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.     

Representative Bureaucracy in the Public Service? A Critical Analysis of the Challenges Confronting Women in the Civil Service of Ghana

In the public administration literature, the debate concerning the representation of minorities in the public bureaucracy continues to attract attention. The idea is that passive representation may lead to active representation with the later helping to develop policies and programs that will benefit minorities. Consequently, a number of governments have been implementing policies to enhance the involvement of minorities in public services. The Ghana government has not been left out in this endeavor. Since 1957, it has continued to institute measures to ensure a fair gender representation in the bureaucracy. This notwithstanding, the upper echelons of the bureaucracy continue to be dominated by males despite the over representation of women at the lower levels. What are the challenges confronting women in the public sector that make it difficult to achieve active representation? In this article, we examine the challenges confronting women to achieve active representation from a representative bureaucracy perspective.     

Who Gains More from Education? A Comparative Analysis of Business,Farm and Wage Workers in India

The economics literature on returns to education has focused largely on wage workers, thereby ignoring a sizable section of the workforce which is self-employed. This paper presents the estimates of private returns to education for business, farm and wage workers in India using a nationally representative household survey. The paper addresses the sample-selectivity issue arising due to endogenous sector allocation in the earnings equation using the multinomial-selection approach. Our results show that the average rate of return to education is higher for wage workers followed by business and farm workers. Focusing only on wage workers would provide an overestimate of returns by 30 per cent for business workers and by 40–50 per cent for farm workers. Further, the profile of returns across the education ladder varies perceptibly for the three type of workers with higher education being more rewarding for wage workers.     

Rethinking “Wana”: A Game Theoretic Analysis of the Conflict in the Tribal Region of Pakistan

The purpose of this study is to analyze the ongoing conflict situation between the government of Pakistan and the tribal population groups residing in the tribal belt along the Pakistan–Afghanistan border, while Pakistan aids the United States in its “War on Terror.” The article brings into limelight the political problems being faced by the government of Pakistan while it supports the United States and its allies in their mission to combat and weaken the Al Qaeda and Taliban forces. It further attempts to apply some simple game theoretic models to the situation in Waziristan and tries to accommodate the influence of the third party (the United States in this case) on the strategies as well as on the Nash equilibrium of the players in this situation of conflict. The aim of this exercise is to capture and highlight policy insights that might emerge from this strategic analysis. The possible Nash equilibrium depicts that the presence of the third party in the said conflict complicates the situation in an adverse manner. Moreover, the rebels might find it profitable to rebel and retaliate against the government in the subsequent periods due to the grievances caused by the actions of government in the first period. The government of Pakistan therefore seriously needs to rethink and reform its strategy for dealing with the extremists in the case discussed.     

Media Influence on Citizens’ Government Trust: A Cross-Sectional Data Analysis of China

This study explores how media affects citizens’ government trust in modern China. Detailed analyses of the survey data found that Chinese official media has a positive effect on government trust, and the growing social media has been becoming a major threat to it. Further validation of the multiple mediation model shows that the post-materialist values, performance evaluation, and their continuous multiple role serve as bridges between the positive effect of official media on government trust. Although the similar mediating factors also exist between the negative influence of social media on public trust in government, their mechanisms and effects are quite different. Compared with the role of cultivating and guiding values, the propaganda effect of official media on government performance play a more important role in enhancing citizens’ trust in government, while the acceleration of public value transformation is the main source of decline in government trust brought by social media.     

Innovation in Public Management: Is Public E-Procurement a Wave of the Future? A Theoretical and Exploratory Analysis

Project management has become an answer to many traditional organizational structuration and performance shortcomings, while gaining currency in business and public sector organizations. Public procurement systems have evolved into public electronic procurement systems with variations and distinctions in the age of globalization and digitalized complexities. This article examines the development of public e-procurement as an innovation in public management in the contexts of project management, public procurement management, and e-governance. It also links practice to theory—through a fourfold theoretical perspective—with contributions to the knowledge in public procurement, governance, and public administration.     

Does Market Access Mitigate the Impact of Seasonality on Child Growth? Panel Data Evidence from Northern Ethiopia

Seasonality in agricultural production continues to shape intra-annual food availability in low-income countries. Using high-frequency panel data from northern Ethiopia, this study attempts to quantify seasonal fluctuations in children’s weights. Consistent with earlier studies, we document considerable seasonality in children’s age and height adjusted weights. While children located closer to local food markets are better nourished compared to their counterparts residing farther away, their weights are also subject to considerable seasonality. Further analysis shows that children located closer to food markets consume more diverse diets than those located farther away but the content of the diet varies across seasons. This leads us to conclude that households located near these food markets are not able to insulate their children from seasonal weight fluctuations. We discuss some policy options with potential to address this threat to child wellbeing.     

What's the Problem in Public Sector Workforce Recruitment? A Multi-Sector Comparative Analysis of Managerial Perceptions

Public sector workforce recruitment is problematic, but the nature of that problem is not clearly defined. Workforce recruitment is essentially a matching problem that requires managers to recruit desired employees in available labor pools. This research asks whether sectoral differences and competition for labor affect whether public managers frame the major problem of workforce recruitment as the size, qualifications, or work ethic of the labor pool. Using survey data from about 2,300 managers from two US states, problem attributions are modeled using multinomial logit. The findings suggest that the public and nonprofit sectors find it more problematic to recruit qualified employees than the private sector, but public and nonprofit agencies hold a comparative advantage over the private sector in recruiting employees with sufficient work ethic. Therefore, public and nonprofit managers should emphasize retention and training to leverage their comparative advantage in recruiting employees with work ethic while addressing a comparative disadvantage in recruiting qualified employees.     

Is Poverty in Africa Mostly Chronic or Transient? Evidence from Synthetic Panel Data

Absent actual panel household survey data, we construct for the first time synthetic panel data for more than 20 countries accounting for two-thirds of the population in sub-Saharan Africa. We employ in this process repeated cross sections that span, on average, a six-year period for each country. Our analysis suggests that all these countries as a whole have had pro-poor growth. In particular, one third of the poor population escaped poverty during the studied period, which is larger than the proportion of the population that fell into poverty in the same period. The region also saw a 28 per cent increase in the size of the middle class. Chronic poverty, however, remains high and a considerable proportion of the population is vulnerable to falling into poverty.     

Who Should Be at the Top of Bottom-Up Development? A Case-Study of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission in Rajasthan,India

It is widely acknowledged that top-down support is essential for bottom-up participatory projects to be effectively implemented at scale. However, which level of government, national or sub-national, should be given the responsibility to implement such projects is an open question, with wide variations in practice. This paper analyses qualitative and quantitative data from a natural experiment of a large participatory project in the state of Rajasthan in India comparing central management and state-level management. We find that locally managed facilitators formed groups that were more likely to engage in collective action and be politically active, with higher savings and greater access to subsidised loans.     

Understanding Insurgency Violence: A Quantitative Analysis of the Political Violence in Northern Ireland 1969–1999

The main argument examined in this article is that the escalation of political violence in Northern Ireland between 1969–1999 resulted because of the state's reliance on repression and this had conflicting effects contributing to the rise in violence. Perhaps the most important finding reached by this research was that a state's reliance on repression is positively associated with more insurgent violence. This research suggests that variations in outcomes to the use of force by a democratic state may result because one may assume a linear model exists when in reality the true relationship maybe curvilinear.     

National Transparency Regimes: Rules or Principles? A Comparative Analysis of the United States and The Netherlands

Technology development and democratization have been identified as the general drivers of the worldwide thrust in transparency. But what transparency regimes do these drivers generate in different countries? This mixed method study indicates that national regimes are different due to pre-existing institutional differences and critical junctures in the historical development of transparency regimes. Our analysis shows that the U.S. transparency regime can be characterized as a rules-based approach while a principles-based transparency regime prevails in the Netherlands. This article nuances the debate about the global character of transparency and highlights two different outcomes of the push for transparency.     

Participation and Earnings of Older People in Argentina: Nice Work if You Can Get It?

The article explores the potential contribution of better labour market participation among older people in Argentina to address old age poverty and vulnerability. The acute financial crisis in 2001 led to a steep rise in poverty and renewed concerns over the deterioration of old age support. Broadly, two main strategies took shape: to strengthen pension provision for poorer and vulnerable older people, and to improve their labour market participation. Using data from a dedicated survey of older people, the article tests the feasibility and effectiveness of the second strategy through a detailed analysis of the labour market participation and earnings of older people in Argentina.     

Is Economic Growth Increasing Disparities? A Multidimensional Analysis of Poverty in the Lao PDR between 2003 and 2013

The Asian story of miraculous growth and poverty reduction has reinforced mainstream views of development that equate high and sustained economic growth with progress in human wellbeing. But understanding development only in terms of economic growth is not sufficient. This paper offers a different perspective on possible effects of Laos’s transition from a subsistence-oriented economy to a market-oriented economy. We used a multidimensional poverty approach with panel data for the years between 2003 and 2013. Findings suggest that benefits were not equally distributed: 50 per cent of people moved in and out of poverty, and the other half was either non-poor (37%) or always poor (13%).     

A Macro–Micro Analysis of the Effects of Electricity Reform in Senegal on Poverty and Distribution

This paper uses a computable general equilibrium (CGE) macro–micro model to explore the distributional effects of price reform in the electricity sector of Senegal. In the first part of the paper we analyse the distribution of electricity in Senegal by income quintiles, between 1995 and 2001. The analysis demonstrates that poor and rural households are not the main beneficiaries of the expanded network. The results of the CGE model show that direct price effects are weaker than general equilibrium effects on poverty and inequality. Moreover, compensatory policies tested can help attenuate some adverse effects.