impacts in uganda of rising global food prices the role of diversified staples and limited price transmission this study assesses the potential impact of rising world food prices on the welfare of ugandan households while uganda experienced sharply higher food prices in 2008 as a landlocked food exporting country the causes of those price changes were mainly regional and indirect rather than directly transmitted from global markets using trade volumes food prices and household survey data we describe how uganda unlike some other countries is partially shielded from direct impacts of global food price movements although the majority of ugandans are net food buyers the adverse impact at household level of rising global prices is moderated by the relatively large quantity and range of staples consumed that come from home production moreover several of these are not widely traded some population groups in uganda are vulnerable to rising food prices however primarily those for whom maize is an important staple including those dependent upon humanitarian relief and the urban poor only a relatively small group of ugandan households will benefit directly and immediately from rising food prices the significant net sellers of food crops constituting between 12 and 27 of the population in this assessment we do not estimate the level and extent of wider second round effects from these higher prices jel classification q18 r22

applied general equilibrium models of taxation and international trade an introduction and survey we wish to acknowledge the help of three referees and of john pencavel on several earlier drafts as well as the assistance of the modelers whose work is referred to in the paper they corrected our lack of understanding of their work and provided many other helpful comments excellent research and bibliographical assistance have been provided by debbie fretz radwan shaban and janet stotsky helpful comments have been made by charles ballard michael boskin lans bovenberg sylvester damus harvey galper glenn harrison gordon lenjosek jack mutti serena ng t n srinivasan charles stuart and eric toder the authors also acknowledgefinancial support from the national bureau of economic research the national science foundation international business machines and the social sciences and humanities research council ottawa canada

macrodynamic adjustment mechanisms in india abstract the dynamic interplay among food prices manufacturing profitability and investments is investigated in a macrodynamic model of india the interaction between agriculture and the rest of the economy and the role of the income distribution are emphasized the dynamic mechanisms include investment response in agriculture and manufacturing and wage indexation the sixth five year plan is used to establish a trend growth reference path for the analysis policy experiments show trade offs among growth inflation and income distribution that should be taken into account when fiscal policies and investment strategies are decided

computable general equilibrium models adjustment and the poor in africa abstract sahn and others at cornell have conducted a major research program on the impact of adjustment policies on the poor in africa making use of computable general equilibrium cge models their work was summarized in world development april 1996 they concluded that adjustment policies have not hurt and may have helped the poor this paper shows that such conclusions are highly dependent on the assumptions made about parameters relationships and closure in the models moreover in madagascar and tanzania where the cornell models suggest the poor benefited from adjustment there is evidence of worsening social and economic indicators our conclusion is that the cornell results are more a reflection of the assumptions made in developing the cge models than of reality

cournot duopoly with two production periods and cost differentials abstract saloner 1987 analyzes a cournot model with two production periods before the market clears if costs do not vary across periods any point on the outer envelope of the reaction functions between the firms stackelberg outputs is attainable with a subgame perfect nash equilibrium spne saloner s analysis is generalized by allowing for cost differences across periods the continuum of equilibria vanishes for any cost differential if costs fall slightly over time there are multiple leader follower equilibria otherwise the model generates a unique spne where both firms produce their single period cournot outputs in the period when production is cheaper

marketed surpluses of agricultural households in sierra leone an agricultural household model is used with household level data from sierra leone to estimate elasticities of marketed surplus for several outputs and for labor with respect to price and nonprice variables positive own price elasticities are found with magnitudes considerably above own price output elasticities changes in household characteristics and production technology also affect marketed surpluses but not always in anticipated directions elasticities are reported for households when grouped by their total expenditure not just for the sample mean the differences are important showing that low expenditure households respond as much as high expenditure households

china s membership in the world trade organization wto and the exports of the developing economies of east asia a computable general equilibrium approach there is a general perception particularly among the developing countries of east asia that china s wto membership would spell bad news for their exports the asean countries in particular are quite concerned about its likely negative impact on their export and growth potentials in this light the main objective of this paper is to empirically assess the trade implications of china s wto membership for these countries only few studies using a computable general equilibrium cge approach have addressed the issue of china s wto membership trade implications further these studies have not adequately addressed the issue from the perspective of the developing countries of east asia particularly the asean countries using the latest version of the global trade analysis project gtap model and based on the latest tariff reduction commitments by china the results showed that contrary to the current perception and previous studies almost all of the developing countries of east asia are likely to benefi

on the endogeneity of cournot nash and stackelberg equilibria games of accumulation abstract we characterize equilibria of games with two properties i agents have the opportunity to adjust their strategic variable after their initial choices and before payoffs occur but ii they can only add to their initial amounts the equilibrium set consists of just the cournot nash outcome one or both stackelberg outcomes or a continuum of points including the cournot nash outcome and one or both stackelberg outcomes a simple theorem that uses agents standard one period reaction functions and the one period cournot nash and stackelberg equilibria delineates the equilibrium set applications include contribution oligopoly and rent seeking games

dynamic cournot duopoly with intertemporal capacity constraints this paper studies a dynamic cournot duopoly in which suppliers have a limited amount of products available for two consecutive periods we derive optimal sales strategies and analyze welfare effects with and without commitment under commitment strategies do not depend on the rival s realized sales in this case there is a unique nash equilibrium for any allocation of initial supplies and prices increase over time absent commitment sellers can adjust their supply decision after the first period in this case a subgame perfect nash equilibrium does not always exist and prices may decline over time a more asymmetric allocation of stocks generally leads to higher first period prices whereas the impact on second period prices is ambiguous the larger firm typically prefers not to commit whereas the smaller firm is better off under commitment commitment generates a higher total surplus and almost always a higher consumer surplus our findings thus suggest that market transparency or flexible supply contracts can adversely affect welfare in situations where production precedes sales and firms face an intertemporal capacity constraint

analysis of india s policy reforms he process of major economic reforms undertaken in the indian economy has now completed six years of implementation the economy has entered into a new phase of development directed towards becoming globally competitive through opening up to trade foreign investment and technology inflows the unilateral reforms of the trade and domestic policies of india along with reforms of the tax regime since 1991 represent a significant departure from the policy framework of the previous four decades and are important to the future course of the indian economy there is an ongoing debate in india regarding the likely impacts of sectoral reforms on output employment and other variables that affect the economic wellbeing of the country s population it thus becomes important to evaluate the effects of such policy reforms on factor prices output and trade along with inter sectoral movement of resources viz land labour and capital to address these issues we use a 34 sector computable general equilibrium cge model for india though such ex ante analysis may not be replicated ex post due to various macroeconomic and other factors that our model does not capture the positive results nevertheless go a long way in establishing the credibility of the reforms process we hope therefore that our analysis will provide a more solid underpinning for the ongoing policy debate the paper proceeds as follows the policy relevance of our research is outlined in section 2 in section 3 we elaborate briefly the essential features of the india cge model the various policy scenarios are discussed in section 4 and the results are presented in section 5 in section 6 we report on the sensitivity of the model to changes in some of its essential parameters our findings are summarised in section 7

macroeconomics financial variables and computable general equilibrium models abstract this paper surveys micro macro computable general equilibrium cge models that incorporate asset markets and product and factor markets recent models are designed to analyze the impact on economic performance and the distribution of income in developing economies of structural adjustment and stabilization programs implemented in response to macro shocks these financial cge models add a loanable funds market incorporating a variety of assets to a cge model that already incorporates flow equilibria in product and factor markets these financial models start from tradefocused cge models and also draw on earlier work with micro and macrostructuralist models in specifying the interactions between financial variables and the real side of the economy the paper also compares these models to dynamic macro models both short run adaptive models with lagged adjustment mechanisms and longer run forward looking models the paper discusses the theoretical problems such models face in reconciling micro focused cge models with macro models incorporating dynamic behavior

endogenous timing in duopoly games stackelberg or cournot equilibria abstract simultaneous versus sequential play is studied in an extended game in a preplay stage players decide whether to select actions in the basic game at the first opportunity or to wait until observing their rivals first period actions in one extended game players first decide when to select actions without committing to actions in the basic game the equilibrium has a simultaneous play subgame unless payoffs in a sequential play subgame pareto dominate those payoffs in another extended game deciding to select at the first turn requires committing to an action both sequential play outcomes are the equilibria only in undominated strategies

gendered impacts of the 2007 2008 food price crisis evidence using panel data from rural ethiopia abstract this paper provides empirical evidence on the gendered impact of the 2007 2008 food price crisis using panel data on 1400 households from rural ethiopia that were initially surveyed before the onset of the crisis in 1994 1995 1997 and 2004 and after food prices spiked in 2009 it investigates whether female headed households are more likely to report experiencing a food price shock and whether female headed households experiencing a shock are more or less likely to adopt certain coping strategies controlling for individual household and community characteristics our findings suggest that female headed households are more vulnerable to food price changes and are more likely to have experienced a food price shock in 2007 2008 because female headed households are also resource poor and have a larger food gap compared with male headed households they cope by cutting back on the number of meals they provide their households during good months and eating less preferred foods in general a combination of short term measures to protect diet diversity and micronutrient consumption of vulnerable groups and longer term measures to promote investment in sustainable agriculture such as strengthening women s property rights may increase the ability of poor and vulnerable households to cope better with food price increases

collusion in finitely repeated oligopolies abstract explaining collusion in infinitely repeated oligopolies is problematic because of the backward induction argument the usual response to this has been to consider infinitely repeated games and treat these as approximations of long finite repetitions or to introduce a modicum of irrationality in firm decision making the present paper explores a third avenue which introduces some extensive form structure to the cournot game itself hence the supergame constructed in this paper is one in which the stage game is itself an extensive form game in particular the stage game is a cournot oligopoly in which firms can observe each others initial production and respond by producing more before the product is sold on the market with this structure it is possible to devise a discriminating trigger strategy which generates collusive behaviour among fully rational firms with finite lives

on flexibility in oligopoly abstract this paper demonstrates that even when firms initial moves are simultaneous the mere opportunity to wait out the opponent s move may be as harmful as a second mover disadvantage

poverty and growth impacts of high oil prices evidence from sri lanka the sharp rise in oil and food prices in 2007 and 2008 caused negative impacts on poverty and economic growth in many oil and food importing developing countries some analysts believe that these countries are under stress again due to a rise in crude oil prices to a two and a half year high in march 2011 which has also been partly responsible for higher food prices in recent months however there is a limited body of empirical evidence available from developing countries on the impact of high oil prices on growth in general and household poverty in particular in this study sri lanka is used as a case study and a computable general equilibrium cge approach is adopted as an analytical framework to explore the growth and poverty impacts of high oil prices the results suggest that urban low income households are the group most adversely affected by high global oil prices followed by low income rural households in contrast estate low income households are the least affected out of all low income households the energy intensive manufacturing sector and services sector are affected most compared to the agricultural sector

the imf s food financing facility much ado about nothing abstract in may 1981 the executive board of the international monetary fund imf announced its decision to extend compensatory financing assistance to members encountering balance of payments difficulties caused by increased cereal import costs at the time the food financing facility was welcomed as a significant step towards providing a more adequate level of world food security since its establishment only limited use has been made of the facility and the director general of the fao commented recently that it needs to be improved

being a leader or a follower this paper deals with the analysis of conflicts in duopoly situations in particular with the distribution of roles in the von stackelberg framework which firm will be the leader which firm the follower under what circumstances will firms find a mutually advantageous distribution of roles will they fight for leadership or followship in von stackelberg s analysis of duopoly either firms do not choose their respective roles or they fight for leadership this situation is due to the particular strategy space namely the quantity to produce of an homogeneous good we extend here the strategy space to price quantity pairs we show that if costs are identical or similar then both firms will prefer the role of follower if there is a significant cost differential between the firms then the non cooperative equilibrium can only be of two types either the less efficient firm will act as the leader selling a limited quantity at a low price and the more efficient firm as the follower selling to the residual demand at a higher price or the more efficient firm acting as leader will drive the less efficient firm out of the market by adopting a limit pricing strategy but in so doing that firm makes less profits than if it acts as follower we suggest that it is not unreasonable to expect that firms in a duopoly framework will tend to coordinate on their mutually advantageous role distribution even if they compete in a non cooperative strategic way in terms of both prices and quantities

market integration and uncertainty the impact of domestic and international commodity price variability on rural household income and welfare in ghana and peru abstract we estimate rural household income uncertainties and welfare changes due to commodity price and production variability in ghana and peru under different scenarios for international and domestic market shocks uncertainties significantly affect the variability of household income especially for households that are specialised in the production of few commodities wider exposure to international markets would increase the income variability for producers of commodities that are subjected to stabilisation policies in ghana but would reduce the variability that rural households in peru face in terms of welfare rural households in both countries are expected to gain if fully exposed to international markets

understanding the impact of high food prices in latin america since the late 1980s almost all latin american countries have adopted a series of far reaching economic reforms especially trade financial and capital account liberalization increased economic openness has gone hand in hand with large financial inflows particularly in the first half of the 1990s and has brought new sources of economic growth as a result economies grew inflation declined and there was a big surge in foreign cap ital inflows although overall growth slowed after 1995 the region has expe rienced strong growth in the past five years the best sustained performance since the 1970s with the exception of a handful of countries this economic growth has been accompanied by relatively modest inflation despite these positive results virtually all latin american countries share similar problems uneven economic growth unacceptably high poverty and malnutrition rates and lagging agricultural growth more than 60 percent of the region s poor live in rural areas where slow economic growth unequal distribution of assets inadequate public investment and public services and vulnerability to natural and economic shocks are major policy issues the 2007 08 food price crisis exacerbated these problems prior to the cri sis the region was considered relatively stable and capable of absorbing exter nal shocks thanks to its higher foreign exchange liquidity decreased public sector and external borrowing needs exchange rate flexibility lower exposure to currency interest rate and rollover risks in public sector debt portfolios and improved access to local currency loans nevertheless the food price cri sis severely affected most of the latin american countries in terms of inflation especially food inflation

assessing the impact on food security of alternative compensatory financing schemes a simulation approach with an application to india summary the international monetary fund s compensatory and contingency financing facility ccff provides temporary finance to a country suffering from a temporary shortfall in export receipts or a temporary overrun in cereal import costs the purpose of the present paper is to provide an assessment of the impact of the ccff on the food security of an individual country the focus of the analysis is upon possible interactions between the ccff and the domestic economic policies of a country we construct an illustrative two sector model of a food insecure country and estimate the model using data for india we then simulate the model to study the impact on food consumption of different versions of the ccff we also study the sensitivity of the model to varying assumptions about domestic food policies our results suggest considerable variation in the possible effectiveness of the ccff depending on the exact nature of the scheme and on the assumptions made about domestic food policies

evaluating tourism s economic effects new and old approaches abstract techniques such as multiplier analysis and input output analysis are still very commonly used to make estimates of the economic impact of changes in tourism expenditure these techniques have serious limitations and as a result alternative techniques have been developed to address the problems computable general equilibrium cge models are now extensively used especially in australia the uk the us and canada to estimate economic impacts of a wide variety of changes and policies across most sectors cge techniques have been used in the tourism context but so far not extensively economic evaluation in tourism thus fails to achieve best practice the paper presents arguments in support of cge modelling as the preferred technique in analysing the economic impacts of tourism and discusses its potential to drive future research in this area that is more relevant to real world tourism destinations

distributional effects of maize price increases in malawi abstractin the wake of highly volatile world prices of staple commodities we examine the impacts of increases in maize prices on various categories of households in malawi using household level data changes in household income are calculated taking into account the net maize production status of the household and food price elasticities estimated from a censored demand system while maize price increases have unequivocal deleterious effects on the incomes of urban households rural households experience differential impacts net producing households in rural areas benefit from price increases with households above the poverty line obtaining proportionally higher incomes

a general equilibrium analysis of price controls and subsidies on food in mexico abstract in this paper we present a general equilibrium model that permits a thorough analysis of the effects of government pricing policies in particular we study the effects of price controls and subsidies on agricultural and food items in mexico we analyze alternative policies for reducing the government deficit by cutting subsidies and increasing indirect taxes our results indicate that although food subsidies need to be reduced maintaining some subsidies would have a favorable impact on income distribution

measuring food insecurity the frequency and severity of coping strategies abstract defining and interpreting food security and measuring it in reliable valid and cost effective ways have proven to be stubborn problems facing researchers and programs intended to monitor food security risks this paper briefly reviews the conceptual and methodological literature on food insecurity measurment describes a particular method for distinguishing and measuring short term food insecurity at the household level and discusses ways of generalizing the method the method developed enumerates the frequency and severity of strategies relied on by urban households when faced with a short term insufficiency of food this method goes beyond more commonly used measures of caloric consumption to incorporate vulnerability elements of food insecurity as well as the deliberate actions of household decision makers when faced with food insufficiency

endogenous stackelberg leadership abstract we consider a linear quantity setting duopoly game and analyze which of the players will commit when both players have the possibility to do so to that end we study a two stage game in which each player can either commit to a quantity in stage 1 or wait till stage 2 we show that committing is more risky for the high cost firm and that consequently risk dominance considerations as in harsanyi and selten 1988 allow the conclusion that only the low cost firm will choose to commit hence the low cost firm will emerge as the endogenous stackelberg leader journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 d43

a two stage model of research and development with endogenous second mover advantages this paper describes a simple two stage model of research and development in which the winner of the research stage has the option of moving first in the development stage some unexpected results emerge in equilibrium the leader in the development stage invests less than each follower and is consequently least likely to collect the patent moreover the leader receives a lower expected payoff than each of the followers thus there are endogenous second mover advantages using a game of timing in which the identity of the stackelberg leader is determined to link the two stages i find that firms face quite different incentives in the research stage although the leader invests less than each follower in the research stage as well the leader enjoys higher expected revenue from the complete two stage game than does each follower the equilibrium is inefficient because there is a lag between the time at which research is completed and the time at which development is begun and because aggregate investment is inefficiently asymmetrically distributed across firms

wheat markets food aid and food security in afghanistan abstract in afghanistan after two decades of civil strife and successive droughts from 1998 to 2002 large inflows of food aid distributed mainly to returning refugees and through food for work programs have helped offset production shortfalls of wheat the country s major staple at the same time private international trade from neighboring countries especially pakistan has also played a major role in augmenting wheat supply and stabilizing prices this paper presents an analysis of wheat prices and market flows in afghanistan based on results of surveys of wheat traders and millers and econometric analysis of price movements in major markets in afghanistan and pakistan in spite of food aid imports domestic prices were not lowered below import parity levels in most major afghan markets thus the price evidence suggests that large scale inflows of food aid which benefited the country by providing resources for targeted food for work and other programs did not have major price disincentive effects on domestic production at least through mid 2003 however following the 2003 bumper harvest the analysis suggests that continued food aid inflows may have depressed producer prices by as much as about 15 moreover given substantial prospects for rehabilitation of irrigation infrastructure there is ample scope for increasing domestic production of wheat and decreasing import demand so price disincentive effects of food aid remain a possibility in the future as well

a computational general equilibrium model with endogenous unemployment an analysis of the 1980 fiscal reform in mexico abstract in this paper we develop a general equilibrium model of the mexican economy in which unemployment and government deficits play important roles the unemployment rate depends on a downwardly rigid real wage in the urban sector the government runs a deficit simply by selling bonds that consumers consider perfect substitutes for physical capital as savings instruments the model is used to analyze the impact of the 1980 fiscal reform the presence of the rigid real wage and alternative specifications of government policies regarding the size of the deficit are found to have significant effects on the comparative statics results whether or not the reform improves the welfare of rural households compared to urban households for example depends on whether government policy is to keep the deficit constant or keep expenditures constant in response to changes in tax revenues

strategic managerial incentives in a two period cournot duopoly abstract this paper examines the nature of optimal managerial incentives in the context of a duopoly marked by competition between the firm s managers in a dynamic production environment if the marginal cost of production falls moderately over time or remains unchanged there exists an equilibrium where one owner requires her manager to maximize profit whereas the rival owner requires her manager to maximize sales revenue the profit maximizing manager turns his firm into a stackelberg leader while the sales revenue maximizing manager turns his firm into a stackelberg follower further the profit maximizing manager may generate a larger firm profit relative to the sales revenue maximizing manager

capacity dynamics and endogenous asymmetries in firm size empirical evidence suggests that there are substantial and persistent differences in the sizes of firms in most industries we propose a dynamic model of capacity accumulation that is consistent with the observed facts the model highlights the mode of product market competition and the extent of investment reversibility as key determinants of the size distribution of firms in an industry in particular if firms compete in prices and the rate of depreciation is large then the industry moves toward an outcome with one dominant firm and one small firm industry dynamics in this case resemble a preemption race contrary to the usual intuition this preemption race becomes more brutal as investment becomes more reversible

a short run general equilibrium model for a small open economy abstract this paper introduces some features observed in developing countries into a cge model in particular quantitative restrictions on exports and imports are incorporated and quota derived rents are included as a source of income the economy is assumed to be small only on the import side such that export prices are endogenous a distinction between traded and treadeable goods is introduced together with the possibility of water in the tariff thus the law of one price need not hold another key feature is the modelling of supply with unutilized capacity thus excess demands clear by price changes output adjustments or imports depending on the degree of capacity utilization the tradeability of the good and the trade regime an empirical application of the model shows that in a ge context import quotas can worsen the trade balance while lowering real income and the real wage rate

terms of trade and class conflict in a computable general equilibrium model for mexico a computable general equilibrium model for mexico is constructed in which class conflict over the distribution of the surplus is the principal determinant of the terms of trade the model consists of seven social classes and eight productive sectors classes are distinguished as fundamental or subsumed according to whether their incomes are primarily determined by conscious class struggle or by the resulting system of relative prices flexible prices are assumed to clear markets for which non produced means of production such as agricultural land limit supply while output in the remaining sectors is determined by the level of effective demand for the latter sectors two theories of price formation are compared and are seen to differ radically in their implicit conception of the nature of class conflict a keynes kalecki closure is considered in which prices are determined by a fixed mark up on costs this enables capitalists to protect themselves from incursions on the rate of profit due to labou

computable general equilibrium models for development policy analysis in ldcs abstract the use of cge models has gained much popularity among policy analysts in ldcs and there is a fast growing body of literature on this area of economics in this survey the advantages of general equilibrium approach over partial equilibrium approach in analysing a wide range of policy issues are highlighted the evolution of cge modelling is discussed and more than 60 cge applications related to different policy issues in ldcs are surveyed this comprehensive survey shows that the cge models have become quite popular analytical tools among policy analysts in ldcs over the last decade or so the debate in the economic profession regarding the value and appropriateness of using cge models for policy analysis is examined in the final section of this paper some of the criticisms levelled at cge models are discussed and it is argued that despite this criticism such models are capable of providing insight into important policy problems

bertrand edgeworth competition demand uncertainty and asymmetric outcomes abstract we analyze investment and pricing incentives in a symmetric bertrand edgeworth framework with uncertain demand firms choose production capacities before observing demand prices are chosen after demand is observed if the extent of demand variation exceeds a threshold level then a symmetric equilibrium in pure strategies for capacities does not exist a smaller firm has no incentive ex ante to expand its capacity because capacity expansion would reduce its expected revenue in the event that demand is lower than expected output prices are predicted to have positive variance when demand is low and zero variance when demand is high journal of economic literature classification numbers d43 l13

short run rigidities and long run adjustments in a computable general equilibrium model of income distribution and development this paper summarizes the structure of a a computable general equilibrium model which incorporates short run disequilibrium mechanisms stemming from natural rigidities of the economic system illustrative simulations based on the venezuelan economy are reported the model seems a priori to offer a more satisfactory representation of the sequence of short run effects leading to a structural modification of the economy after some exogenous shock the adjustment is more progressive than with a pure general equilibrium model and involves quantity variables as well as price variables with the rather realistic macroeconomic specifications selected for these experiments however this double adjustment process has spillover effects that would not be found so explicitly in pure models the paper which is mainly theoretical shows simply that generalizing the available computable general equilibrium models to disequilibrium situations and price quantity adjustment mechanisms is quite possible although not easy

the distributional impacts of indonesia s financial crisis on household welfare a rapid response methodology analyzing the distributional impacts of economic crises is an ever more pressing need if policymakers are to intervene to help those most adversely affected they need to identify those who have been hurt most and estimate the magnitude of the harm they have suffered they must also respond in a timely manner this article develops a simple methodology for measuring these effects and applies it to analyze the impact of the indonesian economic crisis on household welfare using only pre crisis household information it estimates the compensating variation for indonesian households following the 1997 asian currency crisis and then explores the results with flexible nonparametric methods it finds that virtually every household was severely affected although the urban poor fared the worst the ability of poor rural households to produce food mitigated the worst consequences of the high inflation the distributional consequences are the same whether or not households are permitted to substitute toward relatively cheaper goods households with young children may have suffered disproportionately large adverse effects

von stackelberg and cournot duopoly choosing roles under what circumstances will firms agree on the choice of roles of leader and follower in the von stackelberg duopoly model a key determinant is the slope of the firms reaction function in either price or quantity space the duopolists will disagree over the choice of roles if they have downward sloping reaction functions each will prefer to be the leader they will also disagree if they have upward sloping reaction functions and similar profit functions each will prefer that the other be the leader preferences between von stackelberg and cournot outcomes are also considered

a general equilibrium model of structural change and economic growth with application to south korea abstract this paper presents a computable general equilibrium model for south korea it is a dynamic input output model solved by assuming equal sectoral growth rates its solution gives output and price relatives which measure the structural distance of the economy from the turnpike comparisons of these model solutions with actual output proportions and relative prices provide insights into the south korean industrialization process however the model s strict assumptions limit its applicability and provide problems of interpretation especially in open economies

food security policy in a stochastic world abstract food security may be increased by variance reducing strategies by food aid or by development strategies this paper uses a korea cge model subjected to random fluctuation in world prices and domestic food productivity to evaluate these policies we find that poverty reducing development strategies are the most food security strategies

the strategic perils of delayed differentiation the value of delayed differentiation also known as postponement for a monopolist has been extensively studied in the operations literature we analyze the case of imperfectly competitive markets with demand uncertainty wherein the choice of supply chain configuration i e early or delayed differentiation is endogenous to the competing firms we characterize firms choices in equilibrium and analyze the effects of these choices on quantities sold profits consumer surplus and welfare we demonstrate that purely strategic considerations not previously identified in the literature play a pivotal role in determining the value of delayed differentiation in the face of either entry threats or competition these strategic effects can significantly diminish the value of delayed differentiation in fact under plausible conditions these effects dominate the traditional risk pooling benefits associated with delayed differentiation in which case early differentiation is the dominant strategy for firms even under cost parity with delayed differentiation we extend the main model to study the effects of alternate market structures asymmetric markets and inventory holdback our results in particular that for a broad range of parameter values early differentiation is a dominant strategy even under cost parity with delayed differentiation are robust to these relaxations

endogenous role in mixed markets a two production period model in this paper i investigate endogenous roles in a mixed duopoly where private and state owned public firms compete by allowing two production periods i find that many equilibria exist including the cournot type equilibrium and one stackelberg type equilibrium where the public firm becomes the follower however another stackelberg type equilibrium where the public firm becomes the leader does not exist if small inventory costs are introduced the unique equilibrium outcome becomes the stackelberg type where the public firm is the follower

a shoven whalley model of a small open economy an illustration with philippine tariffs abstract this paper describes an applied general equilibrium model of a price taking economy in both imports and exports sector specific factors are incorporated to avoid complete specialization problems a hicksian composite traded good market is used for achieving trade balance in the model foreign and domestic goods are assumed perfect substitutes for illustration philippine tariffs and export taxes are analyzed using the model

insulating countries against fluctuations in domestic production and exports an analysis of compensatory financing schemes abstract for several years the imf has operated a compensatory financing facility cff whose aim is to smooth out the effects of a shortfall in export receipts in a particular country in 1981 the facility was extended to cover imports of foodstuffs with the objective of reducing food insecurity the purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical analysis of the cff interpreted as an international scheme whose object is to stabilise some domestic policy target such as consumption by providing loans based on the value or volume of a country s exports or imports the paper shows that under certain assumptions the imf s cff for exports provides net gains to individual countries the extension of the scheme to include food imports could provide further gains but only if it is appropriately redesigned

garment industry in sri lanka and the removal of gsp plus by eu the ready made garment industry plays an important role in sri lanka both in terms of export earnings and poverty alleviation through employment generation following the removal of gsp plus by eu in 2010 on the basis of alleged human right violations by the sri lankan government during the last stage of the civil war in 2009 and after it currently faces serious challenges in exporting to the eu its major market given the important role of the ready made garment industry in poverty alleviation through employment generation the impact of removal of gsp plus on the poor is examined in this paper the empirical results of this study demonstrate that poverty and income inequality are expected to be exacerbated in sri lanka as a result of the removal of gsp plus by the eu using non economic reasons such as human rights violation the results are also relevant for the renewed emphasis on trade preferences as a potential instrument for the millennium development goals and the debate on how trade preferences are to be designed to maximise their effectiveness in stimulating a manufacturing supply response

the short run impact of fluctuating primary commodity prices on three developing economies columbia ivory coast and kenya abstract computable general equilibrium models are used to study the short run impact of fluctuating primary commodity prices on the economies of columbia ivory coast and kenya the results indicate that these economies are destabilized by primary commodity price fluctuations unless governments act to hold real domestic absorption constant to achieve this however would require foreign exchange reserves in excess of the level normally available to these governments for the purpose of stabilizing domestic economic activity

income and livelihoods in the war in afghanistan we explore the impact of the insurgency and military deployment on the livelihoods of local communities in afghanistan we use monthly wages and commodity prices at the provincial level over the period 2003 09 and look for their response to conflict events and isaf deployment overall we find that prices are more sensitive to deployment than to attacks commodity prices are not significantly affected by insurgent violence which is consistent with coping strategies already in place on the opposite military deployment is associated with an increase in the levels of wages and commodity prices as isaf is a new source of uncertainty

a cross section analysis of food insecurity in developing countries its magnitude and sources short term instability in food supplies continues to be a severe problem for many developing countries from the viewpoint of an individual country this problem arises primarily from fluctuations in domestic food production and in foreign exchange availability the present paper aims to establish the magnitude and seriousness of the problem in a sample of 50 food deficit countries it also aims to broaden the scope of discussion of the food security problem by taking into account the possibility that food insecurity may manifest itself in a country in a variety of ways which depend in part on the manner in which the domestic authorities respond to periodic shortfalls in food supplies

insecurity food financing and the imf abstract this article considers the desirability and feasibility of an international food financing facility along the lines of existing lending facilities administered by the imf and under the imf s auspices a prominent proposal is the extention of the compensatory financing facility the authors examine this proposal in the context of the nature and magnitude of food insecurity in developing countries the authors conclude that the establishment of a food facility within the imf is both desirable and feasible but that as suggested by fao it should be separate from the compensatory financing facility

budgetary and financial policy potency amid structural bottlenecks evidence from uganda abstract most policy analysts implicitly relax the assumption that structural bottlenecks distinctively exist in developing economies in this paper some bottlenecks are identified and modeled to augment a small model of uganda the baseline and augmented model variants are estimated and tested on aggregate data 1963 1985 and their results are compared the magnitudes and signs of the short run estimates and long run multipliers from the two variants show that bottlenecks constrain the potency of stabilization policy in general the hypothesized effects of structural elements are validated for the aggregate supply and foreign balance schedules of the economy while orthodox budgetary and financial policies are major players on the aggregate demand side it is proposed that policy makers in uganda should pay more attention to supply side issues especially with respect to the food and export sectors

the impact of food price increases on caloric intake in china world food prices have increased dramatically in recent years we use panel data from 2006 to examine the impact of these increases on the consumption and nutrition of poor households in two chinese provinces we find that households in hunan suffered no nutrition declines households in gansu experienced a small decline in calories though the decline is on par with usual seasonal effects the overall nutritional impact of the world price increase was small because households were able to substitute to cheaper foods and because the domestic prices of staple foods remained low due to government intervention in grain markets

food insecurity in vulnerable populations coping with food price shocks in afghanistan we use the case of afghanistan during the 2007 08 food price crisis to illustrate the impact of staple food price increases on household food security using the unconditional quantile regression estimator to identify separate effects for households across the distribution we find evidence of divergent behavior the most vulnerable households with low calorie diets cannot afford to make substantial cuts to caloric intake since they are close to or below the minimum daily energy requirements accordingly we find no decline in per capita daily caloric intake as a result of the price increases such households may be sacrificing diet quality to maintain calories with a potential for serious and long term health consequences households with high calorie diets who can afford to cut back on calories experience the largest declines we find evidence of declines in dietary diversity across the entire distribution of households with slightly larger declines observed for those with the least diversity moving beyond the price responses for the average household can inform policy makers of how the most vulnerable groups are affected such information is particularly salient in a country like afghanistan where decades of war political instability and recurring droughts have led to a precarious state of food insecurity and poverty

an economic analysis of delayed primary school enrollment in a low income country the role of early childhood nutrition this paper investigates why children in low income countries often delay primary school enrollment despite the prediction of human capital theory that schooling will begin at the earliest possible age we explore several explanations for delayed enrollment but focus on the hypothesis that delays are rational responses to early childhood malnutrition we test these alternative hypotheses using recent data from ghana our estimates which address a number of previously ignored econometric issues firmly support the hypothesis that early childhood malnutrition causes delayed enrollment we find little or no support for alternative explanations based on borrowing constraints and the rationing of places in school copyright 1995 by mit press

rising food prices and coping strategies household level evidence from afghanistan this paper investigates the impact of rising wheat prices on household food security in afghanistan exploiting a unique nationally representative household survey the authors find evidence of large declines in the real value of per capita food consumption smaller price elasticities with respect to calories than with respect to food consumption suggest that households trade off quality for quantity as they move away from nutrient rich foods such as meat and vegetables toward staple foods the authors work improves upon country level simulation studies by providing estimates of actual household food security during a price shock in one of the world s poorest most food insecure countries

macroeconomic adjustment and income distribution alternative models applied to two economies abstract to analyze the impact of alternative macroeconomic adjustment mechanisms on the distribution of income in developing countries we construct a cge model that is general enough to incorporate neoclassical neo keynesian and a variety of structuralist macro closure rules the model is applied to two economies brazil and korea with alternative macro closures both for savings investment and for the balance of trade we find that 1 the size distribution of income is largely insensitive to macro closure rules 2 the functional distribution is very sensitive to macro closure rules and 3 the balance of trade closure is at least as important in determining distributional outcomes as the savings investment closure

rice prices and income distribution in thailand a non parametric analysis rice is a staple crop in thailand significantly entering both household production and consumption this paper examines the effect of rice prices on the distribution of real income across households taking into account household characteristics and geographical location the data set is a large scale survey of 11 893 households simple nonparametric techniques for regression and density estimation are used these methods depend on few assumptions and generate flexible graphical results that are directly informative about the problem at hand the main results are that higher rice prices should benefit all rural households but the largest benefits accrue to rural households in the middle of the income distribution copyright 1989 by royal economic society

public investment social services and productivity of chinese household farms this article examines the impact of village sponsored infrastructural investment and social services on the productivity of chinese farm households using detailed farm level data for the period 1986 90 the main findings are that the public facilities and services provided by village collectives augmented productivity growth of farm households and that the expenditures on public good activities in the sample villages were below the optimal level the problems of under investment in public projects were particularly acute in low income villages

making sense of the experimental evidence on endogenous timing in duopoly markets abstract the prediction of asymmetric equilibria with stackelberg outcomes is clearly the most frequent result in the endogenous timing literature several experiments have tried to validate this prediction empirically but failed to find support for it in contrast these experiments find that simultaneous move outcomes are modal and that behavior in endogenous timing games is quite heterogeneous this paper generalizes hamilton and slutsky s hamilton j slutsky s 1990 endogenous timing in duopoly games stackelberg or cournot equilibria games and economic behavior 2 29 46 endogenous timing games by assuming that players are averse to inequality in payoffs i explore the theoretical implications of inequity aversion and compare them to the empirical evidence i find that this explanation is able to organize most of the experimental evidence on endogenous timing games however inequity aversion is not able to explain delay in hamilton and slutsky s endogenous timing games

stabilisation strategies in primary commodity exporting countries a case study of chile abstract a range of stabilisation options are considered to enable the chilean economy to accomodate a reduction in world copper prices these include macroeconomic wage and trade devaluation protection export subsidies policies using a multisectoral model the paper checks the ability of these option to reach employment and current account targets while quantifying their implications for other macroeconomic and structural variables each option is efficient in some degree in meeting one target while violating the other external and internal equilibrium cannot however be simultaneously achieved without cuts in both money wages and real absorption trade policies in themselves are insufficient

contests a comparison of timing and information structures we study a model of imperfectly discriminating contests with two ex ante symmetric agents we consider four institutional settings contestants move either sequentially or simultaneously and in addition their types are either public or private information we find that an effort maximizing designer of the contest prefers the sequential to the simultaneous setting from an ex ante perspective moreover the sequential contest pareto dominates the simultaneous one when the contestants types are sufficiently negatively correlated regarding the information structure the designer ex ante prefers private information while the contestants prefer public information

the welfare effects of unbundling gas storage and distribution we use a stylized gas system to study the use of access to gas storage in a seasonal model in a duopoly setting we find that welfare is higher under vertical integration and open access organization than under separate management of storage and distribution this raises questions about recent regulatory reforms in the gas sectors in the us and europe supporting the separation of storage and merchant activities in the absence of other justifying reasons such as encouraging competition by creating a level playing field separating the management and accounting functions of storage activities from those of distribution may be a better option than real divestiture on the basis of welfare arguments

the effect of time to build on strategic investment under uncertainty we show that time to build which creates a lag between the decision to invest and production is an important element of industry structure we study a multiperiod investment game where there is demand uncertainty adding time to build to the model alters the classic tradeoff between making strategic commitments and exploiting the option to wait furthermore time to build gives rise to novel equilibria in which firms invest incrementally which contrasts with most prior work on multiperiod investment games in which firms invest only once we show how time to build affects firm heterogeneity investment timing the option value of waiting the evolution of prices and social welfare copyright 2003 by the rand corporation

equilibrium under price controls with endogenous transactions costs abstract in this paper we present an equilibrium model for an exchange economy with fixed prices and endogenously determined search or transactions costs given the fixed prices endogenously determined equilibrium buying and selling prices which include transactions costs result these costs occur on either the demand or supply side of each market but not both we see an eventual application of this approach to an evaluation of welfare costs of either economy wide wage and price controls or sector specific price controls such as energy in the final section we present some simple numerical examples which illustrate the approach

trade liberalization in a multinational dominated industry abstract existing theoretical models in the trade industrial organization literature assume almost exclusively that firms are national enterprises so that there is no international coordination by multinational firms we develop a model in which multinationals compete among themselves but coordinate production pricing and sales decisions across multiple plants and markets free entry and exit is assumed and cases in which the multinationals can and cannot segment markets are considered the model is simulated using data from the north american auto industry results are compared with a counter factual model calibrated to the same data which assumes national ownership of firms

noncomparable poverty comparisons poverty estimates based on enumeration from a single point in time form the basis for most country level analysis of poverty cross country comparisons of poverty and global counts of the poor implicitly assume that country level poverty headcounts are comparable this paper illustrates that the assumption of comparability is potentially invalid when households are interviewed multiple times throughout the year as opposed to a single visit interview an example from jordan illustrates how the internationally comparable approach of handling data from repeat visits yields a poverty rate that is 26 per cent greater than the rate that is currently reported as the official estimate

giffen behavior and subsistence consumption this paper provides the first real world evidence of giffen behavior i e upward sloping demand subsidizing the prices of dietary staples for extremely poor households in two provinces of china we find strong evidence of giffen behavior for rice in hunan and weaker evidence for wheat in gansu the data provide new insight into the consumption behavior of the poor who act as though maximizing utility subject to subsistence concerns we find that their elasticity of demand depends significantly and nonlinearly on the severity of their poverty understanding this heterogeneity is important for the effective design of welfare programs for the poor jel d12 012

on the causes of food insecurity in less developed countries an empirical evaluation abstract this paper provides an empirical analysis of the causes of short run food insecurity it begins with a preliminary investigation of the correlations between two external factors values of food imports real merchandise exports and two internal ones real per capita income domestic food production with instability in food consumption then it attempts to elaborate the variables which are systematically associated with fluctuations in food consumption by applying a regression method both simple and multiple on a cross section basis as a measure of food consumption instability an index based on the consumption theory is used the analysis indicates that although both external and internal factors have a significant bearing on food consumption instability instability in domestic food production is the most important single factor

price hike of staple food nutritional impact and consumption adjustment evidence from the 2005 2010 rice price increase in rural bangladesh this paper studies the nutritional impact of the rice price increase between 2005 and 2010 on households in rural bangladesh and their resulting adjustment in consumption of rice non rice food and

access to natural gas storage facilities strategic and regulation issues abstract in this paper we analyze the strategic function of gas storage focusing on how gas storage decisions impact competition between gas companies on both spot and downstream markets using a two tier oligopolistic structure we first show that gas storage is actually used strategically even in a symmetric oligopolistic setting along the gas value chain storage is then a way to intensify competition on the spot market second we analyze the setting where a company has favored access to storage for example due to a historical monopolistic position and we analyze this as a leadership situation in the context of tpa regulation we then show that this setting compels the leader to adopt a strategic storage decision this strategy consists of levels of gas stored being greater than supplies available in the downstream market such a leader decision is part of a strategy to raise a rival s costs furthermore one can think that optimal regulation of the access to storage facilities would prevent such a behavior however especially when storage is not too costly we show that preventing a storage strategy for the leader is not optimal since the strategy helps to reduce the spot market price

endogenous timing in a mixed oligopoly abstract endogenous order of moves is analyzed in a mixed oligopoly where the firms first choose the timing for choosing their quantities the results are strikingly different from those obtained in a corresponding oligopoly with all profit maximizing firms

interactions between trade policies and domestic distortions in a small open developing country abstract this paper reports results from a price taking open economy numerical general equilibrium model of the philippines whose purpose is to explore the ways in which trade policies and other domestic distortions interact in a small open developing economy the trade policies featured in the model include tariffs export taxes and import quotas while the domestic distortions considered are rent seeking and harris todaro labour market dualism results clearly indicate that interactions between trade policies and other domestic distortions are significant and need to be more fully considered in numerical economic policy analyses for developing countries

bank failures and fiscal austerity policy prescriptions for a developing country abstract this work employs a dynamic general equilibrium model to evaluate the causes and implications of bank insolvencies we apply the model to stylized data from bangladesh a country whose banking system is currently suffering from large stocks of non performing assets the model is used to derive positive conclusions about alternative policy instruments designed to alleviate the impact of these insolvencies a benchmark case is simulated using historical exogenous parameters we then generate a bank failure by assuming that firms cannot service their debt if their interest obligations rise above their anticipated return on capital the public withdraws deposits from the banking system in reaction to worries about defaulting bank assets if banks optimize by restricting credit to risky borrowers these failures can be partially avoided such bank behavior is often prohibited in developing countries so we investigate an active monetary policy that compensates banks for withdrawn deposits the resulting outcome indicates that such a policy can slow the pace of bank failures although at the cost of certain macro imbalances our final simulation imposes a reduction in public spending in order to tighten fiscal policy and thereby reduce budgetary pressure the resulting decline in interest rates eliminates all investor defaults and bank failures we conclude that the combination of compensating monetary policy and restrictive fiscal policy may offer the best way of responding to a bank crisis

trade preferences for developing countries a survey of results empirical studies of the trade and development effects of the major preferential trading schemes between the industrialised countries and the developing countries are surveyed most studies find the agreements to be trade creating improving welfare for the donor though general equilibrium analysis indicates that terms of trade deterioration offsets efficiency gains there is some evidence that trade preferences stimulate ldc exports of preferred products but total exports are not significantly affected due to limited product coverage the existing literature does not provide evidence on the degree of infant industry protection or on economic diversification of the beneficiaries

when rebels attack quantifying the impacts of capturing territory from the government in yemen households were adversely affected by the mostly nonviolent capture of yemen s capital in 2014 although socioeconomically advantaged households were initially better able to cope with the shock th

implications of high food prices for poverty in pakistan the study estimates the impacts of rising world food prices on poverty in rural and urban areas of pakistan household income and expenditure data for 2004 2005 is used to estimate compensated and uncompensated price and expenditure elasticities using the linear approximation of the almost ideal demand system taking the unexpected component of higher domestic food prices in 2007 2008 own and cross price compensated elasticities are used to derive the changes in the quantity consumed food expenditure and impacts on poverty assuming the food crisis happened in 2004 2005 the results indicate that poverty increased by 34 8 severely affecting the urban areas where poverty increased by 44 6 as compared to 32 5 in rural areas the estimates show that 2 3 million people are unable to reach even one half of poverty line expenditures while another 13 7 million are just below and 23 9 million are just above the poverty line in the short run it is important to ensure food availability to these people in the long run the policy environment of subsidizing urban food consumers by keeping wheat prices lower than the international price needs to be reconsidered to provide the right incentives to increase food availability

relating seasonal hunger and prevention and coping strategies a panel analysis of malawian farm households relative to chronic hunger seasonal hunger in rural and urban areas of africa is poorly understood this paper examines the extent and potential correlates of seasonal hunger in malawi using panel data from 2011 2013 we find that both urban and rural households report seasonal hunger in the pre harvest months certain strategies to smooth consumption including crop storage and livestock ownership are associated with fewer months of hunger in addition we find that malawian households that experience seasonal hunger harvest their crops earlier than average a short term coping mechanism that can reduce the crop s yield and nutritional value possibly perpetuating hunger