smallholders land access in sub saharan africa a new landscape while scholars long recognized the importance of land markets as a key driver of rural non farm development and transformation in rural areas evidence on the extent of their operation and the nature of participants remains limited we use household data from 6 countries to show that there is great potential for such markets to increase productivity and equalize factor ratios while rental markets transfer land to land poor and labor rich producers their operation and thus impact may be constrained by policy restrictions their functioning may also be constrained by ill defined or insecure rights that may arise from failure to fully compensate existing rights in cases of expropriation a failure to implement more broadly land policies or to do so in a gender sensitive manner methodological and substantive conclusions are derived

agricultural land elasticities in the united states and brazil the elasticity of aggregate supply is one key to understanding the degree to which policy induced increases in demand for biofuel feedstocks or agricultural co2 offsets will result in higher prices or expanded supply in this paper we report land supply elasticities for the united states and brazil estimated directly from the observed changes in cropland and estimated changes in expected returns the resulting aggregate implied land use elasticities with respect to price are quite inelastic in the united states and more elastic in brazil 0 007 0 029 and 0 382 0 895 respectively however with pasture land included in brazil implied elasticities become much less inelastic 0 007 0 245

incorporating process based crop simulation models into global economic analyses climate change will significantly affect agricultural production significantly economic models that include the agricultural sector must capture two major effects from climate change first there is the impact on plant growth secondly there are the resulting behavioral responses of producers such as changes in input baskets crop and cultivar selection planting dates and management technologies such production changes will take place in the context of consumers responding to available production as well as their own evolving preferences this article examines the use of crop modeling techniques to assess the physical consequences of climate change and how these effects can be combined with economic models looking into the future

an endogenous growth model for the evolution of water rights systems this article presents a model to help explain the transition path from one water management system to another typically a commons framework to one of tradable permit based property rights furthermore drawing from transaction cost literature the model demonstrates how this takes place when externalities the strain on water resources become severe enough to warrant the increased transaction costs inherent with more complex water rights management frameworks

federal reserve financial crisis lending programs and bank stock returns abstract we use an e garch model to estimate the wealth effects of federal reserve lending during the financial crisis to investment banks i banks too big to fail tbtf banks and traditional commercial banks borrowing from the term auction facility program has negative wealth effects for all banks and i banks in particular we also find that the market view of the liquidity programs changed across the sample sub periods i bank and tbtf bank borrowing from the discount window is initially viewed positively however continued use of the discount window and the term auction facility was generally though not universally viewed negatively commercial paper funding facility program participation is consistently positive only for traditional banks and programs that focus on the purchase of specific securities e g commercial paper to address specific problems also appear to primarily benefit traditional banks the inconsistency of results across the time periods of the crisis is telling as market participants struggled to discern what access to these programs meant

strategic interdependence in models of property rights the concept of strategic interdependence has opened a wide spectrum of explanation beyond the robinson crusoe economy this essay explores the implications of strategic interdependence for the theory of property rights and the new institutional economics schotter it attempts to clarify some of the linkages from institutional economics to micro and macroeconomic theory by considering how property institutions result from strategic interdependence confer payoffs to individual agents and reflect collective choices based on individual preferences

examining crop price effects on production decision and resource allocation an ex ante approach this article examines the output price effects on the us crop production employing an ex ante approach to the differential systems of input demand and output supply the estimation results of the

green revolution in sub saharan africa implications of imposed innovation for the wellbeing of rural smallholders green revolution policies are again being pursued to drive agricultural growth and reduce poverty in sub saharan africa however conditions have changed since the well documented successes of the 1960s and 1970s benefitted smallholders in southern asia and beyond we argue that under contemporary constraints the mechanisms for achieving improvements in the lives of smallholder farmers through such policies are unclear and that both policy rationale and means of governing agricultural innovation are crucial for pro poor impacts to critically analyze rwanda s green revolution policies and impacts from a local perspective a mixed methods multidimensional wellbeing approach is applied in rural areas in mountainous western rwanda here malthusian policy framing has been used to justify imposed rather than induced innovation the policies involve a substantial transformation for rural farmers from a traditional polyculture system supporting subsistence and local trade to the adoption of modern seed varieties inputs and credit in order to specialize in marketable crops and achieve increased production and income although policies have been deemed successful in raising yields and conventionally measured poverty rates have fallen over the same period such trends were found to be quite incongruous with local experiences disaggregated results reveal that only a relatively wealthy minority were able to adhere to the enforced modernization and policies appear to be exacerbating landlessness and inequality for poorer rural inhabitants negative impacts were evident for the majority of households as subsistence practices were disrupted poverty exacerbated local systems of knowledge trade and labor were impaired and land tenure security and autonomy were curtailed in order to mitigate the effects we recommend that inventive pro poor forms of tenure and cooperation none of which preclude improvements to input availability market linkages and infrastructure may provide positive outcomes for rural people and importantly in rwanda for those who have become landless in recent years we conclude that policies promoting a green revolution in sub saharan africa should not all be considered to be pro poor or even to be of a similar type but rather should be the subject of rigorous impact assessment such assessment should be based not only on consistent objective indicators but pay attention to localized impacts on land tenure agricultural practices and the wellbeing of socially differentiated people

the global supply and demand for agricultural land in 2050 a perfect storm in the making the number of people which the world must feed is expected to increase by another 2 billion people by 2050 when coupled with significant nutritional improvements for the 2 1 billion people currently living on less than 2 day this translates into a very substantial rise in the demand for agricultural production most past growth in the demand for food has been met by improvements in productivity but there is evidence of declining growth rates for agricultural yields climate change is likely to have important impacts on productivity through changes in temperature and precipitation land based climate mitigation policies are also projected to lead to increasing pressure on agricultural lands meanwhile supplies of water for irrigation are under pressure urban land use is on the rise and demands for setting aside land for environmental purposes continue to increase clearly an enormous amount of additional research on ways to deal with this potential perfect storm is needed this paper highlights the explores the roles of biophysical and economic uncertainty in these projections of long run land use change using this to suggest a future research agenda

competition for land in the global bioeconomy the global land use implications of biofuel expansion have received considerable attention in the literature over the past decade model based estimates of the emissions from cropland expansion have been used to assess the environmental impacts of biofuel policies and integrated assessment models have estimated the potential for biofuels to contribute to greenhouse gas ghg abatement over the coming century all of these studies feature explicitly or implicitly competition between biofuel feed stocks and other land uses however the economic mechanisms governing this competition as well as the contribution of biofuels to global land use change have not received the close scrutiny that they deserve the purpose of this article is to offer a deeper look at these factors we begin with a comparative static analysis which assesses the impact of exogenously specified forecasts of biofuel expansion over the period 2006 2035 global land use change is decomposed according to the three key margins of economic response extensive supply intensive supply and demand under the international energy agency s new policies scenario biofuels account for nearly one fifth of global land use change over the 2006 2035 period the article also offers a comparative dynamic analysis which determines the optimal path for first and second generation biofuels over the course of the entire 21st century in the absence of ghg regulation the welfare maximizing path for global land use in the face of 3 annual growth in oil prices allocates 225 mha to biofuel feed stocks by 2100 with the associated biofuels accounting for about 30 of global liquid fuel consumption this area expansion is somewhat diminished by expected climate change impacts on agriculture while it is significantly increased by an aggressive ghg emissions target and by advances in conversion efficiency of second generation biofuels jel classifications q11 q15 q24 q42 q54

the fate of easter island the limits of resource management institutions abstract malthus malthus thomas 1798 1970 an essay on the principle of population penguin new york believed that population growth will eventually lead to natural resource depletion economic and social collapse and population decline brander and taylor brander james a taylor m scott 1998 the simple economics of easter island a ricardo malthus model of renewable resource use american economic review 88 119 138 use a predator prey model with an assumption of an open access resource they show that the collapse of easter island could be explained by a malthusian trap combined with technical characteristics of the resources they suggest that institutional change such as assignment of property rights could potentially have averted the collapse of easter island in this paper we show that even if the islanders had complete assignment of property rights and implemented optimal resource management with infinite horizon or equivalently had a social planner that implemented such an optimal plan as in neoclassical welfare economics a similar boom bust cycle would have occurred

social policy and mortality decline in east asia and latin america abstract since 1960 chile and costa rica have improved life expectancy and infant survival as much as south korea and taiwan despite growing more slowly suffering more income poverty and having more unequally distributed incomes this paper analyzes the origins and impact of the publicly funded social services that allowed chile and costa rica to achieve rapid reductions in the risk of early death despite relatively poor performance on income related indicators and explores how south korea and taiwan managed to achieve similar progress at reducing premature mortality despite making less deliberate efforts to fund social services for the poor

political commitment institutional capacity and tax policy reform in tanzania abstract the early literature on structural adjustment programs concentrated on the types of economic reforms required and more recent literature addresses the political and institutional dimensions of economic policy reform this paper presents a framework for analyzing the interaction between politics notably the political commitment to reform and institutions especially administrative capacity in implementing reform the framework is applied to tax reform and trade liberalization in tanzania a number of conclusions are drawn regarding the appropriate design and sequence of a reform program to increase the likelihood of effective implementation given the policy environment and political and institutional changes required

the influence of technology and demand factors on firm size and industrial structure in the dram market 1973 1988 abstract the focus of this research is on the impact of the diffusion of innovations in integrated circuit technology on the market structure of that industry and the implications of firm strategy for both further innovation and market structure change the study examines the effects of sustained product innovation over a fifteen year period in the dram segment of the integrated circuit industry assessments are made on first mover advantages shape of the diffusion curve and resource needs in a market characterized by an increasingly complex technology comparisons are made along the dimensions of number of firms in the market continuity of the firms and market concentration

can political entrepreneurs solve the free rider problem abstract a solution of the problem of voluntary collective action employing an improved concept of political entrepreneurship is proposed this solution is consistent with large numbers of actors and pure public goods joint production of private goods and asymmetry are not assumed the importance of information imperfections in producing suboptimality in the provision of public goods is emphasized political entrepreneurship is made to parallel the knightian concept of the entrepreneur emphasizing the role of risk taking and information collecting

is a slowdown in agricultural productivity growth contributing to the rise in commodity prices a slowdown in the rate of agricultural productivity growth is thought by many observers to be contributing to the recent rise in agricultural prices in this article i decompose sources of output growth in global agriculture into aggregate input and total factor productivity tfp components and examine whether productivity growth slowed substantially in the years leading up to the recent rise in commodity prices contrary to widely held perceptions i find no evidence of a general slowdown in sector wide agricultural tfp at least through 2006 if anything the growth rate in agricultural tfp accelerated in recent decades however the results do show a slowdown in the growth of agricultural investment accelerating tfp growth largely offset decelerating input growth to keep the real output of global agriculture growing at about 2 per year since the 1960s regionally however agricultural productivity performance has been uneven these findings have important implications for the appropriate supply side policy response to the current agricultural price crisis

public information and coordination evidence from a credit registry expansion this paper provides evidence that lenders to a firm close to distress have incentives to coordinate lower financing by one lender reduces firm creditworthiness and causes other lenders to reduce financing to isolate the coordination channel from lenders joint reaction to new information we exploit a natural experiment that forced lenders to share negative private assessments about their borrowers we show that lenders while learning nothing new about the firm reduce credit in anticipation of other lenders reaction to the negative news about the firm the results show that public information exacerbates lender coordination and increases the incidence of firm financial distress

central banks and financial stability rediscovering the lender of last resort practice in a finance economy the purpose of our paper is to assess whether central banks have adopted new practices of lending in last resort during the 2007 09 financial crisis we compare the current period with the classical period both featured by a finance economy with developed financial markets and unregulated institutions beyond the differences determined by the monetary regime and concerning the central bank rate policy we find similarities such as the enlargements of the set of counterparties and eligible collateral assets since the credit system is based on financial markets and innovations central banks have a wider involvement that goes beyond a narrow conception of the lender of last resort that prevailed under a regulated banking system we conclude that the historical roots of financial stabilisation by central banks in a finance economy have just been rediscovered and that the functions of lender of last resort and market maker of last resort may be analytically integrated copyright oxford university press

dimensions and diversity of property rights in rural china dilemmas on the road to further reform abstract this paper contributes to the debate over land tenure in rural china by conceptualizing and measuring multiple dimensions of property rights in a way that elucidates the competing interests that are affected by the property rights regime utilizing a unique village level data set this paper argues that the regional and temporal variation in rural property rights signals a pattern in which decentralized institutional innovation occurs in response to the competing interests of the national state of local authorities and of present and possible future individual land users unlike the earlier debate concerning the household responsibility system the current property rights dilemma is intrinsically more complex because the potential conflicts of interest between individuals local collectives and the state are greater resolution of that debate will ultimately require careful exploration of the reality and substance of the tradeoffs and competing interests that make further reform of rural property rights so difficult

using national statistics to increase transparency of large land acquisition evidence from ethiopia the 2007 08 commodity price boom triggered a rush for land in developing countries yet many affected countries lacked the regulatory infrastructure to cope with such demand and reliable data on investors performance this study uses the example of ethiopia to show how simple improvements in administrative data collection can help to address this by i allowing assessment of the productivity of land use and taking measures to increase it ii comparing productivity between large and small farms to identify spillovers and ways to improve these and iii setting in motion a process of continuing improvement implications for global investment in this area are drawn out

wage setting institutions and economic growth abstract wage setting institutions in several asian and latin american economies are compared and contrasted the asian economies have relied more on market wage determination whereas the latin american economies have encouraged institutions which push wages in key sectors up above market clearing levels market wage determination combined with exportled growth has resulted in rapidly rising real wages in the context of full employment in the asian

economic growth convergence and world food demand and supply in projecting global food demand to 2050 much attention has been given to rising demand due to the projected population increase from the current 7 4 billion to more than 9 billion an increasingly important source of the increase in food demand is per capita demand growth induced by rising income per person since the proportion of income spending on food decreases as incomes rise growth in global food demand will be greater if incomes grow faster in developing countries than in high income countries such a pattern of income convergence has become established in recent years making it important to assess the implications for food demand and supply using a resource based measure of food that accounts for the much higher production costs associated with dietary upgrading this paper concludes that per capita demand growth is likely to be a more important driver of food demand than population growth between now and 2050 using the middle ground international institute for applied systems analysis shared socioeconomic pathway projections to 2050 which assume continued income convergence the paper finds that the increase in food demand 102 percent would be roughly a third greater than without convergence 78 percent since the impact of convergence on the supply side is much more muted convergence puts upward pressure on world food prices partially offsetting a baseline trend toward falling world food prices to 2050

poverty income distribution and child welfare in latin america a comparison of pre and post recession data abstract the traditional and external dependency of most latin american economies and their recent pattern of growth has made them particularly vulnerable to the unexpected and severe changes of the world economy that began in 1979 1980 even those countries with less open economies have been forced to seek adjustments to the new world situation that are both in nature and consequences essentially different from those of the interdependent industrial economies this paper attempts to evaluate the impact of these recent economic changes on the living conditions of the populations of chile colombia costa rica panama and venezuela it is based on household data and is limited to those aspects of household living conditions that can be observed through the variables included in labour surveys it analyses changes in overall income distribution the movement of different socio economic groups within the income pyramid and changes in these groups livelihood strategies

the development of an infrastructure for entrepreneurship abstract this paper takes a macroperspective of entrepreneurship and focuses on the issues and events involved in constructing an industrial infrastructure that facilitates and constrains entrepreneurship this infrastructure includes 1 institutional arrangements to legitimate regulate and standardize a new technology 2 public resource endowments of basic scientific knowledge financing mechanisms and a pool of competent labor as well as 3 proprietary rd numerous entrepreneurial actors in the public and not for profit sectors play crucial roles it motivates one to examine the different roles played by these actors and how their joint contributions interact to develop and commercialize a new technology this in turn makes it possible to understand how the risk time and cost to an individual entrepreneur are significantly influenced by developments in the overall infrastructure for entrepreneurship it also explains why the entrepreneurs who run in packs will be more successful than those that go it alone to develop their innovations

the new institutional economics and its applicability to development abstract the several remarkable developments in the social sciences which have come to be known as the new institutional economics nie have not yet been fully exploited for analyzing the determinants and effects of institutional change in the context of development this paper identifies two important components of the nie and illustrates both a potential complementarities between them and b their applicability to various problems and policies in the long term development of developing countries

do financial indicators have directional predictability for us home sales abstractthis study investigates the directional predictability of financial indicators for home sales across tranquil 1984 2005 and volatile 1972 1983 and 2006 2013 periods we find that the mortgage rate has directional predictability for both existing and newly built home sales for up to 2005 the federal funds rate generally has directional predictability for existing newly built home sales in 1984 2005 1972 1983 the term spread has directional predictability for home sales in 1972 1983 but generally not in the tranquil period of 1984 2005 further unlike mortgage and federal funds rates the term spread has directional predictability for home sales in 2006 2013 and thus can help the fed with useful information assuming that this trend continues

land tenure choice in chinese villages the rational versus the political model the rational and political decision models are developed and tested for the land tenure choice in rural china a novelty of the test is to link the collective decision with general relative factor scarcities competing hypotheses are developed for the two models and tested with panel data collected on 83 chinese villages the results show that neither model is strongly rejected although the political model fares slightly better in more sophisticated econometric testing this suggests that popular political participation is emerging in chinese villages implications of this finding to chinese land policy are discussed

does population pressure induce farm intensification empirical evidence from tigrai region ethiopia the scarcity of land for crop and livestock production is critical in countries with growing populations the idea that increasing population density leads to natural resource depletion and economic failure as predicted by malthus or rather to farm intensification as hypothesized by boserup motivates this research this article examines how high population pressure in northern ethiopia influences smallholders farm intensification by applying recursive estimation with a control function approach using data from 518 randomly selected farmers although our empirical results are more in favor of the boserupian hypothesis the findings also reveal that both malthusian and boserupian forces coexist consistent with malthus theory high population pressure is found to be associated with small farm size and herd size population pressure affected both technology use breed cow stall feeding and modern cattle feed and output supply milk yield milk income and straw output as predicted by boserup s theory the use of modern input and output supply initially increases with increasing population pressure but declines again when population densities pass a critical threshold 800 persons km2 supporting malthus hypothesis the estimation results also revealed that both milk and straw supply responded positively to prices free grazing and stall feeding are found to be complementary activities likewise crop farm income and off farm job have a nonlinear relation with population pressure implying that both initially increase and then decrease with rising population pressure

da agrariedade a ruralidade novos enfoques a economia territorial in the first part the paper presents the evolution of the rural develoment theories from 50s to nowadays consequently in the second part it is addressed the issue of how the transition from subsistance economy to traditional economy to agricultural economy to rural economy could delineate virtuous processes of local development in specific contexts this concept is futher developed in the third part where territorial development is analysed in accordance with international studies and more specifically with european ones and in the forth where the topic is critically focused in the framework of the brazilean literature

below the line poverty in latin america abstract despite gains in basic welfare indicators poverty remains prevalent in latin america this paper surveys existing data on poverty in the region and discusses the relationship between growth inequality and poverty given the inequality of income distribution in latin america and the slow growth of output policies to overcome poverty must involve more efficient allocation of government resources redistribution and foreign aid

assessing the land use changes and greenhouse gas emissions of biofuels elucidating the crop yield effects available estimates of the land use changes and greenhouse gas emissions of biofuels differ significantly across economic models this paper focuses on the impacts of price induced yield assumptions on u s corn ethanol results these assumptions have dramatic impacts within the fapri modeling framework but limited ones within the gtap bio model i show that these sensitivity to yield assumption results are not comparable because the ex ante land and production elasticities assumed in these two models are not comparable the analysis reveals that the current focus solely on the value of the price induced yield elasticity can be misleading

nitrogen land substitution in corn production a reconciliation of aggregate and firm level evidence in this paper we seek to reconcile low farm level substitution elasticity between nitrogen fertilizer and land with larger industry level values for the corn sector this is accomplished with a micro simulation model which identifies twenty three heterogeneous groups of corn farmers based on survey data for indiana after controlling for soil quality slope crop rotation and natural nitrogen sources considerable variation in fertilizer application rates remains model simulations indicate that the estimated substitution elasticity at the state level 1 15 is consistent with very low farm level substitutability the difference is attributable to compositional changes in the wake of relative price shocks these compositional effects are potentially very important but they are ignored in most policy analyses

structural change power politics and community organizations in africa challenging the patterns puzzles and paradoxes abstract this paper explores two phenomena shaping processes of local institutional and organizational change in rural africa the first is the complexity of institutional layering and dissonance in which local organizations and institutions in rural africa coexist the second is the paradox often found in state local relations in africa central governments encourage local communities to take on responsibilities which the center cannot manage should significant organizational strength emerge at the local level however central powers often move expeditiously to destroy it illustrative material comes primarily from kenya and zimbabwe and selectively from several other countries we ask what new structures are emerging and what old ones are being adapted to new functions we argue that local organizations are critical for addressing ecological decline and restoring the productivity and sustainability of rural africa both localities and national governments have much to gain if the capacities of local organizations can become themselves a valued resource in the resource scarce setting comprising much of rural africa

the indirect land use impacts of united states biofuel policies the importance of acreage yield and bilateral trade responses recent work has highlighted agricultural land conversion as a significant debit in the greenhouse gas accounting of ethanol as an alternative fuel this work has at the same time sparked considerable debate on the role of crop yield growth as a means of avoiding rapid land conversion we examine the agricultural land use impacts of mandate driven ethanol demand increases in the united states in a formal economic equilibrium framework which allows us to examine the importance of yield price relationships we find that the standard assumption of trend yield growth is likely restrictive for analysis of equilibrium response to significant demand increases for fuel feedstocks furthermore we identify both the acreage response and bilateral trade specification of a multi country model as important sources of variability in terms of parametric uncertainty in predicting global land use change from the biofuels boom

crisis and responses the federal reserve in the early stages of the financial crisis in summer 2007 u s and global financial markets found themselves facing a potential financial crisis and the u s federal reserve found itself in a difficult situation it was becoming clear that banks and other financial institutions would ultimately lose tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars from their exposure to subprime mortgage market loans bank lending is closely tied to bank capital or net worth specifically bank regulators require that loans not exceed a certain multiple of capital thus the federal reserve faced the danger of a sharp contraction in credit and bank lending in a way that threatened a deep recession or worse when this kind of event happens the job of the central bank is to assure that financial institutions have the necessary funds to conduct their daily business that they have the liquidity they need to make timely payments and transfers modern financial institutions need to replenish their funding every day in the united states alone literally trillions of dollars are transferred between banks each day to support the 50 trillion credit outstanding in the economy as a whole commercial banks require funds to initiate the mortgages auto loans and credit card debt they then sell into financial markets while investment banks finance much of their activity with daily borrowing in the early stages of the crisis the situation often arose in which a wellcapitalized bank was forced to make sudden large loans based on previously committed lines of credit in this circumstance central bank actions can ease

the effect of the interbank network structure on contagion and common shocks abstract this paper proposes a dynamic multi agent model of a banking system with central bank banks optimize a portfolio of risky investments and riskless excess reserves according to their risk return and liquidity preferences they are linked via interbank loans and face stochastic deposit supply comparing different interbank network structures it is shown that money centre networks are more stable than random networks evidence is provided that the central bank stabilizes interbank markets in the short run only systemic risk via contagion is compared with common shocks and it is shown that both forms of systemic risk require different optimal policy responses

social science knowledge and institutional change over the last several decades agricultural economists have made major contributions to our understanding of the impact of advances in natural science knowledge on technical change and of the impact of technical change on economic growth we have also significantly advanced our understanding of the sources of demand for and supply of technical change work carried out within the framework of the induced technical change paradigm has demonstrated that technical change can be treated as largely endogenous to the development process hayami and ruttan 1971 binswanger and ruttan we have made less progress in our attempts to understand the contributions of advances in social science knowledge to institutional innovation or of the contribution of institutional innovation to economic political or social change and our knowledge of the sources of demand for and supply of institutional change remains rudimentary in this paper i suggest an approach to thinking about the sources of demand and supply for institutional change i then proceed to explore the use of social science knowledge and the role of social scientists in the design and evolution of institutional innovations finally i examine the contribution of agricultural economics research and of agricultural economists to the design and evolution of the direct payment approach to farm price and income policy i follow the lead of commons and knight and define institution to include both the behavioral rules that govern patterns of relationships and action as well as decision making units such as government bureaus firms and families the term institutional change will at times be used to refer to both institutional innovation and to changes in institutional performance i

agricultural labour productivity food prices and sustainable development impacts and indicators in the last few years high and unstable food and agricultural commodity prices and concerns about population growth increasing per capita food demands and environmental constraints have pushed agriculture and food production up national and international political policy and research agendas drawing on both theory and empirical evidence this paper argues that fundamental impacts of links between agricultural productivity sustainability and real food price changes are often overlooked in current policy analysis this is exacerbated by a lack of relevant and accessible indicators for monitoring agricultural productivity sustainability and real food prices two relatively simple and widely applicable sets of indicators are proposed for use in policy development and monitoring historical series of these indices are estimated for selected countries regions and the world their strengths weaknesses and potential value are then discussed in the context of the need for better sustainable agricultural development and food security indicators in any post 2015 successors to the current mdgs

selecting the state or choosing the chief the political determinants of smallholder land titling summary this article examines the effect of customary institutions on smallholder land titling in sub saharan africa it argues that the individual s status within the customary institution conditions his or her demand for land titles individuals with greater customary privilege gain advantages from maintaining customary property rights including stronger tenure security for households with lower privilege within the customary institution the benefits of adopting state land titles are higher analysis of an original survey of smallholder farmers in senegal and an existing survey in zambia demonstrates that households with greater customary privilege are less likely to adopt state land titles independent of ethnicity wealth and land values i find additional support for the argument in measures of increased tenure security for those with greater customary privilege qualitative interviews with customary authorities and smallholder farmers help establish the mechanism these findings update the dominant wisdom that land values and material transaction costs drive smallholder land titling demonstrating the important effect of status within the customary institution on demand for land titles by examining the political underpinnings of customary property rights this article contributes to our understandings of which farmers benefit most from land titling this has implications for the improved design of land governance programs

institutions and the r d of gm crops abstract this paper analyzes how different institutional structures shape the research and development r d of genetically modified crops gm crops whether this r d is conducted within companies cooperatives or public research organizations both publicly and privately funded r d is expected to influence the type of crops and traits that are developed and therefore the effects on society and ecosystems that potentially could follow from the use of gm crops this issue is analyzed empirically by statistical analysis of 1323 notifications for field trials with gm crops that have been submitted under two eu directives in seven european countries the results show that the type of r d organization influences the traits and crops that are developed companies are more likely to submit notifications that concern gm crops that secure the potential for profit than are other types of r d organizations while r d organizations that are purely publicly funded are more likely to submit notifications that only concern biosafety research than are cooperatives and companies consideration of the environment food safety and food security might justify institutional reforms of r d of gm crops this might include increased public funding combined with changes in intellectual property rights

adaptation to land constraints is africa different since the seminal works of malthus and boserup scientists have long debated the impact of population growth and land constraints on the wellbeing of rural people today these concerns are particularly relevant to africa with its rapid population growth very small farms and chronic food insecurity in this paper we examine adaptation to falling land labor ratios using a comprehensive theoretical framework in which households faced with binding land constraints can respond in three ways intensifying agricultural production diversifying out of agriculture and reducing fertility rates using cross country data and drawing upon the existing literature we reach three conclusions first population density is associated with reduced fallows and more intensive use of land but not fertilizer use or irrigation indicating major challenges in achieving sustainable intensification or agricultural productivity growth second there is little evidence of successful non farm diversification in response to land pressures in africa from domestic or international income sources third rural africans in land constrained countries desire smaller families but have thus far benefited little from family planning policies these findings underscore the need for a coordinated multi sectoral approach to sustainably reduce poverty in the region

a dynamic option value for institutional change marketable property rights in the sahel in this article we use dynamic programming methods to create an option value measure of the value of the institutional innovation of marketable property rights this measure has two properties that are important to understanding institutional change it is truly dynamic and it allows for agent heterogeneity in the case of west africa we find that the collapse of customary risk management institutions is a vital part of the demand for marketability rights as agents struggle to smooth income and consumption in its wake we find that the social efficiency implications of this demand for institutional innovation are ambiguous

productivity growth in world agriculture sources and constraints during the last half century advances in crop production came from expansion in areas irrigated from more intensive application of fertilizers and crop protection chemicals and from crop varieties that were more responsive to technical inputs and management advances in animal production came from genetic improvements and advances in animal nutrition differences among developed and developing countries in output per hectare and per worker have widened if these gaps are to be narrowed agricultural research capacity in developing countries will have to be substantially strengthened

agriculture and climate change in global scenarios why don t the models agree agriculture is unique among economic sectors in the nature of impacts from climate change the production activity that transforms inputs into agricultural outputs involves direct use of weather inputs temperature solar radiation available to the plant and precipitation previous studies of the impacts of climate change on agriculture have reported substantial differences in outcomes such as prices production and trade arising from differences in model inputs and model specification this article presents climate change results and underlying determinants from a model comparison exercise with 10 of the leading global economic models that include significant representation of agriculture by harmonizing key drivers that include climate change effects differences in model outcomes were reduced the particular choice of climate change drivers for this comparison activity results in large and negative productivity effects all models respond with higher prices producer behavior differs by model with some emphasizing area response and others yield response demand response is least important the differences reflect both differences in model specification and perspectives on the future the results from this study highlight the need to more fully compare the deep model parameters to generate a call for a combination of econometric and validation studies to narrow the degree of uncertainty and variability in these parameters and to move to monte carlo type simulations to better map the contours of economic uncertainty

discount window borrowing after 2003 the explicit reduction in implicit costs abstract in 2003 the federal reserve introduced primary credit as its main discount window lending program this program replaced the adjustment credit program which subject to a number of restrictions had generated a stigma associated with borrowing from the federal reserve lessening the stigma of borrowing was viewed as essential for reducing the reluctance to borrow from the federal reserve we develop a structural model of daily borrowing using this model we estimate the implicit cost associated with borrowing our results suggest that the stigma of borrowing is significantly reduced

changes in the returns to education in costa rica abstract i document patterns in the returns to education in costa rica from 1976 to 1992 the most important change during this period was that from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s the return to education fell by about one fourth i construct demand and supply indices within a fixed manpower requirements framework to estimate demand and supply shifts i find a significantly positive relationship between measures of demand for education and a significantly negative relationship between measures of supply for education these findings suggest that calculations based on the returns to education such as the returns to social investments in education must take into account future changes in the returns to education as supply and demand conditions develop

making sense of institutions as a factor shaping economic performance abstract there has recently been a resurgence of interest in how institutions affect economic performance a review of this literature reveals that the concept of an institution means different things to different scholars both within economics and across the social sciences we discuss what factors unify the different definitions of institutions and develop a concept of institutions useful for the analysis of economic performance and economic growth in particular specifically we develop the notion of institutions as standard social technologies economic growth results from the co evolution of physical and social technologies

dynamic debt runs we develop a dynamic model of debt runs on a rm which invests in an illiquid asset by rolling over staggered short term debt contracts i e dierent contracts mature at dierent times we derive a unique threshold equilibrium in which creditors coordinate their asynchronous rollover decisions based on the rm s publicly observable and time varying fundamental the coordination problem ampli es the creditors concerns about the rm s future rollover risk created by its time varying fundamental and causes each maturing creditor to run ahead of others even when the current fundamental is substantially higher than its liability our model provides a set of implications on the roles played by volatility illiquidity and debt maturity in driving debt runs as well as on rms capital adequacy standards and credit risk

toward a theory of induced institutional innovation in this paper we elaborate a theory of institutional innovation in which changes in the demand for institutional innovation are induced by changes in relative resource endowments and by technical change we illustrate from agricultural history how changes in resource endowments and technical change have induced changes in private property rights and in the development of non market institutions we also consider the impact of advances in social science knowledge and of cultural endowments on the supply of institutional change in a final section we present the elements of a model of institutional innovation that maps the relationships among resource endowments cultural endowments technology and institutions

the performance of the labor market during recession and structural adjustment costa rica in the 1980s abstract in this paper we trace the evolution of indicators of labor market performance in costa rica throughout the 1980s and examine the special features of the costa rican labor market that influenced the rapid decline 1980 1982 and rapid recovery 1982 1986 of those indicators we find that among other factors legal minimum wages and a large public sector work force were important in influencing these indicators we conclude that recovery and structural adjustment have been relatively successful in costa rica within a system where the labor market functions in an institutional context rather distant from the free market model

water resources as determinants for foreign direct investments in land a gravity analysis of foreign land acquisitions worldwide increasing demand for agricultural products poses the critical question of where this additional production will take place in this context the phenomenon of large scale foreign land acquisition fla is one strategy that has been controversially discussed in scientific and public debates a better understanding of what factors drive fla flows between investor and target countries is still needed this project applies a gravity model to estimate the effect of agro environmental determinants in target countries the response variables are derived from improved data obtained from the land matrix global observatory and the explanatory variables from a range of climatic and agricultural data sets the issue of large numbers of zero flows in such a data set is tackled using zero inflating regression models overall the results highlight the crucial role of water resources in particular the potential of rainfed crop production in the targeted areas and not just land abundance alone as found in previous studies moreover in line with previous studies we show that in contrast to other types of investment flows agricultural investment flows are not negatively affected by weaker institutional regulations or corruption

can consumers willingness to pay incentivize adoption of environmental impact reducing technologies in meat animal production abstract this study develops a model estimating consumer willingness to pay wtp for environmental meat attributes and uses a multi objective nutritional optimizer to explore the extent to which wtp can offset on farm costs of reducing water use data for the wtp model are sourced from a literature survey of the agricola and google scholar databases yielding 46 studies estimating wtp for pure and impure organic grass fed natural environmental meat attributes bayesian analysis is used to estimate 3 models varying in independent variables models are evaluated by the correlation coefficient r2 root mean squared error of prediction rmspe and posterior model probability the most probable model is then used to estimate a confidence range of wtp for pure environmental beef impure environmental labels result in higher wtp than pure labels non hypothetical wtp for pure environmental labeling for north american consumers ranges from 6 7 to 32 6 a case study is conducted to identify the expected reduction in water use that can be funded from capturing wtp through labeling a multi objective nutritional optimizer is used to identify ideal management of beef cattle to reduce whole system water use in three regions of the united states cost increases from management are varied over the predicted range in wtp and combined with the probability of a consumer purchasing beef at each wtp value to identify the theoretical effect on expected environmental impact reduction a 10 premium is the ideal wtp resulting in water use reductions between 24 4 l and 41 4 l

inter and intra seasonal crop acreage response to international food prices and implications of volatility understanding how producers make decisions to allot acreage among crops and how decisions about land use are affected by changes in prices and their volatility is fundamental for predicting the supply of staple crops and hence assessing the global food supply situation this study makes estimations of monthly i e seasonal versus annual global acreage response models for the world s principal staple food crops wheat corn soybeans and rice primary emphasis is given to the magnitude and speed of the allocation process estimation of intra annual acreage elasticity is crucial for expected food supply and for input demand especially in the light of the recent short term volatility in food prices the econometric results indicate that global crop acreage responds to crop prices and price risks input costs as well as a time trend depending on respective crop short run elasticities are about 0 05 to 0 40 price volatility tends to reduce acreage for some of the crops comparison of the annual and the monthly acreage response elasticities suggests that acreage adjusts seasonally around the globe to new information and expectations given the seasonality of agriculture time is of an essence for acreage response the analysis indicates that acreage allocation is more sensitive to prices in the northern hemisphere spring than in winter and the response varies across months

opportunism and ngos entrepreneurship and green north south transfers abstract through the lens of entrepreneurship this paper applies the new institutional economics to examine two case studies of environmental nongovernmental organizations ngos in latin america to clarify their political economic roles southern ngos that rely on northern donors are viewed as entrepreneurial economic entities producing international public goods these nonprofit ngos take their place alongside for profit firms as contributors to economic production employment institutional innovation and technology transfer the theoretical framework proposed assumes that self interested behavior coexists with loyalty commitment and altruism as well as opportunism

scarcity amidst abundance reassessing the potential for cropland expansion in africa abstract sub saharan africa is typically regarded as land abundant and previous efforts to estimate the true extent of potentially available cropland pac have largely affirmed this perception such efforts however have largely focused on production potential and have underemphasized economic profitability and other constraints to expansion this paper re estimates pac for africa in a more explicit economic framework that emphasizes the returns to agricultural production under a variety of assumptions using recent geospatial data existing pac estimates for africa are shown to be highly sensitive to assumptions about land productivity and market access and are moderately influenced by the use of alternative data sources the region s underutilized land resources are concentrated in relatively few countries many of which are fragile states between one half and two thirds of the region s surplus land is currently under forest cover conversion of forests to cropland would entail major environmental costs most of the continent s unexploited land resources are located far from input and output markets limiting their economic attractiveness in the long run improvements in infrastructure and agricultural productivity and the growth of hinterland towns will enhance the economic returns to cropland expansion in the short to medium term however the potential for profitable smallholder based cropland expansion in most african countries is likely to be much more limited than it is typically perceived to be

employment and economic growth in costa rica abstract costa rica s economic growth in the last 25 years has had favorable labor market and income distribution consequences overall employment growth kept pace with labor force growth the mix of jobs improved real wages rose and relative inequality and absolute poverty fell but during the economic crisis of 1980 1982 when real per capita income plummeted labor market conditions deteriorated markedly unemployment doubled employment composition worsened and real wages fell by 40 growth labor market conditions and income distribution

agricultural intensification in ghana evaluating the optimist s case for a green revolution abstract while there are valid reasons for a renewed interest in adapting the lessons of the asian green revolution to the african setting research must go further in identifying the main and potentially unique drivers of agricultural intensification within and across african countries in this study we look at the case of ghana to identify whether fast population growth and the remarkable agricultural performance the country has enjoyed in recent years have resulted in favorable conditions for the adoption of asian style green revolution technologies through descriptive analysis combined with empirical assessment of the economic efficiency of agriculture in different production systems and agroecologies we are able assess the relevance of green revolution technologies for agricultural production in ghana in particular we analyze whether fertilizer use in ghana is associated with high population density and intensive cereal production and whether land intensive innovations are associated with more efficient production practices overall we do not find evidence of asian style green revolution agricultural intensification in ghana in fact we find no correlation between population density and input intensity we also find that labor costs still play a major role in ghanaian agricultural development in limiting the adoption of labor intensive technologies even in relatively high population density areas

institutional innovation and agricultural development abstract this paper elaborates a theory of institutional innovation in which shifts in the demand for institutional change are induced by changes in relative resource endowments and by technical change the supply of institutional innovations responds to advances in social science knowledge and changes in cultural endowments case studies drawing on 1 innovations in land tenure and labor relations in the philippines 2 export promotion and import substitution of agricultural commodities in east asia and 3 farm commodity policy in the united states are presented elements of a general institutional innovation model are outlined

what has luck got to do with it a regional analysis of poverty and agricultural growth in rural india this article explores the role of agro ecological factors associated with agricultural growth and poverty outcomes in india using a new operationalisation of agro ecological factors and incorporating within state variations in poverty and other variables we show that agricultural growth and poverty reduction appear to depend on underlying agro ecological conditions which are favourable to the spread of irrigation and hence agricultural development which in turn in associated with poverty reduction promotion of agriculture in less favoured areas in unlikely to have similar effects on agriculture in less favoured areas is unlikely to have similar effects on agricultural growth even if the effects of agricultural growth on poverty remain similar unless conditions for irrigation are favourable or rainfall is sufficiently abundant and reliable this suggests that considerable caution may be needed in drawing policy conclusions from empirical analysis by state alone and without regard to their underlying f

business groups and the natural state abstract recent revisionist accounts of corporate governance in both business history and finance are challenging the tradition narrative associated with berle and means 1932 and chandler 1977 in which the american model of diffuse ownership and coherent diversification is both an inevitable outcome of economic development and perhaps a normative standard for the world to follow this essay is an attempt to rethink that narrative in light of the continued significance of the pyramidal business group as a governance structure around the world i argue that business groups arise in response both to inadequacies in arm s length markets and to the needs of what north et al 2009 call the natural state in this view the quality of markets and the demands of the state are tightly interconnected phenomena such a perspective explains the emergence of business groups in developing countries as well as their persistence even in wealthy and sophisticated polities apart from the u s and the u k in the end moreover i endorse the view that the much discussed and oft misunderstood exceptionalism of the u s in corporate governance arises not only from the sophistication of american markets but also importantly from government policies toward corporate taxation and securities regulation policies that arose from the unique public choice problem posed by the differential effect on the u s of the collapse of globalization during the middle years of the twentieth century

the political economy of productivity thai agricultural development 1880 1975 the economic history of thailand between 1880 and 1975 contrasts sharply with the development experiences of other third world countries between the opening of trade in 1850 and 1941 when war halted economic activity thailand became a major exporter of rice in the world market although conditions for further growth seemed highly favourable thailand s rapid integration into the world economy failed to improve living standards and rice yields actually declined in examining the causes of the underdevelopment of thai agriculture over the last 100 years feeny introduces supply and demand models of technical and institutional change to analyse why the rice export boom did not result in more development this book much of which is based on primary research in the thai national archives is one of the few quantitative economic histories of a less developed country

financial deepening and economic growth the core of shapley shubik games and general equilibrium models with a venn diagram is applied for a theory on the role of real finance in economic growth among advanced economies then the dynamic computable general equilibrium dcge models for germany france the uk japan and the usa are constructed to assess the validity of the over financing hypothesis that has reappeared after the financial crisis of 2008 actual financial deepening ratios observed in the nonconsolidated balance sheet of the oecd exceeded by factors of 3 5 2 4 5 1 11 6 and 4 8 than the optimal financial deepening ratios implied by dcge models respectively in these countries because of excessive leveraging and bubbles up to 19 times of gdp which were responsible for this great recession containing such massive fluctuations for macroeconomic stability and growth in these economies are not possible in conventional fiscal and monetary policy models and require a dcge analysis like this along with adoption of separating equilibri

land pressures the evolution of farming systems and development strategies in africa a synthesis abstract evidence assembled in this special issue of food policy shows that rising rural population densities in parts of africa are profoundly affecting farming systems and the region s economies in ways that are underappreciated in current discourse on african development issues this study synthesizes how people markets and governments are responding to rising land pressures in africa drawing on key findings from the various contributions in this special issue the papers herein revisit the issue of boserupian agricultural intensification as an important response to land constraints but they also go further than boserup and her followers to explore broader responses to land constraints including non farm diversification migration and reduced fertility rates agricultural and rural development strategies in the region will need to more fully anticipate the implications of africa s rapidly changing land and demographic situation and the immense challenges that mounting land pressures pose in the context of current evidence of unsustainable agricultural intensification a rapidly rising labor force associated with the region s current demographic conditions and limited nonfarm job creation these challenges are manageable but will require explicit policy actions to address the unique development challenges in densely populated rural areas

the development of a land market insights from cote d ivoire this paper contributes to the debate on rural land sales in africa first it shows that the emergence of sales in the forested area of cote d ivoire corresponds to an imperfect land commoditization due to the social embedding of land transfers in the autochthon migrant relationship then it analyzes land sales in a former no man s land outside this relationship where the transactions correspond to complete sales however a diachronic analysis reveals an involution in the market related to the transformation of the pioneer s individual private right into a family right once the land is inherited highlighting therefore another social dimension of land markets 2006 by the board of regents of the university of wisconsin system

implications of higher global food prices for poverty in low income countries in many poor countries the recent increases in prices of staple foods raise the real incomes of those selling food many of whom are relatively poor while hurting net food consumers many of whom are also relatively poor the impacts on poverty will certainly be very diverse but the average impact on poverty depends upon the balance between these two effects and can only be determined by looking at real world data results using household data for ten observations on nine low income countries show that the short run impacts of higher staple food prices on poverty differ considerably by commodity and by country but that poverty increases are much more frequent and larger than poverty reductions the recent large increases in food prices appear likely to raise overall poverty in low income countries substantially

an assessment of the agricultural economics profession i u i r t department of agricultural and resource econol 1ics division of agriculture and natural resources le niversity of california d 8cvlceltvc j working paper no 509 an assessment of tiie agricultural economics profession by richard e just and gordon c rausser california agricultural experiment station giannini foundation of agricultural economics august 1989

did established early warning signals predict the 2008 crises abstract over the past 60 years a voluminous literature has painstakingly developed crises theories and their associated early warning signals the hallmark of this literature is the consistency with which selected early warning signals such as the level of reserves and exchange rate appreciations are presumed to predict different types of crises across countries and time the diversity of crises theories that motivate early warning signals presents however a challenge to empirical implementations given that the true model of early warning signals is unknown omitted variable bias contaminates estimates and confidence levels when the uncertainty surrounding a particular theory has been ignored after addressing model uncertainty in early warning signal regressions using an extended version of frankel and saravelos 2012 j int econ 87 216 231 dataset we do not find a single early warning signal that alerts to all dimensions of the 2008 crisis instead distinct sets of early warning signals identify different dimensions of the crisis banking balance of payments exchange rate pressure and recession

green growth in the post copenhagen climate global climate change stands out from most environmental problems because it will span generations and force us to think in new ways about intergenerational fairness it involves the delicate problem of complex coordination between countries on a truly global scale as long as fossil fuels are too cheap climate change policy will engage all major economies the costs are high enough to make efficiency a priority which means striving toward a single market for carbon plus tackling the thorny issues of fairness hopes for a grand deal were mercilessly shattered at copenhagen in december 2009 and in other recent unfccc meetings with the result that green growth is promoted as an alternative path indeed green growth is clearly the goal but it is no magic bullet the world economy will require clear and rather tough policy instruments for growth to be green and it is naive to think otherwise growth green or not will boost demand for energy and coal is normally the cheapest source the magnitude of the challenge is greater if we also consider the problems related to nuclear fission energy and in some instances to bioenergy such as its competition for land that may be essential for the poor this paper discusses some necessary ingredients for a long term global climate strategy as we wait for the final and maybe elusive worldwide treaty we must find a policy that makes sense and is not only compatible with but facilitates the development of such a treaty c 2011 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

toward a food secure future ensuring food security for sustainable human development in sub saharan africa food security remains a top development priority and global concern it is enshrined in the 2030 agenda for sustainable development in sustainable development goal two food security is also a core component of the human development and capability paradigm since food access and entitlements are critical for reinforcing essential human capabilities in introducing this special issue this paper argues that agriculture is central to improving food security and reducing poverty in africa it suggests that realizing the potential of agriculture in africa requires rapid increases in land productivity and increases in agricultural yields a science based approach that integrates gender and sustainability is critical to meet this goal through the design and implementation of policies that improve the availability farm inputs and farm technology the paper concludes by introducing the papers in this special issue