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Summary: This article tests the role of social learning in the modernization of a rural nonfarm industry, using data from a paper-manufacturing village that was transformed from a traditional handicraft industry into a modern industrial cluster. Knowledge diffusion through kinship networks is shown to have played a significant role in the dissemination of mechanized production by helping the followers to overcome subjective risk during the initial investment stage. The financial support through kinship networks also had a demonstrably positive impact on the diffusion of the technology, which removed financial constraints on the initial fixed investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This study examines the recent dynamics in the rapidly growing handmade paper industry in Nepal. The paper argues that the industry is sustainable from social responsibility as well as natural resources and economic perspectives. Five principle sources of socially responsible practices are identified: (1) traditional commitment to community development, (2) fair trade codes of conduct, (3) corporate social responsibility, (4) the industry’s business service organization (Nepal Handmade Paper Association), and (5) the general policy and legal framework. The paper concludes with a discussion of this industry as a case study of “positive deviance” and with lessons for contemporary innovation systems theory and for development policy and practice. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: In this paper, we analyze the diffusion and adoption of paper making machinery in the Indonesian pulp and paper industry, from 1923 till 2000. We develop a machine level index of technological sophistication (mach), which measures the technological distance of each paper machine to the world technological frontier. The data reveal a pattern of rapid technological catch up. But catch up was not an industrywide phenomenon. Some modern firms installed state-of-the-art machinery, while others installed older vintages. The paper argues that industrial policy has played an important role in the speed and nature of diffusion of paper making machinery. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Qualitative and quantitative methods are applied to assess the impact of CIFOR’s political economy research on the Indonesian pulp and paper sector. Key-informant interviews triangulated by trend-series tests suggest important influence through advocacy intermediaries and counterfactuals of slower adoption of improvements. Effects on conservation set-asides, overcapacity, and plantation establishment are estimated to avert loss of 76,000–212,000hectares of natural forest (135,000 under main assumptions). Application of an economic-surplus framework for environmental benefits of forest conservation and avoided implicit wood subsidies finds benefits of US$19 to US$583 million (US$133 million main estimate), compared with US$500,000 of direct research costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper uses data from the 2003/04 Cambodia Household Socioeconomic Survey to investigate the effects of property rights to land. Plots held with a paper documenting ownership in rural Cambodia are found to have higher productivity and land values than other plots, while property rights have weak effects on access to credit. The paper also investigates whether the introduction of private property rights leads to decreased availability of common property resources. The data offers only weak support for this hypothesis. The general insight is that policies to strengthen land property rights can have important, positive effects on the rural economy, even in an environment of low state capacity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Is there an alternative model to small family farming that could provide sustainable livelihoods to millions of resource-constrained and often non-viable smallholders in developing countries? Could group farming constitute such an alternative, wherein smallholders voluntarily pool land, labour and capital to create larger farms that they manage collectively? In South Asia, for instance, over 85% of farmers are small and increasingly female. Potentially, group farming could provide them economies of scale, a dependable labour force, more investible funds and skills, and greater bargaining power with governments and markets. But can this potential be realised in practice? In particular, can group farms economically outperform small family farms? A rare opportunity to test this is provided by two experiments begun in the 2000s in the Indian states of Kerala and Telangana. Constituted only of women, the groups lease in land to farm collectively, sharing labour, the cost of inputs, and the returns. But the states differ in several respects, including the technical support the groups receive, and their institutional base, composition, land access and cropping patterns. Based on the author's primary sample surveys in both states, this paper compares the productivity and profitability of group farms with that of small individual family farms in the same state. Kerala’s groups perform strikingly better than the predominantly male-managed individual farms, both in their annual value of output per hectare and annual net returns per farm, while in Telangana group farms perform much worse than individual farms in annual output, but are equivalent in net returns. In both states, groups do much better in commercial crops than in traditional foodgrains, where the largely male-managed individual farms, owning good quality land and with longer farm management experience, have an advantage. The factors underlying the differential performances of Kerala and Telangana, and the lessons learnt for possible replication, are also discussed. Overall, the paper demonstrates that group farming can provide an effective alternative, subject to specified conditions and adaptation of the model to the local context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on rural field research in three provinces of Northeast Thailand, the paper seeks to understand the ways in which life course, generational, era-defining and developmental change intersect, and why rural smallholders and smallholdings continue to persist notwithstanding deep structural change. We outline the creative ways that households and their members have sought to address the scissor effects of declining land holdings, rising needs, reduced relative returns to agriculture, and often precarious non-farm work. We posit, drawing on this work from Thailand, that while Asia’s ‘truncated agrarian transition’ goes some way to explaining the current empirical fact of persistent smallholders, we raise doubts whether the rural development agenda of modernisation, marketisation and rural exit will have the traction that governments and some scholars anticipate. A focus on production obscures how rural livelihoods also embody acts of consumption, care, reproduction and redistribution. Our study finds that the current experience of occupational multiplicity where households’ livelihoods comprise farm and non-farm, commoditised and quasi-subsistence, in situ and ex situ , production and care, and reproduction and redistribution will likely also persist, if non-farm occupations remains classically precarious and social safety nets thinly woven. The paper contributes to debates over agrarian and rural livelihood transitions in Asia, and sheds explanatory light on why the farm-size transition has not taken hold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Recent literatures examine the short-run effects of natural disasters on household welfare and health outcomes. However, less advancement has been observed in the use of self-reported data to capture the short-run disaster–development nexus in least developed countries’ with high climatic risks. This self-identification in the questionnaire could be advantageous to capture the disaster impacts on households more precisely when compared to index-based identifications based on geographical exposure. In this paper, we ask: “what are the impacts on household income, expenditure, asset, and labor market outcomes of recurrent flooding in Bangladesh?” We examine the short-run economic impacts of recurrent flooding on Bangladeshi households surveyed in year 2010. In 2010 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES), households answered a set of questions on whether they were affected by flood and its likely impacts. We identify treatment (affected) groups using two measures of disaster risk exposure; the self-reported flood hazard data, and historical rainfall data-based flood risk index. The paper directly compares the impacts of climatic disaster (i.e., recurrent flooding) on economic development. We further examine these impacts by pooling the data for the years’ 2000, 2005, and 2010 and compare the results with our benchmark estimations. Overall, we find robust evidence of negative impacts on agricultural income and expenditure. Intriguingly, the self-reported treatment group experienced significant positive impacts on crop income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary There has been a major expansion of social security programs in India during the last 15 years or so, along with wider recognition of economic and social rights. This paper discusses five programs that can be seen as partial foundations of a possible social security system for India: school meals, child care services, employment guarantee, food subsidies, and social security pensions. The record of these programs varies a great deal between Indian states, but there is growing evidence that they make an important contribution to human well-being, and also that the achievements of the leading states are gradually spreading to other states as well. Much scope remains for extending these efforts: despite the recent expansion, India’s social security system is still very limited in international perspective. The paper also discusses some general issues of social policy in India, such as the arguments for universalization versus targeting and the value of a rights approach to social security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Sen’s entitlement thesis rooted in social contract theory has been used to explain access to food, and is used by states to design social protection programs as transfer entitlements to diffuse food insecurities. Social protection programs have now burgeoned in several countries as a strategy to enable the poor to overcome risks, vulnerabilities and poverty. These social protection programs have inclusion and exclusion errors, which current theorization attributes mainly to political clientalism, social vulnerability, elite capture, targeting inefficiency, leakages and corruption, lack of information transparency and improper designing of social protection programs. This paper argues that the errors are due to a more fundamental assumption made in application of social contract and entitlement-based approach to social protection programing. It identifies an uncritical application of Sen’s entitlement thesis to social protection programs, as leading to inclusion and exclusion errors. The main problematic, the paper shows is that the social contract-led entitlement thesis works within the domain of formal rights situated within the state-citizen relations, and as such, misses out on the non-formal entitlements and non-state influences that impact materialization of social protection programs in practice. Evidences from flood prone Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh, India indicate that non-state rules linked with clientele and patronage relations, moral and local political economies trump over formal rights to mediate social protection entitlement outcomes. Rather than abstract state-citizen social contract, it is the moral contracts of reciprocal exchanges with influential patrons embedded in the moral economy of the villages that ultimately ground the social protection entitlement claims of poor villagers. Conceptualizing this process of access as cultures of entitlement, the paper builds a framework for reinterpretation of entitlements and their outcomes, suggesting a recalibration of application of Sen’s entitlement thesis to social protection programs. In conclusion it argues that Sen’s entitlement thesis which is pitched at transfer of economic resources through social protection from the state to the poor is inadequate. Learning from social movements currently leading the transparency and accountability struggles in India, it calls for an instituting and recognition of accountability as new cultural resource and entitlement. In conclusion it argues that information, and accountability as new cultural entitlements, when mobilized through collective agency of the poor can potentially challenge the current cultures of entitlements evidenced in this paper that presently underlie social protection outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Recognizing that enterprises operate at varying levels of informality, this paper evaluates the determinants of their degree of informality. Reporting a 2012 survey of 300 informal microenterprises in the city of Lahore in Pakistan, the finding is that the key predictors of their level of informality are the characteristics of the entrepreneur and enterprise, rather than their motives or the wider formal and informal institutional compliance environment. Lower degrees of informality are associated with women, older, educated, and higher income entrepreneurs and older enterprises with employees in the manufacturing sector. The paper concludes by discussing the theoretical and policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper examines how the efficacy of energy-saving policies can be improved through learning. Effective allocation of energy-saving targets is key to achieving China’s reduction targets for energy intensity. Despite growing research interest in the energy-saving target allocation system, details regarding the logic and rationale behind the modifications to the system since the 11th FYP period remain unclear. This paper contributes to the previous literature by applying the concept of policy learning to an analysis of how and from what sources the Chinese government has learned to improve its energy-saving target allocation system over the 2006–13 period. Our study finds that the Chinese government has developed a distinct policy style of “learning from multiple sources” that involves three primary sources: previous experience, local practice, and expert knowledge. Although the extant literature has previously identified these three sources of learning, most of this literature has focused on only one—or at most two—sources of learning at any given time. The uniqueness of policy learning in the energy-saving target allocation system consists of the co-existence of these three sources of learning in one case. This learning-oriented policy style is characterized by reflexivity, which allows current policies to be adjusted in a timely manner in order to alleviate prospective risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The concept of autonomous adaptation is widely used to describe spontaneous acts of reducing risks posed by resource scarcity and, increasingly, climate change. Critics, however, have claimed it is unproven, or simplifies the agency by which smallholders respond to risk. This paper presents empirical research in eight Karen villages in Thailand to identify how resource scarcity is linked to adaptive responses including livelihood diversification. The paper argues that autonomous adaptation is driven by how environmental change and scarcity present livelihood risks, rather than physical risks alone. Adaptation planning therefore should acknowledge different experiences of risk, and socio-economic barriers to adaptation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper contributes to the impact evaluation of GIs by carrying out a case study of Basmati rice in India. Although Basmati rice is not yet an official GI, its long standing reputation for quality and GI-like protection by major importing countries except the United States (US) has rendered it a mirror image of a GI good. The analysis is based on a survey of 299 Basmati and nonBasmati rice farmers in Uttarakhand, one of the Northern states [1] India, officially Republic of India is a republic comprised of 28 constituent states and seven Union territories. These states and union territories are partially self-governing states or regions united by a central (federal) government. In India, this self-governing status of the component states is typically constitutionally entrenched and may not be altered by a unilateral decision of the central government. 1 of India. The empirical strategy of the paper is three-pronged. First, a net income analysis has been carried out to elicit the net benefits of Basmati rice as opposed to nonBasmati rice and another competing crop in that region such as sugarcane. The findings show that Basmati rice is more profitable than the nonBasmati varieties but less so than sugarcane. In the second stage, the endogeneity-corrected Heckman selection model reveals that Basmati adoption has increased welfare of the households. Finally, a Tobit model is estimated to investigate the determining factors of Basmati adoption among the farmer households. The determining factors are found to be access to extension training facilities, a credible hedge against risk, and the availability of household labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper investigates the impact of foreign labor on domestic manufacturing wages through a case study of Malaysia, a country where foreign labor has played a key role in manufacturing growth over the past two decades. The main focus of the paper is on an econometric analysis of the determinants of inter-industry variation in wage growth using a new panel dataset. The results suggest that wage growth is fundamentally embedded in the structure and performance of domestic manufacturing. There is evidence of a statistically significant negative impact of foreign labor on the growth of unskilled-worker wages, but the magnitude of the impact is rather small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper attempts to quantify the impact of fiscal decentralization in India on its social infrastructure and on rural development. Overall, the results in this paper indicate that Government of India within a federal framework has been fostering development equitably across its states, particularly through health and education expenditures aimed at improving human capital development. In this context, the importance of the two tier centre-states decentralization should be noted. However, the third tier of local governance, particularly the state-rural local bodies decentralization has been dismal and has not achieved significant results across states, which warrant the attention of the central and state governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Enforcement of and compliance with pollution control laws is inter-related. • The probability of inspection influences plant-level compliance and vice versa. • Enforcement activity is targeted towards frequent violators. • Plants that belong to dirty industries are more stringently monitored but those belonging to more profitable firms less so. • Plants with high abatement costs and those that are new comply less frequently. Abstract Effective implementation of environmental regulations is an important concern for emerging economies that face serious environmental degradation. In this paper we analyze compliance and enforcement of environmental regulations in India. In particular, we model: (i) plant-level compliance with water and air pollution control laws in the state of Punjab, and (ii) the decisions of the regulatory agency, namely, the Punjab Pollution Control Board to enforce these laws through inspections and other administrative actions. The two decisions are interrelated. For a sample of 117 large water polluting plants and 109 large air polluting plants the probability of inspection influences plant-level compliance and vice versa. We also find enforcement activity is targeted towards frequent violators. Plants that belong to dirty industries are more stringently monitored but those belonging to more profitable firms less so. Plants with high abatement costs and those that are new comply less frequently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: China’s state-owned banks have demonstrated a tremendous capacity for change, but their implications for development policy are often unclear. The paper examines why the pre-reform banking system based on moral compromise almost seamlessly changed to one based on self-advancement. Focusing on a period when resources were desperately short, the paper argues that China’s great advantage has been Hong Kong and the safe access to international markets it provided. Consequently China’s leadership is more familiar with international markets than is often assumed, and although capitalism is no longer exceptional, access to formal institutions continues to be a core development priority in achieving modernization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper examines the role of social capital in the sustainability of induced community-based organizations (CBOs). Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 14 villages and 129 CBOs in Southern Nepal. This paper argues that social capital can be both positive and negative, affecting collective action and the sustainability of CBOs. Major problems include rule breaking with impunity and elite capture of resources, especially during the transition phase from external to internal management. While external agencies play an important role in inducing and sustaining CBOs, they should also address the complex issue of social capital and its downside. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper investigates the traits of self-employed entrepreneurs in urban China, an economy rife with informational and institutional imperfections, under-developed financial markets, but a growing and important non-state sector. Despite this challenging context, this paper finds that entrepreneurs make on average 20% more than non-entrepreneurs, while being similar in age, marital status, educational attainment, and socio-economic background. Fewer are Communist Party members and more have experienced unemployment, however. Women, Party members, more educated and older workers are less likely to become entrepreneurs. Social networks, motivation and drive, and attitudes toward risk, are all significant factors associated with entrepreneurship. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper applies a conceptual framework of “governance failure” to an analysis of the institutional dimensions of urban water supply provision to poor households, focusing on the case of Jakarta. Data from a household survey, archives, GIS-based mapping, and interviews are used to document governance failures that create disincentives for utilities to connect poor households and for poor households to connect. The paper concludes by suggesting that the debate over the relative merits of public and private provision has diverted attention from the pressing issue of governance reform, and by raising the question of whether household provision of networked water supply by monopolistic providers (whether public or private) is universally feasible given the current water supply policy norms. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper examines the effects of forest devolution on the livelihoods of the rural poor. The paper analyzes changes in forest endowments and entitlements among households brought about by “forestland allocation” in two villages of Vietnam’s Central Highlands. Its results indicate that not only the nature of devolved rights but also broader political and economic processes influence the extent and distribution of benefits. Even where devolution generates benefits to local people in poor areas, local power relations and the institutions regulating access to productive resources may constrain the ability of the “poorest of the poor” to take advantage of devolution. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: The transition to a market economy, in which privatization of state owned assets plays a central role, has been accompanied in many instances by a significant deterioration in the distribution of income and large increases in poverty. This paper investigates to what extent the choices made with respect to privatization contributed to these distributional changes in the case of Mongolia. It finds that some of the methods chosen and the manner of their implementation were significant. As many assets still remain in state hands and a number of controversial privatizations are proposed, the paper makes some suggestions to reduce the adverse distributional consequences. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: The paper reviews the literature on the characteristics and impact of opinion leaders on the diffusion of new knowledge, concluding that there is no clear evidence on whether opinion leaders are more effective if they are similar in socio-economic attributes to the other farmers rather than superior to would-be followers. A multivariate analysis of the changes in integrated pest management knowledge in Indonesia among follower farmers over the period 1991–98 indicates that opinion leaders who are superior to followers, but not excessively so, are more effective in transmitting knowledge. Excessive socio-economic distance is shown to reduce the effectiveness of diffusion. The paper then derives operational implications of the empirical results. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Dramatic demographic changes accompanied the decay and collapse of the Soviet Union. This paper considers their long-run economic effects, particularly with respect to impacts on government budgetary positions due to social transfers. Using a detailed actuarial forecasting model for the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan, the paper demonstrates that the effect of the transition will be felt far into the 21st century, as government budget pressures to meet social expenditure needs result in lower savings rates and higher public debt. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the nature of the on-going urban transition in developing countries, the quality of the available data, and the uncertainty of existing urban forecasts. Although the recently released United Nations’ publication World Urbanization Prospects is an invaluable resource for those interested in studying urban change, the data in the report are somewhat deceptive in their apparent completeness and beyond the narrow confines of technical demography there is a great deal of misunderstanding and misreporting about what these data mean and how they should be interpreted. For example, while the scale of urban change is unprecedented and the nature and direction of urban change is more dependent on the global economy than ever before, many aspects of the traditional distinction between urban and rural are becoming redundant. This paper provides a broad overview of the available evidence on patterns and trends in urban growth in developing countries, highlighting regional differences where appropriate. The paper also examines the quality of past urban population projections and finds that there has been considerable diversity in their quality by geographic region, level of development, and size of country. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Most of the available studies on commodity chains and upgrading pursue a narrow economic view. This paper points to the need for mapping the social linkages of production and movement of commodities. In relation to upgrading, the paper emphasizes the importance of looking at their social implications. Toward these goals, the paper advances the idea of socially embedding the commodity chain. The idea is demonstrated by examining, from a long-run historical perspective, the global coir yarn commodity chain of southern India. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Viewing chronic poverty in terms of extended duration, severity and multidimensional deprivation, this paper uses existing literature to draw attention to those people in India for whom poverty is intractable. Two sets of approaches are used: an area-based approach and an historically marginalized groups-based approach. The area-based approach maps the location of the chronically poor by identifying states and regions that have been especially vulnerable to poverty in terms of severity and multidimensionality. It focuses on drylands and forest-based regions. The historically marginalized groups approach draws attention to groups who have suffered multiple deprivations for long periods. Chronic poverty is disproportionately high among casual agricultural laborers, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. In conclusion, the paper briefly reviews the factors that contribute to chronic poverty and the efficacy of policies to reduce such deprivation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Building and nurturing institutions are most challenging tasks in any development work. In this paper an attempt has been made to understand the rise and fall of institutions involved in the management of forest resources. This has been done through comparative case studies of Van (Forest) Panchayats of Uttaranchal and Forest Protection Committees of West Bengal in India. As has been documented, Van Panchayats have been created as a response to the people’s movement against forest reservation at the beginning of the 20th century. The concept of Forest Protection Committees under Joint Forest Management in India has recently emerged in response to the severe degradation of forest resources and the persistent conflicts and movements against the State. The paper goes on to explain the evolution, management systems and effectiveness of these institutions along with the issues they are confronted with in the management and protection of forest resources. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper investigates how climate change strategies and resource conflicts are shaping each other in the Greater Aural region of western Cambodia. Agro-industrial projects linked to climate change goals are reshaping both social and ecological dynamics, by altering patterns of access to land and water resources as well as the nature of the resources themselves. Using a landscape perspective, we investigate these social and ecological changes occurring across space and time. Drawing on data from community researchers, field visits, interviews and secondary sources, we examine two kinds of connections between climate change responses and resource conflicts in the Greater Aural: 1) demand for biofuels as a driver of flex crop expansion; and 2) the construction of irrigation infrastructure as a climate change adaptation strategy. Findings include that some impacts of flex crop expansion and irrigation systems are local and immediate, for example when villagers lose land, plantation workers are not paid, and cassava processing pollutes local water supplies. Other impacts are transferred to different locations or deferred to the future, for example when changes in water quality and quantity affect those living downstream, or when soil degraded by cassava production becomes unproductive for future generations. We conclude that climate change strategies are now deeply entangled with resource conflicts in the Greater Aural region. Adopting a landscape perspective and working directly with community researchers opens new pathways for identifying not only site-specific, but also cumulative and shifting impacts of climate change strategies and their relationship to resource conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strengthening the rule of law and promoting access to justice in developing countries have been longstanding international policy objectives. However, the standard policy tools, such as technical assistance and material aid, are routinely criticized for failing to achieve their objectives. The rare exception is paralegal aid, which is almost universally lauded by policymakers and scholars as effective in promoting the rule of law and access to justice. This belief, however, rests on a very limited empirical foundation regarding what paralegal programs accomplish and under what theory they operate. This paper critically examines the conventional wisdom surrounding paralegal initiatives through case studies of two successful paralegal programs in post-conflict Timor-Leste that are broadly representative of the type of initiatives commonly implemented in developing countries. These programs did improve access to justice services, bolster choice between dispute resolution forums, and increase local knowledge of progressive norms on human rights and women’s rights. Yet, as this article shows, even successful programs can expect to achieve only incremental gains in promoting the rule of law because advances largely depend on alignment with the priorities of powerful state and non-state actors, donors, program implementers, and paralegals themselves. To date, the literature has not acknowledged these limitations. This article addresses this gap by demonstrating that paralegal aid faces multiple challenges that mean paralegals cannot necessarily transcend or modify deep seated norms and power structures. These issues include principal agent-problems due to the extensive delegation required, internal limitations resulting from paralegals’ limited authority and independence, and external constraints from state and non-state justice actors. Paralegal programs also face program design, implementation, and sustainability challenges. Consequently, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers need to adopt a more balanced view of paralegal aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Son preference is widespread in a number of developing countries despite substantial improvements in education levels and economic development. One potential explanation for the persistence of this phenomenon is that individual household members like the mother derive large non-monetary benefits from giving birth to a son and therefore prefer boys to girls. Qualitative evidence suggests that such benefits exist and may depend on the child’s age. This paper uses large nationally representative datasets from India and tests whether having a son leads to higher decision-making powers for mothers than having a daughter. Since the number and gender composition of children is likely to be non-random for families that want a son, I focus on first-born children for whom the sex ratio of girls relative to boys is normal. The main analysis also focuses on young children of up to six months, which gives parents little time to adjust desired birth-spacing intervals that could be systematically correlated with decision-making powers and child gender. The results show little evidence of consistently large female benefits shortly after birth, and any positive impacts of having a son disappear after the first six months. There are also no large benefits for adult sons. These empirical patterns do not support qualitative evidence suggesting that women benefit from the birth of a son through larger decision-making powers in the household because of increased respect by other household members. The benefits also do not heavily depend on the child’s age, which is not consistent with a channel predicting a better bargaining position for women with adult sons who start taking over the running of the household. Overall, these results extend our understanding of individual-specific incentives for son preference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Research on economic status and adult mortality is often stymied by the reciprocity of this relationship and lack of clarity on which aspect of economic status matters. While financial resources increase access to healthcare and nutrition and reduce mortality, sickness also reduces labor force participation, thereby reducing income. Without longitudinal data, it is difficult to study the linkage between economic status and mortality. Using data from a national sample of 132,116 Indian adults aged 15 years and above, this paper examines their likelihood of death between wave 1 of the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), conducted in 2004–05 and wave 2, conducted in 2011–12. The results show that mortality between the two waves is strongly linked to the economic status of the household at wave 1 regardless of the choice of indicator for economic status. However, negative relationship between economic status and mortality for individuals already suffering from cardiovascular and metabolic conditions varies between three markers of economic status—income, consumption, and ownership of consumer durables—reflecting two-way relationship between short- and long-term markers of economic status and morbidity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary In this paper, we propose a new method of poverty decomposition. Our method remedies the shortcomings of existing methods and has some desirable properties such as time-reversion consistency and subperiod additivity. Our decomposition integrates the existing methods of growth-redistribution decomposition and sector-based decomposition, because it allows us to decompose the change in poverty into growth and redistribution components for each group (e.g., regions or sectors) in the economy. Our decomposition works well in cases where only partial data are available for some periods. It is also flexible and can be extended to have the following six components: population shift, within-region redistribution, between-region redistribution, nominal growth, inflation, and methodological change components. The empirical application of the six-way decomposition to the Philippines for the period 1985–2009 shows that important policies for poverty reduction may differ across regions. For example, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao would need growth-enhancing policies, whereas Eastern Visayas would need policies to improve the income distribution. Our decomposition method has a wide applicability and may complement the poverty profile approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Local variation in social welfare provision appears in myriad contexts around the world. And yet, our attempts at conceptualizing welfare regimes focus on the national level. In China, local authorities have shaped social policy implementation since economic reforms. In this paper, I answer three questions about subnational variation in social policy provision in China: (1) Have Chinese provinces diverged in their social policy provision?; (2) How do provincial social policy regimes differ from one another?; (3) What explains variation in provincial social policy spending? To answer the first question, I conduct a cluster analysis of provincial social policy spending data. I find that provinces systematically diverge in their social policy priorities. While some provinces invest in education to develop human capital and promote economic growth, others emphasize poverty alleviation. I propose a typology to conceptualize these tendencies. I then test for these divergent approaches using between-effects regression models of provincial social policy spending. Although provincial wealth and needs sometimes play a role in allocations for social policy, I find that economic development strategy and social instability are associated with distinct approaches to social welfare spending. These distinct provincial welfare regimes have implications for the adoption, implementation, and ultimately, effectiveness of social policy in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary It is well known that consumption patterns change with income. Relative price changes would therefore affect rich and poor consumers differently. Yet, the standard price indices are not income-specific, and hence, they cannot account for such differences. In this paper, we study consumption inequality in India, while fully allowing for non-homotheticity. We show that the relative price changes during most of the period from 1993 to 2012 were pro-poor, in the sense that they favored the poor relative to the rich. As a result, we also find that conventional measures significantly overstate the rise in real consumption inequality during this period. The main lesson from our study is the importance of accounting for non-homotheticity when measuring inequality. The price index literature has, as of yet, paid relatively little attention to this. In our application, however, it turns out that the allowance for non-homotheticity is quantitatively much more important than much discussed adjustments, such as those for substitution in consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Community-centered development in Myanmar favors areas with less vulnerable populations and more luminosity. • Among villages with similar luminosity, aid goes to villages in greater need. • Aerial luminosity, consistently available and not constrained to a specific scale, is a robust proxy for regional needs at a granular level. • High-resolution spatial measures have stronger predictive power for aid location than surveyed wealth measures. • Donors adopting developmental state theories reach out to conflict areas while donors adopting neoliberal theories focus on poverty reduction. Development aid has greater potential to alleviate poverty when targeted towards areas of concentrated need. However, the body of research examining subnational aid targeting is often constrained to state- or district-level analysis due to the lack of aid or wealth data in small regions. This study fills this gap by examining the poverty orientation of aid at the granular spatial units where the pro-poor interventions are implemented. Specifically, it explores the extent to which community-centered development (CCD) in Myanmar takes place in poor villages. This paper estimates aid presence and density, given regional poverty, by linking detailed aid location with nightlight luminosity and wealth-related data. Overall, densely aided areas tend to shine brighter and have a lower share of vulnerable populations. However, for villages with similar luminosity, aid goes to areas with fewer resources. This study also finds heterogeneity in the targeting practice among donors who adopt different ideologies. The market-oriented World Bank project supports poorer villages whereas the Korean International Cooperation Agency's project, drawing from the developmental state, includes villages close to conflict zones. Some evidence of needs-based allocation in this study runs counter to previous findings that aid favors richer states and districts. The result of this study suggests that analyzing aid at a fine-grained level with high resolution spatial data can provide a more nuanced view of aid targeting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Development ideologies have shaped two models of community-centered development in Myanmar. • SMU reflects the perspectives of the developmental state while the NCDDP represents revised neoliberalism. • The two models differ regarding the main agency of change, the handling of power, and the prioritized dimensions of development. Community-centered development (CCD) has gained renewed interest as a means of providing aid to fragile states. This paper aims to explore how CCD aid projects in a fragile state are shaped by distinctive ideologies. Using document reviews, stakeholder interviews, and spatial analysis, this paper analyzes two aid projects in Myanmar: the Korean government-supported Saemaul Undong (SMU, New Village Movement) and the World Bank-supported National Community-Driven Development Project (NCDDP). Each project reflects the perspectives of the developmental state and revised neoliberalism, respectively. This study finds that the intervention strategies of SMU and NCDDP differ in terms of their main agency of change, handling of power, and prioritized dimensions of development. SMU engages with government extension workers as change agents, and ties accountability to performance. By contrast, the NCDDP works with private facilitators and emphasizes the processes of inclusion. This paper suggests that one useful tool for CCD intervention is the deconstruction and integration of East Asian/Southern and Western/Northern approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper illustrates the sharp contrast in welfare impacts between the rich and the poor caused by typhoon Milenyo in a Philippine village. We find that fish prices dropped sharply due to the damage caused to fish pens near the village, leading to positive net welfare gains among the wealthy. In contrast, the poor do not consume much fish and thus did not gain from the sharp decline in prices. Finally, consumption reallocation played an important role as an ex post risk-coping measure, albeit only among the wealthy, who are relatively well-protected against typhoons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Previous literature suggests that social capital at the individual and community levels can contribute significantly to poverty reduction. In this paper we empirically investigate the relationship between social capital and households’ probability of living under poverty. We used a large-scale cross-sectional survey in western Chinese provinces to explore the impact of households’ social capital on four different poverty measures. Our results indicate that in addition to the structural and relational properties of households’ social networks, the types of resources embedded in these networks such as business ties, political ties, and appropriable social organizations can contribute significantly to poverty reduction. Moreover, since our study is situated in China’s emerging economy context, we can thus further explore how variations in macrolevel institutions affect the usefulness of various social resources in reducing poverty. We discovered that the quality of local institutions as measured by local residents’ trust toward the institutions can modulate the effectiveness of political ties and appropriable social organizations, such that the impacts of political ties and appropriable social organizations tend to diminish in communities with higher level of institutional trust than they are in communities with lower level of institutional trust, while business ties turn out to be effective in alleviating poverty in both high- and low-trust communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary In the context of climate change and its effect on poverty, previous studies have shown that productivity shocks in agriculture, such as rainfall variability, affect wages adversely. None of the studies, however, consider the heterogeneity in the impact of these shocks on agricultural wages by gender, a feature which has been studied for demand shocks in urban labor markets for developed countries. Using National Sample Survey data for India from 1993 to 2007, a district-level panel dataset is created to examine how a rainfall shock affects the gender wage gap. The study shows that both female and male wages are positively related to rainfall shocks. Hence, future studies must study the impact of labor market shocks in rural areas on both female and male wages separately. It also finds that the female-to-male wage ratio is significantly positively associated with a rainfall shock in regions where rainfed rice is cultivated, i.e., low (high) rainfall reduces (increases) the female-to-male ratio. The study demonstrates that this result is due to a positive association of demand for female labor with rainfall in these rainfed rice-growing regions. This finding is consistent with the greater marginal value of female labor in rice cultivation, which is also a crop highly sensitive to rainfall variability under rainfed conditions. The paper concludes that the effect of a rainfall shock on the gender wage gap depends upon the gender roles underlying the technology of production, which varies across cropping systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper investigates the link between the wartime governance of rebel groups and post-civil war civilian identity. Focusing on Sri Lanka, it explores why and how individuals’ wartime experience continues to influence their affinity to subnational entities in post-war society. Analyzing original survey data with Structural Equation Modeling, the results show that civilians’ consciousness of rebel statehood has a positive effect on the formation of a subnational identity in the aftermath of civil war. The legacy of rebel governance persists and retains an impact on civilian identity in the post-war context. The findings suggest that those charged with the task of post-war reconstruction need to take into account the long-lasting influence of rebel statehood in order to successfully rebuild integrated communities. A post-war regime cannot simply implant a new national identity if it dismisses this influence because post-war identity is a consequence of civilians’ experience of governance by non-governmental but de facto state actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Under what conditions does economic growth benefit the poor? One way to answer this question is to identify and compare positive and negative outlier areas, those that experience greater and lesser poverty reduction, respectively, compared to what was anticipated given their levels of economic growth. The more similar these areas, the more leverage there is to unearth the factors that allow the poor to benefit from growth. In this paper, we employ an inductive approach to glean possible pathways out of poverty from two highly similar underdeveloped neighboring provinces in northeastern Thailand. Using extensive fieldwork and interviews, we explore factors that can account for one province reducing poverty at a quicker pace than expected, even as the other failed to channel its faster growth into significant poverty reduction. Our study finds that in Surin province, because a strong network of local NGOs was working closely with provincial leadership, national policies that targeted the poor found fertile ground and thrived. Small-scale, low-tech, rural-based initiatives including organic rice, handicraft production, and rural tourism helped drive initially high levels of poverty down. Though many in Si-Saket also pursued many of these initiatives, they were structured in ways that promoted economic growth but largely prevented poor farmers from benefitting. Further research can examine whether this kind of “micro-oriented” path to rapid rural poverty reduction is useful in other contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper shows that colonial institutions are attenuating the impact of NREGA. • Rural and agricultural wages in non-landlord districts increased significantly. • In non-landlord districts NREGA reduces time-spent by women in unpaid domestic work. • NREGA does not impact wages in landlord districts as its provision is insufficient. By providing 100 days of guaranteed employment to every rural household, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) can challenge the hegemony of landed elites as major employers in the Indian countryside. Using the colonial classification of landlord and non-landlord-based land-revenue institutions in India, this paper provides a political economy explanation for regional variation in the labor market impact of NREGA. The extractive landlord-based system led to high inequality in landownership and political domination by a large landlord class. Comparing the labor market impacts of NREGA between the landlord and non-landlord districts in a difference-in-differences and triple-difference framework, we find that the provision of public employment under NREGA and correspondingly, its impact on rural wages is muted in landlord districts. In these districts, public employment under NREGA substitutes for self-farming but has no impact on private wage employment. However, the program is highly successful in raising wages by generating more public employment in non-landlord districts. In these districts, the provision of public employment under NREGA crowds-out labor primarily from unpaid domestic work, reflecting an increase in women's participation in the program. These findings suggest that NREGA has not become a credible alternative to private employment in regions historically characterized by exclusionary economic and political institutions since large land-owning elites in these regions have managed to keep wages depressed by virtue of their position as major employers in the countryside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The paper looks at productivity differentials across women and men managed farms in India. • We find that productivity on women managed farms is on an average 11% lower than male managed farms. • This gap reduces to 7% once crop choice, input usage, location and farmer characteristics are controlled for. • Semi-parametric decomposition shows that productivity differential remains largest in lower part of the value distribution. • Heterogeneity analyses shows inadequate experience among women managers as a contributor to the residual productivity gap. In India, role of women as farm managers has been veiled behind image of men as primary decision makers on farms. Data shows that approximately 8% farm households had women farm managers in India in 2004, and this number increased to 11% in 2011. This rising phenomenon of farm management by women begets an in depth understanding about these farms, including, differentials in productivity levels across men and women managers. This paper uses three measures to capture productivity – production value, profit value and crop specific yields. Results show that total farm production and profits are lower by approximately 11% in households where women manage farms. This falls to 7% when controls for crop choice, input usage, location and farmer characteristics are included. The main mediating factors in explaining the productivity gap are crop choice and input usage, explaining almost 45% of the productivity gap. Further, the paper provides suggestive evidence on mechanisms contributing to the remaining productivity difference that cannot be explained by differences in observed characteristics. It shows that inadequate experience of women farm managers in agricultural production processes can be an important factor behind the remaining gap. The study makes two contributions to the literature – one, it is the first quantitative study in the Indian context on gender differentials in farm productivity and second, it applies semi-parametric decomposition techniques to look at the productivity differentials along the entire distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper analyzes the causal impact of blackouts on the performance of micro and small enterprises in developing economies. • Estimates the cost of blackouts in Indonesia. • Finds that blackouts negatively affect average labor productivity. • Shows that installing a captive generator is a common strategy for mitigating the impact of blackouts. • Provides evidence to assist developing countries in prioritizing electricity reliability. The reliability of electricity supply is one of the most pressing challenges faced by many micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in developing countries. MSEs play a pivotal role in generating employment in these countries, yet the productivity of MSEs is relatively low. Little is known about how blackouts affect performance of MSEs. This paper is the first study to estimate the impact of such power blackouts on productivity of manufacturing MSEs and to discuss the role of the government in addressing the problem. We employed a pseudo-panel dataset covering six firm cohorts within 21 regions the Indonesian national electricity company operates in from 2010 to 2015. Our identification strategy firstly involved examining blackouts determinants and then using these determinants as instruments in an instrumental variable (IV) dynamic panel fixed effects estimation while controlling for factors that potentially affected productivity and correlated with blackouts. We found that electricity blackouts reduced average labor productivity and the resultant losses amounted to approximately IDR 71.5 billion (USD 4.91 million) per year in Indonesia. Therefore, it is crucial to improve electricity supply reliability in developing countries. We found that introducing a captive generator as a way to cope with power outages is positively associated with productivity, and that MSEs that have captive generators benefit when the power supply is poor. Our findings will assist policy makers to prioritize addressing power blackouts relative to other constraints MSEs face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We introduce Rasch modeling to the quantification of a country's readiness to tackle agricultural policy issues. • Rasch modeling provides a fundamental scale that solves the 'mash-up' index problem. • Rwanda has a high degree of policy readiness, Kenya ranks low. • Markets and trade policy, and mutual accountability, are difficult. • Risk and resilience policy is least difficult. Positive agricultural and food policy environments are critically important to the success and inclusiveness of agricultural growth and transformation. Despite the catalytic potential of enabling policies, countries vary in their willingness, capacity, and ability to improve policy: in other words they have varying degrees of policy readiness. The profession has spawned a plethora of 'policy readiness' indices over the past decade. These indices are welcome first steps, but they are non-statistical compilations of a collection of inherently different measures with unclear relationships: to borrow Ravallion's term, they are mash-up indices. In this paper we propose a novel, empirically-based policy readiness index. In contrast to prior literature, we approach the problem from a measurement perspective. This perspective enables us to aggregate items into a multi-component index such that their combination achieves superior statistical properties and assures cross-country comparability, through the application of Rasch modeling. With these empirical qualities, the meaning and robustness of the scores then become clear. We apply the model to a unique data set of policy actions prioritized in 2012/13, and the extent to which these actions were executed by Fall of 2015. The results are statistically- and measurement-valid measures of both country policy readiness and the degree of difficulty of various dimensions of policy actions. The resulting policy readiness scores are a novel index that significantly advances the dialogue on countries' abilities to execute those agricultural and food policy changes that are priorities for accelerating agricultural transformation. Policy implications include continued support for capacity building in low-readiness countries and cross-country support through continental or global processes for lowering the burden across all countries of making progress in the most difficult policy areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper evaluates the impact of Household Businesses’ decision to leave the informal sector on their performance and mode of operation. It capitalizes on a unique panel dataset, result of a five-year project. Using dynamic specifications, we find a significant impact of formalization on annual value added of 20% on average. More importantly, we show that this improvement is not valid for the smallest units, and that it is made possible for the others by changing their operating conditions. Released from the constraints of informality, they can access better equipment, increase their scale of operation, and operate in a more competitive environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper explores monthly, firm-level customs records from Laos in the period 2005–10. We analyze the role of two important and related determinants of export survival, experience, and networks, which are particularly relevant for developing countries. We go beyond previous studies by disaggregating contract terminations to consider the possibility of upgrades to superior products. Having prior experience with the export product and destination and strong networks of similar firms has a strong positive impact on chances of simple export survival. The likelihood of upgrading is boosted by destination experience but lowered by familiarity with the product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper examines the evolution of Chinese rural industry since the rural reform in the late 1970s and revisits the debate on the role of ownership. Based on a case study of W county in southern Jiangsu province as well as drawing on national data, the author shows that the community-based market dynamic had been a key factor in the expansion of rural enterprises and that its weakening in recent years has led to the closing of village enterprises and deindustrialization of the countryside. Large-scale land expropriation, sponsored by local government, is the principal factor responsible for the change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]