sense and sustainability revisited the limits of total factor productivity measures of sustainable agricultural systems many economists have advocated and applied total social factor productivity tsfp i e total factor productivity estimated with both market and non market inputs and externalities and with all factors valued at social prices as a single all embracing measure of agricultural sustainability this paper reviews the conceptual and practical issues in measuring tsfp and shows that no one measure alone will be theoretically or empirically robust as an indicator of sustainability tsfp is a conceptually flawed measure since inclusion of non market inputs and outputs and social price based valuation in most cases violates the theoretical basis underlying those estimates trends in tsfp also have limited value in diagnosing the nature of sustainability problems unless changes in productivity are related to underlying changes in technology human and physical infrastructure and indicators of resource quality more attention needs to be given to defining key indicators of agro ecosystem health and relating these measures to trends in productivity this analysis must be sufficiently disaggregated and for a long enough time period to allow for spatial and temporal variability inherent in agricultural production secondary data at the district level on both conventional inputs and outputs and resource quality have recently allowed more quantitative estimates of sustainability and its causes with limited data yield growth decomposition analysis can often be used to provide valuable insights into sustainability problems meanwhile there is a need to invest in long term experimental and panel surveys of farmers and their fields for key production systems in order to provide long term data that will allow full productivity accounting using more formal statistical procedures regardless of the approach selected the findings of this paper strongly suggest a need for economists agronomists and soil scientists to collaborate in integrating approaches in order to provide more robust and informative measures of sustainability

the norwegian winter herring fishery a story of technological progress and stock collapse in the 1970s herring stocks in the northeast atlantic were nearly fished to extinction this collapse is usually attributed to technological advances we investigate the empirical impact of technological shocks on herring stocks we show evidence that the power block was the principal factor in the demise of the stock we also look at the sensitivity of catch to stock size and technological shocks we measure a significant stock effect in the 1950s contrary to what we expect a simulation model indicates that this could have been caused by an increasing range of the fishing fleet due to ongoing technological progress

credible commitment and success with public enterprise reform abstract this paper studies why some efforts at public enterprise reform fail and why others succeed economic reforms are intended to increase efficiency and thus help sustain long term growth yet many governments have had difficulty sustaining the reforms they initiated and have reintroduced rigid controls over markets and enterprises this is because either in the process of implementation the government discovers that the costs of carrying the reform further are greater than the expected efficiency gains or the public is skeptical that the new policies can be sustained and does not take the actions necessary for the gains to be realized this paper develops a new institutionalist framework and employs various measures of policy commitment and net gain from continued reform to analyze these issues the paper suggests ways in which the potential success or failure of a reform can be assessed with implications for the steps that reformers might take to increase the chances of success

transferable lessons re examining the institutional prerequisites of east asian economic policies competing theories of east asian economic policy share the assumption that a highly capable coherent economic bureaucracy closely connected to but still independent of the business community has been an essential institutional prerequisite for successful policy formation and implementation in east asia these institutional prerequisites were constructed in a variety of concrete forms with great difficulty and imperfect results as long as the idea of transferable lessons is understood as an invitation to indigenous innovation that takes advantage of the underlying analytical logic of east asian institutions other countries can reap important benefits from east asia s experience

making development simple the genetic deterministic hypothesis for economic development abstract this paper discusses the dangers inherent in attempting to simplify something as complex as development it does this by exploring the lynn and vanhanen theory of deterministic development which asserts that varying levels of economic development seen between countries can be explained by differences in national intelligence national iq assuming that intelligence is genetically determined and as different races have been shown to have different iq then they argue that economic development measured as gdp capita is largely a function of race and interventions to address imbalances can only have a limited impact the paper presents the lynne and vanhanen case and critically discusses the data and analyses linear regression upon which it is based it also extends the cause effect basis of lynne and vanhanen s theory for economic development into human development by using the human development index hdi it is argued that while there is nothing mathematically incorrect with their calculations there are concerns over the data they employ even more fundamentally it is argued that statistically significant correlations between the various components of the hdi and national iq can occur via a host of cause effect pathways and hence the genetic determinism theory is far from proven the paper ends by discussing the dangers involved in the use of over simplistic measures of development as a means of exploring cause effect relationships while the creators of development indices such as the hdi have good intentions simplistic indices can encourage simplistic explanations of under development

the impact of pollution abatement investment on productivity change anempirical comparison of the u s germany and canada since environmental quality became an important focus of government regulations in most industrialized countries in the early 1970s many researchers have assessed the impact of these regulations on economic performance for example leontief and ford 11 and pasurka 15 investigated the impact that environmental protection costs had on prices in the u s walter 24 calculated the effect of pollution abatement expenditures on u s trade and robinson 19 measured the distributional impact of the burden of industrial pollution abatement a related issue involves the productivity consequences of environmental regulations in this paper we address this issue by considering the impact of pollution abatement investment on productivity growth

productivity change under an individual transferable quota management system this is a scanned version of a published article the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of the agricultural and applied economics association the original can be found at http www aaea org publications ajae to the best of our knowledge one or more authors of this paper were federal employees when contributing to this work

growth accounting in a fishery abstract since 1950 the real value of fish catches in norway has about doubled while the number of fishermen has declined by about 85 percent this has made it possible to maintain fishermen s incomes roughly on par with other occupational groups in norway it is investigated to what extent this increase in labor productivity is due to accumulation of capital increasingly abundant fish stocks or technological progress since the capital stock in recent years is not much greater in real terms than in the early 1960s it is tempting to ascribe most of the increase in labor productivity to technical progress this however would leave out the role of fish stocks if stocks have increased over this period this would explain some of what otherwise appears as a technical progress using data on labor capital fish catches and fish stock abundance 1961 2004 the development of total factor productivity is examined ignoring changes in fish stocks total factor productivity is estimated to have increased by 0 8 percent per year accounting for changes in fish stocks raises this to 1 7 4 3 percent per year depending on the importance assigned to stocks as factors of production

a reconsideration of import substitution this paper studies the origins of an import substitution strategy of development summarizes the consequences of that strategy and reviews the problems that led to its failure the fundamental difficulty was its discouragement of the indigenous social learning necessary for sustained independent development the emergence of an outward oriented minimal government strategy is due to the success of korea and taiwan this strategy fails to recognize that social learning requires a strong role for national agents and that this role can be penalized by undue openness an effective strategy must protect and induce domestic learning without penalizing exporting

measuring the sustainability and economic viability of tropical farming systems a model from sub saharan africa abstract new technologies must be developed in sub saharan africa which are sustainable and economically viable this paper discusses a methodology for measuring the agricultural sustainability and economic viability of tropical farming systems for new technology evaluation the approach is based on the concept of interspatial and intertemporal total factor productivity paying particular attention to valuation of natural resource stock and flows agriculture is a sector which utilizes natural resources e g soil nutrients and the stock and flows of these resources affect the production environment however in many cases the stock of these resources is beyond the control of the farmer and must be accounted for in an agricultural sustainability and economic viability measurement for example soil nutrients are removed by crops erosion or leaching beyond the crop root zone or other processes such as volatilization of nitrogen agricultural production can also contribute to the stock of some nutrients by leguminous plants such as agroforestry systems using a data set available at the international institute of tropical agriculture we compute the intertemporal and interspatial total factor productivity indices for four cropping systems in southwestern nigeria using stock of major soil nutrients as the natural resource stock results show that the sustainability and economic viability measures are sensitive to changes in the stock and flow of soil nutrients as well as the material inputs and outputs where the contribution of natural resource stock and flows are important such as in the case of alley cropping the measures provide markedly different results from conventional tfp approaches the advantage of this approach is that interspatial and intertemporal total factor productivity measures are computed using only price and quantity data thus eliminating the need for econometric estimation

the asian debt and development crisis of 1997 causes and consequences abstract interpretations of the asian crisis have coalesced around two rival stories the death throes of asian state capitalism story about internal real economy causes and the panic triggering debt deflation in a basically sound but under regulated system story that gives more role to external and financial system causes the paper presents the stories and assesses the evidence the evidence in particular the chronology of the crisis supports the second rather better than the first the paper discusses the interests driving capital account liberalization without a framework of regulation the single most irresponsible act of public authorities in the whole crisis us and uk financial firms allied with their treasuries and with the imf the wto and the oecd saw themselves at a chronic disadvantage in the asian system of long term relationships and patient capital this alliance supported by segments of asian political and financial elites achieved dramatic domestic financial sector liberalization and capital account opening in asia over the 1990s setting up the conditions for crisis paradoxically the crisis may be looked back upon not as the triumph of benign globalization and neoliberal economic doctrine but as the beginning of its end

technological change and the tragedy of the commons the lofoten fishery over 130 years we analyze the effect of technological change on labor and total factor productivity in the lofoten fishery using detailed data for 130 years our findings support the important role of natural resources in productivity and improvements in welfare in natural resource based industries the total factor productivity has risen faster than labor productivity in the fishery indicating that the considerable technological progress in this industry has to some extent been neutralized by the decline in the fish stock open access to the fish resource most probably led to this situation

credibility and reputation building in the developmental state a model with east asian applications abstract we use a game theoretic model to analyze the role of credibility reputation and investment coordination in a developmental state our model focuses on why a soft state serving narrow social groups so often obtains in less developed countries and under what conditions a hard or developmental state can emerge the model highlights the dilemma that although state and private sector alike may want economic growth both must simultaneously invest to achieve it but the equilibrium outcome analogous to the prisoner s dilemma is investment by neither even when initial conditions are favorable and a state is potentially developmental with the genuine capability to elicit private sector investment this may not materialize and an equilibrium of low or no investment will prevail to avoid this deadlock and foster growth the successful developmental state must demonstrate commitment by promoting its developmental credentials through a process of reputation building a consequent incentive to act tough together with seeming advantages of authoritarianism in implementing the developmental state may help to explain why it is often associated with an authoritarian political system

total factor productivity change in the new england groundfish fishery 1964 1993 abstract we develop estimates of total factor productivity tfp change in the new england groundfish fishery from 1964 to 1993 using a procedure similar to squires 1992 rand j econom 23 2 221 236 method which extends standard tfp measurement by including the effect of fluctuations in stock abundance the results indicate that tfp increased on average by 4 4 per year from 1964 to 1993 a higher average rate of increase occurred between 1964 and 1982 possibly due to new technologies e g fishfinders tfp declined at 0 33 annually from 1983 to 1993 due to stringent output and effort control measures

transferable quotas enforcement costs and typical firms an empirical application to the norwegian trawler fleet an alternative to traditional regulations of fisheries to avoid rent dissipation is the use of individual transferable quotas itqs where prices in the quota market provide the necessary information to owners of harvest rights to contract with each other however even under such a decentralized regime information on the underlying technology of the fishing vessels is also necessary first since most fisheries consist of many interrelated production processes in order to avoid rent dissipation by discarding wrong output mix etc the structure of production in the multispecies fishery must be known to design a proper quota system second an itq system may create incentives for misreporting by understating the actual catch this may especially be the case where the expected degree of self enforcement is low the paper proposes a way to reduce the information requirements under regulation with asymmetric information by constructing a typical firm and comparing performance for the other vessels to this firm based on the typical firm and if the industry is relatively homogenous the performance and hence catch of any other firm in the industry can be predicted within a certain range further the paper applies this idea to the norwegian trawler fleet to assess the production structure in terms of jointness input output separability and the supply and demand elasticities for the fishing firms this information characterizes the fishery and thus how the quota system may be designed and how to construct a yardstick in order to reduce the enforcement cost under a decentralized regulation of itqs

multi output nonfrontier primal measures of capacity and capacity utilization this article implements an econometric approach for generating primal capacity output and utilization measures for fisheries in situations where regulatory environmental and resource conditions affect catch levels but are not independently identified in the data frontier based capacity models may interpret such impacts as production inefficiency however if such inefficiencies are unlikely to be eliminated the implied potential output increases may be unrealistic we develop a multi output multi input stochastic transformation function framework that permits various assumptions about how output composition may change when operating at full capacity we apply our model to catcher processor vessels in the alaskan pollock fishery

an analysis of the efficient production frontier in the fishery implications for enhanced fisheries management the transformation relationship between factor inputs and outputs the efficient production frontier epf contains important information for fisheries managers a directional technology distance function model of the harvesting technology is used to measure changes in the epf over time frontier shifts are summarized with input and output based frontier indicators that are interpreted as measures of bioeconomic productivity change the model is applied to the mid atlantic surf clam and ocean quahog fishery

fishing effort validation and substitution possibilities among components the case study of the viii division european anchovy fishery command and control regulation programmes particularly input constraints typically fail to achieve stated objectives because fishermen may substitute unregulated for regulated inputs it is thus essential to have an understanding of the internal structure of production technology a primal formulation is used to estimate a translog production function at the vessels level that includes fishing effort and fisherman s skill the flexibility of the selected functional permits the analysis of the substitution possibilities among inputs by estimating the elasticity of substitution with no prior constraints particular attention is paid to the empirical validation of fishing effort as an aggregate input which implies either the acceptance of the joint hypothesis that inputs making up effort are weakly separable from the inputs out of the subgroup or considering that effort is an intermediate input produced by a non separable two stage technology cross sectional data from the spanish purse seine fleet op

the making of economic policy a transaction cost politics perspective economic policymaking as a political process the normative approach to policy analysis the positive view of political economy a synthesis the policy process in real time a theme transaction costs the transaction cost politics framework political outcomes and economic efficiency transaction cost analysis in politics mechanisms to cope with transaction costs in politics national differences two case studies to illustrate transaction cost politics tax and expenditure reform in the united states the gatt and national trade politics some reflections and suggestions some lessons for the policy process the role of the economist concluding comments appendix multiprincipal multitask agencies

the developmental state government and singapore s economic development since 1960 abstract government interventionism is widely acknowledged to characterize less developed countries but consensus is lacking as to whether it promotes economic development and if so how the present article analyzes the nature of government involvement in the singapore model of economic development and emergence of a developmental state closely associated with this model it compares singapore s experience with south korea s and taiwan s where government also contributed to development success and with other asian countries where government failed to play a strong developmental role

productivity measurement in common property resource industries an application to the pacific coast trawl fishery this article measures total factor productivity in industries that exploit resources held in common particular attention is paid to the valuation and specification of in situ commonproperty resources in a neoclassical production technology catchability of the resource and variations in economic capacity utilization an empirical analysis of the open access pacific coast trawl fishing industry demonstrates that disentangling the productivity residual from changes in resource abundance its catchability and variations in capacity utilization hones the productivity residual to finer precision lowering mean productivity growth by about hak removing biological noise from highly variable resources is also important the results are related to aprogram limiting the number of vessels and can contribute to sustainable resource management whenever resources are held in common

the successful developmental state where does it come from abstract in this paper it is taken for granted that the state has played an important role in the industrialization of east asia accepting this the purpose of the paper is to determine why government policy was so effective in these countries while failing to a great extent in much of the rest of the developing world the key seems to reside in the ability of the state to discipline firms which in turn is dependent upon the credibility of government policy the latter depends on a large number of variables this paper argues that a crucial factor is the size of the domestic market for manufactured goods

productivity development in icelandic norwegian and swedish fisheries this article analyses the total factor productivity tfp performance of fisheries in iceland norway and sweden during the period 1973 to 2003 we measure tfp growth using real gross value added as output and capital input labour input and a stock input index based on the major fish stocks in developed neighbouring countries we expect rapid diffusion of fishing technology innovations contributing to productivity convergence in addition innovations in the public regulation and the industrial organization may also have influenced productivity growth during the period we find that iceland had the highest annual tfp growth accounting for stock changes it amounts to 3 while the corresponding figures for sweden and norway are 2 8 and 0 8 respectively despite best practice fishing technologies being widely available we find no evidence of productivity convergence among the three countries