private food safety and quality standards for fresh produce exporters the case of hortico agrisystems zimbabwe abstract there is evidence that the challenges of complying with stricter food safety and quality standards are acting to exclude small scale producers from export supply chains for high value agricultural products the case of hortico agrisystems illustrates the considerable challenges and costs faced by supermarket suppliers in sourcing from a broad base of small scale producers in the context of evolving food safety and quality standards while small scale producers are able to achieve levels of compliance at least equal to those of large scale producers multi tiered and dynamic systems of control are required to maintain control these need to include measures that facilitate compliance incentives to reward good performance and penalties to punish non compliance in establishing a sustainable supply system in this context both exporters and small scale producers face a steep learning curve in adjusting to new requirements further emphasising the need for supply chains to be responsive to change

after chayanov and lenin new paths of agrarian capitalism abstract the theory of peasant economy is dominated by two classic authors of largely contradictory views a v chayanov and v i lenin this paper begins by setting forth their contrasting interpretations of differentiation among the russian peasantry at the end of the nineteenth century and the contrasting theoretical frameworks of marginalism and marxism which underlie those interpretations it then proceeds to set its debate against certain aspects of current transformations in the agrarian structures of latin america which call for a transcendence of this classic debate in particular it is pointed out in conclusion that family farms far from being a feature of peasant societies are more common and more dominant in countries and regions which have experienced a relatively dynamic process of capitalist development

the economic viability and stability of capitalised family farming an analysis of agricultural decollectivisation in peru agricultural decollectivisation in peru created a nascent capitalist family farm sector does the empirical fact of parcellisation suggest that small scale agriculture is optimal will land reconcentration occur with differentiation among the parceleros studying the causes and consequences of parcellisation provides insight into a number of questions relating to alternative production systems productive efficiency is compared between the parceleros and their co operative predecessors and among the parceleros some conclusions reached are 1 rice yields increased relative to the final years of co operative production 2 sample parceleros and co operatives exhibit similar levels of technical efficiency 3 the production potential of parcelled units is estimated to be less than that of a well functioning co operative system and 4 differentiation among parceleros is occurring as a range of incomes is realised from a more or less homogeneous resource base

sharecropping and the capitalist transition in agriculture some evidence from the highlands of ecuador abstract sharecropping has been the subject of much debate among economists concerned with static efficiency and to some extent with equity this paper shifts the focus to the dynamics of structural change the research reported adds to the discussion a detailed account of a large number of sharecropping contracts and why they vary and offers a theory of the relationship between sharecropping as practised in the ecuadorian province of carchi and a particular pattern of structural change which is described as the transition to an agrarian structure dominated by capitalised family farms the prevalent use of wage labour on sharecropped land and the place of sharecropping in intergenerational asset transfers are shown to be important elements in explaining this transition

agriculture in recent development theory abstract this paper is a critical review of recent contributions to the literature on agriculture in development theory it considers and compares the main lines of advance made within neoclassical neo marxian and structuralist approaches recent neo marxian and structuralist studies of agrarian development reveal that traditional agriculture is neither stationary nor efficient that resource allocation cannot be separated from wealth distribution or production organization that forms of surplus appropriation do not necessarily follow the dictates of efficiency that the social relations of production may inhibit accumulation and determine the forms of technological change that the state s role in primitive accumulation is more economic than explicitly coercive political and that political and macroeconomic constraints preclude a simple get the prices right view of the intersectoral terms of trade the thrust of these developments is to challenge both neoclassical and some orthodox marxian formulations of agrarian development issues and add to the insights to be gleaned from a political economy of development

network infrastructure spillover in private productive sectors evidence from spanish high capacity roads interest in public infrastructure research has been a subject of increasing concern to economists and policy makers this article aims at analysing the locational impact of the high capacity roads hcr on the spanish private economic activity from 1970 through 1998 given that this is one of main infrastructure based development strategy undertaken in spain in this period in a stochastic frontier production function framework we allow for modelling of provincial heterogeneity through the existence of different efficiency levels in the territorial units results show hcr spillovers between geographically close provinces and between provinces displaying similar socio demographic characteristics and government size to the extent that the magnitude and sign of these impacts differ across sectors a reasonable explanation of the limited impact of hcr on aggregate private production could be made the presence of a negative spillover effect in the industrial and business service sector suggests that spanish

determinants and impacts of rural land market activity evidence from nicaragua summary use of data from nicaragua to examine the performance of land rental and sales markets during 1995 98 which coincide with the implementation of major macroeconomic and sectoral reforms leads to three main conclusions first even though the data point toward an inverse farm size productivity relationship and large differences in land productivity between large and small producers land markets have not led to an equalization of returns among the groups considered second both in 1995 and in 1998 land sales markets have contributed to land concentration suggesting that credit market imperfections impeded demand in land sales markets third the policy reforms undertaken after 1995 have led to a structural shift in the performance of the land rental market instead of transferring land to large owners as it did in 1995 the land market now moves land from large to small producers the quantities involved however remain limited we conclude that if it is to contribute to equity and efficiency liberalization of land sales markets has to be complemented by measures to reduce the attractiveness of speculative land accumulation furthermore measures to reduce the transaction costs of land rental e g titling and to increase effective demand from small producers e g technical assistance and credit will be needed 2003 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

firm size and efficiency in the german mechanical engineering industry research usually finds a positive size efficiency relationship but few studies focus on sectors dominated by small and medium sized firms smes this paper fills this gap by analyzing this relationship in the german mechanical engineering industry sector which is both successful and increasingly dominated by smes the analysis using a large and representative dataset finds that small and large firms are on average the most efficient ones while medium sized firms have on average the greatest inefficiencies thus the size efficiency relationship is u shaped rather than monotonically increasing additionally the analysis finds that companies with active owner s are significantly more efficient and that capital firms are less efficient than firms with personally liable owners being located in either east or west germany has no effect

can land market reform mitigate the exclusionary aspects of rapid agro export growth abstract agro export growth has been associated with land concentration and employment instability in the wake of exclusionary agro export booms land market reform has been proposed as a way to improve peasant land access through the market developing a model of the economic competitiveness of different classes of producers this paper evaluates the likely effectiveness of land market reform while the model itself gives ambiguous answers numerical simulation identifies a large gap between market price and peasants abilty to pay for land among the components of land market reform policy progressive land taxation appears unlikely to close that competitiveness gap while farm land mortgage banks appear more likely to mitigate exclusionary aspects of growth

on prices and economic power explaining recent changes in intersectoral relations in the indian economy two contrasting views about the relationship between agriculture and industry and in particular about the optimal level of the terms of trade between these two sectors are identified and first set in the context of the political economy of contemporary india methodological issues relating to the correct measurement of intersectoral price shifts are taken up and it is shown that these have considerable bearing on current controversies it is argued in particular that single factor explanations of the behaviour of the terms of trade lack credibility and that these have to be analysed in the context of wider issues of growth and imbalance in developing economies

the impact of credit on peasant productivity and differentiation in nicaragua abstract an endogenous switching regressions framework is used to structure and identify the impact of credit on small farm food production in nicaragua the results which emerge weakly support the hypothesis that credit had a positive impact on production and could be expected to reduce the pattern of structurally unbalanced growth in nicaraguan agriculture however the estimated impact is of a form which implies a process of differentiation and unequal growth in the peasant sector in the wake of the new opportunities afforded by credit

the inverse relationship between size of land holdings and agricultural productivity the important relationship between the size of land holdings and agricultural productivity in developing countries has been debated intensely from early soviet debates to the extensive literature generated by the release of farm management survey fms data in india the question of returns to scale and input productivities primarily for land in traditional agriculture has been confused and clouded by strong positions and ideological predilections bhagawati and chakravarty saini 1969 and bharadwaj provide extensive bibliographies on the theoretical and empirical aspects of this problem in the indian context briefly sen 1964 1966 mazumdar 1963 1965 c h h rao 1966 1970 khusro saini 1971 bhattacharya and saini more or less endorse an inverse relationship between the land size and its productivity a p rao 1963 and rudra and bandhopadhyay do not believe in the existence of an inverse relationship and argue that no systematic relationship can be established between any two variables describing land size and productivity bharadwaj and others dismiss the statistical validity of an inverse relationship but generally accept it as a stylized fact the approach used in these statistical studies is to employ aggregate average or farm level data within a village or among different villages for all crops or a few specific ones various concepts of productivity and input variables are used the actual regressions use linear or log linear functional forms using the pooled fms data for several states in south india this paper makes an attempt to reexamine in a more general way the relationship between the size of land holdings and agricultural productivity this study employs the transcendental logarithmic translog function to formalize the relation between output and an arbitrary number of inputs the translog function is not locally constrained by assumptions of homogeneity or additivity estimates of output elasticity with respect to land size for various values of cooperating inputs will indicate whether the alleged inverse relationship holds in any or all circumstances

credit as insurance in agrarian economies abstract this paper examines consumption credit as an insurance mechanism in agrarian economies it explains the more rapid adoption of new technology in the green revolution by large farmers who had greater access to consumption credit the paper also demonstrates how the emergence and expansion of consumption credit markets by mitigating the need for hoarding in order to meet consumption contingencies enhances growth by encouraging investment

europe s tired poor huddled masses self selection and economic outcomes in the age of mass migration during the age of mass migration 1850 1913 one of the largest migration episodes in history the united states maintained a nearly open border allowing the study of migrant decisions unhindered by entry restrictions we estimate the return to migration while accounting for migrant selection by comparing norway to us migrants with their brothers who stayed in norway in the late nineteenth century we also compare fathers of migrants and nonmigrants by wealth and occupation we find that the return to migration was relatively low 70 percent and that migrants from urban areas were negatively selected from the sending population keep ancient lands your storied pomp cries she with silent lips give me your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to breathe free the wretched refuse of your teeming shore send these the homeless tempest tost to me i lift my lamp beside the golden door emma lazarus 1883

adoption of agricultural innovations in developing countries a survey this paper reviews various studies which have provided a description and possible explanation to patterns of innovation adoption in the agricultural sector the survey points out that the tendency of many studies to consider innovation adoption in dichotomous terms adoption nonadoption may not be appropriate in many cases where the actual decisions are defined over a more continuous range more attention needs to be given to the socio cultural and institutional environment in area studies so that their interrelation with economic factors affecting adoption can be inferred the presence of several interrelated innovations is another aspect that needs to be considered more carefully in future research since a number of simultaneous decisions may be involved furthermore the possibility of regular sequential patterns in adopting components of a new technological package should be specifically addressed in future studies finally the impact of differential adoption rates on land holding distribution merits attention in future research

land reforms poverty reduction and economic growth evidence from india recognition of the importance of institutions that provide security of property rights and relatively equal access to economic resources to a broad cross section of society has renewed interest in the potential of asset redistribution including land reforms empirical analysis of the impact of such policies is however scant and often contradictory this paper uses panel household data from india together with state level variation in the implementation of land reform to address some of the deficiencies of earlier studies the results suggest that land reform had a significant and positive impact on income growth and accumulation of human and physical capital the paper draws policy implications especially from the fact that the observed impact of land reform seems to have declined over time

poverty consumption risk and soil conservation abstract this paper studies the impact of poverty and uninsured consumption risk on incentives to invest in soil conservation a stochastic dynamic model is used to show how consumption risks and costs of investment influence incentives to adopt soil conservation measures on low income farms the model is calibrated using production data from hillside farms in the philippines simulations with the model demonstrate how the value of soil conservation depends on the cost of investing the risk characteristics of the soil conservation method and differences among households in capacity to bear risk model predictions are compared with empirical adoption patterns as described by a probit model and nonparametric kernel regressions of adoption probability empirical findings show how differences in farm size tenure security risk exposure and access to credit help to explain patterns of soil conservation adoption implications for policy are discussed

intermarriage and the economic assimilation of immigrants this article investigates the assimilation role of intermarriage between immigrants and natives intermarried immigrants earn significantly higher incomes than endogamously married immigrants even after we take account of human capital endowments and endogeneity of intermarriage the premium does not appear to be a reward for unobservable individual characteristics natives who intermarry do not receive this premium nor do immigrants who intermarry into another ethnic group the premium is mainly attributable to a faster speed of assimilation rather than any difference in labor market quality between intermarried and nonintermarried immigrants at the point of arrival

credit constraints credit unions and small scale producers in guatemala abstract efficient and equitable development outcomes may depend in part on whether formal financial institutions leave low wealth producers tightly constrained in their access to credit if so can cooperative institutions efficiently relax these constraints these issues are explored using survey data gathered from 950 small scale producer households in areas of guatemala with market oriented credit unions that mobilize savings and make unsubsidized loans nonprice rationing by banks is found to be common among lower wealth households while credit unions relax credit constraints for a significant portion of those rationed by banks but not the poorest of the study households

cash crops in developing countries the issues the facts the policies the issue of cash crops is profoundly controversial the debate uses different definitions of the term and slides across levels of analysis from the household to the international economy it also cuts across arguments crops countries and time periods this paper sets out to order the debate it deals first with definitions and taxonomy and then reviews issues connected with cash crops and a growth b distribution c food security d dependency and e the environment the paper concludes that with appropriate policies cash crops can offer a route to equitable growth

access to capital and agrarian production organisation there are two problems both universal that entrepreneurs in any economy must contend with firstly an agent generally has access only to a limited amount of working capital secondly workers hired by an agent are subject to moral hazard and this necessitates their supervision this paper models for an agrarian economy the constraints imposed on entrepreneurs activities by these two problems and endogenously determines the various organisational forms of production as well as the allocation of resources that will obtain with a simple model we endeavour to explain a diverse set of empirical observations pertaining to the less developed countries in terms of the general processes that determine the distribution of income among the various agents and the hierarchical relationships that develop among them agricultural production typically involves a period of several months between the time the inputs are purchased and the time the output is marketed access to working capital and hence to the credit market thus plays an important role in a farmer s production decisions the distribution of access to credit in turn tends to be an important determinant of income distribution in poor agrarian economies credit is invariably rationed according to the ability to offer collateral the amount of working capital a farmer can mobilise therefore depends on the amount of land he owns which is often a good proxy for his overall wealth and thus his ability to offer collateral further since hired hands have a propensity to shirk they need to be supervised and therefore the

regional productivity variation and the impact of public capital stock an analysis with spatial interaction with reference to spain in this article we examine whether variations in the level of public capital across spain s provinces affected productivity levels over the period 1996 to 2005 the analysis is motivated by contemporary urban economics theory involving a production function for the competitive sector of the economy industry which includes the level of composite services derived from service firms under monopolistic competition the outcome is potentially increasing returns to scale resulting from pecuniary externalities deriving from internal increasing returns in the monopolistic competition sector we extend the production function by also making log labour efficiency a function of log total public capital stock and log human capital stock leading to a simple and empirically tractable reduced form linking productivity level to density of employment human capital and public capital stock the model is further extended to include technological externalities or spillovers across provinces using panel data

rent income distribution and growth in an underdeveloped agrarian economy abstract a model is constructed to examine the determination of income distribution in an underdeveloped agrarian economy such as the indian one in which both rich capitalist farmers and poor subsistence farmers rent in land from landlords it is used to analyse the growth and income distributional consequences of different kinds of institutional and technological changes the possibilities of the growth of capitalism and the impact of industrial expansion

return migration wage differentials and the optimal migration duration in simple static models migration increases with the wage differential between host and home country in a dynamic framework and if migrations are temporary the size of the migrant population in the host country depends also on the migration duration this paper analyses optimal migration durations in a model which rationalises the decision of the migrant to return to his home country despite persistently higher wages in the host country the analysis shows that if migrations are temporary the optimal migration duration may decrease if the wage differential grows larger using micro data for germany the second part of the paper provides empirical evidence which is compatible with this hypothesis

agro export production and peasant land access examining the dynamic between adoption and accumulation abstract new technologies and export opportunities have often contributed to dualistic agrarian structure and intense social conflict in latin american a switching regression model developed in this paper explicitly links export adoption and land accumulation patterns controlling for pre existing differentiation processes applied to survey data gathered from peasant households in guatemala the model provides evidence of equitable structural change induced by a recent export boom in vegetable crops however the optimism of these results is tempered by consideration of the unfavorable longer term market dynamics confronting small scale producers

brazil s agrarian structure changes from 1970 through 1980 abstract structural patterns that accompany the growth and modernization of brazil s agrarian economy are identified despite increasing land concentration a rather large and disproportionate economic contribution of sizable numbers of very small farms is documented as is an enhanced vitality of larger farms meanwhile large quantities of unused agricultural land remain on many medium sized and large farms the expected inverse relationship between farm size and various measures of production per land unit is validated and reasons for the inverse relationship are deduced production is so large on small farms because their intensity of resource use overwhelms the facts that yields are greater and higher valued export crops are more usually found on large farms that capitalized intermediate and large farms seem destined to play a larger role in future production in brazil is argued but it is doubtful that the small farm and by implication the peasantry will disappear in the foreseeable future

the economic situation of first and second generation immigrants in france germany and the united kingdom a central concern about immigration is the integration into the labour market not only of the first generation but also of subsequent generations little comparative work exists for europe s largest economies france germany and the uk have all become perhaps unwittingly countries with large immigrant populations albeit with very different ethnic compositions today the descendants of these immigrants live and work in their parents destination countries this article presents and discusses comparative evidence on the performance of first and second generation immigrants in these countries in terms of education earnings and employment it is widely believed that many european countries have a serious problem with the integration of immigrants and their children leed 2006 many northern european countries have accumulated sizeable populations of immigrants but the lack of longterm strategies and policies to integrate these into societal structures and the labour market is often cited as one reason for social and economic exclusion of the children of these immigrants in the past decade southern european countries such as spain and italy have experienced similar if not larger immigrations than the large northern european economies france germany and the uk in the late 1950s to early 1970s again it seems that there is little thought devoted to long term strategies for immigrants and their descendants the experience of those countries that had large scale immigration in the last half of the twentieth century should be of importance for devising future immigration and integration policies however there is rather little hard evidence in the literature about the relative position of immigrants and their descendants in these countries in a manner that allows comparisons to be made in this article we aim to provide a comparative study of a number of outcomes education earnings and employment of both first and second generation immigrants of different origins in the three largest european economies france germany and the uk

the relation between farm size and farm productivity the role of family labor supervision and credit constraints abstract the paper shows that if the performance of hired farmhands is affected by supervision from family members and if the availability of credit is dependent on the amount of land owned then a systematic positive or negative relationship between per acre yields and farm size will prevail a model with no supervision effects on labor productivity would predict that yields are unaffected by farm size the paper also investigates the relation between land utilization and owned holding size when land rental possibilities are limited results are shown to be compatible with various observed patterns in ldcs

globalization and smallholders the adoption diffusion and welfare impact of non traditional export crops in guatemala summary this paper uses a duration analysis based on adoption data spanning 25 years from six communities in the central highlands of guatemala to explore how household characteristics and external trends play into both the adoption and diffusion processes of non traditional exports ntx among smallholders based on the analysis ntx production appeared to have delivered less prosperity to adopters than initially promised smallholders may lack capacity to overcome difficulties that inevitably arise in complex types of cultivations and in highly variable global agricultural markets governmental and non governmental organizations can attempt to mitigate these difficulties but market forces may overwhelm these efforts

not just a work permit eu citizenship and the consumption behavior of documented and undocumented immigrants this paper explores the impact of the 2007 european union enlargement on the consumption behavior of immigrant households using data from a unique italian survey and a difference in differences approach we find that the enlargement induced a significant consumption increase for the immigrant households from new member states both in the short and in the medium run this enlargement effect cannot be attributed to the mere legalization as it concerns both undocumented and documented immigrants albeit through different channels detailed information on immigrants legal status undocumented documented and sector of employment informal formal allows us to shed light on the exact mechanisms following the enlargement previously undocumented immigrants experienced an increase in the labor income by moving from the informal towards the formal economy whereas immigrants who were already working legally in italy benefitted from the increased probability of getting a permanent contract enhanced employment stability in turn reduced the uncertainty about future labor income leading to an increase in documented immigrants consumption expenditure

immigrant earnings assimilation estimates from longitudinal data analysis of longitudinal data for immigrants presents a more pessimistic portrait of immigrants economic success first the rate of growth of immigrant earnings was overstated in census based studies second the worsening of immigrant earnings for more recent arrival cohorts is deeper than previously suggested against these two negative findings one must keep in mind an important caveat the steeper cohort decline in earnings may be a sign of greater human capital investment by more recent immigrants longitudinal data suggest a strong degree of earnings convergence immigrants who start at lower earnings quickly make up a large part of the deficit relative to their immigrant counterparts

assimilation changes in cohort quality and the earnings of immigrants this paper reexamines the empirical basis for two facts that seem to be found in most cross section studies of immigrant earnings 1 the earnings of immigrants grow rapidly as they assimilate into the united states and 2 this rapid growth leads to many immigrants overtaking the earnings of the natives within 10 15 years after immigration using the 1970 and 1980 u s censuses this paper studies the earnings growth experienced by specific immigrant cohorts during the period 1970 80 it is found that within cohort growth is significantly smaller than the growth predicted by cross section regressions for most immigrant groups this differential is consistent with the hypothesis that there has been a secular decline in the quality of immigrants admitted to the united states

should african rural development strategies depend on smallholder farms an exploration of the inverse productivity hypothesis in africa most development strategies include efforts to improve the productivity of staple crops grown on smallholder farms an underlying premise is that small farms are productive in the african context and that smallholders do not forgo economies of scale a premise supported by the often observed phenomenon that staple cereal yields decline as the scale of production increases this paper explores a research design conundrum that encourages researchers who study the relationship between productivity and scale to use surveys with a narrow geographic reach when policy would be better served with studies based on wide and heterogeneous settings using a model of endogenous technology choice the authors explore the relationship between maize yields and scale using alternative data since rich descriptions of the decision environments that farmers face are needed to identify the applied technologies that generate the data improvements in the location specificity of the data should reduce the likelihood of identification errors and biased estimates however the analysis finds that the inverse productivity hypothesis holds up well across a broad platform of data despite obvious shortcomings with some components it also finds surprising consistency in the estimated scale elasticities

the effect of naturalization on wage growth a panel study of young male immigrants for young male immigrants naturalization facilitates assimilation into the u s labor market following naturalization immigrants gain access to public sector white collar and union jobs and wage growth accelerates consistent with removal of employment barriers the faster wage growth of immigrants who naturalize might alternatively result from greater human capital investment prior to naturalization stemming from a long term commitment to u s labor markets but there is no evidence that wage growth accelerates or the distribution of jobs improves until citizenship is attained finally the gains from naturalization are greater for immigrants from less developed countries and persist when we control for unobserved productivity

rural wages labor supply and land reform a theoretical and empirical analysis land reform is one of the most mentioned of the theoretical policy instruments discussed in the development literature yet relatively little attention has been paid to the wage rate consequences of such a program despite the fact that perhaps more than one half of rural families in a developing country receive a substantial proportion of their income from wage earnings in agriculture one reason for this lacuna may be that the determination of wages and family labor supply in the agricultural sector of ldcs has also been somewhat neglected particularly in the context of a heterogeneous labor force 2 the subsistence or institutional wage models of w arthur lewis john fei and gustav ranis and gerald rodgers for instance offer no theory of how rural wage levels or differentials are set and thus provide little guidance on how wage rates would be affected by changes in land ownership patterns more recently pranab bardhan and t n srinivasan david newbery and clive bell and pinhas zusman who formulate general equilibrium market or bargaining models determining endogenously the rental share paid by tenant sharecroppers have assumed that agricultural wage rates are exogenous or determined only by nonagricultural factors all of these models assume that rural labor is homogeneous another reason why the potential wage impact of a land reform program may have received little attention is that models of peasant family behavior such as those of a k sen dipak mazumdar and robert mabro typically embody two restrictive assumptions which would tend to make the equalization of landholdings appear wage augmenting although this implication has never been formally derived these assumptions are that 1 agriculture is dualistic with small farm families facing lower shadow prices of labor leisure than large farm landlords because of impediments to labor mobility and 2 agricultural households are dichotomous small farmers employ family labor and maximize utility while large farms only utilize wage labor and maximize profits data from a 1970 71 allindia survey of over 5 000 households collected by the national council of applied economic research3 indicate however that almost all cultivator households large and small participate actively in the labor market as either buyers or sellers of labor services with almost 88 percent of households cultivating a gross cropped area less than 1 5 acres utilizing some hired labor seventynine percent of these small farm households associate professor yale ujniversity the research embodied in this paper was supported in part by a grant from the ford and rockefeller foundations program in support of social science and legal research on population policy and with funds from the u s agency for international development under order no aid otr 1432 helpful suggestions and comments were provided by james l mccabe mark gersovitz an anonymous referee the managing editor and members of the economic growth center yale university i am also grateful to the members of the research program in development studies princeton university for the use of their facilities research assistance was provided by james devine anne morgan and roberta robson inotable exceptions are r albert berry mark gersovitz and m a rahman all of these authors however employ geometric analyses with differing assumptions leading to wholly different predictions regarding wage effects none consider the heterogeneity of agricultural labor pay attention to questions of stability or attempt to apply their models to data 2lnformation on the differential impact of alternative agricultural policies including land reform on sex or age specific wage rates is not only important in settling income distribution and equity issues but as suggested in an article by the author and robert evenson may have significant implications for population growth and schooling as well 3for a more detailed discussion of these data see the author

the effects of agricultural development policies on income distribution and technological change in agriculture abstract a framework for analyzing the effects of policies on income distribution is introduced for the case where farmers have both discrete adoption decisions relating to fixed cost and continuous adoption decisions relating to land allocation distributional effects depend on the underlying distributions of farm size risk preferences and credit availability absolute and relative equity effects of various policies are shown to depend critically on which of these factors are major barriers to adoption and on the stochastic relationship of returns to various cropping activities a fixed cost subsidy appears to be a dominant policy from an equity standpoint in most cases

access to citizenship and the economic assimilation of immigrants immigrants often have lower employment rates and earnings than natives our empirical analysis relies on two reforms generating exogenous variation in the waiting time for citizenship we find that faster access to citizenship improves the economic situation of immigrant women especially their labour market attachment with higher employment rates longer working hours and more stable jobs immigrants also invest more in host country specific skills like language and vocational training faster access to citizenship seems a powerful policy instrument to boost economic integration in countries with traditionally restrictive citizenship policies

level playing fields and laissez faire postliberal development strategy in inegalitarian agrarian economies focusing on the rural sector in latin america this paper explores the microeconomic linkages between distribution and growth which drive the possible reproduction of rural poverty over time the result of this exploration is a neostructuralist perspective which argues that actually existing laissez faire agrarian economies do not present a level playing field and that low wealth farms face disadvantages which tend to reproduce or even deepen sectoral inequality the paper then tries to identify the sorts of public policy and collective action which might modify the nature of growth and distribution in post liberalization agrarian market economy

technical efficiency of spanish manufacturing firms a panel data approach this paper estimates the levels of technical efficiency reached by spanish manufacturing firms through an econometric estimation of frontier production functions for fifteen sectors of activity and also obtains other relevant technological measurements of these productive processes such as the scale and the technical progress parameters the methodology used is the panel data methods schmidt and sickles 1984 the statistical source is provided by the survey on business strategies encuesta sobre estrategias empresariales a panel of data covering 855 spanish manufacturing firms observed over the period 1990 1994 our econometric results confirm the great heterogeneity in the firms efficiency the predominance of constant returns to scale and the great rate of technological progress

is the new immigration really so bad this article reviews the recent evidence on us immigration focusing on two key questions 1 does immigration reduce the labour market opportunities of less skilled natives 2 have immigrants who arrived after the 1965 immigration reform act been successfully assimilated overall evidence that immigrants have harmed the opportunities of less educated natives is scant on the question of assimilation the success of the us born children of immigrants is a key yardstick by this metric post 1965 immigrants are doing reasonably well even children of the least educated immigrant origin groups have closed most of the education gap with the children of natives

behavioural and material determinants of production relations in agriculture in this essay we develop a framework for analysing the major institutions governing the production and exchange of output and the primary factors of production in rural areas the analysis incorporates general considerations of risk and information constraints jointly with the principal material attributes of agriculture and of agricultural production factors the framework is used to analyse barriers to the existence of the major intertemporal and factor markets it is applied specifically to land scarce environments for which it provides an internally consistent explanation for many of the well documented institutional features of such settings in addition the analysis provides new implications for among other phenomena the inter relationships among ownership holdings operational scale family size and factor productivity for the scarcity of animal rental markets and use of animals as collateral for the renting out of land by small landowners and for the existence of plantations for certain crops

change in state power international conditions and peasant producers the case of kenya arguments for food self sufficiency at the level of small scale farms invariably refer to the need for national self sufficiency this article shows that state inspired attempts to impose self sufficiency upon specialised middle peasant producers in kenya have had the effect of reducing the supply of marketed food and increasing food imports a change in the character of presidential power has also inhibited food production by large scale farms and this together with imported price shocks has reduced the supply of food for commercialised peasants who produce for international markets only very specific political conditions make it possible for international and internal circuits of capital and exchange to be harmonised through the power of a nation state

the inverse relationship between productivity and farm size a test using regional data from india the farm size productivity debate for india needs little introduction it has occupied a prominent position in the agricultural economics literature since 1962 when sen observed that indian farm management data revealed an inverse relationship between farm size and yields per acre since then no fewer than twenty journal papers have appeared on this subject sen 1975 the objective of this paper is to test two hypotheses that were either not given enough attention or left unresolved in the debate the first is that the inverse relationship is valid for all of indian agriculture it is not merely a phenomenon observed in a few sample villages this means a test of the hypothesis that the small farm sector as a whole is more productive than the large farm sector in indian agriculture the second hypothesis is that the inverse relationship is true only of a traditional agriculture and that it breaks down with technical progress a methodology is developed below which uses cross sectional regional data to test the two hypotheses simultaneously on applying this methodology to indian district level data 272 districts for 1970 71 it is found that the hypothesis of the small farm sector being more productive than the large farm sector cannot be rejected at low levels of agricultural technology but can be rejected at higher levels this suggests that the inverse relationship between yields and farm size although valid for a traditional agriculture cannot be assumed to exist in an agriculture experiencing technical change

equilibrium credit rationing of small farm agriculture it is often argued that externally imposed contractual restrictions lead to inequitable credit rationing this paper argues that unrestricted laissez faire markets may also inequitably ration credit a formal model which grants borrowers autonomy in credit application and use demonstrates that adverse incentive and selection effects may cause banks to endogenously impose interest rate restrictions and ration small farms out of the credit market consequently liberalization of financial markets may be insufficient to guarantee small farms access to credit

non traditional crops traditional constraints long term welfare impacts of export crop adoption among guatemalan smallholders this study documents the long term welfare effects of household non traditional agricultural export ntx adoption the analysis uses a unique panel dataset which spans the period 1985 2005 and employs difference in differences estimation to investigate the long term impact of non traditional agricultural export adoption on changes in household consumption status and asset position in the central highlands of guatemala given the heterogeneity in adoption patterns the analysis differentiates the impact estimates based on a classification of households that takes into account the timing and duration of non traditional agricultural export adoption the results show that while on average welfare levels have improved for all households irrespective of adoption status and duration the extent of improvement has varied across groups long term adopters exhibit the smallest increase in the lapse of two decades in spite of some early gains conversely early adopters who withdrew from non traditional agricultural export production after reaping the benefits of the boom period of the 1980s are found to have fared better and shown greater improvements in durable asset position and housing conditions than any other category

training wages and sample selection estimating sharp bounds on treatment effects this paper empirically assesses the wage effects of the job corps program one of the largest federally funded job training programs in the u s even with the aid of a randomized experiment the impact of a training program on wages is difficult to study because of sample selection a pervasive problem in applied microeconometric research wage rates are only observed for those who are employed and employment status itself may be affected by the training program this paper develops an intuitive trimming procedure for bounding average treatment effects in the presence of sample selection in contrast to existing methods the procedure requires neither exclusion restrictions nor a bounded support for the outcome of interest identification results estimators and their asymptotic distribution are presented the bounds suggest that the program raised wages consistent with the notion that the job corps raises earnings by increasing human capital rather than solely through encouraging work the estimator is generally applicable to typical treatment evaluation problems in which there is nonrandom sample selection attrition copyright wiley blackwell