1,226 research outputs found
Data for: Contract Farming as Partial Insurance
No full textReplication files for Bellemare, Lee, and Novak "Contract Farming as Partial Insurance.
Book review: Doing economics: what you should have learned in grad school – but didn’t by Marc F. Bellemare
No full textIn Doing Economics: What You Should Have Learned in Grad School – But Didn’t, Marc F. Bellemare offers a new guide to research economists to help equip them with the practical tools for ‘doing economics’. This book will be an excellent starting point for young students of economics who are thinking of pursuing a career in academia, writes Ritwika Patgiri. Doing Economics: What You Should Have Learned in Grad School – But Didn’t. Marc F. Bellemare. MIT Press. 2022
Minnesota Applied Economist 729, Fall 2016
Get PDFIn this issue: From the Department Head; Using Experimental Methods to Learn How Producers Respond to Uncertain Prices, by Marc F. Bellemare; Distinguished Leadership Award for Internationals - Klaus Deininger; Outstanding Alumni Award - Robert Johansson; Undergrad Student Spotlight-Trey O'Bryan; Graduate Student Spotlight-Vaneesha Dusoruth; New Staff Member - Jenna Mead; Farewell to Emeritus Faculty - Jerry Fruin; Students Compete in CME Trading Challenge; Applied Economics at the Great Minnesota Get-Together; Fellowships and Scholarship
Insecure Land Rights and Share Tenancy in Madagascar
Get PDFWhile most studies looking at the consequences of tenurial insecurity on land markets in developing countries focus on the effects of tenurial insecurity on the investment behavior of landowners, this paper studies the hitherto unexplored relationship between tenurial insecurity and contract choice in land tenancy. Based on a distinct feature of the interaction between formal law and customary rights in Madagascar, this paper augments the canonical model of share tenancy by making the strength of the landlord’s property right increasing in the amount of risk she chooses to bear within the contract. Sharecropping may thus emerge as the optimal contract even when the tenant is risk-neutral. Using data on landlords’ subjective perceptions of tenurial insecurity in a rural area of Madagascar, empirical tests strongly support the hypothesis that insecure property rights drive contract choice while offering little support in favor of the canonical hypothesis that risk sharing considerations drive contract choice.Sharecropping, Property Rights, Tenurial Insecurity, Subjective Expectations
The (Im)Possibility of Reverse Share Tenancy
Get PDFUnder the assumption that the landlord is risk-neutral and the tenant is risk-averse, sharecropping is second-best in that it trades off risk sharing and incentives. Many, however, have reported instances of reverse share tenancy, or sharecropping in which the landlord is considerably poorer than the tenant. This note shows that reverse share tenancy is impossible under the canonical Stiglitzian model of sharecropping but becomes possible if and only if (i) both the landlord and the tenant can be assumed risk-averse; or (ii) there exist significant transactions costs making sharecropping more desirable than either a wage or fixed rent contract.Sharecropping; Reverse Share Tenancy; Transactions Cost
AN ASSET-RISK MODEL OF REVERSE TENANCY
Get PDFReverse tenancy, wherein poorer landlords rent out land to richer tenants on shares, is a common phenomenon. Yet, it does not fit existing theoretical models of sharecropping and has never before been modeled in the development microeconomics literature. We explain reverse tenancy contracts using an asset risk model that incorporates moral hazard. When choosing the terms of an agrarian contract, the landlord considers the impact of her choice on the probability that she will retain future rights to the rented land. Thus, this model captures the effect of tenure insecurity and property rights on agrarian contracts. The main testable implication of the theoretical model is that, as property rights become more secure, reverse tenancy tends to disappear.Risk and Uncertainty,
The Determinants of Music Piracy in a Sample of College Students
Get PDFWhy do some individuals pirate digital music while others pay for it? Using data on a sample of undergraduate students, we study the determinants of music piracy by looking at whether a respondent’s last song was obtained illegally or not. In doing so, we incorporate (i) the individual-specific transactions costs that constitute the effective price of illegal music; and (ii) individual willingness to pay (WTP) for digital music, which we elicit using a simple field experiment and which we use to control for the unobserved heterogeneity of preferences between respondents. Our empirical results indicate that a respondent’s subjective probability of facing a lawsuit and her degree of morality both have a negative impact on the likelihood that her last song was obtained illegally. These results are robust whether WTP is estimated parametrically or nonparametrically. We conclude by discussing the practical implications of our findings.Music Piracy, Transactions Costs, Subjective Expectations
Household-Level Livestock Marketing Behavior Among Northern Kenyan and Southern Ethiopian Pastoralists
Get PDFPastoralists in East Africa's arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) regularly confront climatic shocks triggering massive herd die-offs and loss of scarce wealth. On the surface, it appears puzzling that pastoralists do not make extensive use of livestock markets to offload animals when climatic shocks temporarily reduce the carrying capacity of local rangelands, and then use markets to restock their herds when local conditions recover. In recent years, donors and policy makers have begun to hypothesize that investments in livestock marketing systems might quickly pay for themselves through reduced demand for relief aid,by increasing pastoralist marketing responsiveness to temporal variation in range conditions.Marketing,
Metadata initiatives and emerging technologies to improve resource discovery
Get PDFThis paper discusses some emerging issues on metadata as a mechanism of resource discovery and its impact on precision of search results in a distributed network environment. It presents a brief account of the recent major developments related to metadata across the globe. Highlights a consistent growth of multiple metadata standards to meet the variety of needs in a hierarchy of complexity. Examines various metadata-harvesting tools and related technologies that fulfill the task implicit in a user’s search. Brings out popular standards, useful protocols, and open-source harvesters along with their intrinsic capabilities for harvesting and presenting metadata and introduces a variety of metadata services viz., OCLC’s catalogue service, UKOLN metadata editor service, OAIster harvester service, DP9 gateway service, etc. explores the underlying principles of metadata-harvesting in DSpace and web search engines. Discusses use of multiple metadata formats in DSpace archives for exposing domain-specific metadata; and the inherent mechanism for extensibility and interoperability functions. Proposes methods for creating metadata that can pursue high-precision document retrieval in dynamic collections. Also discuses semantic web technologies and use of specialized metadata for long-term management and preservation of digital objects
The Welfare Impacts of Commodity Price Fluctuations: Evidence from Rural Ethiopia
Get PDFMany governments try to stabilize commodity prices based on the widespread belief that households value price stability and that the poor especially benefit from food price stabilization. We derive an exact measure of multivariate price risk aversion and of associated household willingness to pay for price stabilization across multiple commodities. Using data from a panel of Ethiopian households, we estimate that the average household would be willing to pay 6-32 percent of its income to eliminate fluctuations in the prices of the seven primary food commodities. But not everyone benefits from price stabilization. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the welfare gains from eliminating price fluctuations would be concentrated in the upper 40 percent of the income distribution, making food price stabilization a distributionally regressive policy in this context.Price Fluctuations; Price Stabilization; Price Risk; Risk and Uncertainty
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