Marriage as women's old age insurance : evidence from migration and land inheritance practices in rural Tanzania

In a traditional system of exogamous and patrilocal marriage prevalent in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, when she marries, a rural woman typically leaves her kin to reside with her husband living outside her natal village. Since a village that allows a widow to inherit her late husband's land can provide her with old age security, single females living outside the village are more likely to marry into the village. Using a natural experimental setting, provided by the longitudinal household panel data drawn from rural Tanzania for the period from 1991 to 2004, during which several villages that initially banned a widow's land inheritance removed this discrimination, this study provides evidence in support of this view, whereby altering a customary land inheritance rules in a village in favor of widows increased the probability of males marrying in that village. This finding suggests that providing rural women with old age protection (e.g., insurance, livelihood protection) has remarkable spatial and temporal welfare effects by influencing their decision to marry.

Rethinking special and differential treatment in the WTO

Special and differential treatment (S&D) allows differentiated treatment for developing countries within the WTO system by justifying a deviation from the most-favoured-nation obligation. Since it was incorporated into the GATT (the predecessor of the WTO) in the 1960s, S&D has played a significant role in promoting the integration of developing countries into the multilateral trading system. However, S&D is undergoing complicated and entangled discussion at the current multilateral trade negotiations, the Doha Development Agenda. There are a number of reasons to make opposing arguments in developed and developing countries, among which this paper focuses on two elements: diversification of developing countries and instability of preferential schemes. In order to overcome these problems and in order to make S&D more effective and operational, this paper considers the following alternative approaches: differentiation among developing countries applying the common but differentiated responsibility (CBDR) principle by analogy and codification of a preferential scheme as a multilateral agreement in the manner of North-South RTAs with flexibility.

Political institutions and policy outcomes : effects of presidential vetoes on budget making

The article examines how the power distribution between the executive and the legislature under the Presidential system affects policy outcomes. We focus in particular on the presidential veto, both package and partial. Using a simple game theory model, we show that the presidential partial veto generally yields a result in favor of the President, but that such effects vary depending on the reversion points of the package veto and the Congress's possible use of sanctions against the President. The effects of the Presidential partial veto diminish if the reversion point meets certain conditions, or if the Congress has no power to impose sufficient sanctions on the President when the President revises the outcome ex-post. To clarify and explain the model, we present the case of budget making in the Philippines between 1994 and 2008. In the Philippines, the presidential partial veto has been bringing expenditure programs closer to the President's ideal point within what may be called the Congress's indifference curve. The Congress, however, has not always passed budget bills and from time to time has carried over the previous year's budget, in years when the budget deficit increased. This is the situation that the policy makers cannot retrieve from the reversion point.

Impact of seasonality-adjusted flexible microcredit on repayment and food consumption : experimental evidence from rural Bangladesh

The mismatch between credit repayments and income seasonality poses a challenge for microfinance institutions (MFIs) working in developing countries. For instance, in northern Bangladesh, income and consumption downfalls during the lean season after the transplanting of major paddy crops are a serious threat to a household's economy. Poor landless agricultural wage laborers suffer the most owing to this seasonality as they face difficulties in smoothing their consumption. However, in designing microcredit products, MFIs do not usually provide flexibility or seasonal adjustment during the lean season. This is mainly because MFIs are afraid that such flexibility might break the repayment discipline of borrowers, resulting in higher default rates. We thus conducted a randomized controlled trial in 2011-12 in northern Bangladesh to empirically test whether seasonality-adjusted flexible microcredit leads to an increase in repayment problems for MFIs as well as whether it can increase and stabilize consumption of borrower households. Our results suggest no statistically discernible difference among the treatment arms in case of default, overdue amount, or repayment frequency. On the other hand, we find no positive impact of repayment flexibility on immediate food consumption during the period of seasonality, except for in-kind full moratorium treatment group. After a year of initial intervention, however, we see positive changes in food intake during the lean season. Thus, our preliminary results are in favor of seasonality-adjusted flexible microcredit.