Programme Participation Intensity and Children’s Nutritional Status: Evidence from a Randomised Control Trial in Mozambique

Abstract

Agricultural interventions are thought to have the potential to improve nutrition, but little rigorous evidence is available about programmes that link the two. In this article, we study impacts of an integrated agricultural and nutritional biofortification project, the REU in Mozambique. We first provide evidence on dietary impacts of the programme and then examine impacts of the programme by participation intensity. Using OLS and IV techniques, we find that more intense participation in both project components led to larger impacts. The results therefore have important implications for refining the design of future projects attempting to link agricultural and nutrition interventions.     

Are Daughters Always the Losers in the Chore War? Evidence Using Household Data from Vietnam

Abstract

We examine the gender gap in housework in Vietnam among siblings aged less than 18 years. We show daughters undertake 5.25 minutes more unpaid housework per day than sons. However, the gender gap in housework is negligible for children aged less than 14 years. A decline in the gender gap at 15 years of age suggests parents eventually begin to consider the education of their daughters. Before then, however, the gender gap increases with age and can be even greater if daughters also engage in paid work.     

Domestic Violence and Women’s Land Rights in Rural China: Findings from a National Survey in 2010

In recent decades, China undertook a series of agricultural land tenure reforms to increase the security of land use rights for rural households. While these reforms boosted agricultural production, they also increased landlessness among women due to patrilocal and patrilineal customs. Utilising data from China’s Women Social Status Survey conducted in 2010, this paper examines the impact of women’s land rights on the incidence of domestic violence in rural China. The results show that women who have lost claims to contract land or have no residential land face significantly higher risks of being physically or psychologically abused by their husbands.     

China’s development: a new development paradigm?

The emergence of China as a development actor across the global South has raised significant questions regarding the extent to which the country presents new development opportunities to its compatriots in the South. My aim is to reflect on and parse out the experiences and policies that have shaped China’s development to assess how it can inform the field of development studies. I argue that we need to critically engage in China’s development process, as China’s own development has led to the emergence of many more problems than solutions, ranging from increasing inequality to exclusionary development practices pertaining to ethnic minorities.     

Women’s Empowerment and Wellbeing: Evidence from Africa

We use household survey data from Senegal to model the effects of empowerment within the home on married women’s wellbeing. The estimated effects of empowerment are at least as large as more conventional development indicators, such as household income. The size of the empowerment effect is robust to alternative estimation techniques, including an Instrumental Variables estimator.     

Is the PDS Already a Cash Transfer? Rethinking India’s Food Subsidy Policies

Abstract

Critics argue that India’s mismanaged Public Distribution System (PDS), which sells subsidised cereals to poor families, should be replaced by cash transfers. Others fear cash may be misused. Using National Sample Survey data, this article demonstrates that families treat additional PDS subsidies wholly as a source of cash – exactly like a cash transfer. More worryingly, cereal consumption has not increased, despite higher real subsidies. Moreover, neither the PDS nor cash transfers are likely to raise total food expenditure in poor families. Finally, therefore, the paper explores how higher food consumption and other objectives of PDS subsidies may be achieved.     

China’s road from socialism to global capitalism

Abstract

China’s engagement with global capitalism is driven by the emergence of a statist and private transnational capitalist class. Nevertheless, aspects of China’s foreign policy from the Maoist period still echo today. Consequently, elements of third world solidarity and opposition to Western domination continue to exist as China’s past is redefined to further its transnational strategies in Latin America and the US. The main Chinese investments in South America have been in energy and infrastructure among the left lead countries of the Pink Tide. In the US, Chinese capital has grown despite heated political rhetoric. This paper will examine how economic ties in South and North America reflect past and present conditions, and if China has initiated a non-Western globalisation.     

Public Value Review of China’s Public Policies on Human Organ Transplantation

Public value is a concept used to evaluate government acts and social affairs and is especially useful for evaluating ethical issues from a non-economical perspective. This article reviews the public values of China’s public policies related to human organ procurement and distribution, with the assistance of case and survey studies, and summarizes the value hierarchy or value tendency that the Chinese government wants to express through its policy design and practice. The purpose of this article is to understand national ethical policies and to determine what public values deserve to be prioritized in this field.     

Does the ICDS Improve Children’s Diets? Some Evidence from Rural Bihar

Although there are several studies documenting the impact of the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) – the largest preschool intervention – in India, few have documented to what extent it improves the quantity and quality of food consumed by young children. This paper attempts to provide causal estimates of the impact of the ICDS on calories, protein, iron, and Vitamin A intakes of children. Using matching techniques to define an appropriate counterfactual, and a primary survey in four villages in rural Bihar, our results suggest that: (a) for older children three to six years who benefit from cooked meals, the ICDS did result in higher intakes of calories, protein, and iron, and no substantive evidence that as a consequence there was substitution away from food at home. However, there was no impact on vitamin A intake; (b) for younger children whose mothers are given take-home rations, there is no evidence the ICDS improved intakes of calories or any other nutrients. Thus, even though the monetary value of the transfer was the same across both age groups, there is evidence to suggest the mode of transfer does seem to matter to ICDS effectiveness, consistent with other literature.     

Can a developing democracy benefit from labour repression? Evidence from Sri Lanka

While a growing body of academic literature casts doubt on the wisdom of authoritarian responses to labour in developing democracies, few empirical studies demonstrate the adverse effects of excluding organised labour from the policy arena or repressing trade unions in the industrial relations arena. This paper draws on the recent history of state–labour relations in Sri Lanka to help fill this gap. Beginning in the late 1970s, the Sri Lankan government adopted a labour-repressive export-oriented strategy of development. The author shows how the repression of private sector unions during this period destroyed the legitimacy of traditional left unions and the structure of institutionalised bargaining that was in place prior to Sri Lanka's authoritarian period. This erosion of the system of institutionalised bargaining eventually led workers to shift their support to more radical, ‘new left’ unions and culminated in a wave of extreme and violent forms of protest that chased away much needed foreign direct investment. The chaotic consequences of the labour repression suggest two primary conclusions: (a) that prior democratic mobilisation may make labour repression untenable over the long term; and (b) that repression may backfire, creating bursts of highly visible and destabilising protest that undermine the developmental objectives of neoliberal reforms.     

Comparing China’s frontier politics: how much difference did a century make?

In response to foreign demands for concessions and territories, China’s last imperial court in the early twentieth century executed reforms to strengthen fiscal, personnel, military, and cultural control over its frontier regions. However, in so doing, it provoked an awakening of the national consciousness of the elites of non-Han ethnic minorities there. Much has changed over the past 100 years regarding the governance of China’s frontier territories of Inner Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang, with the diffusion of nationalist claims among increasing numbers of the ethnic minority populace, heightened focus of foreign actors on the humanitarian and rights situations of the ethnic minorities, and greatly extended reach and firmer grip of the central government. What remained unaltered is the “state integration” purpose of Chinese regimes, as manifested in the practices of “internal colonialism” or “ethnic assimilation,” which has led to grievances and resistance by China’s ethnic minorities against the Chinese state.     

Are Survey Measures of Trust Correlated with Experimental Trust? Evidence from Cameroon

In less developed countries, there is often a low correlation between survey-based measures of interpersonal trust and experimental measures. This has caused doubt about the reliability of trust measures used to explain variations in levels of socio-economic development. Using data from rural Cameroon, we explore whether the correlation between survey and experimental trust depends on social distance, and on whether the survey questions are context-specific. We find a high correlation in all cases. However, correlations with survey trustworthiness do depend on social distance.     

Joint Land Certification Programmes and Women’s Empowerment: Evidence from Ethiopia

This paper connects two important development policy issues: women’s empowerment and land certification. We use propensity score matching to study the impact of the Ethiopian joint land registration and certification programme on women’s empowerment. Data are collected using surveys and a field experiment, enabling construction of complementary indices for empowerment. Our main result is that joint land certification has significant effects on women’s empowerment, particularly on dimensions that indicate female participation and roles outside the home. This result is robust to various sensitivity checks and alternative model specifications.     

Learning from your comrade’s mistakes: the impact of the Soviet past on China’s future

While the Soviet Union imploded in the midst of its attempt to reform itself, more than a decade later China stands as a testament to the resilience of Communist rule. I suggest that one reason China has been able to stave off a regime collapse is that Chinese leaders have sought to learn from the collapse of the Soviet Union and are seeking to adjust their policies to buttress their political power. I present evidence in support of this position including statements of political leaders and party insiders, internal government documents, and Chinese scholarship on the Soviet collapse.     

Does the Heterogeneity of Project Implementers Affect the Programme Participation of Beneficiaries?: Evidence from Rural Cambodia

This study employs the dataset collected for the assessment of a post-harvest technology project in rural Cambodia and focuses on the heterogeneous preferences of project implementers, frequently overlooked in the literature on programme evaluation studies. We focus on the ‘implementer effect’ on the programme participation of the treated farmers. We demonstrate that the heterogeneous programme participation of ordinary farmers could be induced due to heterogeneity in the characteristics of the project staff. In particular, we indicate that the baseline altruism of the project staff, measured by the dictator game, consistently increases the participation rate and the number of participations in the training sessions of beneficiaries. This type of heterogeneity in project staffs’ preferences across treatment sites could be a source of treatment heterogeneity for programmes conducted at a certain cluster level. While few studies have focused on the heterogeneity of programme implementers, our empirical results indicate that the preference of implementers could be a source of treatment heterogeneity and imply the importance of implementation of an actual project.     

Are School Committees a Source of Empowerment? Insights from Tanzania

Studies on user committees often critique the claim that membership to these committees empowers people. In this article, we use survey data on empowerment school committees in Tanzania to find out whether school committee membership is a source of empowerment of people at the local levels. Our findings suggest that membership in itself has limited impact on empowerment, while access to information and gender are the major sources of empowerment. However, the role of membership to the school committee is significant insofar as it can expose members to critical information on school issues.     

How Does Globalisation Affect Regional Inequality within A Developing Country? Evidence from China

Developing countries are increasingly concerned about effects of globalisation on regional inequality. This paper develops an empirical method for decomposing the contributions of two major driving forces of globalisation, foreign trade and foreign direct investment (FDI), on regional inequality and applies it to China. Even after controlling for many other factors, globalisation is still found to be an important factor contributing to the widening regional inequality. The paper ends by investigating the role of factor market segmentations in aggravating the distributional effect of changing regional comparative advantages in the process of globalisation.     

Does transformational leadership stimulate user orientation? Evidence from a field experiment

While doing good for specific citizens and users is often considered a powerful motivator among public service employees, little research has rigorously evaluated how public managers can promote individualized prosocial motivation. We follow recent studies on the behavioural implications of ‘user orientation’ to explore how public managers can use a specific leadership strategy—transformational leadership—to reinforce employees' individualized prosocial motivation. Combining a field experiment with 80 childcare centre managers and survey reports from their 590 preschool teachers, we assess the effect of a transformational leadership training programme on user orientation. The results show a positive effect on user orientation three months after the training programme but no persistent effect 15 months after the intervention. This implies that, at least in the short term, public managers can use transformational leadership behaviours to stimulate user orientation.     

Social Health Insurance and the Use of Formal and Informal Care in Developing Countries: Evidence from Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme

This paper studies the relationship between the use of formal and informal health care in a developing country setting by examining the introduction of a social health insurance scheme in Ghana. We estimate the effects of gaining coverage on changes in care seeking behaviour and show how these effects differ by age and wealth status. District-level differences in the implementation of the insurance scheme provide exogenous variation in access to insurance and allow us to address issues with selection into coverage. Results indicate that insurance access strongly increased use of formal care and reduced out-of-pocket expenditures on health services.     

Are the LDCs really the world’s least developed countries?

The term ‘the least developed countries’ (LDCs) is widely understood to designate, exactly as stated, the world’s least developed countries. In conjunction with the 2015 United Nations (UN) triennial review of the LDC category, this article attempts to critically evaluate the UN’s list of LDC countries in the light of various indicators – economic, social, political, military and security related, and psychological. It concludes that the official and actual lists of LDCs, despite important similarities, are not completely identical. The term ‘the LDCs’ as used by the UN is therefore not fully consistent with the reality it attempts to designate and describe.