Suchergebnisse

AbstractAggregate shocks such as droughts and floods cannot be perfectly insured by risk sharing within a village. Given this inability, what type of households are more vulnerable in terms of a decline in consumption when a village is hit by such shocks and what kind of microeconomic mechanism underlies the household heterogeneity in vulnerability? These questions are investigated using two-period panel data collected in rural Pakistan in 2001 and 2004. We compare consumption response to droughts, floods and health shocks and investigate how the response differs across different types of households. Empirical results show that the impact of droughts was negligible, younger and more landed households were less vulnerable to floods, and households with greater access to formal financial institutions were less vulnerable to idiosyncratic health shocks. The empirical pattern suggests the possibility of risk sharing among households that are heterogeneous in both risk aversion and credit access.

In this paper, the concept of vulnerability of the poor's
welfare and its practical measures are scrutinised in order to derive
implications for targeting poverty reduction policies toward vulnerable
households. As illustration, various measures of vulnerability proposed
in the literature are applied to a panel data-set collected from rural
Pakistan. The empirical results show that different vulnerability
rankings can be obtained depending on the choice of the measure. By
utilising these measures, we can identify who and which region is more
vulnerable to a particular type of risk. This kind of information is
useful in targeting poverty reduction policies. Since the nature of
vulnerability is diverse, it is advisable to use the whole vector of
various vulnerability measures. JEL classification: I32, I38. Keywords:
Vulnerability, Poverty, Risk, Consumption Smoothing,
Pakistan.

In 2001, a scheme called Citizen Community Board (CCB), a kind
of community-based organisation (CBO), was introduced in Pakistan as a
devolution policy, under which local people propose to the local
government development projects through forming a CCB and upon approval
the local government funds 80 percent of the project cost. Since 2001,
however, both the number of CCBs and that of approved projects have been
below the expected level. This raises a concern that the Pakistani
society with limited historical experience in CBO-based development is
too handicapped for the CCB scheme to be successful. Although the number
of empirical studies on Pakistan's CCB scheme has been increasing [e.g.,
see Cheema and Mohmand (2004), Cheema, et al. (2006)], our understanding
on conditions for a success of such schemes is limited. This paper thus
attempts to analyse the conditions in the context of community and
economic development in Pakistan from Japanese Perspectives.

As one of the dimensions of vulnerability, this paper empirically investigates the inability of rural dwellers to cope with negative income shocks. A variable coefficient regression model is applied to a two-period household panel dataset collected in the North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan, an area with high incidence of income poverty and low human development. The empirical model allows for a different ability to smooth consumption, approximated by a linear function of households' attributes, and controls for the endogeneity of observed changes in income, using qualitative information on subjective risk assessment. Estimation results show that the ability to cope with negative income shocks is lower for households that are aged, landless and do not receive remittances regularly. (DSE/GIGA)

This paper proposes an empirical model of profit variability at the individual farm level and applies it to Pakistan's agriculture. Results show that the addition of idiosyncratic yield shocks and adjustment for input costs lead to a much larger variability of net profits than implied by the variability of average gross revenues–Pakistan's irrigated agriculture is associated with higher profit variability compared with semiarid India. It is also demonstrated that the correlation between green fodder profit and milk profit at the farm level is substantially negative. This negative correlation implies that it is advantageous, in terms of risk diversification, to combine fodder and milk production in one enterprise, which is commonly observed in the mixed farming systems in Pakistan's Punjab.

Agricultural households in developing countries face substantial risk of farm income fluctuations. Farm income is subject to yield and prise risk, both of which are significant because of the dependence of farming on weather. The paper attempts to estimate the variability of net profits at the individual farm level in the case of Pakistan Punjab's agriculture. (DÜI-Sen)

This paper analyses household decisions in producing cereal
crops, green fodder crops, and milk, for the case of mixed' farming in
the Pakistan Punjab. In the Punjab agriculture, increased household
income and increased yields of cereal crops after the Green Revolution
have resulted in the growing importance of milk in household economy.
Using a sensitivity analysis based on a household model of crop choices
under uncertainty, this paper emphasises the constraint that fodder
represents for further increases in food-grain output. Results show that
the welfare cost of production risk is significant, it is higher for
land-poor households, and its significant part is attributable to green
fodder price risk. The welfare and supply effects of more elastic fodder
demand and increased fodder yields are investigated. These innovations
in fodder technology are suggested to have a higher potential to improve
household welfare and to induce a robust supply response of cereal crops
with respect to their prices, than a crop insurance scheme to hedge
against yield risk.

This paper empirically examines the spatial and intertemporal
price relations of grains in Pakistan's Punjab. The salient feature of
the paper is that quantity variables such as market surplus and
government release are incorporated in the price arbitrage model to
quantify the effects of government interventions. Regression analysis
using three-year crosssection data shows that the farm-gate prices of
wheat after harvest are mostly explained by the government support price
while those of Basmati paddy have more unexplained variation. This
difference could be due to a difference in the price support mechanism.
Investigation on intertemporal price relations shows that wholesale
wheat prices regularly increase at the rate of storage costs in the
first half of a food year, and that the price rise is repressed by the
government release in the second half only in a normal year.