https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

A Treatise on the Family

In this innovative approach to the practice of social science, Charles Ragin explores the use of fuzzy sets to bridge the divide between quantitative and qualitative methods. Paradoxically, the fuzzy set is a powerful tool because it replaces an unwieldy, "fuzzy" instrument—the variable, which establishes only the positions of cases relative to each other, with a precise one—degree of membership in a well-defined set. Ragin argues that fuzzy sets allow a far richer dialogue between ideas and evidence in social research than previously possible. They let quantitative researchers abandon "homogenizing assumptions" about cases and causes, they extend diversity-oriented research strategies, and they provide a powerful connection between theory and data analysis. Most important, fuzzy sets can be carefully tailored to fit evolving theoretical concepts, sharpening quantitative tools with in-depth knowledge gained through qualitative, case-oriented inquiry. This book will revolutionize research methods not only in sociology, political science, and anthropology but in any field of inquiry dealing with complex patterns of causation.

Fuzzy-Set Social Science

Women and Human Development. Martha C. Nussbaum. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 303 pp.

Women and Human Development.

Participants are requested to register and obtain meeting badges at the registration counter, located on the ground floor, UNCC, from 08:30 hours to 09:00 hours on the event day. Participants who are not able to register during the time indicated above are requested to do so upon their arrival at UNCC before going to the conference room. Only the names of duly registered participants will be included in the list of participants.

/pdf/economic-and-social-commission-for-asia-and-the-pacific-1cgptjifai.pdf

Economic and social commission for asia and the pacific

Although first applied in the medical sciences in the 1970s, systematic reviews have been recently, and increasingly, used in the field of international development to examine the impacts of a range of development and humanitarian interventions. However, to date, there has been only limited critical reflection on their application within this field. Drawing on the authors' first-hand experiences of conducting eight systematic reviews, this article reflects upon the use of systematic reviews in international development research. It is concluded that although using systematic review principles can help researchers improve the rigour and breadth of literature reviews, conducting a full systematic review is a resource-intensive process which involves a number of practical challenges. Further, it raises a series of fundamental concerns for those working in international development, as well as the social sciences more broadly. Ultimately, systematic reviews should be viewed as a means to finding a robust and ...

The benefits and challenges of using systematic reviews in international development research.

Massey et al. (1994) is a ground-breaking paper in the migration literature that discusses and unifies different migration theories. However, their review and synthesis is incomplete and fairly brief for researchers interested in a deeper understanding of the migration theory literature. This paper therefore aims to review the complete spectrum of economic migration theory from the 1950s until today and
to show the differences and complementarities between the different approaches.

/pdf/why-do-people-migrate-a-review-of-the-theoretical-literature-2mv8rwzdgh.pdf

Why do people migrate? A review of the theoretical literature

In this paper we review the current state of literature on the determinants of remittances since it is important to understand remittance flows from a policy perspective since they affect the lives of so many people around the world. While the decision to remit may be clearly linked to the causes of migration, for example, in the theory the New Economics of Labour Migration, we take the causes of migration literature as given and broadly focus on the determinants of remittances. Most of the literature is based on empirical applications; hence we will focus on clearly summarising existing findings before comparing the results to our own. We start by giving the theoretical background of the determinants of remittances and then briefly discuss the literature that focuses on the macroeconomic level. We find the main theoretical determents of remittances to be altruism, insurance, the bequest motive, loan repayment, and the exchange motive. We then move to a more extensive section on the empirical applications of the micro-economic determinants of remittances. We conclude with a summary of findings from the literature. Keywords: remittances, transfers

/pdf/the-determinants-of-remittances-a-review-of-the-literature-4e4i668hnc.pdf

The determinants of remittances: A review of the literature

This article presents the findings of a review of the impact of non-contributory cash transfers on individuals and households in low- and middle-income countries, covering the literature of 15 years, from 2000 to 2015. Based on evidence extracted from 165 studies, retrieved through a systematic search and screening process, this article discusses the impact of cash transfers on 35 indicators covering six outcome areas: monetary poverty; education; health and nutrition; savings, investment and production; work; and empowerment. For most of the studies, cash transfers contributed to progress in the selected indicators in the direction intended by policymakers. Despite variations in the size and strength of the underlying evidence base by outcome and indicator, this finding is consistent across all outcome areas. The article also investigates unintended effects of cash transfer receipt, such as potential reductions in adult work effort and increased fertility, finding limited evidence for such unintended effects. Finally, the article highlights gaps in the evidence base and areas which would benefit from additional future research.

The Impact of Cash Transfers: A Review of the Evidence from Low- and Middle-income Countries

Building on previous reflections on the utility of systematic reviews in international development research, this paper describes an approach to carrying out a literature review that adheres to some of the core principles of ‘full’ systematic reviews, but that also contains space within the process for innovation and reflexivity. We discuss all stages of the review process, but pay particular attention to the retrieval phase, which, we argue, should consist of three interrelated tracks – important for navigating difficult ‘information architecture’. We end by clarifying what it is in particular that sets this approach apart from fuller systematic reviews, as well as with some broader thoughts on the nature of ‘the literature review’ within international development and the social sciences more generally. The paper should thus be seen as sitting somewhere between a practical toolkit for those wishing to undertake a rigorous, evidence-focused review and a series of reflections on the role, purpose and application of literature reviews in policy research.

http://r4d.dfid.gov.uk/pdf/outputs/SLRC/Guidancenote-literature-reviews.pdf

Jessica Hagen-Zanker

Papers

The benefits and challenges of using systematic reviews in international development research.

Why do people migrate? A review of the theoretical literature

The determinants of remittances: A review of the literature

The Impact of Cash Transfers: A Review of the Evidence from Low- and Middle-income Countries

How to do a rigorous, evidence- focused literature review in international development