Is South Sulawesi a Center of Growth in Eastern Indonesia? : Japanese ODA Strategy Revisited

Japanese ODA, especially that undertaken by JICA, has targeted South Sulawesi Province as a core area of development in eastern Indonesia, with hope that the economic growth of South Sulawesi will bring about spillover effects in other regions. This paper tests the validity of the strategy using a framework of Vector Autoregressive model. The results show that South Sulawesi’s economy Granger causes other regions in eastern Indonesia, but not vice versa, implying that South Sulawesi drives the development of other regions in eastern Indonesia. Further analysis shows that the development of the agricultural sector in South Sulawesi potentially has the highest spillover effects than other sectors and that the magnitude of spillover effect from South Sulawesi on eastern Indonesia is higher than other economically important regions, such as Eastern Java and Kalimantan

農業と非農業就業の動態的変化と貧困削減への影響: 1979年から2003年に関するフィリピン農村地域の実態

公共政策プログラム / Public Policy Program政策研究大学院大学 / National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies論文審査委員: 大塚 啓二郎（主査）, 黒澤 昌子, Jonna P. Estudillo, 加治 佐敬, 不破 信彦（千葉大学

Sources of Regional Income Disparity in Rural Vietnam: Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition

This paper investigates determinants of regional income disparity in rural Vietnam, with special emphasis placed on the roles of human capital and land. We apply a decomposition method, suggested by Oaxaca and Blinder. We found that returns to assets rather than endowments, especially those of human capital, are one of the leading factors to account for income differences across regions. We also found that substantial improvements of returns to human capital in the Red River delta region are a driving force to catch up with Mekong River delta region. Unexpectedly, differences in land endowment do not strongly correlate with regional income disparity because better access to land in a region was partially offset by lower returns

Pro-poor growth or poverty trap? : estimating intergenerational income mobility in rural Philippines

Using an intergenerational database covering nearly a quarter of a century, we explored the degree of intergenerational income mobility among individuals who had grown up in rural Central Luzon, the Philippines. We found that the intergenerational income elasticity is significantly lower than unity, at roughly 0.23, indicating that the average income growth rate is higher for children born to poorer families. The detailed analysis, however, revealed that its magnitude significantly varies across percentiles in a U-shape. The results provide supporting evidence of multiple equilibria or poverty trap

Human Capital Investment and Poverty Reduction over Generations: A Case from the Rural Philippines, 1979-2003

This paper attempts to identify a pathway out of poverty over generations in the rural Philippines, based on long-term panel data spanning for nearly a quarter of a century. Specifically, it sequentially examines the determinants of schooling, subsequent occupational choices, and current non-farm earnings for the same individuals. We found that an initial rise in parental income, brought about by the land reform and the Green Revolution, among other things, improves the schooling of children, which later allows them to obtain remunerative non-farm jobs. These results suggest that the increased agricultural income, improved human capital through schooling and the development of non-farm sectors are the keys to reducing poverty in the long run. It must be also pointed out that the recent development of the rural non-farm sector offers ample employment opportunities for the less educated, which also significantly contributed to the poverty reduction

Mobile Phone Expansion, Informal Risk Sharing, and Consumption Smoothing: Evidence from Rural Uganda

We study how the recent expansion of mobile phone coverage affects the degree of consumption smoothing using data collected in rural Uganda in 2003 and 2005. We found that mobile phone coverage helps consumption smoothing against covariate shocks but not idiosyncratic shocks. Unlike in studies on informal risk sharing, but in line with the permanent income hypothesis, we also found that household-level consumption changes are insenitive to transitory household income shocks, but sensitive to permanent household income shocks. Full intertemporal self-insurance is, however, impossible under imperfect credit and insurance markets. Our results show that households effectively combine self-insurance, local risk sharing, and long-distance risk sharing via mobile phone, where idiosyncratic shocks are partially mitigated by self-insurance as well as mutual insurance within local communities, while covariate shocks are partially mitigated by self-insurance and across distant communities via mobile phones

Spillovers as a Driver to Reduce Ex-post Inequality Generated by Randomized Experiments: Evidence from an Agricultural Training Intervention

Randomized experiments ensure equal opportunities but could generate unequal outcomes by treatment status, which can be socially costly. This study demonstrates a sequential intervention to conduct rigorous impact evaluation and subsequently to mitigate ‘“experiment-driven’ driven” inequality, using Cote d’Ivoire as a case. Specifically, control farmers were initially restricted from exchanging information with treated farmers, who received rice management training, to satisfy the stable unit treatment value assumption. We then encouraged information exchange between the two groups of farmers one year after the training. We found positive training effects, but initial performance gaps created by our randomized assignment disappeared over time because of information spillovers and, hence, eventually control farmers also benefitted from our experiment

Homological mirror symmetry for the quintic 3-fold

We prove homological mirror symmetry for the quintic Calabi-Yau 3-fold. The proof follows that for the quartic surface by Seidel (arXiv:math/0310414) closely, and uses a result of Sheridan (arXiv:1012.3238). In contrast to Sheridan's approach (arXiv:1111.0632), our proof gives the compatibility of homological mirror symmetry for the projective space and its Calabi-Yau hypersurface.Comment: 29 pages, 6 figures. v2: revised following the suggestions of the referee

Impacts of solar lanterns in geographically challenged locations : experimental evidence from Bangladesh

Despite continuous efforts to improve the coverage, the access to electricity remains insufficient in many developing countries, particularly in geographically challenged locations, due mostly to the high cost of grid extension. To rigorously investigate the effectiveness of solar products as an alternative in remote areas, we conducted a randomized controlled trial in river islands of northern Bangladesh where no grid-based electricity is available. We found that solar lanterns significantly increased home study hours among schooled children, especially in the night and before exams. School attendance rate also initially increases due to the provision of solar lamps, although such effects fade away over time. The increased study time and initial school attendance rate, however, did not improve children\u27s exam results. We also found marginal improvements on health-related indicators, such as eye redness and irritation, but negligible impacts on respiratory indicators. Households that received solar lanterns substituted the traditional lighting sources with modern technology, leading to a significant decrease in annual biomass fuel consumptions, particularly kerosene. Finally, treated households showed a greater self-reported willingness to purchase solar products compared with the control group