Suchergebnisse

Research in bean economics includes production, marketing and consumption, and policy studies. Production research focuses on 2 mutually reinforcing themes: (1) assessment of the spread of new var. recently released to farmers by national programs; and (2) assessment of farmers' current production systems and problems. Consumption and marketing of beans remain important research topics because most beans in Latin America are produced for the market, thus making consumer acceptability, price, and ease of market entry, critical factors in determining farmer adoption of new bean var. Case studies of policies affecting bean production and markets are undertaken when they have an important impact on the environment for which the new technology is being developed. A great deal of the research on all these issues is conducted in collaboration with national programs. Strengthening their research capacity through training and collaborative projects is an important activity. (AS) ; La investigacion en economia de frijol incluye estudios en produccion, mercadeo, consumo y politicas. La investigacion en produccion se enfoca en 2 esquemas que se refuerzan mutuamente: 1) evaluacion de la diseminacion de las nuevas var. recientemente liberadas a los agricultores por los programas nacionales y 2) evaluacion de los sistemas y problemas de produccion actuales de los agricultores. El consumo y el mercadeo del frijol siguen siendo importantes topicos de investigacion, debido a que la mayor parte del frijol en America Latina se produce para el mercado; por lo tanto, la aceptabilidad del consumidor, el precio y la facilidad de entrar al mercado son factores criticos que determinan la adopcion de la nueva 186 var. de frijol por el agricultor. Se realizan estudios de casos de las politicas que afectan la produccion y el mercadeo del frijol cuando estas tienen un impacto importante en el ambiente en el cual se esta desarrollando la nueva tecnologia. Una gran cantidad de la investigacion sobre todos estos temas se realiza en colaboracion con los programas nacionales. El fortalecimiento de su capacidad de investigacion mediante la capacitacion y los proyectos colaborativos es una actividad importante. (RA-CIAT)

This dissertation contains three essays on labor economics and development economics.In the first and second chapters, I examine determinants and consequences of alcohol consumption in Russia and quantify the effects of various public policies on mortality rates and on consumer welfare. For the past twenty years, Russia has confronted the Mortality Crisis - the life expectancy of Russian males has fallen by more than five years, and the mortality rate has increased by 50%. Alcohol abuse is widely agreed to be the main cause of this change.In the first chapter, I employ a rich dataset on individual alcohol consumption to analyze the determinants for heavy drinking in Russia, including the price of alcohol, peer effects, and habits. I exploit unique location identifiers in my data and patterns of geographical settlement in Russia to measure peers within narrowly-defined neighborhoods.This definition of peers is validated by documenting a strong increase in alcohol consumption around the birthday of peers. With natural experiments, I estimate the own price elasticity of the probability of heavy drinking using variation in alcohol regulations across Russian regions and over time. From these data, I develop a dynamic structural model of heavy drinking to quantify how changes in the price of alcohol would affect the proportion of heavy drinkers among Russian males (and subsequently also affect mortality rates). I find that that higher alcohol prices reduce the probability of being a heavy drinker by a non-trivial amount. An increase in the price of vodka by 50% would save the lives of 40,000 males annually, and would result in an increase in welfare. Peers account for a quarter of this effect.The second chapter analyzes the consequences of government policy towards light alcohol drinks. Light drinks are commonly viewed as stepping stone to harder drinks, but also as safer substitutes for them. Here, I analyze this trade-off by utilizing micro-level data on the alcohol consumption of Russian males. I find, first, that beer is a safer drink compared to hard alcohol beverages, in the sense that consumption of hard beverages increases the hazard of death while consumption of beer does not. Second, I find that beer is a substitute for vodka: there is significant positive cross-price elasticity of vodka consumption with respect to beer price. I find also little evidence that beer consumption actually serves as stepping stone for vodka consumption. Initiation of beer consumption instead forms habits for the further consumption of beer. Drinking beer at earlier ages results in higher beer consumption and higher overall alcohol intake in older years, but also results in reduced consumption of hard drinks compared to vodka drinkers and to non-abstainers. Finally, I estimate a multivariate model of consumer choice, and quantify the effect of different government policies on mortality rates, drinking patterns, and consumer welfare. I find that the taxation of beer may decrease consumer welfare and increase mortality rates. In contrast, subsidizing beer consumption will increase consumer welfare and even slightly decrease mortality rates.The third chapter of my dissertation documents the unequal enforcement of liberalization reform of business regulation across Russian regions with different governance institutions, which leads to unequal effects of liberalization. National liberalization laws were enforced more effectively in sub-national regions with a more transparent government, more-informed population, higher concentration of industry, and stronger fiscal autonomy. As a result, in regions with stronger governance institutions liberalization had a substantial positive effect on the performance of small firms and on the growth of the official small-business sector in general. In contrast, in regions with weaker governance institutions there is no effect from the reform, and in some cases even a negative effect is observed.

Chapter I: The Impact of Occupation on HealthParticipation in meaningful occupations contributes to good health and well-being. Workers are more likely to derive satisfaction from participating in occupations well-suited to their skills and training. This project provides causal evidence of the impact of occupation on health among college graduates. In particular, I estimate the health effect of participation in occupations well-suited to their education level, that is, occupations that value college education. Valuation of college education in an occupation is measured by occupation-specific college earning premium: the adjusted percentage difference in earnings between workers with and without college degrees in this given occupation. The causal inference relies on estimation with instrumental variables, which are constructed in the spirit of Hausman's price instrumental variables. The result suggests that college educated individuals participating in occupations with higher college earning premiums have better self-reported health, even after accounting for income, occupational prestige, and within-occupation hierarchy. This is the first paper to establish the causal impact of occupation on health. I also show that this causal impact remains significant across various specifications.Chapter II: The Power of PropagandaSince the 1950s, China's central government's gender equality propaganda is widely accepted as the explanation for China's high female labor force participation rate. In an effort to provide empirical evidence for this viewpoint, this project shows that early exposure to propaganda promoting gender equality affects individuals' attitudes towards women in the workforce. We gauge variation in the political climate between 1952 and 2008 by using the official newspaper of the central government, People's Daily, which has been under the direct control of the Chinese Communist Party's top leadership. For causal inference, we exploit provincial variation in propaganda intensities, proxied by provincial level radio and television signal coverage. In addition, we use the timing of exogenous events to generate an instrumental variable for intensity peaks of the gender-equality propaganda. First, we exploit the exogenous timing of a series of national and international Women's Conference as one set of instrumental variables. Second, we utilize the timing of Jiang Qing's (Mao's wife) coming into prominence and her sudden removal by a political coup towards the end of the Cultural Revolution. We find that women with more intense exposure to propaganda promoting gender equality before age 26, and men with more intense exposure before age 18 tend to endorse women's participation in the workforce. The effect of propaganda is more pronounced on women than men. It is worth noting that while propaganda encourages women's participation in the workforce, it does not emphasize men's responsibility in the household. We indeed find evidence of the "superwoman complex": women are expected to strive for a career and do the bulk of the housework. This further evidence suggests that propaganda is able to transmit a more nuanced message, rather than a singularly progressive one. This is the first paper to empirically establish the long-term effect of early exposure to propaganda on individual's preference formation.Chapter III: Do Food Stamps Need More Restrictions?Given the high prevalence of obesity in low income population, several times in the history of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Congress has considered placing limits on the types of food that could be purchased with program benefits. This study provides empirical evidence on the effectiveness of such potential restriction by examining the impact of income on calorie consumption patterns. The intuition is that if limited budget is the main reason why low-income households choose calorie dense food items, then subsidy without any restriction, acting as an upward shift in income, would reduce the likelihood of obesity. Using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data from 2007-2014, I compare individuals from households who were recently dropped from SNAP, most likely due to a positive income shock, to individuals who are still participating in the program. I find little income effect on calorie consumption patterns. Whereas reduced grocery store accessibility is significantly correlated with an increase in total calorie intake, and calorie intake from sugar and fat. The result of this study suggests that placing limits on the types of food that could be purchased would be effective in curbing the obesity pandemic in low income population, and it also confirms the importance of eliminating food deserts.

Public economics is based on the policies of the government. Public economics aspects or financial aspects of people in general division is the investigation of government arrangement through the viewpoint of monetary proficiency and value. At its most fundamental level, public economics aspects gives a system to pondering regardless of whether the administration ought to take an interest in monetary markets and to what degree it ought to do as such. Keeping in mind the end goal to do this, microeconomic hypothesis is used to survey whether the private market is probably going to give proficient results without legislative impedance. Characteristically, this investigation includes the examination of government tax assessment and consumptions. This subject incorporates a large group of points including market disappointments, externalities, and the creation and execution of government approach. Public economics matters expands on the hypothesis of welfare financial matters and is eventually utilized as an apparatus to enhance social welfare. Wide techniques and points include the hypothesis and use of open finance examination and outline of open policy distributional impacts of tax assessment and government expenditures examination of market failure and government failure. Accentuation is on diagnostic and logical strategies and regularizing moral examination, as recognized from belief system. Cases of subjects secured are impose incidence, ideal taxation, and the hypothesis of open merchandise Muskan Dhakad "Public Economics" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-2 | Issue-5 , August 2018, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd17057.pdf

Ethical considerations intersect with economics education on a number of planes. Nonetheless, in terms of curricula, only a handful of economics departments offer courses specifically focused on ethics. This chapter addresses the ways in which instructors can incorporate ethical components into teaching principles and field courses in order to broaden economic understanding and to enhance critical thinking. It examines three pedagogical issues: the artificial dichotomy between positive and normative analysis; the limiting scope of efficiency in outcomes analyses; and the incorporation of alternative ethical frameworks into public policy debates.