smallholder market participation concepts and evidence from eastern and southern africa abstract this paper reviews the evidence on smallholder market participation with a focus on staple foodgrains i e cereals in eastern and southern africa in an effort to help better identify what interventions are most likely to break smallholders out of the semi subsistence poverty trap that appears to ensnare much of rural africa the conceptual and empirical evidence suggests that interventions aimed at facilitating smallholder organization at reducing the costs of intermarket commerce and perhaps especially at improving poorer households access to improved technologies and productive assets are central to stimulating smallholder market participation and escape from semi subsistence poverty traps macroeconomic and trade policy tools appear less useful in inducing market participation by poor smallholders in the region

the price of pollution a dual approach to valuing so2 allowances under the 1990 clean air act amendments a market based scheme to reduce u s sulfur dioxide emissions takes effect in 1995 indications are that participation in the market will be light and allowance prices will be lower than was once expected using an output distance function approach for wisconsin coal burning utility plants we estimate the shadow price of so2abatement which should approximate the allowance price the estimated average shadow price is above the prices at which the few observed allowance trades have occurred wisconsin s stringent state so2legislation may explain a portion of this divergence

the food retail revolution in poor countries is it coming or is it over abstract global retail chains are becoming increasingly dominant in the global food trade and their rise leads to dramatic impacts on agricultural supply chains and on small producers however the prospects and impacts of a food retail revolution in poor countries are not yet well understood here i examine this question in madagascar a poor but stable country in which global retailers have been present for over a decade the survey and analysis find that while global retail chains sell better quality food their prices are 40 90 higher ceteris paribus than those seen in traditional retail markets in poor settings characterized by high food price elasticities a lack of willingness to pay for quality and small retail margins supermarkets appear to set prices with an eye toward maximizing profits on the basis of price inelastic demands for quality products from a small middle class interested in one stop shopping it seems unlikely that global retail chains will further increase their food reta

environmental efficiency measurement and the materials balance condition reconsidered abstract this note takes up a shortcoming of coelli et al s 2007 popular environmental efficiency measure and its extension to economic environmental trade off analysis see van meensel et al 2010 namely that they do not reward emission reductions by pollution control a new environmental efficiency measure that overcomes this issue and similar to coelli et al s efficiency measure is in line with the materials balance principle is proposed and further decomposed into technical environmental efficiency and material and nonmaterial allocative environmental efficiencies the new efficiency measure collapses into coelli et al s efficiency measure if none of the considered decision making units control pollutants a numerical example using data envelopment analysis is provided to further explore the properties of the new efficiency measure

agroindustrialization globalization and international development an overview of issues patterns and determinants this paper offers an overview for a special issue on agroindustrialization globalization and international development it sets out a conceptual framework for understanding the links among these three broad phenomena and then discusses emerging issues and evidence concerning the factors conditioning agroindustrialization in developing countries and the subsequent effects on employment poverty and the natural environment we conclude with a research agenda

saving or stripping rural industry an analysis of privatization and efficiency in china abstract this paper describes the process of privatization of china s township enterprises findings from a recent field survey by the authors show how far privatization has proceeded and how it has affected firm performance the pervasiveness and impact of privatization are readily apparent the privatization in the mid 1990s was deep and fundamental more than 50 of local government owned firms have transferred their shares to the private sector partially or completely privatization is widespread regardless of what definition we use share shifting controlling interest shifting or complete although we do not find any evidence in our descriptive statistics that private and privatized firms outperform government ones the private sector does appear to be beginning to manage its firms e g labor and inventories somewhat differently our multivariate analysis however finds a positive impact of privatization on technical efficiency efficiency of china s rural industries including agro industrial firms would rise if township enterprises privatized the impact of privatization however does not occur immediately transitional costs apparently reduce private firm efficiency in the year that firms are being privatized it is possible to surmise that as privatized firms complete their ownership transition and continue to learn how to adapt to china s business environment that the gains could rise further however we cannot say if the gain in efficiency is enough to make rural industries competitive in the future

substitutability among undesirable outputs in recent years economists have started to move beyond calculating regulatory effects on a pollutant by pollutant basis since their interaction is important in this study we take up this issue to allow for joint production of multiple pollutants and marketable output we specify our technology using a directional distance function this allows us to treat pollutants as joint outputs yet accounts for their undesirability we estimate the distance function for a sample of coal fired electric power plants from 1985 to 1998 which includes the first 4 years of phase i of the clean air act amendments of 1990 we focus on the interaction between so2 and no x as they became more highly regulated and estimate shadow prices of the pollutants and the morishima elasticity of transformation between two pollutants no x and so2 as well as with respect to the desirable output kilowatt hours of electricity as expected we find that power plants increase no x emissions as they decrease so2 i e they are subs

accounting technologies and sustainability assessment models abstract within ecological economics there is recognition of the need for new approaches to decision making to support sustainable development initiatives there is an increasing acknowledgement of the limitations of cost benefit analysis approaches as a measure of the un sustainability of organizational activities these are viewed as particularly inappropriate within the participatory settings that sustainable development proponents seek to foster they also fail to deal with the highly contested nature of sustainable development discourse in contemporary pluralist democracies while advances have been made in the field of multi criteria decision making there is still a relative dearth of versatile models that accommodate monetization in a way that recognizes the limits of calculative technologies this article introduces readers to developments within the accounting discipline designed to support sustainable development decision making and evaluation in particular it proposes sustainability assessment models as a viable alternative to cost benefit analysis sustainability assessment models are based on an inter disciplinary approach that recognizes the need for accountings that facilitate more participatory forms of decision making and accountability as such they address many of the weaknesses in current approaches to cost benefit analysis the authors first experiences with sustainability assessment models were with bp and the united kingdom oil and gas sector where models were developed as a means of making previously external costs more central to organizational decision making later work has included exploration of a range of decision making situations in private and public sector organizations in both the united kingdom and new zealand this has involved more explicit attention to plural values and issues of participation dialogue and democracy

the rationality of a safe minimum standard the safe minimum standard sms is a policy shift to safety defaults to forestall irreversible outcomes critics charge an inconsistency what justifies business as usual cannot also justify switching to the sms currently the sms is only a procedural shift where economic optimality procedures are buttressed by extra special focus on uncertainty yet social welfare function may not be complete enough warranting a more fundamental sms shift numerous moral positions support this sms approach this sms also operationalizes the intolerable cost as a trigger point noting societies with lower tolerance for sacrifice must trigger the sms earlier

small farmers and big retail trade offs of supplying supermarkets in nicaragua summary in nicaragua and elsewhere in central america small scale farmers are weighing the risks of entering into contracts with supermarket chains we use unique data from cooperatives supplying supermarkets to study the effect of supply agreements on producers mean output prices and price stability we find that prices paid by the domestic retail chain approximate the traditional market in mean and variance while mean prices paid by walmart are significantly lower than the traditional market however the walmart contract is found to systematically reduce price volatility we find some evidence however that farmers may be paying too much for this contractual insurance against price variation

links between economic liberalization and rural resource degradation in the developing regions this paper examines evidence of the effects of economic liberalization and globalization on rural resource degradation in developing countries the principal resource effects of concern are processes of land use change leading to forestland conversion degradation and deforestation the main trends in globalization of interest are trade liberalization and economy wide reforms in developing countries that have opened up the agroindustrial sectors thus increasing their export orientation such reforms have clearly spurred agroindustrialization rural development and economic growth but there is also concern that there may be direct and indirect impacts on rural resource degradation the direct impacts may occur as increased agricultural activity leads to conversion of forests and increased land degradation from unsustainable production methods however there may also be indirect effects if agroindustrial development displaces landless near landless and rural poor generally who then migrate to marginal agricultural lands and forest frontier regions this paper explores these direct and indirect effects of globalization and agroindustrialization on rural resource degradation both generally plus through examining case study evidence the paper focuses in particular on the examples of structural adjustment trade liberalization and agricultural development in ghana and maize sector liberalization in mexico under north american free trade agreement nafta

non linear production abatement pollution and materials balance reconsidered abstract in the environmental economics literature the standard approach of modeling non linear production and abatement processes is to treat waste emissions simply as another factor of production cropper and oates j econ lit 30 1992 675 740 that approach does not map the materials flow involved completely and hides moreover the exact links between production residuals generation and abatement this paper shows that production functions with emissions treated as inputs can be reconstructed as a subsystem of a comprehensive production cum abatement technology that is in line with the materials balance principle in a simple economy with full regard of the materials flow it also explores the consequences for allocative efficiency and efficiency restoring taxation of multiple and interdependent residuals generated in the transformation processes of production abatement and consumption finally the paper demonstrates that efficiency may require setting the emissions tax rate above or below conventionally defined marginal abatement cost if the residual subject to abatement is not the only residual causing pollution

the if how and where of assessing sustainable resource use in today s economies those who sustain the burden of resource use those using resources and those providing resources are not necessarily identical with this separation come three fundamental but interrelated decision making perspectives on the sustainability assessment of resource use these three perspectives correspond to the three assessment questions if how and where resources should be used most sustainability assessment approaches do not make their underlying assessment perspectives explicit the goal of this paper is to provide structure and organisation to existing approaches this structuring suggests that any discussion on the appropriateness and validity of different assessment approaches and their results must take into account the underlying assessment perspective the three questions if how and where resources should be used correspond to the requirements of a sustainable resource use while existing assessments do address the three questions in isolation it is all the more important that the limitations and implications of focusing on a single perspective are spelled out as the main contribution the paper distinguishes the rationale of each assessment perspective and develops on their interlinkages and thus provides the context and structure for a more informed and fruitful debate on the assessment of sustainable resource use

the hotspots reference routes and research trends of marginal abatement costs a systematic review abstract as one of the most effective means of evaluating environmental policies marginal abatement costs macs have been adopted in a growing body of research this study characterizes the mac related literature from 1993 to 2018 on web of science based on a systematic review bibliometric analysis and mind mapping the results classify the research hotspots into influential factors methods and empirical applications the three most frequently mentioned influential factors are technical change discount rates and energy prices compared with top down models bottom up models including engineering model and expert based method are the most widely used improvements in the former focus on strengthening market behavior effect while those in the latter aim to overcome the weaknesses of negative costs and lack of interaction across measures mac applications focus on environmental policies with two new research areas recently emerging co benefits and sectoral abatement costs furthermore a reference route is proposed by summarizing the applicability of methods and matching relationships among influential factors methods and empirical problems finally potential research directions are summarized based on the identified research hotspots and a similar co word analysis in marginal cost field such as considering the effects of both multiple influential factors and the interaction among factors on maccs

how private contract enforcement mechanisms can succeed where public institutions fail the case of juhocukor a s the enforcement of contracts is necessary for efficient exchange and investment in economic activities contracts can be enforced through a variety of mechanisms both public and private however in many developing and transitional countries these public institutions are either absent or ineffective in ensuring contract enforcement under such conditions private enforcement mechanisms may provide a suitable replacement for public enforcement institutions this may be done externally through a third party or internally through self enforcing agreements this paper analyzes the use of self enforcing arrangements or internal private enforcement mechanisms using a case study of an agri business in a transition economy juhocukor a s a slovakian sugar processor we show that the use of internal private contract enforcement mechanisms can have a significant positive effect on output and efficiency for both partners to the exchange transaction in an environment characterized by the absence or ineffectiveness of public enforcement institutions 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the concept of joint production and ecological economics joint production is suggested as one of the conceptual foundations of ecological economics the notion of joint production springs immediately from the application of thermodynamics and has a long history in economic analysis considerations of joint production give rise to philosophical concerns relating to responsibility and knowledge the concept of joint production is easily comprehensible and is also constitutive and supportive of a range of concepts current in ecological economic thought 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

non parametric productivity analysis with undesirable outputs an application to the canadian pulp and paper industry this article extends the chavas cox approach to non parametric analysis by incorporating undesirable outputs to provide a more complete representation of the production technology inner and outer non parametric technology bounds are constructed the methods are illustrated with application to time series data for the canadian pulp and paper industry conventional measures that ignore changes in pollutant outputs underestimate true productivity growth further there is a large gap between estimates generated with reference to inner and outer bounds to the technology suggesting that researchers need to be aware of the limitations of results derived from analyses relying only on dea methods copyright 2001 oxford university press

marginal co2 abatement costs findings from alternative shadow price estimates for shanghai industrial sectors abstract shanghai one of the most developed cities in china is implementing a pilot regional carbon emission trading scheme estimating the marginal abatement costs of co2 emissions for the industrial sectors covered in shanghai s emission trading scheme provides the government and participating firms useful information for devising compliance policies this paper employs multiple distance function approaches to estimating the shadow prices of co2 emissions for shanghai industrial sectors our empirical results show that the overall weighted average of shadow price estimates by different approaches ranges between 394 5 and 1906 1 yuan ton which indicates that model choice truly has a significant effect on the shadow price estimation we have also identified a negative relationship between the shadow price of co2 emissions and carbon intensity and the heavy industries with higher carbon intensities tend to have lower shadow prices it has been suggested that shanghai municipal government take various measures to improve its carbon market e g using the marginal abatement costs of participating sectors firms as a criterion in the initial allocation of carbon emission allowances

the calculation of shadow prices for industrial wastes using distance functions an analysis for spanish ceramic pavements firms abstract this paper deals with the calculation of shadow prices for two industrial wastes generated on their production processes by 18 firms belonging to the spanish ceramic pavements industry these prices are then used to calculate an extended productivity index which takes into consideration wastes going with the production of marketable goods we follow the methodological approach first proposed by fare et al the review of economics and statistics 75 1993 a negative correlation is found between absolute shadow prices and wastes production intensity reflecting a greater marginal cost of eliminating wastes for those firms using less contaminant production processes differences between a conventional labour productivity index and an extended productivity index are also statistically related to firms characteristics such as size previous investments in cleaner technologies and affiliation to a technological institute

agroindustrialization through institutional innovation transaction costs cooperatives and milk market development in the east african highlands abstract some small holders are able to generate reliable and substantial income flows through small scale dairy production for the local market for others a set of unique transaction costs hinders participation cooperative selling institutions are potential catalysts for mitigating these costs stimulating entry into the market and promoting growth in rural communities trends in cooperative organization in east african dairy are evaluated empirical work focuses on alternative techniques for effecting participation among a representative sample of peri urban milk producers in the ethiopian highlands the variables considered are a modern production practice cross bred cow use a traditional production practice indigenous cow use three intellectual capital forming variables experience education and extension and the provision of infrastructure as measured by time to transport milk to market a tobit analysis of marketable surplus generates precise estimates of non participants distances to market and their reservation levels of the covariates measures of the inputs necessary to sustain and enhance the market policy implications focus on the availability of cross bred stock and the level of market infrastructure both of which have marked effects on participation the velocity of transactions in the local community and inevitably the social returns to agroindustrialization

environmental emissions and production economics implications of the materials balance in modeling emissions the literature has usually specified an explicit emission function or treated emissions as a production input we examine the validity of these approaches taking into account the materials balance principle we show that a technology can equivalently be described by i a production function with material and nonmaterial inputs and bounded marginal product of the material input ii a well behaved production function with emissions as an input and iii a well behaved emission function if the materials balance is accounted for as an additional condition we offer a forma derivation of common but not rigorously established modeling approaches

trade and agroindustrialization in developing countries trends and policy impacts there have been important changes in the international trade of processed and high value added food products from developing countries over the past several decades one of them has been the emergence of oilseeds and fruits and vegetables replacing traditional products such as sugar coffee and cocoa as the main exports from developing countries another trend has been the collapse of african agroindustrial exports and the increase of exports from asia the paper highlights key trends and explores possible reasons for the trends focusing on trade policies in less developed countries ldcs and developed countries dcs the paper argues that national trade policies and other economic policies appear to have been relatively supportive of agroindustrial production and exports in asia in contrast policies have had more mixed effects in latin america and the caribbean lac and seem to have been just one component in a larger array of forces inhibiting economic development in africa the performance of agroindustrial production and exports from ldcs may be now more dependent than ever on the completion of reforms in the agricultural trade policies of dcs for africa however a more supportive international environment and better macroeconomic and trade policies will not be enough to ensure a thriving agroindustrial sector within a broader process of economic development until military confrontations stop

endogenous institutional innovation and agroindustrialization on the peruvian coast this paper presents an analysis of endogenous institutional innovations that have recently emerged in the agroindustrial zone of chincha on the coast of peru these innovations include 1 contracts between agroindustrial firms and large farmers introduced by the firms themselves to assure timely delivery and compliance with strict requirements implied by the emerging demanding quality and safety standards for agro export of processed asparagus 2 management services exchanged for labor supervision and land collateral in share tenancy contracts between a management company and farmer companies of small cotton farmers these contracts introduced by the management company illustrate those described theoretically by eswaran and kotwal am econ rev 75 3 352 367 the nature and importance of these institutional changes are twofold 1 they were induced institutional innovations driven by the requirements of agroindustrialization itself 2 together they had ambiguous employment and income impacts tending to the negative on the one hand the emergence of asparagus and firm farm contracts reduced employment through exclusion of small farms and shifts to capital intensive crops on the other hand the reinforcement of smallholder cotton and the emergence of farmer companies increased employment and income of smallholders the institutional innovation allowed them to reduce risk and increase profits and thus access some of the benefits of agroindustrialization and globalization while processing firm farm contracts are common in peru as is the presence of ngos bringing subsidized credit the private management firm innovation is rare and new in peru and apparently also in the region and of great interest in fact policymakers and ngos have recently discovered that this innovation is taking place and are asking hard questions about whether this innovation can and will be diffused the interest in the private for profit institutional change is sharpened by growing doubts about how economically sustainable and widespread a response ngo help can be to small farmers in maintaining their participation in income enhancing agroindustrialization moreover with changes in land laws and markets the fluidity of the situation is apparent with agroindustrial firms even starting to ask themselves whether contracts with large farms are necessary and best 2000 published by elsevier science b v

new institutional arrangements for rural development the case of local woolgrowers associations in the transkei area south africa until recently smallholder farmers in the transkei area had very limited access to a profitable market outlet for their wool in response the south african wool industry built shearing sheds managed by a local association that sells directly to the brokers this article investigates the effect of joint wool marketing through the shearing shed on the farmers revenue from wool a three step regression model of the revenue from wool indicates that the farmers selling through the shearing shed obtain better financial results as compared to those who use alternative channels this analysis shows how new institutional arrangements may contribute to economic development

agroindustrialization of the global agrifood economy bridging development economics and agribusiness research this paper examines the agroindustrialization process from two supposedly disparate views development economics and agribusiness research the evolution of conceptual and methodological approaches emanating from these fields is explored and general observations are made concerning farm economic interdependence institutional and organizational change differing scopes of interest the causes of agroindustrialization orientation and the choice of microanalytic tools terminology and unit of analysis despite an impressive list of hurdles disincentives and disconnects complementarities between the two fields are identified the paper concludes by exploring the potential of bridging development economics and agribusiness research to inform the future agroindustrialization research agenda

short and long run credit constraints in french agriculture a directional distance function framework using expenditure constrained profit functions this empirical application investigates the eventual presence of credit constraints using a panel of french farmers the credit constrained profit maximization model proposed by fare grosskopf and lee is extended in three ways first we rephrase the model in terms of directional distance functions to allow duality with the profit function second we model credit constraints in the short run and investment constraints in the long run using short and long run profit functions third we lag the expenditure constraint one year to account for the separation between planning and production we find empirical evidence of credit and investment constraints financially unconstrained farmers are larger perform better and seem to benefit from a virtuous circle where access to financial markets allows better productive choices

the impact of the tomato agroindustry on the rural poor in mexico this article addresses the issue of whether the tomato agroindustry tai has been an effective instrument in the reduction of rural poverty the tai is by far the most important agroindustry in mexico in terms of exports and employment creation most of the laborers employed by the tai in northwest mexico are temporary migrants coming from poverty stricken regions in southern mexico conditions of poverty induced migration are explained the characteristics and strategies of large modern tomato enterprises are analyzed the main conclusion is that migrant income earned in the tomato fields and packing plants is fundamental for the bare survival in villages in poverty stricken regions however this does not provide a solution to poverty alleviation because migrant income is not sufficient to contribute to capital formation in the migrating communities or the to create the conditions for endogenous local development

capturing the least costly way of reducing pollution a shadow price approach abstract the production analysis literature is increasingly concerned with estimating marginal abatement costs yet most studies do not emphasize the ways in which pollutants may be reduced and their costs which makes them unable to identify the least costly compliance strategy this paper utilizes the materials balance principle to relate pollution to the employment of material inputs a production model which allows input and output substitution downscaling of operations pollution control and emission permits purchases as compliance strategies is proposed and the implications of joint and non joint pollution controls for the trade off between pollutants and desirable outputs are considered marginal abatement costs reflecting the least costly way of compliance are derived by exploiting the duality between the directional distance function and the profit function

contract farming smallholders and rural development in latin america the organization of agroprocessing firms and the scale of outgrower production abstract this paper demonstrates how contract farming functions as an economic institution and explores the causes of the observed variation in the scale of outgrower production in latin america we outline how market imperfections and transaction costs influence the decision of agroprocessing firms to contract out vertically integrate or use spot markets to obtain raw product the paper demonstrates how market conditions are likely to be associated with particular outgrower characteristics under contract farming an analysis of the mexican frozen vegetable industry illustrates determinants of successful and unsuccessful small scale contracting and suggests alternative policies to promote contract farming with smallholders

a framework to facilitate institutional arrangements for smallholder supply in developing countries an agribusiness perspective the industrialization of agriculture and the potential problem of small scale farmer marginalization calls for a fresh approach to the design of agribusiness supply chain arrangements in developing countries the objective of the paper is to contribute to a better understanding of institutional arrangements that can promote stable smallholder agribusiness contracting arrangements in a developing country context a case study approach incorporating a transaction cost framework is used to test whether trust can significantly change the contract characteristics of supply the results suggest that although the presence of trust can influence the contract characteristics of a supply arrangement it may not be significant because of other factors in a developing country context bearing this in mind a number of institutional arrangements are recommended in order to promote more stable contract conditions

measuring farm sustainability and explaining differences in sustainable efficiency abstract a major objective of european agricultural policy is to have a sustainable and efficient farming sector that is applying environmentally friendly production methods policy makers aim to combine a strong economic performance and a sustainable use of natural resources therefore it is important to measure and to assess farm sustainability for a large dataset of flemish dairy farms a valuation method that is based on the concept of opportunity costs is used to calculate and analyze differences among the sample farms with respect to the creation of sustainable value but more important than measuring the creation of sustainable value is to analyze differences in sustainable efficiency therefore sustainable efficiency measures are calculated and differences in sustainable efficiency are explained using panel data an effect model captures the determinants of sustainable efficiency of the studied farms the empirical model shows that in general larger farms have a higher sustainable efficiency also farmer s age and dependency on support payments proved to be determining characteristics for observed differences in sustainable efficiency

issues of paradigm ideology and democracy in sustainability assessment does the challenge of sustainable development sd have implications for our approches to decision making and evaluation do we need specific sustainability assessment models sams and if so what

econometric estimation of technical and environmental efficiency an application to dutch dairy farms in this article we estimate the technical and environmental efficiency of a panel of dutch dairy farms nitrogen surplus arising from the application of excessive amounts of manure and chemical fertilizer is treated as an environmentally detrimental input a stochastic translog production frontier is specified to estimate the output oriented technical efficiency environmental efficiency is estimated as the input oriented technical efficiency of a single input the nitrogen surplus of each farm the mean output oriented technical efficiency is rather high 0 894 but the mean input oriented environmental efficiency is only 0 441 intensive dairy farms are both technically and environmentally more efficient than extensive farms

diversification into horticulture and poverty reduction a research agenda summary horticultural produce and processed products from the developing world are becoming increasingly popular both in domestic and in international markets global production and exports are rising steadily however yield increases have been smaller than area growth and have been negligible or even negative in the least developed countries while experience shows that horticulture can offer good opportunities for poverty reduction because it increases income and generates employment care must be taken that small and poor farmers are not excluded from the opportunities in these market sectors in this article we argue that development agencies must put more emphasis on horticultural research and development especially in the following priority areas genetic improvement safe production systems commercial seed production postharvest facilities and the urban peri urban environment

small farmers ngos and a walmart world welfare effects of supermarkets operating in nicaragua despite more than a decade of ngo and government activities promoting developing world farmer participation in high value agricultural markets evidence regarding the household welfare effects of such initiatives is limited this paper analyzes the geographic placement of supermarket supply chains in nicaragua between 2000 and 2008 and uses a difference in difference specification on measures of supplier and non supplier assets to estimate the welfare effects of small farmer participation though results indicate that selling to supermarkets increases household productive asset holdings they also suggest that only farmers with advantageous endowments of geography and water are likely to participate

production consumption and general equilibrium with physical constraints abstract this paper analyzes the consequences of integrating the conservation laws of mass and energy into the microeconomic models of production consumption and general equilibrium we show that abstract models and especially general equilibrium theory are consistent with these physical constraints but most applied and environmental economic models are not we analyze the consequences of physical conservation laws for substitution possibilities and show that these constraints limit the number of independent substitution processes but not the value of the substitution elasticities finally we propose a method for integrating physical constraints into static microeconomic models with a minimum of changes

issue in pollution control interplant cost differences and economies of scale debate on interplant pollution control cost differences focuses on the question of whether a system of taxes or transferable discharge permits should require those plants with low treatment costs to control a higher share of effluents another issue under debate is whether those industries with a large minimum size may be effectively barred by pollution control requirements evidence of the inefficiency of present institutional arrangements is shown by studying production function estimations of 30 pulp and paper mills in wisconsin and michigan a more efficient reallocation of pollution control resources could be effected with more market oriented regimes 58 references 6 tables dck

a nonparametric approach to expenditure constrained profit maximization a nonparametric approach to expenditure constrained profit maximization is developed a deterministic frontier profit function is constructed with and without expenditure constraints foregone profit is used as dual evidence for the existence of expenditure constraints individual evaluations on performance and expenditure constraints are produced empirical analysis is based on survey data for california rice farms seventeen of the eighty two surveyed farms experience profit loss as a result of expenditure constraints

the sustainable value approach a clarifying and constructive comment recently the original benchmarking methodology of the sustainable value approach became subjected to serious debate while kuosmanen and kuosmanen 2009b critically question its validity introducing productive efficiency theory figge and hahn 2009 put forward that the implementation of productive efficiency theory severely conflicts with the original financial economics perspective of the sustainable value approach we argue that the debate is very confusing because the original sustainable value approach presents two largely incompatible objectives nevertheless we maintain that both ways of benchmarking could provide useful and moreover complementary insights if one intends to present the overall resource efficiency of the firm from the investor s viewpoint we recommend the original benchmarking methodology if one on the other hand aspires to create a prescriptive tool setting up some sort of reallocation scheme we advocate implementation of the productive efficiency theory although the discussion on benchmark application is certainly substantial we should avoid the debate to become accordingly narrowed next to the benchmark concern we see several other challenges considering the development of the sustainable value approach 1 a more systematic resource selection 2 the inclusion of the value chain and 3 additional analyses related to policy in order to increase interpretative power

shadow prices and pollution costs in u s agriculture abstract we use the directional output distance function to derive estimates of production inefficiency shadow prices for polluting outputs and the associated pollution costs using a quadratic functional form for the directional output distance function and data for the u s agricultural sector during 1960 1996 we find that the pollution costs the shadow values from the runoff and leaching of pesticides are 6 of crop and animal revenues and are highest in the midwest and lowest in the western states if states were to reduce technical inefficiency and operate on the production frontier pollution costs could be reduced by 7

internal capital market controls and financial performance in multidivisional firms it is proposed that within the population of m form firms the control systems necessary to realize economic benefits from interrelationships between subunits o f a firm are incompatible with the systems necessary to realize benef its from an m form type internal capital market this hypothesis is t ested on 156 large u k firms questionnaire data are used to classif y the firms according to their internal control characteristics the findings provide tentative support for the hypothesis copyright 1988 by blackwell publishing ltd

the value of environment across efficiency quantiles a conditional regression quantiles analysis of rangelands beef production in north eastern australia in agricultural systems the value of environmental inputs can be measured using the production function approach whereby the marginal contributions of factors are associated with a shadow value under perfect competition and rationality assumptions however empirical studies show that inefficiency in production is common indicating that the rationality assumption is not met furthermore substantial evidence exists to suggest that the contributions of environmental inputs in particular may be differentiated across the efficiency distribution this means that the frontier technology may not be an appropriate reflection of the technology in use by inefficient enterprises this article presents the use of conditional regression quantiles to consider how the value of environmental inputs measured by their contributions to production vary across efficiency quantiles we employed a case study of rangelands beef production in australia to consider how environmental health differentially contributes to production values across efficiency quantiles our approach generates detailed insights into the nature of environmentally sourced technical inefficiency and suggests that conditional quantile regression approaches are ideal for consideration of issues wherein substantial heterogeneity exists limiting the information content of conditional mean based analyses

engel curves for fair trade consumption and development perspectives for producers evidence from data on real fairtrade purchases while fairtrade sales have exhibited two digit growth rates over recent decades their capacity to become large enough to generate substantial gains for producers is still uncertain estimating fai

not measuring sustainable value at all a response to kuosmanen and kuosmanen abstract in their article in this issue of ecological economics kuosmanen and kuosmanen kuosmanen t and kuosmanen n this issue how not to measure sustainable value and how one might ecological economics aim to criticise the measurement of sustainable value as proposed in our previous research by adopting a production perspective and based on a productive efficiency analysis they claim that the proposed way of measuring sustainable value represents an invalid simplification that rests on restrictive and unrealistic assumptions our response is to show that their argument rests on a fundamental misspecification of the sustainable value approach we identify three conceptual misfits a mismatch in the perspective of the analysis a misspecification of opportunity costs and the irrelevance of production functions ultimately kuosmanen and kuosmanen s train of thought rests entirely within the realm of productive efficiency analysis whereas sustainable value builds on the foundations of financial economics and consequently adopts a macro rather than a firm perspective it is thus not surprising that the findings of kuosmanen and kuosmanen appear to contradict the sustainable value approach however this is due to their fundamental misspecification of the sustainable value approach as a result rather than providing novel insights into how sustainable value might be measured in a better way they do not measure sustainable value at all

the applicability of marginal abatement cost approach a comprehensive review abstract the marginal abatement cost mac methodology is widely used in climate change policies policy makers rely on mac to assess feasible strategies and related costs to achieve emission reduction goals this paper introduces a variety of mac methodologies aiming at solving diverse problems which utilizes various calculable logic thus producing different results and implications this study applies a mind mapping method to capture differentiation of mac methods and systematically classify mac methodologies the applicability path analysis was proposed based on principles such as stakeholder type decision making objectives cost concept strategy mode and information scope our goal is to assess the applicability of different methodologies to reduce misuse by policy makers and to serve as a guide for subsequent research which might prompt and lead to the derivation of more consequential results in future studies the results of this study suggest that the complex method is not always better than the simplified method because policy makers are required to select the appropriate method according to the type of information needed it may even be suggested that mac could be reliable by ranking relative value of options compared with baseline rather than focusing on the absolute value of individual measures

agrifood industry transformation and small farmers in developing countries summary this article introduces this special issue on the rapid transformation of the agrifood industry in developing countries and its effects on small farmers we review the literature from the late 1980s to the present and find evidence first of food processing then retail transformation and mixed evidence of impacts on small farmers both inclusion particularly with resource providing contracts and exclusion sometimes from scale constraint sometimes from inadequate non land assets the special issue papers contribute to the debate by confirming the mix of cases of inclusion and exclusion the cases are main in horticulture and dairy key hopes for smallholder development

expenditure constraints and profit maximization in u s agriculture the u s agricultural sector is undergoing some of its most severe financial problems since the great depression numerous reports have emerged of large numbers of farmers being unable to obtain short term oper

how not to measure sustainable value and how one might abstract sustainability is a complex multidimensional concept that entails economic environmental and social aspects the sustainable value sv method developed by f figge and t hahn ecol econ 48 2004 173 187 is one of the most promising attempts to measure sustainability performance of firms sv measures corporate contributions to sustainability by valuing resource use based on the opportunity cost which must be estimated this paper critically examines figge and hahn s estimator for opportunity cost and shows that the proposed estimator rests on a number of strong unrealistic assumptions evidence from monte carlo simulations conducted by authors shows that the proposed estimator performs very poorly even under ideal conditions having identified shortcomings in the sv method we review some econometric approaches with a proven statistical foundation which might be usefully applied in the present context

messy marginal costs internal pricing of environmental aspects on the firm level abstract internal pricing of environmental aspects is usually not embedded in management accounting systems therefore we first show that pricing from a corporative perspective is possible and applicable contrary to common belief we also show that marginal costs curves of environmental aspects are often not monotonic and price changes are highly context specific we introduce a model that addresses different environmental aspects that translate into constraints or change direct cost factors in the objective function environmental constraints originate from different types of limit values concerning emissions and production processes as well as restraining the potential environmental damage as the outcome of ecological valuation methods direct cost factors include the taxation of emissions and costs stemming from being involved in the emissions trading market our model allows for calculating the marginal indirect costs of these environmental aspects as the constraints might enforce factor and product substitutions we show that the marginal costs differ substantially from the direct costs and do not follow a predictable pattern sensitivity analysis and parametric programming are applied to set up an internal pricing and cost allocation scheme for environmental aspects specifically focusing on the pricing of emissions resources and processes of production and recycling the model s implications on corporate decision making are illustrated by a numerical example that draws on the opportunity of process substitution e g producing a product on different machines even though we cannot use original data for proprietary reasons such settings are highly relevant in industry and the energy sector

justifying the incorporation of the materials balance principle into frontier based eco efficiency models frontier based models are an alternative to traditional eco efficiency ratio indicators this paper considers two different types environmentally adjusted production efficiency models and frontier eco efficiency models and tries to find justification for incorporating the materials balance principle mbp in them similar importance is attached to the economic and environmental outcomes of a production process like economic outcomes can be derived from inputs and outputs and respective prices some cases allow for deriving environmental outcomes from the production function with the mbp after an overview of attempts to incorporate environmental issues in production efficiency models and some reflections why mbp has been neglected in environmental economics and production efficiency analysis the paper gives basic principles to incorporate the mbp in conventional production efficiency methods and shows how this adjustment leads to a more diversified diagnosis of eco efficiency finally potentialities and bottlenecks are discussed exploiting the mbp in production efficiency and eco efficiency analysis will facilitate more pro active eco efficiency research

food safety issues and fresh food product exports from ldcs fresh food products have a high income elasticity of demand and few traditional trade barriers in high income markets as such they represent an important opportunity for less developed country ldc exporters fresh food product exports account for half of all food and agricultural exports from ldcs to high income countries but these products may be subject to greater food safety risks and potential trade barriers arising from sanitary regulation this paper reviews the challenges and issues facing ldcs in meeting food safety standards for export these issues include a the importance of fresh food product trade by region and the kinds of issues that arise from those products b the role of farm to table approaches and hazard analysis critical control points haccp in ensuring safety c the role of the public sector in ldcs in facilitating trade d the potential role of the sps agreement in resolving disputes and determining equivalency of standards between high and low income countries