the expansion of modern agriculture and global biodiversity decline an integrated assessment the world is banking on a major increase in food production if the dietary needs and food preferences of an increasing and increasingly rich population are to be met this requires the further expansion of modern agriculture but modern agriculture rests on a small number of highly productive crops and its expansion has led to a significant loss of global biodiversity ecologists have shown that biodiversity loss results in lower plant productivity while agricultural economists have linked biodiversity loss on farms with increasing variability of crop yields and sometimes lower mean yields in this paper we consider the macro economic consequences of the continued expansion of particular forms of intensive modern agriculture with a focus on how the loss of biodiversity affects food production we employ a quantitative structurally estimated model of the global economy which jointly determines economic growth population and food demand agricultural innovations and land conversion we show that even small effects of agricultural expansion on productivity via biodiversity loss might be sufficient to warrant a moratorium on further land conversion

the future of food demand understanding differences in global economic models understanding the capacity of agricultural systems to feed the world population under climate change requires projecting future food demand this article reviews demand modeling approaches from 10 global economic models participating in the agricultural model intercomparison and improvement project agmip we compare food demand projections in 2050 for various regions and agricultural products under harmonized scenarios of socioeconomic development climate change and bioenergy expansion in the reference scenario ssp2 food demand increases by 59 98 between 2005 and 2050 slightly higher than the most recent fao projection of 54 from 2005 2007 the range of results is large in particular for animal calories between 61 and 144 caused by differences in demand systems specifications and in income and price elasticities the results are more sensitive to socioeconomic assumptions than to climate change or bioenergy scenarios when considering a world with higher population and lower economic growth ssp3 consumption per capita drops on average by 9 for crops and 18 for livestock the maximum effect of climate change on calorie availability is 6 at the global level and the effect of biofuel production on calorie availability is even smaller

trade in technology a potential solution to the food security challenges of the 21st century abstract the recent rise in caloric undernutrition in sub saharan africa ssa demonstrates the continued relevance of the malthusian footrace between food availability and population sluggish growth in farm productivity in ssa has brought to the fore the key role of agricultural technology in alleviating future food insecurity we develop a model of technology food security and international trade with three distinct channels for technology reduce food insecurity in ssa the first is via greater domestic r d investment an alternative is to import technologies from other countries with significant knowledge capital the third role for technology to resolve the malthusian dilemma in ssa is that of virtual technology trade i e importing technological investments undertaken elsewhere through cheaper imported food to assess the relative contribution of each channel to food security in africa we employ a partial equilibrium quantitative trade model augmented by a temporal relationship between r d investments knowledge capital and agricultural productivity over the historical period 1991 2011 we find that direct r d investments in ssa have been the dominant vehicle for lowering food prices in africa looking forward to 2050 we find that virtual technology trade will be the most important vehicle for reducing non farm undernutrition in africa

post reform forestland markets in china land markets developed rapidly in china after agricultural land tenure reforms but not after forest reforms we surveyed farmers in three provinces to examine the post reform forestland markets and options to strengthen them using household choice experiments we estimate land market demand and supply under alternative contractual arrangements our findings are consistent with the currently thin markets but also suggest that alternative institutional and contractual conditions could support broader participation in land markets strengthening property rights on forestland emerges as an especially effective possible policy instrument we illustrate its predicted effects on equilibrium rental rates and market participation

land use change with spatially explicit data a dynamic approach most of the economic literature that uses spatially explicit data to estimate the determinants of land use change is limited to static models and cross sectional data sets recent attempts to move to a more dynamic analysis include using panel data sets and survival analysis in this study we use a discrete choice dynamic model of land use where the agent s choices are regarded as the solution to a dynamic optimization problem the irreversibility of some decisions expectations about future prices and forward looking behavior of the land operator can all be accounted for our results show that a model specification that incorporates some of the complexities of the decision process improves upon results found in the existing literature first prediction accuracy of land use change is superior to any of the existing models second we demonstrate that models that do not account for transactions costs tend to overestimate the effects of changes in transportation costs

introducing detailed land based mitigation measures into a computable general equilibrium model abstract we propose a new climate change mitigation assessment method focusing on agriculture forestry and land use change sectors by coupling the computable general equilibrium cge model with a bottom up type technology model the cge model covers the entire economic market but includes a rough description of mitigation measures whereas the bottom up type technology model takes into account abatement cost and mitigation effects of individual mitigation measures but only focuses on a few sectors the coupled framework enables us to connect relevant conditions and to complement the shortcomings of each model as a test we applied our method to indonesia which has set a national greenhouse gas emissions reduction target for 2020 a large proportion of indonesia s greenhouse gas emissions are from the land use sector we assessed the differences in modeling behaviors between the cge models with and without coupling the bottom up type model the two primary findings were 1 consumption loss estimated by the coupled cge 1 2 was larger than the loss estimated by the uncoupled model 0 5 because the emission reduction estimated by the bottom up model was less than the standalone cge s estimate and 2 consumption loss caused by achieving the reduction target by 2020 in indonesia strongly depends on the assumption of mitigation costs and available land area for the emission reduction measures

china s uneven progress against poverty while the incidence of extreme poverty in china fell dramatically over 1980 2001 progress was uneven over time and across provinces rural areas accounted for the bulk of the gains to the poor though migration to urban areas helped the pattern of growth mattered rural economic growth was far more important to national poverty reduction than urban economic growth agriculture played a far more important role than the secondary or tertiary sources of gross domestic product gdp rising inequality within the rural sector greatly slowed poverty reduction provinces starting with relatively high inequality saw slower progress against poverty due both to lower growth and a lower growth elasticity of poverty reduction taxation of farmers and inflation hurt the poor external trade had little short term impact

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

effects of agricultural market policy on crop production in china this paper investigates the effects of chinese market policy on crop production in the reform process after a brief review of the policy changes due to the reform the theoretical significance of chinese market policies for crop production is demonstrated diagrammatically it is shown that under the current market system the production of main crops is significantly influenced by both market and quota prices while relatively high quota reduces the influence of market prices on production relative price changes between competing crops will lead to shifting farmers cultivation preferences if inputs are constant empirical analysis based on cross section data for the period 1985 1997 from the province of zhejiang confirms these hypotheses the effects of policy variables however prove to be crop specific if the potential of crop production in china is to be better used an even more market oriented agricultural policy is required

the household responsibility system reform in china a peasant s institutional choice since 1978 the chinese government has implemented a series of major reforms including diversification of the rural economy production specialization crop selection in accordance with regional comparative advantage expansion of free markets and a marked rise in state procurement prices these reforms have brought about dramatic changes in china s rural areas however the most important change was the emergence and eventual prevalence of the household responsibility system hrs which restores the individual household and replaces the production team system as the unit of production and accounting in rural areas after the chaos of the cultural revolution china s moderate leaders started to reconsider china s rural policies although the government admitted that solving the labor management problems within production teams was the key to improving productivity and recommended measures to relate rewards to performance more closely the hrs was considered the reverse of the socialist principle of collective farming and was prohibited editorial board of china agriculture yearbook 1980 p 58 the official position at that time maintained that the production team was to remain the basic unit of production and accounting nevertheless toward the end of 1978 first secretly and later with the blessing of local authorities a small number of production teams in anhui province which was frequently victimized by flood and drought began to experiment with contracting land other resources and output quotas to individual households

geography matters international trade patterns and the indirect land use effects of biofuels this article investigates the relationship between international trade patterns and the global distribution of coarse grain production responses to market developments in the united states our null hypothesis is that world markets are fully integrated rendering the geographic persistence of bilateral trade flows irrelevant in the global production response to a change in us prices the alternative hypothesis allows price transmission to vary along with the intensity of competition among countries in specific markets using data from 1975 to 2002 we reject the null hypothesis our work has direct implications for the analysis of the global land use impacts of biofuel mandates

conservation payments under risk a stochastic dominance approach conservation payments can be used to preserve forest and agroforest systems to explain landowners land use decisions and determine appropriate conservation payments it is necessary to focus on revenue risk marginal conditional stochastic dominance rules are used to derive conditions for determining the conservation payments required to guarantee that the environmentally preferred land use dominates an empirical application to shaded coffee protection in the biologically important choco region of west ecuador shows that conservation payments required for preserving shaded coffee areas are much higher than those calculated under risk neutral assumptions further the extant distribution of land has strong impacts on the required payments

the impact of china s economic reforms on agricultural productivity growth this paper presents a method for assessing the relative importance of price increases and strengthened individual incentives due to the introduction of the responsibility system for the post 1978 increase in china s agricultural productivity data on post 1978 chinese agricultural performance suggest that a little over three quarters of the measured productivity increase is due to payment system changes and the remainder to price increases we also use our method to calculate incentive indices giving an estimate of the fraction of their marginal product that peasants received under the pre 1978 regime

property rights and deforestation in the brazilian amazon this paper focuses on the impact of property rights insecurity on deforestation in the brazilian legal amazon deforestation is considered as a risk management strategy property rights insecurity reduces the present value of forests and fosters forest conversion into agricultural and pasture lands moreover deforestation is the consequence of strategic interactions between landowners and squatters landowners clear the forest preventively in order to assert the productive use of land and to reduce the expropriation risk squatters invade land plots clear the forest and may afterwards gain official recognition with formal property titles a particular attention is paid to the measure of land property rights insecurity in the brazilian context it is assumed that property rights insecurity has a multidimensional character taken into account by the number of homicides related to land conflicts and expropriation procedures principal component analysis allows synthesising such information an econometric model of deforestation is estimated on a panel dataset on the 1988 2000 period and the nine states of the brazilian legal amazon the hypothesis that insecure land property rights contribute to higher rates of deforestation is not rejected when the simultaneity bias between insecure property rights and deforestation is addressed this result questions the modality of the brazilian land reform that considers forested areas as unproductive and thus open for expropriation procedures

the household responsibility system reform and the adoption of hybrid rice in china abstract this paper studies the diffusion of hybrid rice before and after the recent institutional change from the collective team system to the household based farming system in rural china a simple model which treats the adoption of hybrid rice as a portfolio selection problem is presented the model is tested against time series cross county data collected from hunan province in south china the empirical evidence suggests that 1 adoption behavior in the collective system was not consistent with the predictions of the theoretical model this evidence indicates the existence of administrative intervention in influencing production decisions in the collective system 2 there was a significant change in the structure of the adoption function following the transition from the collective system to the household based system and 3 adoption behavior in the household system is consistent with the predictions of the theoretical model

irrigation agricultural performance and poverty reduction in china the overall goal of our paper is to understand the impact that irrigation in china has had on grain production and incomes in general and income and poverty alleviation in poor areas in particular the paper seeks to meet three objectives first we describe the relationship among irrigation status yields and household crop revenue second we seek to understand the magnitude and nature of the effect that irrigation has on yields and crop revenue finally we seek to understand the impact that irrigation has on incomes in poor areas our analysis shows that irrigation contributes to increases in yields for almost all crops and in income for farmers in all areas the importance of crop income in poor areas and the strong relationship between crop revenue and irrigation provides evidence of the importance of irrigation in past and future poverty alleviation in china we also show that in the majority of the villages that invested in new irrigation returns are positive even after accounting for increases in capital and production costs 2005 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

the interaction of population growth and environmental quality an important question for policy is whether holding constant per capita income and other relevant factors population pressures have a significant effect upon environmental degradation the authors examine the effect of population pressures upon deforestation in 64 developing countries in an attempt to provide relevant empirical findings data on deforestation were drawn from the food and agriculture organizations production yearbook results suggest that a relationship exists between per capita income and deforestation and that for africa rural population density shifts the relationship upward the increase in the rate of deforestation levels off as income increases the rate of growth in per capita income also has a significant negative impact upon deforestation although the magnitude of the effect is small the authors close in stressing that reducing the rate of population growth is not necessarily the best way to reduce the rate of deforestation deforestation in developing countries is really a problem of market failure since property rights are often neither defined nor enforced there is essentially no private cost of deforestation with no long term stake in the land people have no incentive to use land efficiently this situation must be addressed in conjunction with the problems of poverty and population growth

links between rural poverty and the environment in developing countries asset categories and investment poverty abstract this paper presents a framework for analyzing the links between poverty and the environment in rural areas of developing countries it introduces the concept of investment poverty and relates it to other measures of poverty in analysis of these links the notion of poverty is examined in the context of categories of assets and categories of environment change with particular focus on farm household income generation and investment strategies as determinants of the links the strength and direction of the poverty environment links are shown to differ even invert depending on the composition of the assets held by the rural poor and the types of environmental problems they face policy strategies need to focus on conditioning variables that affect market development community wealth infrastructure household asset distribution and the affordability and appropriateness of natural resource conservation technologies

marketing reforms market development and agricultural production in china abstract chinese agricultural reforms have consisted of two transitional stages initially decollectivization in the late 1970s followed by market liberalization in the mid 1980s while much research has been conducted on the initial stage of increasing the incentives for farmers in collective cultivation little quantitative evidence exists on how marketing reforms and the development of rural markets has affected agricultural production decisions using more accurate and disaggregated measures of the reform and market development components of liberalization than previous research this study examined the effects of these liberalization policies on the agricultural production decisions in shaanxi province procurement quota levels were found to be positively associated with the area planted to grain crops thus quotas represent an effective way of increasing grain production and thereby also a means of achieving food self sufficiency which remains an important policy objective for the chinese government the involvement of state grain stations in free market grain trade and the expansion of rural markets has increased the area planted to the two potential cash crops soybeans and wheat and reduced the sown area of the subsistence crop corn reflecting the reduced need to plant corn as a self insurance mechanism for smoothing consumption an increase in procurement quotas increases fertilizer use on grain crops due to the policy of linking quotas to access to below market priced fertilizer but decreases the use of labor which shifts to other more profitable enterprises market development has increased these off farm employment opportunities and the earnings associated with them thereby promoting the shift of labor out of crop production and increased the use of fertilizer which has also become more available

why do global long term scenarios for agriculture differ an overview of the agmip global economic model intercomparison recent studies assessing plausible futures for agricultural markets and global food security have had contradictory outcomes to advance our understanding of the sources of the differences 10 global economic models that produce long term scenarios were asked to compare a reference scenario with alternate socioeconomic climate change and bioenergy scenarios using a common set of key drivers several key conclusions emerge from this exercise first for a comparison of scenario results to be meaningful a careful analysis of the interpretation of the relevant model variables is essential for instance the use of real world commodity prices differs widely across models and comparing the prices without accounting for their different meanings can lead to misleading results second results suggest that once some key assumptions are harmonized the variability in general trends across models declines but remains important for example given the common assumptions of the reference scenario models show average annual rates of changes of real global producer prices for agricultural products on average ranging between 0 4 and 0 7 between the 2005 base year and 2050 this compares to an average decline of real agricultural prices of 4 p a between the 1960s and the 2000s several other common trends are shown for example relating to key global growth areas for agricultural production and consumption third differences in basic model parameters such as income and price elasticities sometimes hidden in the way market behavior is modeled result in significant differences in the details fourth the analysis shows that agro economic modelers aiming to inform the agricultural and development policy debate require better data and analysis on both economic behavior and biophysical drivers more interdisciplinary modeling efforts are required to cross fertilize analyses at different scales

growth in china s grain production 1978 1997 a disaggregate analysis abstract this paper analyzes china s grain production during 1978 97 using disaggregate approach to explore disparities in growth patterns of respective crops the study reveals that during this period almost all the increased output can be attributed to the growth of rice wheat and corn the contribution of other crops as a whole was almost negligible the disparities in growth patterns were partly the result of crop adjustments induced by changes in food demand and dominated by substitutions of high yield crops for low yield crops in this process the adoption of new technologies played an important role varying opportunity costs of grain production in different areas also affected growth patterns of respective crops the trend in china s grain production in the past two decades suggests that the adherence to grain self sufficiency has become not only increasingly costly but also unnecessary

determinants of deforestation and the economics of protection an application to mexico we estimate the probability of deforestation at the plot level for chiapas and oaxaca two poor mexican states with high levels of biodiversity results highlight the importance of physio geographic endowments as well as policy variables and allow to test explicitly for aggregation bias they also suggest that if combined with information on the biodiversity value of specific plots such models could be of great relevance for policy by allowing to identify the ex ante risk of deforestation copyright 2002 oxford university press

contrasting approaches to projecting long run global food security the provision of food has been a central preoccupation of policy makers throughout history today we are witnessing a period of food security pessimism triggered by increases in food prices and their higher volatility that began in 2008 however previous episodes of food pessimism were ended by the industrial and green revolutions and policy makers legitimately ask whether human ingenuity and technical advances will address today s worries without the need for their intervention here we explore some of the ways natural and social scientists have attempted to explore the supply and demand for food in the future to help policy makers understand the challenges ahead we are particularly struck that different communities have approached this problem in different ways that seldom reference each other we describe two broad approaches statistical extrapolation and economic simulation models of the food system that incorporate market mechanisms we compare the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches and make some tentative suggestions about how they can together address important policy priorities

poverty policies and deforestation the case of mexico this study examines the determinants and policy implications of deforestation in mexico and includes a brief review of the relevant empirical literature and a description of the theoretical model land use patterns and socioeconomic and physiogeographic factors are determinants data were obtained from digital maps of land use and soils and the 1990 population and 1991 agricultural censuses a simple 2 period equation formalizes the relationship between deforestation and poverty government policies and local land tenure in period 1 representative producers in municipalities have 4 options in allocating labor time wage generation agricultural production deforestation on land without clear property rights and investment in technology during period 2 the options are to farm on available land and deforested areas or work in the wage sector findings reveal that 1 communal land tenure ownership by the ejido did not increase deforestation 2 pricing that favors maize production which is very land intensive increased deforestation and technical assistance reduced deforestation and 3 poverty was related to higher rates of deforestation prices were the most important immediate factor in unsustainable resource use but other factors had an impact the government policy mix did not support sustainable development reduced subsidies would benefit the environment the government should provide safety nets to increase the level of rural investment and reduce poverty and should improve land productivity with technical inputs trade liberalization and elimination of subsidies should be sensitive to the poors need for real wages

the ecological footprint of poverty alleviation evidence from mexico s oportunidades program abstract we study the consequences of poverty alleviation programs for environmental degradation we exploit the community level eligibility discontinuity for a conditional cash transfer program in mexico to identify the impacts of income increases on deforestation and use the program s initial randomized rollout to explore household responses we find that additional income raises consumption of land intensive goods and increases deforestation the observed production response and deforestation increase are larger in communities with poor road infrastructure this suggests that better access to markets disperses environmental harm and that the full effects of poverty alleviation on the environment can be observed only where poor infrastructure localizes them

public investment and regional inequality in rural china this paper develops a method for decomposing the contributions of various types of public investment to regional inequality and applies the method to rural china public investments are found to have contributed to production growth in both the agricultural and rural non agricultural sectors but their contributions to regional inequality have differed by type of investment and the region in which they are made all types of investment in the least developed western region reduce regional inequality whereas additional investments in the coastal and central regions worsen regional inequality investments in rural education and agricultural r d in the western region have the largest and most favorable impacts on reducing regional inequality

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

agriculture and climate change in global scenarios why don t the models agree agriculture is unique among economic sectors in the nature of impacts from climate change the production activity that transforms inputs into agricultural outputs involves direct use of weather inputs temperature solar radiation available to the plant and precipitation previous studies of the impacts of climate change on agriculture have reported substantial differences in outcomes such as prices production and trade arising from differences in model inputs and model specification this article presents climate change results and underlying determinants from a model comparison exercise with 10 of the leading global economic models that include significant representation of agriculture by harmonizing key drivers that include climate change effects differences in model outcomes were reduced the particular choice of climate change drivers for this comparison activity results in large and negative productivity effects all models respond with higher prices producer behavior differs by model with some emphasizing area response and others yield response demand response is least important the differences reflect both differences in model specification and perspectives on the future the results from this study highlight the need to more fully compare the deep model parameters to generate a call for a combination of econometric and validation studies to narrow the degree of uncertainty and variability in these parameters and to move to monte carlo type simulations to better map the contours of economic uncertainty

trade policies economic growth and the direct causes of deforestation by ramon lopez gregmar i galinato please send correspondence to ramon lopez 2200 symons hall university of maryland college park md 20742 email rlopez arec umd edu tel 301 405 1281 fax 301 314 9091 gregmar i galinato 2200 symons hall university of maryland college park md 20742 email ggalinato arec umd edu tel 301 405 0477 fax 301 314 9091

consequential life cycle assessment of bioenergy systems a literature review abstract policies and business decisions intended to promote the use of bioenergy should be based on accurate estimates of the sustainability impacts of various alternatives including indirect consequences of any change consequential life cycle assessment clca attempts to include such impacts in the analysis this paper reviews studies that have adopted a clca approach to analysing the use of bioenergy describing their main topics approaches empirical and methodological aspects and scenarios the review finds that the production of studies proceeded at a modest pace from 2007 with a significant increase occurring from 2015 onward the most studied impact is global warming potential gwp although other impacts are frequently taken into consideration a majority of the studies concern the agricultural followed by the forest sector the literature has a european emphasis and relatively few studies have focused on low and middle income countries the review also finds a diversity in terms of how empirical and methodological aspects are taken into consideration based on the findings of the review areas of improvement for future research are suggested an increased focus on bioenergy use in the household sectors more studies in under researched regions more precise explanations of the clca methods used a critical examination of the scenarios and methodological collaboration with economic bio sector modelling in addition the factors that affect the generalizability of the results can be discussed in a more systematic manner frameworks and procedures for improving the applicability and validity of clca will likely emerge as the research field develops

comparing supply side specifications in models of global agriculture and the food system this article compares the theoretical and functional specification of production in partial equilibrium pe and computable general equilibrium cge models of the global agricultural and food system included in the agmip model comparison study the two model families differ in their scope partial versus economy wide and in how they represent technology and the behavior of supply and demand in markets the cge models are deep structural models in that they explicitly solve the maximization problem of consumers and producers assuming utility maximization and profit maximization with production cost functions that include all factor inputs the pe models divide into two groups on the supply side 1 shallow structural models which essentially specify area yield supply functions with no explicit maximization behavior and 2 deep structural models that provide a detailed activity analysis specification of technology and explicit optimizing behavior by producers while the models vary in their specifications of technology both within and between the pe and cge families we consider two stylized theoretical models to compare the behavior of crop yields and supply functions in cge models with their behavior in shallow structural pe models we find that the theoretical responsiveness of supply to changes in prices can be similar depending on parameter choices that define the behavior of implicit supply functions over the domain of applicability defined by the common scenarios used in the agmip comparisons in practice however the applied models are more complex and differ in their empirical sensitivity to variations in specification comparability of results given parameter choices is an empirical question to illustrate the issues sensitivity analysis is done with one global cge model magnet to indicate how the results vary with different specification of technical change and how they compare with the results from pe models

china s agriculture drivers of change and implications for china and the rest of world the overall goal of this article is to identify major changes in china s agriculture food economy and their implications for both china itself and more importantly to the rest of world china has become one of the fastest growing economies in the world since late 1970s gdp grew at about 10 annually in the past 30 years china s experience shows the importance of both domestic and external policies in achieving sustainable growth the results from this study provide significant policy implications to many countries that are currently china s major trade partners or those seeking greater economic and trade relations with china the main conclusions on the implications of china s rapid economic growth are that china s growth will provide more opportunities than challenges to the rest of the world on average overall the rest of the world will gain from china s economic expansion though this general conclusion may not hold for some countries

price trends and volatility scenarios for designing forest sector transformation abstract potential scenarios for the forest bioeconomy are heavily reliant on price assumptions in particular any abrupt changes in prices have a profound impact on the relevancy of any sector analysis the objective of this paper was to demonstrate a new forest sector approach for incorporating price uncertainties in order to improve our assessment of investment decision making alternatives methodologically we linked a multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model mgarch 1 1 with three global land use scenarios that are of strategic importance to the forest bioeconomy the three scenarios were formulated as i a business as usual scenario ii a high biomass usage scenario and iii a no growth scenario our results indicate an upward trend in prices over time for all three scenarios and for most woody biomass commodities under all scenarios price volatility in the forest sector would be smaller than that for the fossil fuel energy i e oil and natural gas price volatilities from fossil fuel markets are positively influencing woody biomass price volatility and positively influencing pulp volatility these results are discussed in the context of a case study describing investment alternatives for a district heating facility with options for woody biomass natural gas or heating oil

are there lessons for africa from china s success against poverty at the outset of china s reform period the country had a far higher poverty rate than for africa as a whole within five years that was no longer true this paper tries to explain how china escaped from a situation in which extreme poverty persisted due to failed and unpopular policies while acknowledging that africa faces constraints that china did not and that context matters two lessons stand out the first is the importance of productivity growth in smallholder agriculture which will require both market based incentives and public support the second is the role played by strong leadership and a capable public administration at all levels of government

demand for differentiated products discrete choice models and the characteristics approach we propose a specific characteristics framework in order to construct linkages between alternative conceptual approaches to modelling product differentiation first it is shown that a demand system which satisfies the gross substitutes property imposes specific requirements on the locations of products in particular the dimension of the characteristics space must be larger than or equal to the number of products minus one we then identify a method for casting a given demand system subject to certain restrictions into our characteristics framework this is illustrated for the logit probit and linear probability models of discrete choice theory finally we find a characteristics representation of the ces representative consumer

gradualism versus big bang speed and sustainability of reforms a beneficial reform may be blocked by a majority if it is implemented by a big bang but the same reform may succeed with an optimally designed gradualist approach a gradualist approach can sometimes split opposition force and is in this sense more politically sustainable on the other hand if both approaches are politically preferred to no reform a big bang is often preferred to gradualism in terms of both political support as well as economic efficiency

reforms investment and poverty in rural china shenggen faninternational food policy research institute and institute of agriculturaleconomics of the chinese academy of agricultural scienceslinxiu zhangcenter for chinese agricultural policy of the chinese academy of sciencesxiaobo zhanginternational food policy research institutei introductionchina is one of the few countries in the developing world that has madeprogress in reducing its total number of poor over the past 25 years

implications of higher global food prices for poverty in low income countries in many poor countries the recent increases in prices of staple foods raise the real incomes of those selling food many of whom are relatively poor while hurting net food consumers many of whom are also relatively poor the impacts on poverty will certainly be very diverse but the average impact on poverty depends upon the balance between these two effects and can only be determined by looking at real world data results using household data for ten observations on nine low income countries show that the short run impacts of higher staple food prices on poverty differ considerably by commodity and by country but that poverty increases are much more frequent and larger than poverty reductions the recent large increases in food prices appear likely to raise overall poverty in low income countries substantially

control in a dynamic village economy the reforms and unbalanced development in china s rural economy abstract a dynamic control framework is used to model the chinese village economy in order to explain the rural sector s unbalanced growth in the post reform period village leaders are assumed to maximize a multi attribute utility function by manipulating local policy instruments subject to the structural relationships in the economy the model s parameters are estimated econometrically using a data set from forty villages in eastern china the empirical results identify important linkages between agriculture and rural industry in village economies unbalanced growth can partially be explained by the way economic incentives induce individuals in rural areas to move resources toward the rural industrial sector and away from agriculture

bridging the gap between partial and total factor productivity measures using directional distance functions technical dependencies as well as data constraints limit our ability to allocate inputs across sectors and hence our ability to measure sectoral productivity we adapt a directional measure of efficiency to the measurement of sector specific productivity that does not require allocating all inputs across sectors applied to the agricultural sector of a group of countries the results show important differences in livestock and crops productivity growth commonly used partial factor productivity measures for livestock and crops tend to overestimate productivity growth in most developing countries while underestimating it in european countries

empowerment and efficiency tenancy reform in west bengal the paper analyzes the effect of agricultural tenancy laws offering security of tenure to tenants and regulating the share of output that is paid as rent on farm productivity theoretically the net impact of tenancy reform is shown to be a combination of two effects a bargaining power effect and a security of tenure effect analysis of evidence on how contracts and productivity changed after a tenancy reform program was implemented in the indian state of west bengal in the late 1970s suggests that tenancy reform had a positive effect on agricultural productivity there

education and allocative efficiency household income growth during rural reforms in china this paper studies the contribution of schooling to rural income in china during factor market liberalization between 1986 and 1995 the relaxation of controls permitted farm households to reallocate productive inputs from agriculture to nonagricultural activities it is hypothesized that education facilitates this adjustment panel data from sichuan province suggest that schooling enhanced the ability of farmers to devote labor and capital to nonfarm production given the evidence that less than optimum levels of these inputs were allocated to nonagricultural uses during the transition the expansion of nonfarm activities contributed significantly to household income growth

the sectoral and regional economic consequences of climate change to 2060 this paper presents a new detailed global quantitative assessment of the economic consequences of climate change i e climate damages to 2060 the analysis is based on an assessment of a wide range of impacts changes in crop yields loss of land and capital due to sea level rise changes in fisheries catches capital damages from hurricanes labour productivity changes and changes in health care expenditures from diseases and heat stress changes in tourism flows and changes in energy demand for cooling and heating a multi region multi sector dynamic computable general equilibrium model is used to link different impacts until 2060 directly to specific drivers of economic growth including labour productivity capital stocks and land supply as well as assess the indirect effects these impacts have on the rest of the economy and on the economies of other countries it uses a novel production function approach to identify which aspects of economic activity are directly affected by climate change the model results show that damages are projected to rise twice as fast as global economic activity global annual gross domestic product losses are projected to be 1 0 3 3 by 2060 of the impacts that are modelled impacts on labour productivity and agriculture are projected to have the largest negative economic consequences damages from sea level rise grow most rapidly after the middle of the century damages to energy and tourism are very small from a global perspective as benefits in some regions balance damages in others climate induced damages from hurricanes may have significant effects on local communities but the macroeconomic consequences are projected to be very small net economic consequences are projected to be especially large in africa and asia where the regional economies are vulnerable to a range of different climate impacts for some countries in higher latitudes economic benefits can arise from gains in tourism energy and health the global assessment also shows that countries that are relatively less affected by climate change may reap trade gains

responsiveness flexibility and market liberalization in china s agriculture been at most only limited gains from market liberalization if one were to take the findings of this admittedly scant literature seriously it would appear as if there is at most only a relatively small impact from market reforms in china we believe there are three possible but only one plausible explanations for the findings first if market liberalization actually contributes little to no growth or increases in output or incomes this would of course in part explain why economies that lead reform with market liberalization do not experience significant gains theory and the experiences of other economies in other settings however would argue against such an interpretation second it could be that china s agricultural market liberalization has just proceeded so slowly that it is still too early for output to have been positively affected by market liberalization however as seen above the record on the market expansion and the observations of many researchers would not support this view

collective agricultural production a solution for transition economies abstract the paper examines theoretical reasons and provides examples for productivity differences between agricultural service cooperatives and collectives service cooperatives can utilize economies of scale enhance competitiveness and provide technical information advantages that often outweighed problems of free riding low investment and excessive political intervention agricultural collectives while not adding substantial advantages are in addition associated with problems of supervision and effort supply tendencies to substitute casual workers or mechanization for regular members and low investment incentives while collective forms of organization in transition economies respond to high risk and market imperfections they do so inefficiently policies that create conditions for service cooperatives to compete may lead to large productivity gains

impacts of increased bioenergy demand on global food markets an agmip economic model intercomparison integrated assessment studies have shown that meeting ambitious greenhouse gas mitigation targets will require substantial amounts of bioenergy as part of the future energy mix in the course of the agricultural model intercomparison and improvement project agmip five global agro economic models were used to analyze a future scenario with global demand for ligno cellulosic bioenergy rising to about 100 exajoule in 2050 from this exercise a tentative conclusion can be drawn that ambitious climate change mitigation need not drive up global food prices much if the extra land required for bioenergy production is accessible or if the feedstock for example from forests does not directly compete for agricultural land agricultural price effects across models by the year 2050 from high bioenergy demand in an ambitious mitigation scenario appear to be much smaller 5 average across models than from direct climate impacts on crop yields in a high emission scenario 25 average across models however potential future scarcities of water and nutrients policy induced restrictions on agricultural land expansion as well as potential welfare losses have not been specifically looked at in this exercise