Agricultural exit problems: Causes and consequences

"Contrary to conventional economic theories, the relationship between income growth and the share of the population within the rural or agricultural sector is extremely diverse, even among regions starting from similar levels of development, such as Asia and Africa. The pattern in developing Asia is characterized by fast growth and slow urbanization, primarily as the result of labor-intensive agricultural growth and strong farm–nonfarm linkages. But for all its success to date, Asia appears to be increasingly vulnerable to rising inequality and jobless growth patterns. Africa presents a divergent pattern of slow growth with rapid urbanization stemming from urban-biased policies, low rural population density, and high rates of population growth. But whereas Africa's path of urbanization without growth presents problems like unemployment, congestion, and food-price inflation, it may also provide new development possibilities through greater political empowerment, lower fertility rates, and agglomeration externalities. The paper concludes with a discussion of how development strategies can address these agricultural exit problems." from authors' abstracteconomic growth, structural change, Urbanization, agricultural exits, rural to urban migration, rural non-farm employment, Inequality, employment, agglomeration externalities,

Happiness and the Human Development Index : the paradox of Australia

According to the well-being measure known as the U.N. Human Development Index, Australia now ranks 3rd in the world and higher than all other English-speaking nations. This paper questions that assessment. It reviews work on the economics of happiness, considers implications for policymakers, and explores where Australia lies in international subjective well-being rankings. Using new data on approximately 50,000 randomly sampled individuals from 35 nations, the paper shows that Australians have some of the lowest levels of job satisfaction in the world. Moreover, among the sub-sample of English-speaking nations, where a common language should help subjective measures to be reliable, Australia performs poorly on a range of happiness indicators. The paper discusses this paradox. Our purpose is not to reject HDI methods, but rather to argue that much remains to be understood in this area

Does happiness induce a rosy outlook?

The appreciation of a life-as-a-whole affects evaluative perceptions of various aspects of life. When people get happier, they become more satisfied with their jobs and attainments, they see more nice events happen to them and they rise in their own estimation. This appears in an analysis of the Australian QOL-panel study, involving 4 interviews over a 7 year period. There is no ground to dismiss these effects as rosily unrealistic, but there are good reasons to consider them beneficial for the individual and the societ