Directed Structural Change

Kane, Robert F.

doi:10.1017/s1365100517000505

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…6 This paper is also connected to the literature on structural transformation. This literature offers two explanations for the positive trend in the share of services and the negative trend in the share of agriculture: the demand side, which relies on nonhomothetic preferences (Kongsamut et al, 2001;Foellmi and Zweimüller, 2002;Buera and Kaboski, 2012;Matsuyama, 2002), and the supply side, which relies on biased sectorial growth (Buera et al, 2013(Buera et al, , 2015Kane, 1919). 7 According to the demanddriven theory of structural change, as households become richer, the demand for certain goods grow so does output in these sectors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bequests, Imperfections in Factor Markets, and Long-Run Inequality: A Theoretical Assessment of Piketty

2019

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bequests, Imperfections in Factor Markets, and Long-Run Inequality: A Theoretical Assessment of Piketty

2019

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“…Economists historically argue that appropriate technologies for low-income countries will more likely meet the needs of the poor when relatively being more labor-intensive. 14,[25][26][27] Such technologies not only leverage the local supply of labor and the relatively low wage rates but also such technologies will be less complicated, rely less on specialized components, and will generally be lower cost. 18 Recent research on gender roles though rejects the "cheap or available labor" thesis with respect to women laborers.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Economics of the Soy Kit as an Appropriate Household Technology for Food Entrepreneurs

Kim

Goldsmith

2021

Food Nutr Bull

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Background: The ability for women to operate as food entrepreneurs presents opportunities to leverage at-home production technologies that not only support family nutrition but also generate income. To these ends, the Feed the Future Malawi Agriculture Diversification Activity recently launched a development project involving a new technology, the Soy Kit. The Activity, a USAID (United States Agency for International Development) funded effort, sought to improve nutrition utilizing an underutilized local and highly nutritious feedstuff, soybean, through a woman’s entrepreneurship scheme. Objective: The USAID funded effort provides the overarching research question, whether the Soy Kit is a sustainable technology for delivering nutrition and income through a women’s entrepreneurship scheme. If true, then development practitioners will have a valuable tool, and the associated evidence, to address the important crosscutting themes, of nutrition, poverty, entrepreneurship, and women’s empowerment. To answer this research question, the research team first evaluates the underlying production economics of the kit to measure profitability, return on investment, and operational performance. Second, the team qualitatively and quantitatively assesses the kit’s overall appropriateness as a technology for the developing world. Methods: The team follows the schema of Bower and Brown and utilizes descriptive statistics, and financial techniques to conduct an assessment of the economics and technical appropriateness of the Soy Kit technology. Results: The results show a high level of appropriateness across a number of metrics. For example, the payback period from cash flow is under 6 months and the annual return on capital is 163% when entrepreneurs utilize a domestically sourced kit valued at US$80. Conclusion: The technology matches well with the rhythm of household economy, in particular women’s labor availability and resource base. Businesses earn significant returns on capital thus appear to be sustainable without donor subsidy. At the same time, available capital to finance kit entrepreneurs appears to be scarce. More research needs to take place to address the credit access question, in order to make small-scale kit entrepreneur truly self-reliant; the effects on poverty reduction at the household and village level; and nutrition improvement among the consumers.

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Immigration, Endogenous Skill Bias of Technological Change, and Welfare Analysis

Şenel

2020

Macroecon. Dynam.

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This paper investigates the long-run effects of immigration on wages and welfare in a model with endogenous technology choice (ETC) where firms are allowed to choose their optimal skill intensity from a menu of available technologies. I embed the ETC framework into the Auerbach and Kotlikoff model (1987) that features a large set of overlapping generations, a rich collection of population dynamics, and a social security system. I calibrate the model to match with the U.S. data and evaluate the effect of ETC with the help of two experiments. In the first experiment, I increase the share of high-skilled immigrants and compare the wage and welfare predictions of the model with ETC to a standard model where the skill intensities in production technology are fixed. In the standard model, since the skill intensities are constant, increase in the supply of high-skilled labor leads to a decrease in high-skilled wages and an increase in low-skilled wages. On the other hand, in the model with ETC, negative supply-side effects are counterbalanced by an increase in the intensity of the more abundant high-skilled labor, leading to a smaller decrease in their wages. The discrepancy between wage predictions of these two models is also reflected in the welfare: while the model with ETC predicts an increase in both high- and low-skilled natives’ welfare, the standard model would predict a decrease in the welfare of the high skilled and a larger increase in the welfare of the low skilled. In the second experiment, I examine the effects of an increase in low-skilled immigration and find that in this case, since the initial production technology is low-skilled intensive, the ETC effects are smaller. These results imply that if ETC is ignored, both in the short run and long run, wage and welfare analyses of immigration will be incomplete, and even misleading.

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Directed Structural Change

Cited by 4 publications

References 23 publications

Bequests, Imperfections in Factor Markets, and Long-Run Inequality: A Theoretical Assessment of Piketty

Bequests, Imperfections in Factor Markets, and Long-Run Inequality: A Theoretical Assessment of Piketty

The Economics of the Soy Kit as an Appropriate Household Technology for Food Entrepreneurs

Immigration, Endogenous Skill Bias of Technological Change, and Welfare Analysis

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