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Competitive Mothers: Comparing Competitiveness In Spheres That Matter, Alessandra Cassar, F Wordofa, Y J. Zhang Jan 2016

Competitive Mothers: Comparing Competitiveness In Spheres That Matter, Alessandra Cassar, F Wordofa, Y J. Zhang

Economics

Recent advances have highlighted the evolutionary significance of female competition, with the sexes pursuing different competitive strategies and females reserving their most intense competitive behaviors for the benefit of offspring (1-3). Influential economic experiments using cash incentives, however, have found evidence suggesting that women have a lower desire to compete than men (4-7). We hypothesize that the estimated gender differences critically depend on how we elicit them, especially on the incentives used. We test this hypothesis through an experiment with adults in China (n=358). Data show that, once the incentives are switched from monetary to childbenefitting, gender differences disappear. This …


Economic Growth And Recovery In The United States, 1919-1941, Alexander J. Field May 2013

Economic Growth And Recovery In The United States, 1919-1941, Alexander J. Field

Economics

The first part of this chapter provides an overview of what lay behind record productivity growth in the US economy between 1929 and 1941. The second part considers the role of rigidities and other negative supply conditions in worsening the downturn and slowing recovery. While arguing consistently that the overarching explanation of the Great Depression will and should continue to emphasise a collapse and slow revival in the growth of aggregate demand, the chapter spends relatively little time on what drives this. The emphasis of the chapter is on aggregate supply—both the broad array of positive shocks that propelled potential …


Gendered Production And Consumption In Rural Africa, Michael Kevane Jul 2012

Gendered Production And Consumption In Rural Africa, Michael Kevane

Economics

Recent research underscores the continued importance of gender in rural Africa. Analysis of interactions within households is becoming more sophisticated and continues to reject the unitary model. There is some evidence of discriminatory treatment of girls relative to boys, although the magnitudes of differential investments in health and schooling are not large and choices seem quite responsive to changes in opportunity costs. Social norms proscribing and prescribing male and female economic behavior remain substantial, extending into many domains, especially land tenure. Gender constructions are constantly evolving, although there is little evidence of rapid, transformative change in rural areas.


Diminished Access, Diverted Exclusion: Women And Land Tenure In Sub-Saharan Africa, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray Jan 2008

Diminished Access, Diverted Exclusion: Women And Land Tenure In Sub-Saharan Africa, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray

Economics

Increasing commercialization, population growth and concurrent increases in land value have affected women's land rights in Africa. Most of the literature concentrates on how these changes have led to an erosion of women's rights. This paper examines some of the processes by which women's rights to land are diminishing. First, we examine cases where rights previously utilized have become less important; that is, the incidence of exercising rights has decreased. Second, we investigate how women's rights to land decrease as the public meanings underlying the social interpretation and enforcement of rights are manipulated. Third, we examine women's diminishing access to …


Women’S Access To Credit In Sub-Saharan Africa: Sudan, Michael Kevane, Endre Stiansen May 2006

Women’S Access To Credit In Sub-Saharan Africa: Sudan, Michael Kevane, Endre Stiansen

Economics

Women in Sudan have been largely excluded from formal financial institutions of the Anglo-Egyptian and independent Sudan, even as they have demonstrated the ability and desire to profit from financial transactions. The exclusion is not based on legal criteria, but rather on informal practices that control institutions of the formal sector. However, women –particularly in urban areas of northern Sudan – have access to informal financial institutions, and in recent years there have been some attempts by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to offer financial services, especially loans at discounts, to women


New Evidence On Race Discrimination Under "Separate But Equal", Bradley A. Hansen, Mary Eschelbach Hansen Jan 2006

New Evidence On Race Discrimination Under "Separate But Equal", Bradley A. Hansen, Mary Eschelbach Hansen

Economics

Recently uncovered data on teachers’ salaries in Virginia in 1906 allow for more precise and consistent estimations of marginal returns to certification and formal education than had been available in previous studies. Virginia's “separate but equal” educational system paid black teachers in rural counties lower wages than it paid white teachers and on average paid a lower premium to blacks for certification and formal education than it paid to whites. In incorporated cities, returns to certification and normal school education were about the same for black teachers and white teachers, although average salaries were lower for black teachers.


Are Investments In Daughters Lower When Daughters Move Away? Evidence From Indonesia, Michael Kevane, David Levine Jan 2003

Are Investments In Daughters Lower When Daughters Move Away? Evidence From Indonesia, Michael Kevane, David Levine

Economics

In much of the developing world daughters receive lower education and other investments than do their brothers, and may even be so devalued as to suffer differential mortality. Daughter disadvantage may be due in part to social norms that prescribe that daughters move away from their natal family upon marriage, a practice known as virilocality. We evaluate the effects of virilocality on female disadvantage using data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey. We find little support for the hypothesis. There is no evidence that the overall pattern of rough equality in the treatment of boys and girls in Indonesia masks …


Social Norms And The Time Allocation Of Women's Labor In Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane, Bruce Wydick Feb 2001

Social Norms And The Time Allocation Of Women's Labor In Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane, Bruce Wydick

Economics

This paper proposes that major determinants of allocation of women's time are social norms that regulate the economic activities of women. Our emphasis on norms contrasts with approaches that view time allocation as determined by household-level economic variables. Using data from Burkina Faso, we show that social norms significantly explain differences in patterns of time allocation between two ethnic groups: Mossi and Bwa. Econometric results show women from the two groups exhibiting different responses to changes in farm capital. Implications are that policies that foster changes in social norms may have more permanent effects on altering women's behavior.


Microenterprise Lending To Female Entrepreneurs: Sacrificing Economic Growth For Poverty Alleviation?, Michael Kevane, Bruce Wydick Jan 2001

Microenterprise Lending To Female Entrepreneurs: Sacrificing Economic Growth For Poverty Alleviation?, Michael Kevane, Bruce Wydick

Economics

This research compares the performance of female and male entrepreneurs in a microenterprise credit program in Guatemala. Previous research and field practice has suggested that targeting credit at female borrowers allows for more substantial increases in household welfare, but that male entrepreneurs may more aggressively expand enterprises when given access to credit. In this paper, we develop a model that seeks to clarify why we might expect gender differences in economic responses to credit access. In general, our empirical results reveal that gender differences in economic responses to credit access are surprisingly small. However, we find that female entrepreneurs in …


Evolving Tenure Rights And Agricultural Intensification In Southwestern Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray Jan 2001

Evolving Tenure Rights And Agricultural Intensification In Southwestern Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray

Economics

Popular and official representations of the environment in Burkina Faso present soils as fragile and potentially subject to catastrophic collapse in fertility. In the cotton growing zone of southwestern Burkina Faso, researchers and policy makers attribute changes in land cover and land quality to population growth. This paper presents evidence questioning the dominant "population-degradation narrative" as applied to Burkina. We find that farmers are intensifying their production systems. While population has led to land scarcity, farmers are responding to both the resulting uncertainty in land rights and reductions in soil quality by intensifying the production process. Investments are used both …


A Woman's Field Is Made At Night: Gendered Land Rights And Norms In Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray Jan 1999

A Woman's Field Is Made At Night: Gendered Land Rights And Norms In Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray

Economics

Gendered social norms and institutions are important determinants of agricultural activities in southwestern Burkina Faso. This paper argues that gendered land tenure, in particular, has effects on equity and efficiency. The usual view of women as holders of secondary, or indirect, rights to land must be supplemented by a more nuanced understanding of tenure. Women's rights are in fact considerably more complex than the simple right to fields from their husbands. First, women's rights to property obtained from men may be coupled with other rights and obligations. In many ethnic groups, women have share rights to the harvest of their …


Extra-Household Norms And Intra-Household Bargaining: Gender In Sudan And Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane Apr 1998

Extra-Household Norms And Intra-Household Bargaining: Gender In Sudan And Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane

Economics

This paper argues that future empirical strategies for approaching the problem of deepening relative poverty for women in sub-Saharan Africa might focus on distinguishing and weighing two complementary determinants of the process. One determinant is the changing distribution of intra-household bargaining power. The other determinant is the changing constellation of social norms that constrain and regulate the economic activities of women. The paper shows how fruitful this dichotomization may be in the context of an analysis of women's economic activities in western Sudan and south-western Burkina Faso. In western Sudan the military regime deliberately brought about changes, at the very …


Local Politics In The Time Of Turabi's Revolution: Gender, Class And Ethnicity In Western Sudan, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray Apr 1995

Local Politics In The Time Of Turabi's Revolution: Gender, Class And Ethnicity In Western Sudan, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray

Economics

In one small village in western Sudan local political struggles over power and resources are enmeshed in discursive struggles over representations of gender, ethnicity, class and community. Analysis of two specific conflicts illustrates this point. In one conflict over control of a village grain co-operative some villagers sought to exclude women, West African immigrants and the poor from participating in political decision-making. In a second conflict over a roadside market these same villagers, empowered by the divisive rhetoric and policies of the National Islamic Front regime, again mobilised dominant representations of class, gender and ethnicity in an attempt to prevent …