a joint product analysis of the adoption of modern cereal varieties in developing countries semi dwarf wheat varieties have been slow to diffuse in some regions despite their superior grain yield we analyze varietal differences in yields of the joint products of grain and straw the decision to adopt new varieties and nitrogen demand the low straw yield of semi dwarf varieties under low input conditions is shown to be a plausible explanation for their slow adoption in some regions first generation modern varieties induced a large increase in the derived demand for nitrogen but subsequent varietal development appears to have had little impact on nitrogen demand

animal breeding and productivity growth of dairy farms we introduce genetic based technical change into a malmquist productivity index and measure the growth in productivity caused by bovine breeding because breeding is likely to affect milk quality we adjust milk quantities for quality differences we use panel data on icelandic dairy farms from 1997 to 2006 to estimate an input distance function the malmquist productivity index shows that the average productivity growth rate is 1 6 scale effects are the most important source of this growth but 19 of the productivity growth rate is due to breeding if quality differences are ignored the average productivity growth rate is reduced by 83

the demand for energy cross country evidence using the florida model abstract income and own price elasticities of demand for energy for 51 countries in 1980 are presented based on pooled estimates from an 11 good demand system estimated with the florida model results indicate income elasticities of demand for energy are significantly larger than unitary for all countries and own price elasticities of demand for energy range between 0 8 and 1 0

the effect of uncertainty on the demand for medical care health capital and wealth we analyze the effect of the uncertainty of the incidence of illness on the demand for medical care and on the accumulation of health capital and wealth over the retirement years we use a simplified version of a dynamic grossman household production model to characterize patterns of an individual s precautionary behavior elderly individuals respond to uncertainty by smoothing their expected utility over time by making specific patterns of purchases of medical care and consumption we examine these patterns for individuals with different degrees of risk aversion

elasticities ratios and energy modelling abstract this paper shows certain pitfalls in calculating elasticities and ratios by studying some commonly used econometric models of energy it is then argued that income elasticity could be considered stable both in the short run and in the long run lastly we have derived a formula which clearly relates the income elasticity to the energy income ratio the difference of elasticities among the developing and developed countries can be explained directly from the formula

institutionalizing end user demand steering in agricultural r d farmer levy funding of r d in the netherlands abstract the purpose of this paper is to critically examine the institutionalization of demand driven modes of working in the r d planning process and reveal possible weaknesses through an analysis of a system of collective r d funding by farmers the findings indicate that although end users have the opportunity to raise issues that lead to r d queries are influenced by several actors in the r d planning process in such a way that they do not adequately reflect farmers innovation needs conclusions are that more emphasis is required on joint demand articulation and involvement of end users and other stakeholders in the innovation process and on the institutional development of r d funding organizations in order to adopt a more inclusive view on innovation

energy consumption financial development and economic growth in india new evidence from a nonlinear and asymmetric analysis this paper investigates the asymmetric relationship between energy consumption and economic growth by incorporating financial development capital and labour into a production function covering the indian economy from 1960q1 2015q4 the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach is applied to examine the asymmetric cointegration between the variables an asymmetric causality test is also employed to examine the causal association between the considered variables the results indicate cointegration between the variables in the presence of asymmetries the asymmetric causality results show that only negative shocks in energy consumption have impacts on economic growth in the same vein only negative shocks in financial development have impacts on economic growth by contrast symmetrically capital formation causes economic growth finally over the study period a neutral effect exists between the labour force and economic growth in india the implications of these results for growth policies in india are also discussed

correction note on the demand for health with uncertainty and insurance abstract this paper proves the non existence of an optimal solution under the liljas liljas b 1998 the demand for health with uncertainty and insurance j health econ 17 153 170 type of insurance the reason for the non existence is that the insurance induces the individual to increase his time input relative to medical expenditure in the household production of health investment hence it distorts the balance of inputs in the production of health investment moreover it also distorts the household production for consumption goods through time constraints therefore this paper proposes an alternative insurance that covers the time loss due to illness and has an optimal solution

uncertainty and health care spending by the poor the health capital model revisited this short theoretical paper examines health care utilization by the poor in the context of grossman s 1972 health capital model earlier work has shown that uncertainty can reduce the attractiveness to the poor of health capital investments this paper demonstrates that uncertainty can also have precisely the opposite effect that is while there may be cases in which it is excessively risky for the poor to invest in their health there may also be cases in which the poor can ill afford the risks that arise from not making timely investments in their health

the relationship between energy demand and real gdp growth rate the role of price asymmetries and spatial externalities within 34 countries across the globe abstract the aim of this paper is to empirically explore the relationship between energy demand and real gross domestic product gdp growth and to investigate the role of regional externalities on per capita final energy consumption fec in 34 countries during the period from 2005 to 2013 the paper utilizes a dynamic panel generalized method of moments dpggm approach and spatial econometric techniques in order to analyse the effect of real gdp growth rate on fec through an error correction model ecm and to examine clustered patterns of energy consumption the results show that a the demand is elastic both in the industrial and the household services sectors b electricity and natural gas are demand substitutes c the relationship between real gdp growth rate and per capita energy consumption exhibits an inverted u shape for all the sample countries under scrutiny 34 countries eurozone and eu28 but not for all the employed sectors of the economy d price electricity and gas and gdp growth asymmetries are supported from the employed parametric tests and e distance does not affect per capita fec but economic neighbours have a strong positive effect

energy gdp relationship and capital intensity in ldcs abstract this study provides an updated estimate of the gdp elasticity of energy consumption for ldcs it uses a production function approach in determining this elasticity energy consumption is explained in terms of economic activity capital intensity and structure of economy the elasticity is found to be less than unitary this suggests that the earlier estimates for ldcs were biased

stock watson dynamic ols dols and error correction modelling approaches to estimating long and short run elasticities in a demand function new evidence and methodological implications from an application to the demand for coal in mainland china in this paper robust elasticity estimates of coal demand for china are derived using annual data 1953 92 in so doing we illustrate the use of a powerful yet practically convenient and recently developed modelling procedure devised by stock and watson known as dynamic ols dols who provide evidence based on monte carlo simulations of this estimator being superior in small samples compared to a number of alternative estimators as well as being able not only to accommodate higher orders of integration but also to account for possible simultaneity within regressors of a potential demand system furthermore cointegration and error correction methods are employed to derive short run price and income elasticities estimated results are quite robust not only in terms of statistical prowess but also in terms of economic intuition and indicate that over the long run both price and income elasticities are close to unity while short run price and income elasticities are less in absolute value than their long run counterparts there seems to be some divergence in short run parameters from a subsample analysis overall results seem to imply that for china coal consumption should remain relatively constant as future modernization strategies for economic development are pursued in addition the study has clear methodological implications for estimating the long and short run elasticities in a demand function in general and in a wide variety of fields in future applied research

quantitative restrictions and indian imports abstract many governments in ldcs tend 3o rely heavily on import control for achieving adjustments in the balance of payments the empirical analysis of imports of these countries has failed to address the issue of quantitative restrictions satisfactorily in this paper a set of disaggregated import demand equations are specified which attempt to capture the government s decision regarding quota restrictions the model postulates that the overall level of imports is determined by expected foreign exchange availability while the composition of imports once the level has been decided is based on political and economic priorities and on relative prices

human development at risk economic growth with pollution induced health shocks risks to human health stemming from polluted air water and soil are substantial especially in the rapidly growing economies the present paper develops a theoretical framework to study an endogenously growing economy which is subject to pollution induced health shocks with the health status being an argument of the welfare function pollution arising as a negative externality from production adversely and randomly affects the regeneration ability of a human body leading to a decline in the overall health status of the population we include two types of uncertainty surrounding the health status continuous small scale fluctuations driven by the wiener process and large scale shocks or epidemics driven by the poisson process we derive closed form analytical solutions for the optimal abatement policy and the growth rate of consumption devoting a constant fraction of output to emissions abatement delivers the first best allocation this fraction is an increasing function of total factor productivity polluting intensity of production and damage intensity of both continuous and jump type shocks a higher frequency of jumps also calls for more vigorous abatement policies by contrast the optimal growth rate of the economy is decreasing in the frequency and intensity of shocks and in the polluting intensity of output the efficiency of abatement technology has in general an ambiguous bearing on both the growth rate and on the abatement share due to the opposing forces of the direct and indirect effects

dutch disease government policy and import demand in nigeria the effects of sectoral changes and government policies on import demand in nigeria are examined in the context of the oil shocks of the 1970s and 1980s a two equation model is estimated to determine real import demand and the real exchange rate the results show that import demand increased significantly in response to the boom induced squeeze on the agricultural sector furthermore by inducing and sustaining real exchange rate overvaluation expansionary government policies contributed to higher import demand even after the collapse in oil prices

on energy coefficients and ratios abstract this paper examines the methodological issues of the debates surrounding the problem of measuring energy consumption and the use of the concept of energy coefficients it also investigates the brookes hypothesis of a development effect on energy consumption the results suggest that when energy consumption is appropriately measured the energy coefficients are very consistent and fall steadily from high values tending asymptotically to one

modeling and forecasting energy consumption in china implications for chinese energy demand and imports in 2020 the chinese economy is in a stage of energy transition from low efficiency solid fuels to oil gas and electric power from agriculture to urbanization and industrialization from heavy industry to lighter and high tech industry from low motorization to rapid growth of the motor vehicle population experts fear that continued rapid economic growth in china will translate into a massive need to expand imports of oil coal and gas we build an econometric model of the chinese energy economy based on the energy balance we use that model to forecast chinese energy consumption and imports to 2020 the study suggests that china will indeed require rapidly growing imports of oil coal and gas this growth is not so sensitive to the rate of economic growth as to increases in motorization it can be offset but probably only in small part by increasing domestic energy production or by improvements in the efficiency of use particularly in the production of electric power

estimating energy and oil demand functions a study of thirteen developing countries abstract in this paper we attempt to identify some of the factors that have determined the level and pattern of energy demand in developing countries during the 1970s and early 1980s aggregate oil and energy demanding functions are constructed for a selection of oil importing countries and oil exporting countries the results show a strong link between income and aggregate energy demand conversely the price elasticity of energy demand is low both in the short run and the long run oil demand behaviour is more complex oil products can be rationed or domestic energy production can affect oil demand nonetheless the income elasticity remains close to one in most countries and is well above one for some

decomposition of productivity growth using distance functions the case of dairy farms in three european countries within an output distance function framework the total factor productivity growth index is decomposed into four components technical change technical and allocative efficiency and scale component we estimate stochastic translog output distance functions using panel data from dairy farms over the period 1991 94 for three european countries germany the netherlands and poland results indicate that the change in the productivity growth index in germany 6 and poland 5 are mainly dictated by the technical change component in contrast the productivity growth index in the netherlands 3 is influenced by allocative efficiency components

preventive care underused even when free is there something else at work explaining the rationale of preventive care underuse is a difficult task considering its great benefits for health underuse is even more difficult to explain in countries like italy where preventive care can be obtained for free in this article we investigate the determinants of prevention underuse with an empirical model based on human capital theory which also includes three factors to which little attention has been paid so far role played by the general practitioner gp nonmonetary barriers to access and health beliefs we apply a recursive probit model explaining both recourse to prevention and to the gp which allows us to adequately measure the effect of the latter on the former and to quantitatively compare the determinants of curative and preventive care we find that the gp plays a minor role in prevention use but that nonmonetary barriers to access and health beliefs are strong determinants of preventive care demand finally we also find support for both grossman s capital depreciation the

fiscal stress and the production of public safety a distance function approach abstract faced with increasing crime rates but nonincreasing budgets local governments are seeking cost saving means of providing public safety this paper investigates a bureaucracy s response to fiscal stress as well as its ability to efficiently substitute civilian for uniformed personnel exploiting duality theory a distance function is used to model technology retrieve information concerning substitutability and shadow prices of personnel and test for cost minimization morishima elasticities are adopted to allow for asymmetry in substitution between types of personnel it is found that the more adverse the public safety environment and budgetary condition the more efficiently resources are allocated

the energy gdp relationship in developing countries empirical evidence and stability tests abstract the elasticity of energy consumption with respect to gdp is an important element in projecting energy needs in economic development this study uses cross section and pooled cross section time series data to find that the elasticity of energy consumption with respect to gdp in developing countries is in the neighbourhood of 1 35 and significantly above one over the period covered 1970 to 1976 the relationships appear to have remained stable there are significant differences between areas of the world but the differences in the elasticities between different continents are not large

modelling the energy output ratio abstract the elasticity of energy use with respect to national output has been estimated by various methods with sometimes seemingly contradictory results this study attempts to reconcile these various estimates by modelling the energy output ratio and deriving the corresponding cross section and time series elasticities from this model

an exploratory stochastic framework to analyse the relationship between macro oil price shocks and economic development abstract the paper investigates the impact of the oil price shocks of 1973 and 1978 on the economies of industrial and developing countries empirical results reveal that the severity of the impact of macro price oil shocks has been quite different on the two groups of countries the regression results based on the new exploratory model corroborate clearly that the low income group sustained a drastic blow compared to the high income group countries moreover within the group of developing nations the severity of impact varies according to their dependency on the use of energy sources development levels and the degree of aggregate capital intensity

non monotonic health behaviours implications for individual health related behaviour in a demand for health framework a number of behaviours influence health in a non monotonic way physical activity and alcohol consumption for instance may be beneficial to one s health in moderate but detrimental in large quantities we develop a demand for health framework that incorporates the feature of a physiologically optimal level an individual may still choose a physiologically non optimal level because of the trade off in his or her preferences for health versus other utility affecting commodities however any deviation above or below the physiologically optimal level will be punished with respect to health distinguishing between two individual types we study a the qualitative properties of optimal time paths of health capital and health related behaviour b the perturbations of the optimal time paths that result from changes in exogenous parameters and c steady state properties predictions of the model and the implications for empirical analysis are discussed at length some comments on potential future extensions conclude the paper

employer investments in employee health implications for the family as health producer the model presented in this paper further extends the demand for health model in which the family is the producer of health investments to consider the case in which an employer has incentives for investing in the health of a family member the household and the employer are assumed to interact strategically in the production of health the general insight provided is that the conditions which determine the nature of the relationship between the employer and the employee for instance market conditions production technologies taxes and government regulation will also affect the allocation of health investments and health capital within the family

quality oriented technical change in japanese wheat breeding abstract the article presents a productivity analysis of japanese wheat breeding research we first estimate a hedonic function to determine the marginal implicit values of japanese wheat characteristics and find that protein contributes substantially to millers price offers to farmers induced innovation theory implies breeders thus should be responding to new protein oriented price policies by developing high protein wheat varieties we test this hypothesis by estimating a distance function relating breeding resources including what we call gene recharge rates to the yield and protein characteristics of discovered varieties new varieties indeed have been protein favoring and yield disfavoring suggesting government research programs have been market oriented

oil exports real exchange rate appreciation and demand for imports in nigeria the recession in the oil market since 1981 has drastically reduced the foreign exchange earnings of nigeria as a result the country has faced a severe problem of adjustment to reduced export earnings at a time when payments on its 20 billion external debt have increased in designing a policy to restore balance of payments equilibrium nigeria like many other less developed countries in its position faces two important questions first to what extent the rate of growth of the economy would have to be lowered in order to bring equilibrium to the balance of payments and second to what extent real devaluation is likely to help in the process since nigeria faces a given price for its exports 95 of which is oil and production of oil does not use many domestic resources export revenues in terms of foreign currency are in effect exogenous and therefore the weight of adjustment must fall on imports the search for answers to the above questions thus leads directly to the investigation of the size of income and price elasticities of demand for imports this article presents estimates of an import demand function for nigeria based on annual data for 1963 82 the main finding of the article is that demand for imports is elastic with respect to price but inelastic with respect to income this implies that contrary to expectations the phenomenal rise in nigerian imports in the 1970s may have been a result of real appreciation rather than increase in oil revenues between 1972 and 1981 nigerian imports in constant dollars increased by a factor of five an average annual increase of 33 but during the same period non oil gdp in constant prices increased by only 5 7 per year and gross domestic income gdy total gdp adjusted for improvements in the terms of trade increased by 8 7 per year as a result the ratio of imports to gdy increased from 6 in 1972 to 18 in 1981 in contrast the decline in

the contribution of genetic resources and diversity to wheat production in the punjab of pakistan the ability to meet the world s growing food demand dramatically improved with the release of modern semidwarf or green revolution wheat varieties in the early 1960s despite initial and subsequent success in improving yield potential and yield stability maintaining disease resistance and improving other plant characteristics the green revolution has provoked criticism and debate a major issue in this debate concerns the effect of scientific plant breeding technology on crop genetic diversity which is believed to have important implications for global and national food security and producer welfare

uncertainty inequalities in health and the demand for health abstract as it has become increasingly recognized that inequalities in health stem more from inequalities in wealth rather than from inequalities in access to medical care economists have begun to suggest that michael grossman s model of the demand for health may be a useful analytical framework for investigating the issue ironically the more popular of grossman s two sub models the pure investment model provides little by way of insights into the relationship between inequalities in wealth and inequalities in health in common with other pure investment models of human capital formation grossman s model predicts that an individual s health investment decisions at each stage in the lifecycle will be independent of his initial wealth this paper shows that if uncertainty is introduced into the model this result no longer holds it also shows that if individuals display decreasing absolute risk aversion wealthier individuals will invest more in health capital than individuals who start life with relatively small stocks of financial capital

the family as producer of health an extended grossman model deriving a model where each family member is the producer of his own and other family members health shows that the family will not try to equalise marginal benefits and marginal costs of health capital for each family member they will rather invest in health until the rate of marginal consumption benefits equals the rate of marginal net effective costs of health capital the level of compensation in the social insurance system the effective price of care health related information and transfer payments will all affect the production possibility set and therefore the optimal level and distribution of family health

measuring environmental policy stringency approaches validity and impact on environmental innovation and energy efficiency abstract solid tests of the impact of environmental and energy policy on important economic outcomes such as innovation productivity competitiveness and energy and carbon efficiency are impaired by the lack of appropriate empirical proxies for the commitment to and stringency of environmental policy we contribute to the literature by 1 computing different indicators of environmental policy stringency 2 testing to what extent they convey similar insights through a statistical comparison exercise and 3 showing the implications of using one or the other indicator in two illustrative empirical applications focused on environmental innovation and energy efficiency we conclude by highlighting the implications of our analysis for empirical research focusing on the evaluation of policy impacts and highlight fruitful future research avenues

consumption and investment demand when health evolves stochastically abstract the health capital model of grossman 1972 is extended to account for uncertainty in the rate at which a stock of health depreciates two general versions of the model are contemplated one with a fully functioning financial market and the other in its absence the comparative dynamics of the feedback form of the consumption and health investment demand functions are studied in these general settings where it is shown that the key to deriving refutable results is to determine how a parameter or state variable affects the expected lifetime marginal utilities of health and wealth to add further reach to the results a simplified stochastic control problem is explicitly solved yielding estimable structural feedback demand functions

demand for health a generalised grossman model the demand for health and medical care is analysed within a generalised grossman type health investment model its underlying assumptions are shown to differ from those employed earlier in a manner which avoids some of the criticisms levelled at grossman s model the comparative static predictions of the generalised model are examined and it is demonstrated that most previous health investment models are derivable from it also the present model is applicable to a new wider range of problems thus increasing the scope of economic explanations of health behaviour