Alberto Zezza

Investing Back Home: Return Migration and Business Ownership in Albania

In view of its increasing importance, and the dearth of information on return migration and its impacts on source households, this study uses data from the 2005 Albania Living Standards Measurement Study survey and assesses the impact of past migration experience of Albanian households on non-farm business ownership through instrumental variables regression techniques. Moreover, considering the differences in earning potentials and opportunities for skill acquisition in different destination countries, the impact of household past migration experience is differentiated by main migrant destinations, namely Greece and Italy. The study also tests for the hypothesis of the existence of migration cycles, by differentiating the time spent abroad based on the year of return. The empirical results indicate that household past migration experience exerts a positive impact on the probability of owning a non-farm business. While one additional year in Greece increases the probability of household business ownership by roughly 7 percent, a similar experience in Italy or further destinations raises the probability by over 30 percent. Although past migration experience for the period 1990-2000 is positively associated with the likelihood of owning a household enterprise, a similar impact does not materialize for the period 2001-2004. The latter finding seems suggestive of the fact that more recent migrants are yet to attain a target level of required savings and skills in order to successfully establish a new business upon return.

The vanishing farms ? the impact of international migration on Albanian family farming

Abstract This paper investigates the impact of international migration on technical efficiency, resource allocation and income from agricultural production of family farming in Albania. The results suggest that migration is used by rural households as a pathway out of agriculture: migration is negatively associated with both labour and non-labour input allocation in agriculture, while no significant differences can be detected in terms of farm technical efficiency or agricultural income. Whether the rapid demographic changes in rural areas triggered by massive migration, possibly combined with propitious land and rural development policies, will ultimately produce the conditions for a more viable, high-return agriculture attracting larger investments remains to be seen.

Moving away from poverty: a spatial analysis of poverty and migration in Albania

This paper analyses recent patterns of migration and poverty in Albania, a country that - following the collapse of the communist regime in 1990 – has been experiencing high migration rates. Using a combination of survey and census data, the paper characterises spatial patterns in the distribution of poverty and migration at a high level of geographic disaggregation. The results emphasise the importance of analysing internal and international migration as different phenomena, as the two appear to be associated in opposite ways to observed poverty and welfare levels. While poverty acts as a push factor for internal migration, it seems to be a constraining factor for the more costly international migration. The results also suggest that rural migration to urban areas contributes to the relocation of poverty in urban areas.

Farm-level pathways to improved nutritional status

Abstract Global, national and local policies and programmes for agricultural development are recurrently justified based on their alleged role in improving food and nutrition security. However, strikingly little evidence is available to prove that a direct, household-level link between agricultural production and improved nutrition exists. The objective of this special issue is to systematically and empirically test, using data from Africa and South Asia, whether a relationship between household agricultural production and nutrition can be found. Overall, the studies in this special issue support the hypothesis that household agricultural production has direct and important linkages with dietary patterns and nutrition.

Being poor, feeling poorer: Combining objective and subjective measures of welfare in Albania

Abstract In this paper we investigate how combining objective and subjective measures of welfare can enrich traditional poverty profiles by exploring the relationship between these welfare measures, and examining what explains the differences between the two. One important finding of our analysis (using data for Albania) is that reconciling subjective and objective poverty profiles suggests the presence of sizable economies of scale. This result calls for increased attention to the proper estimation of a scale parameter for poverty analysis, as changes in assumptions on economies of size and adult equivalence scales are likely to produce significant changes in the analysis of poverty and its distribution across households and individuals.

Meso-Economic Filters Along the Policy Chain: Understanding the Links Between Policy Reforms and Rural Poverty in Latin America

The policy reforms introduced in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s have induced profound and beneficial changes in the overall productive structure of most Latin American countries, and particularly concerning the increased competitiveness and profitability of some agro-export activities. Yet, even if a relatively stable macroeconomic environment has been achieved, agricultural price distortions have been removed, and inefficient governmental agencies serving the sector have been dismantled, high levels of rural poverty remain in the region. What went wrong? How have the intended impacts of the reforms been transmitted to the rural sector, and how have farmers responded to the newly created incentive structure, and how has this influenced the observed poverty outcomes? Despite several attempts to introduce new dimensions to policy analysis, a consistent theoretical framework is still lacking capable of accounting for the various sources of policy and market failures leading to such unsatisfactory policy outcomes. The objective of this paper is to propose a framework aimed at developing a better understanding of the reasons of the failures of the past to inform the current policy debate. The proposed framework takes the moves from the theoretical debate on the importance of considering transaction costs and institutions in policy design and implementation. It develops a synthesis of macro-, meso- and micro-economic perspectives, that focuses on the roles of the structural and institutional factors mediating the effects of policy reforms as they “trickle down” to rural households. Such synthesis is realised through a conceptualisation in three levels of filters intervening at various level of the “policy chain”, and by developing a model linking those to the household decision-making level. The paper is organised into four parts. Part one provides stylised background information about policy reforms and rural poverty outcomes in Latin America. In the second part two main bodies of literature are reviewed: a) the “meso-economy” level of market mechanisms, institutional arrangements, and the administrative procedures mediating the “public” provision of goods and services; and b) the “micro-economy” level of rural farm household models. In the third part, the insights provided by these two bodies of literature are used to develop an analytical framework integrating the macro-economy to agricultural household models, as mediated by the mesoeconomy links. Finally, in the fourth part some policy implications are drawn and research guidelines proposed.

Does Livestock Ownership Affect Animal Source Foods Consumption and Child Nutritional Status

Abstract In many developing countries consumption of animal source foods (ASF) among the poor is still at a level where increasing its share in total caloric intake may have many positive nutritional benefits. This paper explores whether ownership of different livestock species increases consumption of ASF and helps improving child nutritional status, finding some evidence that both food consumption patterns and nutritional outcomes may be affected by livestock ownership in rural Uganda. Our results are suggestive that promoting (small) livestock ownership has the potential for affecting human nutrition in rural Uganda, but further research is needed to more precisely estimate the direction and size of these effects.

Does Livestock Ownership Affect Animal Source Foods Consumption and Child Nutritional Status? Evidence from Rural Uganda

In many developing countries, consumption of animal source foods among the poor is still at a level where increasing its share in total caloric intake may have many positive nutritional benefits. This paper explores whether ownership of various livestock species increases consumption of animal source foods and helps improve child nutritional status. The paper finds some evidence that food consumption patterns and nutritional outcomes may be affected by livestock ownership in rural Uganda. The results are suggestive that promoting (small) livestock ownership has the potential to affect human nutrition in rural Uganda, but further research is needed to estimate more precisely the direction and size of these effects.

Monitoring Poverty without Consumption Data: An application using the Albania panel survey

In developing countries, poverty is generally measured with expenditure data, which are normally available only every three to five years. In between surveys, there is a clear need to provide policy makers with information for the monitoring of poverty trends. This paper reviews several methods with which to perform this monitoring and compares the poverty estimates and trends resulting from their application to a panel data set for Albania. The results are broadly consistent across methods and point to an overall improvement in welfare conditions over time, concentrated in urban areas. Lacking a gold standard measure, the use of a suite of welfare indicators, if duly validated, can be a viable approach to monitor poverty trends. Caution should be exercised in drawing conclusions about the actual magnitudes of the changes.

Are African households (not) leaving agriculture? Patterns of households’ income sources in rural Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper uses comparable income aggregates from 41 national household surveys from 22 countries to explore the patterns of income generation among rural households in Sub-Saharan Africa, and to compare household income strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa with those in other regions. The paper seeks to understand how geography drives these strategies, focusing on the role of agricultural potential and distance to urban areas. Specialization in on-farm activities continues to be the norm in rural Africa, practiced by 52 percent of households (as opposed to 21 percent of households in other regions). Regardless of distance and integration in the urban context, when agro-climatic conditions are favorable, farming remains the occupation of choice for most households in the African countries for which the study has geographically explicit information. However, the paper finds no evidence that African households are on a different trajectory than households in other regions in terms of transitioning to non-agricultural based income strategies.