The green revolution and the productivity paradox : evidence from the Indian Punjab

The author provides district-level estimates of the contribution of technical change to agricultural output growth in the Indian Punjab from 1960 to 1993. Contrary to widespread belief, productivity growth in the Punjab was surprisingly low during the green revolution (in the mid-1960s), when modern hybrid seed varieties were being adopted. It improved later, after adoption of the new varieties was essentially complete. The author proposes three reasons for this pattern: (1) The standard measure of total factor productivity overstates the contribution of capital to output growth at the expense of the productivity residual. High-yielding varieties introduced in the 1960s helped spur output growth by making crops responsive to water and fertilizer, which not only allowed but indeed encouraged far greater use of capital inputs. This increase in the elasticity of the output response to capital inputs is incorporated into the index of factor accumulation and therefore excluded from the measure of total factor productivity growth. As a result, the contribution of technical change to growth in Punjab's agriculture during the green revolution is probably underestimated. (2) The overstatement of the capital contribution during the green revolution is exacerbated by indivisibilities in capital inputs. (3) Productivity growth did not come from the adoption of modern varieties alone. Improved resource management and public investment in infrastructure also helped improve productivity.Crops&CropManagement Systems,Economic Theory&Research,Agricultural Research,Water Conservation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Crops&Crop Management Systems,Agricultural Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Economic Growth

Poverty decline, agricultural wages, and non-farm employment in rural India : 1983-2004

The authors analyze five rounds of National Sample Survey data covering 1983, 1987/8, 1993/4, 1999/0, and 2004/5 to explore the relationship between rural diversification and poverty. Poverty in rural India declined at a modest rate during this period. The authors provide region-level estimates that illustrate considerable geographic heterogeneity in this progress. Poverty estimates correlate well with region-level data on changes in agricultural wage rates. Agricultural labor remains the preserve of the uneducated and also to a large extent of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Although agricultural labor grew as a share of total economic activity over the first four rounds, it had fallen back to the levels observed at the beginning of the survey period by 2004. This all-India trajectory masks widely varying trends across states. During this period, the rural non-farm sector grew modestly, mainly between the last two survey rounds. Regular non-farm employment remains largely associated with education levels and social status that are rare among the poor. However, casual labor and self-employment in the non-farm sector reveal greater involvement by disadvantaged groups in 2004 than in the preceding rounds. The implication for poverty is not immediately clear - the poor may be pushed into low-return casual non-farm activities due to lack of opportunities in the agricultural sector rather than being pulled by high returns offered by the non-farm sector. Econometric estimates reveal that expansion of the non-farm sector is associated with falling poverty via two routes: a direct impact on poverty that is likely due to a pro-poor marginal incidence of non-farm employment expansion; and an indirect impact attributable to the positive effect of non-farm employment growth on agricultural wages. The analysis also confirms the important contribution to rural poverty reduction from agricultural productivity, availability of land, and consumption levels in proximate urban areas.Rural Poverty Reduction,Labor Markets,Labor Policies,Crops&Crop Management Systems

Is a guaranteed living wage a good anti-poverty policy?

Minimum wages are generally thought to be unenforceable in developing rural economies. But there is one solution - a workfare scheme in which the government acts as the employer of last resort. Is this a cost-effective policy against poverty? Using a microeconometric model of the casual labor market in rural India, the authors find that a guaranteed wage rate sufficient for a typical poor family to reach the poverty line would bring the annual poverty rate down from 34 percent to 25 percent at a fiscal cost representing 3-4 percent of GDP when run for the whole year. Confining the scheme to the lean season (three months) would bring the annual poverty rate down to 31 percent at a cost of 1.3 percent of GDP. While the gains from a guaranteed wage rate would be better targeted than a uniform (untargeted) cash transfer, the extra costs of the wage policy imply that it would have less impact on poverty.Environmental Economics&Policies,Safety Nets and Transfers,Rural Poverty Reduction,Services&Transfers to Poor,Health Economics&Finance

They Sought Our Help: A Survey of One-on-One Research Assistance at The University of Tennessee Lupton Library

Providing research assistance on an individual basis to patrons has long been a standard service in the panoply of services at many academic libraries. The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) Lupton Library describes its one-on-one research service as follows: if you are new to using the library resources, can’t find the right source for your paper or need a demonstration of a database, need help in tracking an obscure article, or have any other questions that require a little extra help, Lupton Library offers one-on-one research help to students and faculty. You many request a research appointment online or if you want to work with a specific librarian, you can contact him or her directly (spring Newsletter, 2011). About five years ago the reference librarians at UTC started keeping statistics of how many students and faculty use the one-on one service and how much time was being devoted to that service

On the adiabatic expansion of the reaction products inside the gun

The change in composition of the products of reaction inside the gun, during their adiabatic expansion, from the position of the all burnt to the muzzle has been considered and the temperature of the product, when they reach the muzzle, determine. While the maximum change of composition is 10 percent. The difference of temperature at the muzzle from that calculated on the basis of constant composition is only 1 percent

Motivation to Manage and Status of Women in Library and Information Science: A Comparative Study Among the United States, India, Singapore and Thailand

In most non-western societies, the self-system (personal standards of judging and guiding one’s actions) is much more inter-dependent on family and society, whereas in western societies, especially in the U.S., it is dependent on the individual self. Cross-cultural studies suggest that a person’s behavior should be understood in the context of their social experience and social roles. In all the cultures and countries studied, however, the status of women is universally lower than men; consequently there is a need to explore the causes. Professional women have made some strides in penetrating managerial ranks in the library and information science profession, but they still experience inequality in compensation, promotion, and in appointment to powerful middle or high-level positions. It seems that social needs and cultural influences play a very important role in the acceptance of women as managers or leaders. This study compares the managerial motivations of Library and Information Science (LIS) students from the United States, India, Singapore, and Thailand. The students responded to a questionnaire containing 41 statements dealing with motivation to manage, and 16 demographic questions. The respondents consisted of 665 students from the United States, 808 from India, 73 from Singapore, and 284 from Thailand. (The data from Japan was not analyzed because the sample was too small-not a valid sample). The major gender differences show up by gender and country in ‘Social Acceptance,’ ‘Rigidity’ and ‘Women as Managers.’ Even when a majority of both genders agree to accept women as managers at the conceptual level, acceptance of women as managers lags behind men in societies according to the results of this study. In some of the countries studied, a substantial number of women do not have the confidence that they can handle managerial jobs as objectively and aggressively as men

Monopoly power and distribution in fragmented markets : the case of groundwater

Using data from Pakistan's Punjab, the authors examine monopoly power in the market for groundwater - irrigation water extracted using private tubewells - a market characterized by barriers to entry and spatial fragmentation. Simple theory predicts that tubewell owners should price-discriminate in favor of their own share tenants. And this analysis of individual groundwater transactions over an 18-month period confirms such price discrimination. And among those studied, tubewell owners and their tenants use considerably more groundwater on their plots than do other farmers. The authors also provide evidence that monopoly pricing of groundwater leads to compensating - albeit small - reallocations of canal water, which farmers exchange in a separate informal market. Despite the substantial misallocation of groundwater, a welfare analysis show that monopoly pricing has limited effects on equity and efficiency. In the long run, a policy aimed at eliminating monopoly pricing would do little to help the poorest farmers.Water and Industry,Water Resources Law,Water Conservation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Water Supply and Systems,Water and Industry,Water Conservation,Water Supply and Sanitation Governance and Institutions,Drought Management,Water Use

Reference Use Statistics: Statistical Sampling Method Works (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga)

Most reference librarians would like reference statistics to reflect all aspects of reference work. They would also like the task of keeping statistics to be simple. However, there is nothing simple about reference service. While spending more and more time helping individual students at their workstations, away from the reference desk, reference librarians still have to remember to mark statistics when they return to the reference desk. They realize that detailed information as to the type of questions asked at the desk would be helpful in guiding librarians while providing user instruction. Such details would also provide information on the impact of resource changes and technology in the library. However, the librarians do not have time to collect such detailed statistics while serving the patrons. They feel that helping the patron is more important than marking statistics on the sheet. As a result many questions go as unmarked. Traditional counting methods do not reflect what resources are most helpful or which formats require increased time with users

Localized and Incomplete Mutual Insurance

The practice of mutual insurance is conditioned by two types of transaction costs: "association" costs in establishing links with insurance partners and "extraction" costs in using these links to implement insurance transfers. Data on insurance-motivated water exchanges among households along two irrigation canals in Pakistan show that households exchange bilaterally with neighbors and family members but the majority exchange with members of tightly knit clusters. We, therefore, develop a model that endogenizes both cluster formation and the quality of insurance in the chosen cluster as a function of the relative importance of association and extraction costs. Full insurance at the community level, the object of most empirical tests of mutual insurance, is seen to be an extreme case. It is consequently not surprising that tests of the hypothesis of full risk pooling at the community level have led to rejection. The Pakistan data support the proposition that the configuration of insurance clusters and the intensity of exchanges within clusters vary with association and extraction costs. These costs are affected by kinship, distance to neighbors, and exposure to risk. Households with larger kinship groups, closer neighbors, and greater risk exposure insure through larger clusters and more intensive exchange.mutual insurance, transaction costs, clusters, Risk and Uncertainty,