smallholder market participation concepts and evidence from eastern and southern africa abstract this paper reviews the evidence on smallholder market participation with a focus on staple foodgrains i e cereals in eastern and southern africa in an effort to help better identify what interventions are most likely to break smallholders out of the semi subsistence poverty trap that appears to ensnare much of rural africa the conceptual and empirical evidence suggests that interventions aimed at facilitating smallholder organization at reducing the costs of intermarket commerce and perhaps especially at improving poorer households access to improved technologies and productive assets are central to stimulating smallholder market participation and escape from semi subsistence poverty traps macroeconomic and trade policy tools appear less useful in inducing market participation by poor smallholders in the region

measuring food security in africa conceptual empirical and policy issues the definition of food security has broadened since the term first came to prominence at the 1975 world food conference discussions of food security in the midand late 1970s were strongly influenced by the shortfall in world food production and run up in prices early in that decade initially food security meant avoiding transitory shortfalls in the aggregate supply of food by the early 1980s however the world food supply situation had evolved markedly the famines striking africa took place in a world awash in grain clearly inadequate levels of global food supply were not the cause of hunger sen s work focused attention on the lack of access by households and individuals to food because of low incomes entitlements as a cause of food insecurity and other research has shown that for most of the hungry in the world this lack of access is chronic not transitory thus the conceptual understanding of food insecurity has gradually evolved over the past fifteen years to include not only transitory problems of inadequate supply at the national level but also chronic problems of inadequate access and unequal distribution at the household level d spite a broader understanding of the complexity of food insecurity policy makers must still look for easily measured indicators to design programs to reach the food insecure often these indicators are measures of regional or national food supply or its correlates such as rainfall as current information on household or individual entitlements to food is usually lacking s me policy makers may think of supply shortfalls or the lack of domestic food self suffi

testing dependence between gdp and tourism s growth rates abstract the main aim of this paper is to link the economic behaviour and statistical properties of gdp and tourism receipts growth rates through modelling the dependence to that end two developed economies such as the united kingdom non tourist oriented and spain tourist oriented and an emerging economy such as croatia tourist oriented are considered as case studies therefore a copula based garch approach is employed to describe the dependence structure between gdp and tourism receipts growth rates in this respect any causality and cointegration between tourism and gdp could justify public policies that promote a more efficient public resource allocation in the tourism industry additionally evidence of dependence between growth rates can justify the extent and direction of these policies results indicate that there is a significant asymmetric and positive dependence between tourism and gdp growth rates for the three countries studied though only for croatia is it time varying over time

official and parallel cereals markets in senegal empirical evidence abstract senegal s experience with cereals market regulation grows out of a colonial legacy that accepts a preeminent role for the state as protector of producers and comsumers yet the reality of cereals market operation in senegal differs substantially from that specified in regulatory texts and satisfaction of certain performance objectives is achieved largely because of illegal parallel market activity involving violations of official rules and policies survey data collected in northern and central senegal provide valuable insights into the operation of a heterogeneous cereals marketing system made up of parallel channel marketing agents authorized private traders public sector marketing organizations and parastatals

marketing maize and tef in western ethiopia implications for policies following market liberalization abstract ethiopia has recently eliminated fixed grain prices and has reduced its role in purchasing grain from farmers results indicate that private sector marketing of maize and tef is characterized by high risks and variable gross margins returns from storing grain for later sale can be high but predicting price movements is risky interspatial arbitrage is seriously flawed correlations in prices between markets range from weak to strong the government s restriction of the movement of grain and market interventions during the survey period are partly responsible for these trends proposed measures to improve marketing performance include 1 improving feeder roads 2 providing credit to traders and transporters 3 improving farm level maize storage facilities and 4 permitting markets in an area to be held on different days of the week

domestic trade and transportation costs as barriers to international trade available evidence indicates that costs of nontraded services in domestic transportation wholesaling and retailing domestic margins are higher if a good is shipped in international trade than if it is shipped from domestic producers to domestic consumers consequently domestic margins appear to act as natural barriers to trade in the same manner as international transp ort costs do this paper presents estimates of the barriers that the domestic margins impose against u s imports and shows that they exc eed the barriers imposed by tariffs and international transport costs combined

economies of scope and the cash crop food crop debate in senegal abstract the government of senegal plans to achieve national food self sufficiency by inducing farmers to switch away from cash crops toward food crop production this paper examines selected economic consequences of the planned substitution using empirical data recently collected in southeastern senegal cost function estimates suggest that farmers are currently producing too much food crop and too little cash crop output given existing technology and observed relative prices moreover economies of scope in producing both food crops and cash crops on the same farm result in a 22 cost saving relative to growing both types of crops on separate specialized farms

computable general equilibrium models adjustment and the poor in africa abstract sahn and others at cornell have conducted a major research program on the impact of adjustment policies on the poor in africa making use of computable general equilibrium cge models their work was summarized in world development april 1996 they concluded that adjustment policies have not hurt and may have helped the poor this paper shows that such conclusions are highly dependent on the assumptions made about parameters relationships and closure in the models moreover in madagascar and tanzania where the cornell models suggest the poor benefited from adjustment there is evidence of worsening social and economic indicators our conclusion is that the cornell results are more a reflection of the assumptions made in developing the cge models than of reality

paying the price final goods protection in oecd countries this paper presents new measures of final goods trade protection in eight developed countries the analysis exploits detailed comprehensive and careful price comparisons to derive estimates that it is argued reliably capture all kinds of barriers the results show extensive protection japan s average tariff equivalent is 57 those of the european countries range from 48 to 55 and that of the united states is lowest at 12 an applied general equilibrium analysis of this protection is conducted the results include the following japan s barriers impose large costs on itself japanese and u s barriers greatly burden poorer countries the united states would benefit significantly from multilateral but not unilateral opening

the welfare implications of services liberalization in a developing country abstract we propose an integrated method based on a two sector small open economy dynamic and stochastic general equilibrium model to estimate non tariff barriers and quantify the impact of services liberalization the major component of trade barriers is explicitly modeled through the introduction of entry sunk costs hence liberalization is treated assuming a government s policy decision aimed at reducing those costs then we estimate the model using bayesian techniques for tunisia and the euro area the paper presents a precise quantitative evaluation of services trade barriers as the difference between entry sunk costs in tunisia versus the euro area we find significant welfare benefits in addition to aggregate and sectoral growth gains the tunisian economy could attain following services liberalization surprisingly the good sector is the one that benefits the most from services liberalization in the short and long term horizons

cash crops and food security evidence from ethiopian smallholder coffee producers one of the central questions in food policy debates has been the role of cash cropping for achieving food security in low income countries we revisit this question in the context of smallholder co

food security strategies under extremely adverse conditions the determinants of household income and consumption in rural mozambique abstract this paper uses household survey data from war torn northern mozambique to examine the factors associated with higher incomes and improved rural household food security incomes and calorie consumption were found to be low and variable in each district and both are highly correlated with land holdings the central role of land holdings is largely a result of serious market failure food market participation rates and the proportion of net buyers are lower than in other sub saharan africa ssa research purchased food as a percentage of total caloric intake and off farm income as a percentage of total income are both very low by ssa standards in short surveyed smallholders have adopted a strategy of marked reliance on farm based own production to ensure their survival it is suggested that land holdings will continue to be key determinants of household income and consumption for the foreseeable future broad based rural development efforts possibly organized around existing cotton growing enterprises may offer one way out of the poverty trap for smallholders

forecasting u s tourist arrivals using optimal singular spectrum analysis this study examines the potential advantages of using singular spectrum analysis ssa for forecasting tourism demand to do this it examines the performance of ssa forecasts using monthly data for tourist arrivals into the unites states over the period 1996 to 2012 the ssa forecasts are compared to those from a range of other forecasting approaches previously used to forecast tourism demand these include arima exponential smoothing and neural networks the results presented show that the ssa approach produces forecasts which perform statistically significantly better than the alternative methods in forecasting total tourist arrivals into the u s forecasts using the ssa approach are also shown to offer a significantly better forecasting performance for arrivals into the u s from individual source countries of the alternative forecasting approaches exponential smoothing and feed forward neural networks in particular were found to perform poorly the key conclusion is that singular spectrum analysis ssa offers significant advantages in forecasting tourist arrivals into the us and is worthy of consideration for other forecasting studies of tourism demand

relationships and traders in madagascar this article documents the role that personal relationships play in economic exchange original survey data show that agricultural traders in madagascar perceive relationships as the most important factor for success in their business evidence details the extent to which relationships are used to serve a variety of purposes such as the circulation of information about prices and market conditions the provision of trade credit the prevention and handling of contractual difficulties the regularity of trade flows and the mitigation of risk of these the regularity of supply and demand and the sharing of risk appear particularly important larger and more prosperous traders are those with quantitatively and qualitatively better relationships family plays little role in business beyond assistance at start up

price transmission and trader entry in domestic commodity markets abstract using detailed data from three simultaneous surveys of producers traders and exporters this paper examines the transmission of international coffee prices through the domestic value chain in uganda we find that producer price fluctuations are inconsistent with constant transaction costs we investigate three possible explanations for this finding storage and contango marketing costs that increase with price and trader entry that raises search time we test and reject the storage and marketing costs explanation but we find some evidence of trader entry in response to a rise in export price our findings suggest that small itinerant traders enter in response to an export price increase probably taking advantage of farmers ignorance of the rise in wholesale price

the impact of regulations on agricultural trade evidence from the sps and tbt agreements according to world trade organization rules countries may adopt regulations under the agreements on sanitary and phyto sanitary sps and technical barriers to trade tbt we analyze the structure of these measures in agricultural trade the inventory approach suggests that european countries have among the lowest coverage ratios of all oecd countries using a gravity equation we also estimate their stringency our results suggest that they significantly reduce developing countries exports to oecd countries but do not affect trade between oecd members furthermore european imports are more negatively influenced by sps and tbts than imports of other oecd countries

the causes of africa s food crisis abstract this paper examines the causes of africa s food crisis by examining patterns of food imports the econometric results indicate that the rise in food imports during 1970 87 can be explained by a combination of demographic policy and economic factors which have raised domestic demand for imported food these factors include urban migration peaks in income especially during commodity booms lower international prices of food and distorted exchange rates after accounting for these factors the residual trend in food imports per capita is negative over this period evidence is also presented showing that in ghana policy reforms have led to reverse migration from urban to rural areas

higher fuel and food prices impacts and responses for mozambique rising world prices for fuel and food represent a negative terms of trade shock for mozambique the impacts of these price rises are analyzed using various approaches detailed price data show that the world price increases are being transmitted to domestic prices short run net benefit ratio analysis indicates that urban households and households in the southern region are more vulnerable to food price increases rural households particularly in the north and center often benefit from being in a net seller position longer term analysis using a computable general equilibrium cge model of mozambique indicates that the fuel price shock dominates rising food prices from both macroeconomic and poverty perspectives again negative impacts are larger in urban areas the importance of agricultural production response in general and export response in particular is highlighted policy analysis reveals difficult trade offs between short run mitigation and long run growth improved agricultural productivity has powerful positive impacts but remains difficult to achieve and may not address the immediate impacts of higher prices

the welfare effects of distribution regulations in oecd countries i introduction the distribution sector plays a crucial and large role in most economies 1 in the g 7 united states japan germany france united kingdom italy and canada distribution s share of gross domestic product gdp ranges from 8 to 15 and its share in employment ranges from 11 to 19 pilat 1997 table 2 1 because almost all goods in an economy pass through this sector distribution can heavily influence prices for consumer goods in particular these price effects can be large in organisation for economic cooperation and development oecd countries consumer prices for final goods exceed the corresponding producer prices by 40 and more in addition to indeed because of its economic importance distribution producers enjoy substantial political clout and have won many favorable regulations from the political process see kalirajan 2000 and pilat 1997 these regulations may impose large welfare costs and may exert a large influence on trade flows nonetheless relatively few publications rigorously analyze the potential overall welfare and trade effects of deregulating distribution this study seeks to fill some of that void i first provide a brief overview of distribution regulations then i present new internationally comparable distribution margins data for a sample of eight oecd countries these data are used to infer the extent to which distribution regulations reduce efficiency for four of these countries i conduct an applied general equilibrium age analysis of the welfare effects of high margins and find that they impose large costs rivaling those of protection it appears that efforts to increase economic welfare should not ignore the potentially large gains from liberalizing distribution this article also examines the relationship between restricted distribution and imports ii distribution regulations several studies have described a variety of distribution regulations in oecd countries nicoletti 2001 boylaud 2000 kalirajan 2000 and pilat 1997 provide excellent overviews these studies imply that despite some liberalization many impediments remain the most burdensome regulations include restrictions on large stores onerous business set up rules restrictive zoning laws and other real estate regulations limits on product ranges store hours and pricing and monopoly distributors for certain products such as pharmaceuticals liquor and tobacco in addition many local regulations work under the radar of studies such as these the limited literature on the subject implies that distribution regulations reduce welfare pellegrini 2000 estimates that deregulating retail trade would increase italian gdp by more than 1 japan s economic planning agency 1996 finds that loosening restrictions on large retailers has increased japanese gdp by 1 pilat 1997 cites a european commission study that finds that liberalizing store hours has greatly increased consumer welfare carree and nijkamps 2001 find efficiency gains after entry barrier removal in the netherlands nicoletti 2001 concludes both simulation and econometric studies point unequivocally to potentially large welfare gains from the liberalization of retail trade also burda 2000 and studies cited in nicoletti 2001 find that employment would increase not decrease with liberalization these studies provide valuable information but none simulate the effect of a country s total package of distribution regulations on welfare i do so by exploiting age modeling which takes account of links among industries and nations to produce broad brushed estimates of inflated margins effects in multiple countries distribution s widespread influence on an economy makes an age approach especially important 2 iii measuring margins the underlying data the distribution margins data grow out of protection data developed in bradford 1998 2003

measuring protection mission impossible abstract there seems to be some confusion between openness and protection measures in the international trade literature the aim of this paper is to bring together the state of the art in quantifying trade policy measures and for this reason we focus on the extent of the protection granted by policies rather than on the degree of openness of the economy given the considerable amount of literature that deals with these issues we will limit our review as follows on the one hand we focus on trade policies implemented at the border and therefore do not consider all the other possible public interventions influencing trade flows on the other hand we only take into account indexes that explicitly adopt a metric expressed in a scalar aggregate tariff and quota equivalent measures or an index in a closed interval we distinguish between indexes that aggregate across products same barrier for more products and indexes that aggregate across instruments more barriers for the same product finally in order to classify the large number of indexes covered in our review we propose a typology based on three categories incidence outcome and equivalence

a management orientated approach to combination forecasting of tourism demand abstract volatility exponential smoothing regression and naive 2 models are considered singly and in combination in terms of forecasting demand for international tourism these models generate accurate predictions of tourism flows but their prime utility is when combined with other models usually models are combined by means of purely statistical criteria we show that goal programming gp offers an alternative flexible approach to model combination gp offers planners a practical solution to tourism forecasting problems since the method is more adaptable than conventional minimisation of prediction error by permitting practitioners to prioritise a series of management related goals forecasters can focus on longer and short term goals minimising forecast under and over estimation and or concentrate on prediction errors in tourism flows at various times of the year

the impact of export crop production on nutritional status in cote d ivoire abstract in exploring the implications of the commercialization of agriculture on nutrition in cote d ivoire this paper found that sales of export crops combined with the domestic marketing of food crops represent the most important sources of incomes for rural households rich and poor alike increasing the price of the heavily taxed export crops cocoa and coffee will raise incomes throughout the income distribution increasing the profitability and productivity of cotton will not only raise rural incomes but will also have positive distributional consequences a reduced form nutrition model was estimated in order to examine the impact of income as well as the allocation of land to the production of the major export crops rather than to food crops on nutritional status results indicate that higher incomes improve long term nutritional status and that the share of land allocated to export crops does not affect the nutritional status of preschool aged children even when controlling for income in combination these facts suggest that raising incomes through exploiting comparative advantage in export crops such as coffee cocoa and cotton will have positive nutritional outcomes in cote d ivoire

recent theoretical results for time series models with garch errors this paper provides a review of some recent theoretical results for time series models with garch errors and is directed towards practitioners starting with the simple arch model and proceeding to the garch model some results for stationary and nonstationary arma garch are summarized various new arch type models including double threshold arch and garch arfima garch charma and vector arma garch are also reviewed copyright 2002 by blackwell publishers ltd

informing food security decisions in africa empirical analysis and policy dialogue discussions of economic and agricultural development in africa have focused heavily in recent years on structural adjustment i e basic policy changes aimed at allowing international and domestic markets to play a greater role in coordinating national economic activities often these structural adjustments and accompanying policies aimed at improving economic performance have been based on several implicit assumptions about how african food systems operate yet for many countries little empirical information has been available to test these assumptions hence designing policies too often becomes an exercise in planning without facts this paper argues that not only is there a need to base food security and structural adjustment policies more firmly on empirical information but that the process by which the information is obtained is as important as the information itself agricultural economists and other social scientists can and increasingly should design policy research in africa in ways that simultaneously increase effective demand for empirical information as an input into the ongoing policy process and augment african capacity continually to inform policy deliberations we illustrate the payoffs to such an approach by drawing on selected experience in several african countries weber

real time forecasting regional tourism with business sentiment surveys abstract this study provides evidence that supply side soft information retrieved from business surveys is effective in real time forecasting of hotel arrivals at the regional level we assess the effect of including business sentiment indicators in commonly used naive specifications and structural time series models using residuals and predictive diagnostics we find that both the goodness of fit and the forecasting accuracy of the augmented models are superior to those of the baseline models whence the opportunity to extend to the tourism sector the surveys on the business sentiment currently realized by the provincial chambers of commerce for the manufacturing sector allowing an effective and timely managing of local tourism market where official information is likely to be either lacking or poor in quality

determinants and effects of income diversification amongst farm households in burkina faso using four years of household data from three agroecological zones in burkina faso sahelian sudanian and guinean the article examines the determinants and effects of household income diversification harvest shortfalls and terms of trade are found to drive diversification but land constraints do not income diversification is associated with higher incomes and food consumption and more stable income and consumption over years

how competitive are crop markets in sub saharan africa during the structural adjustment era of the 1980s and 1990s governments across sub saharan africa generally withdrew from crop markets to encourage entry by private traders and foster competition since that time the degree of competition in crop markets has been a central concern of policymakers donors and researchers we review the evidence on that topic by first developing a conceptual framework to guide our analysis then discussing the findings from four categories of literature we have two main findings first there is a paucity of empirical evidence on this question which hinders our ability to draw strong conclusions second that point notwithstanding the evidence that does exist is broadly supportive of the notion that crop markets are competitive the dominant themes in the literature are that trading profits are highly variable trader entry and exit rates are high and price co movements between markets suggest relatively efficient levels of competitive arbitrage it is possible that the high costs of entry foster non competitive conditions at the level of large scale long distance subnational trade but we find no positive evidence to that effect only the satisfaction of certain necessary conditions

the structure of indigenous food crop markets in sub saharan africa the rice market in uganda abstractusing data obtained from a series of nation wide market surveys in uganda this article attempts to document and assess the domestic rice market at all stages in the post harvest marketing chain from the farm gate to metropolitan area retail outlets the criteria used are quantities marketed prices marketing margins marketing costs and net returns to traders the results show that the regional rice markets are integrated into the national market and that on average little surplus is left for rice traders at all market stages if marketing costs are accounted for the spontaneously developed indigenous crop market works reasonably well

trade in the triad how easy is the access to large markets in this paper we measure market access between the united states the eu and japan the triad using the effect of national borders on trade patterns we investigate overall and industry level trends of bilateral trade openness and provide explanations for those using proxies for bilateral observed protection tariffs and ntbs home bias of consumers product differentiation and levels of fdi the explanations related to actual protection home bias and substitutability of goods put together explain a large part of the border effect between blocs of the triad although they do not explain the whole of the border effect puzzle jel classification f12 f15 commerce dans la triade jusqu a quel point l acces aux grands marches est il facile cet article mesure le niveau d integration commerciale entre les pays de l ue le japon et les etats unis la triade en utilisant l effet des frontieres nationales sur le commerce international nous etudions le niveau et l evolution du degre d ouverture bilateral ainsi que les differentes explications possibles des effets frontiere estimes qui sont testees a l aide de variables capturant la protection tarifs et bnts le biais domestique des consommateurs le degre de differenciation des produits et les niveaux d ide bilateraux les explications liees a la protection au biais domestique et a la substituabilite entre produits considerees ensemble expliquent une bonne partie de l effet frontiere entre pays de la triade meme si elles n expliquent pas la totalite de l enigme

household food security and nutrition monitoring the malawi approach to development planning and policy interventions abstract this paper documents implementation of food security and nutrition monitoring fsnm at the household level as a process of information generation for food and nutrition planning and policy making a case study of malawi is presented to describe various stages involved in generating data and converting them into policy decisions the institutional arrangement for food security and nutrition monitoring in malawi is presented along with a conceptual framework for identifying factors that influence food security and nutritional status of the population the process of implementing food security and nutrition monitoring in malawi is presented in two parts the process of information generation and the use of results in policy implementation the costs and benefits of food security and nutrition monitoring in malawi are also documented presenting the lessons from the malawi approach the paper concludes that a decentralized system of data collection processing and analysis is more likely to be successful in planning and policy making for food security and nutritional improvements

modelling multivariate international tourism demand and volatility international tourism demand which is typically measured as tourist arrivals to australia has experienced dramatic fluctuations in recent years due to changes in the economic financial and political environment however variations in tourism demand specifically the conditional variance or volatility have not previously been investigated in the tourism literature an analysis of such volatility is essential for investigating the effects of shocks in tourism demand models this paper models the conditional mean and conditional variance of the logarithm of the monthly tourist arrival rate from the four leading tourism source countries to australia namely japan new zealand uk and usa using three multivariate static or constant conditional correlation ccc volatility models specifically the symmetric ccc mgarch model of rev econ stat 72 1990 498 symmetric vector arma garch model of econ theory 19 2003 278 and asymmetric vector arma agarch model of australasian meeting of the econometric society brisbane australia 2002 monthly data from july 1975 to 2000 are used in the empirical analysis the results suggest the presence of interdependent effects in the conditional variances between the four leading countries and asymmetric effects of shocks in two of the four countries this is an important result as it emphasizes interdependencies between major tourism source countries as well as the asymmetric effects of positive and negative shocks in tourism demand the estimated ccc matrices for the three models are not substantially different from each other which confirms the robustness of the estimates to alternative specifications of the multivariate conditional variance

on price risk and the inverse farm size productivity relationship abstract the oft observed inverse relationship between farm size and productivity has elicited several explanations having important policy and theoretical implications using advances in the analysis of price risk effects on producer behavior and a simple two period model of an agricultural household that both produces and consumes under price uncertainty at the time labor allocation decisions are made this paper demonstrates analytically that a non degenerate land distribution and price risk can together produce an inverse relationship even absent any of the more common explanations empirical evidence from madagascar confirms the plausibility of this intuitive explanation for the phenomenon

protection for sale with imperfect rent capturing we extend the protection for sale framework to non tari barriers introducing partial rent capturing leads to a testable specification that bridges the gap between the grossman and helpman 1994 model and its empirical implementation where coverage ratios have been used to measure protection the econometric analysis supports our augmented specification and leads to more realistic estimates for the structural parameters of the model jel classification f13

self reported food insecurity in africa during the food price crisis this article analyzes data on self reported food insecurity of more than 50 000 individuals in 18 sub saharan african countries over the period 2005 2008 when global food prices increased dramatically the average level of self reported food insecurity was high but remarkably stable over time at about 54 however this average hides large heterogeneity both within countries and across countries in eight of the sample countries self reported food security improved while it worsened in the ten other countries our results suggest that heterogeneous effects in self reported food security are consistent with economic predictions as they are correlated with economic growth and net food consumption both at the household and country level specifically in the face of rising food prices self reported food security improved on average in rural households while it worsened in urban households a finding that holds when using global prices or domestic food prices improvements in food security over time were also positively correlated with net food exports and gdp per capita growth while the self reported indicator used in this paper requires further study and one should carefully interpret the results our findings suggest the need for a critical evaluation of the currently used data and numbers in the public debate on food prices and food insecurity

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

modelling the uncertainty in monthly international tourist arrivals to the maldives abstract the indian ocean tsunami of 26 december 2004 made clear the devastating short term impact in lost lives as well as the longer term impact in lost livelihoods and an uncertain future tourism was one of the more obvious non human casualties of this tragic natural phenomenon tourism is the principal industry in the maldives accounting for more than 30 of gdp and more than 60 of foreign exchange earnings as over 55 of government tax revenue arises from tourism related taxes and monthly government budget financing depends largely on international tourist arrivals the monitoring of daily weekly and monthly international tourist arrivals is essential for fiscal policy evaluation over 600 000 tourists visited the maldives in 2004 this paper examines the time series properties of monthly international tourist arrivals to the maldives from eight major tourist source countries namely italy germany uk japan france switzerland austria and the netherlands from 1 january 1994 to 31 december 2003 monthly international tourist arrivals and the associated uncertainty are estimated for the eight principal tourist source countries univariate and multivariate time series models of conditional volatility or uncertainty are estimated and tested the conditional correlations are estimated and examined to ascertain whether there is specialization diversification or segmentation in the international tourism demand shocks from the major tourism source countries to the maldives the estimated static conditional correlations for monthly international tourist arrivals as well as for the respective transformed series were found to be significantly different from zero but also relatively low this indicates that the government of the maldives and the major tour operators that organise tourist vacations have to emphasise their marketing efforts independently of each tourist source country

uk tourism arrivals and departures seasonality persistence and time trends issues such as seasonality persistence and trends are examined in the series referring to the number of uk arrivals and departures using techniques based on fractional integration this methodolog

tourism demand for italy and the business cycle this study provides a strategy for modelling the effect of the business cycle on tourism demand under the rationale that tourism cycles are heavily influenced by lagged effects of the overall business cycle using quarterly data on overnight stays in italian hotels both domestic and inbound between 1985 and 2004 we adopt a structural time series approach to evaluate two alternative models the first with a latent cycle component lcc and the second based on specific economic explanatory variables xcv the two models are compared in terms of explanatory power best fit residual diagnostics and forecasting ability the results show similar performances the policy implication is that the xcv model can be used for calibrating countercyclical interventions in tourism policy

combining volatility and smoothing forecasts of uk demand for international tourism abstract univariate volatility models are applied to uk tourism demand to the country s most popular international destinations volatility is a concept borrowed from finance the fact that significant volatility models are found for ten of the twelve destinations examined shows that the volatility concept has relevance to tourism demand volatility models are able to quantify the impacts of positive and negative shocks on tourism demand the impacts of negative shocks vary in magnitude and duration according to the destination involved and the nature of the shock the forecasting capability of these models has never been assessed in the tourism field they are shown to generate highly accurate forecasts but become optimal when combined with forecasts obtained from exponential smoothing models two methods of combining individual forecasts are considered bias in individual volatility and smoothing models and in combinations of them is examined

the complex dynamics of smallholder technology adoption the case of sri in madagascar this article explores the dynamics of smallholder technology adoption with particular reference to a high yielding low external input rice production method in madagascar we present a simple model of technology adoption by farm households in an environment of incomplete financial and land markets we then use a probit model and symmetrically censored least squares estimation of a dynamic tobit model to analyze the decisions to adopt expand and disadopt the method we find that seasonal liquidity constraints discourage adoption by poorer farmers learning effects both from extension agents and from other farmers exert significant influence over adoption decisions

a selectivity model of household food marketing behavior in sub saharan africa the agricultural household s discrete decision of whether to participate in coarse grain markets is separated here from the continuous decision of how much to sell or buy conditional on participation failure to participate in markets results from high fixed transactions costs a selectivity model endogenously switches households into alternative market participation states correcting for bias caused by the exclusion of unobservable variables affecting both discrete and continuous decisions improved market information increases the probability of participation by sellers while access to cereals processing technology increases quantities transacted by both sellers and buyers conditional on participation

modelling and forecasting daily international mass tourism to peru peru is a south american country that is divided into two parts by the andes mountains the rich historical cultural and geographic diversity has led to the inclusion of ten peruvian sites on unesco s world heritage list for the potentially negative impacts of mass tourism on the environment and hence on future international tourism demand to be managed appropriately require modelling growth rates and volatility adequately the paper models the growth rate and volatility or the variability in the growth rate in daily international tourist arrivals to peru from 1997 to 2007 the empirical results show that international tourist arrivals and their growth rates are stationary and that the estimated symmetric and asymmetric conditional volatility models all fit the data extremely well moreover the estimates resemble those arising from financial time series data with both short and long run persistence of shocks to the growth rate in international tourist arrivals

cereals market liberalization in mali abstract this paper analyzes the impact of the process of liberalization of cereal markets in mali most consumers including food deficient farmers and private grain traders have benefited from the liberalization efforts to tie the liberalization to a minimum support price for farmers failed because the state lacked the resources to guarantee the support price furthermore the ability of different types of farmers and traders to respond to opportunities created by the liberalization has varied widely depending on their access to productive resources improved technologies information and credit economy wide constraints such as the insecurity of contracts and liquidity constraints resulting from the failure of the government to pay salaries on time have further limited the impact of the liberalization

increasing returns and market efficiency in agricultural trade abstract using detailed trader surveys in benin madagascar and malawi this paper investigates the presence of increasing returns in agricultural trade after analyzing margins costs and value added we find little evidence of returns to scale motorized transport is found more cost effective for large loads on longer distances but transporters appear to pool quantities from multiple traders margin rates show little relationship with transaction size personal travel costs are a source of increasing returns but the effect is small consequently total marketing costs are nearly proportional to transaction size working and network capital are key determinants of value added constant returns to scale in all accumulable factors working capital labor and network capital cannot be rejected this implies that policies to restrict entry into agricultural trade are neither necessary nor useful governments should focus instead on technological and institutional innovations to upgrade agricultural markets

tourism demand and economic growth in spain new insights based on the yield curve abstract this study examines for the first time the dynamic relationship between tourism growth and expected macroeconomic conditions of the destination country using a dcc garch model the focus is on the spanish economy in which monthly tourist arrivals data from 1998 to 2017 were collected for five key origin countries and around the world to capture expected macroeconomic conditions the spanish term structure of interest rates is used the results suggest that the tourism expected economic growth relationship is time varying without any country specific differences in the behaviour of the correlations importantly positive correlations reportedly coincides with a regime shift in the spanish economy whereas negative correlations are evident when expected economic conditions are stable it is also shown that the aforementioned relationship is influenced by key geopolitical and economic events the 9 11 terrorist attacks global financial crisis and the ecb s quantitative easing programme finally policy implications derived from the main findings are discussed