The institutional economics if John Commons (1934) contained two related objectives. The first was to explain the evolution of economics. The second was to analyze the effects of institutions on resource allocation and the distribution of income. The method of explaining the evolution of...

In poorly developed market economies, high transactions and related costs, produce a pattern of market organizations with heavy relianceon traditional institutions for handling transactions.The family is one such institution because family ties or bonds allow more efficien, tcontractual...

Most works on food security have a macroeconomic orientation, whereas most discussions of famine are rather microeconomic. The intention here is to seek a more unified approach to the economic issues in food insecurity among low-income rural households.

Much of the debate on the role of agriculture in economic development centers on whether agriculture should be taxed or subsidized. The classical prescription for economic development is investment in industrial modernization financed by an agricultural surplus. Proponents of agricultural...

Strikingly different patterns of agricultural growth and widely divergent results in terlnsof rural income. poverty. and employment have cmcrged in Southeast Asia. In the Philippiies, with someregional variations, a patterns of declining red farm wages,increasing landlessness in worsening...

The paper addresses the nature and locus of appropriate government control in the provision of collective services. It suggests some useful principles for determining organizational structures with the appropriate degree and form of decentralization, which is seen to be an important part of...

The contribution of the environmental-resource sector to national well-being is the sum of natural resource depletion and environmental degradation. Inasmuch as existing resource stocks are below efficient levels, better enforcement of existing laws as well as policies that incentivize...

The Philippines provides a leading example of Rodrik’s Rule that developing countries experience deindustrialization at lower levels of per-capita income than did developed countries. Previous studies point to the role of protectionist policies, financial crises, and exchange rate...