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The process of urbanization profoundly changes aquatic ecosystems. Urban streams often have flashier hydrology, increased nutrient and contaminant concentrations, and reduced biodiversity when compared with nonurban streams. Collectively, these characteristics are described as the urban stream syndrome (USS). The USS is traditionally attributed to the discharge of large volumes of stormwater into streams, thus pointing to stormwater as the primary driver of urban stream degradation. However, the USS was developed using evidence from studies in streams in high-income economies in the Global North, and the extent to which it applies to low- and mid-income countries in the Global South remains unclear. Urban expansion in the Global South is often not concomitant with the expansion of sanitation infrastructure, which can lead to large volumes of untreated sewage being discharged into urban streams. In this paper we explore the role of untreated sewage in the application of the USS concept in Latin America. First, we collected and quantified studies that consider the effect of untreated sewage on urban streams in Latin America. We then use the existing evidence to assess if untreated sewage has the potential to affect urban streams in Latin America in similar ways as stormwater affects urban streams in the Global North. Although untreated sewage pollution is widespread in Latin America, our search documented only 57 studies that consider the effects of untreated sewage in local streams. Despite the lack of empirical studies, it is likely that untreated sewage can be as important as stormwater in driving the USS in Latin America. We assert that to support effective management and conservation of urban streams in Latin America, untreated sewage pollution needs to be explicitly considered in the application of the USS concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adoption of individual harvesting rights, such as IQs, has substantially improved the economics of numerous fisheries around the world. Unfortunately, many developing nations cannot employ these management systems because they lack the ability to enforce them. This paper argues that in many of these fisheries, properly designed community rights-based management regimes (CFMRs) will both greatly simplify the enforcement problem and create conditions conducive to economically efficient fisheries. The key features of such a CFMR for Lake Victoria fisheries are outlined and its workings explained. The essence of the system is the allocation of strong harvesting rights, similar to IQs, to the lake's fishing communities combined with total allowable catch (TAC) limits for the entire lake. The net economic benefits of a project to design, install, and operate this CFMR are estimated. While the estimated net benefits are highly positive, they are much smaller than the attainable net economic surplus obtainable from the fishing activity only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While substantial progress has been made in combating malnutrition at a global level, chronic maternal and child malnutrition remain a serious problem in many parts of the developing world. In this paper, using a randomized controlled trial design in Nepal, we evaluate a program that provided information on best practices regarding infant health and cash to families in extremely poor areas with pregnant mothers and/or children below the age of 2. We find significant and sizable impacts of the information plus cash intervention on maternal knowledge and behavior in the short run. We also find suggestive evidence of improvements in child development for the information plus cash intervention relative to groups that received information only. In a long-run, 2-year follow-up survey, we find that the information plus cash group retained significantly higher knowledge and implementation of best practices regarding early-childhood health. However, there appear to be no sustained impacts on child development or anthropometrics in the follow-up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives detailed consideration to some of the factors likely to affect tax levels in developing countries While important gaps remain to be covered, our results suggest that the availability of taxable bases is a more important determinant of tax levels in developing countries than variations in the demand for government expenditures. In developed countries, variations in tax levels suggest that demand factors come into play. This conclusion is based on our findings that factors measuring tax administrative capacity, while not very meaningful as indicators of demand for public services, are highly significant in explaining the tax ratios in developing countries. The introduction of these variables enables us to explain about 45 percent of the variation in the ratios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite growing public-sector investment in education in developing economies, there are few studies that have examined the efficacy of these investments. In this paper, we estimate social returns to education in Indonesia, using individual-level data on wages from five waves of the Indonesia Family Life Surveys (1993–2014) and subdistrict-level data on average education levels from the National Socioeconomic Survey (SUSENAS), a large-scale national-level socioeconomic survey. Our identification strategy rests on the within-sibling variation in average education levels, which is generated because our analysis includes a large sample of siblings who live in different subdistricts. Using sibling fixed effects, we find that a 1-year increase in average education results in a 6%–8% increase in wages. Our results are robust to several robustness checks, including the addition of several controls for labor demand conditions and adjustments for potential measurement error in individual-level education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bait tuna vessels in developing coastal countries often compete with artisanal fishers for small pelagic species such as anchovies. Owing to the capital-intensive nature of tuna fishing, the vessels are characteristically foreign owned; the catches are exported; and they pay access fees to the host country. By contrast, the artisanal canoes are owned by the nationals and the fish landed are consumed locally. In addition, fish aggregating devices (FADs), such as artificial lights used to catch the baitfish, destroy marine ecosystems. In this paper a bioeconomic model for fish resource allocation, which accounts for the ownership of the tuna fishing vessels and environmental opportunity costs owing to destructive fishing practices, has been developed. From the model, I have verified the extent to which suboptimal equilibrium solutions deviate from social optimal outcomes under different scenarios. Moreover, I have derived an expression for optimal (ad valorem) tax enough to maximize rents from the two stocks. The optimum solutions are characterized using data on tuna and anchovy fishing in Ghana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effort by health workers in developing countries has been the subject of much recent attention, but the implications, if any, for health outcomes have largely remained a matter of conjecture. This paper provides new empirical evidence about the returns to health worker effort. In this experiment, outpatient providers in Nigeria were assigned to an intervention in which their consultations were monitored by a peer. To elicit behavior under the counterfactual, the same group of clinicians was covertly observed. Exploiting the sharp increase in effort induced by peer monitoring, I document large, positive, and statistically significant improvements in health. These findings shed new light on potential gains from incentivizing health worker effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions of rural development policy are for the most part focused on the tenurial, institutional, technical, infrastructural, and economic aspects of agricultural development. In contrast, nonfarm activities in agricultural regions receive little attention, and a number of models of agrarian economies with nonfarm activities have even predicted a decline of such activities with agricultural development. In this paper we show that nonfarm activities in agricultural regions expand quite rapidly in response to agricultural development and merit special attention in the design of rural—and also-of urban—development strategies. The poorest groups of the World's rural population include those who depend on nonfarm activities as a source of employment and income. Nonfarm activities also supply a range of goods and services to agriculture and the rural population, contributing to the growth of agricultural output and the improvement in living conditions in rural areas. Finally, the concentration and growth of nonfarm activities in rural towns localizes employment opportunities for people who leave agriculture and acts to stimulate a degree of decentralization of urban growth. In presenting the evidence on these points, Part II of this paper assesses the magnitude and growth of rural nonfarm employment. Part III then examines the role of rural nonfarm activities in the development process and their linkages with agricultural growth. Part IV presents some conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents how life cycle wage growth varies across countries. We harmonize repeated cross-sectional surveys from a set of countries of all income levels and then measure how wages rise with potential experience. Our main finding is that experience-wage profiles are on average twice as steep in rich countries as in poor countries. In addition, more educated workers have steeper profiles than the less educated; this accounts for around one-third of cross-country differences in aggregate profiles. Our findings are consistent with theories in which workers in poor countries accumulate less human capital or face greater search frictions over the life cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Property rights are one of the most fundamental and highly robust institutions supporting economic performance. However, the channels through which property rights are achieved are not adequately identified. This paper is a first step toward unbundling the black box of property rights into a formal and aninformal component.We empirically determine the significance of both informal and formal rules in securing property rights. We find that when both components are included in the analysis, the impact of formal constraints is greatly diminished, while informal constraints are highly significant in explaining the security of property. These results are robust to a variety of model specifications, multiple instrumental variables, and a range of control variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Almost all of the world's energy demand growth is projected to occur in low- and medium-income countries (LMICs). Targeted energy efficiency investments have the potential to mitigate tensions between economic growth objectives and sustainable development commitments. We review the empirical evidence on both the private and social benefits of energy efficiency improvements in LMICs. In addition to direct energy savings, energy efficiency investments can generate indirect benefits such as improved reliability, enhanced energy access, and increased productivity. We highlight the role that energy subsidies, unreliable power supply, and capital constraints may play in the underinvestment in energy efficiency. Increasingly, LMICs are implementing policies and programs aimed at mitigating these barriers. We discuss some recent policy design innovations and emphasize the importance of rigorous evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we begin by drawing attention to the dramatic increases in the life span of people in most low-income countries during recent decades. We then argue that longer life and the associated improvement in health have important economic implications which have been ignored in the literature. Last, we present evidence in support of two of these implications, namely, the growth of educational investments including the foregone earnings of students and the apparent gains in the productivity of agriculture in India over a period of about 2 decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. marine-science community is currently preparing to launch new programs of marine scientific and technological assistance for developing countries. With Third World governments likely to soon control access to much of the ocean space within which marine scientists work, U.S. oceanographers are making ready for the day when assistance in the building of indigenous Third World technoscientific capabilities will become the standard quid pro quo for clearance to conduct scientific research in Third World waters. This paper begins by describing the forces and factors that are interacting to provide the impetus for marine-assistance programs. It then examines, against the background of the goals that form the rationale for those programs, some of the implications of marine scientific and technological assistance for Third World social and environmental systems. It concludes by indicating areas in which research in the social sciences could prove valuable to assistance-program design and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a partial assessment of the possibilities and prospects of the less developed countries attaining substantial relief from their unemployment and surplus-labor problems through the expansion of manufactured exports. While no generalized conclusions applicable to all developing countries are readily available, this paper is an attempt to present some threads of suggestive evidence based on empirical information. Section II presents an overview of the problem, examining some aggregative aspects of unemployment and trade in manufactures for the less developed countries. Section III presents a few methodological remarks regarding the use of input-output techniques to measure employment requirements, and Section IV presents a discussion of the empirical results, followed by a few concluding remarks in Section V. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the role of the scientific community in a less developed country (LDC) in furthering that country's development? In this paper I will try to develop a perspective on this question by describing the view of underdevelopment and the development process that tends to be held by development economists and then contrasting the economist's view with the one that tends to be held by the natural scientist. The development economist, by and large, has placed less weight on organized science as a factor in development than has the natural scientist; while the natural scientist may overestimate the role of science in development, the economics community may underestimate it. In any case, the reasons for the differences are well worth exploring. What is the role of the scientific community in a less developed country (LDC) in furthering that country's development? In this paper I will try to develop a perspective on this question by describing the view of underdevelopment and the development process that tends to be held by development economists and then contrasting the economist's view with the one that tends to be held by the natural scientist. The development economist, by and large, has placed less weight on organized science as a factor in development than has the natural scientist; while the natural scientist may overestimate the role of science in development, the economics community may underestimate it. In any case, the reasons for the differences are well worth exploring.NNWhat is the role of the scientific community in a less developed country (LDC) in furthering that country's development? In this paper I will try to develop a perspective on this question by describing the view of underdevelopment and the development process that tends to be held by development economists and then contrasting the economist's view with the one that tends to be held by the natural scientist. The development economist, by and large, has placed less weight on organized... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social innovations implemented by public libraries rarely alleviate poverty. Mobile payments (i.e., financial transactions over mobile phones) represent the most widely used solution to alleviate poverty in developing countries, provided that people living in poverty have mobile, financial, and information literacy. This article reports a 3-year-plus study of proposing, testing, customizing, and disseminating a practice-based, outcome-driven, and community-oriented social innovation in the form of a "unified mobile, financial, and information literacy toolkit" to public librarians in India, who can assess mobile, financial, and information literacy of the poor at once and enhance their mobile payment readiness. Public libraries can be a strategic partner of the United Nations and governments in developing countries for addressing the grand challenge of poverty in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political booms, measured by the rise in governments' popularity, predict financial crises above and beyond better known early warning indicators, such as credit booms. This predictive power, however, only holds in emerging economies. We argue that governments in developing countries have stronger incentives to "ride" unsound credit booms in order to boost their popularity, rather than implementing corrective policies that could prevent crises but are politically costly. We provide evidence of the relevance of this mechanism, partly by constructing a new cross-country data set on government popularity based on opinion polls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the influence of stronger patent protection on technology licensing. Using data for the post-Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) period and focusing on developing countries, I correct for any endogeneity biases that may bedevil estimation. Employing a more inclusive index of patent protection than hitherto, which better accounts for the enforcement and implementation environment, I find that stronger protection is associated with increased royalty and license fee payments, which implies greater technology transfer to developing countries. The significance of the protection variable is driven by the subindex of patent coverage, which makes eminent sense in view of the increase in the coverage of patentable matter by developing countries after TRIPS. The economic significance of the protection variable is also substantial, with ceteris paribus changes in this variable accounting for technology inflows of U.S.$2.5-$3.2 billion (base year 2000) in the post-TRIPS sample period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows largely bypass the developing world? The objective of this article is to study this question by focusing on the effect of an increase in the level of democracy on FDI inflows into developing countries. An increase in the level of democracy provides the right macro and micro conditions for larger FDI inflows. The econometric results indicate that a one standard deviation increase in the level of democracy is associated with increased FDI inflows. My empirical findings support a direct relationship between enhanced levels of democracy and FDI inflows, and the results call into question the idea that developing countries receive less capital inflows if they choose to democratize. Moreover, a reanalysis of Li and Resnick's influential 2003 paper essentially overturns their findings in support of a direct association between an increase in the level of democracy and greater FDI inflows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The classical Heckscher-Ohlin-Mundell paradigm states that trade and capital mobility are substitutes in the sense that trade integration reduces the incentives for capital to flow to capital-scarce countries. In this paper we show that in a world with heterogeneous financial development, a very different conclusion emerges. In particular, in less financially developed economies (South), trade and capital mobility are complements in the sense that trade integration increases the return to capital and thus the incentives for capital to flow to South. This interaction implies that deepening trade integration in South raises net capital inflows (or reduces net capital outflows). It also implies that, at the global level, protectionism may backfire if the goal is to rebalance capital flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potential for international law to reduce power asymmetries depends on weaker countries learning to navigate the legal system. This paper examines the use of courts by developing countries to defend their trade interests. Power relations and low capacity may prevent these countries from fully participating in the international trade system. Yet some developing countries have been among the most active participants in GATT/WTO adjudication. We argue that high startup costs for using trade litigation are a barrier to developing country use of the dispute settlement process. Analysis of dispute initiation from 1975 to 2003 shows that past experience in trade adjudication, as either a complainant or a defendant, increases the likelihood that a developing country will initiate disputes. As weaker countries overcome these initial capacity constraints they will increasingly benefit from the international legal structures they have joined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a renewed interest in how political risk affects multinational corporations operating in emerging markets. Much of this research has focused on the relationship between democratic institutions and flows of foreign direct investment (FDI). Yet the existing studies suffer from data problems that only allow for indirect evidence of the relationship between political institutions and political risk. In this paper I utilize price data from political risk insurance agencies to directly test how domestic political institutions affect the premiums multinationals pay for coverage against government expropriations and contract disputes. I find that democratic regimes reduce risks for multinational investors, specifically through increasing constraints on the executive. Utilizing qualitative evidence from investors, insurers, and location consultants, I explore the mechanisms linking democratic regimes with lower levels of political risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do varieties of welfare capitalism exist in the developing world? This analysis challenges scholars of comparative political economy and international political economy who treat the political economies of less developed countries (LDCs) as more or less identical to one another or, at the other extreme, as nations marked by tremendous diversity. This paper is one of the first attempts to highlight systematic differences among the political economies of the developing world, particularly with respect to their distribution regimes. Using cluster analysis, the results illustrate that welfare efforts in LDCs are either directed towards promoting market development (a productive welfare state), protecting select individuals from the market (a protective welfare state), or both (a dual welfare state). The discovery of distinct patterns of welfare regimes in LDCs presents hitherto unknown implications for the influence of domestic politics and policies in late twentieth-century globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Productivity risk is pervasive in underdeveloped countries. This paper highlights a way in which underdevelopment exacerbates productivity risk. Productivity shocks cause larger changes in the wage when workers are poorer, less able to migrate, and more credit-constrained because of such workers' inelastic labor supply. This equilibrium wage effect hurts workers. In contrast, it acts as insurance for landowners. Agricultural wage data for 257 districts in India for 1956-87 are used to test the predictions, with rainfall as an instrument for agricultural productivity. In districts with fewer banks or higher migration costs, the wage is much more responsive to fluctuations in productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on the article "Nature, Harmony, and the Kaliyugaya: Global/Local Discourses on the Human-Environment Relationship," by Nireka Weeratunge, which has been published within the issue. Weeratunge's article focused on various aspects of human-environment relations. According to the author, Weeratunge's paper contributed in showcasing the predominant nature of Third World countries such as Sri Lanka, in the evolution of the Western environmental discourse.

We measure the contribution of firm-embedded productivity to cross-country income differences. By firm-embedded productivity we refer to firm-specific components of productivity, such as blueprints, management practices, and other intangible capital. Using micro-level data for multinational enterprises (MNEs), we compare market shares of the same MNE in different countries and document that they are systematically larger in less developed countries. This indicates that MNEs face less competition and that firm-embedded productivity is scarce in these countries. We implement a measure of firm-embedded productivity based on this observation. Differences in firm-embedded productivity account for one-third of the cross-country variance in output per worker in our sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing about the history and politics of epidemics and pandemics requires stepping into a historiography that is expansive, transnational, and slotted into specific historical periods. This essay considers the main debates in this expansive historiography and highlights the strengths and limitations of dominant historiographical approaches to the study of epidemics and pandemics. This essay also interrogates the framing of three thematic periods, or categories, commonly identified by historians and social scientists in analyses of epidemics and pandemics: categories of "colonial health," "international health," and "global health." As this essay underscores, scholarship often analyzes epidemics and pandemics through overlapping and complex historical temporalities involving colonization, decolonization, and globalization. However, this approach is often constrained by the limitations of existing archives and the overwhelming focus of published scholarship on dominant institutions, scientific and political figures, and specific disease outbreaks that are commonly associated with categories of "colonial health," "international health," and "global health" from the late nineteenth to the present. As a result, scholarship may include linear narratives that flatten or generalize the legacies of epidemics and pandemics. The links between pathogens and pathologies are not linear, however, and colonial structures of power, disease tropes, and surveillance doctrines often persist across time and space. This essay ultimately seeks to challenge and complicate these dominant framings and categories from within. This approach highlights the connectedness—and complex continuities and discontinuities—in the political, economic, social, and scientific perceptions of and approaches to epidemic and pandemic risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International assessments inform education policy debates, yet little is known about their floor effects: To what extent do they fail to differentiate between the lowest performers, and what are the implications of this? TIMSS, SACMEQ, and LLECE data are analyzed to answer this question. In TIMSS, floor effects have been reduced through the introduction of a greater number of easy items. SACMEQ and LLECE, despite being specifically designed for developing countries, display substantial floor effects, a problem obscured by their strong reliance on multiple-choice questions. Consequently, some learners are officially classified as proficient who effectively score zero points beyond random guessing. Though floor effects do not substantially alter country rankings, they are large enough to distort trends over time. Designers of assessment programs need to limit floor effects through a greater number of easier multiple-choice items and more constructed-response items. The former solution is easiest to implement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the demand for housing as a composite good in developing countries. Differences in housing demand by city and by tenure group; Importance of incomes and prices on housing demand; Aggregate analysis of the efficiency of a simple unconstrained housing-subsidy program; Common planning assumptions about low-income shelter projects; Use of price elasticity estimates.

The purpose of this paper is to survey various studies that have attempted to explain these patterns of adoption behavior either theoretically or empirically. Because the volume of such published research is overwhelming, we will attempt simply to review representative works rather than to present an exhaustive discussion of all work to date. The next section introduces a general conceptual framework for analyzing adoption and diffusion processes and then proceeds to survey the existing conceptual and theoretical literature regarding adoption patterns of agricultural innovations in LDCs within this framework. Section III reviews empirical studies that have attempted to clarify and validate various aspects of adoption processes in the light of the theoretical literature. Section IV provides a critique of methodologies and models used in the empirical literature and suggests new approaches and directions. The implications of the survey are indicated in the last section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political change and development in Third World nations have been characterized by violent upheavals and sudden major shifts in government policies. Examples of discontinuities in the process of political change abound. Iran, Nicaragua, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay are only a few of the countries that come to mind. Existing empirical studies of political change and development have not been capable of a formal analysis of discontinuous political transitions. In this paper, we propose a theory of political dynamics capable of explaining endogenously the abrupt political shifts experienced in the last decade by a majority of developing nations. Section I presents a theory of political change. Section II contains a brief discussion of the estimation techniques. Section III presents the data. Finally, Sections IV, V, and VI contain a discussion of the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to overcome all these weaknesses by using a flexible functional form and simultaneously to estimate re turns to scale and elasticities of substitution. Specifically, we use the transcendental logarithmic cost function introduced by Christensen, Jorgenson, and Lau to estimate the measured characteristics of technology for India's manufacturing industries. For purposes of comparison we also focus on various specifications of the production technology. We describe all functions in terms of a translog specification and distinguish other technologies with appropriate parametric restrictions on it. We examine four kinds of returns-to-scale technologies: nonhomothetic, homothetic, homogeneous, and constant returns to scale. There are advantages inherent in the translog function specification. It allows us to test for the validity of the conventional Cobb-Douglas specification and the homogeneity and homotheticity restrictions in explaining the characteristics of technology. Furthermore, the translog format suggests that no a priori restrictions are imposed on the elasticities of substitution. Equally important, it allows test of returns to scale. Section II is devoted to the basic model used to describe the production function and the data used. In Section III we discuss the measured characteristics of the technology. The tests of hypotheses of the production structure are also discussed. In Section IV we summarize our findings and consider their implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These city growth projections are based on models which fail to allow for the potential feedback of various city costs on the rural-urban migration decision. In addition, detailed analyses of Third World cities by urban economists and planners conventionally take in-migration as exogenously given. It is our view that the debate can be better informed by the application of general equilibrium models of Third World development which include some of the potential costs of urbanization—models which at least make an effort to internalize the most important of various alleged costs so that potential "natural limits" to urban growth can be evaluated and the relevance of UN forecasts assessed. Section II illustrates how existing macro models of the Third World are "pro-urban" biased: typically they minimize the potential limits to urban growth and are silent on the issue of overurbanization. Section III lists some key forces which might serve to retard the rate of urbanization. Section IV develops this theme at length by offering some explicit suggestions on how these forces might be introduced into a general equilibrium model of Third World development. Central to this discussion will be potential cost-of-living differentials between urban and rural areas, urban housing availability, the quality of urban public goods, urban land scarcity, modern sector factor requirements and resource "bottlenecks," and the competing demands of "unproductive" urban capital accumulation. While no conclusive results are offered in the present paper, it seems to us timely nevertheless to open the debate on strategies for macromodeling the "limits to urban growth" in Third World economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A great proportion of urban dwellers in developing countries live in illegal squatter communities. Recent studies estimate that some 20%-30% of the population of the largest Asian cities inhabit so-called uncontrolled settlements. Similar figures obtain for African and Latin American cities, although over a wider range. Despite the fact that they are frequently made of makeshift and dilapidated materials, do not have access to basic services, and are under constant threat of being razed by the government authorities, squatter dwellings, like those in the established legal (or formal) sector, are economic goods and can be characterized by a market value. Thus, given the relative size of the population that they shelter, any analysis of urban housing markets in developing countries which relied solely on statistics on the formal sector would most likely be misleading. Social scientists have begun to dispel the traditional notion that squatter housing units are more than temporary, valueless structures which are shoddily built on vacant land. However, figures have not been documented and relatively little is known about this "informal" market. How much are these squatter homes worth? What determines the value of these dwellings? Does this market differ significantly from that found in the formal sector? These questions have important implications for policy measures, such as urban development projects, which are intended to improve the lot of the low-income urban population. This paper is intended as a first step in filling this gap in the literature. Aside from presenting estimates on the value of squatter dwellings for a sample in the Philippines, we will also derive the statistical relationship between value and housing characteristics (such as the availability of certain services). The resulting coefficients can be interpreted as the marginal prices of these characteristics. This exercise has some direct policy implications. In particular, the valuations of... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our purpose is to explore some institutional possibilities for achieving water reform in canal irrigation systems. We do not view this reform as something which developing countries ought to undertake. Our position is that such water reform can be useful in accomplishing some generally accepted developmental objectives, such as to (1) increase agricultural production without more capital investment in dams, ditches, and control structures; (2) encourage adoption of more "modern" agricultural practices; (3) promote the efficient use of a scarce resource—water— subject to both agricultural and nonagricultural demand; and (4) enhance the economic position of small farmers who now have limited access to water. In what follows we will present some generally applicable conceptual guides for improving water allocation within an irrigation system. We do not offer universal prescriptions of a specific nature, but rather we offer general ideas as to how developing countries might begin to enact institutional change to enhance equitable water allocation. By way of illustration, we will explain one program (the Philippine Irrigators' Service Association) that embodies a few of the essential elements. First, however, we present a brief overview of the literature covering the role of water management in agricultural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the relationship between industrial organization and entrepreneurship in the developing countries. Effect of industrial organization on the functioning of economies; Conditions which affect investment and production decisions; Causes of the group pattern of industrial organization.

One of the general hypotheses upon which most economists agree is that emerging nations must increasingly mobilize their internal resources to promote economic growth. The developed nations cannot be relied upon to direct the emerging nations sufficient resources to measurably influence the development process. Perhaps the most important single instrument by which resources are mobilized into development activity is the implementation of an effective tax and fiscal policy. As governments throughout the Third World search for mechanisms to marshal internal financial resources, it is necessary that there be available quantitative tools which may be utilized to measure success in generating public sector resources through tax policy. This paper hypothesizes two criteria that may be quantitatively measured to evaluate fiscal performance over time in emerging nations. Both utilize the concept of the revenue-income elasticity coefficient which was introduced into the literature by H. Groves and C. H. Kahn in 1952. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents comments of the author on the article "Brazilian Stabilization Program, 1964-66," by Alexandre Kafka. His paper represents an important contribution both to the literature on monetary problems in developing countries and to the economic history of Brazil. One of the more encouraging developments in Brazil and other countries is the extent to which first-rate technicians are playing a major role in policy formation. Kafka's paper indicates an awareness of how monetary policy must be made to fit in with all other economic policies. Although essentially a monetary economist-or what in the current vernacular would be called a monetarist, in approach, Kafka clearly understands that monetary policy does not exist in a vacuum and that the aim of economic policy cannot be defined in monetary terms alone.

Because less developed countries (LDCs) export mainly primary products, it has been claimed that their economic growth suffers from the deleterious effects of the export instability they experience. The detrimental effects of export instability have been attributed to either the price instability of primary products per se or to the resulting fluctuations of export proceeds. The argument concerning the effects of export instability on economic growth are usually made on a priori basis with no, or at best, very little empirical evidence. Recent empirical studies, however, have claimed that there is no statistical evidence to support the hypothesis that fluctuations in export proceeds "inflict any significant damage on the stability and growth of the average underdeveloped country," or that there is "any relation between growth in per capita real income and export instability." The purpose of this paper is to point out methodological deficiencies in the above empirical studies that significantly weaken their findings and to test in a more systematic way the validity of the a priori arguments regarding the effects of export instability on the economic growth of both LDCs and developed countries (DCs). In addition, an attempt is made to determine the effects of export instability on the growth of exports and to evaluate the relative importance of the export price and export quantity-instability effects on economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent increased focus on the LDC unemployment problem takes many forms; like development itself, the issue is complex and many faceted. But perhaps no link in the chain of attempted understanding has been as uncertain and controversial as the question of the range of technology choice actually physically open to the contemporary LDC in its nonagricultural sector—even if it were of a mind to listen to relevant advice on the subject. This paper is intended to throw some light on the particular question of LDC industrial sectors' ability to efficiently absorb unemployed or underemployed labor in the course of the development process. We know that in the past even where countries have been growing at 5 or 6 percent annually in real terms—and overall growth has generally been quite satisfactory in the 1960s, as the Pearson Commission records—industrial sector growth rates of from 8 to 10 percent annually have been accompanied by labor absorption rates of only 2-3 percent. Moreover, the elasticity of industrial employment with respect to output has not only been low but also apparently failing over time. Consequently, virtually everywhere in the LDC world some combined index of unemployment or underemployment seems to have been on the rise—and accompanied by an even more pronounced rise in the awareness of the inadequacy of per capita income as the main indicator of adequate performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can shadow prices be used as satisfactory substitutes for market prices evaluating investment projects when market prices convey biased information? Although market failures may be responsible for social loss and constitute part of the barrier to economic development, it is the thesis of this paper that it is not generally possible to mitigate these failures, or to compensate for them, by using shadow prices in the evaluation of new projects. Although it is plausible to seek substitute prices to improve on actual imperfect market prices, on examination of many cases, market prices turn out to be the best prices to use, and there is no known source of shadow prices that generally gives better guidance to investment choices. Furthermore, to replace faulty market prices partially by shadow prices introduces a new kind of market imperfection. If the market is so biased that its prices are categorically unacceptable as a basis for project evaluation, it is better to reform the market process than to invent new prices for special purposes. There are, however, cases in which it is appropriate to use discretion in interpreting what the market price in fact is. In Section I, below, I review market-price biases of importance to developing countries and the proposal to use shadow prices to rectify them. In Section II, alternative sources of shadow prices are considered and a general criticism is stated. More specific and less abstract examples of markets and prices are discussed in Section III in order to show the problems of applying shadow prices, as well as to reconsider the problem of market-price biases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a novel analysis of climate change and policy regarding climate damages to growth under regional cooperation or noncooperation. We introduce a new stylized climate module and compute the regional social cost of carbon (SCC) when climate change impacts the growth rate of regional GDP under cooperation and noncooperation between regions. We find that in the presence of climate damage to economic growth, the regional SCC is high in either a cooperative or a noncooperative world, implying that it is optimal for each region to choose stringent climate policies. Moreover, relative to cooperation, noncooperation reduces the GDP of countries in both high northern latitudes and the tropics, while the loss for developing countries in the tropics is especially significant. The welfare losses to the tropics are larger still in the absence of compensatory transfers from wealthier regions most responsible for climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy reports on the "status of women" constitute one of the most abundant archives on the world's women in the second half of the twentieth century. This essay is an account of and a reckoning with the promises and limits of the social scientific report through an analysis of archives of early "status of women" reports, focusing on reports produced across the decolonizing world from the 1970s to the 1990s. This history reveals paradoxical and difficult genealogies of Third World women researchers who critiqued yet invested in state-sponsored genres of social scientific research in pursuit of equitable citizenship. I explore how the first United Nations International Women's Year in 1975 inaugurated a novel knowledge economy about women's status that created long-lasting infrastructures for social scientific research on women and sexual minorities at the intersection of multiple authorities, including the United Nations, independent nation-states, nongovernmental organizations, and international foundations. Through an analysis of early multicountry studies and reports from postcolonial South Asia, I interrogate how the paradigm of measurable equality in the social scientific study of women occluded other ways of knowing while naturalizing biological determinism in Third World feminist research. Ultimately, the essay asks feminist scholars to reflect on the ethical and epistemological dilemmas created by the dominance of the social scientific report, which today forms the primary mode of research in a multinational knowledge industry of research on women, gender, and sexuality that dominates much of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines evidence from a randomized controlled trial of a novel financial services intervention designed to spur savings uptake in rural areas of the developing world. The sample includes more than 2,000 households from 325 villages in rural Malawi. Results show that an information treatment consisting of periodic village visits from a trained bank staff person significantly increased adoption and use of savings accounts. The findings also show important impact heterogeneities along dimensions such as education level, remoteness of village, and gender of household head, as well as positive spillover effects onto account uptake at other financial institutions. Further analysis reveals active account use among adopters. These findings confirm recent suggestions from survey evidence on an important role played by "soft" barriers to financial inclusion (e.g., low information and trust) and provide insights on how such barriers can be overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introductory chapter by the editors plus 14 chapters on a diverse range of Chinese policy areas variously examine the economic, political, social, demographic, diplomatic, and military landscape that China now encounters and the probable future outcomes. Ho-fung Hung's chapter on China's relations with the Global South (chap. 10) adds that China acts pragmatically in its own interests in its foreign diplomatic and economic relations. [Extracted from the article]

Our large-scale experiment with 542 families from rural Bangladesh finds substantial intergenerational persistence of economic preferences. Both mothers' and fathers' risk, time, and social preferences are significantly (and largely to the same degree) positively correlated with their children's economic preferences, even when controlling for personality traits and socioeconomic background. We discuss possible transmission channels and are the first to classify all families into one of two clusters, with either relatively patient, risk-tolerant, and prosocial members or relatively impatient, risk averse, and spiteful members. Classifications correlate with socioeconomic background variables. We find that our results differ from evidence for rich countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]