| |
Maria Floro
Professor of Economics
Maria Sagrario Floro received her BA from University of the Philippines, MA from Monash University (Australia) and Ph.D from Stanford University. Her dissertation was later published into a book (co-authored) entitled Informal Rural Credit Markets and the New Institutional Economics: The Case of Philippine Agriculture (1991). From the time she was in college, she has been interested in economic problems and concerns of vulnerable groups, especially women, small farmers and urban poor, in developing countries.
Her interest on well-being and women's unpaid work has led her to examine time use surveys. In 1997, she spent her sabbatical at the University of Sydney to work on the measurement and determinants of overlapping activities using the 1992 national Australian time use survey. Later, she extended the study of time intensity using 1992 and 1997 Australian time use surveys in a collaborative study while at Vassar College and Levy Economic Institute. She also explored the dimensions of paid and unpaid work among women and the effects on their well-being. In 2006, she collaborated in a research project exploring the links between social networks, underemployment and unemployment using the national South African time use data.
Her recent research examined the gender dimensions of financing strategies for development, and the intersection of gender, finance and employment in urban low-income communities in Latin America and Asia. In 2002, she embarked on a collaborative research project concerned with the role of financial and labor resources in the coping strategies of urban households. She conducted fieldwork together with several doctoral students and researchers from Cornell University, in several urban poor communities in Ecuador, Bolivia, Thailand and Philippines. This has led to several articles and papers that explore the gendered effects of labor market informalization and the role of credit, assets and savings in the ability of households to respond to shocks.
She is a member of the Gender Working Group of the Economics Department and co-director of the new graduate Program on Gender Analysis of Economics.
Research Interests
Gender Issues in Economics. Recent publications and current research focus on gender-aware models of household debt, work intensity, informalization of employment and globalization as well as relation between microfinance and women’s vulnerability. She also has conducted empirical analysis on gender dimensions of asset ownership and savings, urban informal sector employment and their quality, work intensity and women home-based workers' well-being, time use, unpaid work and overlapping activities, the impact of economic restructuring on time allocation, and social networks, underemployment, and unemployment.
Development Economics. Recent publications and research focus on vulnerability, financial distress of households, microfinance and self-help groups, assets ownership, savings, financing strategies for development, job precariousness and job quality, unpaid work, well-being. She is also interested on formal-informal sector linkages, dynamics of informal sector, institutional economics, social and gender norms, macro-micro linkages, economic restructuring and distribution.
Development Finance. Her work in progress explores dimensions of risk, financial liberalization and financial crises, asset pawning and household debt.
Teaching Interests
Development Economics. Gender Analysis in Economics. Development Microeconomics, Development Finance. Macroeconomics, Political Economy of East and Southeast Asia.
Professional Activities
Professor Floro has worked in various capacities (adviser, economist, and trainer) with grassroots organizations, government ministries, women’s groups and knowledge networks, United Nations, Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank, and other international agencies. The interrelation of women's well-being and economic development was the main theme of the 1997 Philippine Human Development Report of which she served as contributor and a reviewer. She has worked with the United Nations Statistical Division in the late 1990s to help improve data collection and statistics on unpaid work and home-based work. She also had the opportunity to understand the dynamics of gender and macroeconomics (particularly finance and investment) while organizing sessions for the 1995 Beijing Conference, Senior Women leaders’ conference during the 1996 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and serving as gender adviser for the Preparatory Committee Meetings and the International Conference on Financing for Development in 2001. These experiences gave her deep insights on the issues of globalization which she explored analytically in several papers and articles.
In addition, she has worked with research institutions and community organizations in Latin America and Asia on collaborative research projects and training courses. She has been a member of the International Working Group on Gender, Macroeconomics and International Economics and was an instructor in the summer intensive course program offered at University of Utah. She currently serves as associate editor of the journal, Feminist Economics. She has been a member of IAFFE since the early 90s and has served as board member of IAFFE since 2004. She is the currently the Vice President for Development.
Publications
Deconstructing Poverty, Labor Market Informalization, Income Volatility and Economic Insecurity in Ecuador and Bolivia (co-authored with Lourdes Beneria), UNRISD Background Paper, Geneva, 2004.
Countdown on Beijing Plus 10: Engendering Policy Coherence for Development ( co-authored with Hella Hoppe, University of Bern), accepted for publication in the Dialogue on Globalization Occasional Papers Series, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Berlin, September 2004.
Gender Issues and Concerns in Financing for Development, co-authored with Nilufer Cagatay, Korkut Erturk and John Willoughby, Background paper prepared for United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW), June 2003. [Also translated in Spanish and French.]
Gender Effects on Aggregate Savings: Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, co-authored with Stephanie Seguino, World Bank Policy Research Report Background Paper, Washington DC, 2002 (at http://www.worldbank.org/prr).
Gender Dimensions of the Financing for Development Agenda, Background Paper for the United Nations Development Fund for Women, New York 2001 [Also published in Spanish as Dimensiones de Genero en la Agencia del Financiamento para el Desarrollo, Desafios Serie 2, Ediciones Flora Tristan, Fondo de Desarollo de las Naciones Unidas para las Mujeres, 2001.
Informal Rural Credit Markets and the New Institutional Economics: The Case of Philippine Agriculture, co‑authored with Pan Yotopoulos, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, San Francisco and London, 1991.
Women's Work in the World Economy, Nancy Folbre, Bina Agarwal, Barbara Bergmann and Maria Floro (eds.), MacMillan Press and the International Economics Association, London, January 1992. (Also published by the New York University Press).
The Economic and Social Impact of Women's Primary Education in the Developing Countries, co‑authored with Joy Wolf, Advancing Basic Education and Literacy (ABEL) Project, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), 1990. (In English and French).
Role of Financial Intermediation in the Mobilization and Allocation of Household Savings in the Philippines: Interlinks Between Organized and Informal Credits, co‑authored with Pan Yotopoulos, OECD, Paris, 1988.
Articles
Asset Ownership and Asset Building along Gender Lines: The Case of Urban Poor Households in Thailand” (co-authored with Rania Antonopoulos), Journal of Income Distribution, December, 2006.
“Does Gender Have Any Effect on Aggregate Savings?: An Empirical Analysis,” (with S. Seguino), International Review of Applied Economics, Vol. 17, No. 2, 2003, pp. 147-166.
“Time Use and Overlapping Activities: Evidence from Australia,” (co-authored with Marjorie Miles), Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol 27, No. 6, November 2003, pp. 881-904.
“Globalization and Gender,” (co-authored with Lourdes Beneria, Caren Grown, and Martha MacDonald), Feminist Economics, Vol 6, No. 3, November 2000, pp. vii-xviii.
“Financial Crisis, Gender and Power: An Analytical Framework,” (co-authored with Gary Dymski), World Development, Vol 28, No. 7, July 2000, pp 1269-1283.
“Structural Adjustment, Gender and Labor Markets: The Philippines and Zambia,” (co-authored with Kendall Schaefer), Journal of Developing Areas. October 1999.
“Vertical Links between Formal and Informal Financial Institutions,” (co-authored with Debraj Ray), Review of Development Economics, Vol. 1, No. 1, October 1996, pp. 1-32.
“Economic Restructuring, Gender and the Allocation of Time,” World Development, Vol 23, No. 11, November 1995, pp. 1913-1929.
“Women's Well-being, Poverty and Work Intensity,” Feminist Economics, Vol. 1, No. 3, 1995, pp. 1-25.
“Income Distribution, Transactions Cost and Market Fragmentation in Informal Credit Markets,” (co‑authored with Pan Yotopoulos), Cambridge Journal of Economics, Volume 16, No. 3, September 1992, pp 303-326.
“Market Orientation and the Reconstitution of Women's Role in Philippine Agriculture,” Review of Radical Political Economics, Volume 23, Nos 3 and 4, Fall and Winter 1991, PAGES
“Technical Change and the Structure of Informal Credit Markets in Philippine Agriculture,” Journal of Philippine Development, Vol. XIV, No. 2, 1987, pp. 232-272.
Book Chapters
“Labor Market Informalization, Gender and Social Protection: Reflections on Poor Urban Households in Bolivia and Ecuador” (with Lourdes Beneria) in S. Razavi and S. Hassim (eds), Gender and Social Policy in a Global Context, Palgrave Macmillan 2006, pp. 193-217.
“Towards a Globalization with a Human Face: Engendering Policy Coherence for Development” (with Hella Hoppe), in I Bakker and R. Silvey (eds), Social Reproduction and Global Transformations, London and New York: Routledge, September 2008.
“Informalizacion del Mercado Laboral, Genero y Proteccion social: Reflexiones a Partir de un studio en hogares pobres urbanos en Bolivia y Ecuador” in Gioconda Herrera (ed), La Persistencia de la desigualdad: Genero, trabajo y Pobreza en America Latina. CONAMU-FLACSO-Secretaria Tecnica del Frente Social, 2006. pp. 141-176.
“The Importance of the Gender Dimension in the Finance and Economic Development Nexus”, in P. Arestis and M. Sawyer (eds), Financial Liberalization: Beyond Orthodox Concerns, International Papers in Political Economy Book Volume, Palgrave, Macmillan, October 2005, pp. 44-90.
“Distribution, Gender and Labor Market Informalization: A Conceptual Framework,” forthcoming in L. Beneria and Neema Kudva, eds., Rethinking Informalization: Precarious Jobs, Poverty and Social Protection, Cornell e-Publishing, October 2003. pp.
“Macroeconomic Policies, Globalization and gender: Issues and Challenges in an Era of Declining Economic Security,” in Ursula Pasero (eds)l, Gender – from Costs to Benefits, Gender Research, Christian-Albrechts-Universitat Kiel and Westdeutscher Verlag, Weisbaden, Germany 2003, pp. 44-58,.
“What Can We Learn from Time Intensity about Individual Well-being,” ( with Thomas Hungerford), in E. Wolff (ed) What Happened to the Quality of Life in Industrialized Countries?, Edward Elgar Publishing Co, 2002. pp. 275-311.
“Dimensiones de Genero en la Agenda del Financiamiento Para el Desarrollo” in Rosalba Todaro y Regina Rodriguez (eds), El Genero en la Economia, ISIS International, Centro de Estudios de la Mujer, Santiago, Chile, 2001, pp. 131-155.
“Double Day, Double Shift,” in Meg Lewis and Janice Peterson (eds.), The Elgar Companion to Feminist Economics, Edward Elgar Press, New York, Summer, 1999, pp. 136-141.
“The Changing Status of Women,” (co-authored with Professor Edita Tan, School of Economics, University of the Philippines) in Human Development Network and the United Nations Development Programme 1997 Philippine Human Development Report, Manila, Philippines, 1997, pp. 1-24.
“Dynamics of Economic Change and Gender Roles in the Philippines,” in Pamela Sparr (ed.) Women and Structural Adjustment, International Labour Office and Zed Press, Geneva and London, 1994, pp. 116-133.
“Work Intensity and Women's Time Use,” in Gay Young and Bette J. Dickerson (eds.) Color, Class and Country: Experiences of Gender, Zed Press, London, 1994, pp. 168-181.
“Women, Work, and Agricultural Commercialization in the Philippines,” in Nancy Folbre, Bina Agarwal, Barbara Bergmann and Maria Floro (eds.), Women's Work in the World Economy, MacMillan Press and the International Economics Association, London, January 1992, pp. 3-40.
“Transactions Costs and Quantity Rationing in Informal Credit Markets,” co‑authored with Pan Yotopoulos, in M. Roemer and C. Jones (eds.) Parallel, Fragmented and Black: Markets in Developing Countries, Harvard Institute for International Development and the Institute for Contemporary Studies, Cambridge and San Francisco, 1991, pp. 141-166.
Working Papers
“Is there a Link between Quality of Employment and Indebtedness? The Case of Urban Low-income Households in Ecuador”.
“Gender and Time Dimensions of Informal Workers’ Well Being: Evidence from Thailand”.
“Making Ends Meet: Vulnerability and Risk Sharing among Urban Informal Sector Households in Philippines and Thailand”.
“Household Shocks, Vulnerability and Household Finances”.
“Effect of Microfinance on Vulnerability and Risk in Low Income Households”.
“Measuring the Quality of Employment in the Informal Sector”.
“Social Networks, Unemployment and Underemployment in South Africa Reexamined: What
Time Use Data Reveal”.
|
|
|
