pest externalities from agricultural inputs agricultural inputs such as water pesticide and even time may have the unintended effect of stimulating some pest populations leading to crop losses a conceptual model is developed to contrast optimal use of pesticide and nonpesticide inputs with myopic use patterns which ignore pest externalities under most conditions optimal management is found to entail reduced input levels these issues are illustrated for imperial valley cotton using biological simulation correct calculation of the relative profitability of conventional and integrated pest management techniques such as a shortened growing season are found to depend crucially on whether pest externalities are taken into account

rebalancing the chinese economy china has run a current account surplus for two decades its current account surplus is not simply a result of the saving gap rather the current account surplus as well as the saving gap is a result of complicated interaction among various factors in a dynamic fashion while running a large current account surplus china has also run a large capital account surplus mainly in the form of fdi over decades china s twin surpluses are a re ection of market distortion which has caused large welfare losses for the country the chinese government should not only pay attention to internal balance but also to external imbalance hence it should combine expenditure switching policies and expenditure changing policies to maintain a decent non in ationary growth rate while keeping the current account balance to gdp ratio at a rational level

the origins and development of the northeast asian political economy industrial sectors product cycles and political consequences theories of the product cycle hegemony and the world system are used to analyze the creation and development of the northeast asian political economy in this century japan south korea and taiwan have each developed in a particular relationship with the others the three taken together form a hierarchical constantly interacting political economic unit during the period of colonial rule japan was unique in building an imperial economic unit marked by a strong role for the state whether in tokyo or taipei by a tight integral unking of all three nations into a communications and transport network running toward the metropole and by a strategy of both using the colonies for agricultural surpluses and then locating industries there after 1945 a diffuse american hegemony replaced japan s unilateral system but elements of the prewar model have survived strong states direct economic development in south korea and taiwan here termed bureaucratic authoritarian industrializing regimes both countries are receptacles for japan s declining industries and both countries develop in tandem if in competition with each other the most recent export led competition has seen taiwan succeed where south korea has temporarily failed leaving seoul in an export led trap burdened with rapidly increasing external debt taiwan furthermore has industrialized relatively free of social disruption whereas korean society resisted its transformation at japanese hands and remains more rebellious today there can be one japan and one taiwan but not two or many of either in the world economy

poverty productivity and production environment a review of the evidence abstract this paper reviews the state of knowledge about the key issues needing to be understood to satisfactorily resolve a long standing debate within the consultative group for international agricultural research cgiar system the debate revolves around the effects on various populations particularly the poor of different allocations of research effort between marginal and favoured production environments this paper specifically focuses on what is known about the geographical distribution of the rural poor across agro ecological zones and over time variations in the income generating activities including non agricultural activities engaged in by the poor are examined and the ways in which specific technology packages affect the economic well being of different types of households both directly and indirectly

technology structural change and bop constrained growth a structuralist toolbox the latin american structuralism las is a significant part of the heterodox tradition in the theory of long run growth with a focus on the problems of developing economies which started their industrialization process when other regions had already accumulated substantial technological capabilities the emergence of a centre periphery system posed specific problems to growth and distribution in laggard economies which las discusses in a systematic way in this paper we presented a simple model which firstly captures key insights of the las school such as the persistency of technological asymmetries and structural heterogeneity secondly it can be used to analyze the impacts of shocks and policies based on how they affect supply side and demand side parameters of the model thirdly it links more closely post keynesian macroeconomics based on the bop constraint with the evolutionary microeconomics concerned with the dynamics of learning lastly it can be used as a toolbox and a teachable model in the analysis of the interactions between structural change technological catching up and long run growth

structural change and the bop constraint why did latin america fail to converge this paper discusses why latin america failed to achieve sustainable convergence with the developed world since 1960 and analyses different phases of convergence and divergence using a structuralist keynesian approach first it is argued that there are critical differences between latin america the developed economies and the asian economies as regards the evolution of the income elasticity of the demand for imports the rate of growth of exports and the balance of payments constrained rate of growth the income elasticity of the demand for imports in latin america showed an upward trend particularly after the mid 1970s which was not matched by a similar increase in exports a pattern in sharp contrast with that of the east asian countries the evolution of and exports are used to set forth a typology of latin american economic growth since 1960 in addition the paper relates elasticities and the less favourable latin american performance to the intensity and direction of structural change using a broad sample of developed and developing economies it is shown that the developing countries that succeed in reducing the income gap are those that transformed their economic structures in favour of sectors with higher schumpeterian and keynesian efficiency copyright the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

input demand under yield and revenue insurance previous studies disagree on the effects of insurance on fertilizer application rates the effect of increased fertilizer on the probability of low yields primarily determines whether fertilizer and insurance are substitutes or complements we estimate conditional distributions of corn yields to determine if the technical relationship between yields and fertilizer supports the hypothesis that insurance increases optimal application rates our results indicate no support for this hypothesis at all nitrogen fertilizer rates and reasonable levels of risk aversion nitrogen fertilizer and insurance are substitutes suggesting that those who purchase insurance are likely to decrease nitrogen fertilizer applications

third world indebted industrialization international finance and state capitalism in mexico brazil algeria and south korea the past fifteen years have seen two important developments in the international economic system the rapid industrialization of many less developed countries ldcs and their increasing indebtedness to private financial institutions massive bank loans have been used to fund industrial growth in many ldcs international financial markets have replaced multinational corporations as the third world s most important source of private foreign capital in four major borrowing countries mexico brazil algeria and south korea the process of indebted industrialization has its roots in the internationalization of finance the increasing role of the state and the use of funds raised on the international capital markets to finance industrial development the results include rapid expansions of ldc industrial production and ldc exports of manufactured products as well as the formation of an implicit partnership between private financial institutions and state capitalist elites in the third world

can economic incentives encourage actual reductions in pesticide use and environmental spillovers chemical pesticides constitute an important input in crop production but their indiscriminate use can impact negatively agricultural productivity human health and the environment recently attention is focused on the use of economic incentives to reduce pesticide use and its related indirect effects the aim of this work is to assess the effectiveness of different economic instruments such as taxes and levies in encouraging farmers to decrease pesticide use and their environmental spillovers a policy simulation model is employed using data from dutch cash crop producers including two pesticide categories that differ in terms of toxicity and pesticides environmental spillovers four different instruments were selected for evaluation pesticide taxes price penalties on pesticides environmental spillovers subsidies and quotas the results of the study indicate that even high taxes and penalties would result in a small decrease in pesticide use and environmental spillovers taxes that differentiate according to toxicity do not lead to substitution of high with low toxicity pesticides subsidies on low toxicity products are not able to affect the use of high toxicity products pesticide quotas are more effective in reducing pesticide use and environmental spillovers

replacement of agricultural price supports by area payments in the european union and the effects on pesticide use this article determines the contribution of recent european union agricultural policy reforms on the use of pesticides our theoretical model extends the multioutput generalization of the lichtenberg zilberman damage control technology model developed by chambers and lichtenberg our empirical analysis uses farm level data for a sample of french farms results suggest that price effects on the use of pesticides are always more elastic than area payment effects this indicates that policy reforms consisting of a reduction in price supports in favor of area payments may reduce application of crop protection inputs such policy changes which represent a certain degree of decoupling took place under the 1992 common agricultural policy reforms

risk preferences and pesticide use by cotton farmers in china abstract despite that insect resistant bt cotton has been lauded for its ability to reduce the use of pesticides studies have shown that chinese bt cotton farmers continue to use excessive amounts of pesticides using results from a survey and an artefactual field experiment we find that farmers who are more risk averse use greater quantities of pesticides we also find that farmers who are more loss averse use lesser quantities of pesticides this result is consistent with our conceptual framework and suggestive evidence where farmers behave in a loss averse manner in the health domain and place more weight on the importance of health over money in the loss domain

ex post flexibility and choice of capacity for loss reduction this paper examines the implications of ex post utilization flexibility for the firm s ex ante choice of capacity to supply a loss reducing input it is shown that the optimal ex ante choice is greater in the presence of flexibility than in the absence of flexibility it is also shown that the total effect of an increase in risk on the ex ante choice includes a flexibility effect when ex post flexibility is present the flexibility effect always tends to increase the demand for capacity

the econometrics of damage control why specification matters the contribution of damage control agents to production differs fundamentally from that of standard inputs lands labor capital this paper develops an econometric model based on the key characteristics of damage control agents and examines its properties it demonstrates that standard production function specifications overestimate damage control agent productivity and have erroneous implications for the evolution of damage control agent productivity and use in response to changing environments e g the spread of pest resistance it also proposes several alternative specifications and discusses methods for estimating them

an economic analysis of soybean integrated pest management the type of pest management strategy a farmer chooses is influenced by the amount of risk associated with alternative strategies this paper examines the attractiveness of alternative pest management strategies used on a representative virginia soybean farm probability distributions of net revenue associated with alternative pest control options are simulated and then compared using generalized stochastic dominance criteria results suggest risk averse and in some cases risk preferring farmers would prefer strategies which incorporate an integrated pest management approach to pest control rather than one which relies completely on chemical pest control

infrastructure policy and brexit infrastructure is affected in a variety of ways by brexit in some areas such as aviation rail and energy there are single market activities at various stages of maturity in other areas such as water and waste regulatory standards have had considerable impact in the past and there are current directives in preparation these regulations can now be rethought to suit british distinctiveness technological change and market developments also require changes in how economic regulation is done which is an opportunity opened up by brexit

natural resource economics and conservation contributions of agricultural economics and agricultural economists research by agricultural economists on natural resources has been distinguished by an interdisciplinary emphasis and a dynamic perspective it has recognized technological and institutional constraints has been oriented toward solving concrete resource management and policy problems and has emphasized empirical and quantitative analysis agricultural economists have introduced methods for evaluating natural resource conservation efforts for predicting adoption of resource conservation technologies and for designing efficient and sustainable resource management policies they have identified ways of improving land management and preventing land degradation proposed reforms of institutions governing water allocation and water quality and introduced policies for balancing environmental and efficiency considerations in the management of pests biodiversity and livestock diseases their research has had substantial impacts on the formulation of resource conservation policies

redistribution of social benefits from advances in extension and research in the tanzanian maize industry abstract this study determined consumer and producer welfare gains from advances in extension and research in the maize industry of tanzania to determine how a national taxing schedule should be determined it was found that for an off farm marketable surplus of 40 consumers and producers gain equally while for an off farm marketable surplus of 60 consumers realize 75 of the welfare benefits this suggests that consumers and producers should share equally in a revenue generating tax for funding maize research and extension programs however for large producers with a marketable surplus of 60 or more their tax should decrease proportionally to the amount sold alternatively if taxed equally large scale producers should receive some form of compensation through direct government payments

debt and development in historical perspective the external constraints of late industrialisation revisited through south korea and brazil current debates about the role of external finance in development mostly overlook the insights from early development economics that late industrialisation generates a structural tendency to run trade deficits thereby exacerbating rather than relieving external foreign exchange constraints the developmental role of external finance is therefore based on its strategic marginal contribution to relieve such constraints external debt in particular also allows countries to pursue industrial strategies without reliance on foreign direct investment these insights are revisited in this paper as a critical input to both mainstream and heterodox contemporary scholarship on debt and development while the mainstream generally avoids discussion of state led industrial policy the heterodox has converged on a view that developing countries should avoid external finance the contrasting external account histories of south korea and brazil are examined to demonstrate the validity of the classic insights and the contemporary fallacies while the south korean case speaks much to its geopolitical context this does not necessarily refute the principle that post war late development engenders an intensive demand for external finance which must be met if industrialisation strategies are not to be stymied as in the case of brazil no matter how effectively domestic strategies are conceived and implemented

technical change in senegal s irrigated rice sector impact assessment under uncertainty abstract this paper addresses the prospects for technical change in the irrigated rice sector of senegal and measures ex ante the economic returns to recent research efforts in 1994 three new rice varieties were released to farmers in the senegal river valley srv the major irrigated rice region in senegal the productivity advantage of the new varieties is based primarily on early maturity which permits double cropping the seeds are also higher yielding than existing cultivars we use a conventional akino and hayami 1975 am j agric econ 57 1 10 partial equilibrium model adapted to the senegalese situation to assess the social benefits of research and compare those to its costs in calculating the internal rate of return irr to account for uncertainty regarding the future values of model variables we use simulation which allows us to generate a distribution of all possible outcomes of the irr we find that rice research is almost certain to have a very high payoff over the 1995 2004 period the expected value of the irr is calculated to be 121 per year with a 97 5 probability that it lies above annual capital costs of 18

the contribution of genetic modification to changes in corn yield in the united states we use a large rich dataset compiled from results of university extension trials to estimate the contribution of genetic modification gm to changes in corn yield in the united states from timea to timeb through repeated experimental trials we obtain consistent estimates of the effect of these traits by using both the hausman taylor estimator and a comparison of fixed effects estimates analogous to the agronomic practice of comparing near isolines our results suggest that gm traits had a positive impact on yield but that gains associated with combining several gm traits in one hybrid are not necessarily additive

estimating the benefits of plant breeding research methodological issues and practical challenges impact assessment studies consistently show that the benefits generated by plant breeding are large positive and widely distributed numerous case studies have concluded that investment in plant breeding research generates attractive rates of return compared to alternative investment opportunities that welfare gains resulting from the adoption of modern varieties mvs reach both favoured and marginal environments and that benefits are broadly shared by producers and consumers but just how reliable are the results of studies that estimate the benefits of plant breeding research this article reviews methods used to estimate the benefits of plant breeding research and discusses theoretical and empirical issues that often receive inadequate attention in applied impact assessment work our objective is not to question the validity of the theoretical frameworks commonly used to estimate the benefits of plant breeding research but rather to examine problems that can arise when the widely accepted theoretical frameworks are used for empirical analysis most of these problems can be grouped into three basic categories 1 problems associated with measuring adoption and diffusion of mvs 2 problems associated with estimating benefits attributable to adoption of mvs and 3 problems associated with assigning credit among the various plant breeding programmes that participated in developing the mvs

infrastructure why it is under provided and badly managed the paper records the substantial deficiencies that exist in the design and implementation of infrastructure programmes around the world it points to three sources of failure the first is a failure to recognize the systems nature of infrastructure and the implication of this for the appropriate tools of analysis that should be employed in infrastructure assessments the second is a preoccupation with income and expenditure flows rather than balance sheets in reporting public as well as private sector infrastructure accounts this has had profound and in many cases perverse implications for the ownership funding and operation of infrastructure the third is inadequate governance of infrastructure programmes to overcome the significant commitment problems that afflict both private and public sector providers of infrastructure the paper describes a set of responses that recognize the systems nature of infrastructure the importance of balance sheets and the need for commitment mechanisms in the private and public sectors to promote the efficient provision of infrastructure

factors influencing the profitability of fertilizer use on maize in zambia major findings the additional maize produced from a given amount of fertilizer applied varied widely across households even after largely controlling for soil and rainfall conditions the median estimated response rate was 15 9kgs of maize per kg nitrogen applied under the range of conditions and smallholder management practices average maizefertilizer response rates declined as the application rate increased beyond 2 bags of urea and 2 bags of d compound factors raising the response rate and profitability of fertilizer use included timely availability application rates less than the moa 4x4 recommendation use of animal draft power in land preparation and use of hybrid seed in remote areas and given current management practices fertilizer use appears to be profitable only for a minority of smallholder farmers in the relatively remote areas for farmers in the more accessible areas profitability of fertilizer use depends on timely availability if fertilizer is not available on time even farmers in the more accessible parts of this area of relatively high agronomic suitability for maize production are largely unable to use fertilizer profitably because over 30 percent of the households reported that fertilizer was delivered late these findings indicate that efforts to ensure timely distribution can contribute substantially to the productivity gains achievable from fertilizer use

effective costs and chemical use in united states agricultural production using the environment as a free input a cost function based production model is used to represent patterns of input use and output production in u s agriculture and the implied costs of induced reductions in risk from agricultural chemicals bad outputs we estimate and evaluate shadow values for these harmful outputs and the implied input and output specific substitution patterns with a focus on the impacts on pesticide demand and its quality and quantity components using state level data we find these measures to be statistically significant vary substantively by region and imply increased demand for effective pesticides associated with improvements in quality from embodied technology copyright 2002 oxford university press

impacts of food crop improvement research evidence from sub saharan africa abstract the paper reviews and summarizes evidences of impacts of crop improvement research of major food crops in africa it provides evidence of increased availability of improved varieties of major food crops to farmers in africa increased food production in regions where adoption has occurred and positive returns to research investment indicating that agricultural research in africa has had productivity increasing impacts on its agriculture however research impacts vary considerably across countries and regions within a country as a result of agroclimatic factors and policy environment which affects the supply of seeds and other inputs and the continuity and stability of research investments the paper points to a number of important issues both internal and external to the agricultural research system organization that need to be addressed if agricultural research is to provide a stimulus for modernizing african agriculture given the small size of food crop production area in many african countries it is important for research systems to take full advantage of research spill ins from regional and international research organizations there is a great potential to increase the efficiency of research systems by improving the coordination among members of national research systems and continuing improvements in collaborations between narss and regional and international organizations

sub therapeutic antibiotics and the efficiency of u s hog farms antimicrobial drugs are frequently fed to hogs at sub therapeutic levels to promote feed efficiency and growth however in response to concerns that sub therapeutic antibiotics stas are promoting the development of antimicrobial drug resistant bacteria the u s food and drug administration recently adopted a strategy to phase out antibiotics for such production uses this study uses a stochastic frontier model to estimate the costs to u s hog producers of a ban on stas for growth promotion to address potential sample selection issues we employ a recently developed empirical approach that corrects for biases from both observed and unobserved variables

the economics of wheat research in developing countries the one hundred million dollar puzzle abstract currently 1 150 scientists are carrying out wheat improvement research in developing countries with an annual budget of around 100 million because of the recent reduction in agricultural research budgets this study marshalls evidence from 71 wheat research programs in 35 developing countries to address the following puzzle what is the optimal size type and location of wheat research programs in the developing world the analysis reveals that if research spillins are taken into consideration almost half of the wheat improvement programs in developing countries are inefficient the efficiency of wheat research in many national agricultural research systems can be increased by reducing the size of research programs consolidating state and federal research programs and shifting from wheat breeding research to capturing spillins from other countries and from the international maize and wheat improvement center cimmyt

economic returns to crop management research in a post green revolution setting returns to research studies have neglected research on crop management cmr which may account for half of all crop research because cmr enhances the efficiency of input use returns to cmr are hypothesized to increase in settings characterized by high input levels and high yields a method is developed to estimate returns to cmr and this method is applied to wheat research in a post green revolution setting in northwest mexico the results suggest that returns to cmr are positive over a range of model assumptions

modernization of a peasant crop in colombia evidence and implications abstract the survival of the small farm sector in the process of agricultural modernization in latin america has been a concern for many authors and institutions it is generally believed that the small farm sector is bypassed in the process of agricultural development the authors analyze modernization of bean maize cropping systems in southern colombia prices production practices and profitability are compared for 1975 and 1989 by means of a production function the effects of allocative efficiency technical efficiency and technical change on productivity and profitability are analyzed the observed changes reflect very well the price trends over the period between 1975 and 1989 total factor productivity increased by 50 bean maize producers almost doubled returns to land and labor increased technical efficiency had most effect on profitability followed by technical change allocative efficiency had more impact on yields than on profitability because it was associated with high input costs considerable opportunities for further productivity increases were identified conclusions on the nature of the modernization process are drawn implications for agricultural policy research and the role of the small farm in agricultural development are derived

pests and pesticides risk and risk aversion abstract theoretical and applied literature on risk in decision making for agricultural pest control is reviewed risk can affect pesticide decision making either because of risk aversion or because of its influence on expected profit it is concluded that risk does not necessarily lead to increased pesticide use by individual farmers uncertainty about some variables such as pest density and pest mortality does lead to higher optimal pesticide use under risk aversion however uncertainty about other important variables such as output price and yield leads to lower optimal levels of pesticide use neglect of these variables in most studies has led to the false assumption that pesticides are always risk reducing inputs furthermore there is evidence that in general the pesticide dosage which maximises expected profit is lower under risk than under certainty depending on the balance of forces to increase and decrease pesticide use under risk in many circumstances the net effect of risk on optimal decision making for pest control may be minimal the effect on risk of information about pest density and other variables as in integrated pest management programmes is discussed evidence on this issue is mixed a range of analytical techniques for analysing risk in pest control is reviewed throughout the paper gaps in the existing literature are identified

another look at pesticide productivity and pest damage using the lichtenberg zilberman fox weersink damage specification we develop a short run supply response framework based on rational producer behavior in the presence of damage agents we show how representation can be used to measure and decompose the economic damage associated with the presence of pests how to measure the shadow prices of damage control agents how to measure the manner in which pesticide application biases variable input use and how pesticide application affects the relative returns to quasi fixed factors of production an econometric version of the model is estimated using a panel data set on greek olive producers both our theoretical and our empirical results suggest that the most traditional measure of pest damage understates actual economic losses and revenue losses due to pests

national accounting for infrastructure this article discusses how more systematic information can be compiled about the state of the uk infrastructure it stresses the importance of considering the stock and not just the flow of new infrastructure investment it draws attention to the information about the balance sheet that is contained for all sectors of the economy in the national accounts as part of their integrated stock flow structure while there appears to be no internationally agreed convention about the definition of infrastructure the national accounts information can be used to construct time series estimates for the infrastructure on a common sense view of its coverage in constant price terms the ratio of the infrastructure stock to gross value added appears to have risen since the mid 1990s back towards the levels of the 1970s but that is not true in current price terms where the ratio remains well below the levels of the 1970s the explanation seems to be that a relative price effect has occurred infrastructure has become cheaper in relative terms but that has not resulted in increased infrastructure intensity the article notes other information about the state of the uk infrastructure as they mature the whole of government accounts should be a rich source of information so too might the uk capital services index ultimately all this information could feed into a more systematic growth accounting framework for the uk

developing countries changing nature of financial integration and new forms of external vulnerability the brazilian experience this article argues using the example of brazil that the changing nature of developing and emerging countries decs financial integration has created new forms of external vulnerability causing large and volatile capital and exchange rate movements despite sound fundamentals and a substantial reduction in its traditional external vulnerabilities the brazilian real has been one of the most volatile currencies over recent years the article argues that this has been the result of the surging exposure of foreign investors in an increasingly complex set of very short term domestic currency assets following a minskyan analysis we demonstrate that the changing nature of brazil s external vulnerability confirms both the inherent and endogenous instability of international capital flows and decs subordinate role in the international financial system we conclude with policy recommendations to reduce decs external vulnerability sustainably

the econometrics of damage control lichtenberg and zilberman argue correctly that when biological and physical processes are considered we are able to delineate two components of actual realized crop yields potential output the maximum quantity of product obtainable from any given combination of inputs and losses caused by damaging agents present in the environment p 262 they further argue that damage control agents should be defined in terms of their contribution to the abatement effort and hence should enter the production function as an argument of the damage abatement function to demonstrate the consequences of their claims lichtenberg and zilberman make an ad hoc choice of a cobb douglas functional form for crop yield exogenous factors such as pest prevalence and weather conditions are ignored although they note that omission of these environmental factors will result in misspecification of the production relationship p 267

the economics of biotechnology under ecosystem disruption abstract economic analysis of chemical pesticide use has shown that the interactions between plants pests damage control technology and state of the ecosystem are important variables to be considered hence a bio economic model was developed for the assessment of bt variety and pesticide based control strategies of the cotton bollworm in china the model simulates plant growth the dynamics of pest populations and of natural enemies the model predictions are used as major inputs for a stochastic micro level profit model of alternative control strategies results show that 1 productivity effects of bt varieties and pesticide use depend on the action of natural control agents and 2 the profitability of damage control measures increases with the severity of ecosystem disruption the findings highlight the importance of the choice of the counterfactual scenario in the assessment of the impact of agricultural biotechnology also some doubts are raised whether the high benefits of bt cotton varieties claimed by previous studies based on cross section comparisons are realistic

take a risk preferring prevention over control of biological invaders abstract scientists have argued that invasive species can be managed most cost effectively with greater investments in prevention further under ideas like the precautionary principle it is reasonable to expect that a cautious manager would use more prevention relative to control because it keeps more invaders out yet this is not typically done in many cases private and public resources are invested primarily to control existing invaders rather than to prevent new invasions managers frequently wait until after invaders have arrived and then scramble to limit the damages we believe these paradoxical decisions can be understood by recognizing the link between typical human preferences for risk bearing and the technology of risk reduction we demonstrate quantitatively how managers perceived to be cautious or averse to risk tend to shy away from prevention relative to control this counterintuitive result arises because control is a safer choice than prevention because its productivity is relatively less risky it works to remove existing invaders from the system in contrast the productivity of prevention is more uncertain because prevention only reduces the chance of invasion it does not eliminate it and invasion may not occur even in the absence of prevention managers averse to risk will inherently avoid as much uncertainty as possible whether the source of uncertainty regards ecological outcomes or economic productivity implications for environmental decision making are clear in invasive species management if managers act as though they are risk averse their caution can backfire when it leads to more control rather than prevention the social consequences of this choice are a greater probability of future invasions and lower social welfare our results suggest that social welfare is highest when managers were willing to take a risk with prevention

bt cotton in india field trial results and economic projections abstract the performance of bt cotton in india is analyzed on the basis of field trial data from 2001 the amounts of pesticides applied during the trials were reduced to one third of what was used in conventional cotton while under severe pest pressure yield gains were 80 productivity effects are modeled econometrically with a damage control specification the first approval for the commercial cultivation of bt hybrids was given in 2002 by 2005 the technology is expected to cover one quarter of total indian cotton area medium term projections show sizeable welfare gains for the overall economy with farmers being the main beneficiaries

production risk pesticide use and gm crop technology in south africa technology involving genetic modification of crops has the potential to make a contribution to rural poverty reduction in many developing countries thus far pesticide producing bacillus thuringensis bt varieties of cotton have been the main gm crops under cultivation in developing nations several studies have evaluated the farm level performance of bt varieties in comparison to conventional ones by estimating production technology and have mostly found bt technology to be very successful in raising output and or reducing pesticide input however the production risk properties of this technology have not been studied although they are likely to be important to risk averse smallholders this study investigates the output risk aspects of bt technology by estimating two flexible risk production function models allowing technology to independently affect the mean and higher moments of output the first is the popular just pope model and the second is a more general damage control flexible risk mode

pesticides productivity and farmer health a philippine case study health is recognized as one of the most important components of the human capital of rural people in developing countries there is a growing body of literature showing the productivity effects of health associated with nutrition e g bliss and stern 1978 strauss 1986 deolalikar 1988 pitt rosenzweig and hassan 1990 in this literature the productivity effects of health are inferred either by correlating health indicators with wages or by including health indicators in an agricultural production function the human capital literature also has demonstrated that farmer education plays an important role in the allocative and technical efficiency of farmers welch 1970 schultz 1975

taking one for the team is collective action more responsive to ecological change debate persists around the timing of risk reduction strategies for large scale ecological change for three reasons risks are difficult to predict they involve irreversibilities and they impact multiple jurisdictions the combination of these three factors creates a general class of filterable spatial dynamic externalities fsde in which one person s risk reduction investments reduce or filter undesirable events experienced by others and underestimates the option value placed on being able to respond to new information about the consequences of ecological change by focusing on the optimal intervention decision we illustrate how and when the opposing forces created by an fsde will lead to a divergence in private and collective risk reduction strategies we use bioinvasions as our motivating example the bioinvasion first hits one jurisdiction and that jurisdiction s risk reduction investment reduces the risk faced by all other jurisdiction we find that efforts to internalize the full benefits of risk reduction investments may have unintended consequences on the responsiveness of environmental policy there is a social welfare gain from asking the first jurisdiction to delay a risk reduction investment to internalize the option values of all at risk jurisdictions

damage control econometrics functional specification and pesticide productivity empirical studies of pesticide productivity have often concluded that the value of marginal product of pesticide exceeds marginal factor cost despite anecdotal and other evidence to the contrary this article presents estimates of pesticide productivity derived from alternative functional specifications of pesticide involvement in production results suggest that explanation of the magnitude of pesticide productivity estimates obtained in empirical studies may lie somewhere other than with functional specification

the importance of seasonal variability and tactical responses to risk on estimating the economic benefits of integrated weed management seasonal variability is an important source of risk faced by farmers and regardless of an individual s attitude to risk there are options to tactically adjust production strategies as the outcomes of risk become known the objective of this article is to measure the economic benefits of alternative approaches to managing weeds one of the most serious production problems in australian cropping systems a bioeconomic model that combines weed biology crop growth and economics is developed to value the effects of seasonal variability and the role of tactical responses and sequential decision making in determining an optimal integrated weed management strategy this shows that there are substantial differences in the measured long term benefits from deterministic and stochastic simulations it is concluded that for research evaluation of technologies that involve complex biological and dynamic systems ignoring the impacts of seasonal variability responses to risk and sequential decision making can lead to an incorrect estimate of the economic benefits of a technology in this case study of optimal weed management strategies in australia the size of the error is high

firm organizational heterogeneity and market structure evidence from the japanese pesticide market abstract this paper empirically investigates the effects of the organizational forms of firms on their entry behaviors and market structure to exploit the exogenous variation in firm organizational forms we use japanese pesticide market data first our empirical analysis shows that a model of imperfect competition fits the japanese pesticide market well despite the existence of regulations we then estimate the effect of organizational heterogeneity on entry behavior firms having capital ties with special distribution networks tend to enter this market more readily than do firms without such ties furthermore diversified and vertically nonintegrated firms are more likely to enter this market than are stand alone and vertically integrated firms these findings suggest that markets with distribution related diversified and vertically nonintegrated potential entrants are more competitive than those with the same number of potential entrants that have no such characteristics