Consumers' buying behavior is not consistent with their positive attitude toward ethical products. In a survey of 808 Belgian respondents, the actual willingness to pay for fair-trade coffee was measured. It was found that the average price premium that the consumers were willing to pay for a fair-trade label was 10%. Ten percent of the sample was prepared to pay the current price premium of 27% in Belgium. Fair-trade lovers (11%) were more idealistic, aged between 31 and 44 years and less ''conventional.'' Fair-trade likers (40%) were more idealistic but sociodemographically not significantly different from the average consumer.

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Feenstra and Hanson [NBER Working Paper No. 6052 (1997)] propose a procedure to correct the standard errors in a two-stage regression with generated dependent variables. Their method has subsequently been used in two-stage mandated wage models [

Governments in developing countries play an important role in the growth process, most notably through their budgetary policies. This potentially beneficial role is, however, hindered by government expenditure inefficiency. This is illustrated in a basic model of public spending and economic growth. Government efficiency is estimated for 52 developing countries using data envelopment analysis and subsequently employed in a general to specific approach in order to identify its determinants. We find government expenditure efficiency is primarily determined by structural country variables and governance indicators. Economic policy determinants apparently count less. The Asian countries and low income European countries in the sample have a significantly higher and lower efficiency, respectively.JEL Codes: H21, H50, O23,

We use a non‐parametric approach to investigate the (inverse) relationship between farm productivity and farm size. A kernel regression is used on data of mixed cropping systems to study the determinants of production including different factors that have been identified in literature as missing variables in the testing of the inverse relationship such as soil quality, location and household heterogeneity. Household data on farm activities and crop production were gathered from 640 households in 2007 in two Northern provinces of Burundi. Our results do not reject the findings of an inverse relationship between farm size and productivity. However, we find that size returns vary substantially with farm size, that is, between 0.2 for the smallest farms and 0.8 for the largest farms. Other factors that significantly affect production include soil quality. Finally, we find a significant positive association between food security and farm size.

The intensified international migration pressures of the recent decades prompted many developed countries to revise their immigration regulations and increase border controls. However, the development of these reforms as well as their effectiveness in actually managing new immigration flows remains poorly understood. The main reason is that migration regulations are hard to quantify, which has prevented the construction of a universal measure of migration policy. To fill this gap in the literature, we construct an indicator of the restrictiveness of immigration entry policy across countries as well as a more comprehensive indicator of migration policy that also accounts for staying requirements and regulations to foster integration. These indexes are then used to disentangle the factors determining the toughness of migration regulations. Our empirical framework combines elements from the median voter and interest group approach and accounts for cross-country correlation in migration ... AbstractThe intensified international migration pressures of the recent decades prompted many developed countries to revise their immigration regulations and increase border controls. However, the development of these reforms as well as their effectiveness in actually managing new immigration flows remains poorly understood. The main reason is that migration regulations are hard to quantify, which has prevented the construction of a universal measure of migration policy. To fill this gap in the literature, we construct an indicator of the restrictiveness of immigration entry policy across countries as well as a more comprehensive indicator of migration policy that also accounts for staying requirements and regulations to foster integration. These indexes are then used to disentangle the factors determining the toughness of migration regulations. Our empirical framework combines elements from the median voter and interest group approach and accounts for cross-country correlation in migration policies. We find strong evidence of spatial correlation in particular in entry restrictiveness, while the impact of economic determinants of migration policy remains much more modest.

Despite great accomplishments in the migration literature, the determinants of South-South migration remain poorly understood. In an attempt to fill this gap, this chapter formulates and tests an empirical model for intraregional migration in Sub-Saharan Africa within an extended human capital framework, taking into account spatial interaction. Using bilateral panel data between 1980-2000, we find that intraregional migration on the subcontinent is predominantly driven by economic opportunities and sociopolitics in the host country, facilitated by geographical proximity. The role played by network effects and environmental conditions is also apparent. Finally, origin and destination spatial dependence should definitely not be ignored.JEL Classification: F22, O15, C23