Julia Anna Matz

The Impact of Shocks on Gender-Differentiated Asset Dynamics in Bangladesh

Assets are an important means of coping with adverse events in developing countries but the role of gendered ownership is not yet fully understood. This paper investigates changes in assets owned by the household head,his spouse,or jointly by both of them in response to shocks in rural agricultural households in Bangladesh with the help of detailed household survey panel data. Land is owned mostly by men,who are wealthier than their spouses with respect to almost all types of assets,but relative ownership varies by type of asset. Controlling for unobserved heterogeneity across households and looking at changes within,rather than between,households,we find that weather shocks such as cyclones adversely affect the asset holdings of household heads in general,while predicted external events lead to assets of both spouses being drawn down. The results,furthermore,suggest that jointly owned assets are not sold in response to shocks,either due to these assets being actively protected or due to the difficulty of agreeing on this coping strategy,and that women’s asset holdings and associated coping strategies are shaped by their lower involvement in agriculture.

Welfare Effects of Vegetable Commercialization: Evidence from Smallholder Producers in Kenya

We investigate whether smallholder horticultural commercialization is able to, as often stipulated, reduce poverty in developing countries with the help of panel household survey data from Kenya. We find evidence for a positive association between vegetable commercialization and household welfare, even when controlling for unobserved heterogeneity across households. Interestingly, the effect differs depending on which market vegetables are being produced for: commercialization through the export market is consistently positively associated with income but not wealth, while there is some limited evidence for commercialization through the domestic market channel being positively related to welfare measured by asset holdings and income, depending on the specification.

The short-term impact of price shocks on food security-Evidence from urban and rural Ethiopia

This study investigates the impact of food price changes on food security in urban and rural Ethiopia. Using a quarterly household survey panel dataset and price data collected directly at markets, a negative effect of high cereal prices on some, but not all considered indicators of food security was found, controlling for unobserved heterogeneity across households. The results indicate that increases in cereal prices are generally, but not always, associated with households having a lower number of meals and switching to less preferred foods. Diet diversity and calorie consumption, however, show no clear response to grain price changes. Only partly in line with existing notions, our results suggest that the aggregate effect is negative for both the urban and rural populations (with the strongest among the urban poor) but that even poor households are able to maintain their basic food consumption through periods of moderate price changes.

Smallholder Participation in the Commercialisation of Vegetables: Evidence from Kenyan Panel Data

This paper describes the participation of smallholders in commercial horticultural farming in Kenya and identifies constraints and critical factors that influence their decision to participate in this industry by selling their produce. The study employs panel survey data on smallholder producers of both international (export) and domestic market vegetables and controls for unobserved heterogeneity across farmers. We find that participation of smallholders in both the domestic and export vegetable markets declined and that this trend is associated with weather risks, high costs of inputs and unskilled labour, and erratic vegetable prices, especially in the international market. Different factors are at play in determining a household’s market choice for the commercialisation of vegetables: credit is important only when vegetables are (also) exported, livestock ownership is negatively related to production for the domestic market, and distance to the nearest market town positively related to all pathways of commercialisation, for example.

Productivity, Rank, and Returns in Polygamy

This study sheds light on the development of family structures in a polygamous context with a particular emphasis on wife order, and offers an explanation for the association between outcomes of children and the status of their mothers among wives based on observable maternal characteristics. In a simple framework, I propose that selection into rank among wives with respect to female productivity takes place: highly productive women are more strongly demanded in the marriage market than less productive women, giving them a higher chance of becoming first wives. Furthermore, productivity is positively associated with a wife’s bargained share of family income to be spent on consumption and investment for herself and her offspring because of greater contributions to family income and larger outside options. The findings are empirically supported by a positive relationship between indicators of female productivity and women’s levels of seniority among wives, and by a concise replication of existing evidence relating wife order to children’s educational outcomes in household survey data from rural Ethiopia.

On the Train to Brain Gain in Rural China

This study investigates the well-researched relationship between migration and the formation of human capital in the source region using a novel instrument: the existence of a local train station. We make use of Chinese panel data and of the fact that the decision to build a new train station is taken by the central government and unrelated to characteristics of a rural village receiving the station. As an intermediate result we find that train stations are negatively related to migration outflows, thus indicating that the facilitation of local employment through economic integration outweighs the reduction of migratory costs. Investigating variation within villages over time in the instrumental variables approach for the central research question, we see a positive effect of out-migration on educational attainment in the source region. Additional results suggest that the effect is stronger for male and young stayers.

Ethnicity, Marriage and Family Income

This study adds a microeconomic perspective to the discussion on ethnic diversity and economic performance in developing countries by investigating the motivation for intra-ethnicity marriage in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, the paper proposes that ethnic similarity between spouses enhances economic outcomes through a shared agricultural production technology. Furthermore, the framework suggests that the probability of marriage within the same ethnic group is positively related to the size of the group due to frictions in the marriage market: Search costs for co-ethnic spouses are larger the smaller the group. The theoretical propositions are supported using Ethiopian rural household data by demonstrating that inter-ethnicity marriage of the household head has adverse implications for family income. The negative effect is robust to controlling for lagged income and initial conditions, present when investigating the link with changes in family wealth, and persists in additional sensitivity checks.