William A. Masters

The Role of Leaders in Democratic Deliberations: Results from a Field Experiment in São Tomé and Príncipe

Despite a widespread trend toward the adoption of increasingly participatory approaches to political decision making in developing countries, there is little or no evidence that these practices in fact return the benefits attributed to them. This article investigates one specific worry—that participatory decision-making processes may be vulnerable to manipulation by elites. The authors report on a field experiment, drawing on a unique nationwide experiment in democratic deliberation in São Tomé and Príncipe in which the discussion leaders were randomly assigned across meetings. The randomization procedure provides a rare opportunity to identify the impact of leaders on the outcomes of group deliberations. They find that leader effects were extremely large, in many cases accounting for over one-third of all variation in the outcomes of the national discussions. These results have important implications for the design of such deliberative practices. While the total effect of leadership cannot be assessed, it may still be possible to observe when leader influence occurs and to correct for leader effects in comparisons of outcomes across deliberations.

Winner-Take-All and Proportional-Prize Contests: Theory and Experimental Results

This study provides a unified framework to compare three canonical types of contests: winner-take-all contests won by the best performer, winner-take-all lotteries where probability of success is proportional to performance, and proportional-prize contests in which rewards are shared in proportion to performance. We derive equilibria and observe outcomes from each contest in a laboratory experiment. Equilibrium and observed efforts are highest in winner-take-all contests. Lotteries and proportional-prize contests have the same Nash equilibrium, but empirically, lotteries induce higher efforts and lower, more unequal payoffs. Behavioral deviations from theoretical benchmarks in different contests are caused by the same underlying attributes, such as risk-aversion and the utility of winning. Finally, we find that subjects exhibit consistent behavior across different types of contests, with subjects exerting higher effort in one contest also exerting higher effort in another contest.

GENETIC IMPROVEMENT AND COCOA YIELDS IN GHANA

This paper documents the yield gains attributable to the breeding and distribution of new cocoa varieties in Ghana, using data from a 2002 survey of 192 fields in the countrys key cocoa producing regions. We find that planting the more recently-released varieties is associated with at least 42 % higher yields, and that genetic improvement accounts for much but not all of the observed correlation between tree age and cocoa yeild. Fertilizer use is also very important, being associated with 19% higher cocoa yield per 50 kg bag of fertilizer. We find no evidence that varieties differ in their response to fertilizer, pesticide use or labour, and no evidence of a decline in the yield advantage of new varieties over the 17-year age span observed in the sample.

Measuring the Impacts of Malawi's Farm Input Subsidy Program

We measure the impacts of Malawi’s 2009 Farm Input Subsidy Program (FISP) on fertilizer use and maize yields in central and southern Malawi. Using three rounds of panel data and instrumental variables regression strategies to control for endogenous selection into the subsidy program we find positive and statistically significant correlations between participation in the FISP and fertilizer use intensity. Fertilizer use is found to be higher among households that plant improved maize varieties than among those that plant traditional varieties. Results are broadly robust to the inclusion of previous fertilizer intensity to control for household-specific differences in fertilizer use. We combine these results with those from a maize production function to calculate program-generated changes in average maize availability, accounting for estimated subsidy-induced changes in crop area. Our findings have implications for the way input subsidy programs are designed and implemented.

A Spatial Analysis of Maize Marketing Policy Reforms in Zambia

In this study we analyze recent and proposed maize marketing reforms in Zambia. To capture the effects of changing transport systems, we use a continuous-space model in place of the traditional point-representation model of Takayama and Judge. This method permits us to use prereform data on supply, demand, and transport costs to infer both intra- and interregional effects of liberalization and shows that the welfare gains from liberalization are larger than commonly thought. These results provide policy makers with estimates of the magnitude of change associated with alternative reform programs, beyond what would be available from a conventional approach. Copyright 1997, Oxford University Press.

A market-based approach to child nutrition: mothers' demand for quality certification of infant foods in Bamako, Mali

This paper analyses the potential impact of introducing quality certification to the market for infant foods in a very low-income country, where malnutrition is widespread. Using an experimental-economics approach, we find that a program to sample, test and certify the nutrient density of products could promote a more competitive market for low-cost fortified foods and be implemented on a self-financing basis, yielding net economic benefits on the order of US

Effects and determinants of mild underweight among preschool children across countries and over time

1 million per year in the city of Bamako. We find that mothers’ demand for quality information rises with their education and income level, but is higher than the estimated cost of certification even among the very poor and uneducated.

Gender and Agricultural Change: Crop-Livestock Integration in Senegal

Research on malnutrition typically focuses on extreme cases which pose the greatest individual health risks, but researchers comparing populations might find that variation in mild malnutrition conveys valuable information about public health. This paper constructs and compares new measures of the prevalence, depth and severity of both mild and extreme underweight in children from three months to three years of age, as measured by 130 DHS surveys for 53 countries over a period from 1986 to 2006. We find that variance in mild underweight has a larger and more robust correlation with child mortality than variance in severe underweight, and is itself more closely correlated with local agricultural output, over a wide range of regression specifications. We conclude that the prevalence of mild underweight deserves greater attention as a useful signal of changing public health conditions among preschool children in developing countries.

Production costs and input substitution in Zimbabwe's smallholder agriculture

In this article we evaluate stabling, a farm technology now being adopted by house holds in southern Senegal. We use data from southern Senegal to analyze the decision to adopt stabling and the impacts of adoption on family members. Our analyses use insights from several frameworks such as bargaining models and the transaction cost approach, models that assume multiple preferences within households and conceptualize decision making as a process related to the social organization of the household. We estimate an empirical adoption model and find that including indicators of household structure and wives characteristics in addition to the variables traditionally used (e.g. household head s characteristics) adds to the models explanatory power. Our analysis of impacts finds that stabling increases demand for family labor and may result in loss of an important income source for women. However, overall it appears stabling has improved family welfare since men share some of the benefits with their families. Women also want to adopt stabling so that they will be better able to provide for their families.In this article we evaluate stabling, a farm technology now being adopted by house holds in southern Senegal. We use data from southern Senegal to analyze the decision to adopt stabling and the impacts of adoption on family members. Our analyses use insights from several frameworks such as bargaining models and the transaction cost approach, models that assume multiple preferences within households and conceptualize decision making as a process related to the social organization of the household. We estimate an empirical adoption model and find that including indicators of household structure and wives characteristics in addition to the variables traditionally used (e.g. household head s characteristics) adds to the models explanatory power. Our analysis of impacts finds that stabling increases demand for family labor and may result in loss of an important income source for women. However, overall it appears stabling has improved family welfare since men share some of the benefits with their families. Wom...

Climatic conditions and child height: Sex-specific vulnerability and the protective effects of sanitation and food markets in Nepal

In this study, we estimate production costs and elasticities of factor substitution for Zimbabwean smallholders, using a dual (cost function) approach with detailed data on prices paid and received by each of 65 farms across six survey sites over two years. We find that 95% of observed farm choices are consistent with optimal input use, and that there is moderate substitutability between labor, biochemical inputs and capital. These results indicate that farmers can substitute between factors as relative prices change, particularly to increase labor use as the rural population grows. By stratifying our sample, we investigate the degree to which production costs differ among the socioeconomic groups, tsting for higher costs among female-headed households (who might be subject to gender discrimination), resource-poor farmers without their own draft animals (who might have less timely operations), and isolated farms far from paved roads (who might have less access to markets and information). We find significant support only for the paved-roads effect, indicating the importance of rural infrastracture in determining production costs.