the labor market status of immigrants effects of the unemployment rate at arrival and duration of residence combining current population survey samples from november 1979 april 1983 june 1986 and june 1988 all of which included data on country of birth and year of immigration the authors examine pat

the economic impact of agricultural extension a review the history of economic development shows that few countries have achieved sustained economic growth without first or simultaneously developing their agricultural sector in most developing countries agriculture is the most important economic activity providing income employment and foreign exchange without an efficient agricultural sector a country is severely constrained in its ability to feed itself or import foreign products for domestic consumption and development rapid technological advances in agriculture have occurred since world war ii these advances have induced great changes in agricultural production and also highlighted the importance of a rapid and efficient transfer of advanced knowledge to the farmer when farmers become aware of the availability of new technology they may have inaccurate perceptions of the related costs and benefits as information availability may be limited as farmers decisions are based on their perceptions their resource allocation and technology choice will deviate from the social optimum if perceptions do not coincide with the correct attributes of the technology both society and the farmers as individuals would gain from improved information and theoretically there should exist a market for information however information on improved agricultural technology is often a public good because the provider of the information cannot exclude other potential users from free access to information provided to one user and the value of the information is not directly affected by the number of users while many instances of market activities in various aspects of agricultural information are observed e g specialized information on pest man

tariff and quota reform with international capital mobility in a small open economy with a convex production set international capital mobility raises the cost of tariff protection on one subset of imports if there are irremovable quotas on another given irremovable quotas on one subset of imports free trade is the optimal policy toward all other imports with or without international capital mobility further in the scalar case international capital mobility reduces the optimal implicit excess tariff on the quota constrained import if an irremovable tariff is in place on the other import

evaluating the impact of agricultural extension on farms performance in crete a nonneutral stochastic frontier approach this article attempts to integrate the production and the efficiency based approaches for evaluating the impact of extension on farms performance for this purpose the nonneutral production frontier model is used and the empirical analysis refers to a sample of farms from crete greece the empirical results support the proposed formulation instead of either the production or the efficiency based formulations as extension was found to have a statistically significant effect on closing both the technology and management gaps public and private extension services were found to be competitive in the production function and complementary in the technical inefficiency effect function in addition farms using both public and private extension services achieved a higher degree of technical efficiency than those using either public or private extension services and farms with no extension services were found to be the least efficient

livelihoods and farm efficiency in rural georgia this study contributes to the literature on the role of livelihood strategies in rural growth and poverty reduction it distinguishes between livelihood diversity strategies that contribute to sustainable growth in household incomes and those that mainly have a coping function it suggests that typically the contribution of livelihood diversity to growing household income is through relaxing dependence on credit for access to capital in this scenario livelihood diversity would lead to higher technical efficiency in agriculture via investment and thereby to higher household incomes survey data from georgia are introduced and used to test these hypotheses using a bayesian stochastic frontier approach the findings are relevant to defining more clearly the scope and aims of policies to stimulate the rural non farm economy in developing and transition countries

the unemployment experience of male immigrants in england in this paper the unemployment experience of immigrant men in the english labour market is examined using 1993 1994 data from the quarterly labour force survey of the united kingdom hypotheses proposed by chiswick 1982 are investigated for both the claimant count and the ilo measures of unemployment using logistic regression analysis our results show that recent white and nonwhite immigrant men experience much higher levels of unemployment than earlier cohorts for whites this effect is transitory whereas for nonwhites unemployment rates adjust more slowly as the duration of stay increases immigrant unemployment rates also vary considerably with country of birth

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

technical efficiency and productivity of maize producers in eastern ethiopia a study of farmers within and outside the sasakawa global 2000 project abstract this paper investigates the technical efficiency of two samples of maize producers in eastern ethiopia one involving farmers within the sasakawa global 2000 project and the other involving farmers outside this program the study uses stochastic frontier production functions in which the technical inefficiency effects are assumed to be functions of the age and education of the farmers together with the time spent by extension advisers in assisting farmers in their agricultural production operations for the cross sectional data obtained for the 1995 96 agricultural year cobb douglas stochastic frontiers are found to be adequate representations of the data given the specifications of the translog stochastic frontiers for farmers within and outside the project the empirical results indicate that farmers within the sg 2000 project are more technically efficient than farmers outside the project relative to their respective technologies the mean frontier output of maize for farmers within the sg 2000 project is significantly greater than that for the farmers outside the project

migration theories and evidence an assessment abstract this paper presents a critical survey of theories of migration their welfare and policy implications and their empirical relevance we also develop some extensions to the theory beginning with the harris and todaro ht model in particular the ht model is extended to examine risk averse behaviour within families where the migration of members of families serves to diversify risk the welfare implications of the individual migration decision and government intervention in the form of employment subsidies are examined recent evidence on international migration is presented it is shown that migration does not flow automatically in response to wage differentials characteristics of migrants and the process of self selection are found to be important determinants of the rate of migration

the earnings of male immigrants in england evidence from the quarterly lfs in this paper we estimate earnings functions for native born and foreign born white and non white males in the english labour market using data from the quarterly labour force survey our results highlight the importance of distinguishing between native born and foreign born males when investigating the labour market experience of ethnic minorities furthermore the earnings performance amongst white immigrants varies considerably

efficiency in agricultural production the case of peasant farmers in eastern paraguay abstract this paper contributes to the productivity literature in developing country agriculture by quantifying the level of efficiency for a sample of peasant farmers from eastern paraguay a stochastic efficiency decomposition methodology is used to derive technical allocative and economic efficiency measures separately for cotton and cassava an average economic efficiency of 40 1 for cotton and of 52 for cassava is found which suggests considerable room for productivity gains for the farms in the sample through better use of available resources given the state of technology gains in output through productivity growth have become increasingly important to paraguay as the opportunities to bring additional virgin lands into cultivation have significantly diminished in recent years no clear strategy to improve farm productivity could be gleaned from an examination of the relationship between efficiency and various socioeconomic variables one possible explanation for this finding is the existence of a stage of development threshold below which there is no consistent relationship between socioeconomic variables and productivity if this is the case then our results suggest that this sample of paraguayan peasants are yet to reach such a threshold hence improvements in educational and extension services for example would be needed to go beyond this threshold once this is accomplished additional productivity gains would be obtained by further investments in human capital and related factors

education and technical efficiency in small farm production differences in technical efficiency are observed as differences in the physical output produced from a given bundle of physical inputs these differences are not considered in the traditional theory of the firm wherein the output resulting from a particular input bundle is specified as the maximum possible according to the latest technology presupposing technical efficiency the theory of the firm concentrates on allocative efficiency on the choice of the particular input bundle that maximizes profit given prices and the technically efficient production function the best utilization of any particular input combination according to henderson and quandt is a technical not an economic problem 1 economic theory notwithstanding empirical studies of production must take into account differences in the utilization of inputs since in the real world producers are not all equally efficient it is conceptually convenient to divide the output variation observed over a number of firms into two parts one that stems from variation in physical inputs and another that reflects differences in technical efficiency timmer has developed an approach by which to compare the technical efficiency of firms using linear programming he determines the function that relates physical inputs to output for the most efficient of a sample of firms in other words he finds the production surface that is the envelope of all the observation points he calls this function the technical frontier the relative tech

the effects of education in agriculture evidence from nepal the impact of education in modernizing and traditional agricultures of nepal is investigated by utilizing a production function framework education is found to have higher payoff to productivity in a modernizing environment than in traditional agriculture higher college education has a significant role in a modernizing environment but not in the traditional area while both worker and allocative effects of education contribute positively to agricultural production allocative effect surpasses worker effect in both environments however only the input allocation component of the allocative effect is important in traditional areas while both input allocation and input selection components are crucial in a modernizing agriculture

education and technical efficiency during the green revolution in pakistan tion is more likely to arise during disequilibrium caused by technical change in agriculture this may be because technical change renders the existing cultural practices obsolete or inadequate and calls for an adjustment a more educated farmer is supposed to make the required adjustment more quickly this article tests the foregoing hypothesis in pakistan agriculture during the green revolution when introduction of new crop varieties disturbed the prevailing equilibrium for this purpose a production function approach is used and the analysis is conducted not only for the new crop varieties but also for their traditional counterparts the results lend support to the hypothesis by showing that the worker effect is stronger for new crop varieties than it is for traditional ones the article is divided into five sections in the next section a brief review of the literature is presented section iii presents the hypothesis and discusses the methodology used for the analysis the results and their policy implications are discussed in section iv and section v concludes the article ii brief literature review in a pioneering study exploring the economic effects of education z griliches used production function analysis to highlight the contri

measuring efficiency at u s banks accounting for heterogeneity is important abstract estimates of bank cost efficiency can be biased if bank heterogeneity is ignored i compare x inefficiency derived from a model constraining the cost frontier to be the same for all banks in the u s and a model allowing for different frontiers and error terms across federal reserve districts i find that the data reject the single cost function model x inefficiency measures based on the single cost function model are on average higher than those based on the separate cost functions model the distributions of the one sided error terms are wider for the single cost function model than for the separate cost functions model and the ranking of districts by the level of x inefficiency differs in the two models the results suggest it is important when studying x inefficiency to account for differences across the markets in which banks are operating and that since x inefficiency is by construction a residual it will be particulary sensitive to omissions in the basic model

farmer behavior under risk of failure cudari c department of agricultural and resource economi division of agriculture and natural resources l university of california ut workingpaperno 488 j re v farmer behavior under risk of failure by william e foster and gordon c hausser giannini foundation of agricultural economics uerary cr california agricultural experiment station giannini foundation of agricultural economics october 1990

the nature of the farm abstract using a model based on a trade off between moral hazard incentives and gains from specialization this paper explains why farming has generally not converted from small family based firms into large factory style corporate firms nature is both seasonal and random and the interplay of these qualities generates moral hazard limits the gains from specialization and causes timing problems between stages of production by identifying conditions in which these forces vary we derive testable predictions about the choice of organization and the extent of farm integration to test these predictions we study the historical development of several agricultural industries and analyze data from a sample of over 1 000 farms in british columbia and louisiana in general seasonality and randomness so limit the benefits of specialization that family farms are optimal but when farmers are successful in mitigating the effects of seasonality and random shocks to output farm organizations gravitate toward fa

assimilation changes in cohort quality and the earnings of immigrants this paper reexamines the empirical basis for two facts that seem to be found in most cross section studies of immigrant earnings 1 the earnings of immigrants grow rapidly as they assimilate into the united states and 2 this rapid growth leads to many immigrants overtaking the earnings of the natives within 10 15 years after immigration using the 1970 and 1980 u s censuses this paper studies the earnings growth experienced by specific immigrant cohorts during the period 1970 80 it is found that within cohort growth is significantly smaller than the growth predicted by cross section regressions for most immigrant groups this differential is consistent with the hypothesis that there has been a secular decline in the quality of immigrants admitted to the united states

the gender gap in agricultural productivity the role of market imperfections abstractthis paper hypothesises that labour and credit market imperfections by discouraging off farm income generating activities and restricting access to inputs respectively affect female farm productivity more deeply than male productivity the paper develops a theoretical model which decomposes the contribution of various market imperfections to the gender productivity gap empirically we show that agricultural labour productivity is on average 44 per cent lower on female headed plots than on those managed by male heads 34 per cent of this gap is explained by differences in labour market access and 29 per cent by differences in credit access

the impact of agricultural extension on farm production in resettlement areas of zimbabwe in this paper we revisit the contested issue of the impact of agricultural extension on farm production we exploit two features of the data available to us its longitudinal nature and explicit measures of farmer ability we find that after controlling for innate productivity characteristics and farmer ability either using household fixed effects estimation or by including a measure of farmer ability and village fixed effects access to agricultural extension services defined as receiving one or two visits per agricultural year raises the value of crop production by about 15 per cent this parameter estimate is statistically significant however we also find variability in these parameter estimates across individual crop years with the impact being markedly different in drought and non drought years collectively these results suggest that although access to farm level extension visits does increase productivity even after controlling for innate productivity characteristics and farmer ability results from single year cross sectional studies should be treated with caution

privatization of agricultural extension services in the eu towards a lack of adequate knowledge for small scale farms small scale farming involves millions of households in the eu and plays an important role in the rural economy a significant percentage of these farms produce commodities for the market this productive dimension is often overlooked however as is the technical support needed by these farms the privatization of national farm advisory systems nfas has an impact on small scale farming that should be better assessed this paper which looks at the characteristics of intangible services helps demonstrate how the privatization of advisory services may have unexpected adverse effects on small farms the dismantling of coordinating authorities has made these farms less visible as a target client less direct interaction with advisors makes it more difficult to co produce knowledge that is relevant to their needs in addition back office activities such as scientific monitoring building and updating databases and scientific experiments have been restructured in a way which does not support their interests

self selection and the earnings of immigrants this paper analyzes the way in which the earnings of the immigrant population may be expected to differ from the earnings of the native population because of the endogeneity of the decision to migrate the empirical study shows that differences in the u s earnings of immigrants with the same measured skills but from different home countries are attributable to variations in political and economic conditions in the countries of origin at the time of migration excerpt

smallholder technical efficiency controlling for environmental production conditions abstract smallholder agricultural production depends heavily on environmental production conditions that are largely exogenously determined yet few data sets collect necessary detailed information on environmental production conditions this oversight raises the spectre of likely omitted variables bias because farmers input choices typically respond in part to environmental conditions moreover because environmental production conditions are rarely symmetrically distributed the omission also generally leads to upward bias in estimated technical inefficiency and to biased estimates of the correlates of estimated technical inefficiency as well using panel data from 464 traditional rice plots in cote d ivoire we show that controlling for heterogeneous environmental production conditions significantly changes inferences perhaps especially with respect to smallholder rice farmers estimated technical inefficiency

education in production measuring labor quality and management production function studies have used the education of the head of the household or the average education of farm workers to assess the contribution of schooling to farm efficiency in this paper i critically examine the information content of these measures by developing a team production model which suggests separate education measures to approximate labor quality and managerial skills empirical analyses based on chinese farm household data show that the new measures are statistically superior to the existing alternatives there is evidence of centralized decision making on the farms where the highest schooling contributes the most to production efficiency

the economics of immigration this literature review concerns the impact of immigration on the economy of the host country focusing on the experience of the united states the emphasis is on the period from the 1970s to the 1990s the author shows that research earlier in this period generally concluded that the economic effects of immigration were positive but that more recent research on later migrations have generally concluded that immigration may be having an adverse effect on the earnings of native unskilled workers and be placing an increased burden on welfare programs the importance of such economic analysis for the formulation of appropriate migration policies is stressed

extension services product quality and yields the case of grapes in argentina this article studies the impact of publicly subsidized agricultural extension services on yields and product quality we use panel data from grape producers in mendoza argentina to estimate the impacts of farmer trainings we find a negative overall impact on yields and evidence of a positive average impact on the adoption of higher quality grape varieties by analyzing the dynamic pattern of the estimated effects we find evidence of a temporary decrease in yields suggesting the existence of an adjustment process following the introduction of higher quality grapes the overall negative effect on yield is driven by a sharp drop in the year of participation this fades after year one and two to three years after treatment we observe increases in higher quality grape production findings reinforce the importance of temporal dimension of extension services

improving the speed of adoption of agricultural technologies and farm performance through farmer groups evidence from the great lakes region of africa the article examines the effect of membership in farmer groups mfg on adoption lag of agricultural technologies and farm performance in burundi the democratic republic of congo and rwanda we use duration and stochastic production frontier models on farm household data we find that the longer the duration of mfg the shorter the adoption lag and much more so if combined with extension service delivery farmer groups function as an important mechanism for improving farm productivity through reduced technical inefficiency in input use we discuss policy implications under which farmer groups are a useful channel to reduce adoption lag and the means through which improved farm performance can be achieved

measuring technical efficiency in the presence of pesticide spillovers and production uncertainty the case of dutch arable farms pesticides dynamic effects and production uncertainty play an important role in farmers production decisions pesticides have a current production impact through reducing crop damage in the current period and a future impact through impacting the farm biodiversity which alters the future production environment this study presents the difference in inefficiency arising from models that ignore the dynamic effects of pesticides in production decisions and the impact of production uncertainty a dynamic data envelopment analysis dea model is applied to outputs inputs and undesirables of dutch arable farms over the period 2003 2007 a bootstrap approach is used to explain farmers performance providing empirical representations of the impact of stochastic elements on production these empirical representations are used to adjust firms inefficiency scores to incorporate production uncertainty in efficiency evaluation we find that efficiency increased dramatically when a production technology representation that considers both pesticides dynamic impacts and production uncertainty is adopted

productive efficiency of specialty and conventional coffee farmers in costa rica accounting for technological heterogeneity and self selection a steep decline in coffee prices at the producer level led to considerable pressure for farmers in costa rica and producer countries all over the world one possible reaction was moving to specialty markets where price pressure was perceived to be lower we use original survey data from 2002 2003 and 2003 2004 to analyze the factors influencing participation in specialty markets and to estimate separate production functions for specialty and conventional coffee farmers allowing for farm specific inefficiencies applying a sample selection framework we find significant selection bias in the sub sample of specialty farmers and evidence for the overestimation of efficiency if this bias is not adequately controlled for among the most important factors that influence farm specific efficiency levels in the two sub samples are the availability of additional income activities experience in coffee cultivation and membership in cooperatives based on the results we derive policy recommendations to improve farmers production performance and ability to cope with the effects of the coffee crisis these policy measures include the provision of extension services with respect to farm management skills the creation of income opportunities in rural areas and the support of farmer owned cooperatives

the effects of education in early stage agriculture some evidence from china the stochastic production frontier approach is used to study the effects of education on agricultural efficiency for a cross section of early stage farms from guanghan county sichuan province china education for farm families in rural china is multifaceted with a combination of formal education intragenerational transfer of knowledge within the home and agricultural extension services since our survey data span two different years with markedly different policy environments we are able to examine not only which aspects of education affect agricultural efficiency but also whether or not the policy environment matters we find limited evidence that in a policy environment that is conducive to agriculture formal education provides positive returns in agriculture furthermore general education may provide greater returns than the more targeted extension services

extension commercialization how much to charge for extension services as public agricultural extension organizations around the world examine the possibility of privatizing or commercializing part or all their services several issues arise in this paper i address the question of how to price the services provided using available data from israel a supply marginal cost function is estimated for the israel extension service and a demand function for extension services is estimated the derived number of visits and the per visit price are calculated several general extension related policy issues that may also be applicable to other countries are discussed

economics of paid extension lessons from experience in nicaragua public agricultural extension extension faces major changes and challenges resulting from less available public resources and from changes in demand for extension structural changes in extension provision and financing alternatives have been one type of response to the changes in conditions under which extension operates some new mechanisms all modifications to traditional public extension include private extension commercialized extension and co financed extension will be called hereafter paid extension several experiences of paid extension around the world are reported in the literature see keynan olin and dinar for details most of them provide information on the structure and operation of the different paidextension arrangements and in some cases some anecdotal results on the costs and benefits associated with these operations this article offers in the next section a framework to evaluate economic performance of paid extension and demonstrates its application in the third and fourth sections using two types of paid extension programs in nicaragua the article is concluded with a discussion on policy implications