The Dynamics of Self-employment in a Developing Country: Evidence from India

We examine the spatio-temporal dynamics of self-employment in India using geoadditive models and pseudo panel techniques. We test the claim of Iyigun and Owen (1999) that individuals invest in professional human capital and not in entrepreneurial human capital as an economy develops. The results suggest that in non-agriculture, higher education decreases the likelihood of individuals choosing self-employment over time; however, it has an opposite effect in agriculture. While increases in land possessed increase the likelihood of self-employment choice in agriculture, individuals with small land holdings are more likely to transition into self-employment in non-agriculture. Belonging to a backward class has a negative effect on self-employment choice in both sectors; however, the effect has increased in non-agriculture and remained stable in agriculture. The geoadditive models suggest that the propensity to be self-employed has decreased across most spatial units, although there are few pockets where self-employment is rising again.

Export Competitiveness and Comparative Advantage of Pakistan’s Non-agricultural Production Sectors: Trends and Analysis

This paper analyses export specialisation of Pakistan’s non-agriculture production sectors during 1990-2000, by using the revealed comparative advantage (RCA) approach at HS 4-digit level. The paper provides an insight into the challenges and opportunities that Pakistan’s non-agricultural sectors face as they become rapidly integrated into global markets. The paper identifies those non-agricultural export categories in which Pakistan is losing, gaining, or maintaining its export competitiveness. The study examines the extent to which Pakistan’s leading non-agriculture product lines have witnessed a shift in comparative advantage away from the traditional labour-intensive production to the export of technologybased production activities. The study also provides an in-depth investigation of export specialisation of Pakistan’s non-agriculture production sectors by dividing key HS 4-digit non-agricultural product lines into six distinct groups based on their position in Pakistan’s RCA profile. To assess the relative competitive position of various manufacturing and mining activities, the study also provides a comprehensive analysis at the sectoral level.

Structural change in employment in India since 1980s: How Lewisian is it?

Indian economy shows high levels of growth and per capita income in recent years accompanied by an unprecedented shift of labour from agriculture to non-agriculture during the last decade. Reallocation of labour from ‘traditional’ to ‘modern’ segments in an economy having large surplus labour was conceived in the Lewisian framework as the process by way of which both accumulation of capital and exhaustion of surplus labour takes place. This paper argues that the structural change in employment in India that results from the exclusionary nature of the growth process hardly approximates the Lewisian trajectory. Finally, in the context of globalisation this paper explains the responses of firms of various size categories in non-agriculture and argues that the shift in employment basically expands the ‘reserve army of labour’ in the Marxian sense instead of exhaustion of surplus labour conceived in Lewisian conjectures.growth, employment, non-agriculture, structural change,reserve army of labour

The Dynamics of Self-employment in a Developing Country: Evidence from India

We examine the spatio-temporal dynamics of self-employment in India using geoadditive models and pseudo panel techniques. We test the claim of Iyigun and Owen (1999) that individuals invest in professional human capital and not in entrepreneurial human capital as an economy develops. The results suggest that in non-agriculture, higher education decreases the likelihood of individuals choosing self-employment over time; however, it has an opposite effect in agriculture. While increases in land possessed increase the likelihood of self-employment choice in agriculture, individuals with small land holdings are more likely to transition into self-employment in non-agriculture. Belonging to a backward class has a negative effect on self-employment choice in both sectors; however, the effect has increased in non-agriculture and remained stable in agriculture. The geoadditive models suggest that the propensity to be self-employed has decreased across most spatial units, although there are few pockets where self-employment is rising again.Entrepreneurship, Self-employment, Developing Countries, Dynamics, Pseudo Panels

Employment, Wages and Poverty in the Organized and the Unorganized Segments of the Non-Agricultural Sector in India; All-India, 2000-2005

Analysing the Unit Record Data from the NSS 55th and 61st Round Employment-Unemployment Surveys, the Organized Sector Workforce in non-agriculture is shown to be larger than the corresponding DGE&T estimates by 16.5 million in 2004-05 and to have increased by 5.4 million between 2000 and 2005 instead of the 1.6 decrease indicated by the corresponding DGE&T estimates. Examining some features of employment contracts of the regular wage/salary workers who account for 88 percent of the organized sector workforce, it is shown that between 14 to 27 million of the 41.5 million workers in organized non-agriculture are perhaps better labeled as Informal Workers who are without access to a set of social security benefits though they are located in the formal sector. Also presented are our estimates of workforce in the unorganized segment of non-agriculture in the country as a whole as also those in urban India who constitute the Urban Informal Sector. An analysis of labour productivity in the organized-unorganized segments of broad industry groups for 1999-2000 and 2004-05 is followed by an examination of differences across the organized-unorganized divide in average daily earnings and in the poverty status of adult workers in non-agricultural activities for 2004-05Employment in organized sector, Urban Informal Sector, Labour Productivity, Wage Differentials, Poverty status of workers.

Penyebab Kegagalan Negosiasi Pertanian, Jasa, dan Non-Agriculture Market Access (NAMA) dalam Doha Round Tahun 2001-2006

Doha Round is a new round of negotiation in World Trade Organization that held on November 9-14th 2001, at Doha, Qatar. There are 21 subjects of negotiation. The deadline for reaching agreement in all subjects was in 2005 and extended in 2006. Even it was extended, the agreement still could not be reached. One reason of it was unreachable agreements in agriculture, services, and non-agriculture market access (NAMA). This article will try to examine the reason for unreachable agreements in agriculture, services, and non-agriculture market access (NAMA) based on negotiation and rational choice theory. The unreachable agreements in agriculture, services, and non-agriculture market access (NAMA) is result of unreachable concession because of cost that will be received by developed and developing countries based on issue-linkages between agriculture, services, and non-agriculture market access (NAMA). Therefore this article will explain correlation between issue-linkages and unreachable agreement in agriculture, services, and non-agriculture market access (NAMA). Keywords: Doha Round, agreement, negotiation, non-agriculture market access (NAMA), cost, benefit, issue-linkages

A unified theory of structural change

This paper uses dynamic general equilibrium and computational methods, inspired by the multi-sector growth model structure in Stephen Turnovsky’s previous and more recent work, to develop a theory that unifies two of the traditional explanations of structural change: sector-biased technical change and non-homothetic preferences. More specifically, we build a multisector overlapping generations growth model with endogenous technical-change and non-homothetic preferences based on an expanding-variety setup with two different R&D technologies; one for agriculture, and another for non-agriculture. Results give additional support to the biased technical-change hypothesis as an important determinant of the structural transformation. The paper also explores where this bias might come from. Our findings suggest that production-side specific factors, such as asymmetries in cross-sector knowledge spillovers could be behind it, and therefore be important to fully explain the process of structural change.multi-sector growth model, structural change, agriculture and non-agriculture, R&D, directed innovation, hon-homothetic preferences.

An empirical investigation of short and long-run agricultural wage formation in Ghana

This paper investigates empirically the factors that influence real agricultural wage rates in Ghana, based on 1957 to 1991 data. The Johansen cointegration framework is used to examine long-run relationships among agricultural and urban wage rates, the domestic terms of trade between agriculture and non-agriculture, urban unemployment, capital stock in agriculture and the size of the rural population. An error correction model is then used to investigate short-run dynamic relationships among the variables. The results show that: (1) there is only one stable equilibrium relationship among agricultural wage rates and their determinants in the long-run; (2) a 1 percent change in the domestic terms of trade between agriculture and non-agriculture leads to a 0.48 percent change in the real agricultural wage rate in the short-run and a 0.83 percent change in the long run; (3) the analysis suggests a one-time and one way upwards structural shift of 3.6 percent in real agricultural wages during the 1980s.Income Ghana. ,Agriculture Economic aspects Ghana. ,

NPK detection spectroscopy on non-agriculture soil

Soil is a medium for plant roots to grow, absorb water and necessary solutes for growth. Soil macronutrient testing is helpful for determining the nutrients content in soil before applying fertilizer for quality and process controls of agricultural produce and soil fertility. Spectroscopy is an emerging technology which is rapid and simple has been widely used in agricultural and food analysis processes. The capability of spectroscopy to characterize material from the transmission or absorbance has been used in this paper to measure nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) content in non-agriculture soil. The paper details preliminary characterization of soil spectroscopy with a Deuterium-Halogen light source and Ocean Optic spectrometer to measure the absorbance level of the macronutrients. The extracted nutrients were mixed with the colour reagent and specific colored solution was developed. Two soil samples have been employed for the experimental characterization, which are mud flood and kaolin. The result shows that high absorbance level of N at 450 nm in wavelength, P at 750 nm for both samples. The absorbance level of K was measured high at 500nm for mud flood and 450nm for kaolin. In addition, the tested macronutrients give similar wavelength of peak absorbance level at 970 nm for both samples. For future works, the optical measurements will be implemented using visible and near infrared LED and the photodetector in order to replace the spectrometer usage for soil spectroscopy. This would lead to achieve the primary objective of this research in developing a simple and low cost spectroscopy uses light-emitting diode (LED)

The (Evolving) Role of Agriculture in Poverty Reduction: An Empirical Perspective

The role of agriculture in development remains much debated. This paper takes an empirical perspective and focuses on poverty, as opposed to growth alone. The contribution of a sector to poverty reduction is shown to depend on its own growth performance, its indirect impact on growth in other sectors, the extent to which poor people participate in the sector, and the size of the sector in the overall economy. Bringing together these different effects using cross-country econometric evidence indicates that agriculture is significantly more effective than nonagriculture in reducing poverty among the poorest of the poor (as reflected in the $1-day squared poverty gap). It is also up to 3.2 times better at reducing$1-day headcount poverty in low-income and resource-rich countries (including those in sub-Saharan Africa), at least when societies are not fundamentally unequal. However, when it comes to the better-off poor (reflected in the $2-day measure), non-agriculture has the edge. These results are driven by the much larger participation of poorer households in growth from agriculture and the lower poverty-reducing effect of non-agriculture in the presence of extractive industries.agriculture, economic growth, poverty, sub-Saharan Africa