Franz Heidhues – författare

Evaluation pro-poor growth enhancing investments in infrastructure and rural development requires comprehensive appraisal tools. Traditional methods have taken a project or sector perspective that did not capture economy-wide effects. However, in addition to inter-sectoral effects, large-scale investments can also have long-term impacts on national capital formation, the government budget and the foreign trade balance. This study builds a computable general equilibrium model and links it to a micro-accounting module for poverty analysis in Vietnam. The spatial dimension is captured by incorporating two regions into the model: the lagging mountainous province of Son La is compared to the rest of Vietnam. This model is applied to several infrastructure investments and identifies economic growth rates that would be needed to achieve the first Millennium Development Goal.

This study examines the demand for and supply of financial services for small entrepreneurs in Northern Thailand. Particular emphasis is placed on credit technologies deployed by formal and informal institutions and on determinants of credit access and borrower transaction costs. The study complements and expands on existing research into micro-finance by adding a specific regional dimension. A remarkable situation of «urban bias in reverse» has been detected as far as access to formal finance is concerned. Conventional access variables (such as education and the level of household income and assets) do not explain rural households’ access to institutional credit sources, while these factors turned out to be powerful determinants in explaning urban households’ access to formal finance. This can be explained by the efforts on the part of the Thai government to improve access to credit for small rural enterprises. The author concludes that the neglect of rural finance and the lack of innovative financial approaches is, to a significant extent, also the result of political priority-setting and decision-making; it cannot be attributed to unattractive investment possibilities alone.

The growing recognition of the potential of local institutions to assure the sustainability of natural resources has motivated the devolution of the management and responsibility over local commons from the state to local user groups. In Ghana, farmer management of irrigation systems has become an important component of policies for irrigation development and reform. While numerous examples of successful local irrigation management exist in different parts of the world, there are several cases of failure that sometimes lead to a complete system breakdown. Using a dataset from community managed irrigation schemes in northern Ghana, this study examines the reasons why communities differ in terms of economic, distributional and environmental outcomes of the devolution program. Among others, the study finds the resistance of landlords to a land redistribution policy to have a detrimental effect on the success of collective action for local management of the irrigation schemes. The ability of the user groups to tackle local asymmetries for promoting equity and forming appropriate institutions to motivate cooperative behavior is essential for achieving sustainable local management of the irrigation schemes.

This volume has one broad objective: to assess gender-based inequalities with respect to access to and control of land, financial and human capital and how these factors affect household welfare, and food security in Kenya. It gives an insight into the negative effects of gender inequality in resource ownership and access that manifest themselves at the micro level and that can have significant negative impacts at the macro level. The study was conducted in West Pokot, a rural district that lies in the North West of Kenya. The quantitative analysis deals with a wide range of farm household dynamics ranging from returns to farm and non farm activities, technical efficiency analysis in crop production in male and female managed farms, determinants of food security as well as nutrition and health status of children. Female headed households were much more constrained in their access to land, education and income, which showed a significant negative impact on their livelihood and food security. The research concludes that access to land, human capital and finances have an impact on the overall household wellbeing and food security.

North-South Free Trade Agreements are supposed to improve African countries’ access to competitive inputs and consumer goods, to assist in creating an enabling trading environment and to help to improve the competitiveness of domestic companies by involving them in international networks. Negative effects such as revenue losses and trade diversion are meant to be offset by safeguard measures, technical assistance, and economic growth. The effects of a free trade agreement between the EU and the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) countries, especially relating to export performance, diversification efforts, industrialisation options and efforts for deeper regional integration, are the major questions the study addresses. In studying sector examples in the SACU countries for successful industrial policy, an investigation is undertaken of how a free trade agreement between the EU and the SACU countries affects domestic policies, economic performance and the position of sectors in the global value chain. The conclusion drawn is that free trade agreements concluded between the EU and southern African countries failed to be development-oriented. Subsequently, policy recommendations are made as to how EU policies towards southern Africa can take industrial development, export diversification and a move towards deeper regional integration better into account.

At the turn of the millennium, world coffee prices dropped to their lowest levels in 30 years giving rise to the most severe crisis experienced by the coffee sector. The study evaluates the effects of the coffee crisis on the Costa Rican coffee sector and identifies the factors that influence farmers’ production and marketing performance. A two-step selection model is applied to analyze farmers’ participation in specialty markets and cooperatives and the effects on producer prices. Furthermore, a stochastic production frontier is estimated to explore technical efficiency levels of specialty and conventional coffee farmers. Based on the results of the study, policy recommendations are derived that should help farmers to improve their competitiveness and their ability to cope with the crisis. These include the provision of extension and information, the support of coffee cooperatives, and the diversification of the rural economy.