Land reform distribution of land & institutions in rural Ethiopia: analysis of inequality with dirty data

There are two either explicitly or implicitly and widely accepted ideas about the distribution of land in Ethiopia after the reform of 1975. First, land distribution in rural Ethiopia is highly equitable, for example compared to other African countries where private ownership exists. Second, the land distribution pattern currently observed is basically explained by what happened after the reform; hence, pre-reform tenures do not help us understand post-reform land distribution. This paper questions both these ideas. Using formal inequality indexes and a methodology that explicitly considers measurement errors, the empirical results indicate that both inter- and intra-regional inequalities are high; inequality in the distribution of land is as high as or even higher than other African countries. The paper also argues that the post-reform distribution is likely influenced by pre-reform distribution and calls for a more detailed historical analysis that attempts to understand the link between old tenure structures and land distribution after the land reform

Interactions between short- and long-term health of children: A case from rural Ethiopia

2008

Intra-household Distribution of Expenditures in Rural Ethiopia: A Demand Systems Approach

This paper examines the combined effects of changes in prices, income and demographic composition on adult and young, male and female members of households. The recently developed Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS) is used since a demand system provides a unified framework for analysing the combined effects in a systematic fashion. The ‘outlay equivalent method’, which was used with single demand equations in previous studies, is married to the demand system literature. Underlying preference structures for classifying goods into different groups is also examined by conducting alternative tests of separability in preferences. Panel/longitudinal data are used helping to control for household level heterogeneity. The empirical results show that Ethiopian rural households respond to price, income and demographic changes in a more complicated manner than usually assumed; demographic groups absorbing most of the impact differ for different types of changes. Changes in household income affect male members of households (men and boys) more than female members (women and girls). On the other hand, changes in price affect women and boys more than men and girls. In addition, adjustments in household expenditure due to demographic changes imply that boys are favoured relative to girls. But the overall position of boys and girls in the household depends not only on the ‘outlay equivalent ratios’ but also on the effects of changes in household income and prices as determined by budget and price elasticities. These findings show that households distribute risks among different demographic groups rather than only one group absorbing all shocks. The findings indicate that studies that only looked at the ‘outlay equivalent ratios’ tell only part of the story.Ethiopia; demand systems; intra-household allocations; separability tests

Decomposition of Household Expenditure and Child Welfare in Rural Ethiopia

The methodology by Lazear and Michael (1988) is used to decompose household expenditures into that for adults and children. Some specific estimation procedures are modified and cross section-time series (panel) data are used to control for household level heterogeneity. In addition, a new and approximate test for the estimated ratios is applied. The empirical results indicate that even though per child and total child expenditures are increasing with income the relative expenditure on children falls with it. The ratio of child to adult expenditures for female-headed households is less than for male-headed households. While households with a larger number of children expend more on children in per capita terms, the number of adults is negatively related to expenditures per child. Siblings of the spouses have a significant impact on the expenditures on children; particularly, siblings of the wife seem to compete with her children. The completion of primary education by both spouses positively affects relative expenditures on children. Intergenerational effects, through education and wealth, are also important. Pre-marriage wealth, particularly for the female spouse, positively affects allocations to children. Length of marriage and the existence of a written marriage contract increase relative expenditures on children. Both measures reflect stability of marriage indicating that ‘optimal’ matching in the marriage market is an important determinant of intra-household allocations. Individual level fixed effects regressions indicate that weight-for-height z-scores of children are more correlated to the estimated expenditures on children than with total household expenditure. This result on the one hand underscores the importance of intra-household allocations, and on the other shows that the estimated expenditures on children and the underlying assumption used to derive them are not off the mark.Ethiopia; intra-household allocation; child health

Envy and Agricultural Innovation: An Experimental Case Study from Ethiopia

CSAE working paper WPS/2011-0

COMPARISON OF 2D AND 3D-BASED U-NET ARCHITECTURES FOR IMAGE RESTORATION IN STRUCTURED ILLUMINATION MICROSCOPY

Recent developments using deep learning (DL) super-resolution in structured-illumination microscopy (SIM), have improved speed in two-dimensional (2D) image restoration and minimized the impact of noise. We have extended this 2D DL technique to 3D by augmenting the 2D convolutional layers to 3D convolutional layers in a 3D U-Net DL network. We demonstrate experimentally that this extension improves lateral and axial resolution in the final 3D restoration compared to the resolution achieved by axially stacking the outputs of the 2D U-Net. To achieve this, we performed 3D processing on data acquired using 3D Structured Illumination Microscopy (3D-SIM) of subcellular biological samples. This is accomplished by splitting the data for training, validation, and testing followed by training a 3D reconstruction machine learning algorithm. We verify lateral and axial super-resolution improvement in 3D U-Net output by analyzing super-resolution quantitative performance metrics and intensity plots of our test data compared to ground truth images obtained from the traditional 3D-SIM restoration. These comparison results are consistent with those that have been reported using conventional techniques for 2D and 3D processing of a similar dataset

Envy and Agricultural Innovation: An Experimental Case Study from Ethiopia

The underlying motivations for envy or related social preferences and their impact on agricultural innovations are examined by combining data from money burning experimental game and household survey from Ethiopia. In the first stage of the money burning experimental game, income inequality is induced by providing different endowments and playing a lottery. In the second, people are allowed to decrease (‘burn’) other players’ money at their own expense. Conditional on individual behaviour, experimentally measured envious preferences from others have a negative effect on real life agricultural innovation.envy, social preferences, money burning games, agricultural innovations, Ethiopia

Intra-household efficiency; An experimental study from Ethiopia

Using data from experimental games and household survey from 1, 200 married couples in three sites in Ethipoia, this paer uses different versions of a voluntary contribution mechanism to test for household efficiency. The experimental and econometric analyses provide many interesting results that have far-reaching implications for intra-houisehold models. Efficiency in contribution behaviour is decisively rejected in all treatments casting doubt on 'unitary' and 'collective' household models that assume Pareto optimality - significant amounts of potential surplus are not realised. Contribution rates by males and females are not significantly different from each other undermining models that argue females tend to contribute more to the family (for example, Sen 1990). Information on itital endowments of spouses improves contribution rates (efficiency) in some treatments while not having effect in others suggesting that the effect of information is context dependent. Actual and expected contribution rates of spouses are systematically different; husbands' expect their wives will contribute more than their actual contributions and wives expect their husbands will contribute lower than actual contribution. These systematic errors in expectations imply that the attainment if equilibrium in a game theoretic framework is unlikely. Statistical tests indicate that instead of efficiency considerations other norms are likely important. For example, in many of the treatments spouses contributed around half of their endowments implying either a norm like fairness or focal points influence decisions. Overall, most of the empirical resulst cast doubt on cooperative models and provide some support for behaviour guided either by farirness or other norms.household efficiency, intra-household models, experiemental games, ethiopia

What’s love got to do with it ? An experimental test of household models in East Uganda

We test core theories of the household using variants of a public good game and experimental data from 240 couples in rural Uganda. Spouses do not maximise surplus from cooperation and realise a greater surplus when women are in charge. This violates assumptions of unitary and cooperative models. When women control the common account, they receive less than when men control it; this contradicts standard bargaining models. Women contribute less than men and are rewarded more generously by men than vice versa. This casts doubt on postulates in Sen (1990). While the absence of altruism is rejected, we find evidence for opportunism. The results are put in a socioeconomic context using quantitative and qualitative survey data. Assortative matching and correlates of bargaining power influence behaviour within the experiments. Our findings suggest that a .one-size fits all. model of the household is unlikely to be satisfactory.

Spousal control and efficiency of intra-household decision making: Experiments among married couples in India, Ethiopia and Nigeria

Given the importance of the household as a resource allocation mechanism, considerable interest exists in its efficiency. Most of the non-experimental evidence for inefficiency comes from West African farm households in which husbands and wives pursue separate productive activities. Using experiments, we test for efficiency of spouses’ resource allocation decisions in a range of household types. In North India, we selected households that are unified, in northern Nigeria households characterised by separate spheres of economic decision making. Our other sites occupy carefully selected intermediate positions on the spectrum from unitary to separate-spheres household types. We find that, the more separate is decision making in real life, the less efficient is resource allocation in the experiments. Moreover, female control of resource allocation tends to lower efficiency, in contrast to male control. The exception is a site in northern Nigeria where female control of resource allocation is well established