Showing papers on "Developing country published in 1989"

Consumption Smoothing, Migration, and Marriage: Evidence from Rural India

Abstract: A significant proportion of migration in low-income countries, particularly in rural areas, is composed of moves by women for the purpose of marriage. We seek to explain these mobility patterns by examining marital arrangements among Indian households. In particular, we hypothesize that the marriage of daughters to locationally distant, dispersed yet kinship-related households is a manifestation of implicit interhousehold contractual arrangements aimed at mitigating income risks and facilitating consumption smoothing in an environment characterized by information costs and spatially covariant risks. Analysis of longitudinal South Indian village data lends support to the hypothesis. Marriage cum migration contributes significantly to a reduction in the variability of household food consumption. Farm households afflicted with more variable profits tend to engage in longer-distance marriage cum migration. The hypothesized and observed marriage cum migration patterns are in dissonance with standard models of marriage or migration that are concerned primarily with search costs and static income gains.

Government Size and Economic Growth: A New Framework and Some Evidence from Cross-Section and Time-Series Data: Comment

Abstract: In a recent paper, Rati Ram (1986a) derived an equation for economic growth from two separate production functions, one for the government sector and the other for the nongovernment sector' Three different specifications of the growth equation were estimated using data for 115 countries covering the period 1960-80 International cross-section regressions for 1960-70 and 1970-80 as well as time-series regressions for individual countries were considered The following were the main results (Ram, 1986a, pp 191-92): (1) the overall impact of government size on growth is positive in almost all cases; (2) the (marginal) externality effect of government size is generally positive; (3) compared with the rest of the economy, factor productivity in the government sector appears to be higher, at least during the 1960s; and (4) there is a broad harmony between the estimates obtained from crosssection and time-series data From a policy standpoint, Ram's results, if widely accepted, have important implications, especially in regard to the economic development of the lowand middle-income developing countries For instance, the results can be interpreted to favor a relatively large role for governments in the economies of developing countries, especially if the factor productivity in the government sector is higher than in the nongovernntent sector The results of Ram, however, are in contrast to the findings of Daniel Landau (1986) Landau used a regression model within the framework of a pooled cross-section (65 LDCs) and time-series (1960-80) to assess the impact of a wide variety of government expenditure variables on the rate of economic growth The regressors included not only measures of government expenditure but also the level of per capita product, indicators of international economic conditions, human and physical capital variables, the structure of production, historical-political factors, geo-climatic factors, and others On the impact of government on economic growth, Landau's (1986, p 68) conclusions are: "Government consumption expenditure' excluding military and educational expenditure appears to have noticeably reduced economic growth Military and transfer expenditures do not appear to have had much impact on economic growth Governmental educational expenditures seem to be inefficient at generating actual education Government capital development expenditure appears to do nothing to accelerate economic growth" The conclusions of Ram and Landau are in sharp contrast to each other largely due to significant differences in their models and in the specification of government-size variables Ram's model has a better theoretical foundation compared to the multiple-regression approach of Landau On the other hand, Landau used a variety of government expenditure components as against aggregate government consumption which Ram used Their models and results, therefore, need to be carefully evaluated in further research on the subject This paper is an attempt in that direction and is aimed at a critical review of Ram's model and reexamination of his results *Department of Economics and Statistics, National University of Singapore, Kent Ridge, Singapore 0511 The author is grateful to Ganesha and Sai Gayathri for inspiration, to Koh Lin Ji for computing assistance, and to Basant Kapur, Tse Yiu Kuen, Dudley Luckett, and Mukul Asher for comments and advice Special thanks are due to the four referees of the Review for substantial comments on the earlier versions of this paper IRam adapted the two-sector growth model of Gershon Feder (1983) Feder examined the relationship between exports and economic growth

Analysing Decentralization Policies in Developing Countries: a Political-Economy Framework

Abstract: The demand for public services and physical infrastructure in developing countries is growing steadily as populations increase, and as expectations of achieving better standards of living are raised by national development plans and international assistance programmes. Local services and infrastructure not only contribute to social welfare but also enhance the productivity of labour, allow markets to work more effectively, and create opportunities for employment and entrepreneurship (World Bank, 1975; USAID, 1982). But in many developing countries local services and infrastructure are either provided by central governments ineffectively and inefficiently, or by community organizations and private businesses only sporadically (Moris, 1976; Ayubi, 1982; Harris, 1983). Local institutions often lack the incentives, adequate funds, technical expertise, and management capacity to provide services. Thus in many developing countries there are few services of any kind in areas outside of the national capital (Rondinelli and Ruddle, 1978). Furthermore, the maintenance of physical infrastructure that does exist is notoriously poor in developing countries, and as a result services and facilities deteriorate quickly (Tendler, 1979). The World Bank reports that roads it financed during the 1960s and 1970s are deteriorating so fast that many will be unusable before the borrowing countries can repay the loans for their construction. The cost of needed road maintenance in developing countries is now approaching US$40 billion (Roth, 1987b). The problems of providing and maintaining public services and infrastructure have brought increasing calls for decentralization and

World development report 1989

Abstract: This is the twelfth in the annual series assessing major development issues. Economic growth rates among the developing countries have varied considerably. The external environment has had an adverse impact on growth, but domestic policies have been more important. Countries striving to adjust their economies have had considerable success reducing external imbalances but less success with internal balance. In the absence of large inflows of foreign capital, countries will need to rely on the mobilization of domestic financial resources. The structure of a country's financial system reflects its economic philosophy; the present financial structure of many developing countries reflects their approach to development in the 1960s and 1970s, an approach that emphasized government intervention in the economy. Today many countries are revising their approach to rely more heavily on the private sector. For the financial sector, this implies a smaller role for government in the allocation of credit, determination of interest rates, and the daily decisionmaking of financial intermediation. Relaxation of these controls calls for an effective system of prudent regulation and supervision. Hence while the objective is an open market, countries should not remove all capital controls until other economic and financial reforms are in place.

Contractionary Devaluation in Developing Countries: An Analytical Overview

Abstract: The growing literature on whether devaluation has contractionary effects on output in developing countries is evaluated. The paper explores links between the exchange rate and real output within a unified, fairly general analytical framework that incorporates several of the developing country features cited in the literature. The analysis suggests that many of the arguments on both sides of the debate about contractionary devaluation require modification, that some potential effects have been ignored, and that the direction of the impact effects of devaluation on real output is ambiguous on analytical grounds.

Developing Country Debt and the World Economy

Abstract: For dozens of developing countries, the financial upheavals of the 1980s have set back economic development by a decade or more. Poverty in those countries have intensified as they struggle under the burden of an enormous external debt. In 1988, more than six years after the onset of the crisis, almost all the debtor countries were still unable to borrow in the international capital markets on normal terms. Moreover, the world financial system has been disrupted by the prospect of widespread defaults on those debts. Because of the urgency of the present crisis, and because similar crises have recurred intermittently for at least 175 years, it is important to understand the fundamental features of the international macroeconomy and global financial markets that have contributed to this repeated instability. "Developing Country Debt and the World Economy" contains nontechnical versions of papers prepared under the auspices of the project on developing country debt, sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The project focuses on the middle-income developing countries, particularly those in Latin America and East Asia, although many lessons of the study should apply as well to other, poorer debtor countries. The contributors analyze the crisis from two perspectives, that of the international financial system as a whole and that of individual debtor countries. Studies of eight countries Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, South Korea, and Turkey explore the question of why some countries succumbed to serious financial crises while other did not. Each study was prepared by a team of two authors a U.S.-based research and an economist from the country under study. An additional eight papers approach the problem of developing country debt from a global or "systemic" perspective. The topics they cover include the history of international sovereign lending and previous debt crises, the political factors that contribute to poor economic policies in many debtor nations, the role of commercial banks and the International Monetary Fund during the current crisis, the links between debt in developing countries and economic policies in the industrialized nations, and possible new approaches to the global management of the crisis."

The Woodfuel Crisis Reconsidered: Observations on the Dynamics of Abundance and Scarcity

Abstract: Many analyses of the "woodfuel crisis" in developing economies take little account of the significant difference between physical and economic woodfuel scarcities. Even when woodfuels have become physically scarce, households have a great deal of latitude in changing their consumption patterns in response. This paper questions whether the usually understood impacts of the woodfuel crisis are clearly the outcome of physical scarcities, or instead are an outcome of much more fundamental features of the socioeconomy involving labor use, land tenure and usufruct, the transition from subsistence to market economies, and cultural practices. It suggests that the singular focus on woodfuel production in many forestry project interventions has obscured more fundamental issues related to household resource allocation and factor endowments.

Female labor force participation : an international perspective

Abstract: In most economies women are less attached than men to the labor force. This has important implications for development. This article examines definitions and theories of female labor supply and related them to statistical evidence from 136 countries in the early 1980s. The findings support the view that, during the transformation from an agrarian subsistence economy, the participation of women in the labor force initially decreases and picks up later after a critical level of development has been achieved. Education is seen as a potential booster of the officially recorded female labor supply in developing countries.

Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America

Abstract: This text reflects improvements in democratic trends and the erosion of democratic advances in different countries. It regards political actors and institutions, and is concerned about the impact on democratic consolidation of economic constraints, weak states, judicial inefficacy and inequality.

The impact of otitis media.

Abstract: Otitis media is one of the most worldwide prevalent diseases that affects children. The socioeconomic costs may exceed 3.5 billion dollars a year in the United States alone in direct and indirect costs. If a vaccine can be developed that will decrease 1% of the illness this would be significant in this country and probably even more valuable in less developed countries.

The relative effectiveness of private and public schools : evidence from two developing countries

Abstract: This report reviews quality estimates between private and public secondary schools in Colombia and Tanzania. Quality is measured by student performance on standardized achievement tests. Estimated sample selection effects suggest that Colombian students sort themselves by type of institution (private or public), but Tanzanian students appear to be selected by a hierarchical mechanism, with the worst students entering private institutions. These effects are consistent with the different institutional frameworks for educational choice in these countries. For each country, private schools offer an achievement advantage. By standardizing for differences in student and school attributes, private school students have higher achievement test scores.

Literacy and Health Status in Developing Countries

Abstract: In The Health of Nations Sagan described studying historical data collected from almost 150 nations spanning the gamut from pre-modem to highly complex post modem societies searching for the characteristics that would best predict life expectancy. After applying statistical tests to determine which factor(s) appeared to be causal he found that "by far the most consistently powerful predictor of life expectancy was the prevalence of literacy." The association of literacy and health has been reported repeatedly in analyses of the post World War II decline of mortality in developing countries and of mortality differentials within their populations. The strength and significance of this relationship appear similar across cultural regions and time. But uncertainties remain. What is the direction of causation? Are health status and literacy jointly determined by other societal forces? What are the mechanisms through which literacy influences health? (excerpt)

Education, Gender, and Economic Development: A Cross-National Study.

Abstract: This article addresses two issues: Do gender differences in educational expansion have different effects on national economic growth? If so, why? In past comparative research, these issues were either ignored or explained in relation to education's impact on women's participation in the labor force and reproductive behavior. The study presented here analyzed cross-national data on 96 countries from 1960 to 1985 and found clear evidence that in less-developed countries, especially some of the poorest, educational expansion among school-age girls at the primary level has a stronger effect on long-term economic prosperity than does educational expansion among school-age boys. This effect is not mediated by women's rates of participation in the wage labor force or by fertility rates. These findings provide qualified support for institutional theories of education's impact on society.

Motherhood and subsistence work: the Tamang of rural Nepal.

Abstract: Minute-by-minute observation of individual women over the period of a year provides a reliable and valuable description of their daily activities. The extent to which Nepalese rural women vary their subsistence responsibilities during pregnancy and lactation is examined by comparing mothers with a non-childbearing sample. The remarkable behavioral similarity between the two groups of women when workloads are high is explained by reference to childcare practices and labor constraints prevailing in the community.

Strategies for Sustainable Economic Development

Abstract: The author reviews the work of the World Commission on Environment and Development established by the United Nations in 1983 and discusses economic development and ways in which it can be reconciled with environmental needs. Consideration is given to poverty debt and financial flows in developing countries; resource dependence in the third world; the cost of achieving sustainable development; and the impact of military spending on human welfare and natural resource protection budgeting. (ANNOTATION)

Conditionality, Debt Relief, and the Developing Country Debt Crisis

Abstract: This paper raises several cautionary notes regarding high-conditionality lending by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in the context of international debt crisis. It is argued that the role for high-conditionality lending is more restricted than generally believed, because enforcement of conditionality is rather weak. Moreover, the incentives for a country to abide by conditionality terms are also likely to be reduced by a large overhang of external indebtedness. Given the limited ability to enforce conditionality agreements, modesty and realism should be a cornerstone of each program. The experience with conditionality suggests two major lessons for the design of high-conditionality lending. First, debt forgiveness rather than mere debt rescheduling may increase a debtor country's compliance with conditionality, and thereby increase the actual stream of repayments by the indebted countries. Second, given the complexity of the needed adjustments, and the difficulty of enforcing conditionality agreements, programs are most likely to be successful when macroeconomic stabilization is given priority over large-scale liberalization.

Social security in developing countries : what, why, who and how?

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Use of Minority and 50–50 Joint Ventures by United States Multinationals During the 1970s: The Interaction of Host Country Policies Corporate Strategies

Abstract: This article examines geographical, sectoral, and corporate trends in the use of minority and 50-50 joint ventures by U.S. multinational manufacturing and mining firms in less developed countries (LDCs) during the 1970s. It is based primarily on data found in the Harvard Multinational Enterprise Data Base, as updated through the mid-1970s, and supplemented with corporate performance data for the 1975-1980 period from a new international Competitive Analysis (ICA) database developed with support from the General Electric Foundation.

Asian Development: Economic Success and Policy Lessons

Abstract: While the world's attention has been focused on the spectacular economic success of Japan and Korea, the less developed countries of Asia have often been neglected. Asian Development closes the gap. In nontechnical style and with minimal mathematics, it presents an in-depth perspective on the economic development of fourteen countries in East, Southeast, and South Asia. Asian Development is mainly a story of success. Though some problems remain, Asian countries have shown remarkable resilience in responding to sharp changes in the international economy-oil shocks, world recession and inflation, exchange-rate and interest-rate fluctuations, and rapid technological change. The authors conclude that their ability to adjust to changing external conditions is closely related to intelligent governmental policies. Looking back they comment: "In the past, growth of the United States and Japan pulled up the growth rates of the smaller economies in the region." Looking forward, they predict: "In the future, increasingly it will be the growth of the Asian developing countries that acts as a catalyst to growth in the more advanced economies.

Economics of changing age distributions in developed countries.

Abstract: The demographic situation in the developed countries of the world has changed dramatically over the past century: fertility has declined by two-thirds; life expectancy has more than doubled; the proportion of the population over 65 has doubled or tripled, while the proportion of children has declined drastically. At the same time, birth rates have varied widely, creating dents and bulges in the population age distribution. This rapidly changing demographic situation in the developed world contributes to many social and economic problems: population ageing strains pension systems; unusually large generations experience educational disadvantages, reduced wages, and increased unemployment; changing marriage and household behaviour affect the demand for housing. This book examines the implications of such changes for the United Kingdom, Israel, Japan, and the United States. It presents the latest research on these issues by an international group of outstanding scholars. The book is aimed at economic demographers, sociologists, labour economists and policy-makers.