43 research outputs found
Perception of Interpersonal Behaviors Across Cultures
No full textCross-cultural psychology has played a very important role in identifying, describing, and even explaining psychological structures that are involved in the perception of interpersonal behavior. This chapter reviews work based on the research paradigm of subjective culture, which establishes that at least three interpersonal dimensions have been identified across cultures and historical periods: Association-Dissociation, Superordination-Subordination, and Intimacy-Formality. These three dimensions are often conceptualized as psychological universals, a notion that raises the question of the origins of the dimensions. By starting with the fundamental assumption that all social behavior is based on resource exchange, the chapter reviews a framework that attempts to account for the emergence of social meanings through time
Replication Data for: 'Land Security and Mobility Frictions'
No full textThe data and programs replicate tables from "Land Security and Mobility Frictions," by Adamopoulos, Brandt, Chen, Restuccia, and Wei. Please see the readme file for additional details
The Size Distribution of Farms and International Productivity Differences
No full textThere is a 34-fold difference in average farm size (land per farm) between rich and poor countries and striking differences in their size distributions. Since labor productivity is much higher in large relative to small farms, we study the determinants of farm-size differences across countries and their impact on agricultural and aggregate productivity. We develop a quantitative model of agriculture and non-agriculture that features a non-degenerate size distribution of farms. We find that measured aggregate factors such as capital, land, and economy-wide productivity cannot account for more than 1/4 of the observed differences in farm size and productivity. We argue that, among the possible explanations, farm-level policies that misallocate resources from large to small farms have the most potential to account for the remaining differences. Such farm-size distortions are prevalent in poor countries. We quantify the effects of two specific policies in developing countries: (a) a land reform that imposes a ceiling on farm size and (b) a progressive land tax. We find that each individual policy generates a reduction of 3 to 7% in average size and productivity.aggregate productivity, agriculture, farm-size distortions, misallocation
Transportation Costs And Economic Development
No full textThis dissertation contributes to a growing literature using microeconomic data to explore questions in macroeconomic development, with particular focus on the importance of transportation costs. Specifically, I study the importance of idiosyncratic transportation costs and economic development via three different angles.
In Chapter 1, I study how idiosyncratic transportation frictions as labor mobility barriers affect the sectoral sorting of workers between agriculture and non-agriculture and quantify their impact on aggregate and sectoral productivity, the pattern of occupational choices and selection. I add idiosyncratic transport costs by sector to an otherwise canonical two sector Roy model. I combine panel data on household level transport costs and income from Honduras with a structural model to quantitatively estimate the impact observed transport costs on the reallocation of labor and aggregate development through this selection channel. When removing transport costs, share of agricultural employment drops by 8 percent, agricultural productivity increases 1.32-fold and real GDP per worker rises 1.19-fold.
In Chapter 2, I examine whether the geographic location of farmers, and their distance from markets can account for measured misallocation in the data. I quantitatively examine this question by leveraging a transport infrastructure development program in El Salvador. I use panel micro-level data on transport costs and agricultural production at the farm level along with a structural model in which farmers produce subject to transportation costs. The key insight of my model is that in the presence of transport costs the implied efficient allocation is different than that in the canonical model of misallocation.
In Chapter 3, I explore the role idiosyncratic transportation costs from farm to market play in contributing to a pronounced subsistence agricultural sector. Particularly, I study how idiosyncratic transportation costs to market affect crop commercialization among farmers in Tanzania in the long rainy season. Methodologically, I combine panel data from the Tanzania National Panel Survey with a structural model to quantitatively examine the role transport costs play in facilitating the transformation from subsistence to commercial farming. I find that reductions in transport costs for food crop farmers, sees switching to cash crop farming
Land Inequality and the Transition to Modern Growth
No full textCan the initial distribution of land, in a country's early history, affect its subsequent economic development? In this paper, I show that when land ownership is sufficiently concentrated, the landed elite will lobby the government to raise barriers to industrialization in order to protect its rents in the rural economy. I develop a small open economy model in which barriers take the form of tariffs on the imports of intermediate inputs used in industry. Such tariffs can affect both the timing and the pace of industrialization. The quantitative application of the theory is motivated by an important question in economic history: why did Argentina not replicate Canadian economic success, despite reasonable expectations to the contrary in the late 19th century? I provide evidence that Argentina had a markedly higher inequality in land ownership than Canada. Taking as given the observed differences in land distributions in the early 20th century, the model produces differences in equilibrium tariffs similar to the ones observed at the time, and the ones required to account for the Canadian-Argentine income gap until 1950. Over time however, as land becomes unimportant in production, land inequality ceases to be a source of policy disparities and income gaps. (Copyright: Elsevier)Income differences; Tariffs; Land inequality; Lobbying
Transportation Costs, Agricultural Productivity and Cross-Country Income Differences
No full textThere are large differences in transportation infrastructure
across nations. Constructing a measure of transportation
infrastructure density for a large set of countries, I show that
the disparity in this measure between the 5% income rich and the
5% income poor countries is a factor of 28. Are these differences
a source of productivity differences across nations? Using a
three-sector, two-region, general equilibrium model, I show that
high transport costs can distort the allocation of resources not
only across geographically dispersed production units
within sectors but also between agriculture and
non-agriculture. Taking as given the observed differences in
transportation infrastructure densities, I quantify the role of
transportation for cross-country income differences. The
calibrated model produces an income disparity of 10.9 between the
5% rich and 5% poor countries. This corresponds to an
improvement of 35% relative to the disparity predicted by a two
sector model of agriculture and non-agriculture. Furthermore, the
effects of advancements in transportation are non-linear: the
elasticity of aggregate labor productivity with respect to the
stock of transportation infrastructure in the poorest nations is
15 times higher than in the richest onesProductivity Differences, Sectoral Productivity, Transportation Costs
Relative Underperformance Alla Turca
No full textFrom 1960 to 2003, Turkey has underperformed relative to several Western economies, in terms of hours worked and output per hour. Our sectoral analysis illustrates two points. First, Turkey's large drop in hours is due to the fact that the substantial decline in agricultural hours has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in nonagricultural market hours. Second, the sectoral composition of output is important for understanding Turkey's relatively weak rise in output per hour. We develop a simple model of structural transformation and home production to provide an account of Turkey's performance relative to the US and Southern Europe. We find that the evolution of exogenous differences in sectoral productivity and taxes, between Turkey and the US, as well as Southern Europe, can account quantitatively for most of Turkey's relative underperformance to these regions. (Copyright: Elsevier)Income differences; Labor input differences; Structural transformation; Taxes; Turkey
