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| Registros recuperados: 21 | |
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| McMillan, Margaret S.; Masters, William A.. |
| Why do so many African governments consistently impose high tax rates and make little investment in productive public goods, when alternative policies could yield greater tax revenues and higher national income? We posit and test an intertemporal political economy model in which the government sets tax and R&D levels while investors respond with production. Equilibrium policy and growth rates depend on initial cost structure. We find that in many (but not all) African countries, low tax/high investment regimes would be time-inconsistent, primarily because production technology requires relatively large sunk costs. For pro-growth policies to become sustainable, commitment mechanisms or new production techniques would be needed. |
| Tipo: Working or Discussion Paper |
Palavras-chave: International Development; Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies. |
| Ano: 2000 |
URL: http://purl.umn.edu/11839 |
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| Masters, William A.; McMillan, Margaret S.. |
| This paper introduces new data on climatic conditions to empirical tests of growth theories. We find that, since 1960, temperate countries have converged towards high levels of income while tropical nations have converged towards various income levels associated with economic scale and the extent of the market. These results hold for a wide range of tests. A plausible explanation is that temperate regions' growth was assisted by their climate, perhaps historically for their transition out of agriculture into sectors whose productivity converges across countries, while tropical countries' growth is relatively more dependent on gains from specialization and trade. |
| Tipo: Working or Discussion Paper |
Palavras-chave: International Development. |
| Ano: 2001 |
URL: http://purl.umn.edu/11845 |
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| Ngeleza, Guyslain K.; Florax, Raymond J.G.M.; Masters, William A.. |
| This paper tests a series of prominent hypotheses regarding the determinants of per-capita income using a novel spatial econometric approach to control for spillovers among neighboring countries and for spatially correlated omitted variables. We use simultaneous equations to identify alternative channels through which country characteristics might affect income, and then test the robustness of those effects. We find support for both "institutionalist" and "geographic" determinants of income. A time-varying index of institutional quality has a strong independent effect on current income, but there is also a persistent effect of geographic factors such as seasonal frost, malaria transmission, and coastal location, which influence income through their links... |
| Tipo: Working or Discussion Paper |
Palavras-chave: Research Methods/ Statistical Methods. |
| Ano: 2006 |
URL: http://purl.umn.edu/28663 |
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| Yao, Richard T.; Shively, Gerald E.; Masters, William A.. |
| We investigate the Philippine government's price stabilization policy for rice. Seemingly Unrelated Regressions are used to examine the effectiveness of the program at regional and national levels over a 21-year period (January 1983 to December 2003). Results of the regional analysis indicate some NFA-induced spatial and temporal differences in terms of producer prices. The NFA successfully increased producer prices in 5 of 13 regions through stock accumulation and paddy rice purchase at floor prices. NFA stock releases do not correlate strongly with retail prices at the national level, although results from the regional model indicate that NFA stock releases reduced retail prices in five regions, leading to perceptible spatial and temporal differences... |
| Tipo: Working or Discussion Paper |
Palavras-chave: Agricultural and Food Policy. |
| Ano: 2005 |
URL: http://purl.umn.edu/28669 |
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| Kazianga, Harounan; Masters, William A.. |
| This research uses field-level data from Burkina Faso to ask what determines farmers' investment in two well-known soil and water conservation techniques: field bunds (barriers to soil and water runoff), and microcatchments (small holes in which seeds and fertilizers are placed). Survey data for 1993 and 1994 are used to estimate Tobit functions, compute elasticities of adoption and intensity of use, perform robustness tests and estimate alternative models. Controlling for land and labor abundance and other factors we find that those who have more ownership rights over farmland, and who do more controlled feeding of livestock, tend to invest more in both technologies. The result suggests that responding to land scarcity with clearer property rights over... |
| Tipo: Conference Paper or Presentation |
Palavras-chave: Land Economics/Use. |
| Ano: 2001 |
URL: http://purl.umn.edu/20483 |
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| Rios, Ana R.; Masters, William A.; Shively, Gerald E.. |
| We build upon international trade literature to analyze the direction of causality between market participation and productivity. Cross-country household data from Tanzania, Vietnam and Guatemala are used in a 2SLS approach with market participation and productivity as endogenous variables. Results indicate that households with higher productivity tend to participate in agricultural markets regardless of market access factors. In contrast, having better market access does not necessarily lead to higher productivity. This finding suggests that investments in market access infrastructure provide minimal, if any, improvements in agricultural productivity; whereas programs targeted at enhancements in farm structure and capital have the potential to increase... |
| Tipo: Conference Paper or Presentation |
Palavras-chave: International Relations/Trade; Marketing; Productivity Analysis. |
| Ano: 2008 |
URL: http://purl.umn.edu/6145 |
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| Masters, William A.. |
| In the 1980s, the Producer Subsidy Equivalent (PSE) became the dominant measure of protection in applied studies of international agricultural trade. This paper analyzes potential biases in the ratio form of the PSE introduced by using actual domestic prices rather than social opportunity costs in the denominator. It is shown that doing so introduces a consistent under-estimation of the effects of trade restrictions and other price-support policies, relative to deficiency payments and other income-support policies. It is found that under plausible conditions this bias leads the PSE to rank protection levels across countries or crops incorrectly. In a sample of 250 activities across 33 countries, such errors were found to occur in 5% of crop comparisons and... |
| Tipo: Working or Discussion Paper |
Palavras-chave: Agricultural and Food Policy; International Relations/Trade. |
| Ano: 1993 |
URL: http://purl.umn.edu/51114 |
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| Kazianga, Harounan; Masters, William A.. |
| In this paper, we use a vintage-capital model with risk of eviction to assess cocoa farmers' response to changes in their tenure security and to the introduction of a new, faster-maturing cocoa variety. The model is calibrated with data from Cameroon in calendar year 2000, and then used to simulate the effects of institutional and technical change on farmer welfare and deforestation rates. Our findings can be summarized in three points. First, improved tenure security over cocoa fields increases farmers' consumption and welfare, but at the expense of more deforestation. Second, the introduction of new cocoa varieties with faster maturity and higher input response also unambiguously raises farmers' consumption and welfare. Doing so increases deforestation... |
| Tipo: Conference Paper or Presentation |
Palavras-chave: Resource /Energy Economics and Policy. |
| Ano: 2002 |
URL: http://purl.umn.edu/19871 |
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| Bhagowalia, Priya; Chen, Susan E.; Masters, William A.. |
| Malnutrition is manifested in various degrees of both underweight and overweight, with large differences and rapid changes in their prevalence and severity. This paper introduces a new approach to characterizing the distribution of a population’s nutritional status, to help analyze changes in that distribution over time and across countries. Our method draws on the poverty literature to construct Foster-Greer-Thorbecke measures for the incidence and severity of under- and overweight, based on deviations in either direction from the median of a healthy population. We apply this median-based measure to the nutritional status of over 400,000 preschool children, as measured in 130 DHS surveys covering 53 countries over a period from 1986 to 2006. Unlike... |
| Tipo: Conference Paper or Presentation |
Palavras-chave: Food Security and Poverty. |
| Ano: 2008 |
URL: http://purl.umn.edu/6167 |
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| Registros recuperados: 21 | |
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