direct payments spatial competition and farm survival in norway we argue that farm survival is influenced by neighboring farmers characteristics and in particular by the direct payments neighboring farmers receive the article shows empirically that these interdependencies are crucial for an assessment of the effects of direct payments on farm survival using spatially explicit farm level data for nearly all norwegian farms a spatial probit model is estimated to explain farm survival from 1999 to 2009 controlling for spatial farm interdependence we show that ignoring spatial interdependencies between farms leads to a substantial overestimation of the effects of direct payments on farm survival to our knowledge this article is the first attempt to empirically analyze the importance of neighboring interdependencies for the effects of direct payments on farm survival

the role of farming experience on the adoption of agricultural technologies evidence from smallholder farmers in uganda abstractthis article investigates the relationship between adoption of and experience with agricultural technologies we use both non parametric and parametric estimations on data from rural farmers in uganda we find an inverted u relationship between adoption of and experience with agricultural technologies in banana coffee and maize this suggests that farming experience is useful in early stages of adoption of a given technology when farmers are still testing its potential benefits which later determine its retention or disadoption over time thus gradual advances in technology development and continuous retraining of farmers are essential for sustainable adoption of agricultural technologies for some crops

learning about a new technology pineapple in ghana this paper investigates the role of social learning in the diffusion of a new agri cultural technology in ghana we use unique data on farmers communication patterns to define each individual s information neighborhood conditional on many potentially confounding variables we find evidence that farmers adjust their inputs to align with those of their information neighbors who were surpris ingly successful in previous periods the relationship of these input adjustments to experience further indicates the presence of social learning in addition applying the same method to input choices for another crop of known technol ogy correctly indicates an absence of social learning effects jel d83 013 033 q16

the geography of market failure edge effect externalities and the location and production patterns of organic farming abstract perceptions of increasing land scarcity and negative impacts of chemical based agriculture have led to increasing concern regarding the sustainability of food systems incompatible production processes among farming systems may lead to spatial conflicts and production losses between neighboring farms and the magnitude of such losses may depend not only on the scale of each activity but also on patterns of land use such conflicts can be classified as edge effect externalities spatial externalities whose marginal impacts decrease as distance from the border generating the negative impact increases this paper tests the hypothesis that edge effect externalities have influenced the location and production patterns of certified organic farms using data from california central valley certified organic farmers using concepts from landscape ecology and spatial statistics we investigate difference in parcel geometry and surrounding land uses between organic and non organic parcels using a generalized method of moments gmm spatially autoregressive econometric model we demonstrate that both parcel geometry and surrounding land uses influence the probability of a given parcel being certified organic we conclude with suggestions for policies to encourage development of organic farming regions

household level determinants of adoption of improved natural resources management practices among smallholder farmers in western kenya abstract integrated natural resources management inrm of which integrated soil fertility management isfm is a component offers considerable promise for increasing food production in kenya it nonetheless remains unclear whether isfm inrm techniques lend themselves easily to adoption by smallholder farmers using panel data collected in western kenya in 1989 and 2002 this study finds that resource constraints limit many farmers adoption of isfm inrm techniques the size of the farm owned by a household the value of its livestock off farm income family labor supply and the educational attainment and gender of the household head all had a significant positive effect on the likelihood of adoption similar factors were found to be statistically significant in discouraging abandonment of the practices under study there thus seem to exist reinforcing feedback between investments in soil fertility management and household wealth as measured by asset endowments our findings raise important questions as to whether isfm and related techniques are really affordable to poorer smallholder farmers

the economics of smallholder organic contract farming in tropical africa summary the paper examines the revenue effects of certified organic contract farming for smallholders and of adoption of organic agricultural farming methods in a tropical african context the comparison in both cases is with farming systems that are organic by default survey data from a large organic coffee contract farming scheme in uganda are reported and analyzed using a standard ols regression and a full information maximum likelihood fiml estimate of the heckman selection model the analysis finds that controlling for a range of factors there are positive revenue effects both from participation in the scheme and more modestly from applying organic farming techniques

women s schooling home teaching and economic growth the hypothesis that increases in the schooling of women enhance the human capital of the next generation and thus make a unique contribution to economic growth is assessed on the basis of data describing green revolution india estimates are obtained that indicate that a component of the significant and positive relationship between maternal literacy and child schooling in the indian setting reflects the productivity effect of home teaching and that the existence of this effect combined with the increase in returns to schooling for men importantly underlies the expansion of female literary following the onset of the green revolution

international borrowing and time consistent fiscal policy we discuss optimal fiscal policy in open economies using an open economy version of a model used in the recent work by lucas and stokey an optimal allocation smooths out the tax distortions associated with financing a given sequence of government consumption and it also smooths out private consumption of goods and leisure by borrowing lending on the international capital market in periods with high low government consumption the main question we ask is how the optimal policy can be made time consistent when usccessive governments reoptimize with respect to current and future tax rates but most honor the government debt obligations we show that this requires government debt of sufficiently rich maturity to be issued first we treat a case with capital controls where only the government can borrow and lend abroad the there is a unique restructuring scheme for the domestic debt that is necessary to give succeeding governments incentives to continue following the optimal policy here we interpret and extend lucas and stokey s results for a small economy this scheme is also sufficient for time consistency but in an economy large enough to affect its terms of trade it is also necessary to follow a unique restructuring scheme for the government s and the country s foreign debt when there are no capital controls time consistency is no longer a problem in a small economy in a large economy what matters is total government debt and total foreign debt but not their composition and again there are unique maturity structures necessary and sufficient for time consistency an interesting observation is that in the distorted world we consider relaxing the capital controls actually deteriorates welfare

farm level fertilizer demand in java a meta production function approach this paper models seed variety choice and the demand for variable inputs as jointly determined by profit maximizing cultivators the approach parallels that of hayami and ruttan who postulated that changes in the output fertilizer price ratio induce movements along a meta fertilizer response function the envelope of individual variety specific response surfaces ignoring the possibility of seed variety switching leads to underestimates of fertilizer demand elasticities in addition estimation with samples reflecting a single seed variety may involve serious selection bias a two stage procedure which adjusts for selectivity bias is used to estimate the model with farm level data from java

debt restructuring with a public good endogenous government expenditure is introduced into lucas and stokey s 1983 model of optimal wage taxation so long as the government can precommit to taxes or to expenditures a debt maturity structure that keeps the value of the debt invariant to interest rate changes will make the optimal policies time consistent in the absence of partial precommitment debt restructuring cannot enforce time consistency but it can still limit the costs of time inconsistency numerical examples show 1 average debt is smaller than under the precommitment solution 2 the debt structure is much longer than under partial precommitment and 3 restricting the government to one period debt overstates the welfare losses from time inconsistency

social networks and technology adoption in northern mozambique despite their potentially strong impact on poverty agricultural innovations are often adopted slowly using a unique household dataset on sunflower adoption in mozambique we analyse whether and how individual adoption decisions depend upon the choices of others in the same social networks since farmers anticipate that they will share information with others we expect farmers to be more likely to adopt when they know many other adopters dynamic considerations however suggest that farmers who know many adopters might strategically delay adoption to free ride on the information gathered by others we present empirical evidence that shows that the relationship between the probability of adoption and the number of known adopters is shaped as an inverse u in line with information sharing the network effect is stronger for farmers who report discussing agriculture with others the data contains information which is needed to ameliorate the identification issues that commonly arise in this context in particular social networks are precisely identified and in addition we can control for village heterogeneity and endogenous group formation

can peers improve agricultural revenue crop revenues vary greatly among farmers and the source of that variation is not fully understood even after controlling for factors including input use technology adoption and other agro climatic factors one hypothesis that may explain the variation in outcomes among farmers is differential access to information through peers using a household survey from india containing detailed information about personal relationships we estimate peer effects on cash crop revenue using a novel spatial econometric technique to control for reflection our results show that 60 of farmers revenue is explained by peers peer effects are particularly large in pesticide use and in the cultivation of a new crop however peer effects in input expenditures and land allocation cannot fully explain the variation in revenue implying peers may also associate with management negotiation and marketing we find that peer effects are significant among farmers self reported peers especially among those peers who are farmers main advisors for agricultural matters although caste based networks both within the same and in adjacent villages are important their effect is smaller than that of self reported peer networks we empirically rule out that our effects are driven by other factors such as geographically correlated unobservables farmers following a lead farmer or economies of scale our findings speak to both the potential and the limitations of peers as sources of agricultural information and highlight the need for future research about how to best integrate peers into agricultural extension

international trade in a differentiated good trade elasticities in the world rice market in many previous rice trade models the commodity has been regarded as a homogeneous product however homogeneity is not an appropriate assumption given the various types of rice that are traded and consumed parameters estimated from these models therefore do not reflect the real world market for rice and hence may mislead decision makers who use the results for policy evaluation purposes this study uses an armington approach to model the world rice trade as a differential good market and to derive trade elasticity parameters

spatial interactions in multiple use forestry and substitution and wealth effects for the single stand abstract forestry models often ignore spatial relationships between forest stands this paper isolates the effects of stand interactions in multiple use forestry through a straightforward extension of the single stand model effects of stand interactions decompose into wealth and substitution effects and may cause time varying patterns of resource use for a forest stand simulations illustrate that a stand s role even in steady state may alternate an emphasis on timber with an emphasis on nontimber optimal management plans differ substantially depending on whether the manager values nonmarket goods from neighboring stands the model offers insights for improving heuristic forest level optimization models in current usage

coexistence rules and regulations in the european union the institutional environment for planting gm crops in europe is heterogeneous poland wants to ban the planting of gm crops spanish farmers have been growing bt maize for several years 120 communities in belgium have declared themselves to be gmo free a local grain trader in germany has announced that it will pay the same price for bt and non bt maize luxemburg wants to fine farmers up to 750 000 for non compliance with coexistence rules and in poland a prison sentence of up to three years may be given farmers in upper austria must apply for authorization for each field intended to be planted with gm crops and farmers in denmark have to pay a levy of 100 dk per hectare of gm crops in 2003 the european commission stated that no form of agriculture be it conventional organic or agriculture using genetically modified organism gmos should be excluded in the european union but simultaneously decided to follow the principle of subsidiary that measures for coexistence should be developed and implemented by the member states cec 2003a p 1 since then some member states have developed and others are still developing a diversity of coexistence measures that may have a profound impact on the adoption rate of gm crops against this background we ask the following question how will the different coexistence policies among eu member states affect the adoption of gm crops

adoption of organic farming in germany and austria an integrative dynamic investment perspective farm level adaptation to changing economic environments is often slower than expected technological innovations for instance are frequently adopted at a later date than the net present value of investment suggests this can be explained by a model of investment under uncertainty which consistently accounts for uncertainty sunk costs and the flexibility of investment timing its essential conclusion is that due to temporal opportunity costs critical incremental cash flows that trigger investments might be higher than those needed for simple cost recovery this accounts for an ostensible reluctance to invest economic hysteresis in this article we demonstrate how slow conversion to organic farming in general and the different rates of conversion in germany and austria in particular can be explained by the new investment theory

time consistent collection of optimal seigniorage a unifying framework this paper reviews the existing literature on the time consistency problem of seigniorage collection when monetary policy is determined by optimal taxation considerations it develops a unifying accounting framework and suggests a general measure for seigniorage which encompasses the standard measures employed in the literature in addition the ex ante optimal solution to the optimal taxation problem is derived and interpreted in relation to the ramsey principle we show that the different recommendations of the public finance literature i e the friedman rule of optimal deflation moderately positive inflation and seigniorage maximizing inflation are specific solutions to the optimal taxation problem the paper continues with a formal illustration of the time consistency problem of the ex ante optimal policy and the characterization of the time consistent solution under discretion as possible solutions to the time consistency problem we consider reputational forces institutional reforms that establish central bank independence and specific ways of asset and debt management in particular it is formally shown that a modified version of the asset and debt management scheme suggested by persson persson and svensson is not only necessary but also sufficient for optimality although this did not hold in their model

risk schooling and the choice of seed technology in developing countries a meta profit function approach the determinants of rice seed variety choice are studied in a framework in which cultivator s variety specific profit risk preferences uncertainty and schooling affect variety choice the econometric model takes the form of a simultaneous equation switching regimes model with random profit functions the meta profit function adoption of high yielding varieties in indonesia is found to be positively associated with profitability likelihood of flooding quality of irrigation conditional on relative profit and availability of credit and negatively associated with likelihood of drought and land wealth schooling significantly affects variety specific profit and input demand but not variety choice the spread of high yielding rice varieties hyv s has ushered in an era of agricultural transformation in asia in indonesia the adoption of these new seed varieties contributed importantly to a spectacular increase in indonesia s rice production over the last decades rice output grew at an annual rate of 4 percent during the 1970 s and almost 6 percent in the 1980 s while experimental plots have demonstrated that under optimal conditions the mean yield of hyv rice far exceeds that of traditional varieties tv s many asian cultivators do not plant hyv s in indonesia the hyv revolution has been particularly slow to spread to many areas outside of java and partly as a consequence the distribution of the gains derived from hyv s has been uneven accounting for differences in adoption rates is therefore of some interest differences in prices and fixed factors of production are one explanation for inter farm differences in seed variety adoption if cultivator s seed technology choices are the result of profit maximizing behavior then varietal choice will depend on the determinants of profit variable factor prices the prices of varietyspecific output and the level of fixed factors including the agro climatic environment different profit functions exist for each variety reflecting the differences in their biological technology if seed variety choice is itself part of the cultivators profit maximization problem then there exists a single profit function the metaprofit function which treats variety choice as a variable input and from which all

indian farmers valuation of yield distributions will poor farmers value pro poor seeds abstract potential poverty traps among the rural poor suggest a need to reduce poor farmers vulnerability by stabilizing crop yields and limiting yield losses advances in biotechnology will help address this need directly with crops that tolerate climate fluctuation or resist biotic stresses evaluating ex ante how farmers will value these pro poor seeds is important for delivery design but also challenging this paper describes an experimental economic approach to understanding farmers valuation of such seeds using data from a survey and experiment i assess indian farmers valuation of changes in the mean variance and skewness of payoff distributions these farmers value increases in expected value but seem indifferent about higher moment changes in payoff distributions farmer traits such as wealth and risk exposure affect their valuation of these changes only mildly while various limitations to the experimental approach must qualify practical implications of these findings the experiment demonstrates the viability of conducting valuation experiments with open ended questions in developing countries

productivity and land enhancing technologies in northern ethiopia health public investments and sequential adoption the adoption of more efficient farming practices and technologies that enhance agricultural productivity and improve environmental sustainability is instrumental for achieving economic growth food security and poverty alleviation in sub saharan africa our research examines the interaction between public investments community health and adoption of productivity and land enhancing technologies by households in the northern ethiopian state of tigray agricultural technology adoption decisions are modeled as a sequential process where the timing of choices can matter we find that time spent sick and opportunity costs of caring for sick family members are significant factors in adoption sickness through its impact on household income and labor allocation decisions for healthcare and other activities significantly reduces the likelihood of technology adoption our findings suggest that agencies working to improve agricultural productivity and land resource conservation should consider not only the financial status of potential adopters but also their related health situation

agri environmental policy and urban development patterns a general equilibrium analysis this paper investigates the spatial effects that the provision of environmental public goods have on residential location choices in a suburban context specifically a spatial general equilibrium framework is developed to analyze the consequences of adopting an agri environmental policy promoting the provision of positive farming externalities we use a static monocentric model of an open city where agricultural bid rents and agricultural amenities vary endogenously in space and where the positive externalities associated with agricultural production are valued by households consistent with empirical evidence of the potential side effects that conservation policies may have in terms of urbanization patterns and land price changes we show that under certain conditions implementing an agri environmental policy may promote additional suburban development moreover we demonstrate that the emergence of disconnected suburban areas may be significantly influenced by the location of land regulated by an agri environmental policy finally we discuss distributional aspects and show that while introducing an agri environmental policy has a negative impact on most residential land value it can have positive effects on farmland and residential land located within the regulated areas suggesting the non neutrality of such policies regarding the agents assets

adoption of agricultural innovations in developing countries a survey this paper reviews various studies which have provided a description and possible explanation to patterns of innovation adoption in the agricultural sector the survey points out that the tendency of many studies to consider innovation adoption in dichotomous terms adoption nonadoption may not be appropriate in many cases where the actual decisions are defined over a more continuous range more attention needs to be given to the socio cultural and institutional environment in area studies so that their interrelation with economic factors affecting adoption can be inferred the presence of several interrelated innovations is another aspect that needs to be considered more carefully in future research since a number of simultaneous decisions may be involved furthermore the possibility of regular sequential patterns in adopting components of a new technological package should be specifically addressed in future studies finally the impact of differential adoption rates on land holding distribution merits attention in future research

conservation agriculture organic marketing and collective action in the honduran hillsides conservation agriculture ca is often perceived to provide win win outcomes for farmers leading to reduced erosion and off site sedimentation as well as improved soil fertility and productivity however adoption rates for ca in many regions of the world remain below expected levels this article looks at the effects of participation in organic markets and farmers organizations on the adoption of soil conservation practices based on original survey data from 241 small scale farm households in honduras we find that both participation in organic markets and farmer based groups have positive effects on the number of soil conservation practices adopted the results indicate that besides supply oriented policy measures such as the provision of technical assistance and extension demand related factors are likely to play an important role in sustainable soil management demand oriented policy measures include support for labeling initiatives and consumer education to facilitate value added product differentiation and market segmentation jel classifications q01 q12 q13 q16

price dynamics in the bangladesh rice market implications for public intervention in this paper the price dynamics of a rice market are examined using dynamic programming techniques the model is parameterised to the case of bangladesh and thus represents the situation of a very poor country which has characteristically high price elasticity due to income effects and high storage and interest costs the incentives for private sector storage and its impact on price stability are examined various options for public intervention in the storage sector are also explored including price ceiling schemes and subsidisation of storage costs results show that interventions that remove private disincentives such as storage subsidies are much cheaper than direct intervention by government but the impact on the probability distribution of prices is quite different the effect of trade on the probability distribution of prices is also examined

learning by doing and learning from others human capital and technical change in agriculture household level panel data from a nationally representative sample of rural indian households describing the adoption and profitability of high yielding seed varieties hyvs associated with the green revolution are used to test the implications of a model incorporating learning by doing and learning spillovers the estimates indicate that i imperfect knowledge about the management of the new seeds was a significant barrier to adoption ii this barrier diminished as farmer experience with the new technologies increased iii own experience and neighbors experience with hyvs significantly increased hyv profitability and iv farmers do not fully incorporate the village returns to learning in making adoption decisions

bayesian spatial probit estimation a primer and an application to hyv rice adoption increasingly spatial econometric methods are becoming part of the standard toolkit of applied researchers in agricultural environmental and development economics nonetheless applications in discrete choice settings remain few and despite its appeal applications of the bayesian paradigm in these settings are still fewer we provide a primer to the bayesian spatial probit with the objective of making accessible to non users a class of iterative estimation methods that have become fairly routine in bayesian circles offer an extremely powerful addition to applied researchers toolkits and are essential in bayesian implementation of spatial econometric models we demonstrate the methods and apply them to estimate the neighbourhood effect in high yielding variety hyv adoption among bangladeshi rice producers we estimate the strength of this relationship using a standard spatial probit model and compare the policy conclusions with and without the neighbourhood effect included

effect of certified organic production systems on poverty among smallholder farmers empirical evidence from kenya summary this study evaluates the effect of certified organic production on poverty in smallholder production systems data was collected from cross sectional survey of local market oriented peri urban vegetable and rural honey producers in kenya poverty was measured using the multidimensional poverty methodology and endogenous switching probit model used to assess the effect of certified organic production on multidimensional poverty findings were that certified producers were less likely to be multidimensional poor compared to their counterfactual case of not participating in organic certification schemes additionally noncertified producers would be less likely to be poor if they were to participate in organic certification production

time consistency of fiscal and monetary policy a comment in an important recent contribution persson persson and svensson 1987 hereafter pps suggest that through careful restructuring of its nominal and real debt obligations a government may be able to induce future governments to follow the monetary and fiscal policies that it regards as optimal today the pps argument builds on lucas and stokey s 1983 demonstration that in a special nonmonetary setting the time inconsistency of optimal fiscal policy can be avoided through managing the term structure of real government obligations to the public the basic idea of the pps scheme for monetary economies is disarmingly intuitive in addition to continually restructuring nominal and real debt obligations a la lucas stokey each government must ensure that the next government inherits a stream of nominal claims on the public whose present discounted value equals the stock of money this equality pps argue removes the incentive for surprise inflation or deflation because such surprises would not affect the real net worth of the government this note shows that the pps prescription for avoiding time inconsistency appealing as it is is not generally sufficient even under the debt restructuring they recommend optimal policy is likely to be time inconsistent the main reason why their scheme fails is that the restrictions it imposes on government asset stocks satisfy first order but not second order conditions for an optimum because of the complex interactions between the current price level and future interest rates a government can raise its objective function by moving several variables at once away from the levels planned by the previous government even though price level changes alone would not affect government net worth we develop our argument using the model notation and equation numbers of pps to which the reader is referred for details the maximization problem associated with

time inconsistency capital mobility and debt restructuring in a small open economy honest government announcements may not be credible governments may have incentives to change their plans when it is time to carry them out or in technical terms the plans may be time inconsistent a dramatic example is the reaction to a hostage crisis governments should announce they will never negotiate with kidnappers to prevent future abductions after the fact however there are strong incentives to break this promise to save the lives of hostages of course intelligent people understand this so without commitment no one expects time inconsistent policies to be undertaken and in general this represents a welfare loss hostage crises occur as shown by kydland and prescott 1977 and calvo 1978 credibility is a problem in tax policy in general governments have an incentive to change tax rates unexpectedly for example to exploit differences between ex ante and ex post elasticities take the taxation of capital ex ante optimal taxes are low to promote elastically supplied investment ex post the supply of capital is inelastic so optimal taxes are high of course if governments can change tax rates at any time then in order to be credible tax plans should be consistent with future incentives as with a hostage crisis this constraint in general represents a welfare loss in a more subtle way the taxation of labor and consumption is also in general time inconsistent optimal tax rates depend on endowments initial plus acquired for example as a rule tax rates should be high on complements to leisure and other endowments that can be directly consumed in a dynamic economy endowments change when assets are accumulated

globalization local ecosystems and the rural poor summary in this paper we draw upon models from ecology and new institutional economics to examine the various mechanisms through which globalization can lead to loss in resilience of ecosystems and thus increase the vulnerability of poor people who depend on it to illustrate ecological dynamics we examine a semi arid savanna ecosystem that is characterized by nonlinearities and multiple steady states we discuss how traditional knowledge and institutions affect resource use patterns and resilience of such an ecosystem in the absence of trade then we examine the effects of trade liberalization and international technology transfers on institutional and ecological dynamics and consequently on poverty

temporal and spatial modelling of tropical deforestation a survival analysis linking satellite and household survey data we estimate a spatially explicit model of the forest clearance process among smallholder farmers in an agricultural frontier of southern mexico our analysis takes as its point of departure a simple utility maximising model that suggests many possible determinants of deforestation in an economic environment characterised by missing or thin markets hypotheses from the model are tested on a data set that combines a time series of satellite imagery with data collected from a survey of farm households whose agricultural plots were geo referenced using a global positioning system gps we implement a survival analysis to identify the effect of household level explanatory variables on the probability of deforestation this approach allows us to introduce a measure of the time until clearance as a covariate thereby affording a control for the effect of potentially important explanatory variables that vary through time but are not directly observable in addition to identifying several variables relevant for policy analysis including household demographics proximity to roads and government provision of agricultural support model results suggest that the deforestation process is characterised by non linear duration dependence with the probability of forest clearance first decreasing and then increasing with the passage of time

adoption of organic farming are there differences between early and late adoption based on the fact that not all farmers adopt a technology at the same time it is argued in this paper that the distinction between groups is important because early medium and late adopters respond differently to economic and non economic factors when they consider whether to take up organic farming or not the individual effects on adoption between the groups are identified by the use of multinomial logit analysis the results provide evidence that there are significant differences in the characteristics between the adopter groups the findings also reveal that the factors that affect adoption play a different role for early medium and late adopters particularly with regard to farming intensity age information gathering as well as attitudes of the farmer more specifically early adopters were the youngest to adopt organic farming and their decisions were found to be less profit related compared to other groups late adoption is constrained by risk considerations while environmental attitudes and social learning were identified to be important determinants for all adopter groups overall the findings strongly suggest that for policy measures to be effective the current state of diffusion has to be taken into account

local choice of property taxation evidence from norway fiscal competition may influence the design of tax systems the tax competition literature has concentrated on mobility of tax base and tax levels while we turn the attention to the political decision making system and the determination of tax structure in the norwegian setting local governments make a discrete choice whether to have property tax the local choice is investigated in an econometric model allowing for yardstick competition our results indicate that yardstick competition explains the distinct geographic pattern in local property taxation observed grants have no effect on the propensity to have property taxation consistent with the flypaper effect the main methodological challenge handled concerns spatial interaction with discrete choice

spatial externalities in agriculture empirical analysis statistical identification and policy implications summary spatial externalities can affect economic welfare and landscape pattern by linking farm returns on adjoining parcels of land while policy can be informed by research that documents spatial externalities statistically quantifying the presence of externalities from landscape pattern is insufficient for policy guidance unless the underlying cause of the externality can be identified as positive or negative this article provides a springboard for empirical research by examining the underlying structure social environmental interactions and statistical identification strategies for the analysis and the quantification of agricultural spatial externalities that are derived from observations of landscape change the potential for original policy treatments of agricultural spatial externalities in development and environment outcomes is highlighted

adoption of agricultural innovations as a two stage partial observability process in this paper we reconsider the appropriateness of certain statistical analyses in innovation adoption studies and suggest that partial observability models may sometimes be more useful the proposed models allow for a flexible specification of the process of adoption from one stage to two stages facilitate the modelling of non adopters and remedy the violation of the assumption of full information an application to the adoption of organic cultivation in greece demonstrates the relative merits of the proposed analysis

econometric estimation of producers risk attitudes general methods are proposed for the identification and econometric estimation of the parameters of the distribution of risk attitudes in a producer population the proposed methods also provide the basis for the development of statistical tests of model specification and of behavioral hypotheses econometric risk attitude estimation is shown to be possible under less restrictive conditions than previously believed a moment based version of the general model is applied to indian data and the econometrically estimated risk attitudes are presented and compared to experimental results for a similar group of producers

capturing household level spatial influence in agricultural management using random effects regression abstract data on agricultural and natural resource management typically have spatial patterns related to the landscapes from which they came consequently econometric models designed to explain the determinants of humans natural resource management practices or their outcomes often have spatial structure that can bring bias or inefficiency to parameter estimates although econometric tools are available to correct for spatial structure such tools are largely lacking for use with discrete dependent variable models while one obvious solution would be to develop the necessary tools an alternative is to identify conditions under which spatial dependency can be managed effectively without formal spatial autoregressive models this study examines conditions under which spatial structure corresponds closely to defined agro ecological zones making it possible to model spatial effects by random effects regression using household survey data sampled along agro ecological zone strata this article develops two models of links between farmer assets and agricultural natural resource degradation in southern peru the first stage model looks at determinants of crop yield loss over time an index of soil productivity while the second stage model looks at determinants of the extent of fallow cycles in crop rotation a key agricultural practice reducing crop yield loss diagnostic statistics for spatial dependency reveal spatial structure particularly in the fallow model this spatial dependency is eliminated in the ordinary least squares ols models by inclusion of the agro ecological zone random effects in the spatially dependent fallow model comparison of coefficient estimates between ols and the spatial autoregressive maximum likelihood models showed ols with random effects to give virtually identical results to the spatial autoregressive models making the latter unnecessary these results show that spatial structure in natural resource management models can sometimes be captured by zonal variables when this occurs random effects regression can largely eliminate spatial dependency a necessary precondition for this approach with household survey data is prior sample stratification according to landscape characteristics where random effects models can effectively capture spatial structure they may also offer analysts greater flexibility in analyzing models with limited dependent variables

optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital abstract this paper is concerned with the structure and time consistency of optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital in a dynamic context optimal taxation means distributing tax distortions over time in a welfare maximizing way for a barter economy our main finding is that with debt commitments of sufficiently rich maturity structure an optimal policy if one exists is time consistent in a monetary economy the idea of optimal taxation must be broadened to include an inflation tax and we find that time consistency does not carry over an optimal inflation tax requires commitment by rules in a sense that has no counterpart in the dynamic theory of ordinary excise taxes the reason time consistency fails in a monetary economy is that nominal assets should from a welfare maximizing point of view always be taxed away via an immediate inflation in a kind of capital levy this emerges as a new possibility when money is introduced into an economy without capital

wealth weather risk and the composition and profitability of agricultural investments despite the growing evidence that farmers in low income environments are risk averse there has been little empirical evidence on the importance of risk in shaping the actual allocation of production resources among farmers differentiated by wealth the authors use panel data on investments in rural india to examine how the composition of productive and nonproductive asset holdings varies across farmers with different levels of total wealth and across farmers facing different degrees of weather risk income variability is a prominent feature of the experience of rural agents in low income countries the authors report evidence based on measures of rainfall variability that the agricultural investment portfolio behavior of farmers in such settings reflects risk aversion due evidently to limitations on consumption soothing mechanisms such as crop insurance or credit markets the authors results suggest that uninsured weather risk is a significant cause of lower efficiency and lower average incomes a one standard deviation decrease in weather risk measured by the standard deviation of the timing of the rainy season would raise average profits by up to 35 percent among farmers in the lowest wealth quartile moreover rainfall variability induces a more unequal distribution of average incomes for a given distribution of wealth wealthier farmers are willing to absorb significant risk without giving up profits to reduce production risk smaller farmers have to invest their limited wealth in ways that reduce their exposure to risk at the cost of lower profit rates the authors found that at high levels of rainfall variability differences in rates of profit per unit of agricultural assets were similar across classes of wealth but over the sample range of rainfall variability these rates of profit were always higher for the poorer farmers than for the wealthier ones suggesting that the disadvantages of small farmers in risk diffusion are more than offset by their labor cost advantage

discrete choice with social interactions this paper provides an analysis of aggregate behavioural outcomes when individual utility exhibits social interaction effects we study generalized logistic models of individual choice which incorporate terms reflecting the desire of individuals to conform to the behaviour of others in an environment of noncooperative decisionmaking laws of large numbers are generated in such environments multiplicity of equilibria in these models which are equivalent to the existence of multiple self consistent means for average choice behaviour will exist when the social interactions exceed a particular threshold local stability of these multiple equilibria is also studied the properties of the noncooperative economy are contrasted with the properties of an economy in which a social planner determines the set of individual choices finally a likelihood function based on the theoretical model is given and conditions for the econometric identifiability of the model are established

wto negotiations on agriculture and the distributional impacts for us rice farm households abstract the policies of wealthy countries have proven the most difficult to reform in the wto doha round negotiations considerable emphasis has been placed on developing country impacts but a gap in the literature remains on the stakes for rich country farmers despite the large role these countries play in global agricultural protection the research here considers the particular case of us rice households and their sensitivity to japanese market access reform using an applied general equilibrium model with multiple farm households we highlight the distributional impacts among these producers we argue that concessions to japan on market access make domestic reforms in rice a difficult political sale in the us since the wealthiest producers bear the largest losses improving our understanding of the distributional impacts and political realities of the richest countries is critical to informing the negotiating process because the gains to the world s poor can only be realized with creative policy redress in these rich nations

measuring regional diversification of environmental externalities in agriculture and the effectiveness of their reduction by eu agri environmental programs in poland abstract the problem of externalities is an important aspect of contemporary discussion about the directions of agricultural development and agricultural policy nonetheless measuring agri environmental externalities is a difficult task and rarely undertaken in scientific research in our research we have constructed a synthetic indicator that allows measuring agri environmental externalities at the regional level taking into account both positive and negative effects at the same time we also studied the extent to which our synthetic indicator can be used to inform about the effectiveness of subsidies paid to farmers in the european union under agri environmental programs in reduction of externalities generated by agriculture we concluded that the use of subsidies under agri environmental programs has a positive impact on reducing externalities generated by agricultural production measured by our indicator

welfare effects of maize technologies in marginal and high potential regions of kenya this paper describes the findings of a study that used a multi market model to assess the potential impact of improved maize technologies on the welfare of various types of rural and urban households in kenya the modelling results indicate that technologies developed for high potential regions are likely to have more profound aggregate impacts on maize production and lead to greater reductions in import demand if prices are controlled or maize prices if maize prices are flexible technology adoption in high potential regions is likely to have substantially greater positive impacts on aggregate real incomes but inferior income distributional outcomes compared to technology adoption in marginal regions

time consistency of fiscal and monetary policy the problem of time inconsistency arises from two different sources first as shown by guillermo a calvo 1978 the re is an incentive for each government to engage in an initial unanti cipated inflation second as discussed by robert e lucas and nancy l stokey 1983 there is an incentive for each government to deviat e from the path of taxes announced by the preceding government in th is paper it is shown that these two sources of time inconsistency ca n be removed by a particular method of debt management involving bot h nominal and indexed government bonds of various maturities copyright 1987 by the econometric society

spatial patterns of organic agriculture adoption evidence from honduras in low potential agricultural areas like the honduran hillsides characterized by soil degradation and erosion organic agriculture can provide a means to break the downward spiral of resource degradation and poverty we use original survey data to analyze the factors influencing the decision to convert to organic agriculture previous studies have emphasized the role of spatial patterns in the diffusion and adoption of agricultural technologies in general and organic agriculture in particular these spatial patterns can result from a variety of underlying factors in this article we test various potential explanations including the availability of information in the farmer s neighborhood social conformity concerns and perceived positive external effects of the adoption decision in a spatially explicit adoption model we find that farmers who believe to act in accordance with their neighbors expectations and with greater availability of information in their neighborhood network are more likely to adopt organic agriculture furthermore perceived positive productivity spillovers to neighboring plots decrease the probability of adoption we discuss the implications of our findings for the dissemination of sustainable agricultural technologies in low potential agricultural areas in developing countries

coexistence of gm and non gm crops with endogenously determined separation the possibility that genetically modified gm crops may contaminate non gm crops through pollen mediated gene flow presents a challenge to coexistence of gm agriculture with conventional and organic farming systems in this paper an analytical model of coexistence is developed that allows for endogenous derivation of efficient widths and allocation of pollen barriers to limit contamination of non gm crops to reflect the uncertainty that surrounds pollen dispersal mechanisms the model contains a stochastic contamination function and safety rule decision mechanism constraining the level of contamination to remain below a tolerated adventitious presence with a given probability two policies are considered and their performance is tested the tolerance level of adventitious presence and the allocation of responsibility for implementing coexistence measures to either gm or non gm farmers the relative size of gm rents the value of productivity gains and the non pecuniary benefits from gm crops rents for identity preserved non gm crops price premiums realised over the gm crop price characteristics of farms and possible variation in agricultural landscapes are also taken into account the findings indicate that conventional adventitious presence tolerances can be met without ex ante mandating large widths of pollen barriers at the policy level the findings of this paper are relevant for setting region specific pollen barriers widths and or for establishing institutions that facilitate cooperative coexistence

pigs in space modeling the spatial structure of hog production in traditional and nontraditional production regions we posit a spatially explicit county level model of the hog production sector and estimate how numerous firm specific locality specific and spatial agglomeration factors affect the location movement and intensity of hog production within 15 key hog production states spatial agglomeration urban encroachment input availability firm productivity local economy slaughter access and regulatory stringency variables affect the sample regions spatial organization analyses suggest that western states in the sample may shape hog production levels by wielding traditional business recruitment and retention tools e g tax rates environmental stringency while corn belt states may shape hog production via nontraditional tools e g land use controls few sectors have undergone more rapid change in scale structure and organization than the u s swine sector in the past two decades movement to large scale specialized production units reflects past trends in western cattle feeding and dairy enterprises while increasing vertical coordination resembles patterns adopted in the poultry sector several decades ago accompanying these changes in production has been a simultaneous change in the spatial organization of u s hog production industry analysts have forwarded several stylized facts of this spatial reorganization traditional corn belt states have lost in terms of national share of hog production to southeastern great plains and mountain states during the 1980s and 1990s drabenstott hurt as the firms offering swine production and marketing contracts attempt to locate large scale facilities where there are few people cheap land

understanding the uptake of organic farming accounting for heterogeneities among irish farmers abstract this paper examines the decisions of irish farmers to convert to organic farming by applying the theory of planned behaviour to control for social influence and technical constraints cluster analysis and principal component analysis are utilised to account for sample heterogeneity and to identify heterogeneities in farmer beliefs regarding adoption of organic methods the results indicate that the impact of economic incentives and technical barriers varies while social acceptance of organic farming constrains adoption these findings suggest that policy incentives mainly based on subsidy payments may be insufficient to increase the organic sector in the presence of social and technical barriers

are there spatial spillovers in the adoption of clean technology the case of organic dairy farming this paper examines spatial spillovers associated with the adoption of organic dairy farming we hypothesize that neighboring farmers can help to reduce the uncertainty of organic conversion by lowering the fixed costs of learning about the organic system a spatially explicit 10 year panel dataset of more than 1 900 dairy farms in southwestern wisconsin is used as input into a reduced form econometric model of the decision to convert to organic production using an identification strategy that exploits the panel aspect of the micro dataset we find evidence that the presence of neighboring organic dairy farms affects the conversion decision

elasticities in aids models in the literature a variety of approaches have been used to calculate demand elasticities in almost ideal demand system aids models of demand it is common to estimate the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids instead of the aids when the la aids is estimated all of the previously reported approaches to compute elasticities are theoretically incorrect this paper presents correct formulas for la aids elasticities and illustrates the potential errors from using incorrect computing the almost ideal demand system aids of deaton and muellbauer 1980a b has become popular in recent years anderson and blundell blanciforti and green 1983a b blanciforti green and king chalfant eales and unnevehr fujii khaled and mak fulponi heien and willett murray parsons ray a variety of approaches to computing elasticities has been used and some of the approaches may lead to significant errors this paper clarifies the differences between alternative approaches to estimating demand elasticities in aids models

non stationarity and the import demand for virgin olive oil in the european union the aim of this study is to analyse the importation of virgin olive oil to european union countries paying special attention to the spanish export contribution the method used is based on the estimation of an imports demand system the novelty of the paper lies not in the modelling approach but in the explicit consideration of the univariate characteristics of series that is included in the analysis since prices are non stationary cointegration among them has been tested results indicate that they are cointegrated and that homogeneity holds as a result relative prices are included in the imports demand system structural change is also considered so as to account for the entrance of both spain and greece into the eu during the period studied results demonstrate the leadership of spain within the eu virgin olive oil market as well as the increasing competitiveness of greek oil

debt restructuring and the time consistency of optimal policies clever debt restructuring ensures that the optimal taxes on the purchase of consumption goods and on labor income are time consistent even if the government chooses public consumption and public investment for this result two types of debt are needed claims on consumption goods debt indexed by the gross of tax consumption prices and claims on leisure debt indexed by the net of tax wage rate this rescues robert e lucas and nancy l stokey 1983 from the criticism that debt restructuring cannot ensure time consistency when the government chooses public consumption or public investment this paper analyzes a closed economy copyright 1994 by ohio state university press

human capital entrepreneurship and farm household earnings abstract the allocation of resources between agriculture and non agriculture is a central decision of the farm household in this paper we formulate a profit maximization model in which human capital enhances efficiency through both within sector effects and across sector allocation of quasi fixed inputs the model is estimated using chinese household data that contain detailed information on production activities we find that schooling and experience improve the sectoral uses of household supplied inputs accounting for 27 of their total contribution to earnings the evidence suggests that conventional estimates of human capital returns obtained within sectors would undervalue the role of human capital in development

standards as a new form of social contract sustainability initiatives in the coffee industry abstract in the former age of national capitalism the achievement of market fairness was embedded in a normative framework generated by government labor unions and perhaps religious authority in the current age of global capitalism new actors such as ngos industry associations and public private partnerships provide the normative framework that corporations use for social legitimacy in this context standard setting processes operate as new forms of social contract where the state rather than being directly involved between the parties provides a form of basic guarantee while more or less accountable ngos and firms are in charge of hammering out the bargains this article examines the dynamics of this new configuration through the case study of sustainability initiatives in the coffee sector it addresses four questions 1 are these standards effective in communicating information and creating new markets 2 to what extent do they embed elements of collective and private interests 3 is sustainability content actually delivered to their intended beneficiaries and 4 what is the role of public policy in addressing their shortcomings

farmers adoption of integrated crop protection and organic farming do moral and social concerns matter we investigate empirically the role of moral and social concerns in farmers decision to adopt integrated crop protection ip and organic farming of a survey questionnaire has been sent to 1286 fruit growers and vegetable producers located in the french areas of alpes de haute provence hautes alpes and vaucluse analysis of individual responses n 243 shows that although economic concerns play a strong role a significant number of respondents give high importance to moral and social ones we also examine how these considerations matter according to different crop protection strategies that is conventional farming ip and of using a multinomial logistic regression we find that 1 social concerns e g showing to others one s environmental commitment drive both ip and of adoption 2 moral concerns e g do not feel guilty about one s choices increase the probability of organic farming adoption only and 3 farmers who give high importance to economic concerns e g cutting production costs are less likely to adopt of

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

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

community pressure and clean technology in the informal sector an econometric analysis of the adoption of propane by traditional mexican brickmakers abstract in many developing countries the informal sector comprised of low technology unlicensed micro enterprises is a major source of pollution environmental management in this sector is exceptionally challenging though clean technologies offer a means of mitigating the problem to our knowledge there has been no rigorous empirical research on why informal or even small scale firms do and do not adopt them as a first step toward filling this gap this paper presents the results of an econometric analysis of the diffusion of propane among informal traditional brickmakers in cd juarez mexico a leading source of air pollution owing to their reliance on cheap highly polluting fuels such as used tires and scrap wood the two key policy implications of our analysis are that 1 it is possible to successfully promote the adoption of a clean technology by intensely competitive informal firms even when the new technology significantly raises variable costs and 2 community pressure applied by competing firms and private sector local organizations can generate incentives for adoption

time consistency of optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a small open economy abstract this paper characterizes conditions under which optimal monetary and fiscal policy is time consistent in a stylized small open economy with a flexible foreign exchange rate regime it shows that these conditions depend on the way in which leisure is assumed to enter preferences and or on the process which productivity is assumed to follow this paper further argues that these conditions may fail to be sufficient if the small open economy implements a fixed foreign exchange rate regime thus a credible fixed exchange rate regime does not necessarily help render optimal policy time consistent

modeling multiple adoption decisions in a joint framework a multinomial probit mnp model is applied to the modeling of adoption decisions by farmers facing multiple technologies which can be adopted in various combinations this model allows for full investigation of the interactions between decisions to adopt or not adopt several technologies estimation is carried out in a bayesian framework employing gibbs sampling to circumvent past difficulties encountered in maximum likelihood estimation of the mnp model the model is estimated for a sample of u s apple growers with four possible sustainable production technology bundles the results show that adoption decisions are most significantly influenced by off farm labor supply

location and uptake integrated household and gis analysis of technology adoption and land use with application to smallholder dairy farms in kenya abstract gis derived measures of location and space have increasingly been used in models of land use and ecology however they have made few inroads into the literature on technology adoption in developing countries which continues to rely mainly on survey derived information location with all its dimensions of market access demographics and agro climate nevertheless remains key to understanding potential for technology use the measures of location typically used in the adoption literature such as locational dummy variables that proxy a range of locational factors now appear relatively crude given the increased availability of more explicit gis derived measures this paper attempts to demonstrate the usefulness of integrating gis measures into analysis of technology uptake for better differentiating and understanding locational effects a set of gis derived measures of market access and agro climate are included in a standard household model of technology uptake applied to smallholder dairy farms in kenya using a sample of 3330 geo referenced farm households the three technologies examined are keeping of dairy cattle planting of specialised fodder and use of concentrate feed logit estimations are conducted that significantly differentiate effects of individual household characteristics from those related to location the predicted values of the locational variables are then used to make spatial predictions of technology potential comparisons are made with estimations based only on survey data which demonstrate that while overall explanatory power may not improve with gis derived variables the latter yield more practical interpretations which is further demonstrated through predictions of technology uptake change with a shift in infrastructure policy although requiring large geo referenced data sets and high resolution gis layers the methodology demonstrates the potential to better unravel the multiple effects of location on farmer decisions on technology and land use

what s so spatial about diversification in nigeria summary many households in developing countries allocate their productive assets among various income generating activities in order to develop a portfolio of income from occupations with different degrees of risk expected returns and seasonal and liquidity constraints the push and pull factors influencing diversification decisions of households are widely discussed in the literature however no study to date has taken into account spatial interdependence of household decisions in spite of various channels of neighborhood effects such as information flow learning from others social networks and agglomeration economies this paper fills in the gap by incorporating spatial dependence in the choice model of diversification using a spatial auto regressive probit model and an advanced bayesian strategy to its estimation empirical analysis is run taking advantage of the nigerian general household survey panel 2010 11 providing gis coordinates for the surveyed households the results imply endogeneity of the neighbors decisions to allocate their productive assets among various occupations and signal the importance of social learning and agglomeration effects favoring the spillover of diversification activities through neighbors networks and local markets the households decisions respond to local environment factors such as weather shocks or infrastructural constraints as shown by the regional differences taking into account spatial interdependence is particularly important in the event of a wide divide of the data available into different zones as for example in case of the nigerian northern region where the states are larger

on the time consistency of optimal capital taxes abstract this paper studies the time inconsistency problem of optimal capital taxes in the absence of full commitment it is well known that debt restructuring cannot solve the time inconsistency problem for economies with a private stock of capital we re examine this result by exploring the role of institutional delays in government policies we show that when the implementation of government policy requires time debt restructuring can enforce commitment to the optimal capital taxes we conclude that since institutional delays characterize democratic decision making the time inconsistency problem of capital taxes is not so severe