The geographic location of banks' branches is used to test whether they are responding to unexploited gains from nonfarm rural development in Bangladesh. The branch locations of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank are compared with those of traditional banks. The potential gains from switching out of...

Industrial data are used to derive estimates of the pattern of change in wage inequality in Mexico and Brazil. Using the group decomposition of Theil's T-statistic, the paper presents monthly changes in the dispersion of industrial wages for Brazil (1976 through 1995) and for Mexico (1968...

Data from predominantly rural economies show that, despite persistent involuntary unemployment, wages have been rising. However, the theoretical literature offers a scenario of largely rigid wages. This paper proposes a theory of strategic bargaining between individual laborers and farmers based...

The paper presents a version of the exchange-rate-regime model of inflation. Quarterly data from Mexico from 1946 to 1995 are used to estimate and test a simultaneous-equation model for wage inflation, price inflation and industrial production, taking account of the Lucas critique and the...

The period 1976-91 in Taiwan was one of rapid economic growth. Agricultural employment fell from 29% to 13% of the workforce, while the employment rate for prime-age females increased from 43% to 55%. These figures suggest widespread net movements of labor out of agriculture. In reality the net...

Productive consumption enables the satisfaction of current needs and increases the productive potential of labor. The productive-consumption hypothesis is of fundamental interest because it modifies the "harsh" intertemporal consumption tradeoff traditionally assumed. The incorporation of the...

An excessive level of employment is a frequent complaint made about public-sector governance in developing economies. The explanation typically offered is that governments use public-sector employment as a tool for generating and redistributing rents. This article suggests an alternative...

This paper analyzes the effects of the growth of nonfuel primary exports on the growth of industrial exports and GDP in 74 economies between 1965 and 1992. There is clear evidence of positive effects, both in the short term and in the long term, of the growth of primary exports on the growth of...

The complete-markets hypothesis can be tested by examining whether the quantity of labor demanded by the farm is influenced by the farm's household composition. There should be no influence if labor markets clear. This assumes, however, that household composition is fixed. This paper suggests...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is used to measure tax efficiency in 15 Indian states from 1980/81 to 1992/93. Tax efficiency is shown to be conditional on state gross domestic product (SDP), agriculture's share in state SDP, and a poverty index. The considerable remaining efficiency differences...