the political economy of urban food security in sub saharan africa abstract sub saharan african cities in the late 1990s face a daunting set of problems including rapid growth increasing poverty deteriorating infrastructure and inadequate capacity for service provision even as a renewed debate is shaping up around issues of urban development there is little attention given to the question of urban food security whereas in the 1970s and 1980s urban food problems in africa commanded political attention the nature of urban food insecurity in the 1990s is such that it has tended to lose political importance this is largely because in the 1970s the problem was one of outright food shortages and rapid price changes that affected large portions of the urban population simultaneously the impact of structural adjustment continued rapid growth and an increase in poverty make urban food insecurity in the 1990s primarily a problem of access by the urban poor under circumstances where the urban poor spend a very large portion of their total income on food urban poverty rapidly translates into food insecurity the lack of formal safety nets and the shifting of responsibility for coping with food insecurity away from the state towards the individual and household level has tended to atomize and muffle any political response to this new urban food insecurity this paper briefly reviews urban food insecurity and generates a set of empirical questions for an analysis of food and livelihood security in contemporary urban sub saharan africa and then examines historical and contemporary evidence from kampala uganda and accra ghana to suggest some tentative conclusions

a hedonic approach to estimating the supply of variety attributes of a subsistence crop the article extends the household hedonic model by estimating a supply function for variety attributes of a subsistence crop in a developing economy the model is applied to bananas in uganda making use of disaggregated data on variety specific farm gate banana bunch prices and attributes while accounting for the semisubsistence nature of banana producing households the article is motivated by the need to understand the attribute trade offs made by farmers at the farm gate in light of targeted variety improvement efforts and their impact on banana markets whether variety improvement will pay off at the market level requires a more detailed examination of the relative worth of banana attributes within the structure of consumer preferences and production technologies related to bananas in uganda the results confirm the importance of consumption and production attributes in selling behavior quality and bunch size are found to be complements at the farm gate banana bunches that capture a premium at the market will be those that provide bundles of desirable consumption and production attributes simultaneously by revealing important price attribute relationships the findings provide guidance for crop improvement efforts and diversification choices while taking into account implicit market signals for output attributes

the impact of perception and other factors on the adoption of agricultural technology in the moret and jiru woreda district of ethiopia the objectives of this study are to examine both the significance of the impact of farmers perceptions regarding new technology for the adoption decision and how perceptions themselves are influenced by the decision to adopt new technology the study is based on data from 96 wheat farms in the moret and jiru woreda district of ethiopia the probit approach is used to analyse the adoption decision while the variables relevant to farmers perceptions are modelled using the ordered probit methodology a simultaneous equations model combining the probit and ordered probit approaches provides a useful approach to modelling the two way relationship between perception and adoption variables such as farm size farm income and soil type have a key role to play in the model perception is measured by eight different components and as there is a strong collinearity among these various measures a principal components analysis is attempted to draw the best possible linear combination of variables

from production based to consumption based national emission inventories abstract under the united national framework convention of climate change unfccc countries are required to submit national emission inventories nei to benchmark reductions in greenhouse gas ghg emissions depending on the definition and system boundary of the nei the mitigation options and priorities may vary the territorial system boundary used by the unfccc has been critiqued for not including international transportation and potentially causing carbon leakage to address these issues past literature has argued in favour of using consumption based nei in climate policy this article discusses several issues in moving from the standard production based nei to consumption based nei first two distinct accounting approaches for constructing consumption based nei are presented the approaches differ in the allocation of intermediate consumption of imported products second a consistent method of weighting production based and consumption based nei is discussed this is an extension of the previous literature on shared responsibility to nei third due to increased uncertainty and a wide system boundary it may be difficult to implement consumption based nei directly into climate policy several alternative options for incorporating consumption based inventories into climate policy are discussed

testing the central market hypothesis a multivariate analysis of tanzanian sorghum markets the central market hypothesis is important in the analysis of market integration because it implies a specific market structure while avoiding a simultaneity problem however despite its importance the central market hypothesis is difficult to test and is therefore often assumed this article shows that the hypothesis can be tested in a johansen cointegration test provided that prices are nonstationary this approach is applied to reveal the existence of central markets for sorghum in tanzania the results indicate that the tanzanian sorghum market can be grouped into two market regions with prices being determined in a central market in each region

consumer preferences for cowpea in cameroon and ghana consumer preference information is essential to targeting research this paper reports an effort of a multi disciplinary team to measure the market value of cowpea characteristics five samples were purchased once per month in seven markets in ghana and cameroon starting in september 1996 in the market price and vendor characteristics were noted in the laboratory size of grains testa color testa texture eye color and damage levels were recorded a hedonic pricing regression model was used results indicate that grain size is the most important characteristic consumers seem more sensitive to bruchid callosobruchus maculates damage than hypothesized cowpeas with white testa command a clear premium only in one of the ghanaian markets in ghana black eyes sell at a premium but in cameroon black eyes are discounted in general this study indicates that quality characteristics are very important in west african food markets even low income consumers are willing to pay a premium for products that match their preferences and they are vigilant in identifying products that do not meet their standards purchasing samples on a regular basis and hedonic pricing offers a practical way for biological scientists and economists to work together to measure these consumer preferences

structural adjustment in africa insights from the experiences of ghana and senegal abstract structural adjustment in ghana and senegal has helped create an improved framework for economic growth but this is a fragile trend one that could be disrupted by bad weather adverse terms of trade and the vagaries of international assistance the current version of adjustment however has produced little enduring poverty alleviation a weak performance on equity issues together with rising political expectations has generated threats to the sustainability of structural adjustment and overall political stability alternatively adjustment policies can be modified to fully incorporate equity and sustainability objectives in this respect it is critical for the poor to obtain more effective representation in decision making on adjustment through indigenous nongovernment organizations

energy justice and the contested petroleum politics of stranded assets policy insights from the yasuni itt initiative in ecuador abstract ecuador s progressive yasuni itt initiative operational 2007 to 2013 would have left almost one billion barrels of crude oil locked in perpetuity beneath one of the most intact and diverse nature reserves on the planet the project attempted to strand these oil assets in order to protect biodiversity respect the territory of indigenous peoples combat climate change and encourage more sustainable economic development the yasuni itt proposal would have had the international community pay ecuador 3 6 billion roughly half the value of the oil found there in exchange for not developing the ishpingo tambococha tiputini itt oilfields funds would have been placed into social and environmental development programs and the promotion of domestic renewable energy instead the project collected only 13 million and succumbed to a series of challenges including limited financing intense political pressure a national commitment to oil and carbon leakage this article summarizes the history benefits and insurmountable obstacles facing the yasuni itt initiative and presents six broader lessons and implications for climate and energy analysts practitioners and policymakers it questions the political viability of and serves as a stark warning against those promoting and advocating policies centered on carbon budgets stranded assets negative emissions and carbon revenue streams

commodity and developing country terms of trade what does the long run show recently the debate surrounding the commodity net barter terms of trade and the terms of trade of developing countries has entered a new phase in this journal spraos i980 presents evidence of a stable declining commodity terms of trade and sapsford i985 although fl nding instability in the work of spraos argues in support of the stable declining terms of trade hypothesis grilli and yang i988 henceforth gy also provide evidence supporting this view and state the implications of this finding for developing country terms of trade a major contribution of gy is a published set of data on the main price indices with a high degree of consistency for the whole century 1 however cuddington and urzua i989 in thisjournal illustrate that the hypothesis of a secular deterioration in the commodity terms of trade is not robust to the alternative claim that there was a once and for all shift in commodity prices in the period i920 i after taking this shift into account these authors find little evidence to support the view of a secular decline 2 this debate has important implications for the prebisch singer hypothesis of a stable declining commodity terms of trade see for instance prebisch i 950 it also has implications for both development and stabilisation strategies adopted by commodity dependent developing countries a central issue in this analysis is the order of integration of the commodity terms of trade a time series is said to be integrated of order o i o if its mean and variance are constant or roughly speaking if the series is stationary a time series is said to be i n if the series requires first differencing n times before a stationary series is obtained alternatively if adding a time trend is sufficient to induce stationarity the series is termed trend stationary a trend stationary series implies that the variable in question simply adjusts around a constant growth path but an i i series is truly non stationary and displays very different properties a commonly cited example of an 1 i series is the random walk the order of integration of a single time series is related to the idea of cointegration of a number of time series consider two variables x and y that are not themselves i o but are of the same order of integration if the residuals from regressing x on y or vice versa are i o or roughly speaking if the residuals are stationary it can be concluded that the two variables are cointegrated in turn this implies that there is some form of equilibrium

new frontiers and conceptual frameworks for energy justice this article explores how concepts from justice and ethics can inform energy decision making and highlight the moral and equity dimensions of energy production and use it defines energy justice as a global energy system that fairly distributes both the benefits and burdens of energy services and one that contributes to more representative and inclusive energy decision making the primary contribution of the article is its focus on six new frontiers of future energy justice research first is making the case for the involvement of non western justice theorists second is expanding beyond humans to look at the rights of nature or non anthropocentric notions of justice third is focusing on cross scalar issues of justice such as embodied emissions fourth is identifying business models and the co benefits of justice fifth is better understanding the tradeoffs within energy justice principles sixth is exposing unjust discourses in doing so the article presents an agenda constituted by 30 research questions as well as an amended conceptual framework consisting of ten principles the article argues in favor of justice aware energy planning and policymaking and it hopes that its reconsidered energy justice conceptual framework offers a critical tool to inform decision making

steady state of energy feedbacks and leverages for promoting or preventing sustainable energy system development abstract while energy demand has been growing over the last few decades and is projected to keep expanding the current energy system is pushing biophysical source and sink limits at the same time growing demand for energy globally is associated with an expansion of welfare to avoid undesired environmental and social implications of energy developments in the long run a systemic understanding of the dynamics promoting or preventing sustainable energy development is needed departing from daly s steady state economics theory this study conceptualizes a sustainable energy system using a systems thinking approach efficiency increase the central element of daly s theory defined as the service throughput ratio is put in the center of a conceptual analysis of a sustainable energy system and is carefully scrutinized meadows leverage points concept is used to facilitate an analysis of different policies that aim at promoting sustainable energy system development this study concludes that energy policies always need to be explored as part of the broader causality structure into which they are embedded otherwise their impacts on other variables in the system may be overlooked such as in the case of efficiency increase which is shown to have undesired side effects for the development of a sustainable energy system

technological change efficiency gains and capital accumulation in labour productivity growth and convergence an application to the spanish regions the main objective of this article is to analyse labour productivity growth and convergence in the spanish regions between 1965 and 1995 decomposing total factor productivity gains into technological progress and efficiency change by means of malmquist productivity indices on the basis of this decomposition labour productivity growth is broken down into components attributable to technological change shifts in the frontier efficiency gains movements toward the frontier and capital accumulation movements along the frontier the approach followed in this study is based on work initiated by fare et al where a link between the economic growth and convergence literature and the production frontier approach was established furthermore in the spirit of quah s approach the evolution of the whole distribution is considered thus the analysis of the dynamics of the entire distribution of labour productivity and the factors behind it technological progress efficiency gains and capital accumulation

malmquist productivity index decompositions a unifying framework in two widely cited but unpublished working papers simar and wilson 1998 and zofio and lovell 1998 proposed an alternative decomposition of the malmquist productivity index which retained what seemed to be the strongholds of previous proposals with regard to the contribution of technological and efficiency change to productivity change namely a technical change term with regard to the best practice variable returns to scale vrs technology which is to be found in ray and desli 1997 and a scale efficiency change term that illustrates a firm s situation with regard to optimal scale benchmark technology fare et al 1994 attaining this objective required the introduction of an additional term in the malmquist productivity index decomposition which would reflect the scale bias of technical change it is our objective to provide economic rationale for this term within a theory of production context the existing decompositions and recent articles that further elaborate on this issue the ide

estimating price discounts for low quality maize in sub saharan africa evidence from benin summary this article uses household data from benin to estimate the extent that markets in sub saharan africa discount damaged maize stated preference methods indicate that a 10 increase in insect damage results in a 9 maize price discount however revealed preference methods indicate that this discount is only 3 discounts are larger immediately after harvest than they are in the lean period when maize is scarce our results help explain why many smallholder farmers sell maize at harvest rather than making the effort to preserve grain of good quality for later in the season when it may fetch a higher price

spatial integration transport costs and the response of local prices to policy changes in ghana abstract this paper investigates the respective roles of spatial integration and transport costs in explaining price changes in ghana we introduce a model of price formation and market integration that incorporates the price transmission process between local and central markets and also captures the implications for volatility of local prices we explore the implications of the model for the time path of price adjustments as determined directly and indirectly through the marketing sector we show that the price adjustment process in a local market is determined by the degree of interdependence between that market and the central market in which a price shock originates and estimate the intertemporal and interspatial dynamics of the price adjustment process using data from wholesale maize markets in ghana we find that reductions in local prices and local price variance following the introduction of economic reforms in 1983 can be traced to both local and central market forces but that differences in the degree of market integration have important implications for long run changes in transport costs and the evolution of prices in outlying markets

poverty and inequality under income and price dispersions many policies simultaneously affect the distribution of prices and incomes in the economy moreover a bias may occur when there is a stochastic relationship between prices and incomes and this relationship is being ignored it is therefore important to dispose of an analytical framework for welfare analysis that could account for changes in this joint distribution how can the joint influences of price and income distributions on poverty and inequality indicators be analysed we offer a method to deal with this problem by using parametric formulae of poverty and inequality measures we propose statistical indicators for the levels variabilities and a statistical link of price indices and nominal living standards these indicators are consistent with an approximation of the problem based on a bivariate lognormal distribution of price indices and nominal living standards our analysis provides hints about the social welfare impact of economic shocks or policies affecting levels variabilities and correlation of prices and incomes intuitive insights are obtained while using arithmetic means and variances instead does not lead to illuminating results the role of price and income variabilities for poverty and inequality is more complex than generally expected with the possibility of several variation regimes empirical investigation of these statistics would guide social policies

contestation contingency and justice in the nordic low carbon energy transition the five nordic countries have aggressive climate and energy policies in place and have already emerged to be leaders in renewable energy and energy efficiency denmark is renowned for its pioneering use of wind energy finland and sweden bioenergy norway hydroelectricity and iceland geothermal energy all countries aim to be virtually fossil free by 2050 this study explores the nordic energy transition through the lens of three interconnected research questions how are they doing it what challenges exist and what broader lessons result for energy policy the study firstly investigates the pathways necessary for these five countries to achieve their low carbon goals it argues that a concerted effort must be made to 1 promote decentralized and renewable forms of electricity supply 2 shift to more sustainable forms of transport 3 further improve the energy efficiency of residential and commercial buildings and 4 adopt carbon capture and storage technologies for industry however the section that follows emphasizes some of the empirical barriers the nordic transition must confront namely political contestation technological contingency and social justice and recognition concerns the study concludes with implications for what such historical progress and future transition pathways mean for both energy researchers and energy planners

efficiency and productive specialization an application to spanish regions maudos j pastor j m and serrano l 2000 efficiency and productive specialization an application to the spanish regions reg studies 34 829 842 this paper shows the importance of the composition of production productive specialization and sector inefficiencies when evaluating efficiency in aggregate production for this purpose a new approach is proposed for obtaining efficiency scores which enables two components to be differentiated one associated with the degree of efficiency within each sector intra sector efficiency and another associated with the composition of production composition efficiency the application of this approach and its breakdown for the spanish regions in the period 1964 93 using a non parametric approach data envelopment analysis shows greater gains in composition efficiency as a consequence of the structural changes in productive specialization also the breakdown of labour productivity convergence shows the increasing importance over time of composition eff

food price variability and economic reform an arch approach for ghana changes in maize price levels and variability in ghana are investigated a model of wholesale price determination is reviewed in which grain stocks are held for speculative storage as well as export to neighboring countries in the sahel to test the model an autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic arch regression is applied to monthly maize data for two markets over the period 1978 93 the regression is used to measure changes in maize price volatility in ghana and to infer the importance of past prices domestic and regional production and commodity storage and trade in explaining these changes

estimation of the efficiency of structural funds a parametric and nonparametric approach this article seeks to perform an analysis of the efficiency of the application of the structural funds in the regions classified as objective 1 over the period 2000 to 2006 applying the techniques known as data envelopment analysis dea and stochastic frontier in the first place we are going to identify which are the most efficient regions finally we will analyse the extent to which certain factors have repercussions on the efficiency such as country geographical location and contribution of agriculture of gross domestic product gdp and the result indicates that some of these variables have significantly influences of technical efficiency

credit for what informal credit as a coping strategy of market women in northern ghana abstract this paper explores the use of informal credit as a strategy for managing risks by market women in northern ghana a broad concept of the costs of risk management strategies is introduced and encompasses both a time and monetary dimension based on qualitative data the analysis reveals that market women invest a considerable amount of time in maintaining complex networks of informal credit providers to ensure their access to credit once a shock occurs informal credit involves high transaction costs and prevents market women from growing out of poverty in the long term

economic reform and food prices evidence from markets in ghana abstract this paper investigates trends in food prices in ghana during 1970 1993 regression results confirm that real wholesale prices of food have been declining since the 1970s price trends in the 1980s are characterized by a downward shift at the beginning of the postreform period and a subsequent continuing downward trend despite falling grain prices we find that agricultural wage rates failed to provide an adequate basis for subsistence particularly during periods of large seasonal price rises many farmers hold grain for both speculation and to smooth income this view is supported by evidence regarding seasonal price spreads that have been increasing since 1984 we find no support however for conclusions of trader manipulation of marketing margins during the adjustment period

harnessing social innovation for energy justice a business model perspective this paper uses a business model framework to discuss how principles of energy justice in particular equitable distribution of costs and benefits affordability due process and greater participation in decision making can be embedded in business model innovations for energy through social innovation the paper discusses four cases at different scales local subnational regional and global to highlight opportunities for introducing principles of energy justice into the core of business models of companies by doing so the paper offers a critical perspective on the potential of business model innovation to be guided through a more broadly defined understanding of value enhanced by concepts of energy justice the discussion of the four case studies the carbon cooperative robin hood energy renesco and the yansa community interest company highlights the importance of creating supportive wider environments for social and business model innovations such as the development of skills knowledge and social capital through interventions coming from multiple levels and focused on different aspects of energy generation supply and use i e finance and technical implementation going against the grain of current policy the study implies a shift away from upscaling innovations by taking them to the national scale and towards creating supportive conditions for more local deals in different geographic locations

a multiple source of innovation model of agricultural research and technology promotion abstract two models of agricultural research and technology diffusion are described and contrasted the central source of innovation model frequently underlies the theories and rhetoric of agricultural research and extension institutions the multiple source of innovation model places agricultural research and diffusion processes in the historical political economic agroclimatic and institutional context in which technological change takes place the paper discusses the evidence and reasons for the dominance of the central model and reviews the significance of the multiple source model for agricultural research policy

consequences of unintended food policies food price dynamics subject to the israeli palestinian conflict abstract israel s imposition of military security measures in the palestinian territories as a consequence of the long lasting violent conflict between them has negative economic effects on all parties concerned one crucial outcome is the limited ability to carry out trade which brings about welfare losses conflict induced policies such as security measures can result in sizable unintended externalities that shape the markets of and the trade in food we assess the dynamics of daily wholesale prices of food produced in israel and the west bank that is traded between them and is therefore subject to restrictions on movement to do so we suggest a regime switching cointegration model which is estimated using a novel extension of the johansen estimation method we find that the two major wholesale markets of the two regions are integrated with regard to these main trading products deviations from price equilibria are quickly adjusted the model suggests that movement restrictions temporarily cut off markets from each other implications of conflict induced closures for welfare depend on the direction of trade and are harming both palestinian and israeli consumers

household specific food price differentials and high value crop production in rural ghana using panel data from ghana we have examined the relationship between household specific producer consumer price differentials and rural household cropland allocation between food and high value crops we test the hypothesis that cereal price bands induce a shift of resources away from high value crop production making smallholders appear unresponsive to price incentives our results lend support to this hypothesis implying that a policy aiming at increasing farmers income through high value crop production may fail if hard and soft infrastructure does not improve in rural areas and if staple crop productivity does not increase significantly

resolving society s energy trilemma through the energy justice metric carbon dioxide emissions continue to increase to the detriment of society in many forms one of the difficulties faced is the imbalance between the competing aims of economics politics and the environment which form the trilemma of energy policy this article advances that this energy trilemma can be resolved through energy justice energy justice develops the debate on energy policy to one that highlights cosmopolitanism progresses thinking beyond economics and incorporates a new futuristic perspective to capture these dynamics of energy justice this research developed an energy justice metric ejm that involves the calculation of several metrics 1 a country national ejm 2 an ejm for different energy infrastructure and 3 an ejm which is incorporated into economic models that derive costs for energy infrastructure projects an ejm is modeled for china the european union and the united states and for different energy infrastructure in the united kingdom the ejm is plotted on a ternary phase diagram which is used in the sciences for analyzing the relationship trilemma of three forms of matter the development of an ejm can provide a tool for decision making on energy policy and one that solves the energy trilemma with a just and equitable approach

estimating market demand for fresh yam characteristics using contingent valuation implications for crop breeding and production choices this study uses the box cox bc transformations to examine nonlinearity in price modeling and compare results from several functional specifications in hedonic price analysis of yam in togo based on a sample of 6 402 observations on price and produce characteristics generated through a market experiment it is found that the bc quadratic asymmetric specification is the most suitable function several characteristics are valued more than others and prices vary across species time and market sites some residual symptoms of pest and disease damages on yam tubers reduce their market values tuber weight exhibits a diminishing marginal value and price per kilogram decreases above an optimum size therefore producers do not derive additional reward from extra large tubers we conclude that to effectively access and benefit from urban markets producers should focus on small size low weight and conical shaped tubers which are easy to process and meet the esthetic qualities preferred by urban consumers the implications for research on improved variety development to reduce poverty and for crop and resource management practices are drawn

spatial price transmission and asymmetry in the ghanaian maize market abstract this paper utilizes recently developed threshold cointegration tests that allow for asymmetric adjustment toward a long run equilibrium relationship to examine price linkages between principal maize markets in ghana unlike previous studies the approach employed here assumes that economic agents only act to move the system back to equilibrium when the deviation from equilibrium exceeds a critical threshold whereby the benefits of this adjustment exceed the costs the findings indicate that major maize markets in ghana are well integrated both the threshold cointegration and asymmetric error correction models reveal that wholesale maize prices in local markets accra and bolgatanga respond more swiftly to increases than to decreases in central market techiman prices accra prices are found to react faster than bolgatanga prices to changes in techiman market prices

total factor productivity measurement and human capital in oecd countries abstract this paper analyses the total factor productivity tfp evolution in oecd countries by breaking down productivity gains into technical change and efficiency change to avoid biases malmquist indices of productivity including human capital are estimated the results indicate that in fact the inclusion of human capital has a significant effect on the accurate measurement of tfp

are we overestimating the negative impact of higher food prices evidence from ghana most studies of the welfare impact of higher food prices adopt deaton s approach based on the first order effect of prices changes using income and expenditure survey data this paper explores the impact of higher maize and food prices in ghana and considers the sensitivity of results to changes in several assumptions if second order effects are included incorporating household response to price changes the welfare impact of food price increases is more positive but only modestly so however if we assume that marketing margins are constant in real terms rather than proportional to prices the welfare impact is substantially more positive these findings highlight the need for more research on the behavior of marketing margins under volatile prices

spatial disparities in the european agriculture a regional analysis this article examines the territorial imbalances in european agriculture during the period 1980 to 2001 by means of the information provided by various methodological instruments which allow us to overcome the drawbacks of conventional convergence analysis the results obtained reveal that the regional distribution of productivity in the agricultural sector is characterized by the presence of positive spatial dependence this fact implies that the european regions in close spatial proximity register similar levels of the variable under study which highlights the relevance of geographical location in this context the empirical evidence presented also shows that regional disparities have remained almost constant during the time interval considered however the increase in density around the european average explains the observed reduction in the degree of bipolarization while intra distribution mobility is relatively limited finally the analysis carried out allows us to assess the role of variables s

modeling spatial price transmission in the grain markets of ethiopia with an application of ardl approach to white teff following the agricultural market liberalization policy there is an emerging grain market structure in ethiopia in which the central wholesale market exhibits concentration of power and spatial integration with the local markets due to this it is hypothesized that the central wholesale market influences the long run price movements in the local markets the relationship can be modeled as spatial price equilibrium with the aim to guide subsequent policy decisions with regard to public intervention in the post liberalization period in this study we modeled the spatial equilibrium relationship between the producer and the wholesale prices of white teff a major staple in ethiopia using the autoregressive distributed lag modeling approach to cointegration analysis first the existence of a nonspurious long run relationship in levels between the producer prices in the local market and the wholesale prices in the central market is confirmed second the long run relationship and the error correction model for the producer price are estimated the results reveal that the wholesale price of white teff in the central consumer market is a major short and long run determinant of the producer price in the local supply markets therefore the institutional role of the government with the aim of improving producers marketing margin and the overall performance of the grain markets in the post liberalization period can be influenced through targeted interventions at the central wholesale market

politicizing energy justice and energy system transitions fossil fuel divestment and a just transition the burgeoning energy justice scholarship highlights the importance of justice and equity concerns in the context of global decarbonization and the transition to a green economy this paper seeks to extend current conceptualizations of energy justice across entire energy lifecycles from extraction to final use to offer an analytically richer and more accurate picture of the in justice impacts of energy policy decisions we identify two key areas that require greater attention and scrutiny in order to enact energy justice within a more democratized energy system first we call for greater recognition of the politics power dynamics and political economy of socio technical energy transitions we use the example of the fossil fuel divestment movement as a way to shift energy justice policy attention upstream to focus on the under researched injustices relating to supply side climate policy analysis and decisions second the idea of a just transition and the distributional impacts on and the role of labor in low carbon transitions must be addressed more systematically this focus produces a more directly political and politicizing framing of energy in justice and a just energy transition

nonparametric and semiparametric methods for economic research abstract developments in the vast and growing literatures on nonparametric and semiparametric statistical estimation are reviewed the emphasis is on useful methodology rather than statistical properties for their own sake some empirical applications to economic data are described the paper deals separately with nonparametric density estimation nonparametric regression estimation and estimation of semiparametric models

unpacking postharvest losses in sub saharan africa a meta analysis summary reducing postharvest losses phl is a key pathway to food and nutrition security in sub saharan africa however knowledge of phl magnitudes is limited a meta analysis has been conducted to expose nature and magnitude of phl and the kinds of interventions that have been attempted to mitigate the losses findings reveal inadequacies of loss assessment methodologies that result in inaccurate phl estimates moreover losses are often economic rather than physical product losses overall technologies for loss mitigation fail to address dynamics of supply chains consequently rigorous phl assessment using systematic methodologies as well as holistic approaches for losses mitigation are in need 2014 published by elsevier ltd

public expenditures in sub saharan africa during a period of economic reforms abstract public expenditure restraint is the most direct means of reducing balance of payments and budget deficits and is consequently a key aspect of macroeconomic adjustment programs the results of this study indicate a steady increase in total central government and social services spending during 1977 1989 in sub saharan africa the growth in population however contributed to an overall erosion in per capita expenditures while total government expenditures as a share of gdp have been stable during the past decade they have declined net of interest repayments which represent an increasingly large share of total spending an analysis of spending in the three years before and after donor financed adjustment programs began reveals no pattern of increase or decrease in real levels of total and social sector expenditures or in social sector spending as a share of the total expenditures elasticities of health and education spending with respect to gdp were found to be greater than unity in recent years indicating that as countries develop social spending will constitute a larger share of gdp

rice market integration and food security in nepal the role of cross border trade with india coarse rice market integration between nepal and india is analyzed applying a threshold autoregressive model the price response behaviour of traders is found to be consistent with an asymmetric price adjustment mechanism indicating coarse rice prices in nepal respond to shocks originating in india the results show that adjustments to negative price deviations from long run stable equilibrium are faster than adjustments to the positive ones given a null threshold given that trade flows mainly from india to nepal nepali traders would adjust their prices upward to align with the long run equilibrium value relatively more quickly in the case of negative price deviations than if the price deviations were positive such a high speed of adjustment to negative price deviations could be detrimental to net food buyers food security status in the absence of a price stabilization mechanism however a price stabilization policy in nepal a food deficit and import dependent country would hardly have any effect on prices unless further effort is made to build up the level of national food reserves for short term food security interventions in the current context of structurally low levels of national food reserves an alternative short term policy such as foreign aid in the form of food or income transfers targeting the most vulnerable households to price increases is necessary through social safety net programmes in the long run an improvement of transportation infrastructure between market hubs other than the biratnagar trade basin in the terai nepal and india would contribute to the reduction of transaction costs and create incentives for more competition in formal cross border trade with india in times of negative shocks such as the high food price crisis in 2008 restrictive food trade policies in india will continue to undermine household food security in nepal

optimization analysis of carbon emission rights allocation based on energy justice the case of china abstract carbon emission rights allocation affects the effective operation of carbon trading system and then the achievement of energy saving and emissions reduction objectives reasonable allocation scheme should meet the principle of justice carbon emission rights allocation based on energy justice is a novel and worth discussing subject this paper explores the optimization of carbon emission rights allocation based on energy justice the justice based model is built with the aid of gini coefficient the way to optimize allocation scheme with constraints of population ecological productive land fossil energy resources and gdp is discussed results show that fossil energy resources and ecological productive land play more important role in the allocation the prime example is inner mongolia its quota percentage change reaches up to 150 01 as the gdp and population growth rate are fixed in a given interval the quota allocation in eastern china shows some interesting results when the gdp growth rate is 6 25 the quotas of eastern china will not change with varying population growth rate the allocation will enter a relative stable stage as the population growth rate is greater than or equal to 6 4 these results can provide china with experience to deal with the new problem appeared in carbon trading system like two children policy and the new normal of economic growth

will they buy it the potential for marketing organic vegetables in the food vending sector to strengthen vegetable safety a choice experiment study in three west african cities abstract considering the hazardous use of synthetic pesticides in vegetable production in urban west africa this research investigated the marketing potential of organic vegetables in the food vending sector of cotonou benin accra ghana and ouagadougou burkina faso certified organic production and marketing was examined as a potential strategy to improve chemical food safety a stratified random sampling strategy was applied to study the preferences of food vendors n 180 and consumers n 360 vegetable use risk perception choice preferences and willingness to pay wtp for organic certification were specifically analyzed the results showed that awareness of chemical contamination risks was generally low appearance of a product was central to vendor choice consumers attributed similar utility to taste and organic certification consumer wtp was calculated to be a premium of 1 04 usd per plate if the food served contained only certified organic vegetables in restaurants this would mean an average premium of 19 for a meal if certified organic vegetable production is to make a positive impact on food safety in urban west africa we suggest concentrating marketing efforts on the educated elite who frequent restaurants however considering that restaurant owners exhibited a lower preference for organic certification than lower class food vendors the marketing situation is difficult we therefore conclude that demand from the food vending sector alone will not institutionalize domestic certification mechanisms this underlines the need for public commitment to facilitating such change

productivity growth technical progress and efficiency change in industrialized countries this paper analyzes productivity growth in 17 oecd countries over the period 1979 1988 a nonparametric programming method activity analysis is used to compute malmquist productivity indexes these are decomposed into two component measures namely technical change and efficiency change we find that u s productivity growth is slightly higher than average all of which is due to technical change japan s productivity growth is the highest in the sample with almost half due to efficiency change jel c43 d24 in this paper we apply recently developed

measurement of spatial socioeconomic impact of energy poverty abstract this article presents a spatial analysis of the evolution of energy poverty in spanish households and aims to measure the socioeconomic impact of energy poverty the economic financial measurement of palliative measures implemented and social perceptions of energy poverty are also dimensioned in order to analyse holistically the economic financial and social impact of energy poverty at a territorial level a statistical analysis of the financial aids has been conducted and the perception of technicians employed by both the public and the private sectors who work with affected households has been compiled in addition this paper explores the relationship between media coverage and the economic financial impact at territorial level to this goal 259 newspaper articles about energy poverty were classified and analysed to examine the socio genesis of the problem of energy poverty the measurement of the socio economics impact of energy poverty in households in a territory represents the spatial dimension of the problem for the definition of local energy policies taking into consideration the evolution of different measures implemented over time their limitations scope and flexibility

efficiency and technical progress sources of convergence in the spanish regions the paper analyses the contribution of efficiency as a mechanism of labour productivity convergence taking as the unit of analysis the spanish regions in the period 1964 1993 using the stochastic frontier approach a translogarithmic production function is estimated for the different sectors of the spanish regional economy demonstrating on this basis the existence of substantial differences in efficiency between sectors as well as between regions with regard to convergence the results obtained indicate that at aggregate level the convergence observed in labour productivity is explained by the faster growth of the capital labour ratio of the initially poorer regions and the contribution of technical change and the efficiency hence by the convergence of tfp however the information by sectors shows different results thus on the one hand the importance of the convergence in production per employee is seen in all sectors except agriculture and on the other it is observed that technical change is a