a model of candidate location with endogenous valence this work gives a theoretical explanation for the increase in campaign spending and party polarization in u s politics i assume that the effectiveness of persuasive advertising and of costly valence campaigning in general positively depends on the share of nonpartisan voters a decline in the number of partisan voters in a constituency results in greater campaign spending by the candidates if the voters are risk averse the candidates who maximize their expected office rents minus the cost of campaigning will choose divergent policy platforms strategically in order to reduce the costs of subsequent campaign spending the degree of policy divergence positively depends on the share of nonpartisan voters for a broad class of voter disutility and candidate cost of valence functions

price and yield effects of spill overs in international agricultural research evidence from icrisat and australia international agricultural research aimed at improving productivity in developing countries also has spill over effects on developed countries research that affects the supply of commodities is also likely to affect the world price of tradeable commodities in this paper the effects of spill overs to australia from successful cost reducing research into sorghum and chickpeas at the international crops research institute for the semi arid tropics icrisat aimed at developing countries are assessed genetic materials developed and distributed through icrisat are used in australia to increase productivity the price reducing effects of successful research are incorporated into the analysis of spill over impacts on productivity the net effects on welfare for producers and consumers of sorghum and chickpeas in australia and the rest of the world row are identified the consequences of the impacts are discussed and the implications for further funding of international agricultural research are also discussed

the incidence of benefits from u s soybean productivity gains in a context of world trade a new procedure for measuring the k shift in the supply function from new technology is introduced this procedure is used to show that u s soybean total factor productivity increased by 1 6 per year between 1974 and 1983 brazilian and argentine soybean productivity increased 2 4 per year during this period total economic surplus in the u s and the rest of the world increased between 1 7 and 3 2 billion of this total u s resource owners received between 1 3 and 1 5 billion and u s consumers received between a 0 1 and 0 2 billion increase in income from increased soybean productivity

distribution of research gains in multistage production systems research irrespective of the incidence of the levy and benefits no longer is valid we have no disagreement with this important observation but we are concerned about the lack of reliable estimates of the elasticity of substitution building on muth s analysis for which we suggest some changes we explore further the sensitivity of the effects of the distribution of benefits of research to different ways in which research can impact on a multistage production system and to the effects of the elasticities

learning by bidding we analyze a dynamic second price auction with an informed bidder and an uninformed bidder who upon seeing a posted price learns whether his valuation is above that price in the essentially unique equilibrium an informed bidder bids in the first period if her valuation is below some cutoff and bids only in the last period otherwise an uninformed bidder bids in every period to optimally change the price unless the price is above his valuation or he is the high bidder this model also provides a rationale behind the use of a secret reserve price in private value settings

optimal temporal policies in fluid milk advertising this study develops an approach to obtain optimal temporal advertising strategies when consumers response to advertising is asymmetric using this approach optimal strategies for generic fluid milk advertising in new york city are determined results indicate that pulsed advertising policies are significantly more effective in increasing demand than a uniform advertising policy sensitivity analyses show that the optimal advertising policies are insensitive to reasonable variations in interest rates and the inclusion of milk demand seasonality in the model also less asymmetric responses to advertising are found to result in shorter optimal pulsing cycles and reduced intensity of advertising pulses copyright 2000 oxford university press

the impact of integrated aquaculture agriculture on small scale farms in southern malawi sustainable agricultural intensification is an urgent challenge for sub saharan africa one potential solution is to rely on local farmers knowledge for improved management of diverse on farm resources and integration among various farm enterprises in this article we analyze the farm level impact of one recent example namely the integrated aquaculture agriculture iaa technologies that have been developed and disseminated in a participatory manner in malawi based on a 2004 survey of 315 respondents 166 adopters and 149 nonadopters we test the hypothesis that adoption of iaa is associated with improved farm productivity and more efficient use of resources estimating a technical inefficiency function shows that iaa farms were significantly more efficient compared to nonadopters iaa farms also had higher total factor productivity higher farm income per hectare and higher returns to family labor

vote buying supermajorities and flooded coalitions in a recent paper banks 2000 adopting the framework of our model groseclose and snyder 1996 derives several new and noteworthy results in addition he provides a counterexample to our proposition 4 here we explain the error in our proposition but note that we can correct it easily if we invoke an additional assumption in equilibrium the winning vote buyer constructs a nonflooded coalition that is she does not bribe every member of her coalition we conclude with a brief discussion of the substantive implications of banks s proposition 1 we note that it provides additional support for our general claim that minimal winning coalitions should be rare in a vote buying game

diffusion and spillover of new technology a heterogeneous agent model for cassava in west africa understanding what determines the geographic spread of innovations can help guide the funding and implementation of research and extension programs our approach uses household survey data as model parameters to simulate behavior across the entire surveyed population and avoid the aggregation bias associated with representative farm models such a heterogeneous agent approach allows us to infer the distribution of a technology s impacts across one set of households and predict the potential for spreading to another set that shares similar characteristics with respect to natural resource endowments and farming systems we apply the technique to new cassava varieties in west africa finding a strongly poverty alleviating impact with substantial spillover potential from nigeria to neighboring countries

the gains from agricultural research under distorted trade abstract this paper explores the gains from research issue within the framework of a product which is traded with the aid of export subsidies because of the taxpayer burden associated with increased exports it is quite possible for the returns to research to be negative a decline in the rate of protection through a rising world market leads to a linear increase in the gains from research while a rise in the internal support price will cause a non linear and negative response if the supply shift is pivotal and a linear and negative response if it is parallel finally global returns to research will be higher than individual country returns and will always be positive in a free trade environment

lobbying as legislative subsidy professional lobbyists are among the most experienced knowledgeable and strategic actors one can find in the everyday practice of politics nonetheless their behavioral patterns often appear anomalous when viewed in the light of existing theories we revisit these anomalies in search of an alternative theory we model lobbying not as exchange vote buying or persuasion informative signaling but as a form of legislative subsidy a matching grant of policy information political intelligence and legislative labor to the enterprises of strategically selected legislators the proximate political objective of this strategy is not to change legislators minds but to assist natural allies in achieving their own coincident objectives the theory is simple in form realistic in its principal assumptions and counterintuitive in its main implications empirically the model renders otherwise anomalous regularities comprehensible and predictable in a later section we briefly bring preferences back in examining the important but relatively uncommon conditions under which preference centered lobbying should occur

is the united states really underinvesting in agricultural research that the level of public investment in u s agricultural research is too low is widely accepted this paper argues that there are two important limitations to the evidence assembled in support of the underinvestment hypothesis a many authors have compared the social rate of return to public investments with the private rate of return to private investments b costs of public expenditures on agricultural research have been underestimated by a failure to account for the marginal excess burden of the tax collection system taking these two factors into account evidence in support of the underinvestment hypothesis is weakened considerably

evaluating the uncertainty in estimates of the economic impacts of bovine leukosis virus in u s dairy cows an examination of the economic impacts of bovine leukosis virus indicated that reduced milk production attributed to the presence of bovine leukosis virus in dairy cows reduced consumer surplus by 2 7 2 3 billion us bus and resulted in a total partial equilibrium loss of 720 560 million us mus to the u s economy in 1996 most of the economic surplus lost by consumers was transferred to producers whose economic surplus increased by 2 0 1 8 bus as a result of reduced milk production attributed to the presence of bovine leukosis virus in dairy cattle uncertainty analysis showed that an estimate of the milk production decline per percent increase in the prevalence of bovine leukosis virus in dairy cows accounted for most of the uncertainty in the economic impact estimates if bovine leukosis virus had not been present in u s dairy cows then milk production would have increased by 2 0 billion 1 5 billion kg the price would have fallen by 3 8 3 2 cents kg and the value of the milk produced would have decreased by 2 1 1 9 bus guidelines delineated by the international organization for standardization for evaluating and expressing uncertainty in measurement are discussed and proposed for use in the context of broad national estimates for which the economic impacts of bovine leukosis virus serve as an example the principal advantages of the methodology are the clarity and transparency of results and the ability clearly to identify major uncertainty contributors

bargaining in legislatures bargaining in legislatures is conducted according to formal rules specifying who may make proposals and how they will be decided legislative outcomes depend on those rules and on the structure of the legislature although the social choice literature provides theories about voting equilibria it does not endogenize the formation of the agenda on which the voting is based and rarely takes into account the institutional structure found in legislatures in our theory members of the legislature act noncooperatively in choosing strategies to serve their own districts explicitly taking into account the strategies members adopt in response to the sequential nature of proposal making and voting the model permits the characterization of a legislative equilibrium reflecting the structure of the legislature and also allows consideration of the choice of elements of that structure in a context in which the standard institution free model of social choice theory yields no equilibrium

how much is a dollar worth tipping versus equilibrium coexistence on competing online auction sites theory models of platform competition predict that prices and buyer seller ratios should be approximately equal on coexisting auction sites using field experiments on ebay and yahoo auctions we find evidence that is inconsistent with equilibrium hypotheses and suggest that the market is tipping prices on ebay are consistently 20 70 percent higher than those on yahoo and ebay attracts two additional buyers per seller on yahoo prices and bidders counts are unaffected by the auction ending rule various differences between the sites cannot account for the magnitude of these disparities however a model of imitation dynamics can rationalize our findings

evaluating returns to agricultural research a review this paper reviews and compares the most common approaches used to evaluate public agricultural research investment ex post studies fall into two major groups a consumer and producer surplus analyses estimating average rates of return to research and b production function analyses estimating marginal rates of return to research ex ante studies fall into four groups a those using scoring models to rank research activities b those employing benefit cost analysis to establish rates of return to research c those using simulation models and d those using mathematical programming to select an optimal mix of research activities

economic insights from internet auctions this paper surveys recent studies of internet auctions four main areas of research are summarized first we survey several studies that document and attempt to explain the frequently observed sniping or last second bidding behavior in these auctions second we summarize several methods proposed to quantify the distortions caused by asymmetric information in these markets most notably due to the winner s curse third we explore research about the role of reputation mechanisms installed to help combat these distortions finally we discuss what internet auctions have to teach us about auction design

the effects of supply shifts on producers surplus changes in the supply curve caused by technological improvements in production or changes in national policy may or may not benefit producers as a whole depending on the type of shift in the supply curve a structured analysis of different changes in the supply curve that model this situation is given and the change in producers surplus is examined depending on quantitative aspects of the supply and demand curves for supply and demand curves that are linear or power functions a small downward pivot of the supply curve will increase producers surplus only if the equilibrium point is far enough into the elastic region of the demand curve and any downward pivot of the supply curve will decrease producers surplus if the equilibrium point is in the inelastic region of the demand curve similar results are obtained for the more general case of convex supply and demand curves

the calculation of returns to research in distorted markets comment abstract in a recent article oehmke reported that a high internal rate of return for investment in research when the interaction between research and price policy costs was disregarded could become very low or even negative when the effects of research on the costs of price policy were considered in this paper the social returns from research in the presence of the price policies considered by oehmke are reexamined using a simple geometric approach the analysis suggests that an output subsidy in a small importing economy an output subsidy in a closed economy and a target price in a large exporting economy will on oehmke s assumptions cause only small reductions in the internal rate of return from investment in research this implies that the apparent underinvestment by governments in agricultural research cannot be explained away by a large upward bias known to governments in measured rates of return due to failure to account for interactions between research and the costs of price policy measures

does agricultural extension pay a case study for a new crop lupins in western australia abstract compared to studies evaluating the benefits from agricultural research there are relatively few empirical studies of the net economic benefits of agricultural extension and even fewer that consider both public and private sector extension effort in this study we examine regional differences in the adoption of lupins in western australia wa in order to estimate the net economic benefits of public and private sector extension impacts of extension and other variables on adoption were analysed for 40 shires using multivariate regression analysis the results suggest that both public and private extension activities influenced farmer uptake of lupins particularly by bringing forward the start time of the diffusion curve economic benefits of extension based on the statistical analysis were combined with costs of extension estimated from public sector records and surveys of private sector extension agents and used to estimate the net present value of extension investments by the public and private sectors in the study area

elections governments and parliaments in proportional representation systems this paper presents a theory of parliamentary systems with a proportional representation electoral system a formateur selected based on party representation in parliament and parties that cannot commit to the policies they will implement once in government government formation involves efficient proto coalition bargaining and elections yield unique strong nash equilibrium outcomes depending on the status quo minimal majority surplus or consensus governments can form if parties and voters are myopic and the status quo is subject to shocks consensus governments and centrist policies occur only in a crisis otherwise governments are minimal winning and policies reflect only the preferences of the government parties

toward a u s agricultural export policy for the 1980s in a recent issue of business week a special article on the restructuring of the american economy paid particular attention to the agricultural sector and how it likely would be the prime fuel for inflation in the 1980s the rationale behind this outlook was the projection that international demand for u s agricultural exports would continue to grow rapidly while a combination of slower domestic agricultural productivity growth and sharply increased production costs would temper a contemporaneous increase in output the article concluded by saying that we certainly will need a federal policy on exports and in the next few years there is going to be an intense debate on that p 74 the purpose of this article is to open such a debate on an appropriate u s agricultural export policy for the 1980s for the last decade agricultural exports have comprised on the average roughly 20 of the total value of u s exports agricultural imports on the other hand have sharply and continuously declined in relative importance over the same period from 15 of total u s imports in 1970 to 7 in 1980 the result has been a sharply growing agricultural trade surplus from 1 5 billion in 1970 to 12 6 billion in 1975 to 23 9 billion in 1980 compared to a widening nonagricultural trade deficit always in the red in the last decade and sharply increased in the last five years from 20 7 billion in 1976 to 47 2 billion in 1980 u s agricultural exports are largely concentrated in grains 42 6 of the total agricultural export value in 1979 80 soybeans and products 24 1 and cotton 6 7 while a variety of animal products and tobacco comprise the major part of the remainder u s agricultural imports on the other hand are less concentrated noncompetitive items with u s production like coffee cocoa rubber and bananas make up 41 8 of imports in 1979 80 among the supplementary imports the largest shares are occupied by beef and veal 18 9 of total supplementary imports by value in 1979 80 and sugar 14 9 the remainder being comprised of a wide variety of products of particular importance to trade and the a erican balance of payment position is the growing share of u s agricultural production that is exported table 1 shows proportions of he major agricultural products and the share of t tal u s agricultural production exported from 1965 66 to 1978 79 currently about half of the total agricultural production is exported while a decade ago the proportion was about one third the growing importance of trade for u s agriculture has implications that must be reckoned with in the 1980s

elections coalitions and legislative outcomes predictions of electoral behavior in a multiparty setting should be a function of the voters beliefs about how parties will perform following an election similarly party behavior in a legislature should be a function of electoral promises and rewards we develop a multistage game theoretic model of three party competition under proportional representation the final policy outcome of the game is generated by a noncooperative bargaining game between the parties in the elected legislature this game is essentially defined by the vote shares each party receives in the general election and the parties electoral policy positions at the electoral stage parties and voters are strategic in that they take account of the legislative implications of any electoral outcome we solve for equilibrium electoral positions by the parties and final policy outcomes

when rational sellers face nonrational buyers evidence from herding on ebay people often observe others decisions before deciding themselves using ebay data for dvd auctions we explore the consequences of neglecting nonsalient information when making such inferences we show that bidders herd into auctions with more existing bids even if these are a signal of no longer available lower starting prices rather than of higher quality bidders bidding a given dollar amount are less likely to win low starting price auctions and pay more for them when they do win experienced bidders are less likely to bid on low starting price auctions remarkably the seller side of the market is in equilibrium because expected revenues are nearly identical for high and low starting prices

returns to public irrigation development recently returns to public investment in general and irrigation investment in particular have received critical attention from economists young martin two of the important interrelated issues are a how to measure beneficial impacts of irrigation projects and b who should pay for this public investment once we know the magnitude of benefits created and the beneficiaries we should be able to recommend who should pay for this investment and how much they should pay for simplicity we classify the beneficiaries of public irrigation into two major groups producers and consumers most studies freeman keleta u s water resources council u s department of the interior and references cited in young young and gray and martin on returns to irrigation emphasize production gains from irrigation the gains enjoyed by consumers are typically omitted the exception being martin s work the implicit assumption here is that the relevant commodity demand curves are perfectly elastic as martin argues this assumption may be valid for a particular project but not for the general equilibrium context taking into account all the projects undertaken in a period thus the proper demand curve to use is not perfectly elastic but downward sloping for a valid evaluation of benefits of public irrigation one should account for both consumer and producer surpluses doing that will provide us with objective criteria concerning who should pay how much for irrigation investment thus the specific objectives here are a to derive analytical expressions for measuring consumer and producer surpluses when public irrigation investment shifts the supply function for commodities and b to derive expressions for the exact distribution of gains between consumers and producers i consumers and producers surpluses with irrigation

policy specific information and informal agenda power in gilligan and krehbiel s models of procedural choice in legislatures a committee exerts costly effort to acquire private information about an unknown state of the world subsequent work on expertise delegation and lobbying has largely followed this approach in contrast we develop a model of information as policy valence we use our model to analyze a procedural choice game focusing on the effect of transferability i e the extent to which information acquired to implement one policy option can be used to implement a different policy option we find that when information is transferable as in gilligan and krehbiel s models closed rules can induce committee specialization however when information is policy specific open rules are actually superior for inducing specialization the reason for this surprising result is that a committee lacking formal agenda power has a greater incentive to exercise informal agenda power by exerting costly effort to generate high valence legislation

seasonality in the consumer response to milk advertising with implications for milk promotion policy permitting seasonal variation in the goodwill effect in measuring the impact of fluid milk advertising on milk sales in new york city improved the statistical significance of the estimating equation the allocation of generic advertising dollars according to optimization rules during the period 1979 81 would have resulted in a 9 percent increase in returns to dairymen supplying the new york city market harmonic variables are used to account for seasonality a pascal distribution is used to account for the decay structure and goodwill elasticities are estimated to indicate the impact of generic advertising on sales

measuring research benefits in an imperfect market in this paper an imperfect market model is developed for evaluating agricultural research benefits the main finding is that the increases in societal gain and the producer s share of this gain are larger with a monopoly than with a competitive market the paper argues that if the market for an agricultural input or for a commodity is not competitive then use of a competitive model for assessing research benefits could lead to understatements of both producer and total benefits

spatial models of legislative effectiveness spatial models of policymaking have evolved from the median voter theorem through the inclusion of institutional considerations such as political parties committees and various voting and amendment rules such models however implicitly assume that no policy is more effective than another at solving public policy problems and that all proposers are equally capable of advancing proposals we relax these assumptions by modeling proposal quality and the effort needed to make better proposals the resulting legislative effectiveness model lem offers three main benefits first it can better account for policy changes based on the effectiveness or popularity of the status quo changing our understanding of how to overcome gridlock in polarized legislatures second it generalizes canonical models of legislative politics such as median voter setter negative agenda setting and pivotal politics models all of which emerge as special cases within the lem third the lem offers significant new empirical predictions some of which we initially test and find support for within the u s congress

ex ante evaluation of the economic impact of agricultural biotechnology the case of porcine somatotropin advances in biotechnology are leading to the creation of products which are expected to have a significant impact on agricultural production much discussion in the literature has focused on possible impacts of biotechnology on agriculture kalter and tauer hueth and just stallman and schmid but few quantitative estimates of the probable impact exist this paper examines the impact of a new growth hormone porcine somatotropin pst on the u s pork industry our approach is generally useful for ex ante analyses of new biotechnologies where experimental estimates of the impact of the technology are available and where the nature of the commodity produced may be affected by the new biotechnology pst is a naturally occurring somatotropin protein produced in the pig s pituitary supplemental pst has been shown in experimental research to lead to improvement in average daily gain improvement in feed efficiency and change in carcass composition of the pig by converting fat to lean meat the purpose of this paper is to simulate the likely impact of supplemental pst use on prices and quantities of pork at the retail and farm levels and on net benefits of producers and consumers the approach taken here to quantifying the impact of pst is in the spirit of previous ex ante approaches to estimating returns to agricultural research norton and davis this study explicitly takes into account a interrelationships between the domestic hog and pork markets b interrelationships between pork and other meats c interrelationships between the domestic and international mar

measuring research benefits in an imperfect market second comment this note generalizes a finding about the necessary and sufficient conditions for research to generate greater benefits in the presence of distortions and highlights a significant source of bias in conventional cost benefit calculations

distributional welfare implications of an irrigation water subsidy the distributional welfare implications of a subsidy for irrigation water for california rice producers are analyzed a more general equilibrium approach than that used in previous studies is taken in order to determine the effects of subsidy on consumers subsidized producers and unsubsidized producers the two important policy conclusions of the results are that unsubsidized producers bear part of the cost of a subsidy through lower prices and that consumers taxpayers may gain by sponsoring increased production through a selective subsidy

the statistical analysis of roll call data modern studies of legislative behavior focus upon the relationship among the policy preferences of legislators institutional arrangements and legislative outcomes in spatial models of legislatures policies are represented geometrically as points in a low dimensional euclidean space each legislator has a most preferred policy or ideal point in this space and his or her utility for a policy declines with the distance of the policy from his or her ideal point see davis hinich and ordeshook 1970 for an early survey the primary use of roll call data the recorded votes of deliberative bodies 1 is the estimation of ideal points the appeal and importance of ideal point estimation arises in two ways first ideal point estimates let us describe legislators and legislatures the distribution of ideal points estimates reveals how cleavages between legislators reflect partisan affiliation or region or become more polarized over time e g mccarty poole and rosenthal 2001 roll call data serve similar purposes for interest groups such as americans for democratic action the national taxpayers union and the sierra club to produce ratings of legislators along different policy dimensions second estimates from roll call analysis can be used to test theories of legislative behavior for instance roll call analysis has been used in studies of the u s congress both contemporary and

does agricultural extension pay compared to studies evaluating the benefits from agricultural research there are relatively few empirical studies of the net economic benefits of agricultural extension and even fewer that consider both public and private sector extension effort in this study we examine regional differences in the adoption of lupins in western australia wa in order to estimate the net economic benefits of public and private sector extension impacts of extension and other variables on adoption were analysed for 40 shires using multivariate regression analysis the results suggest that both public and private extension activities influenced farmer uptake of lupins particularly by bringing forward the start time of the diffusion curve economic benefits of extension based on the statistical analysis were combined with costs of extension estimated from public sector records and surveys of private sector extension agents and used to estimate the net present value of extension investments by the public and private sectors in the study area

distribution of research gains in multistage production systems comment in a recent paper freebairn davis and edwards hereafter fde have examined an interesting and neglected aspect of the distribution of benefits from research agricultural production is seen to comprise three stages input supply farm production and farm to retail marketing fde have explored the distribution of the benefit stemming from a downwards shift in the supply function at any one of the stages they conclude these benefits are distributed according to the elasticities of consumer demand and supply facing each stage furthermore under the special assumptions they employ this distribution is independent of which of the three supply functions is shifted by research they conclude albeit with due caution that the choice of agricultural research projects should not be limited to farm production research alone especially in view of the cost shares of purchased inputs and marketing services in the retail value of food in fact they argue they farmers may receive greater benefits from off farm oriented research than from farm oriented research p 39 this finding has potentially important implications for agricultural research policy it immediately spurs one to ask whether research funded by the farmer or the fisc might have neglected opportunities for research related to farm inputs or marketing to reach their result fde assume a all supply and demand curves are linear b research induces parallel shifts in supply curves c farmers cannot substitute nonfarm inputs for inputs supplied by farmers in production of the farm product and d marketing firms cannot substitute marketing inputs for raw farm products in the production of retail commodities the purpose of this note is to emphasize the importance of these elasticities of factor substitution in determining the distribution of research benefits between the three stages to do this we use a simple but general two factor model in which we focus attention on the elasticity of factor substitution between marketing services and raw farm products in the third stage marketing this model is not restricted to linear supply and demand curves nor to an elasticity of substitution of zero we maintain the assumptions of parallel shifts of supply curves induced by research and a perfectly elastic supply of marketing services in a revision of fde s application to the u s hog industry the distribution of research benefits is shown to depend crucially on the elasticity of factor substitution their result that such distribution is independent of the stage in which research shifts the supply curve downwards follows only for the special case in which that elasticity is zero this is clearly a restrictive assumption a reexamination of some of the policy issues raised by fde once the assumption is relaxed would seem to be warranted

reflections on agricultural r d productivity and the data constraint unfinished business unsettled issues sixty years ago t w schultz introduced the idea of the productivity residual to agricultural economics 1956 schultz s main message was that growth in conventional inputs accounted for little of the observed growth in agricultural output and that there was work to be done by agricultural economists to understand and ultimately eliminate this unexplained residual called productivity thus was launched the economics of agricultural productivity as a sub field within agricultural economics along with the economics of agricultural r d and innovation and related government policy much progress has been made in the decades since still critical issues remain unresolved this matters because agricultural innovation and productivity matter and so do the related policies that rest to some extent on our established understanding of the economic relationships in this paper i review some unsettled issues related to economic models and measures applied to agricultural r d and productivity and some unfinished business in terms of economic and policy questions that are not yet well answered before doing that i present some evidence on agricultural productivity and why it matters next with a nod to factology i present available productivity measures from the u s department of agriculture usda and international science and technology practice and policy instepp center and compare them in the context of translog cost function models in subsequent sections i use these and other data to develop new evidence related to two contentious questions a do farmers benefit from public agricultural r d b has u s agricultural productivity growth slowed in recent decades the answers are revealed within

compensating variation consumer s surplus and welfare the compensating variation was defined by j r hicks 1942 as the amount one would have to deduct from a person s income to make him just as well off after a change in prices and income as he had been in the initial situation if the compensating variation is positive the individual is better off under the new situation since the compensating variation furnishes a uniquely defined numerical cardinal indicator of welfare improvement it provides an implicit ranking of alternative prospective situations not only relative to the initial situation but also relative to each other in practice this appears to be how this and other tools of cost benefit analysis are actually used one is interested in knowing not only whether a particular bridge or a particular excise tax will lead to an improvement in welfare but which out of a set of alternative bridges or alternative tax systems will improve welfare the most 1 in this paper we analyze conditions under which the compensating variation can be validly used in this generalized sense these turn out to be precisely the same as conditions previously derived see our 1976 paper for the valid use of consumer s surplus as a welfare measure in our final section we analyze the problem of deriving the generalized equivalent and compensating variations either exactly or approximately from observable demand functions by means of generalizations of or alternatives to consumer s surplus

influence of spillovers to australia on impacts of the international center for agricultural research in the dry areas abstract there is growing evidence of spillover effects to developed countries from the plant genetic improvement work of international agricultural research centers iarcs that nevertheless benefit the targeted developing countries this paper examines the modes in which such spillover effects from iarcs to developed countries have an impact on the overall benefits from the iarc system a case study of production spillovers in australia from icarda s work indicates a shift of benefits for the rest of the world from producers to consumers with overall benefits to the rest of the world marginally higher in the presence of spillovers these findings suggest spillovers to developed countries can enhance the impacts of the iarcs on developing countries though they can affect the distribution of benefits received

economic returns to cowpea research extension and input distribution in senegal abstract this paper calculates the rate of return to a set of cowpea research extension and distribution projects in senegal to be between 31 and 92 the results show that a modestly funded program on a secondary crop can be successful they also indicate that programs may increase their effectiveness by addressing specific household needs in this case by focusing on short cycle varieties that provide food during the hunger season prior to the traditional harvest

measuring research benefits in an imperfect market second reply in a recent comment on voon 1994 holloway 1999 has made the following conclusions under conditions that are almost identical to ones considered by voon 1994 and by sexton and sexton 1996 pivotal shifts in marginal costs generate strictly greater benefits under monopoly this paper reconsiders the above conclusion a simple geometric approach similar to alston et al 1988 and voon and edwards 1991 is used for the reassessment the analysis shows that a pivotal shift in the marginal costs generates greater benefits under perfect competition than it does under monopoly this is opposite to holloway s finding the model is depicted in fig 1 instead of a parallel shift in the mc curve as in voon 1994 a pivotal shift above the origin is assumed this implies that the supply price elasticity is greater than unity e 1 see voon and edwards 1991 under monopoly

a prospective evaluation of biotechnology in semi subsistence agriculture abstract the paper analyses ex ante the economic implications of transgenic virus and weevil resistant sweet potatoes in kenya these technologies are being developed within international projects involving public and private organisations it is expected that the resistant varieties will significantly reduce the crop losses in farmers fields model calculations show that both innovations are likely to bring about substantial growth in economic surplus the projected annual gross benefit is 5 4 mus million us for virus resistance and 9 9 mus for weevil resistance due to the semi subsistence nature of sweet potato the producing households will be the main beneficiaries however market consumers will also capture about one fourth of the aggregate welfare gains the high profitability of the projects is confirmed by significantly positive returns on research investments the examples demonstrate the viability of successful research partnerships between the public and private sectors as most of the basic biotechnology tools available to date are patented by private companies in the north which often do not have sufficient market incentives to develop end technologies for the south more interactions of this kind are required from a development policy perspective working with typical semi subsistence crops is particularly appealing because it immediately targets the poor and avoids conflicts with the private sector s commercial interests

agricultural research effort conceptual clarity and measurement abstract this paper emphasizes the need for basic conceptual clarity regarding the measures of research effort in econometric analyses this conceptual clarity could help reduce the misinterpretation of historical and institutional contexts underlying agricultural research effort after a brief review of econometric studies estimating the returns to and determinants of research the centrality of the conceptual contextual and causal significance of this measure is examined conceptualized and measured at the input frontier of the research process an expenditure measure of research reveals the institutional features and changes in the research process in india over time this basic understanding is essential to develop appropriate econometric specifications and correspondingly effective research policy statements

revenue non equivalence between auctions with soft and hard closing mechanisms new evidence from yahoo abstract we use a unique dataset to examine the revenue differences between auctions with a hard close ending rule versus those with a soft close ending rule we find that selling items using the soft close rule increases the selling price by an amount between 25 and 44 or 13 20 percent over the hard close format one possible theoretical explanation for these results is that the hard close ending rule accommodates the practice of sniping which leads to a lower expected selling price we find empirically that a lack of experience could help to explain why in spite of the revenue differences some sellers select the hard close ending rule

econometric estimation of a global spillover matrix for wheat varietal technology abstract an econometric approach using international and national yield trial data is employed to estimate a spillover matrix for wheat varietal technology the global spillover matrix is estimated based on international yield trial data from 1979 1980 to 1987 1988 that include 195 international trial locations and 209 wheat varieties the locations were classified across countries using the cimmyt s wheat megaenvironment system and varieties were classified by both their environmental and institutional origin the model gave good explanatory power and confirmed the location specificity hypothesis at least for the varieties developed by national programs nars the spillover matrix shows that nars varieties developed in the home environment generally perform better on average than varieties developed in other megaenvironments also the matrix is not symmetric cimmyt varieties perform better on average in irrigated and high rainfall environments than nars varieties developed for these environments the yield advantage of cimmyt varieties in many test megaenvironments indicates the potential of cimmyt varieties to spill over to these test megaenvironments results also indicate that national programs are efficient in selecting from among imported technologies analysis of international data is complemented by the analysis of country level data for pakistan and kenya that confirms the above results the country level analysis however indicates that cimmyt germplasm does not do so well in some sub environments such as the irrigated short duration environment the results of the spillover matrix have implications for the design of crop breeding programs both at the national and international levels information provided by the spillover matrix can be utilized by national programs to deploy their resources more efficiently by following a mixed strategy of direct importation of technology in some environments and local development of technologies in other environments which are unique to the country

the calculation of research benefits with linear and non linear specifications of the demand and supply reply this paper provides a comparison of research benefits for linear and nonlinear constant elasticity nlce specifications of supply and demand with a pivotal supply shift framework the comparison allows for a sensitivity test of results to different values for demand and supply elasticity the main finding is that the values of the gross annual research benefits calculated for the nlce specification are larger than those calculated for the linear specification with price elastic supply but are smaller with price inelastic supply the analysis suggests that the use of an nlce specification and a pivotal shift due to research is usually preferable to use of a linear supply curve with pivotal shift

regulation in a dynamic market the u s dairy industry an econometric model of the u s dairy market is estimated for the period 1950 80 the economic costs of the dairy program for the period 1965 80 are calculated using ex ante ex post and long run demand and supply functions results indicate that the costs of the dairy program averaged from 430 to 590 million 1980dollars per year depending upon the choice of economic surplus measure the cost estimates depend only slightly on the year that the dairy program is assumed to have been terminated

potential impacts of bt eggplant on economic surplus and farmers health in india in this article the potential impacts of bt eggplant technology in indian agriculture are analyzed several proprietary bt hybrids are likely to be commercialized in the near future based on field trial data it is shown that the technology can significantly reduce insecticide applications and increase effective yields comprehensive farm survey data are used to project farm level effects and future adoption rates simulations show that the aggregate economic surplus gains of bt hybrids could be around us 108 million per year consumers will capture a large share of these gains but farmers and the innovating company will benefit too as the company has also shared its technology with the public sector bt open pollinated varieties might become available with a certain time lag this would make the technology more accessible especially for resource poor farmers entailing further improvements in welfare and distribution effects the wider implications of the private public technology transfer are discussed furthermore the potential benefits for farmers health resulting from reduced insecticide applications are examined using an econometric model and a cost of illness approach these benefits are worth an additional 3 4 million per year yet they constitute only a small fraction of the technology s environmental and health externalities more research is needed for comprehensive impact analysis

elections with platform and valence competition abstract we study a game in which candidates first choose platforms and then invest in costly valences e g engage in campaign spending the marginal return to valence depends on platform polarization the closer platforms are the more valence affects the election outcome consequently candidates without policy preferences choose divergent platforms to soften valence competition moreover exogenous increases in incentives for valence accumulation lead to both increased valence and increased polarization the latter because candidates seek to avoid the costs of extra valence as a result the increase in valence is smaller than it would have been with exogenous platforms finally the model highlights the overlooked substantive importance of common modeling assumptions changing the source of uncertainty in our model from noise around the median voter s ideal point to a shock to one candidate s valence as is common in the literature leads to complete platform convergence for all parameter values

the political economy of public research investment and commodity policies in agriculture an empirical study the paper tests a political economy theory of simultaneous government decision making on income redistribution through commodity policies and on public research investment in agriculture we use data from 37 countries on agricultural protection and public agricultural research expenditures pari the empirical results are consistent with the political economy hypotheses the analysis suggest that structural changes in the economy have important effects on the political incentives for governments not only to subsidize or tax farmers but also to invest in public agricultural research furthermore the analysis supports the hypotheses that the impact of such structural changes on government decision making on pari is non linear and conditional on other factors regarding the impact of political institutions the results suggest that more democracy neither leads to more distortionary transfers agricultural protection nor to lower investment in public goods pari

resource use and technological progress in agriculture a dynamic general equilibrium analysis we analyze the global effects of economic and population growth and the impact of a slowdown in agricultural total factor productivity tfp on agriculture and forest resources using a dynamic multi region computable general equilibrium model with land use and cover detail given the current consensus about the growth of the world economy our results suggest that food security will not be threatened and agricultural activities will not encroach on forest resources over the next decade a slowdown in agricultural tfp growth might lead to higher crop prices in all regions with south east asia facing the steepest increases a slowdown in agricultural tfp growth also might be accompanied by higher conversion rates of forestland to farmland as well as by greater environmental or ecological damages on the remaining forestland

consumer demand for rice grain quality and returns to research for quality improvement in southeast asia abundant world rice supply has led to renewed interest in improving grain quality of modem rice varieties implicit prices of grain characteristics are estimated for thailand indonesia and the philippines these prices are used to evaluate rice breeding goals and to estimate returns to research for quality improvement results indicate that the past focus on physical quality improvement was appropriate and future welfare gains are possible from chemical quality improvement returns to quality improvement are substantial and indicate underinvestment in this type of research as asian rice production grew faster than population from 1965 to 1980 the real price of rice declined in world markets and several asian countries flinn and unnevehr greater supply and falling prices have increased concern for rice grain quality improvement in national and international research programs in tropical asia khush in this article the consumer goods characteristics model develo ed bv ladd and suvannunt is used to estimaie thedimplicit prices of rice grain quality characteristics in thailand indonesia and the philippines these estimated implicit prices answer three questions a do observed consumer preferences correspond to measures of quality used to screen material in breeding programs b are consumer preferences similar across countries so that quality improvement can be undertaken at the international level c what are the returns to re

a model of candidate location when one candidate has a valence advantage that under some fairly weak assumptions for all levels of the valence advantage the advantaged candidate chooses a more moderate position than the disadvantaged candidate empirical studies of congressional elections by fiorina 1973 and ansolabehere snyder and stewart 2001 support this result d owns 1957 seminal work presents a puzzle for scholars of u s elections why do candidates not converge to the median voter one of the best explanations is that the candidates themselves have ideological preferences as calvert 1985 and wittman 1977 1983 have shown when candidates have such preferences and they are sufficiently uncertain about the preferences of the median voter then they do not converge although they may moderate their positions from their ideal point the basic version of the calvert wittman model however does not account for another basic fact of u s elections often one of the candidates has an advantage due to a nonpolicy factor such as incumbency greater campaign funds better name recognition superior charisma superior intelligence and so on stokes has dubbed such factors valence factors and he has noted their importance in u s elections stokes 1963 1992 1 in this article i extend the basic calvert wittman model by giving one candidate a valence advantage over the other i show that if the valence characteristics of the candidates are approximately equal then when a candidate s valence advantage increases this causes her to move toward the

the rate of return to public sector agricultural r d in the uk 1965 80 1989 the rate of return to public sector agricultural r d in the uk 1965 80 applied economics vol 21 no 8 pp 1063 1086

competitive policy development we present a model of policy development in which competing factions have different ideologies yet agree on certain common objectives policy developers can appeal to a decision maker by making productive investments to improve the quality of their proposals these investments are specific to a given proposal which means that policy developers can potentially obtain informal agenda power competition undermines this agenda power forcing policy developers to craft policies that are better for the decision maker this beneficial effect is strongest if policy developers have divergent ideological preferences because their intense desire to affect policy motivates them to develop higher quality proposals jel d72 d73 d78 e61 during the early years of the new deal president franklin delano roosevelt faced an enormous challenge he believed that dramatic policy innovation was urgently needed on a wide range of issues including agriculture trade banking employment and social insurance however although roosevelt was well versed in policy crafting workable proposals for such a far reaching agenda was well beyond his capacity or that of his immediate advisors instead the president had to rely on a broader array of politicians and bureaucrats to develop new policies although these individuals shared some common goals e g ending the great depression they also had deep seated ideological disagreements among themselves and with the president about what policies the federal government should pursue classic and contemporary theories of bureaucratic politics would suggest that this situation was ripe for exploitation and inefficiency weber 1991 famously argued that the typical ruler of a modern state is reduced to being a mere dilettante when dealing with institutionalized bureaucratic actors more recently scholars

research payoffs from quality improvement the case of protein in australian wheat a model is developed for evaluating the size and distribution of the economic benefits from research that improves the quality of an export commodity quality improvement achieved by research or by agronomic practices shifts the domestic and or excess demand curves for an export commodity research costs are not modeled but any shift in the supply curve due to a change in yield for example accompanying the quality improvement is included the model is used to estimate the gains from research that increases protein content in australian wheat it is estimated that australia has the potential to obtain net benefits up to a 53 million per year from a one percentage point increase in the protein content in wheat over 90 of these gains accrue to wheat producers

consumer s surplus without apology the purpose of this paper is to settle the controversy surrounding consumer s surplus and by so doing to validate its use as a tool of welfare economics i will show that observed consumer s surplus can be rigorously utilized to estimate the unobservable compensating and equivalent variations the correct theoretical measures of the welfare impact of changes in prices and income on an individual i derive precise upper and lower bounds on the percentage errors of approximating the compensating and equivalent variations with consumer s surplus these bounds can be explicitly calculated from observable demand data and it is clear that in most applications the error of approximation will be very small in fact the error will often be overshadowed by the errors involved in estimating the demand curve the results in no way depend upon arguments about the constancy of the marginal utility of income consequently this paper supplies specific empirical criteria which can replace the apologetic caveats frequently employed by those who presently apply consumer s surplus moreover the results imply that consumer s surplus is usually a very good approximation to the appropriate welfare measures to preview below i establish the validity of these rules of thumb for a

optimal control of generic fluid milk advertising expenditures optimal expenditures of the new york state milk promotion program are determined for three markets spending level in new york city and albany should be reduced by about 10 while that for syracuse should be increased three times further there exists an optimal seasonal advertising pattern which reflects the seasonal pattern of the class 1 differential in addition the optimal spending level and seasonal pattern of the state promotion program depends on those of the national program thus coordination between the two promotional units is essential to achieve optimality generic dairy promotion is big business dairy farmers now invest over 200 million annually in promoting the consumption of milk and dairy products nonoptimum allocations of funds miss opportunity to achieve high returns the possibility of potential losses emphasizes the importance of understanding the economics of dairy promotion the continuing effect of advertising on sales after the original period of expenditure is aptly summarized by waugh s statement that old advertisements never die they just fade away the lingering impact of advertising suggests the use of a dynamnic setting in which to explore promotion issues thus far most of the atten

impact of agricultural research and extension on crop productivity in pakistan a production function approach abstract this study analyzes the contribution that agricultural research and extension made to crop productivity in pakistan from 1955 to 1981 using a production function approach it estimates the marginal internal rate of return to these activities the estimated rate of around 36 is in the range reported for other countries considering this high rate of return and the low public spending on agricultural research and extension in pakistan the obvious policy recommendation is to allocate more and higher quality resources to these activities to facilitate a rapid increase in agricultural productivity

the gains from research into tradable commodities this paper develops a model for assessing the aggregate level and distribution of the benefits of reseach into tradable commodities it estimates gains to australia and to the rest of the world from research into the wool and wheat industries

potential benefits of agricultural research and extension in peru the benefits of agricultural research and extension are examined in an ex ante consumer producer surplus framework for five commodities in peru the effects of demand shifts over time and government pricing policies on research and extension benefits are considered data for the analysis include the results of research and extension questionnaires administered at seven sites in peru the projected rates of return to research and extension indicate substantial returns to public investments

estimating the benefits of public plant breeding beyond profits in this study we estimate increases in producer revenue total exports and welfare effects from the genetic gains of the rice breeding program at the university of arkansas system uofa division of agriculture from 1983 to 2016 rice producers are paid based on both the quantity and quality of rice therefore we implement a cluster specific fixed effects model based on location and year to identify the contributions of the uofa breeding program for both paddy yields quantity and head rice yields quality attribute over time additionally the estimated increased yield was imputed into the riceflow trade model to estimate price and export effects including spillover benefits from uofa varieties we find that on average u s rice producers gain 30 9 million usd annually the expansion of u s long grain rice exports facilitated by the uofa is estimated to be 53 000 milled metric tons annually which is enough to lower rice prices by over 1 in low income countries such as haiti panama and nicaragua overall the public breeding program at the uofa contributes to 1 positive genetic gains 2 additional revenue in the mid south and 3 increased trade between the u s and rice consuming countries

functional forms exogenous shifts and economic surplus changes conditions for exact welfare measures in equilibrium displacement modeling are examined these relate to the functional form of supply and demand the nature of the exogenous shift and the definition of percentage changes approximation errors when these conditions are not met in empirical applications are investigated and analytical expressions for the errors derived significant errors are possible when a proportional shift is assumed the assumptions underlying alston and wohlgenant s empirical findings are identified the restriction that supply must be elastic is shown to be unnecessary

market distortions and benefits from research the benefits from cost reducing research and their distribution under a range of price policies are compared with those that would arise in the absence of the policies while any price policy affects the distribution of research benefits the net national or world benefits may be reduced lef unchanged or increased depending on the nature of the policy and the significance of the country in the world market for the commodity some implications for decisions on price policies and for distortions in incentives for the allocation of resources to research are raised

legislators and interest groups how unorganized interests get represented this paper derives a supply price for public policy using a constrained maximization model in the model three sets of agents each have preferences over outcomes organized interest groups offer campaign contributions to improve their own wealth voters offer votes to obtain outcomes closer to their most preferred outcomes and legislators seek both campaign contributions and votes to obtain reelection a given legislator s supply price for policy is shown to depend on the productivity of his effort as determined by committee assignments priority and ability and by the preferences of his unorganized constituency in the home district two extreme assumptions about the effectiveness of campaign spending in eliciting votes are used to illustrate the comparative statics properties of the model the prediction of the model is that interest groups will in general seek out legislators whose voters are indifferent to the policy the interest group seeks thus voters who do have preferences over policy are in effect represented even though they are not organized

the distribution of gains from technological advance when input quality varies empirical evidence about new corn production technology in illinois supports the hypothesis that yield and output enhancing effects vary depending on whether technology is input here land quality dependent or independent in turn these differences affect the distribution of economic surplus from technology adoption across geographic regions with varying land quality a competitive market clearing model for a traded commodity is used to estimate the gains in economic surplus from technological advance

meat and milk self sufficiency in asia forecast trends and implications abstract recent structural changes in dietary patterns in asia resulting from economic development are placing increasing pressure on the existing production systems in the region particularly those systems producing ruminant meat non ruminant meat and milk this has significant policy implications for the countries in the region in terms of self sufficiency goals in these commodities and the associated inter and intra regional trade opportunities in the future forecasts of ruminant meat non ruminant meat and milk production and consumption for selected asian countries between the years 2000 and 2010 revealed the following china pakistan and viet nam are likely to be self sufficient with respect to ruminant meat malaysia is likely to continue to be a net importer of ruminant meat india and malaysia will be more than self sufficient with respect to non ruminant meat with the converse being true for pakistan and india laos and pakistan will be self sufficient with respect to milk production with the possibility of indonesia thailand and cambodia becoming self sufficient if the current trends continue structural changes in the early 1980s generally resulted in higher average annual growth rates of production particularly in non ruminant meat production thus forecasts of ruminant meat production and consumption by 2000 using the medium term average annual growth rates for production present a more favourable outcome in terms of self sufficiency for countries such as bangladesh the philippines and viet nam but a less favourable outcome for countries such as indonesia malaysia laos and india similar forecasts for non ruminant meat indicated an improvement in the long term non ruminant self sufficiency estimates for most cases particularly for bangladesh china and cambodia intensification and commercialisation of meat production systems have increased meat self sufficiency in a number of countries but often at the expense of grain self sufficiency given these trends the impact of trade liberalisation measures on livestock production in the region and inter and intra regional trade of livestock commodities and grain is likely to be significant

returns to investments in small ruminant research in indonesia the small ruminant collaborative research support program sr crsp in west java abstract small ruminant research carried out by the sr crsp on management nutrition and reproduction was developed and evaluated through an outreach pilot program in west java indonesia on farm testing indicated that introduction of different management practices could increase birth rate and survivability of javanese thin tail sheep this article presents results from an assessment of research investments that measures the potential returns from this technological package with various adoption and spillover effects weighs the benefits against the research and training costs of the sr crsp and looks at distribution of benefits among consumers and producers of sheep in indonesia the rate of return in the most conservative scenario was 19 with potential short run benefits exceeding the costs incurred by breeding and nutrition research and training of 23 masters and doctoral students in 10 years market conditions favor producers in the distribution of benefits

a dual approach to evaluating research benefits in the presence of trade distortions we present a new approach for evaluating the welfare consequences of technical change a major feature is its ability to incorporate multiple distortions and multiple sources of technical change in interrelated markets a modified balance of trade function provides money measures of welfare change in terms of producer profits consumer expenditures and tax revenues alternative specifications of technical change are presented to capture the effects of differences in the form of technical change in an illustrative numerical example the approach is applied to a case involving two distortions and technical changes in two related markets the example shows that the approach is reasonably easy to use and that accounting correctly for price distortions can have important implications for research benefit measures

genetic improvements in major us crops the size and distribution of benefits the distribution of welfare gains of genetic improvements in major us crops is estimated using a world agricultural trade model multi market welfare estimates were 75 larger than estimates based on the price exogenous change in revenue method frequently used by plant breeders annual benefits of these genetic improvements range from us 400 600 million depending on the supply shift specification of this 44 60 accrues to the us 24 34 accrues to other developed countries developing and transitional economies capture 16 22 of the welfare gain the global benefits of a one time permanent increase in us yields are us 8 1 billion discounted at 10 and us 15 4 billion discounted at 5 gains to consumers in developing and transitional economies range from us 6 1 billion 10 discount rate to us 11 6 billion 5 discount rate

the calculation of returns to research in distorted markets reply abstract most of the emperical literature calculating rates of return to publicly sponsored research assumes that research is the only relevant government intervention for most countries this assumption is untenable this paper shows that improperly measuring government inducedmarket distortions can severely bias research rate of return calculations if the interaction between successful research and other government interventions increases the cost of the other interventions then neglecting market distortions unambigously increases the calculated rate of return three examples of government induced distortions show that the magnitude of the upward bias in calculated rates of return can be extremely large in some cases more than 100 percentage points a normative implication is that governments should account for interactions between research and price interventions when determining research support levels a positive implication is that existing government research funding patterns are more readily explainable as reasonable behavior by a government that accounts for these interactions

the politics of underinvestment in agricultural research this paper develops a political economy framework that determines the factors causing underinvestment in public research expenditures governments are unable to fully compensate for unequal income distribution effects of research because of either their inability to make credible commitments or ofdeadweight costs associated with compensation

the distribution of benefits from technical change among classes of consumers and producers an ex anteanalysis of beans in brazil abstract because new agricultural technology in developing countries has sometimes bypassed small farmers who are an important social group in low income countries design of technology specifically appropriate to small farmers has been advocated as a policy goal this paper appraises the comparative returns to investment in small farm biased scale neutral and large farm biased technology for bean production in brazil a consumer surplus model is developed to estimate the distribution of benefits among producing sectors and classes of consumers while previous studies have relied on geometrical approximations to measure economic benefits as the area under the supply shifts here an exact analytic solution is obtained by integrating from the supply axis scale neutral technology leads to significant small farmer benefits while maximizing benefits to consumers large farm biased technology results in less benefits to small farmers and consumers and only minor gains to large farmers when compared to scale neutral technology small farm biased technology produces the greatest gains to small farmers but the lowest level of benefits to consumers

the silence of the lambdas a test of the almost ideal and rotterdam models during the past decade the linear approximate la almost ideal demand system and the rotterdam model have been adopted by agricultural economists as the demand systems of choice in most applications the apparent explanation is that the two models are both second order locally flexible and compatible with demand theory they have identical data requirements and are equally parsimonious with respect to parameters and both are linear in the parameters while the two models are thus equally attractive in most respects and indeed appear very similar in structure they lead to different results in some applications this article develops a test of each against the other in an illustrative application to u s meat demand the almost ideal model is rejected while the rotterdam model is not