Jonathan Isham

The Varieties of Resource Experience: How Natural Resource Export Structures Affect the Political Economy of Economic Growth

A novel composite metal material comprises a ferrous metal of relatively low thermal expansion properties and a silver metal substantially free of ferrous constituents having a relatively high thermal conductivity which cooperate in a novel way to provide the composite material with an effective thermal expansion coefficient corresponding to that of various silicon or gallium arsenide semiconductor devices and the like for reliably mounting the devices while also providing paths of high conductivity silver metal extending through the composite material to provide improved heat-dissipation from the semiconductor devices. A circuit system mounts a semiconductor device using the novel composite metal material alone, bonded to other support materials, or formed into a selected shape. In one preferred embodiment, the composite material is used in a novel heat-dissipating member having components of different shape which are bonded together. One component formed of the novel composite material has a selected shape for compactly mounting the semiconductor device and the second component is formed of high thermal conductivity metal and has a different shape particularly adapted to receive heat from the silver paths and to facilitate heat-dissipation from the member.

The Forgotten Rationale for Policy Reform: The Productivity of Investment Projects

Using economic rates of return from more than 1,200 public and private sector projects implemented in 61 developing countries, the authors analyze determinants of investment productivity. Results from Tobit estimation demonstrate that the degree of countrywide policy distortions - macroeconomic, exchange rate, trade and pricing - critically affects the productivity of investments. Countries with undistorted policies are likely to be unproductive investments. In countries with distorted policies, investments are likely to be unproductive. And within a country, investments become more productive when economic policymaking improves. The productivity of projects in the tradable sectors are also affected (in a nonlinear fashion) by the size of a countrys public investment program. The authors discuss possible selection biases in this data set, present tests of robustness, and highlight policy implications. In particular, donor financing for improvements in the policy climate is likely to pay off. A powerful rationale for supporting structual reform is that it raises the productivity of both public and private investments.

The Effect of Social Capital on Technology Adoption: Evidence from Rural Tanzania

This paper develops and tests a model of technology adoption which predicts that the probability of adoption is increasing in household-level human capital and land endowments and village-level adoption patterns and social capital. The results of implementing the model with data from the plateau zone of Tanzania suggest that the probability of adoption of improved fertilizer is increasing in land endowments, the cumulative proportion of adopters, the presence of tribally-based social affiliations, and the village distance from a local market. When adoption patterns are omitted from the implementation of the model, it is shown that the probability of adoption remains increasing in land endowments and ethnic affiliations, and is also positively associated with consultative norms, the adoption of improved seeds, the availability of credit and extension services, and the average number of years that households have resided in the village. The results are robust with different sub-samples of the available data and after testing for multicollinearity, omitted variables, and simultaneity, where indices of ethnic fractionalization and land inequality are used as exogenous instruments. Overall, these results support the finding that tribally-based social affiliations act as a form of social capital in the adoption decision and provide an economic justification, during the design of extension programs, for investments in social assessments in order to analyze characteristics of local social structures.

Governance and Returns on Investment: An Empirical Investigation

Using data from the World Banks Operations Evaluation Department, the authors examine the link between the performance of Bank-financed projects and various indicators of country governance. They find that: there is a strong statistical, and possibly casual, link between civil liberties and project performance. After controlling for a variety of determinants of project performance, they find that in countries with the best civil liberties records projects have an economic rate of return between 8 and 22 percentage points higher than the rate of return in countries with the worst civil liberties. (The average rate of return in the sample is 6 percent). The typical political regime (whether authoritarian or democratic) and the status of more purely political liberties do not appear to significantly affect project performance.

Social Capital and Well-being in Developing Countries: An Introduction

What are human investments? Can they be distinguished from consumption? Is it at all feasible to identify and measure them? What do they contribute to income? Granted that they seem amorphous compared to brick and mortar, and hard to get at compared to the investment accounts of corporations, they assuredly are not a fragment; they are rather like the contents of Pandora’s box, full of difficulties and hope. (Theodore Schultz, 1961, in his address to the American Economic Association on human capital)

The Effects of Volunteering for Nonprofit Organizations on Social Capital Formation: Evidence from a Statewide Survey

As membership in civic organizations declines in the United States, could volunteering for nonprofit organizations be an alternative source of social capital formation? After theoretically connecting volunteering with social capital using a household production framework, the authors then use a unique data set from Vermont to estimate the determinants of the probability of receiving a social capital benefit and the level of such a benefit. The probability of receiving a social capital benefit from ones most important nonprofit organization is increased: (a) if it is a religious or social service organization, (b) if one increases their volunteering for the organization, and (c) if one is female, college educated, or in a two-parent family. However, the relative magnitude of volunteering is similar, or relatively small, compared to the other significant determinants. An increase of volunteer hours does increase levels of social capital; however, the magnitude of this effect is also relatively small.

Social Capital and Economic Development

The chapters in this volume explore the challenges and opportunities raised by this concept for researchers, practitioners and teachers. Social Capital and Economic Development is based upon a consistent, policy-based vision of how social capital affects well-being in developing countries.

Local Environmental Groups and the Creation of Social Capital: Evidence from Vermont

Scholars who have studied local environmental groups in the United States have tended to agree about three related, stylized facts: that such groups are widespread, that they are pursuing a diverse set of activities, and, at least implicitly, that they are creating social capital that significantly affects environmental policy. However, a healthy skepticism about these claims among academics and within the policy community exists due to a lack of significant data to verify them. In this article, (1) we collect and interpret data to demonstrate, in two counties of Vermont, that local environmental groups are indeed pursuing a diverse set of activities, developing a typology of these groups based on their main focus; (2) we show the groups are developing and maintaining social capital; and (3) we illustrate how these methodologies can enhance the literature on local environmental groups by testing claims about the extent and influence of these groups.

Is George Bailey Dead

As consolidation, deregulation, and technological advances transform the financial services industry, it is generally believed that community banks provide relationship-based banking services for small businesses, family farmers, and depositors of low to moderate wealth. Using data from actual loan applications to a rural community bank (not too dissimilar to Its A Wonderful Lifes ‘Bailey Building and Loan Company’ in Bedford Falls), the role of relationship lending in the market for home mortgages is examined for a financial institution with a long-perceived tradition of character lending. No evidence is found that prior account holders are given any advantage in the approval process for a home loan. Nearly all of the loan decisions are based on objective criteria such as personal wealth, debt obligations, and credit score. This has obvious implications for historically underserved consumers who are often rationed out of a credit market that allocates loan funds based solely on credit scoring techniques.