was the emergence of the international gold standard expected evidence from indian government securities abstract the emergence of the gold standard has for a long time been viewed as inevitable we analyze agents expectations using the spread between gold and silver bonds issued by the indian government we find that bimetallism was credible until france surprised markets by suspending domestic operation of bimetallism triggering a run away from silver thereafter markets began demanding a premium to hold silver bonds indicating their belief that silver would depreciate in the future as more countries moved on gold

causal relationships between public sector agricultural research expenditures and output allocative decisions concerning public sector agricultural research appear to be driven by both supply and politically mediated demand forces in sample granger tests along with post sample predictive tests suggest that simultaneity issues should not be ignored when modeling the research expenditure output relationship the results also provide strong evidence that the impact of research expenditures on agricultural output may persist for as long as thirty years these lags are substantially longer than those commonly used for agricultural research to date the lagged effect of output on research appears to be shorter though still between ten and twelve years in this article we analyze the empirical relationship between public sector agricultural research and agricultural output our interest in this question was spurred on two fronts first emphasis of the contemporary economic literature has shifted from an analysis of the consequences of technical change to an explanation of the observed rate and direction of inventive activity a substantial proportion of this literature has focused on appropriable technologies originating in the private sector and remained largely silent on related issues in the public sector here we analyze the dynamics of public sector research in particular publicly sponsored agricultural research in the

accessing modern science policy and institutional options for agricultural biotechnology in developing countries the paper highlights the complexity of the challenge in developing forms of collaboration between a variety of actors in the biotechnology area in developing countries national research systems with diverse capacities in biotechnology international research centers local private research and development companies and advanced research institutes in both industrialized and developing countries case studies are provided from strong programs such as india china and brazil which will be tool developers as well as users programs that are developing an adaptive capacity in biotech to use tools and methods in a large number of countries whose research systems have virtually no capacity in molecular biology each type program presents challenges and opportunities for accessing new technologies based on facilitation of private investments public private partnerships and local capacity to design proprietary technologies working with the consultative group on international agricultural research centers as intermediaries and partners and with regional consortia policy and institutional issues for accessing modern science are then discussed and many of the challenges involve developing strategies in intellectual property management while pubic research organizations will need to develop innovative means of segmenting markets to complement private sector interests

carving up the commons emergence of a new international regime for germplasm development and transfer no nation has ever fabricated or maintained a prosperous food system based on genetic resources of purely indigenous origin remarkably many countries now seem ready and almost eager to try such an approach we identify four separate components of an emerging regime that are interacting in ways that should worry everyone concerned with the development and transfer of plant genetic materials into the south new provisions on intellectual property increased concentration of new enabling technologies into a few large multinational companies heightened anxieties over transgenic crops and new problems arising from international agreements we argue that the solutions now being discussed in global forums are either infeasible incomplete or are likely to have seriously negative effects we call instead for creative new thinking on building human capacity in developing countries on the legal status of plant genetic resources and on publicprivate partnerships especially those in service of the poor 2002 published by elsevier science ltd

supply analysis in an oligopsony model primary agricultural markets are often characterized by oligopsony this paper investigates the effect of an agricultural product supply shift on the equilibrium prices and quantities of farm products purchased by food processors and on profits of food processors the principal comparative static result indicates that under oligopsony qualitative implications of a disturbance in the supply of raw input differ from that under perfect competition and monopsony effects of other disturbances are identical in sign to the perfectly competitive case although magnitudes may differ implications for supply estimation and agricultural policy analysis are briefly discussed

can the public sector meet the challenge of private research commentary on falcon and fowler and pingali and traxler abstract the growth of private sector participation in agricultural research has serious implications for pro poor technology development but there are other factors that must be considered new plant varieties are not the only things standing between resource poor farmers and secure livelihoods and institutional strengthening is also necessary in addition the current state of public agricultural research is cause for concern it is not clear how many effective public private partnerships can be formed the public sector needs a much clearer definition of its targets and priorities and funding strategies for national and international agricultural research must be overhauled

water seeks a level modeling bimetallic exchange rates and the bimetallic band arbitrage costs are usually treated as a mere footnote in formal analyses of bimetallism at the same time recent empirical research has demonstrated their key importance since they produced a bimetallic band this paper provides the first model of bimetallism that takes this explicitly into account and uses it to explain a number of stylized features of the french bimetallic experience 1850 1870 first the model explains the association between the location of the price ratio within its band and the nature either cross or joint of specie flows second it explains the correlation between bimetallic exchange rates and the bimetallic ratio and third it explains the two humps distribution of the bimetallic ratio this analysis leads to a reconsideration of bimetallism the fluctuations of the price ratio are no longer evidence of the collapse of bimetallism but are part of the normal functioning of a bimetallic system

pro poor agricultural biotechnology can the international research system deliver the goods abstract while global investment in agricultural research by the private sector is increasing with growth in developing country markets and the emergence of new technologies complementary public sector investment is stagnating or declining in many developing countries this review argues that the changing roles of the public and private sectors in generating new scientific knowledge may adversely affect the diffusion of explicitly pro poor technologies technologies that are simultaneously yield enhancing and poverty reducing comparing historical evidence from the green revolution with recent evidence from the emerging era of agricultural biotechnology this review argues that a more pluralistic international system for agricultural research will be more responsive to poverty only if the strategic leadership role of the public sector is strengthened certain research functions are reallocated to the private sector and new policy and organizational mechanisms are used to stimulate pro poor research in and for developing country agriculture

slotting allowances as a facilitating practice by food processors in wholesale grocery markets profitability and welfare effects slotting allowances which are lump sum transfers paid by food manufacturers to grocery retailers in return for various retail concessions are becoming increasingly common in wholesale grocery markets this article extends the literature on slotting allowances by considering two features that previously have been ignored the role of food processors in determining these pricing arrangements and the effect of slotting allowances on the size and distribution of economic surplus slotting allowances motivated by food processors increase procurement quantities and farm prices and this raises farm surplus increases total producer surplus and improves consumer welfare in the food system

global agriculture r d and the changing aid architecture agriculture research knowledge and technology that transcends national borders has played a crucial role in enhancing developing country productivity growth over the past 50 years the demand for international agriculture research iar continues to be strong today even while becoming increasingly differentiated by the stage of development that a particular country or region is in the supply of iar to developing country research programs is however becoming increasingly constrained by variable donor support a push toward downstream product adaptation and dissemination activities relative to innovation and product development and a lack of clear links between international public good research and national agriculture development priorities country level donor coordination and alignment mechanisms specified in the paris declaration on aid effectiveness do not explicitly account for the role of iar in the development process while the movement toward national ownership of its development agenda and donor alignment around it is unquestionably good an unintended consequence could be a break in the r d pipeline that supplies public good research and technologies for enhancing developing country agriculture productivity growth the article presents options for rebuilding synergies between international public good research and national agriculture development priorities

options on the minimum or the maximum of two risky assets analysis and applications this paper provides analytical formulas for european put and call options on the minimum or the maximum of two risky assets the properties of these formulas are discussed in detail options on the minimum or the maximum of two risky assets are useful to price a wide variety of contingent claims of interest to financial economists applications discussed in this paper include the valuation of foreign currency debt option bonds compensation plans risk sharing contracts secured debt and growth opportunities involving mutually exclusive investments

an intertemporal general equilibrium model of asset prices this paper develops a continuous time general equilibrium model of a simple but complete economy and uses it to examine the behavior of asset prices in this model asset prices and their stochastic properties are determined endogenously one principal result is a partial differential equation which asset prices must satisfy the solution of this equation gives the equilibrium price of any asset in terms of the underlying real variables in the economy in this paper we develop a general equilibrium asset pricing model for use in applied research an important feature of the model is its integration of real and financial markets among other things the model endogenously determines the stochastic process followed by the equilibrium price of any financial asset and shows how this process depends on the underlying real variables the model is fully consistent with rational expectations and maximizing behavior on the part of all agents our framework is general enough to include many of the fundamental forces affecting asset markets yet it is tractable enough to be specialized easily to produce specific testable results furthermore the model can be extended in a number of straightforward ways consequently it is well suited to a wide variety of applications for example in a companion paper cox ingersoll and ross 7 we use the model to develop a theory of the term structure of interest rates many studies have been concerned with various aspects of asset pricing under uncertainty the most relevant to our work are the important papers on intertemporal asset pricing by merton 19 and lucas 16 working in a continuous time framework merton derives a relationship among the equilibrium expected rates of return on assets he shows that when investment opportunities are changing randomly over time this relationship will include effects which have no analogue in a static one period model lucas considers an economy with homogeneous individuals and a single consumption good which is produced by a number of processes the random output of these processes is exogenously determined and perishable assets are defined as claims to all or a part of the output of a process and the equilibrium determines the asset prices our theory draws on some elements of both of these papers like merton we formulate our model in continuous time and make full use of the analytical tractability that this affords the economic structure of our model is somewhat similar to that of lucas however we include both endogenous production and

ex ante analysis of the benefits of transgenic drought tolerance research on cereal crops in low income countries this article develops a framework to examine the ex ante benefits of transgenic research on drought in eight low income countries including the benefits to producers and consumers from farm income stabilization and the potential magnitude of private sector profits from intellectual property rights iprs the framework employs country specific agroecological drought risk zones and considers both yield increases and yield variance reductions when estimating producer and consumer benefits from research benefits from yield variance reductions are shown to be an important component of aggregate drought research benefits representing 40 of total benefits across the eight countries further estimated annual benefits of us 178 million to the private sector suggest that significant incentives exist for participation in transgenic drought tolerance research

imperfect competition functional forms and the size and distribution of research benefits abstract the effects of functional forms for supply and demand on the size and distribution of the returns to research are examined under a range of forms of competition under perfect competition the choice of functional form is relatively unimportant for the estimation of research benefits under imperfect competition the combination of the choice of functional forms for supply and demand and the nature of the research induced supply shift can have profound implications for the results functional form plays a much more important role than in the competitive model the most important contrast is between the constant elasticity model and the linear model along with various cases of a generalized linear model these findings are illustrated using a combination of analytical results and numerical simulations

the adoption of genetically modified papaya in hawaii and its implications for developing countries 1 abstract as agricultural biotechnology becomes increasingly commercialised numerous constraints limit adoption by developing country producers these include technology access impacts on farmers yields and profits privatisation of research and intellectual property biosafety regulatory frameworks and trade related market restrictions this essay analyses development of the genetically modified papaya and its commercialisation in hawaii as a response to a virulent plant disease papaya ringspot virus results of a survey of hawaiian papaya growers suggest that the unprecedentedly rapid adoption of gm papaya is due to this technology s having addressed many of these key constraints facing growers the implications for developing country adoption of gm varieties are explored

optimal commodity promotion when downstream markets are imperfectly competitive we investigate the optimal collection and expenditure of funds for agricultural commodity promotion in markets where the processing and distribution sectors may exhibit oligopoly and or oligopsony power the conditions that characterize optimal advertising intensity under perfect competition for funds generated from either per unit or lump sum taxes do not in general hold when marketing is imperfectly competitive simulation analyses show that imperfect competition always reduces farmers optimal advertising expenditure and that an imperfectly competitive marketing sector may capture half or more of the benefits from the funds that are expended copyright 2002 oxford university press

the effect of farm supply shifts on concentration and market power in the food processing sector in this paper we examine the marginal impact of changing farm supply on the market structure of the downstream food processing sector we develop a theoretical model that allows for cost differences among processors and endogenizes downstream entry and exit comparative statics results are consistent with several well established trends in the food processing sector in particular the analysis demonstrates that increasing concentration in the food processing sector is consistent with decreasing market power indeed we find that when the farm supply curve shifts outward an increase in concentration can only occur when there is a decrease in market power

a model of bimetallism bimetallism has been the subject of considerable debate was it a viable monetary system was it desirable in our model the amounts of each metal are split between coined metal satisfying a cash in advance constraint and uncoined metal yielding utility the ratio of the monies in the cash in advance constraint is endogenous bimetallism is feasible we find a continuum of steady states indexed by the constant exchange rate of the monies bimetallism is not desirable among steady states welfare under monometallism is higher than under any bimetallic equilibrium long run trends in gold and silver production placed limits on the maintenance of bimetallism at any given ratio but its sudden collapse in 1873 remains a puzzle

biofuels and the poor global impact pathways of biofuels on agricultural markets this study seeks to assess the future impacts of biofuel production on regional agricultural and related sectors over the next decade with a specific focus on the vulnerable regions of developing nations using a modification of the gtap modeling platform to account for the global interactions of regional biofuel and food markets the analysis shows that biofuel production levels depend on the assumption about the future price of energy and the nature of the substitutability between biofuels and petroleum based transport fuels low energy prices reduce the demand for biofuels and thus require greater government support to meet the desired production targets at the other extreme when prices are high and there is scope for substituting biofuels for petroleum based fuels the volume of biofuels produced will exceed the mandates even when biofuels are being mainly produced in developed countries our results indicate that there are impact pathways that extend far beyond the borders of the us brazil and the eu prices of feedstock and non feedstock commodities rise in developing countries there is also a rise in value added from the agricultural sector a gain that is enjoyed by the owners of land and labor including unskilled hence to the extent that agriculture is a key sector in getting growth started and addressing poverty needs the emergence of biofuels can in this way at least be a positive force

optimal expenditures for agricultural research and extension implications of underfunding significant increases in agricultural productivity will be needed for the united states to meet its future food policy goals related to an abundant and stable food supply the nation s ability to meet this challenge will depend on the level of investment in agricultural research and extension each dollar of underfunding relative to the economically efficient level of research and extension expenditures a will cost the government 2 56 1 50 discounted if it later makes up for the low investment level or b will cost consumers 4 39 3 07 discounted if the government does not make up for the low level of investment

the effects of imperfect competition on the size and distribution of research benefits studies of agricultural research benefits usually assume perfectly competitive markets studies that have allowed for market power of agribusiness firms have generally assumed unrealistic pure monopsony or monopoly behavior this paper allows for processing firms to exhibit a range of degrees of oligopsony power in buying raw farm products and oligopoly power in selling processed farm products the results indicate that different types of research induced technical change can exacerbate or ameliorate distortions from the exercise of market power by agribusiness firms which affects the size and especially the distribution of research benefits

can public private partnerships leverage private investment in agricultural value chains in africa a preliminary review summary public private partnerships ppps may be one way of increasing the level of private sector investment into poorly performing agricultural value chains this paper considers a range of ppp mechanisms that respond to different market failures affecting such chains and draws on principal agent theory to illustrate the challenges it reviews emerging experience with a number of these mechanisms along with experience from other sectors that may shed light on generic problems of implementing ppps in africa while finding some positive impacts on investment it notes that state failures can also undermine ppp effectiveness as the evidence base is still limited it calls on organizations promoting innovative ppps to disclose available information for critical examination

the potential benefits of herbicide resistant transgenic rice in uruguay lessons for small developing countries abstract in many developing countries the potential benefits from adopting a transgenic variety developed by a multinational corporation are limited by the crop s small production base this paper presents an ex ante evaluation of the economic impact of herbicide resistant transgenic rice in a small developing country uruguay to fully account for the multinational s market power the firm s seed markup is assumed to affect the adoption rate for the variety stochastic simulation techniques are employed to understand how potential benefits may vary with changes in technology yield costs and adoption parameters the results indicate a 1 82 million mean net present value for producers from the development and utilization of transgenic rice in uruguay and 0 55 million for the multinational these relatively small multinational firm benefits suggest that a firm will not undertake significant efforts to develop transgenic varieties adapted to local conditions without either strategic partnerships with local institutions or access to wider regional markets

a nonparametric analysis of the influence of research on agricultural productivity nonparametric productivity analysis is extended by modeling technical progress as a function of public and private research expenditures results indicate that 30 year lags are required to fully capture the effects of public research expenditures on u s agricultural productivity compared to public research private research has a stronger influence on farm productivity in the short term but a smaller influence in the longer term the internal rate of return is 0 28 for public research and 0 17 for private research

an ex post valuation of the quality option implicit in the treasury bond futures contract abstract this paper develops three empirical estimates of the value of the quality delivery option implicit in the treasury bond futures contract a an ex ante value as given by the excess of forward price of the cheapest to deliver bond over its conversion factor times the futures price b an ex post value equal to the payoffs to a strategy of buying and holding a short futures long forward position at the start and delivering the cheapest bond at the expiration of futures contract and c another ex post value equal to the sum of payoffs to a continuous rollover strategy involving a short futures long forward position in the cheapest to deliver bonds three months prior to delivery the average values of the three estimates are 464 329 and 2 075 respectively the differences among the three estimates appear to be largely due to nonsynchronous spot futures data

demographic variables in demand analysis in this paper the authors discuss five procedures for incorporating demographic variables into theoretically plausible demand systems translating scaling and the gorman reverse gorman and implicit prais houthakker procedures these five procedures are used to incorporate a single demographic variable the number of children in a household into the generalized ces demand system using household budget data for the united kingdom for the period 1966 1972 excerpt

testing expected utility maximization under price and quantity risk with a heterogeneous panel refutable implications based on the curvature properties of the indirect utility function for the competitive firm operating under uncertainty are extended to the case of both price and quantity uncertainty using unit roots and cointegration tests for heterogeneous panels a model of us agricultural production is developed based on the time series properties of a panel of state level data most refutable hypotheses under output price and output quantity risk are not rejected but symmetry conditions implied by a twice continuously differentiable indirect utility function are rejected the same test conclusions are obtained from a traditional model that presumes stationarity in all variables

the future of small farms trajectories and policy priorities summary while smallholder development has in the past led to reductions in poverty and hunger does this still apply in today s more globalized world this paper reviews the debates on the contemporary role of agriculture in development and the case for small farms in light of the rise of supermarkets lower commodity prices and liberalized trade agricultural research funding environmental change hiv aids and changing policy ideas although the answers vary greatly by context for many low income countries smallholder development remains a key option the policy agenda however has changed in addition to providing public goods the growing challenge is to overcome market failures which is largely a matter of institutional innovation

nominal contracts in a bimetallic standard as its central feature a bimetallic standard grants nominal debtors an option to deliver either of two metals with results from the option pricing literature construction of a formula to evaluate the bimetallic option in debt instruments is straightforward with this formula one can compute the option value in a wide range of nineteenth century u s treasury securities posession of the option values permits an adjustment of the yields on u s securities to make them comparable to yields on nonmetallic european securities evaluating the option allows the estimation of transfers from debtors to creditors copyright 1986 by american economic association

analysis of a supply control program under uncertainty and imperfect competition chinese cabbage in taiwan researchers have often attributed the farm wholesale price spread after adjusting for marketing costs as compensation for marketing firms risk bearing however price spreads in excess of marketing costs can also be due to marketing firms exercise of market power in settings where both imperfect competition and marketer risk aversion are plausible a modeling framework must be sufficiently general to accommodate both types of behavior this article develops and estimates such a model in the context of fresh produce marketing and develops the implications for analysis of supply control programs the model is applied to the production and marketing of chinese cabbage in taiwan and specifically to the analysis of supply control programs implemented in this industry by the taiwanese government the empirical results provide little support for the hypothesis that marketing firms exhibit risk averse behavior but they do show that marketing firms exercise oligopsony power in procurement of the product from farmers and that this power is positively related to the quantity supplied in each market period this provides a heretofore unexplored impetus for supply controls intended to raise producer incomes however such controls are also rendered less effective by imperfect competition because marketing firms capture part of the benefits from supply reduction

the seed and agricultural biotechnology industries in india an analysis of industry structure competition and policy options since the late 1980s technological advances and policy reforms have created new opportunities for private sector investment in india s seed and agricultural biotechnology industries these changes have had a significant impact on cotton yields and output in india but less so for rice and wheat the country s main cereal staples for which yield growth rates are tending toward stagnation this analysis examines the structures of these industries their potential effects on competition and innovation and the policies that may improve both industry performance and the delivery of new productivity enhancing technologies to india s cereal production systems our findings suggest that more substantive policy reforms are needed to encourage further innovation reduce regulatory uncertainty and encourage firm and industry level growth while continued public spending on agricultural research is needed to support technological change

systems of innovation theory and the changing architecture of agricultural research in africa abstract this paper examines the on going evolution of the organisational architecture of agricultural research in africa once considered a rural backwater populated by agronomists extension agents and farmers agricultural research is now being explicitly placed within global debates about innovation technology institutions and development this is reflected in a growing interest in the use of systems of innovation theory to both understand and reform innovation processes within agriculture the basic argument put forward in the paper is that the conception of a global agricultural research system and associated efforts to create a coordinated multi layered supra national research infrastructure are at odds with both the realities of research at national level and the bio physical and socio economic heterogeneity that characterises rural africa it is suggested that a less directive approach to support for agricultural research is required to allow national characteristics and differences to come to the fore and to give more room for the development of the all important demand side

impact of bt cotton in china abstract a sample of 283 cotton farmers in northern china was surveyed in december 1999 farmers that used cotton engineered to produce the bacillus thuringiensis bt toxin substantially reduced the use of pesticide without reducing the output ha or quality of cotton this resulted in substantial economic benefits for small farmers consumers did not benefit directly farmers obtained the major share of benefits and because of weak intellectual property rights very little went back to government research institutes or foreign firms that developed these varieties farmers using bt cotton reported fewer pesticide poisonings than those using conventional cotton

the politics of technological upgrading international transfer to and adaptation of gm cotton in argentina summary we describe patterns of international transfer to and adaptation of genetically modified gm cotton in argentina and ask whether political bargaining between the technology owner a multinational enterprise mne and host country actors may have influenced upgrading we suggest that the mne was able to use its exclusive capacity to upgrade gm cotton technologies as a negotiation tool to persuade host actors to change the rules that affected its multi lines of business in the country this implies wider policy scope to encourage technology upgrading host actors could negotiate over a wider range of aspects of interest to mnes

private sector incentives and the diffusion of agricultural technology evidence from developing countries abstractthe role of intellectual property rights iprs has been extensively debated in the literature on technology transfers and agricultural productivity growth in developing countries however few studies offer cross country evidence on how iprs affect yield growth by incentivising private sector investment in cultivar improvement we address this knowledge gap by testing technology diffusion patterns for six major crops using a unique dataset for the period 1961 2010 and an arellano bond linear dynamic panel data estimation approach findings indicate that biological and legal forms of iprs promote yield gap convergence between developed and developing countries although effects vary by crop

returns to public investments in agriculture with imperfect downstream competition a multiple market framework is developed to measure the size and distribution of research benefits the model considers an upstream raw product market and a downstream finished product market and allows for imperfect competition in the intermediary food processing sector a central conceptual result is derived an increase in raw product output is a sufficient condition for costreducing innovations in the farm sector to increase social welfare a special case of linear farm supply and isoelastic processing production functions reveals that necessary conditions for welfare to decrease are a convergent farm supply shift an oligopsonistic upstream market configuration and increasing returns to scale processing technology a basic goal of public agricultural research is to reduce the costs of farm production toward this end governments have invested considerable resources to improve basic scientific knowledge develop novel technologies and facilitate the adoption of modern plant varieties and farming methods economists have generally concluded that public investments in agriculture have achieved remarkable success in lowering the marginal cost of farm production due in large part to the effectiveness of land grant research and extension activities chavas and cox cochrane as a result of these cost changes public agricultural investments have been shown to yield impressive social rates of return in numerous studies for a survey of this literature see alston norton and pardey several recent papers have shown that imperfect competition in the downstream processing sector can affect both the size and the distribution of welfare changes dryburgh and doyle consider the impact of technical innovation in a multimarket study of the british dairy industry under alternate downstream in

a nonparametric analysis of agricultural technology u s agricultural technology and technical change are analyzed nonparametrically under cost minimization and profit maximization based on annual data for 1948 83 various separability hypotheses concerning the aggregate production function for u s agriculture are investigated the proposed nonparametric approach also provides some insights into the nature of technical change

supplying crop biotechnology to the poor opportunities and constraints abstract unlike the public sector research that launched the green revolution private firms based in industrialised countries have done the majority of agricultural biotechnology research and almost all commercialisation of genetically modified gm crops this paper examines consequences of the emergence of a few large companies as leaders in the commercialisation of biotechnology by addressing issues of access to technology costs of conducting research and distribution of economic benefits to provide context we first review the status of crop biotechnology research globally who is benefiting from the technology we then analyse the role of intellectual property rights market access and industry concentration public sector research and gm crop biosafety regulations in determining observed r d by firms the paper recommends policy measures that allow transfer of current technology to the poor and generate more biotechnology research focused on problems of the poor

global water crisis and future food security in an era of climate change food policy should serve humanity by advancing the humane goals of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger however these goals have recently been challenged by emerging forces including climate change water scarcity the energy crisis as well as the credit crisis this paper analyses the overall role of these forces and population growth in redefining global food security specifically global water supply and demand as well as the linkages between water supply and food security are examined the analysis reveals that the water for food security situation is intricate and might get daunting if no action is taken investments are needed today for enhancing future food security this requires action on several fronts including tackling climate change preserving land and conserving water reducing the energy footprint in food systems developing and adopting climate resilient varieties modernising irrigation infrastructure shoring up domestic food supplies reforming international food trade and responding to other global challenges

measuring the marginal cost of nonuniform environmental regulations a method is presented for measuring the marginal welfare cost of environmental regulations affecting agriculture the method incorporates output market effects and recognizes diversity in production conditions among crops regions and seasons an important advantage of the method is that only regional outputs and changes in regional production costs are needed to calculate deadweight loss thus simplifying the measurement of welfare changes this feature of the model is significant since the complexity and substantial data requirements of most existing impact models cause many environmental regulations to be enacted with inadequate analysis of their economic impacts the method also disaggregates welfare impacts by crop place and time thus encouraging the implementation of nonuniform interventions that achieve a given level of environmental quality more efficiently than uniform policies

measuring research benefits in an imperfect market reply to holloway voon s original claim voon 1994 was that the benefits of generating through research a parallel shift in a monopolist s marginal cost curve exceeded the benefits from generating the same shift if the curve represented the market supply curve for a competitive industry as we noted in a subsequent comment this result was wrong with voon s error being due to the use of incmrect normalization procedures in his simu lation analysis we further articulated the general principle that welfare from an innovation in a mono poly industry would be greater than in a structurally equivalent competitive industry if and only if the deadweight loss due to monopoly decreased as a consequence of that innovation finally we opined that this condition will normally not be met in mono poly or other imperfectly competitive structures because in seeking to capture benefits from the inno vation a monopoly or oligopoly industry will generate less output expansion than would occur under perfect competition thereby causing the deadweight loss to increase

changing locus of agricultural research will the poor benefit from biotechnology and privatization trends over the past decade the locus of agricultural research and development has shifted dramatically from the public to the private multinational sector three interrelated forces are transforming the system for supplying improved agricultural technologies to the world s farmers the first is the strengthened and evolving environment for protecting intellectual property in plant innovations the second is the rapid pace of discovery and growth in importance of molecular biology and genetic engineering finally agricultural input and output trade is becoming more open in nearly all countries these developments have created a powerful new set of incentives for private research investment altering the structure of the public private agricultural research endeavor particularly with respect to crop improvement

realignment expectations and the us dollar 1890 1897 was there a peso problem we investigate dollar sterling exchange rate expectations during the period 1890 1908 we show that the dollar faced a peso problem in that for much of the period financial markets expected it to depreciate against sterling but this never in fact happened i e expectations were persistently biased drawing on the economic history of the period we identify 11 events which probably gave rise to realignment expectations once the dollar s adherence to the gold standard was settled as a political matter in the 1896 presidential election expectations of dollar realignment abruptly subsided and united states interest rates fell relative to british rates

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

measuring returns to an innovation in an imperfectly competitive market application to mechanical harvesting of processing tomatoes in taiwan in this paper we develop and apply a general imperfect competition model to evaluate returns to a cost reducing innovation most related work has applied models of perfect competition results demonstrate that welfare estimates derived from a model of perfect competition may be seriously distorted when the relevant market is imperfectly competitive application to mechanical harvesting of processing tomatoes in taiwan reveals the potential for significant benefits to adoption of mechanical harvesting in taiwan however farmers incentives to adopt the harvester are attenuated because total benefits are reduced by oligopsony power in tomato procurement and imperfectly competitive processors will capture a large share of the benefits that remain in this paper we analyze the welfare impacts of mechanical harvesting of processing tomatoes in taiwan a key distinguishing feature of the study relative to previous empirical work on returns to innovations is that it permits market power to be exhibited in both the markets for the raw agricultural product and the processed product outputs indeed the empirical results find significant processor market power in taiwan in both the procurement of raw tomatoes and the sale of processed products in the domestic market the study demonstrates that welfare estimates derived from a model of perfect competition may be seriously distorted when in fact the relevant markets are imper

recent developments in intellectual property and power in the private sector related to food and agriculture the legal protection of intellectual property ip has allowed private persons and enterprises to assert exclusive rights in relation to certain agricultural innovations whether through the protection of breeding innovations under plant variety rights protection laws or through the patenting of genes and gene fragments the increasing involvement of iprs in agriculture has effected a shift of agricultural research from public to private institutions this article examines the changes in the international ip landscape which has facilitated these developments and looks at the impacts of modern ip developments upon agricultural research and farmers it concludes with a consideration of ip liability issues arising from the development of gm agriculture

does oligopsony power matter in price support policy design empirical evidence from the thai jasmine rice market in the oligopsony market farmers may receive low prices and policy analysis assuming perfect competition can yield serious bias results in this paper we estimate oligopsony power between processors and farmers and evaluate the welfare impact of the paddy pledging program ppp a generous price support program in the thai jasmine rice market with an imperfect competition model we develop a model that consists of rice supply equation and derived demand equation we then simultaneously estimate these equations using system estimation methods to recover oligopsony power parameters finally we use these parameters to assess the welfare impact of the price support program using annual panel data running from crop marketing year 2001 2002 2015 2016 and exploiting the institutional feature of the ppp we find strong evidence of some oligopsony power a moderate level of oligopsony price distortion and a negative relationship between price support and oligopsony power we also find that the ppp is inefficient but effective in income redistribution moreover the program benefits both farmers and consumers with better policymaking decisions the ppp can be efficient by setting a suitable support price therefore our results show that in the case of the thai jasmine rice market the generally accepted wisdom about agricultural price support policy does not necessarily hold and price support can be designed to improve the efficiency of the market