In this paper, I test and reject the separability of production and consumption decisions of agricultural households
in Ethiopia, using data from a rural household survey conducted in 1994 and an estimated labor demand equation. I also elicit socio-demographic and asset variables that are positively linked with agricultural labor demand. These results reflect the limited development of fully organized labor markets in rural Ethiopia. They also imply that price
subsidies, taxes and other purely market-driven agricultural policies may have only limited or perverse impacts. They should be complemented by policies directly affecting household decisions, such as food aid, technology transfer, free supply of fertilizers and so on.
We argue that the economic evaluation of health care (cost–benefit analysis) should respect individual preferences and
should incorporate distributional considerations. Relying on individual preferences does not imply subjective welfarism.
We propose a particular non-welfarist approach, based on the concept of equivalent income, and show how it helps to
define distributional weights. We illustrate the feasibility of our approach with empirical results from a pilot survey.
This paper provides empirical evidence supporting the interaction between fertility, education and economic growth through the underlying mechanism behind that correlation in accordance with Becker’s theory. In consistency with the theory, the key explanatory variables in Tunisia’s fertility model are real GDP per capita, infant mortality, contraceptive use ratio, and education. As opposed to most empirical works, the present study takes into consideration three educational levels, i.e., primary, secondary and higher. Also unlike most empirical research, this study attempts to analyse the impact of fertility transition on education and economic growth. To deal with too little or incomplete data, time series data for Tunisia are computed over 45 years. A multivariate cointegration analysis is carried out and shows that a long-term triangular relationship exists. A short dynamic run analysis based on the vector correction error model displays results in coherence with and close to those of the long term. Among our key results, education is found to trigger fertility transition both in the short and long run. In addition, education has relatively fostered economic growth but hardly boosted it through its dynamic interaction with fertility. Furthermore, the variance decomposition and the impulse function show that the fertility transition has produced a feedback effect on both education and economic growth.
We provide a unified treatment of the two approaches pioneered by Atkinson and Bourguignon (1982, 1987) [3,4] by resorting to compensation principles in the bivariate case.We treat the attributes of individual
utility asymmetrically by assuming that one attribute can be used to compensate another. Our main result consists of two sufficient second-order stochastic dominance conditions. In the case where the compensated
variable has a discrete distribution, the distribution of the compensating variable must satisfy a condition which degenerates to the Sequential Generalized Lorenz test for identical marginal distributions of the compensated
variable. Furthermore, the distributions of the compensated variable must satisfy the Generalized Lorenz test.
This paper proposes a dominance approach to study inequality of well-being across countries. We consider a class of well-being indices based on the three attributes used in the HDI (Human Development Index). Indices
are required to satisfy: preference for egalitarian marginal distributions of income, health and education, ALEP substitution of attributes and priority to poor countries in allocating funds to enhance health and education.
We exhibit sufficient conditions for checking dominance over the defined class of well-being indices. We apply our method to country data from 2000 to 2005. The deterioration in health conditions in poor countries
is why welfare improvements at the world level cannot be ascertained.
This case study exploits matched firm-employee Tunisian data in order to underline the role played by within-firm human capital in worker remuneration. The estimated returns to human capital in wage equations remain unchanged when the dummies representing firm heterogeneity are replaced in the list of regressors with three firm variables: a textile industry dummy, within-firm mean education, and firm age. We find that part of what is usually considered as return to education may be due to within-firm externalities.
In this study, we estimate agricultural technology for Tunisian Peasants, accounting for the crop choice of perasants and distinguishing inputs for individual crops such as : vegetable farming cereal and fruit-trees. The study employed the use of cross-section data from dintinguishable irrigated crops Survey conducted on a sample of 218 farmers from 11 régions in Tunisia. The data were colleced with the aid of structured questionnaire and were later analysed. The Cobb Douglass production frontier model is employed in order to analys data collected. Among the irrigated crop farmers, the significant variables were : farmuar manuar fertiliser quantity, labor, mecanic traction and among of irrigates water applied. the estimated sigma square and gamma are widely significants for all irrigated crops and revealed that >85% of the variation in the Tunisian irrigated output among farmers in the study area are due to the différences in their efficiencies. However, we find that predicted technical efficiency widely varies across farms and crops from an average of 54.7% for vegetable farming up to 80.6% for fruit-trees. The study also revealed the existing on inefficiency effects among the farmers as : education, farmer’s age, irrigation techniques, lack of education, property of land
We introduce a new methodology to target direct transfers against poverty. Our method is based on estimation methods that focus on the poor. Using data from Tunisia, we estimate ‘focused’transfer schemes that highly improve anti-poverty targeting performances. Post-transfer poverty can be substantially reduced with the new estimation method. For example, a one-third reduction in poverty severity from proxy-means test transfer schemes based on OLS method to focused transfer schemes requires only a few hours of computer work based on methods available on popular statistical packages. Finally, the obtained levels of undercoverage of the poor are particularly low.
In rural areas of less developed countries because of market imperfections, the health and nutritional status of peasants may directly depend on the production levels of specific agricultural goods rather than solely on income levels. This channel of health and nutrition determination has never been studied. In order to assess and test the empirical possibility of this channel, we estimate the responses of health and nutritional status of autarkic agricultural households in Rwanda with respect to differences in sociodemographic characteristics and the main agricultural outputs and inputs while controlling for local environment and sampling scheme. Several food outputs are found to have a positive influence on health and nutrition, whereas the production of traditional beers has a negative impact. Moreover, greater land negatively affects health and nutrition, conditionally on agricultural production, perhaps because of a larger relative workload for households who have a large farm.
An alternative interpretation of the estimates is that they inform on the validity of the common hypothesis of perfect agricultural input/output markets with no effect of agricultural inputs/outputs on health and nutrition status. This hypothesis is rejected.
It is not known to what extent welfare measures result from seasonal and geographical price différences rather than from differences in living standards across households. Using data from Rwanda in 1983, we show that the change in mean living standard indicators caused by local and seasonal price deflation
is moderately significant at every quarter. By contrast, the differences in poverty measures caused by this deflation can be considerable, for chronic as well as transient or seasonal poverty indicators. Thus,
poverty monitoring and anti-poverty targeting can be badly affected by inaccurate deflation of living standard data. Moreover, when measuring seasonal poverty, the deflation based on regional prices
instead of local prices only partially corrects for spatial price dispersion. Using annual local prices instead of quarterly local prices only yields a partial deflation, which distorts the measure of poverty fluctuations across seasons and biases estimates of annual and chronic poverty.
Cet article étudie l’impact comparé sur l’estimation de la dépense de consommation, de l’utilisation d’un questionnaire budgétaire rétrospectif par rapport à un questionnaire de relevés quotidiens. Les données d’une enquête nationale au Rwanda montrent que l’utilisation du questionnaire rétrospectif entraîne une sous-estimation de la consommation moyenne. Ceci est dû en partie à la sous-estimation des dépenses récurrentes d’un faible montant. Le niveau de valeur des transactions individuelles apparaît comme un élément essentiel dans le choix du questionnaire budgétaire à utiliser. Les omissions avec ces questionnaires sont susceptibles de conduire à des biais importants dans les estimations non seulement de consommation agrégée mais également de modèles linéaires estimés par les moindres carrés ordinaires où la consommation du ménage apparaît comme une variable dépendante ou indépendante. Dans des cas favorables, la direction de ces biais est connue grâce à la connaissance de la corrélation négative des omissions et des valeurs de transaction.
In this paper we propose a new robust estimator in the context of two-stage estimation methods directed towards the correction of endogeneity problems in linear models. Our estimator is a combination of Huber estimators for each of the two stages, with scale corrections implemented using preliminary median absolute deviation estimators. In this way we obtain a two-stage estimation procedure that is an interesting compromise between concerns of simplicity of calculation, robustness and efficiency. This method compareswellwith other possible estimators such as two-stage least-squares (2SLS) and two-stage least-absolute-déviations (2SLAD), asymptotically and in finite samples. It is notably interesting to deal with contamination affecting more heavily the distribution tails than a few outliers and not losing as much efficiency as other popular estimators in that case, e.g. under normality. An additional originality resides in the fact that we deal with random regressors and asymmetric errors, which is not often the case in the literature on robust estimators.
Abstract. Anti-poverty transfer schemes are one of the main way of fighting poverty. Under perfect observation of incomes, designing such scheme boils down to solving an optimisation program under constraints, which can be achieved with well-defined methods. In contrast, when incomes cannot be perfectly observed, the schemes are usually based on predictions of living standards using ancillary regressions and household survey data to predict the unobserved living standards of households. In this paper, we study the poverty minimisation program under imperfect information. We show why using predictions of living standards helps to deal approximately with an otherwise intractable problem. Then, we propose a new approach to the practical optimisation procedure based on improved predictions of living standards in terms of the targeting problem to be solved. Our new empirical methodology to target direct transfers against poverty is based on observable correlates and on estimation methods that can focus on the poor: the quantile regressions. We illustrate our results using data from Tunisia. sense.
The living standard indicator in utilitarian social evaluation functions (USEF) is the ratio of a nominal living standard and a price index. We show that under weak association of price indices and nominal living standards and usual concavity conditions on utility functions, utilitarian social welfare increases with price index dispersion when the aggregate price level is superior to the arithmetic mean of price indices, and diminishes when it is inferior to the harmonic mean.
Many social indicators are based on household consumption information. The valuation of non-monetary operations is crucial for the analysis of consumption surveys in developing countries because of the importance of own-consumption and transfers in kind. What are the price statistics used in the valuation of consumption indicators? How is the available price information exploited to produce consumption indicators? How can the different steps of the valuation process be analysed? We explore these questions by presenting the valuation method for the consumption used in rural Rwanda for the 1983 consumption survey, and by proposing a general model of valuation algorithm. This is useful not only for improving such algorithms, but also for assessing the impact of the valuation process on economic analyses.
We present the asymptotic properties of double-stage quantile regression estimators with random regressors, where the first stage is based on quantile regressions with the same quantile as in the second stage, which ensures robustness of the estimation procedure. We derive invariance properties with respect to the reformulation of the dependent variable.We propose a consistent estimator of the variance–covariance matrix of the new estimator. Finally, we investigate finite sample properties of this estimator by using Monte Carlo simulations.
It is crucial for social Policy in Less Developed Countries to indentify correlates of poverty at the household level. This has been done in the literature by estimating household poverty equations typically with Tobit and Probit models. However, when the errors in these équations are non normal and heteroscedastic, which is usually expected, thes models deliver biased estimates. Using quarterly data from Rwanda in 1983, we reject tje normality and homoscedasticity assumptions for household chronic and transient latent poverty equations. we treat this problem by estimating censored quantile régressions. Our results of censored quantile regressions and of inconsistent Tobit régressions are substantially different. However, in the case of chronic poverty the signs of the apparently significant coefficients are generally in agreement, while for seasonal transient poverty different variables have significant effects for the two extimation methods. our second contribution is to study, for the first time, correlates of poverty indicators bases on quaterly consumptions. Our results show that in Rwanda different correlates are significant for chronic poverty and for transient seasonal poverty. The effects of the main inputs (land and labour) are more important for the chronic component of porverty than for the transient one. Household location and socio demographic characterisitics play important roles that are consistent with usual explanations of poverty in the literature.
In developing countries, the usual modelling of the correlates of health problems is not a good fit for the health phenomena encountered and the available data. Indeed, three common situations occur: (a) it is often the observed symptoms that are used to determine medical interventions instead of specific disease diagnostics or general health indicators; (b) the ill persons described by the data are often affected by multiple health problems; and (c) the correlates of the full spectrum of all symptoms need to be considered together. In this paper, these issues are dealt with by proposing a statistical approach based on competing scores of symptoms that explain their relative prevalence among the observed ill persons. Using multinomial logit models, the relative prevalence of four symptoms was estimated for four age classes of ill persons in Benin. Socio-demographic characteristics, household equipment and consumption behaviour are shown to influence the relative prevalence of symptoms and therefore could be used to decide what treatment to use. Moreover, living standards and economic activities are important and the pattern of symptoms among poor or agricultural ill persons differs from that of the rich or the non-peasants. The proposed method can be used to assist the definition of target groups and to guide the allocation of scarce resources in poor countries.
We review the explanations of the statistical relationship between spatial price indices and real living standards. Then, using data from several seasons in rural Rwanda, we show that these variables are negatively associated, hinting at price discrimination against the poor. In that case, policies permanently improving of market functioning may simultaneously improve efficiency and equity.
Moreover, under a hypothesis of weak association of nominal living standards and price indices, we derive simplified formulae for social welfare indicators. These formulae depend only on a small number of sample statistics obtainable from separate publications for prices and living standards.
“The Role of Production Decisions in Modeling Consumption of Peasants,” in F. Caillavet, H. Guyomard, and R. Lifran, “Agricultural Household Modelling and Family Economics,” Collection “
“Les enquêtes niveau de vie et les politiques de développement” in M. Benoit-Catin, P. Guillaumont, et M. Griffon “Economie des politiques agricoles,”
Estimation des consommations de producteurs agricoles d’Afrique centrale
This paper analytically investigates the incentive scheme of perpetrators of violent conflicts. It provides a rational equilibrium framework to elicit how monetary incentives and survival considerations shape a combatant‟s decision to participate in a conflict. In the model, a leader decides to award soldiers monetary incentives. Civilians finance the militia via donations and soldiers decide on the actual fighting and indulge in looting. We explore the scheduled decision-making that takes place on the path toward a violent conflict and study the principal-agent relationship that exists between the leader and the militia. In addition, we analyze the effect of several internal factors (productivity and survival risk) and external factors (relative economic resources, opponents‟ military strength) on the intensity of the conflict.
The model shows that soldiers‟ fighting decisions are set by the risk of personal mortality and the level of identification with the cause of war. In addition, our results link between monetary incentives and participation infighting and demonstrate a substitution effect of looting and donations as monetary incentives.
Enquête Nationale sur le Budget et la Consommation des ménages. volume 1 : Présentation méthodologique de l’échantillon et de la collecte en milieu rural
La notion d’efficacité en éducation
Méthodes d’apurement et application à l’Enquête Nationale Budget-Consommation Rwanda
Les effets des transferts extérieurs sur l’économie du Cameroun