1,721,256 research outputs found
Data Watch: The World Bank's Living Standards Measurement Study Household Surveys Margaret E. Grosh and Paul Glewwe
No full text Since 1985, the World Bank has been collecting household survey data in developing countries that provide a rich source of information for assessing household welfare, understanding household behavior, and evaluating the impact of government policies. This article describes these household surveys, known as Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) surveys, and explains how to obtain their data. LSMS surveys have been implemented in over twenty developing countries and have been used to analyze poverty, labor markets, health and education pricing policies, determinants of school performance, savings and consumption smoothing, health and nutrition policies, and gender and fertility issues. </jats:p
Yugoslavia - How redistribution hurts productivity in a socialist economy
Full text linkSocialism as practiced in Eastern Europe is characterized by massive income redistribution. This paper focuses on: (a) interfirm redistribution, consisting of taxing profitable firms in order to subsidize unprofitable ones; and (b) intrafirm redistribution, consisting of the compression of personal income differentials within a firm. The author constructs a theoretical model of redistribution of income as practiced in Yugoslav firms. Empirical results lead to the conclusions that efficiency in production could be improved at no cost if such redistribution were abolished. Furthermore, economies in which much of the GNP is redistributed through bargaining are also bound to be inefficient in distribution because some groups are less able to represent their common interests than others. Contrary to a common belief, socialist countries can not be praised on the count of equity either. This paper presents the estimating framework and the results of the empirical analysis obtained on the basis of a sample of Slovenian enterprises and a brief discussion of policy implications concludes the paper.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Inequality,Health Economics&Finance,Work&Working Conditions
Science, technology and skills. Background paper for the 2008 World Development Report of the World Bank.
No full textPhilip G. Pardey, Julian Alston, Jenni James, Paul Glewwe, Eran Binenbaum, Terry Hurley, and Stanley Woo
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Minnesota Agricultural Economist 701
Full text linkAre Foreign-Owned Businesses in Vietnam Really Sweatshops by Paul Glewwe/Filling the Feed Troughs of Minnesota by Douglas G. Tiffany and Jerry Frui
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Many Children Left Behind? Textbooks and Test Scores in Kenya
Full text linkA randomized evaluation suggests that a program which provided official textbooks to randomly selected rural Kenyan primary schools did not increase test scores for the average student. In contrast, the previous literature suggests that textbook provision has a large impact on test scores. Disaggregating the results by students? initial academic achievement suggests a potential explanation for the lack of an overall impact. Textbooks increased scores for students with high initial academic achievement and increased the probability that the students who had made it to the selective final year of primary school would go on to secondary school. However, students with weaker academic backgrounds did not benefit from the textbooks. Many pupils could not read the textbooks, which are written in English, most students? third language. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that the Kenyan education system and curricular materials are oriented to the academically strongest students rather than to typical students. More generally, many students may be left behind in societies that combine 1) a centralized, unified education system; 2) the heterogeneity in student preparation associated with rapid expansion of education; and 3) disproportionate elite power.
The Evolution of Income Inequality in Rural China
Full text linkWe document the evolution of the income distribution in rural China, from 1987 through 1999, with an emphasis on investigating increases in inequality associated with transition and economic development. With a backdrop of perceived improvements in average living standards, we ask whether increases of inequality may have offset, or even threaten welfare gains associated with economic reforms. The centerpiece of the paper is an empirical analysis based on a set of household surveys conducted by the China’s Research Center for Rural Economy (RCRE) in Beijing. These surveys permit us to construct a set of comparable estimates of household income and consumption from a panel of over 100 villages from nine Chinese provinces. We provide a variety of summary statistics, including Gini coefficients, as well as more nonparametric summaries of the income distribution (i.e., Lorenz curves). In addition, we decompose the sources of inequality, exploring the contributions of spatial inequality to overall inequality, and the role of non-agricultural incomes in explaining rising dispersion of incomes. We find that the distribution of income improved by most measures during the early part of the period, as average incomes rose substantially with only a modest increase in inequality. However, the distribution has worsened significantly since 1995, with rising inequality, and falling absolute incomes, especially at the bottom end of the income distribution. We attribute most of the recent decline in welfare to collapsing agricultural incomes, probably brought about by lower farm prices. At the same time, increasing non-farm incomes have widened the gaps between those with and without access to nonagricultural opportunities. Based on explorations with different data sets, our RCRE-based results probably understate the divergence due to non-agricultural income growth and the increase in inequality over time. Our results highlight the need for further evaluation of the role of farming as a source of income in the countryside, and also underline the limitations of a land-based (and essentially grain-based) income support and redistribution mechanisms.Rural inequality; China; welfare and transition; poverty; farm incomes
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