what could promote farmers to replace chemical fertilizers with organic fertilizers abstract to lessen the negative environmental impact of chemical fertilizers replacing chemical fertilizers with more organic fertilizers for famers is a good choice however most of the farmers would like to use chemical fertilizers instead of organic fertilizers in developing countries mainly because they fear that they may lose income if they use organic fertilizers instead of chemical fertilizers from this point policy makers need to find strategies to incentivize farmers to use organic fertilizers instead of chemical fertilizers therefore a randomly selected household survey on the use of chemical and organic fertilizers by apple growers in china was conducted from july 2016 to october 2016 its aim is to find out what could promote farmers to replace chemical fertilizers with organic fertilizers partially or completely we have analyzed farmers choices involving prospect utility risk and environment based on kahneman s prospect theory and lewin s field theory twelve psychological and socio economic variables were included in a tobit regression model to explain farmers choice between organic fertilizers and chemical fertilizers we find that membership in agriculture cooperatives subsidies on organic fertilizers and farm size play positive roles in influencing farmers choice of organic fertilizers instead of chemical fertilizers the results will be helpful to update extension policy of organic fertilizers

fertilization under uncertainty an analysis based on producer yield expectations optimal nitrogen fertilizer levels are computed for a sample of texas coastal bend grain sorghum producers based on their assessed subjective conditional yield and price probabilities utility measures and cost information producers mean yield expectations were substantially greater than experimental yield response and their perceptions of the effects of nitrogen on yield variability were contrary to usual characterization of nitrogen as a risk increasing input optimal fertilizer levels based on expected utility maximization represent actual fertilizer use somewhat better than those based on expected profit maximization however both calculated levels were high relative to actual fertilizer use

nutrient intake of the poor and its implications for the nutritional effect of cereal price subsidies evidence from china summary we incorporate habit formation into an analysis of the effect of cereal price changes on the nutrient intake of the poor in china we find that the poor s nutrient intake responds asymmetrically to declines and increases in cereal prices and that the asymmetric response of their fat intake may be due to habit formation our results also imply that introducing cereal price subsidies can increase their total energy intake by increasing their calorie intake from fat and protein while ending such subsidies would insignificantly affect their total energy intake but further increase their calorie intake from fat and protein

pitfalls in the measurement of real exchange rate effects on agriculture abstract studies of the effects of real exchange rates on agriculture commonly assume that these effects can be identified as those which pertain to traded goods in the standard australian model of an open economy further it is common to assume that the indirect effects of changes in the real exchange rate have the same impact on the various production activities within agriculture this paper discusses the extent to which these stylized facts reflect reality focusing in particular on the extent of tradibility in agricultural markets the irrelevance of results based on free trade equilibria to policy analyses and the importance of the characteristics of crop production functions in estimating the effects of real exchange rate changes ignoring these considerations can cause errors in the measurement of policy effects on agricultural incentives

declining nutrient intake in a growing china does household heterogeneity matter summary this paper uses chinese household data for 1989 2009 to explain why mean nutrient intake has declined despite economic growth we focus on household heterogeneity in nutrient intake response to increases in household income allowing for its endogeneity a quantile instrumental variable fixed effects panel estimation shows that rising income tends to reduce inequality in macronutrient intake in both urban and rural areas in 2004 09 this is driven by increases in nutrient intake for the urban nutrient poor and falls in nutrient intake for the rural nutrient non poor on the other hand fluctuations in prices of meat eggs and oil increase nutrition poverty

an empirical assessment of endogeneity issues in demand analysis for differentiated products this article explores the issue of price and expenditure endogeneity in empirical demand analysis the analysis focuses on the u s carbonated soft drink market we test the null hypothesis that price and expenditures are exogenous in the demand for carbonated soft drinks using an almost ideal demand system aids specification we strongly reject exogeneity for both prices and expenditures we find that accounting for price expenditures endogeneity significantly impacts demand elasticity estimates we also evaluate the implications of endogeneity issues for testing weak separability over the last few decades strong linkages between economic theory and econometric methods have stimulated much empirical analysis of consumer behavior e g deaton and muellbauer 1980b the basic approach involves estimating marshallian demand functions expressing quantities consumed as functions of prices and household expenditures the usual practice is to treat prices and expenditure as exogenous variables in this article we question the validity of these exogeneity assumptions especially when focusing on the demand for differentiated products 1 this is particularly important to the extent that food consumption typically involves differentiated products in market economies we also examine the interactions between endogeneity of prices expenditure in demand systems and the testing for weak separability of consumer preferences

nonparametric analysis of technical pure technical and scale efficiencies for food crop production in east java indonesia abstract nonparametric analysis of technical efficiency for irrigated farms in the madiun regency in the west central part of east java indonesia is conducted using linear programming techniques this procedure allows the relative technical efficiency for each farm to be determined and for inefficiencies to be decomposed into pure technical inefficiency and scale inefficiency and does not require restrictions or assumptions regarding functional form to be placed on the data farmers in madiun generally are efficient relative to each other farmers operating inefficiently do so more often because of scale inefficiencies rather than pure technical inefficiencies a majority of the farms operate in the region of decreasing returns to scale rather than increasing returns to scale farmer age the level of diversification of cropping activities and high school education were found to be related to technical efficiency in the rainy season under irrigated conditions other socioeconomic factors were not statistically significant the results imply that inefficient farms use excessive levels of inputs particularly nitrogen fertilizer this is perhaps due to the lingering effects of past input subsidization policies particularly of fertilizers in indonesia or to risk reducing behavior the results also imply that current government policies to encourage diversification of cropping practices in java may lead to greater technical inefficiencies in production in addition extension education targeted to younger farmers with low levels of formal education would improve efficiency

the relevance of p star analysis to uk monetary policy recent articles have attempted to restore the use of a simple measure of the money supply as an indicator of future price levels p star and to reestablish a causal link from money to prices in this paper we argue that the p star approach is flawed it is certainly more complex than traditional monetarist approaches but the fundamental questions of causality are in no way either affected or resolved we argue that the p star relationship does not have a causal link with prices but rather the causality runs from prices to money we also find that there is some causality running from money to real income so that monetary conditions do seem to have some predictive power for future levels of activity copyright 1994 by royal economic society

dynamic decisions under risk application of ito stochastic control in agriculture in agricultural economics most studies of dynamic decisions under risk have been empirical with less emphasis on theory in finance resource economics and general economics however ito stochastic control is popular for theoretical work optimal decisions can be characterized using the powerful ito stochastic calculus this paper describes the assumptions and methods of ito control constructs a dynamic model of agricultural decisions under risk and illustrates with four examples

are estimates of calorie income fxelasticities too high a recalibration of the plausible range abstract the wide range of calorie income elasticities in the literature results in large part from the particular calorie and income variables used for estimation elasticities across four estimation techniques and four calorie income variable pairs for a sample of philippine farm households ranged from 0 03 to 0 59 estimates associated with calorie availability are biased upwards first because random errors in measuring food purchases are transmitted by construction both to calorie availability and total expenditures and second because the residual difference between family calorie intake and household calorie availability will often increase with income the calorie intake total expenditure variable pair gives the preferred elasticity estimate in the 0 08 0 14 range

pay for percentile we propose an incentive scheme for educators that links compensation to the ranks of their students within comparison sets under certain conditions this scheme induces teachers to allocate socially optimal levels of effort moreover because this scheme employs only ordinal information it allows education authorities to employ completely new assessments at each testing date without ever having to equate various assessments this removes incentives for teachers to teach to a particular assessment form and eliminates opportunities to influence reward pay by corrupting assessment scales education authorities can employ separate no stakes assessment systems to track trends in scaled measures of student achievement jel i21 i28 j33 j45

the effect of income on demand for food in poor countries are our food consumption databases giving us reliable estimates abstract cross section estimates of income elasticities for food staples in the aggregate based on quantity information from household food expenditure surveys are often in the 0 3 0 6 range it is shown that differences in per capita calorie intakes across income groups implied by these income elasticities are grossly inconsistent with observed differences in bodyweights moreover time series data frequently indicate that national per capita consumption of food staples in the aggregate remains constant even as per capita gross national product rises substantially cross section income elasticity estimates are biased upwards due to the failure of food expenditure surveys to undertake an accurate accounting of food transfers from high to low income groups biases which are not generated by survey techniques which record food intakes directly

prospect theory and risk preferences of oregon seed producers prospect theory relates risk preference classifications to gains and losses from a reference income level this study applies prospect theory to reinterpret historical studies of risk preferences of oregon grass seed growers a significant relationship between changes in classifications of preferences and changes in income was found results indicated that those who lost income were concentrated in the category of changing to risk preferrers income changes calculated from crop combinations were also found to be correlated in a theoretically correct pattern with positive measures of risk from crop enterprises the research therefore is consistent with further applications of prospect theory to farm management

an mcdm analysis of agricultural risk aversion abstract in modelling farm systems it is widely accepted that risk plays a central role furthermore farmers risk aversion determines their decisions in both the short and the long run this paper presents a methodology based on multiple criteria mathematical programming to obtain relative and absolute risk aversion coefficients we rely on multiattribute utility theory to elicit a separable additive multiattribute utility function and estimate the risk aversion coefficients and apply this methodology to an irrigated area of northern spain the results show a wide variety of attitudes to risk among farmers who usually exhibit decreasing absolute risk aversion and constant relative risk aversion

universal food security program and nutritional intake evidence from the hunger prone kbk districts in odisha this article provides evidence on the role of consumer food subsidies in improving nutritional intake and diet quality by evaluating the expansion of the government food assistance program coverage in the hunger prone state of odisha in india in 8 districts of odisha popularly known as the kalahandi balangir koraput kbk region which is notable for extreme poverty and starvation deaths the government did away with the targeted food assistance program in 2008 and made the scheme universal using a difference in difference methodology over two repeated cross sectional household surveys this article finds that the shift from targeted to a universal food security program in the kbk region of odisha has led to an improvement in the household nutritional intake and diet quality further examination suggests that proportion of households consuming below the recommended dietary allowance of calorie fats and protein has declined significantly in this region post the intervention

estimating the demand for calories in india this article examines the long run relationship between per capita calorie intake per capita income and food prices using aggregate data for india 1961 1992 cointegration analysis yields an income elasticity of calorie intake of 0 34 while the food price elasticity is insignificant thus economic growth in india as measured by increasing per capita income has significantly improved calorie intake future income growth can alleviate further inadequate nutrition however significant improvements in calorie intake cannot be made directly by food subsidies a further result is that calorie intake is granger caused by income and not vice versa income generation is unconstrained by calorie intake

loss aversion in a consumption savings model abstract we propose a model of consumption and saving based on kahneman and tversky s prospect theory that implies a fundamental asymmetry in consumption behavior inconsistent with other models of consumption when there is sufficient income uncertainty a person resists lowering consumption in response to bad news about future income this resistance is greater than the resistance to increasing consumption in response to good news we present empirical evidence from five countries that confirms this behavior

tournament incentives for teachers evidence from a scaled up intervention in chile abstractin this article we evaluate the effects of the introduction of group monetary incentives for teachers based on a school performance tournament in chile this is particularly relevant to analyze since it is the only scaled up incentive program for teachers in the world we evaluate the tournament effect that is the effect of introducing the incentive scheme on all participant schools both winning and losing we compare public and private subsidized schools to private fee paying schools following a matched difference in difference and using three different empirical approaches we explore the heterogeneous impact of the treatment through the distribution of the probability of winning the results indicate a positive and significant tournament effect especially for schools that are very likely to win which we call on the money

the effect of price and income changes on food energy intake in sri lanka data is used to analyze the food acquisition behavior of households from a 1980 81 survey designed to be nationally sectorally and regionally representative of sri lanka the poor are shown to be much more responsive to price and income changes than other income groups the urban population generally exhibits lower income elasticities of demand for food commodities the poor appear to efficient substitutors thereby mitigating the effects of a price change on caloric intake the important exception is rice whose elasticity of calorie consumption with respect to price was about 4 times higher than for any other commodity the reluctance of households to substitute for rice even when faced with rising prices coupled with its large budget share show rice to be the most important consumption good higher rice prices are an important determinant of poverty for landless and urban workers moderating food prices preferably through technological change is a key ingredient to raising consumption among the poor simulations show that even if there are rapid and proportional increases in expenditures of all income groups this will not dramatically increase caloric intake among the poor however if the absolute value of the increase in real expenditures were distributed equally to all households there would be a marked increase in the of households consuming an adequate diet

nutrition labour productivity and labour supply of men and women in ghana ghana s population is expected to increase from 14 1 million in 1990 to 18 7 million in 2000 bumb et al 1994 this growth in population along with growth in per capita income and urbanisation will create increased demand for food before the launching of the economic reform programme in 1983 ghana s food production had fallen to an abysmally low level in response to the general deterioration in the economy output of food and cash crops declined at a rate of 0 3 percent per year between 1970 and 1980 cereal production which exceeded domestic demand by some 200 000 tonnes in 1971 73 registered a deficit of over 300 000 tonnes in 1981 83 production of starchy staples fell from 7 9 million tonnes to 4 1 million tonnes between 1974 and 1981 as a result of declining food output combined with a rising population per capita food availability in 1981 83 was 30 percent lower than it was in 1975 efforts made under the economic recovery programme have improved the food supply situation in the country although food production levels still remain low output levels of cocoyam and plantain have not reached their average levels in the early 1970 s table 9 1

can targeted food programs improve nutrition an empirical analysis of india s public distribution system abstract despite the widespread belief that a substantial assault on poverty requires targeting scarce resources toward the poor practitioners frequently claim that targeted programs deliver fewer benefits to poor households than do universal programs this article evaluates this concern through an analysis of india s targeted food distribution program the public distribution system it first examines the case for targeting by assessing the responsiveness of caloric intake to the amount of the food grain subsidy a low elasticity suggests that improvements in nutrition may require large subsidies and hence a targeted program it then examines whether targeting adversely affects the probability of poor households participating in the program the empirical analysis identifies the effect of the program by combining time varying policy changes in the value of the program with cross sectional variation in program benefits generated by variation in market prices the results confirm the low responsiveness

joint determination of food consumption and production in rural sierra leone estimates of a household firm model abstract this paper investigates the determination of food consumption for rural households in sierra leone that produce the foods which they consume a household firm model is estimated with seven commodities including five foods non foods and labor as compared to three commodities in past studies such food disaggregation permits tracing of the effects of socioeconomic variables on household nutrient availability household specialization in production is such that censored data is a problem a tobit approach is used to correct for this for most crops the own price effects on consumption remain negative when a price change is allowed to shift the budget constraint by effecting the profits from home production elasticities of calorie availability with respect to toal expenditure are found to be sizeable varying little by expenditure group the price elasticities of calorie availability are generally positive however an important exception occurs for price of the staple food rice this exception has several important policy implications which are explored

the cost of agricultural production risk abstract we examine the relative influence of preferences and technology on producers ex ante willingness to pay for a reduction in production risk a risk averse producer pays both an arrow pratt risk premium to stabilize income and a production premium to stabilize yield using soil nitrate risks as our motivating example we demonstrate that the production premium accounts for 40 85 of producers willingess to pay for risk reduction these results demonstrate the relative importance of technology over risk preferences when estimating the costs of agricultural production risk

will developing country nutrition improve with income a case study for rural south india aggregate estimates of food expenditure are consistent with such a possibility implying income expenditure elasticities close to one however the high degree of aggregation at which such estimates are made means that the considerable increase in price per nutrient as income increases is ignored and the nutrient elasticities are therefore overstated estimates for a rural south indian sample indicate that this bias is considerable and that the true nutrient elasticities with respect to income may be close to zero

individual teacher incentives and student performance this paper is the first to systematically document the relationship between individual teacher performance incentives and student achievement using the united states data we combine data from the national education longitudinal survey on schools students and their families with our own survey conducted in 2000 regarding the use of teacher incentives this survey on teacher incentives has unique data on frequency and magnitude of merit raises and bonuses teacher evaluation and teacher termination we find that test scores are higher in schools that offer individual financial incentives for good performance moreover the estimated relationship between the presence of merit pay in teacher compensation and student test scores is strongest in schools that may have the least parental oversight the association between teacher incentives and student performance could be due to better schools adopting teacher incentives or to teacher incentives eliciting more effort from teachers it is impossible to rule out the former explanation with our cross sectional data

inputs incentives and complementarities in education experimental evidence from tanzania we present results from a large scale randomized experiment across 350 schools in tanzania that studied the impact of providing schools with i unconditional grants ii teacher incentives based on student performance and iii both of the above after two years we find i no impact on student test scores from providing school grants ii some evidence of positive effects from teacher incentives and iii significant positive effects from providing both programs most important we find strong evidence of complementarities between the programs with the effect of joint provision being significantly greater than the sum of the individual effects our results suggest that combining spending on school inputs the default policy with improved teacher incentives could substantially increase the cost effectiveness of public spending on education

school markets the impact of information approximating schools effectiveness abstract the impact of competition on school performance is likely to depend on whether parents are informed about schools effectiveness or value added which may or may not be correlated with absolute measures of their quality and on whether this information influences their school choices thereby affecting schools market outcomes this paper explores this by considering chile s sned program which seeks to identify effective schools selecting them from homogeneous groups of comparable institutions its results are widely disseminated and the information it generates is different from that conveyed by a simple test based ranking of schools which turns out to approximate a ranking based on socioeconomic status we use a sharp regression discontinuity to estimate the effect that being identified as a sned winner has on schools enrollment tuition levels and socioeconomic composition through five applications of the program we find no consistent evidence that winning a sned award affects these outcomes

the indian public distribution system as provider of food security evidence from child nutrition in andhra pradesh abstract we study whether a sudden increase of the price of rice supplied by the indian public distribution system in andhra pradesh a large indian state had a negative impact on child nutrition a few months after the price increase a health survey started to record weight for a large sample of children the data collection continued for several months so that children measured later lived for a longer period of time in a less favorable price regime using different estimation techniques we find that longer exposure to high prices are not accompanied by worse nutritional status as measured by weight for age

more evidence on nutrition demand income seems overrated and women s schooling underemphasized abstract malnutrition is widespread in the developing world controversy continues concerning the roles of income household size and women s schooling on nutrient demand empirical estimates for nicaragua suggest that income elasticities are small and inversely associated with income levels there are some economies of scale in household size the elasticity for women s schooling is higher than those for income or household size and women s backgrounds are important the results cast doubt on the strong emphasis the world bank and others have placed on income and suggest that schooling may be working through tastes not only through productivity

how consumer price subsidies affect nutrition summary we study the effect of an exogenous increase in food grain subsidy from a program targeting the poor in rural india and find that the increase in income resulting from the subsidy increased consumption of the subsidized grains and certain more expensive sources of nutrition lowered consumption of coarse grains the cheaper yet unsubsidized staple food and increased expenditures on nonfood items but had no effect on nutrition in poor households estimates of the price effect of the subsidy on nutrition are also negligible the price subsidy increased consumption of wheat and rice and lowered consumption of coarse grains