a critical assessment of some neo marxian trade theories the neo marxian unequal exchange literature has been largely bypassed in mainstream discussions of theories of comparative advantage during the 1970s in so far as the unequal exchange literature attempts to explain international factor price non equalisation for labour the problems addressed are of more general relevance in my work on this topic i have attempted to distinguish between studies within a classical marxian tradition some of which have been recently written and those neo marxian writers whose work is more broadly compatible with the sraffa or neo ricardian analysis of comparative advantage the purpose of this paper is to survey the latter sub set of the neo marxian literature not only because of its importance in many discussions of third world issues but also because of its own intrinsic merits

the efficiency of producing alcohol for energy in brazil brazil is one of the few countries actually producing renewable fuels as a substitute for opec oil there are now 150 distilleries producing five billion liters of ethanol a year from sugar cane with another 100 distilleries in the planning and construction stages the current stability of world oil prices however does not make alcohol substitution economically efficient for brazil and costs foreign exchange the authors analyze the economics of alcohol production in two regions and find it to be socially unprofitable in terms of breaking even although it does serve to dampen any impact from increasing oil prices 5 tables dck

from the classical economists to empiricists a review of the terms of trade controversy contrary to the classical position the works of prebisch and singer in the middle of the last century launched the controversial hypothesis of a long term decline in the terms of trade of primary products vis a vis manufactured goods and a corresponding decline in the terms of trade of developing countries vis a vis advanced ones the present study traces the origin and evolution of the hypothesis and reviews the related statistical debate it also reviews the theoretical support for the prebisch singer hypothesis it is an exercise in the history of economic thought to trace how the controversies surrounding the terms of trade have evolved over time specifically noting that with the development of the field of econometrics the central thesis of the argument got lost somewhere in the realm of hi tech statistical debates

south north trade and southern growth bleak prospects from the structuralist point of view abstract a three country three commodity model is developed to illustrate the dynamics of growth among the north the south and opec one conclusion is that the southern growth rate will be increased by faster growth of northern capital with a steady state response coefficient of unity however if the steady state is perturbed by increases in northern productivity or the oil price then the coefficient becomes less than one in the short run higher capital flows from north to south increase the former s growth rate but may have only marginal impact on growth in the south higher productivity in the south will slow its growth rate and reduce its terms of trade when the engel elasticity of northern demand for its exports is less than one these and other results follow from surplus labor in the south and its dependent position in international trade from which it will be difficult to escape

apparent collusion and conjectural variations in differentiated oligopoly abstract the conjectural variations model has become the standard exposition of oligopoly theory although rivals assumed behaviour is not profit maximising one response has been models with consistent conjectures developed from rational expectations concepts this paper adopts another approach based on stigler s famous 1964 paper collusion is enforced by the threat of retaliating to price cuts but is imperfect because of their imperfect knowledge which limits the probability of retaliation or retaliation lags three models of imperfect collusion incorporating these features separately and in combination demonstrate the formal equivalence between the results of imperfectly policed collusion and proportional conjectural variations

vertical trading and uneven development abstract the phenomenon of vertical trading in which the center exports a good involving a high degree of processing which leads to economy wide learning and the periphery exports a good which does not generate such effects is formalized in a simple dynamic model of trade it is shown that the periphery can lose from such trade relations conditions under which this can occur are shown to involve parameters of the learning functions and the sizes of the two countries

trade accumulation and uneven development abstract this paper develops a two country model of capital accumulation and growth where the industrial sector exhibits increasing returns to scale it shows that uneven development is a necessary outcome in such a model an initial discrepancy in capital labor ratios between the two countries will cumulate over time leading to the division of the world into a capital rich industrial region and capital poor agricultural region which region takes on which role depends on primative accumulation that is on which region starts with more capital if capital is mobile internationally the model can given rise to a two stage pattern of development a first stage where trade is the engine of growth in the leading country and a second in which foreign investment takes on that role which is reminiscent of the hobson lenin theory of imperialism

testing for market power in multi product industries across multiple export markets a large body of theoretical literature has developed in the past 15 years incorporating various models of imperfect competition into international trade theory empirical work testing for imperfect competition in export markets however has been much more limited in particular the empirical evidence in support of widespread imperfect competition in u s export and import sectors is somewhat scant and mixed 2 one technique for assessing the existence of market power in export markets has been developed by knetter 33 who estimated a reduced form single equation in which the export price to a specific market for a good was a function of the exchange rate a country specific dummy variable and a time dummy knetter rejected the null hypothesis of perfectly competitive markets in nearly all of the u s and german export markets studied 3 his methodology has been adopted by other researchers who have rejected the perfect competition hypothesis in other u s export markets 4

the fundamental determinants of the terms of trade reconsidered long run and long period equilibrium ronald findlay s analysis of the long run equilibrium uniform international growth rates determinants of the terms of trade in the context of north south models of trade and growth is reconsidered when the north is a keynesian and a kaleckian economy also examined are the determinants of the terms of trade in long period equilibrium uniform profit rates so that the consequences of capital mobility are accounted for two surprising results are noted first the long run terms of trade when the north is a kaleckian economy will be independent of the north s markup and second in the long period it is theoretically possible for the north to raise its markup but experience a deterioration in its own terms of trade copyright 1990 by american economic association

strike activity worker militancy and productivity change in manufacturing 1961 1981 the author hypothesizes a two way causality between intracontractual strikes and productivity change in u s manufacturing on the one hand strikes during the term of a contract which are thought to reflect more broadly practiced shop floor militancy slow the pace of productivity growth and on the other hand periods of rapid productivity growth provoke increased intracontractual strike activity among other forms of shop floor protest the model is tested with quarterly data from 1961 through 1981 modified two stage least squares estimates support the hypothesis of two way causality a specific finding is that shop floor confrontation played a significant role in the slump in manufacturing productivity that began in the mid 1960s but not in the more precipitous productivity slowdown of the post 1973 years

the intertemporal stability of the concentration margins relationship using a longitudinal data base we find that there has been a substantial narrowing of the spread between the price cost margins of concentrated and unconcentrated industries including measures of macroeconomic fluctuations into standard price cost margin regressions we find significant differences in cyclical behavior across market structure we also explore a possible explanation unionization for differences in cyclical behavior finally we investigate the degree to which our results are affected by the potential simultaneity of concentration advertising and the price cost margin

normal costs and demand effects in price setting a study of retailing the study aims at contributing to the debate whether there are demand effects in models that seek to explain prices as mark ups on costs for costs it considers actual costs normal costs and an intermediate model with a partial adjustment to the deviation of actual from normal costs for demand effects it considers an effect on the price level of a change of demand with an allowance for asymmetry between demand growth and demand decline tests and estimates are conducted on the basis of data from retailing

industrial conflict and its implications for productivity growth the results of a factor analysis support the proposition that there are different dimensions to labor militance and that they behave differently over time further research is needed on the extent to which they are sensitive to changes in unemployment and the extent to which they can explain the behavior of productivity growth in the post war period if economic hard times enable employers to put labor on the defensive then ceteris paribus productivity growth may accelerate the critical implication for policymakers is that any effort to restore growth which does not take into account the distributive impact of increasing productivity will have only a limited success instead of simply exacerbating existing antagonisms between workers and companies policymakers need to address the source of the conflict the effect of increasing productivity on the quality of worklife 13 references 1 figure 2 tables

mark up pricing and the business cycle the microfoundation of the variable mark up while considerable attention has been paid either to the fixity or variability of the markup and thus the profit rate the existing literature has failed to develop a serious microeconomic underpinning the purpose of this paper is to construct a microeconomic model for the optimal cyclical behavior of the mark up and to analyze its implications for mark up variability the debate over the variability of the mark up has been primarily empirical in nature the major area of contention has centered around the demand sensitivity of the mark up on one hand proponents of a cyclically fluctuating mark up consider both cost and demand determinants of the mark up and focus on the income elasticity of demand to explain mark ups that rise during the expansion phase of the business cycle and decline during the contraction on the other hand there are the cost dominated theories of the mark up which predominantly argue that the mark up is constant over the cycle 2 while this debate rages on neither side has successfully explained the stylized facts of the cyclical mark up trajectory mark ups increase from the initial trough to the midexpansion of the typical business cycle and then decline from that point until the terminal trough 3 this oversight particularly the inability to explain the midexpansion decline in the mark up stems from either the lack of or incomplete consideration of demand determinants of the mark up a major shortcoming of traditional mark up models is the independent rather than interactive treatment of the effects of a changing cost structure and a changing set of competitive pressures on price and mark up determination the interconnection between cost induced price increases and the potential intensification of competitive demand pres

brazilian socioeconomic development issues for the eighties since 1964 brazil has experienced rapid economic growth exclusionary politics and a persistently unequal distribution of income after 1973 rapid growth was maintained only at the cost of accelerating inflation and massive foreign borrowing while a process of political liberalization was begun a change in economic development strategy could increase the number of jobs created per unit of capital invested concentrate benefits on those who have least profited from the growth process to date decrease imports and increase the productivity of the poor such a strategy the outlines of which can be found in brazil s third national development plan makes good social as well as economic sense

price discrimination by u s and german exporters the insensitivity of the u s trade balance to the sharp depreciation of the dollar in the past three years has revived interest in the relationship between exchange rates and the trade balance a central issue in most analyses of the relation between the current account and the exchange rate concerns the price adjustment process the simple integrated competitive market model predicts that local currency prices should change in proportion to the nominal exchange rate for a country too small to influence world prices the relationship between local currency import prices and exchange rates has been referred to as the pass through relationship in the empirical literature in international economics if the proportional relationship between import prices and exchange rates holds pass through is said to be complete accounts of recent u s experience cite the failure of dollar prices of imported goods to rise in proportion to exchange rates i e incomplete pass through as an important factor in explaining the persistence of the trade deficit unfortunately observations on pass through alone provide limited insight into the behavior of markets since incomplete pass through is consistent with at least two fundamentally different paradigms one is the standard competitive model of trade in which the law of one price holds but exchange rate fluctuations are associated with large changes in import demand due to other factors for example if dollar appreciation is correlated with increases in world demand and industry marginal cost is increasing then pass through will be less than complete the other is an imperfectly competitive model in which exporters are capable of price discriminating across destination markets a phenomenon paul krugman 1987 has labeled pricing to market in this model incomplete pass through is typically associated with fluctuations in the markup of price over marginal cost on exports 2 these fluctuations in markups are believed to be countryspecific they do not reflect the behavior of prices to other export destinations both models are plausible explanations of recent u s experience unfortunately it is impossible to distinguish between these competing models using only information on import prices and exchange rates for a single country in order to distinguish between the competing models an empirical analysis of goods prices and exchange rates must be capable of measuring either marginal cost or the markup over marginal cost either of these tasks poses formidable empirical problems much of the empirical literature in industrial organization has been concerned with precisely these issues since markups are an important measure of the competitiveness of industries

retail margins during recession and growth the influence of consumer spending on retail price setting behaviour is investigated in the context of a theory developed in previous research the results indicate that the effect is not the same for growth and decline of spending

elephant poaching ivory trafficking problems in sub saharan africa an application of o hara s principles of political economy this paper examines the complex social problem of african elephant decimation using a political economy approach this paper applies five principles of o hara s political economy pope historical specificity circular and cumulative causation uneven development heterogeneous agents and contradiction pope provides a practical tool for scrutinising the interdependent aspects of a problem the culture of conspicuous consumption for ivory is a key historical driver of demand yet a core integrated factor that helps explain the current crisis relates to the principle of uneven development the role of uneven development can be indirect through lack of human development causing high crime and corruption rates weak policy frameworks and conflicts in land ownership further heterogeneity of agents adds to the complexity of the networks engaged in the decimation of elephants linked to the poaching trafficking circuit of heterogeneous agents this paper identifies two specific elephant contradictions between the market forces of durable fixed capital and environment elephant capital this study contributes to the literature by analysing the interlinking cumulative processes of elephant poaching and ivory trafficking networks which previous studies in the economics literature tend to ignore

on the long run outcome of the lewis nurkse international growth process abstract this essay formalizes the model of international growth advanced by w arthur lewis in his 1979 nobel prize address and by ragnar nurkse in the 1950 s both of them employed the model to support their respective cases for pursuit of a balanced growth strategy by the ldc s the purpose of the formalization undertaken here is to examine the theoretical consequences for the secular ratio of ldc to mdc incomes as the lewis nurkse growth process unfolds the paper explores whether or not growth in lewis nurkse fashion must mean persistent poverty for the ldc s in addition the formalization provides an explicit characterization of economic dependence

the near optimality of mark up pricing mark up pricing policies result in a loss of profits compared to marginal pricing behavior these losses however are often very small even for large changes in the money supply but by adopting a simple pricing rule the firm does not have to forecast the future and avoids the informational and computational costs required to determine the profit maximizing price each period thus even if these costs are small mark up pricing policies may be optimal or approximately so at least for some firms in a macro model this is likely to imply large monetary non neutralities

public research institutions and economic catch up abstract public research institutions often but not always connected with universities have been in the past important elements of the structures supporting economic catch up recent changes in the international economic environment and the growing scientific basis for contemporary technologies will make those institutions even more important in the future universities and public labs have contributed to the development of technological capabilities in different forms across countries and economic sectors in contrast with current emphasis on university based embryonic inventions and fundamental research effective research programs have predominantly occurred in the application oriented sciences and engineering and have been oriented towards problem solving and the advancement of technologies of interest to a well defined user community

clean air and renewable fuels the market for fuel ethanol in the us from 1984 to 1993 abstract ethanol made from corn has become an increasingly important fuel additive in the us over the past decade the market for ethanol has grown from 550 million gallons in 1984 to approximately 1 5 billion gallons in 1995 recent clean air legislation has mandated the use of cleaner burning fuels in the us in specific regions and seasons the fundamental role of fuel ethanol is changing from a gasoline substitute and octane enhancer to being one of a number of possible clean air additives in addition to these changing market conditions the institutional structure surrounding the ethanol market has changed while there is a uniform national subsidy for ethanol use each state has its own supplemental subsidy level which varied from zero to over 0 40 per gallon recently many state subsidy levels have been declining but significant incentives still remain including the federal 0 54 per gallon incentive this paper explores the economic characteristics of the us ethanol market the market supply and demand for ethanol are estimated econometrically the results highlight the importance of the state and federal incentives and mandates along with transportation costs in making corn based ethanol an attractive alternative to gasoline further investigation using a probit model to predict whether a state has an ethanol market or not reinforces the results of the supply demand market model the implications of the market characteristics for current and future us ethanol policy and clean fuels use are discussed

stagnation income distribution and monopoly power the deceleration in the rate of industrial growth in the indian economy since the middlesixties initially interpreted by some as a temporary downward deviation from trend hasnow come to be generally accepted as reflecting long run tendencies towards stagnation several explanations for these tendencies have been offered bhagwati and desai 1970 and bhagwati and srinivasan 1975 have focused on inefficiencies and the misallocationof resources arising from industrial policies pursued by the government others chakravarty 1974 raj 1976 and vaidyanathan 1974 among them have emphasisedthe sluggishness of agricultural growth which is alleged to have retarded industrial growthby limiting markets and the supply of wage goods and raw materials a third view reflectedin srinivasan and narayana 1977 for example has put the blame on a slackening of invest ment demand due to lower public investment but does not explain why public investmentfell or why its fall restrained industrial growth finally there is the explanation put forthin bagchi 1970 1975 1982 in nayyar 1978 and in parts of mitra 1977 that inequali ties in income distribution have resulted in a limited demand for industrial goods reducedincentives for investment and therefore reduced growth this view seems to suggest apositive relation between growth and income equality which is opposed to the generallyaccepted idea derived from cambridge growth models that higher growth requires greaterinequality the purpose of this paper is to examine the last explanation by considering the inter action between growth and income distribution in an underdeveloped economy with thehelp of a simple macroeconomic model the model is a stylisation of the indian economy so that we will be able to use the model to assess the argument that a deceleration in therate of growth of the indian industrial economy could have been caused by an unequaldistribution of income the argument will not be made that this income distributional con straint is the binding constraint on industrial growth the model will merely examine theinternal consistency of the argument that a bad income distribution could explain stagnation in the sense of reduced growth and show that in the indian context as in other similarcontexts this argument can be put forward in explaining stagnation our argument is first presented with a highly simplified schematisation of the indianeconomy which we shall call the basic model the economy modelled produces only one

markup variability and flexibility theory and empirical evidence recent empirical studies have raised serious questions about the basic propositions about the cyclical behavior of prices and markups found in the traditional markup literature the administered price hypothesis and the standard volume target return pricing svtrp and wage cost markup wcm models which provide its theoretical support posit the following 1 the markup over average variable costs avc never declines during the expansion phase of the business cycle 2 in the short run or over the cycle prices and markups are less flexible more stable in highly concentrated industries than in industries of low concentration and 3 in highly concentrated industries prices and markups are insensitive to short run fluctuations in demand conditions and thus are solely determined by cost considerations the first two propositions deal with respectively the qualitative nature of the markup trajectory over the cycle and the relative flexibility of price and markup behavior 2 this paper summarizes and empirically tests an alternative theory of markup pricing it is concluded that over the typical business cycle 1 the markup rises from initial trough until the midexpansion and then declines until the terminal trough and 2 markup flexibility is positively related to the degree of demand competition this cyclical pattern of markup variability is shown to exist in major industry groups for all postwar cycles up to 1980 regression analysis reveals that in highly concentrated industries a positive relation exists between markup flexibility and the level of import competition and a proxy for the elasticity of demand the author is grateful to james r crotty peter t gottschalk william g shepherd and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper 1 see weintraub 1959 chs 4 5 eckstein 1964 p 280 blair 1972 p 477 and weintraub 1978 ch 3 2 these two aspects of markup behavior will be referred to throughout this paper the markup trajectory refers to its dynamic time path over the business cycle its qualitative nature is summarized by its first and second time deriv

monetary analysis the equilibrium method and keynes s general theory compared with the work of his contemporaries keynes s general theory represented a radical change in theoretical method from sequence analysis to the method of equilibrium the nature of this change is discussed together with its implications for the substance of keynes s message and for the subsequent development of macroeconomics

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

manufacturing margins differences between small and large firms the influence of labour costs concentration capacity utilization exports and firm size on manufacturing profit margin is studied with a discrimination between small and large firms

a model of pricing behavior an econometric case study empirical pricing studies are scarce in the modern literature in spite of their obvious importance for understanding competition the present study employs a structural model to identify deviations of individual pricing routines from the commonly assumed single period profit maximization it is applied to individual wholesale firms because wholesale pricing has a decisive influence on the price formation in the entire economic system and because hardly any research exists in this area the results show that wholesale firms operate in imperfectly competitive world markets providing a highly differentiated service package traders apply pricing rules consistent with cost mark up pricing the mark up varies among traders with the extent to which a firm s pricing strategy deviates from full profit maximization this divergent behavior is associated with firm size the type of buyers served and other aspects of the wholesale service package

the profitability concentration relation market power or efficiency industrial economists have been studying the relationship between profitability and concentration using cross industry samples for many years now however as sometimes happens once it appeared that some consensus had been achieved with few exceptions market concentration and industry profitability are positively correlated peltzman i977 p 229 people began to question the interpretation of those results in particular demsetz e g i973 i974 and others suggested that rather than concentration market power leading to higher prices and profits the causal direction in fact ran from greater efficiency to both higher profits and incidentally to higher concentration our purpose here is to subject these conflicting hypotheses to cross industry empirical test using u k data in order to do this we first develop a model which is sufficiently general to allow for both alternative explanations of a positive concentration profitability correlation in the light of this model we then examine the implications for the within industry relation between market share and firm level profitability more specifically we explore demsetz s claim that the empirical form of this relationship should signal which of the alternative hypotheses is consistent with the between industry profitability concentration correlation our model suggests that in certain special circumstances this claim is partly justified in that it should be possible to assess the relative strengths of the market power and efficiency effects from the within industry relation more generally however factors such as product differentiation and scale economies may seriously impair the information content of the relation with at least a strong suspicion that the estimates will tend to exaggerate the evidence in favour of the efficiency hypothesis in the event our results tend to confirm that for most industries the within industry data offer little conclusive support for either hypothesis but for a not insignificant minority of industries the evidence suggests some support for the view that both efficiency and market power are at work simultaneously our model is detailed in section ii and estimated on u k data in section iii after which we offer a few comments in section iv first however we drovide a backcloth to the later analysis

markup adjustment and exchange rate fluctuations evidence from panel data on automobile exports abstract this paper uses data on bilateral automobile export prices from the usa germany and japan to gauge the importance of markup adjustment driven by exchange rate movements across several destination markets we find that japanese exports are characterized by a high degree of markup adjustment designed to stabilize the price measured in the buyer s currency there is weak evidence for such behavior on the part of german exporters and no evidence of markup adjustment by us exporters where it exists markup adjustment tends to be highly persistent the dynamic pattern of markup adjustment is consistent with invoicing in the exporter s currency except for exports to the usa and canada

brazil s agrarian structure changes from 1970 through 1980 abstract structural patterns that accompany the growth and modernization of brazil s agrarian economy are identified despite increasing land concentration a rather large and disproportionate economic contribution of sizable numbers of very small farms is documented as is an enhanced vitality of larger farms meanwhile large quantities of unused agricultural land remain on many medium sized and large farms the expected inverse relationship between farm size and various measures of production per land unit is validated and reasons for the inverse relationship are deduced production is so large on small farms because their intensity of resource use overwhelms the facts that yields are greater and higher valued export crops are more usually found on large farms that capitalized intermediate and large farms seem destined to play a larger role in future production in brazil is argued but it is doubtful that the small farm and by implication the peasantry will disappear in the foreseeable future

business cycles and the relationship between concentration and price cost margins using a newly constructed panel data base we examine changes in price cost margins in 284 manufacturing industries between 1958 and 1981 a key finding is a dramatic narrowing of the spread between the margins of concentrated and unconcentrated industries over this period we provide evidence that this narrowing is a result of the greater sensitivity of price cost margins in more concentrated industries to demand fluctuations this finding is robust to the inclusion of other industry variables and to measures of import competition the results indicate that cross sectional estimates of the concentration margins relationship are likely to be both biased and misleading

north south terms of trade and growth a macroeconomic framework on kaldorian lines abstract in the presidential address to the royal economic society 1976 nicholas kaldor presented an informal model of the world economy on this kaldorian line this paper presents a north south growth model it has been observed that there is no relationship between the monopoly power of the northern capitalists and the north south terms of trade technical progress in the south has a declining impact on the southern terms of trade while technical progress in the north does not have a similar impact on the northern terms of trade furthermore this model shows that the south as a whole cannot speed up its long term growth rate through export promotion rather it faces a terms of trade loss

price mark ups market structure and business fluctuation in japanese manufacturing industries howard wach tel and peter adelsheim 1977 and keith cowling 1983 have argued that firms in concentrated industries tend to increase their price mark ups in recession this hypothesis is variously tested for japanese manufacturing industries in 1958 82 most of the results weakly suggest an effect opposite to wachtel and adelsheim and only when industry specific business conditions are taken into account is some albeit weak evidence found in favor of them copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

market disequilibria and their influence on small retail store pricing in this paper a quantitative model is developed to explain differences in average store price levels we assume that stores may operate under different economic regimes that is under excess capacity or excess demand prices are expected to the higher than average in case of an excess demand regime and lower in an excess capacity situation actual information regarding the regime that applies to each individual store is not available therefore we propose to use a so called switching model with endogenous regime choice to analyse the store price differences the model developed in the paper is estimated using four largely differing types of stores from the dutch retail trade these samples consist mainly of small stores

can globalisation stop the decline in commodities terms of trade in this paper we address the following question would a fully integrated world economy eliminate the widely reported decline in the terms of trade of primary commodities we address the question by looking at the terms of trade within the us a highly integrated economy our findings show two results first us internal real commodities terms of trade over the 1947 1998 period experienced slowly declining but significant trends second once we control for the effect of us prices on international terms of trade we find a long run relationship between the us and international relative prices these findings support the view that the decline of commodities terms of trade bears no relationship with the process of globalisation this seems to indicate that if world terms of trade behaved as the us terms of trade neither increased integration nor protectionist measures would eliminate this trend

on the sources and significance of interindustry differences in technological opportunities abstract the set of technological opportunities in a given industry is one of the fundamental determinants of technical advance in that line of business we examine the concept of technological opportunity and discuss three categories of sources of those opportunities advances in scientific understanding and technique technological advances originating in other industries and in other private and governmental institutions and feedbacks from an industry s own technological advances data from the yale survey on industrial research and development are used to measure the strength of various sources of technological opportunity and to discern interindustry differences in the importance of these sources we find that interindustry differences in the strength and sources of technological opportunities contribute importantly to explanations of cross industry variation in r d intensity and technological advance

firm market share price flexibility and imperfect information this paper argues that firms with larger market shares will be relatively better informed about demand conditions the main implications are 1 more rapid price adjustments in concentrated industries 2 price leadership in industries with dominant firms and 3 price setting behavior by the concentrated side of the market

agricultural policy and productivity evidence from brazilian censuses brazil s economic strategy has shifted hesitatingly during the last several decades from one of producer protection to trade competitiveness exploiting the variations these shifts have afforded we use a sequence of decennial agricultural censuses to examine brazilian policy implications for agricultural competitiveness and efficiency total factor productivity is decomposed into best technology and efficiency elements each subject to policy influence we find technology growth at 4 5 per annum to have been extraordinarily high particularly in the south but because productivity among average producers has fallen rapidly behind that on the technical frontier total productivity growth has been a much more modest 2 6 per year public agricultural research programs most benefit the country s technological leaders widening the gap between frontier and average producer credit education and road construction policies instead narrow that gap credit and road programs especially enhance efficiency in the south where efficiency losses have been greatest jel classification o2 o3

market structure and price cost margins in a paper that has become a standard reference in the structure conductperformance approach to industrial economics cowling and waterson 1976 developed a theoretical rationale for expecting industry profitability to be positively correlated with the level of concentration their model based on a simple algebraic description of oligopoly behaviour has been interpreted as providing a justification for the common empirical practice of cross industry regression analysis of price cost margins in terms of concentration levels in the present paper we show that on further examination this model implies a joint determination of margins and concentration this provides some interesting comparative static results of relevance to inter industry differences in concentration levels equally however it leads to various cautionary insights concerning the meaning of price cost margin versus concentration regressions

should governments stop subsidies to private goods evidence from rural latin america abstract this paper empirically documents the effects of subsidizing private goods to the detriment of the government s supply of public goods we use a new data set from the rural sector in fifteen latin american countries over the period 1985 2001 collected using a methodology that allows us to separate government subsidies to private goods from expenditures in the provision of public goods the econometric evidence shows that the government s decision to subsidize either private or public goods has dramatic consequences for economic development reducing the share of subsidies to private goods or equivalently increasing the share of public goods in the government s budget has ceteris paribus a large and significant positive impact on rural per capita income reduces certain undesirable environmental effects associated with output expansion and contributes to poverty reduction

tales of dissemination in small farm agriculture lessons for institution builders abstract this article describes patterns that are discernible across a dozen cases of good micro performance in agricultural research and extension in poverty stricken northeast brazil research meant to contribute toward a more grounded approach to remedying the problem of mediocre performance of these institutions elsewhere the good performances involved the presence of demanding user agencies outside extension and research shorter time horizons and more focused tasks localized credit subsidies with automatic sunset provisions and penalties for nonperformance a strong presence of municipal elites normally avoided in the design of such programs and an equally strong and complementary presence of more centralized public sector actors

revisiting the revisited terms of trade will china make a difference in challenging the conventional wisdom at the time singer and prebisch posited a number of explanations for declining terms of trade of developing economies including both country and product specific factors over the past decade we have begun to witness a simultaneous process of price differentiation within commodities with the prices of some commodities increasing and within manufacturing with the price of many manufactures falling these price changes may reverse the decline in the terms of trade of commodity producers the entry of china into the global market has played an important role in this augmenting the demand for many hard commodities its role as an exporter of manufactures coupled with concentration in global buying may undermine the prices of many manufactures

thirty years of agricultural growth in brazil crop performance regional profile and recent policy review the postwar economic growth of brazil has received much attention in specialized and general literature on development structural change associated with rapid and sustained industrialization with strong backward linkages into intermediate capital goods sectors has been the focus of much of this work the costs benefits and distortions growing out of this secular process of economic growth have been documented highlighting the unusual performance of the brazilian economy among the middle income developing countries finally the important shift in policy regimes from import substitution in the 1950s to export substitution beginning in the late 1960s has been analyzed adding a rich base of data and results with which to evaluate the brazilian performance and test various hypotheses concerning the impact of selected policy parameters on efficiency growth and distribution 2 however until recently less attention has been devoted to a review of the performance of the agricultural sector within this scenario of rapid change and growth 3 this becomes important in interpreting trends in income distribution in the 1970s this article is directed toward filling this gap in part through reviewing the empirical record on the aggregate and regional performances of output area and yield of the cropproducing sector of brazilian agriculture over the 30 year period 195080 this is possible through the extensive time series on crop output in metric tons area in hectares and physical yields generated by the annual crop reporting series of the brazilian institute of geography and statistics fibge a series that accounts for 98 of all crop output in brazil during this period

on the gains of committing to inefficient production lobbying and low land productivity in latin america abstract we present a new explanation and empirical evidence showing that rural subsidies to large farmers tend to be associated with low land productivity and excessive deforestation we develop a lobbying model where wealthy farmers trade bribes or political contributions to government politicians in exchange for subsidies farmers are able to tilt the terms of the bargaining game with policy makers in their favor by pre committing to an inefficient choice of semi fixed inputs government proneness to accept political contributions or bribes and its willingness to provide subsidies cause farmers to adopt inefficient modes of production as a mechanism to capture such subsidies our predictions are consistent with stylized facts on land use in latin america and suggest that subsidy schemes have been counterproductive distorting and constraining development and triggering excessive depletion of natural resources we validate some of the predictions of the model through econometric analyses using a new data set for nine countries in latin america

monopoly power and uneven development baran revisited baran examined the implications of the rise in monopoly power in advanced economies for the underdevelopment in poor countries and the process of uneven development on a world scale this article examines his work critically and then presents a north south model which defines uneven development in a precise manner and analyses the mechanism by which the rise in monopoly power leads to such uneven development it is shown that the process can work even without reference to imperialism which is a central but controversial element in baran s analysis

evidence of the empirical relevance of the infant industry argument for the protection of brazilian ethanol production abstract the infant industry argument for protection of import competing industries has a long and almost entirely theoretical history in the literature in this paper the empirical evidence of infant industry dynamics in the brazilian ethanol industry is investigated in brazil ethanol has developed into a primary automotive fuel over the past 18 years this import substitute is attractive because it allows decreased dependence on international oil supplies while at the same time it addresses environmental concerns because it is a clean burning renewable fuel while ethanol was initially a high cost alternative to imported oil observed cost reductions have led to an increased belief that this industry may in fact warrant the subsidization it has received because of infant industry reasons the results of this study suggest that there is no empirical evidence of economies of scale and very little technical change there appears to be no empirical validity to the infant industry argument for subsidization of the brazilian ethanol industry

the cyclical behaviour of manufacturing prices in a small open economy this paper presents a disaggregated regression study of the cyclicality of the mark up over costs in belgian manufacturing industry this is found to be low reflecting a great reluctance on the part of price setters to adjust prices to uncertain market signals this appears to be especially the case for exporters when compared with firms active on the domestic market exporters face greater uncertainty because their competitors are less well known and their market shares tend to be smaller implying a higher variance of industry sales estimates

small business economics a perspective from the netherlands textabstractin the analysis of economic phenomena either within or across industries there is room for integrating the role of small business this contribution can be made by aggregation or generalization of the findings at the meso level which again are partly based upon analyses at the micro level the netherlands has a long history in macro model building a recent discussion among dutch macro economists considered the future of econometric model building at the macro level and considered how best to improve this model building the explicit integration of scale effects however was not mentioned i am convinced that improvements in this respect are possible in particular i have in mind the role which small businesses play in certain areas such as wage structure employment or investments the dissection of macro prognoses into a small business component and a remaining component is a traditional practice in the netherlands 1 finally there is much concern in the netherlands for the calculation of regulatory effects decomposed into effects for small and large businesses if anywhere in the world there is a solid foundation for studying scale effects in both macro and sectoral models it most certainly has been in the netherlands there is a strong tradition of macro econometric model building groups of econometricians specialized in small business research exist dutch policymakers show concern and the required research apparatus is available

perspectives on poverty and income inequality in brazil abstract exploratory analysis of the advance tabulations of the 1980 brazilian demographic census suggests the proportion of the population in poverty fell during the decade 1970 1980 the degree of inequality of the distribution of the income of individuals apparently remained about the same from 1970 to 1980 after rising in the 1960s this near constancy of the overall inequality of income distribution resulted from two offsetting changes a narrowing of the gap between rural and urban incomes and greater inequality within the rural sector

the neo ricardians focuses on the neoclassical theory of economics in great britain calculation for the standard commodity assumptions of piedro sraffa on the cycle of production functions of the rate of return ebsco

a new theory of retailing costs in cross section studies of shops of the same type we find that costs in general and labour in particular depend on the sales size per shop according to a linear function with a positive intercept this paper provides some empirical evidence and a theoretical explanation based on queuing theory

on the classical theory of competition this paper identifies some important theoretical issues remaining unresolved in the wake of piero sraffa s seminal work a central problem concerns the process of gravitation towards uniform profit rates and production prices stringent requirements for convergence and stability are discussed the issue of path dependence being regar ded as most basic other issues concern inter and intraindustry mechanisms of competition choice of technique and technical change and mechanisms of wage profit rate determination prospects for advancing a theory of differentiated profit rates that would be consistent with classical theory are examined against this background it is suggested that sraffa s contribution encompasses two theoretically distinct research programs copyright 1988 by oxford university press

labour productivity and profitability in the dutch flower trade this paper makes an attempt to illustrate the use of econometric models as frame of reference for diagnosing small firm performance for this purpose two models are developed explaining differences in labour productivity and profitability among dutch flower exporters in addition we show how these models can be used for inter firm performance comparisons

the dynamics of competition a restoration of the classical analysis the main purpose of this article is to show that it is possible to construct a model of competition based on the classical perspective smith ricardo and marx an analysis of the work of the classics is presented and their views of the workings of competition is contrasted with neoclassical and keynesian approaches a simple model with two commodities is constructed in which the stability of the classical long term equilibrium is shown under certain conditions this first model is developed to include the treatments of gravitation rationing deficiency in demand choice of the technology and three commodities copyright 1987 by oxford university press

land inequality and conflict intensity this paper investigates the impact of land inequality on conflict intensity a fundamental distinction with the existing literature lies in the nature of inequality under consideration we investigate how land inequality across landlords only influences the intensity of the fight against a rebel group comprised of landless individuals we show that conflict intensity is non monotonic in land inequality in particular the most severe conflicts occur for intermediate land inequality levels moreover a pareto improving and thus voluntary transfer of land from the smaller to the larger landlord may exist

new developments in trade theory and ldcs abstract this paper surveys the new literature on international trade relevant to the north south controversy in the first part two types of north south models are considered the unequal exchange theory of lewis and emmanuel and the models of dynamic interaction of findlay taylor and others the analysis focuses on the determinants of growth the terms of trade and relative employment in the world economy in the second part the paper reviews the empirical literature on south north and south south trade and the theories of north south technological gaps intra industry trade and external economies finally we analyze the literature on exports and economic growth and the neo classical keynesian and disequilibrium approaches to the theory of import controls

biofuel v fossil fuel economics in developing countries how green is the pasture abstract as relative fuel prices change the attractiveness of biofuels and fossil fuels to different sectors of the economy alters significantly given the volatility of oil prices and the subsequent intense attention to biofuel technologies over the previous decade in developing countries many questions still remain regarding actual financial and economic performance of these fuels this paper explores sectoral differences between biofuel and fossil fuels with regard to production costs economies of scale subsidies and other economic incentives in developing countries

on the specification of structure performance relationships this paper argues that most estimated structure profitability equations in industrial economics have not been derived from a single coherent view of the behaviour of firms the independent variables in such equations have often been derived on the basis of a literature search and by appeal to conflicting approaches e g constrained and unconstrained profit maximisation the use of a coherent approach indicates that structure performance equations are likely to be highly non linear and that simultaneous equation estimation is neither required nor appropriate in some cases single equation estimation is adequate and in other cases reduced form equations are needed

on the keynesian notion of equilibrium and dynamics harrod had always maintained that keynes s treatise was much more amenable for dynamic analysis than the general theory however in much of the later work on keynesian dynamics the general theory became the foundation in this paper i argue that recent developments in neoclassical general equilibrium theory have the effect of undermining the conventional keynesian conception of dynamics based on the general theory and recasting keynes as a coarse precursor of modern general equilibrium analysis opposing this renewed orthodox reinterpretation of keynes might require a reconsideration of the treatise as the foundation for an alternative keynesian dynamics 1996 academic press limited

the structure of technology in brazilian sugarcane production 1975 87 an application of a modified symmetric generalized mcfadden cost function sugarcane based ethanol has become a primary automotive fuel in brazil over the past 15 years because sugarcane costs are over two thirds of the costs of ethanol production the economic efficiency of this renewable petroleum substitute hinges on the structure of technology in sugarcane production in this paper a modified symmetric generalized mcfadden sgm cost function for sugarcane is estimated and the presence of technical change and economies of scale are investigated the original sgm proposed by diewert and wales 1987 is modified to allow for fixed factors of production this allows the cost function to be applied to processes which have fixed factors the results suggest that there is no empirical evidence of economies of scale and very little technical change only in the north of brazil the implications for the future economic efficiency of this petroleum substitute are discussed