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

rational ponzi games when can a government run a rational ponzi game i e issue debt and never pay back any interest or principal the transversalit y condition of each individual implies that such schemes require an i nfinity of lenders given this horizons are unimportant ponzi games cannot be ruled out by assuming that agents have infinite horizons the authors point out both the basic similarity of and some key diff erences between rational ponzi games and asset price bubbles or fiat money regarding international debt the analysis implies that what matters for the feasibility of rational ponzi games are conditions in the lenders not the borrowers economy copyright 1988 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

has discretionary learning declined during the lisbon agenda a cross sectional and longitudinal study of work organization in european nations this article explores changes in the organization of work in european nations over 2000 2010 results show a decline in the discretionary learning dl periods of economic expansion tend to be dl enhancing while periods of economic stagnation tend to reinforce the use of more hierarchical forms of work organization more generally the results show that cross country comparisons do not provide a sound basis for drawing conclusions about how the evolution of national labor market policies impact on changes in work organization over time within nations

time preference and international lending and borrowing in an overlapping generations model two economies represented by diamond type overlapping generations models and differing only in their pure rates of time preference are joined together capital formation balance of payments behavior and welfare are compared under autarky and openness with a positive natural rate of growth the low time preference country runs a current account surplus in the steady state but not necessarily outside it if preexisting capital is not shiftable between countries integration in the world economy makes the high time preference country worse off in the short run the ranking of stationary utility levels under autarky and openness is ambiguous

managing technological development lessons from the newly industrializing countries this survey looks at the technological development of the newly industrializing countries to draw some important lessons for firms and governments in other developing countries first inventing products and processes is not at the center of the technological development needed for successful industrialization it is at the fringe what is at the center is acquiring the capabilities needed for efficient production and investment second some countries have overemphasized the drive for technological self sufficiency and paid a high price in poor productivity what makes the best economic sense is to combine foreign and local technological elements and to do this in a way that progressively develops local capabilities in areas where they can be more efficient third the acquisition of technological capability does not come merely from experience though experience is important fourth the economic environment through its influence on the technological efforts of firms is very important in determining the productivity of a country s resources

developing technological capabilities in agro industry ghana s experience with fresh pineapple exports abstract this article examines the emergence and trajectory of a new agro industry in ghana the pineapple export industry using the technological capabilities approach it explains the limited expansion of the industry and its declining competitiveness in the face of new competition by looking at how ghanaian exporters developed technological capabilities initially and the incentives and disincentives to building on those capabilities the article argues that at the heart of the industry s crisis was an inability to further develop technological capabilities the crisis had systemic features that have broader implications for developing new agro industries in ghana as well as other african countries

viewpoint customized competitiveness strategies for horticultural exporters central america focus with lessons from and for other regions abstract this paper presents the idea of customized competitiveness as a strategy necessary for overall competitiveness in particular in globalized horticulture markets and in the second round of globalization that started in the mid late 1990s customized competitiveness is additional and complementary to basic structural competitiveness that is the focus of competitiveness debates today and for the past decade the paper illustrates the need for this new strategy using the example of central america highlighting the severe challenges similar to those facing other developing regions it faces in the second round of globalization of horticulture markets magnified by market liberalization culminating recently in implementation of cafta the paper then illustrates solutions by providing examples of cutting edge programs in various developing countries of de facto customized competitiveness in the form of public private partnerships and the provision of public and semi public goods to help their exporters access and succeed in the new markets we conclude with policy implications for central america and other developing regions

is there a pilot in the chain identifying the key drivers of change in the fresh pineapple sector high value export oriented agriculture is today considered as a means of integrating smallholders into the world economy this paper examines the geographic and organisational changes that have taken place in the fresh pineapple sector over the past 50 years we begin with a historical analysis of the changes in leadership among producer countries namely the dethroning of cote d ivoire by costa rica we show that this geographical shift has been accompanied by massive organisational changes the pineapple sector is increasingly driven by large downstream actors who derive their power from the ability to impose their definition of quality to the whole chain and from economies of scale and scope although varietal innovation plays a key role throughout the period commercial and logistical innovation are of increasing strategic importance however because of the constraints imposed by the concerned supply chains small farmers risk being excluded or marginalized

creating and maintaining global connections agro business and the precarious making of fresh cut markets abstract this article reconstructs the evolution of a multinational fruit processing company from ghana starting from the perspective that firms more generally aim at achieving stability in intra and extra organisational relations the article explores the practical means organisational forms resources technologies strategies and routines through which the case study company achieved relational stability in global markets but also shows how this was eroded in changing market environments extending out from this case study the article also addresses the questions why some agro business firms in africa have developed more sophisticated high value market connections while others have not and whether foreign direct investments can serve as catalysts for agro industrialisation

job polarization in europe the structure of employment is always changing and economists are always trying to understand those changes in the 1990s the idea of skill biased technological change sbtc was used to understand the shift in employment toward more educated workers see david h autor and lawrence f katz 1999 for a survey however in recent years it has become appar ent that a more nuanced approach is needed the idea of sbtc might lead one to predict a uni form shift in employment away from low skilled and toward high skilled occupations but studies for the united states autor katz and melissa s kearney 2006 and the united kingdom goos and manning 2007 have shown that there is growth in employment in both the high est skilled professional and managerial and lowest skilled personal services occupations with declining employment in the middle of the distribution manufacturing and routine office jobs this is what goos and manning 2007 term job polarization although see the introduc tion to goos and manning 2007 for antecedents of these ideas there are several hypotheses about the rea sons for job polarization first the routiniza tion hypothesis first put forward by autor frank levy and richard murnane 2003 sug gests that the effect of technological progress is to replace routine labor which tends to be clerical and craft jobs in the middle of the wage distribution second there is the view that globalization in general and offshoring in par ticular is an important source of change in the job structure in the richest countries see for example alan s blinder 2007 third there may be a link between job polarization and

the welfare economics of cooperative and noncooperative fiscal policy abstract in the absence of ricardian equivalence lump sum transfers between households within a country can alter the pattern of national saving and consumption allowing the government to exploit the country s size in world trade and in international borrowing and lending redistribution across generations through unfunded social security retirement schemes or public sector deficit finance with lump sum taxes and transfers enables a national planner to affect both the static and intertemporal terms of trade when trade restrictions or discriminatory taxation of asset income are unavailable due to international agreements the case for cooperative fiscal policy formation by governments of interdependent economies is examined in an overlapping generations economy with internationally perfectly mobile capital and a single relative price the world interest rate the optimum unfunded social security scheme when no distortionary tax instruments are allowed is derived for a government with nationalistic social preferences this policy targets both intergenerational distribution objectives and interest rate objectives the absence of distortionary taxes implies that no overall loss in world surplus need result from the strategic use of lump sum transfers so that coordination of intergenerational transfers is unnecessary for pareto optimality when internationally enjoyed public goods are introduced allocational efficiency requires cooperative selection of national exhaustive public spending programs but it does not demand that the financing of public expenditures be coordinated

success in high value horticultural export markets for the small farmers the case of mahagrapes in india summary in spite of being the second largest horticultural producer in the world india is a failed exporter mainly because of the inability to meet the food safety standards hence successes in horticultural exports are rare here we study one unique success story mahagrapes a marketing partner to farmer cooperatives attributing its success to a combination of collective action and public private partnerships our results indicate that mahagrapes farmers earn significantly higher income vis a vis their outside marketing option and smallholders face no bias in selection together with the farmer s ability to consistently meet standards this implies that the model can be scaled up 2008 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

directly unproductive profit seeking dup activities this paper propses directly unproductive profit seeking dup activities as a general concept that embraces a wide range of recently analyzed economic activities including the subset of rent seeking activities considered by krueger it then proceeds to provide a synthesis and generalization of the welfare theoretic analysis of such activities by developing a fourfold categorization of cases depending on the levels of distortions before and after the dup activity thus a unification and overview of the subject are achieved

how europe s economies learn a comparison of work organization and innovation mode for the eu 15 this article explores the link between the organization of work and innovation by developing national aggregate indicators for the eu member states of organizational forms and innovation modes how firms innovate the organizational indicators are constructed from the third european survey of working conditions results for 8081 salaried employees in 2000 the innovation mode indicators are calculated using the results of the third community innovation survey cis 3 for innovation activities between 1998 and 2000 the analysis shows that in nations where work is organized to support high levels of discretion in solving complex problems firms tend to be more active in terms of innovations developed through their in house creative efforts in countries where learning and problem solving on the job are more constrained and little discretion is left to the employee firms tend to engage in a supplier dominated innovation strategy their technological renewal depends more on the absorption of innovations developed elsewhere these patterns remain when we divide the economies into manufacturing and services the results suggest that in order to understand national systems of innovation it is necessary to bring the mode of organization of work into the analysis early conceptions of national innovation systems were built upon an analysis of interactive learning between producers and users now the analysis needs to be founded also on an understanding of how people interact and learn at the workplace in different national economies the results also suggest that european policy efforts to improve innovation performance as part of the revised lisbon strategy would benefit from a stronger focus on the diffusion of innovative forms of work organization a step in this direction would be to develop indicators of work organization that could be directly linked to innovation performance

how citizens participate in macroeconomic policy international experience and implications for poverty reduction summary many developing and transitioning countries have difficulty sticking to sound macroeconomic policy international donors are pushing recipient countries to forge a public consensus on macroeconomic policy as a means to enhance sustainability and impacts on the poor finance and budget officials central bank staff and economic policymakers however often assume that citizens cannot understand or contribute to macroeconomic policy yet the poor often do not trust the government to make the right decisions for them how can citizen participation help bridge this gap based on a review of international experience the paper explores this question and identifies how development administrators can employ civic participation in macroeconomic policy the discussion highlights where citizens have the greatest options for participation and notes the impacts participation can have on fostering policies and outcomes that target poverty reduction 2003 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

can public private partnerships leverage private investment in agricultural value chains in africa a preliminary review summary public private partnerships ppps may be one way of increasing the level of private sector investment into poorly performing agricultural value chains this paper considers a range of ppp mechanisms that respond to different market failures affecting such chains and draws on principal agent theory to illustrate the challenges it reviews emerging experience with a number of these mechanisms along with experience from other sectors that may shed light on generic problems of implementing ppps in africa while finding some positive impacts on investment it notes that state failures can also undermine ppp effectiveness as the evidence base is still limited it calls on organizations promoting innovative ppps to disclose available information for critical examination

learning adjustment and economic development transforming firms the state and associations in chile abstract this article views learning processes as key to successful economic adjustment it discusses results of research conducted in chile focused on the agroindustry and footwear sectors it identifies specific problems that large and small firms face to upgrade production and stresses the limits of focusing exclusively on market reforms for achieving growth the article discusses how institutions reshape to facilitate learning and improve performance in chile particularly the relations between firms the reorientation of trade associations and the state s role as facilitator of collective learning processes

governance and trade in fresh vegetables the impact of uk supermarkets on the african horticulture industry production of fresh vegetables for export has grown rapidly in a number of countries in sub saharan africa over the last decade this trade brings producers and exporters based in africa together with importers and retailers in europe large retailers in europe play a decisive role in structuring the production and processing of fresh vegetables exported from africa the requirements they specify for cost quality delivery product variety innovation food safety and quality systems help top determine what types of producers and processors are able to gain access to the fresh vegetables chain and the activities they must carry out the control over the fresh vegetables trade exercised by uk supermarkets has clear consequences for inclusion and exclusion of producers and exporters of differing types and for the long term prospects for the fresh vegetables industry in the two major exporting countries studied kenya and zimbabwe

organizational change and skill accumulation we model the links between skills and changes in work organization as the proportion of skilled workers increases the economy travels through a sequence of organizational equilibria we show that as the relative supply of skills increases the organization of work becomes more decentralized both skilled and unskilled workers become more autonomous and perform a wider range of tasks decentralization spreads across firms at the expense of the old centralized organization based on a strict division of labor moreover as firms switch to decentralization their employment structure becomes more homogeneous and wage inequality stops decreasing these predictions are compared with empirical evidence based on french establishment level data and we find support for both of them this suggests that the long term increase in the skill level of the workforce may have been one important factor driving the recent introduction of new work practices by a large number of firms

collective efficiency growth path for small scale industry this study is concerned with the growth of small local industry in developing countries and explores one particular route for understanding and fostering such growth it focuses on the clustering of firms and the competitive advantage which they derive from local external economies and joint action captured in the concept of collective efficiency following a conceptual discussion the article explores the economic and institutional conditions which enhance or hinder collective efficiency this includes a case study which suggests that responding to opportunity and crisis requires shifting from mere reliance on external economies to joint action and from ascribed to earned trust

the role of input vouchers in modernizing the fresh fruit and vegetable market in turkey contractual arrangements between farmers and traders aiming at providing input credit in return for output selling have been widely studied in the literature on agricultural economics nonetheless there is one issue which is barely mentioned in the literature how to enforce the contract terms when traders offer credit in cash rather than input advances this article aims to describe an innovation in farming contracts used by fresh fruit and vegetable wholesalers in turkey which involves a kind of private voucher system drawing on original data collected from wholesalers a segment in the supply chain hardly covered in the literature we investigate the factors determining contract adoption using a two limit tobit model our results suggest that this private voucher system contributes to supply chain coordination and facilitates smallholder farmer participation in export and supermarket channels which are growing rapidly in this developing country resume d auteur

has the quality of working life improved in the eu 15 between 1995 and 2005 this paper provides a mapping of quality of work and measures its evolution between 1995 and 2005 by using european working conditions surveys with a multilevel modelling we assess the sensitivity of observed trends to composition effects and country effects results suggest a decreasing trend in the quality of work working conditions have deteriorated while work has become more intense and less complex in germany and italy all indicators have worsened while other european countries have more mixed results

economic development as self discovery in the presence of uncertainty about what a country can be good at producing there can be great social value to discovering costs of domestic activities because such discoveries can be easily imitated we develop a general equilibrium framework for a small open economy to clarify the analytical and normative issues we highlight two failures of the laissez faire outcome there is too little investment and entrepreneurship ex ante and too much production diversification ex post optimal policy consists of counteracting these distortions to encourage investments in the modern sector ex ante but to rationalize production ex post we provide some informal evidence on the building blocks of our model

who benefits most from employee involvement firms or workers employee involvement ei programs are the leading edge form of personnel and labor relations in the united states while many managers believe that these programs raise productivity and profits the statistical evidence that ei improves the performance of firms is equivocal the coefficients on measures of ei in production functions are usually positive but often insignificant or small commission on the future of worker management relations 1994 ch 2 peter cappelli and david neumark 1999 or contingent on other factors sandra e black and lisa m lynch 1997 casey ichniowski et al 1997 a detailed case study of ei has further confirmed these small effects that were found in large data sets kleiner et al 1999 if ei programs do not greatly affect productivity why does business think so highly of them in this study we argue that the main beneficiaries of ei are workers and managers we estimate the effects of ei on productivity using panel data on firms and the effects of ei on workers using a survey of employees and find that ei barely affects firm productivity but substantially improves worker well being we offer two explanations for this result

public private partnerships and collective action in high value fruit and vegetable supply chains accessing developed country food markets entails meeting stringent food safety requirements food retailers impose protocols relating to pesticide residues field and pack house operations and traceability to enable smallholders to remain competitive in such a system new institutional arrangements are required in particular public private partnerships can play a key role in creating farm to fork linkages that can satisfy market demands for food safety while retaining smallholders in the supply chain furthermore organized producer groups monitoring their own food safety standards through collective action often become attractive to buyers who are looking for ways to ensure traceability and reduce transaction costs this paper compares the ways in which small producers of fruits and vegetables in kenya and india have coped with increased demands for food safety from their main export markets

farmer organization collective action and market access in meso america abstract farmer organization and collective action are often seen as key factors in enhancing farmers access to markets often too little attention is directed at a the most appropriate types of organization b whether organization makes less or more sense in the case of producers of an undifferentiated commodity or a higher value product c whether the public or private sector is best placed to support farmer organizations and d the conditions necessary for ensuring their economic viability research in mexico and central america explored these issues for commodity maize and high value vegetables respectively the benefits of farmer organization are more evident in the vegetable sector characterized by high transaction costs associated with market access however horticultural farmer organizations in honduras and el salvador include less than 5 of total horticultural producers this is possibly due to farmer organizations limited business skills and non replicable organizational models there is less incentive for maize farmers to organize to access output markets as the transaction costs are relatively low the benefits of maize farmer organization are clearer when it comes to accessing inputs such as credit seed and fertilizer farmer organization is a critical factor in making markets work for the poor but the role and timing of public and private investment in these organizations is poorly understood

linking smallholder farmers to markets on extensive and intensive margins evidence from nicaragua abstract access to modern commercialization channels is key for smallholder farmers to move away from subsistence farming and overcome poverty however achieving that goal is challenging for smallholders given their lack of appropriate managerial practices production technology and infrastructure this paper examines the association between receiving trainings in two distinct entrepreneurial practices one direct at the individual and farmer association level and another indirect at the community level and commercialization in non local markets at the extensive and intensive margins we exploit a panel dataset of bean producers in nicaragua that participated in an ngo program implemented between 2007 and 2012 we find opposite results for the two market linkage activities especially on the intensive margin or volume of sales while reciving direct training on entrepreneurial practices ep is positively associated with commercialization training on municipality engagement me activities is negatively associated these correlation patterns are mainly observed among entrant farmers as opposed to those already participating in commercial markets prior to the program implementation we also find varying results for me activities by plot size and leadership position additional estimations show that training activities that are positively correlated with bean commercialization are not necessarily correlated with the commercialization of other crops and vice versa

fiscal policy coordination and emu a dynamic game approach abstract this paper examines the case for fiscal policy coordination in a european economic and monetary union emu a two bloc model with two market structures is examined emu producing a single homogeneous good in both blocs emu1 and a two good emu emu2 where each bloc produces a single home good the european central bank sets monetary policy so as to achieve credibly low inflation rates we find that for emu2 as relative prices can change countries have an incentive to improve their terms of trade leading to an inefficient noncooperative outcome which can be avoided by cooperation

limits of state strength toward an institutionalist view of economic development nomic development attempted to explain why growth did not occur occurred slowly or occurred in a distorted dependent form the impressive economic performances of the east asian newly industrialized countries nics have changed this many noneconomists as well as some economists are now focusing on the political bases of development rather than underdevelopment there are differences among these analysts some distance themselves from neoclassical economics by emphasizing the importance of getting the prices wrong others acknowledge the utility of market conforming policies but common to recent studies of nics is the belief that growthpromoting economic policies require certain types of domestic political institutions analysts have emphasized the utility of strong states in this regard 2 through an analysis of efforts to promote local auto manufacturing in southeast as well as east asia this article argues for an institutionalist approach to development that goes beyond statism the resolution of collective action problems is central to statist writings development requires that private returns to individual activities be brought in line with the broader needs of national development 3 two factors are presumed to obstruct such harmonization in developing