Ceding Power in Intra-Household Bargaining in Times of Economic Anxiety: An Experimental Study in Nepal

How do perceptions of one's relative economic status affect beliefs regarding gender roles? We conducted a 2019 survey experiment with approximately 2,000 adults in Nepal. Employing an established survey treatment called a priming experiment to subtly alter half of respondents' perceptions of their relative economic well-being, we ?find that increased feelings of relative deprivation make married women significantly less likely to support gender egalitarian perspectives. Women decrease their support for women making decisions over household expenditures, having equal control over household income, sharing household chores, and women working outside the home. A message randomly read to some women and designed to spur increased support for women's empowerment does little to alter beliefs regarding gender roles or to attenuate the effects of the relative deprivation prime. Despite the negative impacts on women's gender attitudes, however, we do not find a similar pattern among married men. The results underscore the deleterious effects that feelings of relative deprivation can have on women's own gender attitudes and provide a cautionary tale given trends toward greater economic inequality further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Socio Economic Profile of Lac Growers in Mandla District of Madhya Pradesh, India

The study pertains to data collected from randomly selected 67 lac growers of 10 villages in Mandla district of Madhya Pradesh for the year 2020-2021. The study indicates that more than 80% lac growers in Mandla district are small, semi medium and medium farmers. Majority of farmers (34.32%) belong to middle age group followed by young age group (31.34%). The study revealed that 59.7% lac growers have family members up to 5-7 and educated up to middle school level (40.3%). The resources endowment in terms of the availability of host trees for lac cultivation varies from >25 to <200 trees. In terms of production maximum lac growers (38.81%) average production of 70.91 kg followed by 16.42% had average production 124.28 kg, 16.42% had 38.18 kg average production. Amongst the different source of income of lac growers, Agriculture crop ranked 1st (50.62%) followed by Lac crop (22.9%). Income of selected farmers from lac crop in the study 31.34% farmers earn between Rs. 10,001-20,000 followed by 23.88% farmers between 5001 to 10000 and 23.88% farmers get upto 5000, 10.45% farmers earn more than 40001, 7.46% earn Rs 20001-30000 and only 2.99% farmers get between Rs. 30,000-40,000 annually from lac production. In term of income sharing the maximum number of the farmers (32.84%) contributed 10-20% while only 11.94% farmers contributed more than 40% by lac. Implications of the present study will be helpful in strengthening the socio-economic condition of lac growers and lac marketing scenario of Madhya Pradesh.

Contracting out Rules for Family Income Sharing Arrangements: Providing Certainty and Protecting the Vulnerable

Despite equal division of assets at the end of a relationship, residual economic disparity often remains. This is especially common when one partner has left the workforce to care for children. Addressing such divergent economic prospects at the end of long-term relationships has been a perennial policy challenge. In 2019, the Law Commission completed its review of the Property (Relationships) Act 1976 (PRA). The Commission recommended replacing the current economic disparity compensation and maintenance regimes with an income pooling mechanism: Family Income Sharing Arrangements (FISAs). It also recommended that couples be able to contract out of FISAs. This article explores the rationale for changing the current regime and the conceptual underpinnings of the proposed FISA regime, using human capital as a framework. The article proposes a detailed policy regime for FISA contracting out. The proposed rules consider the needs of couples with children, where a partner has left the labour force, or where lived reality has not met the couple's ex ante expectations. The resulting rules meet the policy goal of allowing couples to contract out of FISAs, but only where their contract causes no hardship. Additional disclosure is also recommended for contracting out of the other provisions of the PRA, with greater deference recommended for such private arrangements as a result.

ENDOWMENT AND WAQF FUNDS IN MALAYSIAN HIGHER EDUCATION: A CONCEPTUAL STUDY

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) require sustainable sources of income to fund operating costs. The role of endowment funds has always been significant in providing financial sources to these institutions. In Islam, an endowment is known as waqf. As the differences in these two types of funds are found to be indistinctive, this study explores and highlights the atypical concepts. The method of library research has been used to acquire relevant reference materials to discuss the concepts. This paper has identified several aspects that distinguished these two funds, which include the element of perpetuity element, rights of ownership, and governance (law, structure, trustee, need permission, and income sharing).

The Ins and Outs of Measuring Income Inequality in the United States

Although measuring income inequality seems straightforward and uncontroversial, methodological issues greatly affect findings. This chapter shows that changes in real median income between 1979 and 2014 across six studies varied from negative 8 percent to positive 51 percent. Furthermore, the share of growth going to the top ten percent during these years in four studies ranged from 31 percent to 100 percent. The first choice that researchers make is choosing a dataset or linked datasets. This choice affects the income sharing unit, be it households, families, individuals, or tax units. The next choice is the definition of income, with the starting point being cash market income only—earnings, dividends, rents, interest payments, or business profits. This total can be expanded by including government cash benefits, employer benefits, the rental value of home ownership, and government and financial services that people don’t pay for. Even after the income concept is chosen, income can be presented as adjusted for family size and either before or after taxes. Finally, adjusting for inflation to change nominal incomes into inflation-adjusted incomes can be performed in a variety of ways.

Security in the absence of a state: Traditional authority, livestock trading, and maritime piracy in northern Somalia

Without a strong state, how do institutions emerge to limit the impact of one group’s predation on another’s economic activities? Motivated by the case of northern Somalia, we develop a model that highlights the monitoring challenges that groups face in making cooperation self-enforcing, and two key factors that influence their likelihood of overcoming this challenge: the ratio of economic interests across productive and predatory sectors, and the existence of informal income-sharing institutions. Our model explains why conflicts between pirates and livestock traders can be resolved in the region of Somaliland, where the ratio of economic interests favors the productive sector and traditional institutions promote income sharing between groups, but not in the region of Puntland, where these conditions do not hold. The model also accounts for several of the empirical patterns in the relationships between piracy, livestock exports, and conflict in both regions.

The Limits of the Commune: A Review of The Mystery of the Kibbutz

Ran Abramitzky's book, The Mystery of the Kibbutz: Egalitarian Principles in a Capitalist World, tries to answer the questions of why the communal kibbutz worked so well in Israel's formative years and what limits its current success in modern Israel. Initial ideological commitment and the special circumstances of Israel's founding led to unusual success when combined with well-thought-out rules on behavior and entry. Over time, the commitment to socialistic income sharing has not worked so well, given modern technology and global commerce. The author links up these ideas to the broader issue of organizational structure but misses out on some opportunities to test the ideas further. (JEL D31, D63, D82, J24, P13, Q13)