specific experience household structure and intergenerational transfers farm family land and labor arrangements in developing countries data from indian rural household survey was used to test th hypothesis that the coexistence in traditional rural societies of extended intergenerational families infrequent land sales and high reliance on family members as farm laborers is the result of the economic advantages which accrue from the knowledge gained by farming a particular ploy of land over a long period of time the land specific experience of elderly members of a intergenerational household who farmed the land as a child and then as an adult are expecially critical in adverse weather years most previous investigators attributed the existence of multigenerational households the use of family members rather than hired laboreds and the infrequency of land sales to deficiencies in the market i e labor market imperfections and an absence of capital insurance and asset markets in the present investigations these same characteristics are viewed as having an economic advantages a model for estimating the contribution of the experience of the elderly household members to agricultural profits was developed and applied to data from a 3 year panel study of 2900 indian rural farm households the data was collected between 1968 71 by the national council of applied economic research the survey collected information on farm profits farm inputs demographic characteristics and the effects of weather conditions on profits a major limitation of the study was a lack of information on the duration of land ownership age of household members was substituted as a proxy for duration of ownership findings were consistent withe the hypothesis in poor agricultural years gross returns for households which contained an elderly household member were greater than the gross returns for comparable households which did not contain an elderly member the economic advantages of specific knowledge embodied in the experienced elderly farmer were comparable to the economic advantages which accrued to households whose members were more educated the hypothesis cannot fully explain the existence of intergenerational families since there is a relatively large proportion of such families among nonfarm families in many countries including india findings suggest that intergenerational families may provide for more occupational diversity and thereby reduce income risks the specific experience hypothesis has policy implications if technological changes are introduced the value of specific experience may be lost and the frequency of intergenerational households may decline the hypothesis may also explain why farmers are reluctant to agree to land redistribution and consolidation schemes this reluctance may disappear after sufficient technological change has occurred

evading the use tax on cross border sales abstract a use tax is similar to a sales tax except that it is imposed on purchases made from out of state firms historically the use tax has been widely evaded this paper uses a spatial model to analyze the welfare effects of such evasion the analysis shows that the ability of consumers to evade the use tax alters their behavior in a way that leads firms to charge lower prices this reduces the welfare loss created by the sellers market power and implies that evasion can increase welfare even when tax rates are adjusted to offset the effect of evasion on tax revenue

subsidy or market reform rethinking china s farm consolidation strategy chinese food security policy is anchored increasingly on the conviction that domestic grain production should be greatly enhanced and the best way to do so is to expand farm production scale to that end an increasing stream of public investment has been directed to the grain sector in the form for example of farm expansion subsidies our purpose is to assess the potential impacts of china s farm scale expansion on both yields and per hectare economic returns analysis of a large sample of farm household production data finds with some exceptions that grain yields likely will decline as farm size grows compromising food self sufficiency targets more importantly in only isolated cases would per hectare economic returns decline with size thus an emphasis on reducing farmland transactions costs may stimulate cropland consolidation and achieve the desired long term structural transformation

the subsidization of farming households in china s agriculture concerned about national food self sufficiency and rural household incomes in 2004 china decided to reverse its longstanding policy of taxing farm households and instead began to provide them with subsidies since 2004 annual announcements have trumpeted rises in subsidies despite the historic turnaround of policy and likely implication of this subsidy policy to china s food economy there has been little household level survey based research that has sought to understand the nature of china s subsidy programs from the viewpoint of the farmer using data from two sets of household based surveys covering tens of thousands of households and most major producing provinces and survey data from government in this paper we examine the subsidies that are directly given to farmers one of the newest and relatively high profiles components of china s subsidy programs we focus on china s grain input seed and machinery subsidy programs according to the survey based findings we show that although agricultural subsidies per farm are low on a per hectare basis the rate of subsidies is high almost all producers are receiving them subsidies are mostly being given to the land contractor not the tiller most of grain input and seed subsidies are non distorting but machinery subsidy is based on farmers actual purchase of machineries

the rapid rise of cross regional agricultural mechanization services in china although adam smith 1776 and alfred marshall 1920 emphasized the gains from specialization that arise from the division of labor their focus was on the manufacturing sector both saw farming as being on too small a scale and bereft of economies of scale with a market that was too small and local with too sharp a seasonality and too quick a succession of tasks to support either the development of a division of labor over the tasks of a cropping season or of mechanization smith and marshall s vision of farming and its implications for division of labor and mechanization was manifest again in the 1950s to the present in asia ruttan 2001 puts forward nearly the same ideas and terms as smith and marshall but for contemporary small rice farms in asia he emphasizes that the use of machines for the series of short tasks performed on tiny farms would imply costly investment in specialized machines that small farmers would be loath to make and even if these farmers mechanized ruttan posited that it would not induce a segmented and specialized farm labor market as again the critical mass of demand for each segment would not be present otsuka 2012 goes further along these lines to note that only on larger farms would the mechanization investment

changes in trade and domestic distortions affecting china s agriculture this paper assesses the implications of china s trade and domestic policies for incentives to producers in china it uses a price comparison methodology nominal rates of assistance at the border and the farmgate with adjustments for exchange rate distortions in the first part of the sample period 1981 1994 on average distortions to agricultural incentives have been reduced in the early 1980s on average china s domestic prices were far below international prices there were substantial variations however between imported which were being protected and exported goods during the 1980s and 1990s the gap between domestic and international prices for both imports and exports narrowed initially mainly due to the elimination of domestic policy distortions between the mid 1990s and 2004 trade liberalization policy furthered narrowed the gap between world and china farmgate prices by the mid 2000s china s agriculture was operating with only small price distortions

is small beautiful farm size productivity and poverty in asian agriculture the debate on the relationship between farm size and productivity has gone through a complete circle in the 1960s it was perceived that small farms were efficient because they can fully use their resources particularly family labor and they can monitor their production activities closely but in the 1970s and 1980s as many asian countries rapidly moved towards industrialization and urbanization small farms were considered a major obstacle in this process

food security policy options for china lessons from other countries the authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the world bank and australia s rural industries research and development corporation

an empirical analysis of patents flows and r d flows around the world in this article we empirically investigate the effect of research and development r d flows on patent flows around the world we do this using an unbalanced panel consisting primarily of organization for economic co operation and development oecd countries that have both patent and r d expenditure information broken down by domestic and foreign sources our analysis shows that even among a fairly homogeneous group of countries the sources of patents and r d differ substantially using a dynamic panel framework we find that domestic r d per capita increases domestic patents per capita only for the european patent convention epc countries that already have a decentralized approach to innovation foreign r d per capita increases foreign patents per capita in all countries even though foreign r d constitutes a very small fraction of total r d we find that some of these differences can be attributed to the locations of the patent applications including those to the european patent office epo unit

inverse productivity land quality labor markets and measurement error abstract this paper examines the role that land quality and imperfect markets play in generating the inverse productivity relationship in the international crop research institute for the semi arid tropics icrisat data differences in land quality largely explain the inverse productivity ip relationship in the random effects profit regression but not in labor demand regressions controlling for labor and land market failures and differences in soil quality eliminates the ip relationship for male labor but not female labor in the random effects estimates the inverse relationship is much stronger in fixed effects than random effects estimates suggesting that the farm size variable may be subject to measurement error a view supported by the results of instrumental variables estimation

access to capital and agrarian production organisation there are two problems both universal that entrepreneurs in any economy must contend with firstly an agent generally has access only to a limited amount of working capital secondly workers hired by an agent are subject to moral hazard and this necessitates their supervision this paper models for an agrarian economy the constraints imposed on entrepreneurs activities by these two problems and endogenously determines the various organisational forms of production as well as the allocation of resources that will obtain with a simple model we endeavour to explain a diverse set of empirical observations pertaining to the less developed countries in terms of the general processes that determine the distribution of income among the various agents and the hierarchical relationships that develop among them agricultural production typically involves a period of several months between the time the inputs are purchased and the time the output is marketed access to working capital and hence to the credit market thus plays an important role in a farmer s production decisions the distribution of access to credit in turn tends to be an important determinant of income distribution in poor agrarian economies credit is invariably rationed according to the ability to offer collateral the amount of working capital a farmer can mobilise therefore depends on the amount of land he owns which is often a good proxy for his overall wealth and thus his ability to offer collateral further since hired hands have a propensity to shirk they need to be supervised and therefore the

environmental policy stringency and technological innovation evidence from survey data and patent counts this article uses patent data to examine the impact of public environmental policy on innovations in environment related technology the analysis is conducted using data on an unbalanced panel of 77 countries between 2001 and 2007 drawing upon data obtained from the european patent office epo world patent statistical patstat database and the world economic forum s wef executive opinion survey the results support our hypotheses concerning the positive role of both general innovative capacity and environmental policy stringency on environment related innovation a subsequent two stage model assesses the factors which drive innovation in general and uses the fitted values to estimate environmental innovation while the analysis is conducted on a smaller sample they confirm the findings of the reduced form model

can unobserved heterogeneity in farmer ability explain the inverse relationship between farm size and productivity abstract the well known inverse relationship between farm size and productivity is usually explained in terms of diminishing returns with respect to land and other inputs coupled with various types of market frictions that prevent the efficient allocation of land across farms we show that even in the absence of diminishing returns one can provide an alternative explanation for this phenomenon using endogenous occupational choice and heterogeneity with respect to farming skills

does supervision matter some hypothesis tests using indian farm level data abstract a model is developed and estimated to test for heterogeneity of family and hired labor in agricultural production and to estimate the impact of employer supervision on the productivity of hired labor plot level data are used from a rice growing village in semi arid tropical india the hypothesis that family and hired labor are homogeneous inputs was rejected results indicate that family member supervision is required to increase hired labor productivity output loss attributable to operating at reduced supervision intensity was greater than 10 on over 40 of the plots

on pareto improving commodity tax changes under fiscal competition this paper shows that when a noncooperative fiscal equilibrium of the mintz tulkens 1986 model of tax competition is inefficient pareto improving changes are positive for the taxes of both regions under concavity of the regions welfare functions it also identifies a class of such equilibria that are always efficient

asymmetric tax competition abstract the paper analyzes nash equilibrium when two jurisdictions set tax rates on a tax base which is mobile between them population differences imply tax differences the smaller jurisdiction levies a lower tax rate in equilibrium and its residents are better off than those in the larger jurisdiction the nash equilibrium is inefficient if the two jurisdictions merged the resulting allocation would be efficient however if differences in population are great enough residents of the small jurisdiction would be made worse off by such a merger

rural reforms and agricultural growth in china this paper employs province level panel data to assess the contributions of decollectivization price adjustments and other reforms to china s agricultural growth in the reform period decollectivization is found to improve total factor productivity and to account for about half of the output growth during 1978 84 the adjustment in state procurement prices also contributed positively to output growth its impact came mainly from the responses in input use the effect of other market related reforms on productivity and output growth was very small reasons for slowdown in agricultural growth after 1984 are also analyzed copyright 1992 by american economic association

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

commodity tax competition between member states of a federation equilibrium and efficiency we first describe regional market equilibria whereupon consumers of each region allocate their purchases of private goods between domestic and nondomestic ones according to the structure of relative prices taxes and transportation costs next regional optimal tax levels and public good quantities are derived the tax of the other region being held constant fiscal competition arises from the ability of one region in choosing its tax to alter the tax base of the other

poverty population and environmental degradation in china this paper studies the relationship among population poverty and the environmental factors and the impact they have had on china s land water forests and pastures it does so by examining the extent of environmental degradation and china s success in controlling its environmental problems is reviewed by investigating how the leadership has tried to develop a legal framework and series of institutions to carry out environmental policy and by providing empirical evidence demonstrating the determinants of the successes that china has achieved in surmounting or slowing some of its environmental problems five of china s rural resource concerns are surveyed in this paper water pollution deforestation destruction of the grasslands soil erosion and salinization the paper finds that government policy has not been effective in controlling rural resource degradation primarily because it has limited fiscal resources and poorly trained personnel and under these constraints the government has delegated responsibility for environmental and resource protection to the ministries of agriculture and forestry two institutions that have an incentive to favor pro production policies instead china s efforts to alleviate policy integrate markets and control population appear to have helped mitigate a number of adverse environmental consequences of china s development effort of the last 40 years

crossing the border does commodity tax evasion reduce welfare and can enforcement improve it this paper compares discrete equilibria in which consumers do and do not evade commodity taxes by making cross border purchases when the government faces a revenue requirement the comparison shows that border crossing reduces welfare if resources wasted by evasion exceed the benefit of consumption changes where these changes reflect lower prices across the border and induced changes in domestic tax rates enforcement reduces welfare if administrative and uncertainty costs outweigh the benefits of consumption changes and the reduction in resource costs the analysis shows that the welfare effect of evasion depends on how well designed the tax system is and how effective enforcement resources are in deterring border crossing

interstate commodity tax differentials and the distribution of residents abstract this paper considers the manner in which an unequal distribution of consumers affects the commodity tax policies of neighboring jurisdictions the paper uses a spatial model in which the residents of two states are distributed non uniformly and employs a variety of assumptions about the behavior of governments and firms throughout the paper shows that at a nash equilibrium in tax levels the sparsely populated state imposes a lower tax than does its densely populated neighbor the paper also demonstrates how equilibrium state taxes differ depending on whether firms employ marginal cost or profit maximizing pricing

a penny for your quotes patent citations and the value of innovations the use ofpatents in economic research has been seriously hindered by the fact that patents vary enormously in their importance or value and hence simple patent counts cannot be informative about innovative output the purpose of this article is to put forward patent counts weighted by citations as indicators of the value of innovations thereby overcoming the limitations of simple counts the empirical analysis of a particular innovation computed tomography scanners indeed shows a close association between citation based patent indices and independent measures of the social value of innovations in that field moreover the weighting scheme appears to be nonlinear increasing in the number of citations implying that the informational content of citations rises at the margin as in previous studies simple patent counts are found to be highly correlated with contemporaneous rd however here the association is within afield over time rather than cross sectional

estimates of the value of patent rights in european countries during the post 1950 period this paper examines the distribution of the values of patent rights in the united kingdom france and germany during the post 1950 period these values are inferred from the behavior of patentees with respect to payment of renewal fees on their patents a simple economic model of renewal decisions is combined with data on the proportion of patents renewed at alternative ages and the renewal fee schedules to produce estimates of the distribution and the total value of patent rights in these countries moreover the data indicate that there have been changes in the value distribution and we follow these changes over the period the empirical results of particular interest concern the total value of patent rights and the relationship between changes in it and changes in the quantity of patents the skew in the distribution of patent values and the rate of obsolescence on the returns to patents

impacts of migration on household production choices evidence from china abstractthe great migration from chinese farms to cities during the past several decades ranks among the most economically consequential of modern population movements we use a national sample of rice producing chinese households to examine the effects of that migration on agricultural production our assessment involves evaluating four alternative theories of labour market equilibrium in the framework of an expanded agricultural household model migration s farm production impacts appear to be slight not on account of farm labour market perfections or remittance financed technological improvements but by substituting a reduction in leisure and other low return activities for lost labour

the spatial incidence of local retail taxation this paper examines the effects of local retail taxation in two simple models of spatial competition suppose that a suburb or central city imposes an excise tax or subsidy on a particular commodity such as gasoline liquor restaurant meals or groceries or imposes a general sales tax that affects many commodities simultaneously to what extent does this lead to higher prices within the jurisdiction and in neighboring jurisdictions section ii presents the basic model of spatial competition that forms a component of the fixed locations model of section iii and the entry model of section iv infinitely many stores are located along an infinite line and demand density is completely inelastic and uniform along the line the main endogenous variables of interest are the prices charged by the different stores throughout the paper a nash equilibrium in prices is assumed section iii presents the fixed locations model in which the tax is imposed after stores have already established themselves store locations are fixed due to location specific sunk costs if a suburb containing a single store imposes an excise tax on a commodity the store that is taxed and its first second and third nearest neighbors on each side increase their prices by 57 7 percent 15 5 percent 4 2 percent and 1 1 percent of the tax respectively this result is independent of the spacing of the stores and independent of whether or not they are evenly spaced if a suburb containing several stores imposes an excise tax the changes in price follow directly by adding the effects of taxes on several adjacent stores if a central city taxes all stores on the right half line the results are given by 12 the taxed and untaxed stores closest to the boundary

testing patent value indicators on directly observed patent value an empirical analysis of ocean tomo patent auctions the valuation of patents is an important albeit challenging task extant research to identify patent value indicators has so far relied on expert estimates of patent value exploited patent renewal data or depended on more indirect measures of patent value recently specialized market places for patent transactions have emerged that allow us for the first time to directly observe patent s private value one of the most prominent market places for patents is ocean tomo a platform that offers periodical patent auctions we make use of this auction data to empirically test predictions on patent value identifiers on real world auction prices we find empirical support for forward citations and the patent s family size however both indicators explain only a small variance in patent value in contrast our full model explains a large share of variance making us optimistic that with increased directly observed patent value such models can be useful tools in patent valuation

an optimal taxation approach to fiscal federalism in a federal system of government each unit of government decides independently how much of each type of public good to provide and what types of taxes and which tax rates to use in funding the public goods in this paper we explore what types of problems can arise from this decentralized form of decision making in particular we describe systematically the types of externalities that one unit of government can create for nonresidents through both its public goods decisions and its taxation decisions the paper also explores briefly what the central government might do to lessen the costs of decentralized decision making

the value of u s patents by owner and patent characteristics abstract this paper uses renewal data to estimate the value of u s patents controlling for patent and owner characteristics estimates of u s patent value are substantially larger than estimates for european patents however the ratio of u s patent value to r d for firms is only about 3 contrary to a common assertion patents issued to small patentees are much less valuable than those issued to large corporations litigated patents are more valuable as are highly cited patents however patent citations explain little variance in value suggesting limits to their use as a measure of patent quality

food insecurity income inequality and the changing comparative advantage in world agriculture i would like to argue in this article that in the process of economic development in land poor countries in asia agriculture faces three distinctly different problems food insecurity sectoral income inequality and the declining food self sufficiency associated with the declining comparative advantage in agriculture at the high income stage massive imports of food grains to asia if they occur will aggravate the world food shortage which will have significant implications for the poverty incidence in the world i argue that in order to avoid such a tragedy asia should expand farm size to reduce labor cost by adopting large scale mechanization sub saharan africa should realize a green revolution in grain production and latin america should further expand its grain production capacity

testing household specific explanations for the inverse productivity relationship the inverse relationship between land productivity and farm size is an old and puzzling empirical regularity most explanations for this relationship rely on market imperfections that jointly determine the farm size and the household s shadow price of some productive inputs we use plot level data from the icrisat vls to assess whether these household specific theories can explain the puzzle the data exhibit plots of different sizes being simultaneously cropped by the same household the inverse relationship is shown to hold true with the same magnitude across the plots of each household thus cross household heterogeneity does not suffice to explain the puzzle

welfare effects of commodity tax harmonisation abstract the european commission is currently seeking a rapid accelaration of the process of commodity tax harmonisation within the european community substantial changes in domestic tax structures are envisaged yet the welfare theoretic basis of the policy has remained obscure this note goes some way towards suggesting a welfare argument for harmonisation as a collective response to tax induced trade distortions intentional or otherwise it is shown that a programme of multilateral domestic tax reform involving convergence towards an appropriately weighted average of pre existing tax structures a kind of harmonisation is potentially pareto improving

jeux sans frontieres tax competition and tax coordination when countries differ in size closer international integration is putting increasing pressure on existing national tax structures this paper uses a simple two country model to address a range of consequent policy concerns focusing particularly on the role of country size differences in size exacerbate the inefficiency from noncooperative behavior harming both countries the smaller country loses from harmonization to any tax rate between those set in the noncooperative equilibrium but both countries gain from the imposition of a minimum tax anywhere in that range the fully optimal response to freer cross border trade however may be to do nothing jel h20 h77

on hotelling s competition with non uniform customer distributions abstract hotelling s competition in a two stage location price game is examined with increasing densities of consumers towards the centre it is shown that there is a range of rather even distributions for which firms locate at opposite ends of the market as the distribution becomes more concentrated duopolists will tend to move inside the market

new perspectives on farm size and productivity abstract the farm size and productivity debate has been limited by the focus on land or labor productivity generally showing respective productivity advantages to smaller or larger sized farms our purpose is to provide new perspectives on the debate by bringing together evidence from a set of novel case studies in both rich and poor countries common to them are the adoption of total factor productivity tfp as the comparative performance measure and the reliance on panels of farm micro data the present article presents a synthesis of findings from five case studies in i malawi tanzania and uganda ii bangladesh iii brazil iv australia and v the united states the preponderance of evidence from these studies suggests that there is no single economically optimal agrarian structure rather it appears to evolve with the stage of economic development certain farm sizes face relative productivity advantages such as small farms in africa but with economic and market growth that smallholder advantage will likely attenuate moving toward constant and eventually increasing returns to size yet importantly small farms may be quite dynamic and need not be a drag on agricultural growth until perhaps well into the development process

can patent family size and composition signal patent value abstractrecent research has proposed a method of patent valuation based on weighting patent family size by the market size of the countries in the family the premise is that inventors tend to seek

patent quality and research productivity measuring innovation with multiple indicators we analyse the determinants of the decline in research productivity using panel data on manufacturing firms in the us for the period 1980 93 we focus on three factors the level of demand the quality of patents and technological exhaustion we develop an index of patent quality using detailed patent information and show that using multiple indicators substantially reduces the measured variance in quality research productivity at the firm level is inversely related to patent quality and the level of demand as predicted by theory and patent quality is positively associated with the stock market value of firms

spatial competition between jurisdictions which tax perfectly competitive retail or production centers abstract this paper examines the taxes that jurisdictions choose to impose on perfectly competitive retail centers or production centers within their boundaries retail centers are located on a line and jurisdictions are segments of the line a jurisdiction maximizes the sum of tax revenues and residents consumer surplus the tax chosen by a jurisdiction is a function of the spacing between retail centers the locations of interjurisdictional boundaries and the taxes imposed by neighboring jurisdictions an exporting jurisdiction chooses a positive tax an importing jurisdiction chooses a zero tax even if neighboring jurisdictions have taxes or subsidies if all jurisdictions with retail centers use endogenous fiscal policy then each imposes a positive or zero tax

can unobserved land quality explain the inverse productivity relationship abstract an inverse relationship between both farm productivity and labor intensity and farm size is a common empirical finding in developing country agriculture the traditional explanation has been imperfect labor markets recently it has been suggested instead that the inverse relationship is a statistical artifact resulting from omitted land quality using a farm level data set from java i investigate whether omitted variable bias can explain the inverse relationship i show that the inverse relationship and accompanying wage responses are inconsistent with a model of neoclassical farm behavior that ignores omitted variable bias instrumental variables techniques yield parameter estimates in which the inverse relationship is eliminated and the estimated wage elasticities are more in line with economic theory further econometric investigation hints that a model of omitted land quality may be a possible source of the inverse relationship these results emphasize the importance of considering the sources of cross sectional variation in estimating microeconomic relationships