World Institute for Development Economics Research

About: World Institute for Development Economics Research is a facility organization based out in Helsinki, Finland. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Poverty & Population. The organization has 110 authors who have published 525 publications receiving 17316 citations.

Access to Land: Market and Non-Market Land Transactions in Rural Vietnam

Abstract: In a country as densely populated as Vietnam, land is a scarce resource. This is even more so because 70 per cent of the population still reside in rural areas. Therefore, achieving efficiency and equity in the allocation of land in this context is a key priority. Furthermore, in a rapidly developing economy such as that of Vietnam, there is a pressing need to facilitate a process whereby land can change hands without large inefficiencies. For example, to ensure an efficient flow of labor resources from rural to urban areas, it is necessary that households (HHs) in rural areas are able to transfer land rights without incurring excessive transaction costs. It is also important to ensure that agricultural land can be transformed into land for residential and industrial purposes without friction, and without imposing heavy costs on farmers. Evidence from other countries on the ability of land markets to perform these functions efficiently is mixed. The studies on land markets in four African countries in Holden et al. (2008) show considerable friction in the operation of land rental markets, but also, for example in Uganda, some positive effects on allocative efficiency. Similar results are reported in Holden et al. (2011), who find that land certification stimulated the rental markets in Northern Ethiopia, and those increased rental market activities, in turn, improved the efficiency of land use. On the other hand, Deininger et al. (2003) find land markets in Nicaragua to be largely ineffective in terms of improving equity as well as efficiency.

Commodity prices and intra-household labor allocation

Abstract: Volatility in commodity markets poses a distinct risk to farmers in developing countries who rely on cash crop agriculture. We combine a time series of international coffee prices with a long-running panel on coffee-growing households in Vietnam to investigate coping mechanisms employed by farmers in a transitioning economy. We find that households cope with lower coffee prices by increasing wage labor of adults with children and adolescents substituting for adults on the farm. Heterogeneity analysis indicates a stronger substitution pattern among women, ethnic minorities, and households with fewer assets. A variety of robustness checks corroborate these findings. Account of this finding should be taken in formulating and implementing social protection and inclusive growth policies

Segregation of women into low-paying occupations in the United States

Abstract: We extend the conventional framework for measuring segregation to consider the stratification of occupations by gender, i.e. when either women or men are predominantly segregated into low-paying jo...

Explaining the Poverty Difference between Inland and Coastal China: A Regression-based Decomposition Approach

Abstract: This study proposes a decomposition framework for quantifying contributions of the determinants of poverty to spatial differences or temporal changes in poverty. This framework is then applied to address the issue why poverty incidence is higher in inland than in coastal China. The empirical application requires household or individual income observations which, generally speaking, are not available. Thus, a data-generation method developed by Shorrocks and Wan is introduced to construct such observations from grouped income data. It is found that inland China is poorer than coastal China, mainly due to lower efficiency in resource utilization rather than less endowment of resources. Also, trade became poverty-reducing in coastal China in the late 1990s but remained poverty-inducing in inland China. Policy implications are briefly discussed.