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The paper provides an up-to date and selective review of the literature on how social safety nets contribute to growth. The evidence is carefully chosen to show how safety nets have the potential to overcome constraints on growth linked to market failures, and is organized into four distinct pathways: i) encouraging asset accumulation by changing incentives and by addressing imperfections in financial markets caused by constraints in obtaining credit, and from information asymmetries; overcoming such failures helps households to invest into their human capital or productive assets; ii) failures in insurance markets especially in low income setting; safety nets are assisting in managing risk both ex post and ex ante; iii) safety nets are overcoming failure to create assets and other local economy complementary factors to household-level investments; iv) safety nets are shown to relax political constraints on policy. Safety nets have a dual objective of directly alleviating poverty through transfers to the poor and of triggering higher growth for the poor. However, the trade-off between the dual objectives of equity and growth is not eliminated by the potential for productive safety nets; this remains critical for designing social policies.

Investment in agriculture is widely recognised as crucial for economic growth, poverty reduction and improved food and nutrition security. In India, investment in agriculture as a share of total capital formation in the economy continue to decline for both public and private investments. The present study attempts to find out the composition and determinants of farm household investment on productive assets using recent NSSO situational assessment survey data. Composition of average monthly expenditure on productive assets indicated that nearly 33 per cent was spent on agricultural machinery and implements, 18 per cent was on livestock and poultry and another 42 per cent was on ‘other assets in farm businesses. Average monthly expenditure on productive assets used in farm business indicated that less than one-third of the all-India average in the lowest size class of land (<0.01 ha.) compared to more than nine times of the all-India average in case of agricultural households with more than 10 ha of land. The Heckman (1979) selection model, sometimes called the Heckit model has been used to explore the determinants of farmers’ investment and the results indicated that sex, caste, credit availed, household size, crop income, education and possessed land were the significant variables which determines the investment decision of farm households and the extent investment on productive assets.

This book is about development and measuring development progress. While precise definitions may vary, development is, at heart, a process of building wealth, the produced, natural, human, and institutional capital which is the source of income and wellbeing. A key finding is that it is intangible wealth, human and institutional capital, which dominates the wealth of all countries, rising as a share of the total as countries climb the development ladder. The book is divided into two parts. The first part provides the big picture of changes in wealth by income group and geographic region, with a focus on natural capital because it is especially important for low-income developing countries. The second part presents case studies that illustrate particular aspects of wealth accounting, including accounting for climate change, the role of intangible capital in growth and development, measuring human capital, and the use of wealth accounting to improve transparency and governance in resource-rich economies. The final chapter reports on the implementation of wealth accounting by countries. The appendixes provide the full wealth accounts for individual countries and for aggregations by income group and geographic region.

In this paper, we unveil a disregarded benefit of product market competition for firms. We introduce the probability of bankruptcy in a simple model where firms compete à la Cournot and apply for collateralized bank loans to undertake productive investments. We show that the number of competitors and the existence of outsiders willing to acquire the productive assets of distressed incumbents affect the equilibrium share of investment financed by bank credit. Using a sample of Italian manufacturing firms, mostly small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), we found evidence showing that the degree of product market competition is positively correlated with the share of investment financed by bank credit only when outsiders are absent.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of Chuma na Uchizi, a livelihood intervention for people living with HIV (PLHIV) in rural Eastern Province, Zambia, on food security. The intervention included cash transfers to purchase income-generating assets, access to a savings account, and life-skills training. The study employed a non-equivalent groups design to compare intervention (n = 50) and control participants (n = 51) who were receiving outpatient care from two comparable health facilities in distinct constituencies in the same geographic area. We collected data before and after implementation of the intervention. Chuma na Uchizi improved access to food. At follow-up, the intervention group reported lower food insecurity scores compared with the control group (β = -5.65; 95% CI - 10.85 --0.45). Livelihood programs for PLHIV are practical and may be a promising approach to address food insecurity and its adverse effects.

We study the strategic behavior of firms competing in the exploitation of a common-access productive asset, in the presence of pollution externalities. We consider a differential game with two state variables (asset stock and pollution stock), and by using a piecewise-linear approximation of the nonlinear asset growth function, we provide a tractable characterization of the symmetric feedback–Nash equilibrium with asymptotically stable steady state(s). The results show that the firm’s strategy takes three forms depending on the pair of state variables and that different options for the model parameters lead to contrasting outcomes in both the short- and long-run equilibria.

This chapter contains sections titled: Why Asset Ownership? The Content of Work: Meaningful Work The Governance of Work: Protection against Arbitrary Interference The Status of Work: Workers as Property Owners Conclusion References

Livestock transfer programs have become an essential component of many non-governmental organizations' (NGOs) strategies for reducing poverty among smallholders and subsistence farmers in less developed countries. Despite their prevalence, the literature surrounding the effectiveness of this class of productive asset intervention is only starting to emerge. In this paper, we examine an NGO-sponsored goat transfer-and-training program in rural Haiti. Before realizing the ultimate program goals of improved health, greater levels of education, better housing, and more productive farms, beneficiaries must build sustainable herds of healthy goats. Our intent is to identify household characteristics correlated with success in the program. Therefore, we measure a set of outcomes related to herd health and growth, and explain their variation across beneficiaries by regressing them on a set of household variables. We use the results of the regressions to evaluate hypotheses informed by current literature in asset-based poverty. Specifically, we find compelling evidence that the wealthiest beneficiaries build smaller, less valuable herds compared to poorer beneficiaries. We find equally compelling evidence that geography affects herd growth. In addition, we find that access to land significantly reduces kid mortality, a key to sustainable, profitable goat herding. Finally, we find some evidence that female beneficiaries experience lower kid mortality. To the extent that these findings hold in other contexts, NGOs can improve the targeting of livestock programs by screening beneficiaries on these criteria.

This article studies the intergenerational persistence of industry in India. Using data from a nationally representative sample, we find that 62 per cent of young Indian men are employed in the same industry as their fathers. A set of simulations that assign young men randomly across industries is run to study the persistence in a counter-factual population. We use a probit model to estimate the effect of education, productive asset ownership and father’s network on intergenerational persistence. Higher education is found to be associated with lower persistence. Ownership of productive assets exerts a significant non-linear effect on intergenerational transmission of industry. We also find substantial evidence of the influence of father’s network and assortative matching in parents’ generation on son’s choice of industry.