IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/7300.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Market imperfections exacerbate the gender gap: the case of Malawi

Author

Listed:
  • Palacios-Lopez,Amparo
  • López,Ramón
  • Palacios-Lopez,Amparo
  • López,Ramón

Abstract

This paper hypothesizes that labor and credit market imperfections?by discouraging off-farm income-generating activities and restricting access to inputs, respectively?affect female farm productivity more deeply than male productivity. The paper develops a theoretical model that decomposes the contribution of various market imperfections to the gender productivity gap. The paper shows empirically that agricultural labor productivity is on average 44 percent lower on plots managed by female heads of household than on those managed by male heads. Thirty-four percent of this gap is explained by differences in labor market access and 29 percent by differences in credit access.

Suggested Citation

  • Palacios-Lopez,Amparo & López,Ramón & Palacios-Lopez,Amparo & López,Ramón, 2015. "Market imperfections exacerbate the gender gap: the case of Malawi," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7300, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7300
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/372181467999080232/pdf/Market-imperfections-exacerbate-the-gender-gap-the-case-of-Malawi.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barrett, Christopher B., 1996. "On price risk and the inverse farm size-productivity relationship," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 193-215, December.
    2. Joseph G. Altonji & Todd E. Elder & Christopher R. Taber, 2005. "Selection on Observed and Unobserved Variables: Assessing the Effectiveness of Catholic Schools," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(1), pages 151-184, February.
    3. Oaxaca, Ronald, 1973. "Male-Female Wage Differentials in Urban Labor Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 14(3), pages 693-709, October.
    4. Matthias Doepke & Michèle Tertilt, 2019. "Does female empowerment promote economic development?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 24(4), pages 309-343, December.
    5. Alan S. Blinder, 1973. "Wage Discrimination: Reduced Form and Structural Estimates," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 8(4), pages 436-455.
    6. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2001. "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1369-1401, December.
    7. Raney, Terri & Anríquez, Gustavo & Croppenstedt, André & Gerosa, Stefano & Lowder, Sarah K. & Matuschke, Ira & Skoet, Jakob, 2011. "The role of women in agriculture," ESA Working Papers 289018, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESA).
    8. Peterman, A., 2010. "A review of empirical evidence on gender differences in nonland agricultural inputs, technology, and services in developing countries," IWMI Working Papers H043605, International Water Management Institute.
    9. Vargas Hill, Ruth & Vigneri, Marcella, 2011. "Mainstreaming gender sensitivity in cash crop market supply chains," ESA Working Papers 289013, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESA).
    10. Peterman, Amber & Behrman, Julia & Quisumbing, Agnes, 2010. "A review of empirical evidence on gender differences in nonland agricultural inputs, technology, and services in developing countries," IFPRI discussion papers 975, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    11. Amber Peterman & Agnes Quisumbing & Julia Behrman & Ephraim Nkonya, 2011. "Understanding the Complexities Surrounding Gender Differences in Agricultural Productivity in Nigeria and Uganda," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(10), pages 1482-1509.
    12. Ramón López & Claudia Romano, 2000. "Rural Poverty in Honduras: Asset Distribution and Liquidity Constraints," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Ramón López & Alberto Valdés (ed.), Rural Poverty in Latin America, chapter 11, pages 227-243, Palgrave Macmillan.
    13. Markus Goldstein & Christopher Udry, 2008. "The Profits of Power: Land Rights and Agricultural Investment in Ghana," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(6), pages 981-1022, December.
    14. Kilic, Talip & Palacios-López, Amparo & Goldstein, Markus, 2015. "Caught in a Productivity Trap: A Distributional Perspective on Gender Differences in Malawian Agriculture," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 416-463.
    15. Christopher B. Barrett & Shane M. Sherlund & Akinwumi A. Adesina, 2008. "Shadow wages, allocative inefficiency, and labor supply in smallholder agriculture," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 38(1), pages 21-34, January.
    16. Udry, Christopher, 1996. "Gender, Agricultural Production, and the Theory of the Household," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(5), pages 1010-1046, October.
    17. Alene, Arega D. & Manyong, Victor M. & Omanya, Gospel O. & Mignouna, Hodeba D. & Bokanga, Mpoko & Odhiambo, George D., 2008. "Economic Efficiency and Supply Response of Women as Farm Managers: Comparative Evidence from Western Kenya," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 1247-1260, July.
    18. Eswaran, Mukesh & Kotwal, Ashok, 1986. "Access to Capital and Agrarian Production Organisation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 96(382), pages 482-498, June.
    19. World Bank, 2011. "World Development Report 2011 [Rapport sur le développement dans le monde 2011 : Conflits, sécurité et développement - Abrégé]," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 4389.
    20. Talip Kilic & Amparo Palacios-Lopez & Markus Goldstein, 2013. "Caught in a Productivity Trap," World Bank Publications - Reports 25461, The World Bank Group.
    21. Ariel Dinar & Giannis Karagiannis & Vangelis Tzouvelekas, 2007. "Evaluating the impact of agricultural extension on farms' performance in Crete: a nonneutral stochastic frontier approach," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 36(2), pages 135-146, March.
    22. Peter R. Moock, 1976. "The Efficiency of Women as Farm Managers: Kenya," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 58(5), pages 831-835.
    23. Akresh, Richard, 2005. "Understanding Pareto Inefficient Intrahousehold Allocations," IZA Discussion Papers 1858, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    24. Doss, Cheryl, 2011. "If women hold up half the sky, how much of the world's food do they produce?," ESA Working Papers 289017, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESA).
    25. Lanjouw, Jean O. & Lanjouw, Peter, 2001. "The rural non-farm sector: issues and evidence from developing countries," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 1-23, October.
    26. World Bank, 2012. "World Development Report 2012 [Rapport sur le développement dans le monde 2012]," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 4391.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Palacios-López, Amparo & López, Ramon E., 2014. "Gender Differences in Agricultural Productivity: The Role of Market Imperfections," Working Papers 164061, University of Maryland, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    2. Kilic, Talip & Palacios-López, Amparo & Goldstein, Markus, 2015. "Caught in a Productivity Trap: A Distributional Perspective on Gender Differences in Malawian Agriculture," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 416-463.
    3. Arturo Aguilar & Eliana Carranza & Markus Goldstein & Talip Kilic & Gbemisola Oseni, 2015. "Decomposition of gender differentials in agricultural productivity in Ethiopia," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 46(3), pages 311-334, May.
    4. Ali, Daniel & Bowen, Derick & Deininger, Klaus & Duponchel, Marguerite, 2016. "Investigating the Gender Gap in Agricultural Productivity: Evidence from Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 152-170.
    5. Mukasa Adamon N. & Adeleke Oluwole Salami, 2016. "Working Paper 231 - Gender productivity differentials among smallholder farmers in Africa: A cross-country comparison," Working Paper Series 2324, African Development Bank.
    6. Talip Kilic & Paul Winters & Calogero Carletto, 2015. "Gender and agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa: introduction to the special issue," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 46(3), pages 281-284, May.
    7. Mahajan, Kanika, 2019. "Back to the plough: Women managers and farm productivity in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 1-1.
    8. de la O Campos, Ana Paula & Covarrubias, Katia Alejandra & Prieto Patron, Alberto, 2016. "How Does the Choice of the Gender Indicator Affect the Analysis of Gender Differences in Agricultural Productivity? Evidence from Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 17-33.
    9. Marenya, Paswel & Kassie, Menale & Jaleta, Moti & Rahut, Dil Bahadur, 2015. "Does gender of the household head explain smallholder farmers' maize market positions? Evidence from Ethiopia," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 212229, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    10. Gbemisola Oseni & Paul Corral & Markus Goldstein & Paul Winters, 2015. "Explaining gender differentials in agricultural production in Nigeria," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 46(3), pages 285-310, May.
    11. Larson, Donald & Savastano, Sara & Murray, Siobhan & Palacios-Lopez, Amparo, 2015. "Are Women Less Productive Farmers? How Markets and Risk Affect Fertilizer Use, Productivity, and Measured Gender Effects in Uganda," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 212032, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    12. Girma Gezimu Gebre & Hiroshi Isoda & Yuichiro Amekawa & Dil Bahadur Rahut & Hisako Nomura & Takaaki Watanabe, 2021. "What Explains Gender Gaps in Household Food Security? Evidence from Maize Farm Households in Southern Ethiopia," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 155(1), pages 281-314, May.
    13. Vanya Slavchevska, 2015. "Gender differences in agricultural productivity: the case of Tanzania," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 46(3), pages 335-355, May.
    14. R. Wendy Karamba & Paul C. Winters, 2015. "Gender and agricultural productivity: implications of the Farm Input Subsidy Program in Malawi," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 46(3), pages 357-374, May.
    15. Andre Croppenstedt & Markus Goldstein & Nina Rosas, 2013. "Gender and Agriculture: Inefficiencies, Segregation, and Low Productivity Traps," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 28(1), pages 79-109, February.
    16. Rama Lionel Ngenzebuke, 2017. "The Returns of "I Do": Multifaceted Female Decision-making and Agricultural Yields in Tanzania," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2017-05, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    17. Sarah Lyon & Tad Mutersbaugh & Holly Worthen, 2017. "The triple burden: the impact of time poverty on women’s participation in coffee producer organizational governance in Mexico," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 34(2), pages 317-331, June.
    18. Amparo Palacios-L�pez & Ram�n L�pez, 2015. "The Gender Gap in Agricultural Productivity: The Role of Market Imperfections," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(9), pages 1175-1192, September.
    19. Peter Brummund & Joshua D. Merfeld, 2022. "Should farmers farm more? Comparing marginal products within Malawian households," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 53(2), pages 289-306, March.
    20. Deschênes, Sarah & Dumas, Christelle & Lambert, Sylvie, 2020. "Household resources and individual strategies," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inequality; Gender and Economics; Economics and Gender; Gender and Poverty; Gender and Economic Policy; Gender and Development; Labor Markets; Rural Labor Markets;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7300. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.