Sigh.... How long have economic pointy-heads been arguing the benefits of free trade, and it still hasn't sunk in with the blunt-heads. Some of the uniforms of the Border Patrol have been made in Mexico, providing an opportunity for local columnists and politicians to wallow in economic know-nothingism.

I am being precise in my labeling here. Not only do those objecting to the Mexican-made uniforms know nothing about economics, they are exhibiting some of the beliefs of the Know Nothing Party. They may not be racists, but they seem to want to have the U.S. live in isolation from foreigners as much as possible. The inconsistency of Montini's position is particularly sharp. Either Mexico is going to send us shirts, or it is going to send us people.

The mention of the Know-Nothing party provides and opportunity for a semi-gratuitous Abraham Lincoln quote.

It's Religion and Politics Day for the Republic's Columnists. Doug MacEachern says adios to his colleague Ricardo Pimentel with a meditation on why Catholics, despite their problems with capitalism, still vote Republican.

The importance of social issues is nearly ignored in Jon Talton's piece on the so-called Mormon mafia. Talton is not hostile to Mormons, after all they help finance trains:

The transcontinental railroad would not have been built without Brigham Young. The Mormon patriarch supplied the critical labor and capital to complete the link in 1869 and for many years was a major shareholder in the Union Pacific Railroad.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, the church has amassed large business holdings, including in Arizona. But it's hardly backward-looking. Salt Lake City's successful light-rail system was pushed by church leaders.

Let us pause on the irony of lauding the promotion of a century-old transportation system as forward looking. Let us go on to point out that the actions for which Talton praises the Mormons can be explained by old-fashioned economic boosterism and real estate speculation. Yet he decries the East Valley Saints as tools of the Real Estate Industrial Complex. The line that Talton uses to distinguish between good and evil economic boosterism is obscured by the fogginess of his logic.

One final story about Ricardo Pimentel. When I was with the Goldwater Institute I bought a copy of one of his books with the plan to ask him to autograph it when we met with the Republic's ed board. The point was to show that we (conservatives) were not illiterate, or bigots, and that there were no hard feelings whatever the policy differences. But in the several ed-boards I attended, he never showed.

Sturgeon's Law corollary: 90% of the output of the wonkacracy is crud. Andrew Sullivan provides evidence.

Mark Steyn has more evidence. (It's funny how Arthur Schlesinger keeps appearing on these lists.)

Wonkacracy. Defn. Columnists for the Big Eastern Papers and University professors who spend more time on PBS chat shows than in their office talking to students.

Mark Steyn on Reagan as an Actor:

He was a natural actor who lacked only a natural role. And eventually he found that, to the surprise of his old bosses. On being informed Reagan was running for Governor of California, Jack Warner is said to have replied, “No. Bob Cummings for Governor. Ronald Reagan as his best friend.”

Also via Steyn, the New York Times on John Kerry (no joke!)

Kerry Behind the Scenes: Restless, Multisyllabic

By JODI WILGOREN

Published: June 13, 2004

BOSTON, June 12 — Like a caged hamster, Senator John Kerry is restless on the road. He pokes at the perimeter of the campaign bubble that envelops him, constantly trying to break out for a walk around the block, a restaurant dinner, the latest movie.

Restless and multisyllabic. The top two traits I want in my President.

Update: Here is the Republic's headline for its reprint of the same article:

Kerry refined, a regular guy

The Death of Ronald Reagan prompted feelings of nostalgia for a time when Berke Breathed's strip was populated mostly by humans; when you could read a new Calvin and Hobbes, Far Side, or (remember!) Downstown; Saturday Night Live was waiting to catch its second wind but there were new albums from U2, REM, and the Talking Heads that were still worth buying. And a Republican presidential candidate could still win California or New York.

This last point was driven home in an especially depressing manner today while I was driving around in the Gringo-mobile and reading the roadside campaign signs. The placard for county attorney candidate Andrew Thomas shares his name with the slogan "Stop illegal immigration."

It was nice when conservatives could rally around the slogans of economic prosperity, freedom, and death to commies instead of trying to pick at ulcers like immigration and gay marriage. Reagan signed the 1986 immmigration act that granted amnesty to illegal aliens and drives the anti-immigrant crowd nuts. Now, except for certain university departments, the commies are dead and after two decades of holding power conservatives have literally sold out their free-market principles.

Question: What is a bigger waste of time than watching the Presidential debates?

Answer: Reading an approximately 9,000 word preview of the debates by James Fallows in the July/August Atlantic. Given that the debates will consist of bland restatements of well-known positions, over-rehearsed "ad-lib" jokes, pretentious questions from preening media bigfeet, and that the "winner" will be determined by such factors as gestures, frequency of eye-rolling, and whose make-up made him look like a propped-up corpse is reading Fallows' tome really worthwhile? Or should you just read Castles of Steel (see below) at the beach?

I have a long plane trip coming up. I'll read it and tell you!

I take some of that back! If one thinks of politics as entertainment (or as an economist would put it: a consumption good) then the debates are sort of a nipple-free Super Bowl. Fallows then is providing the same sort of analysis that emanates from the media before every big game. Fans may digest every bite, but the rest of us can ignore it.

In the same issue, an article by P.J. O'Rourke discusses how talk radio (and cable-TV shout shows he might add) are aimed at shouting at the choir than providing substance or information. It underscores the fact that most media punditry is merely entertainment for fans.

Castles of Steel. A pro-British, pro-Jellicoe account of World War I at sea. Battleships sink with their guns blazing, captains go down with their ship, and afterwards the victors and vanquished dine cordially together in the wardroom. Also, ocean liners are torpedoed without warning, defenseless coastal towns are shelled killing women and children, and the survivors of sunken U-boats are shot while swimming in the water.

Author Robert Massie also finds time for plenty of salacious, Masterpiece Theater-style Edwardian scandal as he devotes pages to the tempestuous relationship between Admiral David Beatty and his unfaithful wife and Marshall Fields heiress Ethel Field Tree Beatty. We also learn that the father of Lord Louis Mountbatten, Prince Louis of Battenberg, had an illegitimate daughter with the actress Lillie Langtry.

Two macabre scenes from the book: Allied sailors listen through their hydrophone as the crew of a crippled German U-Boat commits suicide with a revolver (p. 737). And this from the aftermath of Jutland:

Afterward, on Tiger, "an awful smell penetrated all over the ship and we had to get busy with buckets of disinfectant and carbolic soap. Human flesh had gotten into all sorts of nooks, such as voice pipes, telephones, and ventilating shafts." (p. 657)

While we're on the subject of Brits at war, Edwardian love triangles, and chivalry between foes, I'd like to recommend Powell and Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. A "classic of British cinema" Churchill allegedly hated it because it asserted that 1. the Englishman and the German could be friends and 2. You can't play fair or nice in modern warfare and expect to win. Watch it for the parallels between the naive and open Brits (Americans) and the ruthless Germans (al-Qaeda).

Of course the analogy is not exact. The Germans came from a civilization that produced Schubert, Einstein, Goethe etc. while al-Qaeda represents barbarism.

San Jose's mass transit system is in a world of hurt. Subsidies received via tax revenue are down and fares are up. But the point of this post is not to gloat, but rather to take note of this unusual fact:

The fare increase comes at a time weekday ridership continues to decline at an alarming rate -- down to 118,000 late last year, a deep dive from the 182,000 who took transit during the height of the dot-com boom four years ago.

You would think that after the dotcom bubble had burst and the Lexuses and Hummers were all in the hands of the repo man, ridership would increase. But it hasn't. And I don't know why!

A possible warning for Phoenix? Also note, the farebox recovery rate (the fraction of operating costs actually covered by passenger fares) is 13 percent in San Jose. "The agency's goal is to reach as high as 25 percent, still lower than the national fare box recovery average of 30 to 33 percent."

Farebox recovery in Phoenix is 22 percent.

Also note, that the local paper in San Jose has no qualms about referring to the light rail line as the trolley.

An LA Tradition. If you have ever listened to radio in LA, you've heard of the SigAlert. The creator of the SigAlert, Loyd Sigmon, has died. May he never experience 30-minute delays on that Great I-5 in the Sky.

Driving an AFV (alternate fuel vehicle, that is.) I had the chance to do some traveling in a converted Chevy Cavalier. The tank for the natural gas takes up the whole trunk, yet only lasted until Sedona.

It also had no power. Every time I stepped on the "gas" I imagined a small dinosaur--a la the Flintstones on a treadmill under the hood--whining in a Mel Blanc voice, "I'm going as fast as I can!" But this could have been due to the alternate fuel, intrinsic to the Cavalier, or the guys in the motor pool fixing the car so it I can't drive fast.

Cottonwood, another oasis of fine dining. There is a Thai restaurant on old 89 on the way to Clarkdale, and Pinon Bistro that features fancy dishes made from organic produce, free range meats etc (1075 Highway 260 near the Arby's). I sampled neither and instead ate at the suspiciously chain-like but good Murphy's Grill. (Its chain-ness was vehemently denied on their menu.)

On your way back stop at Bylers Amish Kitchen in Black Canyon City. Family fare with excellent homemade bread. Buy Amish handicrafts in the gift shop!

Question. Whenever a restaurant claims on its menu that its chilidogs, hot sauce, wings etc are famous, how many of you actually have heard of the well-known dish before? Thought so.

Mickey Kaus is guilty of making a false observation in the 2nd degree. His explanation for a more truculent 1960s Ronald Reagan:

3) Everybody seems nastier and more Jack Webb-like in old TV and radio clips, including the reporters. Edward R. Murrow, what an a-----e! And that grumpy old Mr. Cronkite. People just presented themselves differently in public then. More Humphrey Bogartish and Gary Cooperesque.

Personally, if I were a crime victim, witness, or even suspect I would rather be questioned by the businesslike yet polite Sgt. Friday than have steaming load of sarcasm dumped on me by the cops from Law and Order.

If you watch old TV or listen to old radio shows you will hear professionals treat people professionally, and adults talk to each other like adults rather than whiny, sarcastic children.

Check it out for yourself here.

Kaus will receive a sentence as prescribed by law.

Careful for what you wish for...With regards to my earlier post on Ricardo Pimentel, it turns out Ricardo is leaving to become the editorial page editor for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Seeing Pimentel on Horizonte tonight made me regret some of my original harshness. If he a)Stayed away from national/international issues b)and the stale Iraq/Vietnam analogy c)covered more local issues and d)avoided attributing every attitude and policy he disagreed with to racism, he would have been alright.

Wal-Mart and Cars--Working Together to Improve Health and Fight Poverty. Featured on Nightline last night: Why America's Poor are Obese. Here's an extract from Koppel's closing thought:

The large supermarkets with the great selection of fresh foods, tend not to open branches in the slums and next to the projects. And if that's where you live and you don't have private transportation, well then you buy what's available at your local bodega or from the fast food places that do flourish in those neighborhoods.

Here is a link to a longer, previous story. We've been repeatedly told by the New Urbanists that Americans should get out of their SUV's and rediscover the charm of walking to the local corner store to shop. Now we're told that the poor are disadvantaged because they can't drive to the Wal-Mart supercenter. Make up our mind here.

Koppel's point is what I, as someone who has experienced shopping at the corner store, have been constantly trying to get across in the sprawl/urban design debates that have been going on here for the past decade.

Although, I have to admit that it is not as grim as Koppel and others would have you believe. Sure your choice of lettuce is iceberg or iceberg--at $1.50 a head--but you also have canned and frozen vegetables. It's not as if their only choices are the pork rinds and Ding-Dongs.

Plus, if compare the shoppers at Wal-Mart to those at A.J's it is readily apparent that low prices do not necessarily lead to healthy eating.

By coincidence, new from NBER this week was this working paper:

Obesity as a Barrier to the Transition from Welfare to Work
by John Cawley, Sheldon Danziger - #10508 (HE LS)

Abstract:

This paper utilizes a rich longitudinal data set -- the Women's Employment Study (WES to investigate whether obesity, which is common among women of low socioeconomic status, is a barrier to employment and earnings for current and former welfare recipients. We find evidence that, among current and former welfare recipients, high body weight is a greater barrier to labor market success for white women than for African-American women. Among white women, we consistently find a negative correlation between weight and labor market outcomes such as employment, hours worked, and earnings. Among African American women, weight is not correlated with employment, hours worked, or earnings, but it is correlated with the percentage of months spent on welfare between interviews. We provide suggestive evidence that these differences between white and African-American women in the relationship between body weight and labor market outcomes are partly due to differential weight-based discrimination in employment.

Today's word is:

vex•il•lol•o•gy n.
The study of flags.

Here is the web site of the North American Vexillological Association.

And here is the flag of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation for those of you who can't seem to fit in anywhere else. (Sorry about being glib, check out the UNPO. It has members with real grievances.)

Weird Science.

United States scientists are preparing to perform the world's first full-face transplant. The 24-hour operation involves lifting an entire face from a dead donor -- including nose cartilage, nerves and muscles -- and transferring them to someone hideously disfigured by burns or other injuries.

A tip of the sombrero for this link and the one below to the San Jose Mercury News' daily e-bulletin Good Morning Silicon Valley.

Nevertheless, those of you who think a big airport is vital to a local economy should visit San Jose's dumpy Norman Mineta International Airport. No food or "facilities" beyond security for some gates, and at others you have to deplane via a staircase and walking across the tarmac. There is what looks like granite facing on one of the parking garages though. They had money to burn, once.

OPE, POE--what is that code? What was the secret code that would have launched America's force of nuclear-warhead-tipped Minuteman missiles? OOOOOOOO!

The Strategic Air Command (SAC) in Omaha quietly decided to set the “locks” to all zeros in order to circumvent this safeguard. During the early to mid-1970s, during my stint as a Minuteman launch officer, they still had not been changed. Our launch checklist in fact instructed us, the firing crew, to double-check the locking panel in our underground launch bunker to ensure that no digits other than zero had been inadvertently dialed into the panel. SAC remained far less concerned about unauthorized launches than about the potential of these safeguards to interfere with the implementation of wartime launch orders. And so the “secret unlock code” during the height of the nuclear crises of the Cold War remained constant at OOOOOOOO.

Extra salsa for the person who can identify the very obvious movie reference in the header.

Economics in Today's Papers. The New York Times has taken a position on interstate wine shipments that is more free market than that of the Arizona legislature:

These laws violate the Constitution by discriminating against interstate commerce. They also hurt consumers by keeping prices artificially high and limiting their choices. The court should rule for the retailers and the consumers challenging these laws.

And...

Bob Robb points out that liberals don't want $5.00 gallon gasoline, they just want everyone to act like it costs $5.00 per gallon.

Everything that Rises Must Converge. The Republic's Heat Index offers more proof that professional basketball and professional wrestling have become indistinguishable:

Play-by-play man Brent Musburger and analyst Tim Legler overheard referee Eddie F. Rush ask the scorer how many fouls O'Neal had after O'Neal was charged with his fifth.

Musburger dutifully reported the conversation, and Legler - to his credit - wondered out loud why a referee would need to know such a thing.

Good question. He wouldn't, unless he intended to protect the player. Now, we're the first to say that folks pay to see the best players decide the outcome of games.

But if O'Neal has five fouls he has five fouls. If he commits another he's out of the game, and the Lakers are more than likely going to Minnesota for Game 7.

That is, unless we're watching some less-than-reality television.

It also offers evidence of the approaching apocalypse:

First the folks in the Dodgers front office decided that the Dodger Stadium organist could only play before games, replacing the usual organ music between innings with the kind of eardrum-bursting stuff you get in NBA arenas.

And now, in another sign that the end of the world may really be coming the day after tomorrow, the Los Angeles Times reports that the Dodgers are considering adding a mascot.

Unions Outsource Picketing to Foreign Labor. As you've driven around the Valley of the Sun you probably have seen picketers holding giant banners saying "Krispy Kreme Unfair to Workers." Well, it turns out that many of those picketers are part of a union outsoucing effort to increase the productivity of its members:

Sure, it's hot, there are no breaks and no opportunity to get lunch. But as immigrant workers, they're used to toiling long hours for low pay.

"We've had much harder jobs," Hernandez, 38, said while leaning on a tall chair along East Van Buren Street.

The two are among dozens of women hired by the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters to carry out the union's demonstrations. It's sort of an "outsourcing" of the protest.

...

The old-fashioned method, where workers would protest their own conditions, is apparently passe. The construction workers who were supposedly being treated unfairly were still on the job during the demonstration, receiving their supposedly substandard wage and measly benefits.

Chavez and Hernandez, both of whom came from Chihuahua, Mexico, six years ago, say most of the construction workers are immigrants as well. So, they feel like they are trying to stop people in the same situation from being taken advantage of.

A tip of the hat to columnist Richard Ruelas. Poor RR. He's liberal and can be unfair, but he's also smart and willing to wear down the shoe leather--unlike the Republic's other liberal, Hispanic columnist. The Republic doesn't seem to know what to do with him, and he's often been exiled to the community pages. If the Republic feels there is space for only one liberal Hispanic, throw out Pimentel and give Ruelas his space. Better yet, bring back Ruben Navarette!

A reader asks [Jon Talton] why San Diego's new Petco Park has helped spawn impressive new development downtown - the same is true of Coors Field in Denver - while Bank One Ballpark still hasn't fulfilled that hope.

Here is my answer:

Median home price in Phoenix $155.8K; median home price in San Diego, $483.0K; median home price in Denver $231.8K.

A bigger mystery is what reader would ask the Republic's resident angry man such an analytical question and expect an answer? If any of the small population of readers in Gringolandia feel the need to ask the Jeremiah of Section D his analysis of a pressing issue, save yourself the time. Below is a handy Taltonator that will given you the answer instantly.

The [Kookacracy, Real Estate Industrial Complex] held in thrall to [business-as-usual thinking, the almighty dollar, the local "think tank"] are to blame for [low graduation rates, the drought, sprawl, below average per capita income, the D-Backs blowing chunks]. But there is hope as shown by [T-Gen, Governor Napolitano, the last business pooh-bah who bought me lunch].

Barry Goldwater, Counterculture Figure. Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm has been sitting on the El Gringo recommended reading bar for many moons, yet I have not said anything about it.

A central myth of the conservative world view is that there once was a golden age when Americans fought wars to win, prayed in school, and married for life. Then the 1960s happened (cue stock footage of hippies rolling around in the mud at Woodstock to Jimi Hendrix), the radical left undermined or seized control of the nation's institutions, and we have been in the soup ever since.

Perlstein's book does a good job of making the case that the original and most vigorous dissent against the post-WWII consensus, and the harshest criticism of American institutions came from the Right. The Right was also the home of the original campus agitators. While Tom Hayden's Students for a Democratic Society had 250 members, the Greater New York Council of the Young Americans for Freedom alone had ten times that number. The former Mr. Jane Fonda himself gave greater space to conservative campus activists in a 1961 Mademoiselle article.

Perlstein writes for the Nation and the Village Voice, and sometimes he can't help but let slip that he views a significant portion of the conservative population as racist loons. (Sadly, sometimes I think he is right.) But on the whole he tries to accept the movement on its own terms, and with a modicum of respect. He recognizes that the radical left and right are close cousins--as is sometimes manifested in the politics of Pat Buchanan.

P.S. Two weeks ago in the pages of the NYT John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge acknowledged that the right remains the most intellecutally vigorous political movement in the U.S.:

Democrats have come up with all sorts of excuses, from the evils of Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy" to the "stolen" election of 2000. They usually ignore the fact that the right has simply been far better at producing agenda-setting ideas. From welfare reform in Wisconsin to policing in New York City, from the tax-cutting Proposition 13 in California to regime change in Baghdad, the intellectual impetus has, for better or worse, come from the right. As President Bush bragged at last week's party, the right is "the dominant intellectual force in American politics."

Yet many Democrats insist this will change once Mr. Bush is ejected from the White House. This shows how little they have learned. First, the right has a history of advancing its agenda under Democratic executives (welfare reform came about under Bill Clinton). More important, it has organized itself for a much longer battle. Whenever it has been forced into retreat — as after Watergate — the flame has burned eternal at places like Heritage, the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, and at their smaller cousins in virtually every state.

I am more pessimistic. Our well of ideas has begun to run dry, and Republican politicians have shown little willingness to adhere to conservative prinicples once they are in power. Without Osama and Saddam, it would be hard to imagine what conservatives would be agreeing about these days.

Anti-Floridaismo. Phoenix may not be high on the list of cool, but it is family friendly. Shawnna Bolick says so.

Family-friendliness, in the end, may be more important than cool, but it's not as exciting. It requires keeping the streets safe and the schools good. The business interests aren't interested because family-friendliness doesn't justify subsidies for them. City officials aren't interested because the problems of crime and school quality are much more difficult to deal with than cutting the ribbon on a light rail line.

On the Road Again. Just back from a tour of the south and east sections of the state.

After 15 years of being an Arizonan, I finally saw The Thing. El Gringo loves retro, and nothing is more retro than a roadside museum/sideshow. The Thing museum features a car that might have been Hitler's, complete with a fuhrer-like mannequin in the back seat, life sized wood carvings of medieval tortures, and, of course, the Thing. The Thing is no mystery once you see it. It's more sad, really.

El Gringo breaks the chains, so you don't have to! On my tour I doggedly tried to avoid eating with the Colonel, Mickey D, or even the more upscale chain restaurants. In the rural parts of the state this leaves you with a selection of local diners or Mexican. El Gringo did not have the cojones (or more accurately the stomach) to try the Chinese buffets in Safford. Maybe next time.

Chalo's La Casa Reynoso. 611 6th Avenue, Safford. Afterward take a stroll in downtown Safford. Visit Goodgame's Books at 616 W. Main Street.

If you are looking for pretty rocks or native American stuff, try Brown's Turquoise Shop, 2248 S. 1st Ave/S Hwy 191, Safford.

Reb's Cafe. 1020 W 4th St, Benson. Take exit 303. Sandwiches and burgers served in a place with lots of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis stuff on the walls.

My Place. 1081 E. Fry Blvd. Sierra Vista. American, Mexican, and Asian (Vietnamese) food. The country fried steak was better than the last one I had at Denny's, but the lima bean and corn vegetable medley was cold. Next time I will try the Vietnamese sandwich.

Q: What movie is the ubiquitous ethnic restaurant TV showing in an American/Mexican/Asian restaurant? Bulletproof Monk.

Of course, there is Dateland. Is there anyplace that sells date shakes that doesn't claim they're world famous?

You get a little more variety when you hit the big city:

In Tucson:

Seri Melaka. 6133 E. Broadway at Wilmot. Malaysian and Chinese food. Very good.

Sushi Garden. 15 North Alvernon Way. The self-proclaimed largest sushi bar in Tucson. I was there for the lunch buffet.

Who knew Yuma was a center of fine dining? Well, the Yumanites probably do, but you did you? Drive up 4th Ave. and choose from barbecue, Indian, and of course the omnipresent Chinese and Mexican places. El Gringo, however, decided to go upscale and eat at the River City Grill, 3rd Street at 6th Ave. Dishes like pistachio crusted chicken served on black beans with chipotle sauce served by modish looking twenty-somethings. And you don't have to go anywhere near Scottsdale.

Ok, and I have to admit the KFC buffet at the junction of the I-10 and 90 is pretty good.

Today! Sex, and His and Her Crops in Africa

Money, Sex, and Happiness: An Empirical Study
by David G. Blanchflower, Andrew J. Oswald

This paper studies the links between income, sexual behavior and reported happiness. It uses recent data on a random sample of 16,000 adult Americans. The paper finds that sexual activity enters strongly positively in happiness equations.

After over 5000 years of folk belief, high and low art, and the learned judgments of philosophers, poets, troubadors, and Dr. Ruth, it's finally good to have it confirmed by Social Science.

Greater income does not buy more sex, nor more sexual partners.

If you believe this, then Scottsdale on a Saturday night is filled with people who are seriously fooling themselves.

The typical American has sexual intercourse 2-3 times a month. Married people have more sex than those who are single, divorced, widowed or separated. Sexual activity appears to have greater effects on the happiness of highly educated people than those with low levels of education.

What we've been told is right. The most important sexual organ is the brain! This research was done, of course, by highly educated people.

The happiness-maximizing number of sexual partners in the previous year is calculated to be 1.

Monogamy rules!

Highly educated females tend to have fewer sexual partners. Homosexuality has no statistically significant effect on happiness.

So much for being "gay".

Our conclusions are based on pooled cross-section equations in which it is not possible to correct for the endogeneity of sexual activity. The statistical results should be treated cautiously.

Oh well, never mind.

Here's one for my sister.

Intrahousehold Resource Allocation in Cote d'Ivoire: Social
Norms, Separate Accounts and Consumption Choices
by Esther Duflo, Christopher Udry

We study resource allocation within households in Cote d'Ivoire. In Cote d'Ivoire, as in much of Africa, husbands and wives farm separate plots, and there is some specialization by gender in the crops that are grown. These different crops are differentially sensitive to particular kinds of rainfall shocks. We find that conditional on overall levels of expenditure, the composition of household expenditure is sensitive to the gender of the recipient of a rainfall shock. For example, rainfall shocks associated with high yields of women's crops shift expenditure towards food. Strong social norms constrain the use of profits from yam cultivation, which is carried out almost exclusively by men. In line with these norms, we find that rainfall-induced fluctuations in income from yams are transmitted to expenditures on education and food, not to expenditures on private goods (like alcohol and tobacco). We reject the hypothesis of complete insurance within households, even with respect to publicly observable weather shocks. Different sources of income are allocated to different uses depending upon both the identity of the income earner and upon the origin of the income.