Agriculture
What obstacles exist for green revolution on the African continent?
Technical (parts of the continent are not suited towards the of the high-yielding variety, low use of fertilizer and irrigation)
How do remittances compare to ODA?
Remittances outweigh ODA by far
What is the endowment effect?
Individuals place greater value on goods they own than on identical goods they do not own. This is exacerbated with poverty.
How does farm size impact productivity and why?
There is an inverse relationship between farm size and land productivity. The marginal product of land is higher on smaller farms. This is due to agency problems in labor markets: hired workers have lower incentives and cannot be monitored perfectly. Smaller farms are more cultivated by the owner
Why motivates people in developing to migrate for a season? What might hinder them?
What is the effect of aspirations on labor?
Some researchers argue that aspirations are not distributed evenly amongst rich and poor. Low levels of aspiration and hope can limit social mobility. The experiment with Garlick et al (2023): ”Aspiring to a Better Future: Can a Simple Psychological Intervention Reduce Poverty?” did a workshop teaching training techniques to raise aspirations --> those already helped increase investment and living standards.
What are the push and pull factors for structural change for structural change away from an agricultural society?
Push: as agriculture becomes more productive, fewer people are needed to supply the food needs of the country, freeing up more labor for other industries
Pull: as other sectors become more productive, the wage increases, which pulls people out of agriculture
What impact does international migration have on the sending country?
Brain drain, but also: benefits of having a diaspora, incentive effects for education (in order to go abroad) and learning embodied to migrants coming back
What is the effect of identity on labor?
Susanna Oh (2023): Take-up rate of caste-associated tasks vs tasks with no caste association. It is measured by how much time is spent on it. Results: workers are adverse to taking up job offers that are associated with castes that differ from their own castes. These concerns are driven by identity, not social image.
What is the separation hypothesis?
Benjamin (1992): With fully functioning efficient markets, households can freely buy or sell labor at wage w regardless of their dempgraphic. Households therefore choose the labor input for their farms to maximize profits given wage w and optimal labor/leisure trade-off for the family given w.
How does the access to informal insurance networks influence migration?
Munshi and Rosenzweig (2016)
Males in relatively wealthy households who benefit less from the redistributive network migrate more and males in households facing greater rural income risk (who benefit more from the insurance network) migrate less. Hence, class and access to informal insurance network due to consumption smoothing plays a big role.
What was the sugarcane experiment about?
Comparison of cognitive performance pre-vs. post harvest. Farmers’ financial situation is worse pre-harvest.They did better post harvest. But this could also have to do with learning effects.
Why is there a misallocation in agriculture?
Actual land barely reflects productivity (Restuccia and Santaeulalia-Llopis, 2017). There are frictions in factor markets (i.e. land, labor and capital) and frictions in output markets (i.e. differential market accesses)
The size of potential gains from greater migration depends on 4 things to consider. These are...
"Economics and Emigration: Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk?” Clemens, 2011.
- External effects of emigrants departure om on the productivity of non-migrants
- Elasticity of labor demand in origin and destination country
- Whether productivity depends on who you are or where you are from
- What future level of emigration is feasible
How does scarcity impede cognitive function?
Mullainathan and Shafir (2013): Scarcity captures mental cognitive capacity (bandwidth). Overall cognitive capacity is limited (tunnel on certain decisions at expense of others). Poverty makes monetary concerns top of mind.