This study uses a marginal treatment effects approach and farm household rice survey data from Northern Ghana to examine the heterogeneous effects of agricultural technologies on household welfare. Results indicate significant heterogeneity in the gains from the adoption of improved rice technologies among farmers. We found significant evidence of a pattern of positive selection on unobserved gains from the adoption of agricultural technologies on rice yield and household dietary diversity scores (HDDS). Moreover, the policy-relevant treatment effects suggest that reducing the distance to sources of agricultural technologies increases rice yield and HDDS through technology adoption.

To understand the structural dynamics of the current eurozone crisis, it is necessary to examine the longstanding internal contradictions that the system has inherited from its inception under the Maastricht Treaty and the neoliberal strategy which has governed its evolution from the first experiments in economic and monetary union in the 1970s. A brief narrative of the evolution of the European Monetary Union yields some insights into its peculiar institutional design. More specifically, the article examines the dangerously self-reinforcing logic between speculative bond markets and cascading, deflationary policies of austerity imposed on those countries encountering severe debt crises. This examination reveals the fragile foundations upon which the eurozone was constructed.

The euro project is now at the threshold of disintegration as the fault-lines between the core/surplus countries and the peripheral/deficit countries experience a profound rupture. In the absence of political union or fiscal federalism, these centrifugal forces appear to be irreversible. It is difficult to envisage the current system, with its internal contradictions, surviving the crisis that now engulfs the entire eurozone. The present crisis is to a large extent the continuation of the longstanding neoliberal policies favoured by Germany, which have informed the creation of the euro. This article examines the historical context of the debt crisis and the institutional design of this flawed monetary edifice.

Nous proposons d'analyser l'un des premiers outils de simulation en économie au travers les travaux de Tinbergen entre 1935 et 1940 au sein de la Société des Nations. Précisément, Tinbergen développe l'utilisation des modèles structurels destinés à la simulation économique. Nous constaterons dans une première partie la volonté de Tinbergen de simuler le mouvement économique en testant statistiquement les théories économiques des cycles. Ainsi, Tinbergen est à la recherche d'un système de fonctions dont la structure est basée sur des théories économiques. Ce système est considéré par Tinbergen comme faisant office de machine permettant alors un second niveau de simulation développée dans la deuxième partie de l'article. Précisément, la machine ainsi constituée permet des simulations de scénarios de politiques économiques. Tinbergen élabore une machine expérimentale qui lui permet de considérer à la fois des scénarios de politiques conjoncturelles et structurelles.