fishing effort its testing specification and internal structure in fisheries economics and management abstract the concept of fishing effort is central to fisheries economics and management however effort is an aggregate index of inputs which can be consistently formed only under the condition on production technology of homothetic separability of inputs this paper develops the conditions under which effort can be consistently formed it then provides the first empirical test for effort and jointness in inputs in a fishery by estimating a multiproduct function for the new england otter trawl fleet after not rejecting input output separability and rejecting nonjointness in inputs the construction of a superlative index for effort is demonstrated through estimating a translog production function the implications of effort s internal structure for fisheries management are then considered

profit function approximations and duality applications to agriculture monte carlo simulations of profit functions indicate that flexible functional forms may be ranked nearly the same with respect to allen uzawa partial substitution elasticities or price and fixed factor elasticities flexible functional form approximations of output price elasticities are generally worse than approximations of input price or fixed factor elasticities minflex laurent functional forms did not appear to approximate underlying elasticities any better than did their translog and generalized leontief counterparts

natural resources and the marshallian effects of input reducing technological changes abstract input reducing technologies are often cited as potential solutions to the pressure for over harvesting natural resources the underlying implicit assumption that technological change reducing the hicksian input demand also reduces the marshallian input demand neglects the impacts of input reducing technological changes on marshallian supplies this reasearch shows that marshallian supply effects generally offset the impacts of technological change on hicksian input demands and if the offset is large enough marshallian input demands could even increase as an example i statistically determine the extent increased technological efficiency in lumber production reduced the demand for sawlogs in the pacific northwest the statistical results indicate that input reducing technological changes did not reduce the overall marshallian demand for sawlogs resource conservation policies which rely solely on the implementation of input reducing technologies may be ineffective or even counterproductive

a revenue function approach to the measurement of output substitution possibilities in agriculture the purpose of this article is to calculate hicksian and marshallian estimates of output substitution possibilities in an agricultural industry the hicksian elasticities or net substitution possibilities are measured within a revenue maximizing framework holding input levels constant the marshallian elasticities that encompass both net substitution and expansion effects are measured within a profit maximizing framework allowing both output and input levels to vary the results are empirically reasonable and consistent with the duality theory for revenue and profit maximizing behavior a notable empirical result is that in the very short run or market period with input levels held constant there exists considerable scope for changing the output composition between crops and cattle on cattle farms

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

the tragedy of the commons in cote d ivoire agriculture empirical evidence and implications for evaluating trade policies expansion of cultivated land diminishes the extent of forestlands or reduces the length of fallow periods and hence reduces the amount of natural vegetation the increase in land under cultivation has a direct output increasing effect at the cost of reducing natural capital and agricultural productivity the evidence for western cote d ivoire is consistent with and provides an explanation for the declining agricultural productivity observed in sub saharan africa during the past few decades this article uses a theoretical model to determine the level of land cultivation that maximizes village income using data from cote d ivoire for 1985 87 an important part of the land is under common property usually at the village level the results show that farmers do not internalize even a small fraction of the external cost of biomass in their land allocation decisions the lack of internalization of the social cost of the biomass resource leads to large income losses at the village level as much as 14 percent of village income these losses are many times larger than the usual estimates for conventional distortions

profit efficiency among basmati rice producers in pakistan punjab farm specific profit inefficiency among basmati rice producers was estimated from a variable coefficient profit frontier the mean level of inefficiency at farm resources and price levels was 28 with a wide range 5 87 average loss of profit was rs 1 222 per hectare socioeconomic factors related to profit loss were the farm household s education nonagricultural employment and a credit constraint institutional determinants of profit loss were a water constraint and the late application of fertilizer punjab wide benefits of increasing farmer s profit efficiency are large a 25 reduction in profit loss among basmati rice producers may generate over rs 240 million in extra profits each rice season rice is a major export commodity for pakistan generating about 2 5 billion pakistan rupees rs annually or 20 of foreign exchange earnings from commodity trade in the early 1980s two varieties dominate in pakistan s international trade in rice basmati 370 a high quality long grained aromatic variety and the medium long grained irri 6 distinct export markets exist for these rices over 90 of the basmati is exported to oil rich middle eastern nations while the mediumlong varieties are mainly marketed in southeast asia in 1983 the export price of basmati was about rs 7 900 per ton while the price of medium long grained varieties averaged rs 2 700 per ton pakistan has a comparative advantage in the international market for basmati but probably not for medium long grained rices azhar and mamhud historically pakistan had a near monopoly in international trade in basmati but now faces increased competition from thailand and the united states efferson therefore pakistan must strive to increase the efficiency of basmati production to retain its comparative advantage and competitive edge in foreign rice markets basmati 370 is a pure line selection made in

the capital energy controversy further results abstract the significance of capital energy k e relationship in manufacturing is important however the available econometric evidence is contradictory in the sense that support can be found for both k e substitutability and k e complementarity moreover the empirical studies are based mainly on production and cost functions few researchers have examined the k e relationship by assuming a profit function approach the objective of this paper is to investigate the k e controversy by estimating both a cost and a profit function the results should provide a better understanding of the relationship between model used and estimated k e elasticities in addition the two models are compared on the basis of their predictive performance

pre announcement and timing the effects of a government expenditure shock abstract an econometric strategy to identify a pre announced fiscal policy shock is proposed i show that the reduced form innovations can be recovered by estimating a vector moving average model using the kalman filter the structural effects are identified exploiting the shock s pre announced nature which leads to potentially different signs of the responses of some endogenous variables during the announcement and after the realization of the shock i illustrate my strategy by identifying a pre announced shock to government consumption expenditures i find that the response of private consumption is significantly negative on impact rises and becomes significantly positive two quarters after the realization of the policy shock

production efficiency of chinese agriculture evidence from rural household survey data a shadow price profit frontier model is developed to examine production efficiency of chinese rural households in farming operations the model incorporates price distortions resulting from imperfect market conditions and socioeconomic and institutional constraints but retains the advantages of stochastic frontier properties the shadow prices are derived through a generalized profit function estimation the shadow price profit frontier is then estimated and an efficiency index based on the estimated profit frontier is computed and decomposed to household characteristics empirical results using data from china s rural household survey for 1991 reject the neoclassical profit maximization hypothesis based on market prices in favor of the general model with price distortions farmers resource endowment and education influence their response to the market restrictions thus alter their performance in terms of efficiency the estimated efficiency index ranges from 6 to 93 with a sample average of 62 households educational level family size and per capita net income are positively related to production efficiency households living in mountain areas or with family members employed by the government or state industries are relatively inefficient reducing market intervention allowing right of use of farm land to be transferred among households encouraging migration of excess farm labor and promoting farmers education will improve rural households efficiency in agricultural production

testing for indeterminacy an application to u s monetary policy reply this paper considers a prototypical new keynesian model in which the equilibrium is undetermined if monetary policy is passive the likelihood based estimation of dynamic equilibrium models is extended to allow for indeterminacies and sunspot fluctuations we construct posterior weights for the determinacy and indeterminacy region of the parameter space and estimates for the propagation of fundamental and sunspot shocks according to the estimated model u s monetary policy post 1982 is consistent with determinacy whereas the pre volcker policy is not we find that before 1979 indeterminacy substantially altered the propagation of shocks

explaining the relative decline of agriculture a supply side analysis for indonesia the relative decline of agriculture in growing economies is a central feature of economic development and a major influence on agricultural policies the literature on the causes of this decline has focused on the relative price effects arising from demand factors especially engel s law rather than on supply side influences such as changes in relative factor endowments and differential rates of technical change this article develops a simple structural model of the transformation of the indonesian economy applying an error correction mechanism to capture the dynamics resulting from disequilibria and the costs of adjustment the decline in agriculture s share of gross domestic product is found to be caused much less by the relative price effects typically emphasized in the literature than by capital accumulation and rapid technical change in agriculture

the timing of antitrust effects on pricing this paper extends recent results suggesting a deterrent effect of antitrust cases on price cost margins of firms involved in a sample of 288 firms a negative effect of price fixing indictments on margins is found an effect which erodes over time some weak support is given for the view that a deterrent effect is reduced if a conviction is not obtained finally an attempt to examine the response of firms to stages of a case suggests that the bulk of the antitrust effect on pricing may occur at the onset of investigation prior to actual filing of the case

education experience and allocative efficiency a dual approach a generalization of the dual non frontier profit function approach to evaluating allocative efficiency is developed that allows for training human capital variables to influence the efficiency level directly an application to pennsylvania dairy indicates that education and experience are substitutes and play a significant role in the level of efficiency while these operators are not allocating their variable inputs in an absolutely efficient manner relative efficiency can be achieved for four of six possible input combinations for prescribed levels of education and experience furthermore the estimates of the efficiency measures suggest that these operators are maximizing production rather than short run profits

distributional consequences of fisheries regulations an empirical methodology for evaluating fisheries regulations in terms of both rent gains and employment losses is proposed a royalty tax and a change in catch distribution among competing vessel types are compared with the status quo of restricted access the case study is the british columbia commercial salmon fishery results suggest that rent gains associated with the alternatives are not always sufficient to compensate for losses in fishing income

profit supply and factor demand functions comment in lau and yotopoulos 1972 a new method of estimating production relations was developed building on lau and yotopoulos 1971 this method bringing together estimates of profit and factor demand functions was further developed in yotopoulos and lau to incorporate a test of rationality their method has since been applied by yotopoulos lau and lin sidhu sidhu and baanante 1979 1981 jamison and lau and junankar 1980a b 1982 because the assumption of rationality is so fundamental to economics and because few tests of this hypothesis exist the lau yotopoulos method is very important however these studies rest on advanced economic theory and sophisticated econometrics so it is easy to be intimidated by them sophisticated estimators however are not necessarily free from er

modeling supply response in a multiproduct framework the paper models multiproduct supply response in agriculture and tests key assumptions traditionally maintained in supply response studies the technology is approximated by a restricted profit function the properties of the restricted profit function are imposed during estimation the hypothesis that maintains the existence of output price and quantity indexes that satisfy the adding up property is rejected the existence of individual production functions for each output is also rejected unless joint production is permitted the estimates of responsiveness of a particular commodity to changes in own price or prices of competing outputs are likely to be considerably understated

usefulness of pretests for estimating underlying technologies using dual profit functions translog and generalized linear approximating forms are used to estimate dual profit functions from stochastically simulated data generated from a known relatively complex technology under profit maximizing conditions the hypotheses of monotonicity convexity and equality of parameters common to the profit function and demand equations are tested this last hypothesis is always rejected and monotonicity is never rejected convexity is rejected for about a third of the translog models and fewer than 5 percent of generalized linear models neither approximating form strongly dominates the other for accuracy in estimating the underlying elasticities of substitution copyright 1987 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

ozone pollution and farm profits in england and wales tropospheric ozone is an air pollutant known to adversely affect crop yields across europe experimental work is underway to quantify yield effects at ambient ozone levels for a number of crops in this article we undertake direct farm level evaluation of the impact of ozone by estimating a multi output profit function using a panel dataset of cereal farms in england and wales a system of equations comprising the profit function input and output share equations is estimated using a fixed effects seemingly unrelated regression technique with ozone as a quasi fixed input estimated parameters are used to calculate tropospheric ozone related profit and output supply elasticities the main findings from the profit function show that a 10 increase in average ozone levels would decrease variable profits by 1 3 and wheat output supply by 1 these results are of a significantly lower magnitude but qualitatively consistent with findings from similar studies carried out in north america

measuring the benefits of environmental change using a duality approach the case of ozone and illinois cash grain farms abstract the measurement of the economic effects of a changing environment can be complex and costly this study uses a duality approach to quantify the relationship between ambient levels of ozone and economic damage on illinois cash grain farms econometric estimates from producers profit functions indicate a significant negative relationship between ozone and the levels of profit and output these findings are consistent with results from more traditional ecosystem assessment procedures given the data and experimentation costs associated with traditional approaches this study s results point to duality as a potentially powerful tool for assessing the economic effects of various environmental phenomena

cartels and antitrust the role of fines in deterring violations at the margin the potential benefits of effective antitrust action include both increased economic efficiency through the expansion of output and improved equity through the redistribution of income from monopolies to consumers a large and growing literature is devoted to empirically testing and documenting the economic consequences of antitrust casebringing activity a second empirical literature is focused on the role which economic variables play in the determination of casebringing activity by the united states department of justice 2 what separates these two bodies of literature are the behavioral linkages between anti

duality theory for variable costs in joint production duality methods for incomplete systems of consumer demand equations are adapted to the dual structure of variable cost functions in joint production this allows identification of necessary and sufficient restrictions on technology and cost so that con ditional factor demands can be written as functions of input prices fixed inputs and cost these are observable when variable inputs are chosen and committed to production hence the identified restrictions allow ex ante conditional demands to be studied using observable data this class of production technologies is consistent with all von neu mann morgenstern utility functions when ex post production and or output prices are un certain

role of education and extension in the adoption of technology a study of upland rice and soybean farmers in central west brazil strauss j barbosa m teixeira s thomas d and junior r g 1991 role of education and extension in the adoption of technology a study of upland rice and soybean farmers in central west brazil agric econ 5 341 359 this paper explores reduced form determinants of the adoption of certain technologies by upland rice and soybean farmers in the center west region of brazil we merge community level data on the availability and quality of publicly provided infrastructure principally extension to the farm level data containing information on farmer human capital as well as land quantity and quality by using community level measures of availability and quality of extension we avoid problems of endogeneity of farm level measures of extension use we find positive impacts of farmer education on the diffusion process in accordance with other studies we also isolate effects of the quality in regional extension investment as measured by the average experience of technical extension staff these results indicate that investments in human capital of extension workers does have a payoff in terms of farmer adoption of improved cultivation practices

on the dynamic implications of news shocks abstract this paper assesses the time series properties of rational expectations models with news shocks we show that news shocks allows to substantially improve the dynamic behavior of such models in generating higher persistence we also warn the use of svar models to uncover news shocks

the deterrent effect of antitrust enforcement in this paper we formulate and test a model of collusive pricing in the presence of antitrust enforcement we show that a cartel s optimal price is likely to be neither the competitive price nor the price that the cartel would set in the absence of antitrust enforcement but rather an intermediate price that depends on the levels of antitrust enforcement efforts and penalties our empirical results reveal that increasing antitrust enforcement in the presence of a credible threat of large damage awards has the deterrent effect of reducing mark ups in the bread industry

the tragedy of the commons in cote d lvoire agriculture expansion of cultivated land diminishes the extent of forestlands or reduces the length of fallow periods and hence reduces the amount of natural vegetation the increase in land under cultivation has a direct output increasing effect at the cost of reducing natural capital and agricultural productivity the evidence for western cote d lvoire is consistent with and provides an explanation for the declining agricultural productivity observed in sub saharan africa during the past few decades this article uses a theoretical model to determine the level of land cultivation that maximizes village income using data from cote d lvoire for 1985 87 an important part of the land is under common property usually at the village level the results show that farmers do not internalize even a small fraction of the external cost of biomass in their land allocation decisions the lack of internalization of the social cost of the biomass resource leads to large income losses at the village level as much as 14 perce

estimating farm level input demand and wheat supply in the indian punjab using a translog profit function application of the translog profit function to farm level data from punjab india allowed a more disaggregated analysis of the farm production structure compared to the case of cobb douglas formulation the flexibility afforded by translog formulation permitted measurement of the different impacts that exogenous variables have within and across input demand and output supply functions policy relevant elasticity estimates with respect to variable inputs and output prices fixed inputs a few soil related state of nature variables measured by soil analysis and education which are usually considered constraints to farm production were obtained and two examples of policy applications were developed

robust error specification in a production system economists estimating demand and supply systems face the question of using shares or quantities as dependent variables this article finds that inconsistent estimates are obtained if one makes the wrong choice a robust structure is presented to let the data choose the preferred form empirical applications to u s and texas agriculture using the generalized method of moments suggest that shares and quantities are rejected in favor of a more general functional form the texas application provides some evidence for fixed capital but not for labor copyright 2013 oxford university press

strategic and deterrent pricing responses to antitrust investigations abstract this paper examines the issue of the effects of antitrust on pricing through two empirical studies the first analyzes time series of prices in five industries involved in antitrust cases to determine whether the various stages of the antitrust process influenced pricing behavior some evidence of a deterrent effect is found with real prices lower than their pre investigation level following the conclusion of the case a major part of the pricing reaction occurs prior to the filing of formal charges the second study provides additional evidence of the existence of such a strategic reaction to the onset of investigation through an examination of prices in 23 industries investigated but not charged with price fixing

estimating substitution and expansion effects using a profit function framework this study reports a first attempt to derive all the relevant information with respect to the structure of production of an industry using knowledge of only a profit function using estimates of a profit function for canadian agriculture a procedure to separate substitution and expansion effects for both inputs and outputs was implemented information concerning net input and output substitution and complementarity possibilities were obtained the most important empirical results suggest that the hypothesis of nonjoint production of crop and animal outputs in canadian agriculture cannot be rejected and that hired and operator labor are complements rather than substitutes

news driven business cycles insights and challenges there is a widespread belief that changes in expectations may be an important independent driver of economic fluctuations the news view of business cycles offers a formalization of this perspective in this paper we discuss mechanisms by which changes in agents information due to the arrival of news can cause business cycle fluctuations driven by expectational change and we review the empirical evidence aimed at evaluating their relevance in particular we highlight how the literature on news and business cycles offers a coherent way of thinking about aggregate fluctuations while at the same time we emphasize the many challenges that must be addressed before a proper assessment of the role of news in business cycles can be established jel d83 d84 e13 e32 o33

market deregulation trade liberalization and productive efficiency in bangladesh agriculture an empirical analysis the impact of trade liberalization and of market deregulation in general on the performance of agriculture remains contentious and empirical issue in the literature following the random coefficient frontier modelling framework this paper attempts to contribute to this debate by computing the farm specific productive efficiency indices in bangladesh agriculture before and after reform it also examines the impact of some farm specific and policy variables on productive efficiency the empirical results show that there are wide variations in productive efficiency across farms and regions and the average efficiency of all regions increased modestly by 8 percentage points from the pre reform to post reform period the efficiency differentials are largely explained by farm size infrastructure households off farm income and the reduction of government anti agricultural bias in relation to trade and domestic policies the implication of these results suggests the need for further policy reform to augment p

measurement of profit efficiency using behavioural and stochastic frontier approaches the objectives of this study are to estimate profit inefficiency of farms in the north west frontier province of pakistan using stochastic frontier and the behavioural profit functions the derived measure of inefficiency based on a half normal distribution of the stochastic error term is related to socio economic variables and of these the size of holding fragmentation of land subsistence needs the higher age of farmers contribute positively to inefficiency the behavioural approach satisfies most of the assumptions of the dual profit function and the likelihood ratio test rejects the market efficiency hypothesis it is also shown that use of manures labour and fertilizers is below the optimum small farms seem to have higher productive efficiency than large farms and therefore small farm ownership needs to be encouraged

short and long run adjustments in dairy production a profit function analysis a dual profit model is developed to analyse the structure of dairy technology using farm level data for vermont potential short and long run effects of milk price reductions on output supply input demand farm size and profitability are studied the observed levels of the quasi fixed inputs family labour and herd size are found to be significantly lower than their optimal or long run equilibrium values which is consistent with a continuing shift towards fewer and larger dairy farms the analysis suggests that lower milk prices threaten the short run survival of small and medium size farms and reduce the optimal farm size in the long run

the structure of u s agricultural technology 1910 78 this paper utilizes 1910 78 time series data and a single product aggregate translog profit function to measure the structure of u s agricultural technology duality relations are used to devise a multifactor measure of biased technical change a measure of nonhomotheticity is introduced which indicates the effects scale change has had on aggregate cost shares the empirical analysis finds that different nonhomothetic technologies characterized the prewar and postwar periods differing technical change biases are consistent with relative price trends during the two periods showing that the long run structure of u s agricultural technology has been consistent with the hayami ruttan induced innovation theory

egypt s multiproduct agricultural technology and agricultural policy based on the hypothesis that egyptian farmers maximise economic profits the multiproduct translog profit function is used to estimate input demand and output supply functions for corn rice and cotton crops grown in egypt s nile delta elasticity estimates indicate a generally high degree of price responsiveness the estimates are used to evaluate egyptian agricultural policies concerning labour mechanisation and output prices the results show that egypt s agricultural policies of taxing output and subsidising certain inputs have hada substantial negative impact on agricultural productivity

how costly is the maintenance of the coal mining jobs in europe the spanish case 1989 1995 abstract the aim of this paper is to estimate the welfare effects of the coal policy in spain for the period 1989 1995 in order to carry out the study a partial equilibrium analysis has been used and the so called conventional or neo classical cost of protection is calculated the results indicate that the coal policy produces an important conventional cost even when applied to the most profitable areas of the industry thus the maintenance of coal mining jobs in spain appears to be quite expensive in terms of protection costs

determinants of agriculture s relative decline thailand during economic development agriculture declines as a proportion of aggregate national output a number of theoretical explanations for this phenomenon have been advanced in the economic literature but their relative historical significance has not been clear this paper develops an econometric methodology to analyze this issue and applies it to time series data for thailand the study investigates the importance of relative commodity prices factor endowments and technical progress as explanations for changing sectoral gdp shares of agriculture manufacturing and services it is concluded that the movement in thailand s aggregate factor endowment relative to labor was the most important determinant of agriculture s relative decline

the response of peasant farmers to price incentives the use and misuse of profit functions recent famines in chad ethiopia and the sudan have highlighted a major problem facing less developed countries how does an ldc become self sufficient in food production the answers to this question range from the narrowly defined economic one or economistic approach to the more widely based institutional reforms approach the former approach typified by say schultz 1964 or the world bank 1982 would emphasise the importance of mainly price incentives the latter approach as typified by myrdal 1968 in his monumental work asian drama would emphasise the importance of land reforms as a pre condition for agricultural development the debate has sometimes followed a misleading path and discussed whether peasants are rational or whether they are lazy inert tradition bound etc the aim of this article is to show that the use of profit functions to model peasant behaviour in ldcs is seriously flawed neo classical economic theory within which profit functions are embodied ignores the historical social institutional and political context within which peasant farmers operate peasant farmers do not operate in full blooded capitalist impersonal competitive input and output markets the article is structured as follows section ii outlines the profit function approach and section iii provides a survey and critique of applications of the profit function to ldc agriculture section iv concludes with some general remarks on analysing peasant behaviour in an alternative paradigm

public regulation and the structure of production in multiproduct industries an application to the new england otter trawl industry this article considers the problem of managing multispecies fishing industries as one of regulating the production of individual multiproduct firms the multispecies new england otter trawl industry is examined within this framework empirical results derived from estimating a multiproduct profitfunction indicate that management consistent with the structures ofmultiproduct production and costs would directly regulate inputs little support is provided for applying the traditional bioeconomic model to the fishery studied

state antitrust enforcement in the us and implications for small business entry and relocation this article examines the impact of the important yet little studied state level antitrust enforcement activity on entry and relocation behaviour by small us firms feinberg and husted 2011 have shown that this enforcement especially nonhorizontal cases may be viewed by potential entrants as a negative aspect of the state business climate however they did not pursue a more disaggregate analysis of small firm entry behaviour nor did they investigate different responses between manufacturing wholesaling and retailing firms another related issue is the extent to which state cases filed in tandem with federal investigations have the same impact on establishment entry as do purely independent cases these considerations are dealt with in this article the author uses annual state level data from the statistics of us business to examine entry and relocation reactions to state antitrust enforcement by firms within three small business categories 1 19 employees 20 99 employees 100 499 employees g

environmental impacts of technological change in bangladesh agriculture farmers perceptions determinants and effects on resource allocation decisions this article measures the impact of modern technology adoption in raising farmers environmental awareness and the impact of farmers environmental awareness on resource use by utilizing survey data from 21 villages in three agro ecological regions of bangladesh the econometric analysis is based on the application of the tobit model explaining farmers environmental awareness in the first stage and a profit function examining environmental awareness and resource use relationships in the second stage results reveal that the level and duration of involvement with modern technology raises farmers environmental awareness and that farmers environmental awareness reduces resource use including chemicals farmers who are aware of the adverse environmental impacts of modern agricultural technology use lower amounts of all inputs in order to avoid further environmental damage therefore efforts to raise farmers environmental awareness are expected to enhance intangible benefits accruing from a relatively less chemical intensive environment

news shocks or parametric indeterminacy an observational equivalence result in linear rational expectations models abstract this paper studies identification in linear rational expectations models with news shocks we show that news driven models and indeterminate equilibrium economies with i i d fundamentals are observationally equivalent this finding calls for carefully designing empirical investigations of news shocks in estimated dsge models

testing separability of production using flexible functional form profit functions abstract we show that the dual implications of separability depend crucially on whether profit is transformed non linearly in modern flexible form production systems in any case where profit is non linearly transformed as in the translog homothetic separability is maintained

farm size relative efficiency and agrarian policy in cote d ivoire profit function analysis of rice farms abstract this paper examines the relative economic efficiency of small and large rice farms in cote d ivoire using a profit function approach no differences in the relative economic efficiency of small and large farms were found this conclusion is robust under alternative model specifications agrarian reforms directed towards further concentration of landholding for large farms in cote d ivoire cannot be justified based on economic efficiency results show that access to credit and use of modern rice varieties significantly increase profits to improve technical efficiency of rice farms an accelerated program to provide information credit improved seeds and other inputs is needed when all the farms i e large and small are taken together there is evidence of allocative inefficiency strategies are needed to remove such management related inefficiencies in rice production either through the development of a better market price information system or effective farmer oriented technical training programs by rice extension workers