Beyond agriculture : the role of economic distance on rural productive asset accumulation in Peru
Description
Thesis (M.P.P.)--Georgetown University, 2009.; Includes bibliographical references. Much of the literature that focuses on poverty, and rural poverty more specifically, concentrates on its determinant factors, including the asset-base of households. Nonetheless, much is to be explored about what affects those factors. If the assets held by rural families are so important when explaining their livelihoods and wellbeing outcomes, it is then crucial to identify and understand what factors determine the pattern of individual asset accumulation. This paper hypothesizes that the degree to which rural producers invest in productive physical assets is partly affected by economic distance factors, such as transport cost to reach the markets relevant for their products. Using an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression method and a sample of producers that participated in a rural development project in the departments of Cusco and Puno, Peru, it finds that as producers face greater economic distance their productive investments increase at a diminishing rate. This behavior illustrates that producers regard investments in productive assets as necessary to increase their incomes and their households' wellbeing. Public policies should therefore approach the rural poor in terms of their assets and support strategies that incentivize their investment in productive assets.
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http://hdl.handle.net/10822/553700Date Published
2009Type
Publisher
Georgetown University
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