Factors impeding credit use in small‐farm households in Bolivia

Sample survey data show few Bolivian small‐farm households using credit, but most would like to borrow from formal market institutions. A theoretical framework is developed to formulate testable hypotheses to identify factors that inhibit credit use. Major impediments to borrowing are scale of operations, as measured by amount of useable land, and borrower's transactions costs that arise from loan paperwork, use of Indian language, remoteness from market, little education and low degree of market integration. When farmers with these characteristics borrow they tend to use informal market sources because of the lower transactions costs compared to those of formal market lenders. The policy implication is if formal market lenders are to reach more farmers they must lower transactions costs.     

DOES DISPERSED PUBLIC OWNERSHIP IMPAIR EFFICIENCY? THE CASE OF REFUSE COLLECTION IN NORWAY

Corporate governance theory suggests that companies with dispersed and indirect ownership suffer from agency costs. A worst case is where several political authorities jointly own a company, which allows managers to operate with inferior efficiency. In political economy, the manager is not the major agency problem. Elected politicians may impair efficiency to improve their re‐election prospects. Since politicians have less influence in jointly owned firms, such companies are expected to perform better than those owned by a single public authority. Consistent with corporate governance – but not political economy – the empirical analysis suggests that dispersed municipal ownership impairs cost efficiency. In the Norwegian case of municipal refuse collection presented here, costs of dispersed ownership often outstrip gains from economies of scale. Use of jointly owned companies is not necessarily a proper response to efficiency problems inherent a fragmented local government structure.     

Political engagement and participation of Thai citizens: the rural–urban disparity

The nature of citizen participation and engagement in public life in Thailand has changed dramatically over the last decade. This article focuses on explaining the changing pictures of political engagement – political interest, knowledge, and efficacy – among rural and urban Thai citizens since the House of Representatives election in 2001. The major attempt made in this article also to explain how these changes affect patterns of political activism (i.e. in voting, political contacting, and protesting activities), particularly between the rural and urban Thai voters. Relying on three latest survey data taken from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, the article suggests that the factors facilitating greater political participation are relatively different between rural and urban residents, and such differences cannot simply be explained as a result of a deeper engagement in the patron–client relationship of the rural than of the urban. Indeed, those differentiations depend on several factors and vary according to different kinds of political activity.     

EXIT,VOICE, AND DISAPPOINTMENT: MOUNTAIN DECLINE AND EU COMPENSATORY RURAL POLICY IN SPAIN

The article analyses the Spanish experience of EU compensatory rural policy in order to contribute to broader debates on the effectiveness of this kind of policy and the role of agriculture in the definition of European rural policies. In the case of Spain, compensatory allowances to mainly mountain farmers had little effect on economic trajectories or social cohesion because of the small sums involved, the exclusion of those with very small farms, and the decreasing role of agriculture in the rural economy. Other, more structural, instruments of rural policy focused on small‐scale promotion of business growth but were ill‐equipped to challenge some of the territorially defined items of living standard gaps. A historically grounded analysis suggests that the main changes in the social trajectory of Spain's mountain areas in the last decades have little to do with compensatory policy and are related to ordinary economic dynamics.     

Repeated Transaction in Rural Grain Markets of Ethiopia

This article uses the theory of repeated transaction to model exchange in rural grain markets. We examine the theoretical and empirical drivers of repeated transaction, as well as potential problems that may arise as a result of its widespread use. We develop a structural repeated game to represent buyer-seller relations in a developing country grain market, motivated by observations in Ethiopia. The model generates hypotheses regarding the logic that drives long-term tied transactions, as governed by information access, screening and investment costs, and time preferences. The model's predictions are tested using market transaction data collected in Ethiopia in 2009. Results support the view that a relational contract is driven by access to information and the costs of screening. Our major finding is that trust in relational trading can emerge through costly repeated interaction.     

PARALLEL STRUCTURES IN THE EGYPTIAN GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRACY: A PROBLEMATIC QUICK FIX

This paper investigates the proliferation of parallel structures – also known as project implementation units (PIUs) and technical offices (TOs) – within the Egyptian public administration system and the pressures since the 1990s that have led to their increasing numbers, including the current political turmoil. To determine whether these structures are a viable tool for the implementation of reform in Egypt, the paper examines international experience, analyses the literature, and assesses the results of a brief survey of staff working in the traditional bureaucracy and those in parallel structures. The paper concludes that while PIUs may sometimes be necessary for initiating reform in the short term, long term sustainable reform requires genuine commitment of both donor and recipient governments to improve governance, build capacity within the traditional national institutions, apply performance management with a focus on policy impacts, and adopt alternative mechanisms in implementing development projects such as general budget support.     

Identifying a Sustained Pathway to Multidimensional Poverty Reduction: Evidence from Two Chinese Provinces

Poor rural households in developing countries often endure many-faceted burdens including monetary poverty, nutrition deficiency and energy shortage due to reliance on limited local natural resources with low utilisation efficiency. We investigate a sustained pathway in rural China to escape the vicious circle between three important dimensions of poverty – deficiency of income, malnutrition and a low energy consumption profile in terms of reliance on firewood. By exploiting household panel data and a dynamic and recursive multi-equation mixed mode, we identify inter-locking deprivations in income, nutrition and energy consumption. Firewood plantations only offer short-term solutions to break them through income effects, while the sustained pathways in the long-term are increasing agricultural labour productivity and provision of agricultural loans.     

The divergence of private from social costs in rural‐urban migration: A case study of Nairobi,Kenya

In LDCs the level of urban wages tends to induce more people to seek employment in the towns than can be employed at this wage level. The existence of these urban unemployed causes the private costs of migration to diverge from the social costs. The individual rural resident decides to remain or migrate on the basis of perceived private costs of migration. The effect of a decision to migrate on the economy is the social cost of migration. In our study we consider the determinants of different levels of private and social costs associated with different stocks of urban unemployed. In addition, utilising survey data on Nairobi, Kenya, an attempt is made to quantify the major private and social costs of migration to determine whether they diverge significantly. On the basis of these estimates some policy options for limiting urban unemployment caused by urban in‐migration are considered.     

Transforming Staple Food Value Chains in Africa: The Case of Teff in Ethiopia

We study changes in the last decade in the teff value chain, Ethiopia’s most important staple food crop by area and value. Upstream, there is increasing adoption of modern inputs and new varieties – especially by those farmers living close to cities – leading to higher land productivity. Mid- and downstream, we find improved processing costs and increasing willingness-to-pay for convenience and quality, as illustrated by the emergence of one-stop retail shops and the rise of more expensive teff varieties. Because of the large numbers of teff producers and consumers, this transformation has important implications on the country’s food security.     

The ‘tenure guidelines’ as a tool for democratising land and resource control in Latin America

Abstract

The current configuration of global land politics – who gets what land, how, how much, why and with what implications in urban and rural spaces in the Global South and North – brings disparate social groups, governments and social movements with different sectoral and class interests into the issue of natural resource politics. Governance instruments must be able to capture the ‘political moment’ marked by the increasing intersection of issues and state and social forces that mobilise around these. This paper looks at whether and how the Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (also known as the TGs) passed in 2012 in the United Nations Committee for Food Security (CFS) can contribute to democratising resource politics today. This work puts forward some initial ideas about how systematic research into the TGs can be done more meaningfully.     

Will blockchain emerge as a tool to break the poverty chain in the Global South?

Just like its recent predecessors, blockchain – also known as the distributed ledger technology – is considered to have the potential to cause major economic, political and social transformations in the Global South. The visible effects of this technology are already being noted there. We present early evidence linking the use of blockchain in overcoming some economic, social and political challenges facing the Global South. The article highlights the key applications and uses of blockchain in developing countries. It demonstrates how blockchain can help promote transparency, build trust and reputation, and enhance efficiency in transactions. The article looks at opportunities and key triggers for blockchain diffusion in these countries. It also delves into challenges and obstacles that developing economies are likely to encounter in the use of blockchain.     

From global workers to local entrepreneurs: Sri Lanka’s former global factory workers in rural Sri Lanka

Abstract

Working in Sri Lanka’s urban free trade zones (FTZs) introduces Sri Lanka’s rural women to neoliberal ways of fashioning selves, which subsequently not only shape village entrepreneurial activities but also initiate negotiations in kinship, marriage, domestic arrangements, and community relations. The knowledges and networks that they develop while at the FTZ allow former workers to connect with global production networks as subcontractors, making them part of the cascading system of subcontracting that furthers the precarity of regular FTZ work. This article explores how these former workers manipulate varied forms of capital – social, cultural and monetary – to become local entrepreneurs and community leaders, while simultaneously initiating changes in rural social hierarchies and gender norms. When neoliberal economic restructuring manifests within local contexts it results in new articulations of what it is to be an entrepreneur and what it is to be a worthy, young, married woman. Overall, the paper sheds light on the fragmented and uneven manner in which neoliberal ethos take root in rural South Asia.     

Coordination Risk and Cost Impacts on Economic Development in Poor Rural Areas

This paper addresses issues relevant to a critical problem in economic development: how to get rapid pro-poor economic growth in poor rural areas in Africa and South Asia where most of the world's dollar a day poor live. It examines constraints to the development of coordinated exchange systems in poor rural areas, focusing on the core problem of thin markets and low density of economic activity in these areas. Transaction cost and risk analysis is integrated into a conventional neoclassical production economics framework to describe the existence of low level equilibrium traps in transactions and supply chains and to generate important insights for development policy.     

CONTRACTORS' EXPERIENCE OF COMPULSORY COMPETITIVE TENDERING: A CASE STUDY OF CONTRACT CLEANERS IN THE NHS

Compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) has been an important instrument of Conservative government economic policy since 1979. Its effectiveness in generating cost-effective services depends on competition to supply the service in question.
The NHS domestic market is large and, prior to the introduction of CCT, promised to be profitable for contractors. Many contract cleaners with office cleaning experience entered. In the event the costs of entry were heavy, and the profit margins of established firms were reduced. When contracts have been awarded to firms, they tended to be to those with a track record. Many firms therefore withdrew; and the few that remained have profit margins in the NHS little different from those found elsewhere. Of more than by firms with a serious interest in entry, probably no more than a handful can have come out of the experience in net profit in the first seven years.
The experience of CCT in the market for NHS domestic services has shown that a degree of competition in the market can be achieved, arguably because of the presence of direct service organizations. Competition for this market, on the other hand, can be limited by the high costs of entry.     

STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN THE NHS AND GP UTILIZATION IN ENGLAND UNDER NEW LABOUR, 1997–2003

In this article we compare the pattern of service utilization in the period preceding the health‐care reforms introduced by New Labour with service utilization following the refoms. Data from the 1997 and 2003 waves of the British Household Panel Survey are used to estimate a series of utilization functions. These show that GP utilization overall fell, for women more than men and for the sick more than others. The results suggest that GPs responded to the changing context the reforms created but there are different interpretations of that response. They support the contention that GPs devoted greater attention to preventative services post‐reform than had previously been the case. They are also consistent with the contention that GPs responded less directly to the needs of their patients, either because they became more sophisticated in interpreting those needs or conscious of the increased opportunity costs of responding to them.     

Structuralism versus Monetarism : A note on evidence

This paper illustrates, with a ten year simulation, possible effects of Malaysia's national buffer stock for natural rubber on the level and stability of export earnings, export tax revenue, producer income and world price. Employing rubber market parameters based on inference and empirical tests and buffer stock operating costs and policies similar to those of the current Malaysian buffer stock, it is shown that capital requirements for effective control exceed those at the disposal of the buffer stock manager while control may be expected to stabilize price at the expense of export earnings and producer income stability. These unfavourable effects can be neutralized in part by the increase in receipts obtained with a sufficiently narrow controlled price range or by an increase in demand emanating from reduced price risk. Under the apparent wider range of the buffer stock, losses in export earnings and producer income, as well as capital expenses and the terminal deficit of the stock authority are each less than 1 per cent of export earnings and producer income. The maximum short run capital requirement is about 2.5 per cent of these latter magnitudes. The arguments presented indicate that internationalization of the buffer stock would increase the benefits and decrease the costs in terms of the proportion of producer income and export earnings, compared to the existing national device.     

OFFICER-MEMBER RELATIONS IN COUNTY-LEVEL POLICY-MAKING FOR RURAL AREAS: THE CASE OF THE GLQUCESTERSHIRE STRUCTURE PLAN

Studies of rural planning have only recently begun to focus on concepts of policy-making and implementation which have been developed in urban and regional contexts. Although recognizing the need for inter-organizational frameworks, this paper investigates one particular factor in policy-making – officer-member relations – as illustrated in the structure plan-making process of Gloucestershire County Council. Through a partnership between senior officers who were able to orchestrate decision-making, and elite members who provided political support for technical policy justifications, a form of directed policy consensus was reached. The consensus in this particular structure plan was marked by the prominence of a political-bureaucratic goal to provide policy-responses to rural problems. This theme was diluted, however, when the plan moved from the local to the central arena of power.     

Creating Direct Incentives for Wildlife Conservation in Community-Based Natural Resource Management Programmes in Botswana

Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) programmes in Botswana were intended to create a wildlife conservation incentive by providing rural communities with tourism rights to wildlife—with limited effect. The 2007 CBNRM policy, increasing central control of CBNRM, is likely to further undermine communities' incentive to conserve wildlife. A complementary conservation corps is needed to create direct incentives to conserve wildlife and to reduce human-wildlife conflict. Responses to contingent behaviour questions indicate broad community support for such a programme and the availability of a suitable labour force willing to work at costs that can be financed from existing CBNRM revenues.     

The effects of transportation costs in low‐income agricultural economies

This paper examines the static consequences of transport costs in low‐income agricultural economies, and argues that many phenomena common to such economies may be largely due to the costs of transportation. It is argued below that the coexistence of ‘modern’, intensive capital‐using farms and others using primitive, extensive farming methods and very little capital can be a response to transport costs. It also seems possible that a sizeable fraction of the frequently observed urban‐rural wage gap may be a transport‐related index number phenomenon rather than a true gap in real wages.