongest for land sales on the informal market. If, however, land conversion is managed by local governments and rural collectives, the expected utilities of individuals have no significant effect on the amount of land development. The results suggest that capitalizing land development rights under consideration of land attributes and individuals’ preferences would lift compensation standard to a level that strikes a balance among competing land-related interests. In addition, it would promote China’s land development by bypassing the institutional constraints imposed by the current land tenure system.     

中部崛起政策对地区产业升级的异质性影响与机制分析--基于PSM-DID方法的一项拟自然实验

国家中部崛起政策实施13年来,相关地区的经济发展和产业结构发生不同程度的变化。为进一步引导发展,需对这一政策的实施效果作整体评估和检验。基于1999-2013年我国201个地级市的面板数据,运用PSM-DID方法,从长期影响角度评估中部崛起政策实施效果。结果表明,以地区技术复杂度度量的产业结构得到了显著的提升。在此基础上考察中国式财政分权模式下政府财政行为波动对政策效果的影响,结果显示政府财政支出波动对地区产业升级会起到负面作用。进一步的机制检验表明,吸引外商直接投资、积极性政府财政政策、突破路径依赖是实现政策效果的中介变量;政策着力点主要在高技术水平的产业上;由于地区异质性的存在,部分省份产业升级并未达到预期效果。因此,制定新一轮崛起战略措施时,要因地制宜,充分考虑地区异质性,走内涵式发展道路。     

Multinational activity of European firms and heterogeneity

This paper offers an empirical assessment of the multinational activity of European firms. It takes the predictions of models of firm heterogeneity and FDI activity as a reference to explore the characteristics of multinational firms from 30 European countries. We use a data set, based on ORBIS, which links information of parent–affiliate pairs of firms. Our results show that more productive firms have greater multinational activity in terms of both scope, the number of foreign markets where they invest, and scale, the volume of local sales by subsidiaries active in foreign markets. The estimation of gravity equations shows that country characteristics that encourage multinational activity successively induce the entry of less productive parent firms. We confirm this asymmetry for the GDPs of the home and host countries, distance, contiguity and other standard gravity equation variables.     

Optimal granularity for portfolio choice

Many optimization-based portfolio rules fail to beat the simple 1/N rule out-of-sample because of parameter uncertainty. In this paper we suggest a grouping strategy in which we first form groups of equally weighted stocks and then optimize over the resulting groups only. This strategy aims at balancing the trade-off between the benefits from optimization and the losses from estimation risk. We rely on Monte-Carlo simulations to illustrate the performance of the strategy, and we derive the optimal group size for a simplified setup. Furthermore, we show that estimation risk also has an impact via the criterion by which the assets are sorted into groups (like the expected excess returns or betas), but does not negate the grouping approach. We relate our work to linear asset pricing models, and we conduct out of sample back-tests in order to confirm the validity of our grouping strategy empirically.     

State dependence in youth labor market experiences, and the evaluation of policy interventions

We investigate the extent and type of state dependence in labor market outcomes for young low-skilled Australians. Our model allows for three labor force states, employment, unemployment and out of the labor force, and for observed and unobserved heterogeneity. We find evidence of occurrence dependence, but no lagged duration dependence. A past employment spell increases the probability of employment in the future, but the length of the spell does not matter. A past spell of unemployment undoes the positive benefits from a spell in employment. Interpretations of these effects and implications for labor market policies are discussed.     

Pooling data for the analysis of dynamic marketing systems

Vector autoregressive (VAR) models have become popular in marketing literature for analyzing the behavior of competitive marketing systems. One drawback of these models is that the number of parameters can become very large, potentially leading to estimation problems. Pooling data for multiple cross-sectional units (stores) can partly alleviate these problems. An important issue in such models is how heterogeneity among cross-sectional units is accounted for. We investigate the performance of several pooling approaches that accommodate different levels of cross-sectional heterogeneity in a simulation study and in an empirical application. Our results show that the random coefficients modeling approach is an overall good choice when the estimated VAR model is used for out-of-sample forecasting only. When the estimated model is used to compute Impulse Response Functions, we conclude that one should select a modeling approach that matches the level of heterogeneity in the data.     

市场分割、地区异质性与经济增长质量

市场分割已成为影响我国经济实现高质量增长的重要因素。以往的研究多以经济增长速度作为经济增长的变量,未将经济增长质量纳入研究范围。通过对市场分割对经济增长质量的影响机制的理论分析,以及就不同类型市场分割对我国地区经济增长质量的影响的实证分析,结果显示:东部地区商品市场的分割对经济增长质量的不利影响程度较大,资本市场的分割是中部和东北地区经济增长质量的主要影响因素,西部地区则受到多类型市场分割的共同影响。为此,我国应当健全区域协调发展的政策体系,把基本经济制度优势转化为区域协调发展的治理效能,落实公平竞争审查制度、市场准入负面清单制度,建立统一开放、竞争有序的市场体系;各地区应当发挥自身比较优势,合理分工,在聚集过程中走向新的平衡,进一步优化营商环境,减少对资源配置的直接干预,实现区域高质量发展。