economic tactics commercial policy and the socialization of african agriculture abstract commercial policies in some african countries have come under considerable criticism in recent years and it has become necessary to resolve the problems of existing agricultural marketing forms an alternative approach to the market liberalization commonly recommended is to intervene in the market so as to achieve its regulation and control and a pricing system which can and will support the socialization of agricultural production in collective farms maintain incentives for individual producers and encourage state procurement of basic crops such market control cannot be achieved without an active commercial policy based on the transformation of marketing institutions effective forms of market intervention and the devolution of considerable power over pricing and marketing from the national to the local levels

primitive accumulation agrarian reform and socialist transitions an argument this essay constructs a preliminary argument concerning the position of the peasantry in the twin transitions the first to industrialisation and the second towards socialism within orthodox marxian theory the two transitions are also sequential with the socialist order emerging from the crisis breakdown and overthrow of the capitalist system which in its maturity becomes a fetter upon further development and begets with the inexorability of a law of nature its own negation marx 1969 144 at this juncture the process of proletarianisation has been completed in the economy as a whole including the agricultural sector where the petty peasant producers and artisans have been separated from their means of production and have been reduced to the status of sellers of labour power while the landlords and or sections of the middle and rich peasantry have emerged as capitalist farmers who treat agriculture as a branch of industry integrated fully with the rest of the economy however this bit of marx s theory of history was drafted without the benefit of hindsight and thus far history has resisted conforming to what was expected of it the first socialist revolution broke the capitalist chain not at the strongest but rather at the weakest link and subsequent socialist transitions have also been initiated through revolutionary movements in arenas which display low initial levels of economic especially industrial development at the time of the revolutionary break with the past none of the present roll of socialist economies boasted an advanced industrial sector in none of them was the process of rural proletarianisation anywhere near completion indeed in most cases on both counts the situation was as far from the marxian postulation as could be imagined as such these countries have entered the socialist transition not through the crossroads of industrialisation instead they have launched upon the twin transitions simultaneously

optimal dynamic pricing of inventories with stochastic demand over finite horizons in many industries managers face the problem of selling a given stock of items by a deadline we investigate the problem of dynamically pricing such inventories when demand is price sensitive and stochastic and the firm s objective is to maximize expected revenues examples that fit this framework include retailers selling fashion and seasonal goods and the travel and leisure industry which markets space such as seats on airline flights cabins on vacation cruises and rooms in hotels that become worthless if not sold by a specific time we formulate this problem using intensity control and obtain structural monotonicity results for the optimal intensity resp price as a function of the stock level and the length of the horizon for a particular exponential family of demand functions we find the optimal pricing policy in closed form for general demand functions we find an upper bound on the expected revenue based on analyzing the deterministic version of the problem and use this bound to prove that simple fixed price policies are asymptotically optimal as the volume of expected sales tends to infinity finally we extend our results to the case where demand is compound poisson only a finite number of prices is allowed the demand rate is time varying holding costs are incurred and cash flows are discounted the initial stock is a decision variable and reordering overbooking and random cancellations are allowed

stabilization adjustment and the poor abstract this paper attempts to survey the recent literature on the impact of stabilization and adjustment programs upon the poor and to consider some of the key issues in the context of a particular equity oriented low income country tanzania after looking at some of the approaches of earlier studies this paper analyzes the effects of restructuring policies macroeconomic restraint and strategic policy change the author then reviews available evidence on the recent experience of tanzania with external shock efforts at stabilization and relations with the imf in conclusion the author argues that in order to better understand their impact on poverty we need more detailed analyses of specific countries experience with different kinds of macroeconomic imbalance and different short to medium term policy responses however he does indicate with some certainty that when equivalent external blows impact upon very low income countries there must be a presumption that other things being equal including the distribution of income the proportion of households and people pushed over the line into absolute poverty will be greater than in middle income countries the international community should provide external finance to aid these low income countries in limiting the negative impact on the poorest

official and parallel cereals markets in senegal empirical evidence abstract senegal s experience with cereals market regulation grows out of a colonial legacy that accepts a preeminent role for the state as protector of producers and comsumers yet the reality of cereals market operation in senegal differs substantially from that specified in regulatory texts and satisfaction of certain performance objectives is achieved largely because of illegal parallel market activity involving violations of official rules and policies survey data collected in northern and central senegal provide valuable insights into the operation of a heterogeneous cereals marketing system made up of parallel channel marketing agents authorized private traders public sector marketing organizations and parastatals

price promotions cause impatience in this research the authors propose that incidental exposure to price promotions can cause downstream impatience in an unrelated domain specifically price promotions trigger reward seeking a ge

pricing and lot sizing polices for perishable goods when the demand depends on selling price displayed stocks and expiration date abstract price is a major factor on the demand based on marketing and economic theory in addition the demand for perishable products also depends on its freshness moreover it is a well known fact that increasing stock display e g fresh fruits vegetables baked goods may encourage consumers to purchase more this paper first proposes an inventory model that stipulates the demand explicitly in a multivariate function of price freshness and displayed stocks it may be profitable to have a closeout sale at a markdown price and always keep on hand displayed stocks fresh and plentiful if the demand is freshness and stock dependent hence the traditional assumption of zero ending inventories is relaxed to a non zero ending inventory as a result the objective is to determine three decision variables i e unit price cycle time and ending inventory level in order to maximize the total profit then it is demonstrated that the total profit is strictly pseudo concave in those three decision variables which reduces the search for solutions to a unique local maximum finally numerical examples to illustrate the theoretical results and to highlight managerial insights are presented

an economic lot size model with non linear holding cost hinging on time and quantity abstract this paper develops an economic lot size inventory model where the demand rate depends on the stock level and the cumulative holding cost is non linear on both the quantity and the time they are stored more concretely it is supposed that the demand rate is a concave potential function of the inventory level and the holding cost is potential on both time and quantity moreover shortages are not allowed a general procedure to determine the optimal lot size and the maximum inventory profit is developed also some results about the profitability of the inventory system are presented this work extends several inventory models previously considered in the literature finally numerical examples which help us to understand the theoretical results are also given

optimal ordering and pricing policies in a single period environment with multivariate demand and markdowns this paper investigates a single period inventory model in which the demand of the product is a deterministic multivariate function of price time and level of inventory models are formulated for the basic pricing case and the case with a price markdown during the season solution methodologies are presented for each case when the pricing decisions are predetermined and when they are decision variables comments on the practical use of this model are presented and sensitivity analysis is conducted on the decision variables and demand parameters

extrinsic versus intrinsic problems of agricultural cooperation anti incentivism in tanzania and china peasant willingness to engage in collective farming and the efficiency of collective farms once established may be preconditioned on local self determination participatory control discriminating work incentives and external manoeuvrability in the absence of such preconditions whether or not there exist economies of scale sufficient to offset effectively minimised incentive problems cannot be determined anti incentivism bureaucratic controls and extractive external environments are identified as factors inhibiting successful collective farming in both tanzania and china explanations of these tendencies in the two countries are sought in their political economies and ideological structures

framing the deal the role of restrictions in accentuating deal value we propose that consumers use the presence of a restriction i e purchase limit purchase precondition or time limit as a source of information to evaluate a deal in a series of four studies we present evidence suggesting that restrictions serve to accentuate deal value and act as promoters of promotions we begin by using aggregate level scanner data to test our hypothesis that a sales restriction e g limit x per customer results in higher sales via three subsequent experiments we then investigate contextual and individual factors moderating this effect study 2 suggests that restrictions only have a positive effect for low need for cognition individuals study 3 explores the potential mediating role of deal evaluations on purchase intent across discount levels study 4 examines the effect of three types of restrictions purchase limits time limits and purchase preconditions across discount levels and explores the underlying beliefs driving these effects an integrative model across studies demonstrates the robustness of the restriction effect and supports the premise that restrictions work through signaling value implications for how consumers determine promotional value are discussed

rejoinder food agricultural and trade policy to the year 2000 abstract this article partly in response to fred sanderson s article pp 363 73 challenges the narrow approach of forecasting the future food situation by extrapolating current trends and the view that little can be done to improve the predicament of the poorest of the poor this article argues that we must look for ways of breaking out of the vicious circle of low income low economic demand low productivity and low levels of resource utilization

agrarian reform in the dominican republic an associative solution to the collective individual dilemma abstract the dilemma of appropriate organizational structure for agrarian reform projects is pervasive in all of latin america collectives or production cooperatives provide superior vehicles for necessary credit and technical assistance but unlikely family plots they are wrought with administrative problems and low worker incentive this case study of land reform projects in the dominican republic presents the limitations of collective and individual farming structures and characterizes an intermediate associative preferred by the dominican reform beneficiaries empirical evidence shows higher productivity as the reform projects adopt the associative structure

on some recent explanations of why capital hires labor conventional microeconomics contains no explanation of why capital hires labor and not the reverse in view of some surprisingly positive results in the theoretical analysis of worker run enterprise systems recent contributions to the theory of the firm have attempted to explain the dominance of capitalist production relations in efficiency terms the present paper critically reviews works in this area by alchian and demsetz 1972 williamson 1975 1980 and jensen and meckling 1979 and contends that a convincing efficiency argument for the general superiority of capital owners over workers control of enterprises still is lacking

exact accounting of inventory costs in stochastic periodic review models abstract most stochastic periodic review inventory models calculate inventory costs according to the inventory level at the end of the review cycle however in most cases actual inventory costs accrue at different time points over the course of the cycle suggesting that the outputs of these models might be suboptimal this work proposes a means of overcoming this deficiency by attributing inventory costs to their actual timing formulas are presented for the expected profit and for its corresponding optimality equation in various multi period models that follow complete or partial backlogging with or without spoilage stationary or varying inventory costs within cycle and immediate or postponed revenues we show that the optimality equation of all these model variants is a kind of newsvendor formula with modified demand distribution and cost parameters a simple approximation formula and bounds on the optimal order quantity which are based only on the demand distribution over the entire cycle are presented and combined together into an improved approximation formula numerical examples of a brownian motion demand process demonstrate the benefit of the proposed approximation in comparison to the simple approximation formula

common property equality and development the appeal of common property ideas may be traced in large measure to the fact that they seem to embody widely held values of equality on the other hand empirical examination of common property institutions reveals that they can coexist with significant inequality in this paper the relationship between common property and equality is examined it is argued that the role of common property can only be understood in the context of the associated private property institutions common property in agriculture is interpreted as part of a system based on small scale peasant proprietorship of arable land common property institutions provide a method of capturing scale economies and thereby increasing the efficiency of small scale proprietorship in competition with large scale production based on wage labor

inventory cost rate functions with nonlinear shortage costs this article considers five cost rate models for inventory control each summarizing the expected holding and shortage costs per period as a function of the inventory position all models have linear holding costs and shortage cost coefficients of dimension unit period unit and period the latter two coeficients may be the shadow costs of a fill rate and a ready rate service constraint respectively one of the cost rate models is a new suggestion intended to facilitate modeling of periodic review inventory systems if and only if conditions on the demand process are presented for which the cost rate is quasi convex in the inventory position the typical sufficient condition requires that the cumulative demand distribution be logconcave a condition that is met by most demand distributions commonly used in the inventory literature the results simplify optimization and extend the known optimality of s s and nq r policies to cost structures common in applications and to the presence of typical service constraints as a prerequisite for the study a series of new monotonicity results are derived for compound renewal processes

a periodic review lot sizing problem with random yields disruptions and inventory capacity this paper examines a periodic reviewed lot sizing problem with random yields disruptions and limited inventory capacity to characterise the continuous production an additive random yield model is considered rather than a multiplicative one disruptions cause breakdowns to production inventory capacity is included since the production has to be shut down when the inventory buffer is full both disruptions and shutdowns lead to a start up cost and a stochastic lead time to recover the production these compound factors of uncertainty are encountered in practical planning decisions in process industries we review the existing random yield models which are then compared with the additive model with a linear production cost the additive model has an order up to policy to be optimal disruptions deteriorate the expected actual production quantity and the fill rate dramatically even though the optimal order up to level increases compared with the cases of no disruption considering inventory capacity makes the problem to be a non convex dynamic programming problem numerical analysis shows that the performance is dramatically deteriorated when the inventory capacity is rather tight which indicates the importance of selecting a proper inventory capacity to reduce the negative impacts and avoid redundant investment on capacity moreover the start up cost plays an important role in determining the level of inventory capacity

money planning and rural transformation in mozambique this article argues that the transformation of the rural economy should proceed on a broad front which links the development of the state sector with the need to transform family agriculture through co operatisation in actual fact planning became concentrated on the state sector which received the bulk of the investible resources disequilibria between the planned needs of resources and their real availability destabilised the exchange between the state sector and peasant production and consequently blocked the possibilities of transforming family agriculture this contradition expresses itself in the form of monetary disequilibrium but it cannot be solved by monetary policy only rather it requires rethinking the nature of planning itself

parallel rice markets policy lessons from northern senegal abstract cereals policy reform in africa is often cast in terms of a choice between public sector and private sector solutions recent evidence from northern senegal including the first empirical data collected on parallel channel rice marketing activities suggests that excessive reliance on either the state or the private sector is likely to result in unsatisfactory performance despite the claims of government authorities to the contrary the performance of parallel channel marketing agents in the senegal river valley compares favourably with that of the state grain marketing organizations however profitmotivated private traders are unlikely to meet all national food policy objectives implying a continuing role for government participation in marketing activities

financial deprivation prompts consumers to seek scarce goods consumers assess their well being subjectively largely by comparing the present state of their lives to the state of comparable others and to their own state earlier in time the authors suggest that consumers similarly assess their financial wellbeing and when these evaluations highlight a deficit in their financial position they pursue strategies that mitigate the associated sense of financial deprivation specifically consumers counteract the relative deficit in their financial resources by acquiring goods that are consequently unavailable to other consumers in their environment the results from five studies suggest that the inferiority and unpleasant affect associated with financial deprivation motivates consumers to attend to choose and consume scarce goods rather than comparable abundant goods these effects diminish when scarce goods are limited because other people have already obtained them and when consumers attribute their unpleasant feelings to a source unrelated to financial deprivation

balance of payments output and prices in tanzania abstract this paper examines the relationship between changes in international reserves and changes in output prices and monetary balances in tanzania using annual data for 1962 86 a short run macroeconomic model of the balance of payments is formulated and estimated in which output and prices are endogenized and the behaviors of the monetary and fiscal authorities are explicitly modeled the estimation results are used to examine the relative effectiveness of alternative policy instruments on the key macroeconomic variables of the model the monetary variables appear to have played a relatively significant role in the development of prices but they were only marginally significant in the process of balance of payments adjustment the simulation results indicate that a tradeoff existed between faster economic growth and better balance of payments performance

the deterministic eoq with partial backordering a new approach previous authors have shown that if demand that cannot be filled from stock is partially backordered then using the full backordering model or assuming that all stockouts will result in lost sales can lead to substantial increases in cost relative to using a model that specifically recognizes the percentage of the stockouts that will be backordered the models that these authors developed resulted in procedures or equations that are relatively difficult to use in this paper we take a different approach to modeling the deterministic eoq with partial backordering that results in equations that are more like the comparable equations for the basic eoq and its full backordering extension

a modified collective agriculture in rural growth with equity reconsidering the private unimodal solution abstract this paper identifies limitations of an agricultural structure of small private farms as a basis for rural growth with distributive equity and points out potential advantages of democratically managed collectives characterized by flexibility with respect to production scale group checks on inequality in land use and avoidance of the underemployment generating tendencies of large scale non collective agriculture after a critique of recent literature on scale economies and a discussion of stratification tendencies in private agriculture a model of democratic rural collectives incorporating features of chinese and tanzanian precedents is introduced and evaluated political feasibility is considered in a concluding discussion

accumulation social services and socialist transition in the third world reflections on decentralised planning based on the mozambican experience the purpose of this article is to argue for the viability and the logic of a distinctive approach to planning economic development and socialist transition in poor economies the components of this distinctive approach are more decentralised and popularly based planning and control of accumulation the close interlinking of investment in social services and in rural production and an emphasis on intervention in the market as a tool of socialist planning the article therefore presents an argument about economic planning intended to be relevant to a range of countries with similar general aims and problems however the ideas are developed here as they were in practice through a reflection on our own understanding of planning andits problems in mozambique during the first ten years of that country s independence 1

communal property and land markets agricultural development policy in st lucia abstract communal land tenure in st lucia was targeted for privatization in 1986 on the premise that its undercapitalization and low productivity could be corrected by establishing an efficient land market this article takes the neoclassical analysis which was used to support this policy to task with empirical evidence from st lucia it argues that the inefficiencies attributed to communal land only are not justified many of these inefficiencies are in fact also shared with freehold tenure in addition family land performs socioeconomic functions that cannot be achieved with freehold tenure and fulfills a critical function in the development process

maize food self sufficiency and policy in east and southern africa abstract in recent years maize has become a major food staple in the east and southern african region national average yields of maize remain low and yield gains are generally below population growth rates agricultural policy particularly maize pricing marketing and trade is examined and it is noted that despite an objective of maize self sufficiency many countries in the region continue to face erratic supplies finally a brief look is taken at the technologies available for maize and at those groups of smallholders who are unable to meet their annual household food requirements

agricultural price policy in tanzania abstract this paper examines agricultural price policy implementation and its strategic impact in tanzania over the period 1969 1980 trends in producer prices and the rural urban terms of trade are analysed by constructing weighted price and income indices for major categories of crops marketed through official channels the results indicate a substantial deterioration of real prices and incomes from crop sales during the 1970s when taken in conjunction with a concomitant deterioration in the efficiency of agricultural marketing the analysis suggests that price policy has had a major adverse impact both on peasant living standards and on the economic performance of tanzania since the mid 1960s

adapting the newsvendor model for infinite horizon inventory systems abstract we address inventory decisions in the context of the reorder point order quantity policy in infinite horizon stochastic lead time demand inventory systems in which the parameters may be non stationary we develop a heuristic policy based on the simple economic order quantity eoq model and the one period newsvendor model using illustrative numerical examples we demonstrate that our simple and easy to understand heuristic policy performs nearly as well as the optimal policy derived from complicated mathematical procedures our heuristic policy is simple easy to implement and flexible in that it can be easily adapted to situations when the parameters of the inventory system may change analytical modeling under non stationary parameters would be extremely complex and the derivation of closed form optimal policies is mathematically intractable in most cases in such cases practitioners will find our heuristic policy an attractive option

a hierarchy model of associative farming abstract acceptance of the need for complementary services when agrarian reform is introduced such as credit and technical assistance has led many countries in latin america to organize land reform projects into collectives or production cooperatives but the disincentives to effort inherent in group farming have been a continual source of underproduction and disappointment with cooperative farming experiments the paper suggests an intermediate farming structure currently successful in the dominican republic in the framework of an agency contract incorporating the hierarchical relations between beneficiary administrator and governing agency the advantages of the associative over either individual or collective farming are illustrated

the carbon constrained eoq model with carbon emission dependent demand abstract currently companies are looking for solutions to reduce carbon emissions associated with their operations operational adjustments such as modifications in batch sizes or order quantities have proven to be an effective way to decrease emissions in this paper a novel model is proposed that takes into account the link between an inventory policy eoq total carbon emissions and both price and environmental dependent demands in the case of an exogenous price two optimal quantities are determined which maximize a retailer s profit and which minimize carbon emissions conditions that allow a company to maximize profit while minimizing emissions and mechanisms that allow a firm to maximize its profit and to decrease its carbon emissions are determined in the case of an endogenous price some empirical results are also discussed when a firm optimizes its profit through both its selling price and its order quantity some experiments match empirical observations on the one hand an environmental strategy is more significant for cheaper and green labeled products on the other hand a public mechanism such as a carbon tax will decrease total and marginal emissions

joint pricing and inventory control for non instantaneous deteriorating items with partial backlogging and time and price dependent demand abstract in this paper a joint pricing and inventory control for non instantaneous deteriorating items is developed we adopt a price and time dependent demand function shortages is allowed and partially backlogged the major objective is to determine the optimal selling price the optimal replenishment schedule and the optimal order quantity simultaneously such that the total profit is maximized we first show that for any given selling price optimal replenishment schedule exists and unique then we show that the total profit is a concave function of price next we present a simple algorithm to find the optimal solution finally we solve a numerical example to illustrate the solution procedure and the algorithm

end of period vs continuous accounting of inventory related costs this paper investigates the effect of using an end of period accounting scheme for inventory related costs when costs actually accrue in continuous time using a simple model we show that i the end of period scheme results in higher than optimal order up to levels and inventory cost if the cost and demand parameters are unchanged and ii it is possible to replicate both the optimal base stock level and its cost by selecting the values of the cost or demand parameters judiciously the cost adjustments often require extreme values and no systematic cost parameter adjustment scheme is robust however we find a systematic adjustment to the demand parameters that serves as a good approximation and is robust we therefore conclude that end of period cost accounting without parameter adjustments is in general inappropriate when costs are incurred continuously but there are adjustments that can make it work well

how many parts to make at once reprinted from factory the magazine of management volume 10 number 2 february 1913 pp 135 136 152 interest on capital tied up in wages material and overhead sets a maximum limit to the quantity of parts which can be profitably manufactured at one time set up costs on the job fix the minimum experience has shown one manager a way to determine the economical size of lots

urbanization and underdevelopment a global study of modernization urban bias and economic dependency the causes and effects of 3rd world urbanization have been addressed in theories of modernization urban bias and economic dependency but no single cross national study has tested the arguments advanced by all 3 theories this paper uses panel regression analysis to assess the validity of the 3 perspectives in 61 underdeveloped countries between 1960 and 1980 the modernization theory asserts that industrial employment attracts people to urban areas where they work in modern sector employment that facilitates national economic expansion the urban bias theory posits that the disparity in welfare between country and city increases rural to urban migration and thereby expands both urbanization and service informal employment dependency and world system arguments assert that foreign investment promotes both urbanization and service informal labor with foreign investment in agriculture pushing farmers townward and foreign investment in urban manufacturing pulling them there results suggest that underdeveloped nations are experiencing a gradual transition from an agrarian to a service and informal economy a transformation that impedes economic expansion unfavorable agricultural conditions alone will not push rural citizens to urban areas 2 theories help explain the relationship between relatives urbanization and economic growth if future studies of urbanization and underdevelopment are going to be useful then they must transcend current theoretical and ideological particularism

south african land policy the legacy of history and current options abstract the highly dualistic farm structure of south africa and the low productivity of native african farmers have been the result of systematic distortions in land allocation output markets the provision of infrastructure agricultural credit and services the dualistic structure did not emerge because of genuine economies of scale in the large commercial sector other countries in latin america and africa that once supported a dualistic farm size structure through similar distortions have either implemented large scale land reforms or have experienced decades of peasant revolts and civil war the paper compares these international experiences to south africa and outlines judicial and market assisted approaches to south african land reform

economic reform and smallholder agriculture in tanzania a discussion of recent market liberalization road rehabilitation and technology dissemination efforts abstract this paper discusses the reforms affecting tanzania s small farm sector during 1984 1993 it focuses on changes in marketing and input supply including the revival of regional cooperative societies the ending of the state monopoly in food crop procurement and changes in the export crop sector efforts to rehabilitate the country s road network and the effects of institutional change on a technology dissemination program sasakawa global 2000 are also discussed the author concludes that improvements in the performance of the smallholder sector cannot be expected to follow automatically from a withdrawal of government

optimal ordering and pricing policy for demand functions that are separable into price and inventory age abstract we formulate and analyze two models for determining the optimal pricing order quantity and replenishment period for items whose demand function is separable into components of price and inventory age the first model assumes a multiplicative demand function we provide conditions which are satisfied by most common price dependent demand functions to reduce the three variable profit maximization problem into a single variable problem which can be solved using an efficient line search method next we show that a genuine additive model cannot exist and instead suggest and analyze a pseudo additive model however this model is more limited than the multiplicative model in its ability to incorporate various combinations of price and inventory age effects and reduction of the maximization problem into a single variable problem is more complicated except in the case of a linear price effect which is further analyzed for both models we show that the optimal solution satisfies the first order condition for equilibrium under a monopoly with a modification that includes inventory holding costs we solve numerical examples to illustrate the solution procedures

inventory ordering policies of delayed deteriorating items under permissible delay in payments abstract the existing literature on inventory of deteriorating items considers deterioration to begin as soon as the items are stocked however there are several deteriorating items that do not start deteriorating immediately they are held in stock some farm produce like potatoes yams and even some fruits and vegetables have this property depletion of these items as soon as they are stocked will depend on demand and when deterioration begins it will depend on both demand and deterioration in this paper we develop a mathematical model on the inventory of deteriorating items that do not start deteriorating immediately they are stocked the model also takes into cognizance the fact that in business activities nowadays customers are given some allowed period within which to settle for the goods supplied to them they can use the accrued money from sales of the supplied goods to earn interest within the allowed period they are charged interest only when they fail to settle the amount they owe the supplier at the end of the allowed period

transforming feudal agriculture agrarian change in ethiopia since 1974 this article seeks to examine the nature and consequences of agrarian change in ethiopia since the revolution of 1974 it argues that while the reforms implemented since 1975 have effectively destroyed the age old feudal framework of agriculture they have not yet created a coherent new framework even though the government s proclaimed objective is to develop a co operative framework not much progress in that direction has so far been made in fact state policies in the past few years were dictated by the need to cope with short term problems arising from a decline in production and marketed surplus of food in the immediate aftermath of the reforms the analysis in this article shows that the basic problem of peasant agriculture is that it currently produces only a meagre economic surplus at this stage therefore agricultural growth is to be achieved primarily through the promotion of labour investment this is the principal argument for co operativisation this view suggests state policies which are

structural adjustment as a policy process the case of tanzania abstract analyses of structural adjustment in developing countries have increasingly come to emphasize the importance of grounding reforms in the political realities of the countries concerned while this approach is a step forward from the more economistic and prescriptive analyses that prevailed in the first part of the 1980s we believe that the dynamics of structural adjustment is only fully captured by an approach that treats the policy context as an explicit and independent variable on the basis of a case study of tanzania this article uses a policy process approach in which the notions of ambiguity and conflict in policy situations help us better understand the opportunities and constraints for action on structural adjustment issues

the discrete time eoq model solution and implications abstract consideration is given to the classical eoq with backorders model where one of its original assumptions is modified instead of being continuous time forms a sequence of indivisible quanta unit periods the implications of this assumption common in the analysis of periodic review policies are explored for deterministic demand modeled as an inventory system under the s t policy long run average cost is derived and it is shown that optimal control involves the solution of a two dimensional non convex integer optimization problem properties are established leading to a solution algorithm which guarantees optimal s and t determination with at most three cost function evaluations it is shown that contrary to intuition the classical eoq optimal cost is not a lower bound for the system studied this is exploited to develop distribution free lower bounds for stochastic periodic review systems together with properties rendering them useful in inventory optimization

an optimal replenishment policy for non instantaneous deteriorating items with stock dependent demand and partial backlogging abstract in this study we consider a problem of determining the optimal replenishment policy for non instantaneous deteriorating items with stock dependent demand in the model shortages are allowed and the backlogging rate is variable and dependent on the waiting time for the next replenishment the necessary and sufficient conditions of the existence and uniqueness of the optimal solution are shown as the special cases the results for the models with instantaneous or non instantaneous deterioration rate and with or without shortages are derived further we analytically identify the best circumstance among these special cases based on the minimum total relevant cost per unit time sensitivity analysis of the optimal solution with respect to major parameters is carried out finally four numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the developed model and the solution procedure

the dark side of scarcity promotions how exposure to limited quantity promotions can induce aggression marketers frequently use scarcity promotions where a product or event is limited in availability the present research shows conditions under which the mere exposure to such advertising can activate actual aggression that manifests even outside the domain of the good being promoted further we document the process underlying this effect exposure to limited quantity promotion advertising prompts consumers to perceive other shoppers as competitive threats to obtaining a desired product and physiologically prepares consumers to aggress seven studies using multiple behavioral measures of aggression demonstrate this deleterious response to scarcity promotions

an eoq model with backorders and rejection of defective supply batches abstract we consider a single echelon inventory installation under the classical eoq with backorders paradigm to study the effects of supply quality on cost performance previous research on imperfect supply quality has focused on variants of the proportional deterministic or random yield problem where supply batches are all accepted and then used after screening any defects in this paper we study an alternative setting where entire supply batches may be defective below quality standards and therefore rejected on arrival note that such supply flow disruptions are analogous to those considered within the economic order quantity with disruptions eoqd area of research we first present an exact model for the system expected cost and show its convexity optimal cost and respective values of the decision variables i e planned order quantity and backorders are then obtained in a closed form interestingly under perfect supply quality all expressions reduce to those of classical eoq analytical and computational results reveal the serious impact of inferior supply quality on system cost as well as the sensitivity of the system parameters

relative agricultural prices and the urban bias model a comparative analysis of tanzania and fiji the paper critically examines agricultural price aspects of the urban bias model especially the links between class interests government policies and the trend of real agricultural prices the paper contains an analysis of the principal factors both economic and political underlying agriculture s terms of trade in two contrasting countries tanzania and fiji both case studies in different ways raise doubts about the generality of urban bias propositions as they relate to agricultural prices they also suggest important weaknesses in the model s interpretation of the politics of farm prices

markets markets everywhere understanding the cuban anomaly abstract cuba has made exceptionally little use of markets compared with other centrally planned economies only in the 1970s did the cubans begin to experiment with a state controlled parallel market and in 1980 with a free peasant market six years into the experiment this market was closed as it produced tensions common to other socialist experiences with market mechanisms high prices growing income and consumption inequality and the illegal redirection of resources from the planned to market sphere the free market was replaced with a more limited market mechanism an expanded parallel market in both agricultural procurement and food distribution considered more compatible with the cuban commitment to egalitarianism

an evaluation of indian government rice policy in tamil nadu abstract the indian government procures rice from wholesalers or producers at a price below the market price and then distributes it to low income consumers at a subsidized price this paper uses a simulataneous equations econometric model to evaluate the effects of this policy on supply demand of rice in the state of tamil nadu between 1956 and 1985 results show that production is more responsive to power for irrigation and fertilizer prices than to output prices because supply is inelastic producers bear the burden of the tax imposed by procurement even though rice is procured from the wholesaler rice distributed by the government displaces rice demanded in the open market and thus the government distribution of rice has not increased the total consumption of rice

incorporating quantity discounts to the eoq model with transportation costs abstract this article extends a previous economic order quantity eoq model with two modes of transportation namely truckload tl and less than truckload ltl carriers by introducing all units and incremental quantity discount structures into the analysis exact algorithms are developed for each quantity discount structure to compute optimal policies for single stage models over an infinite planning horizon

government intervention in food grain markets an econometric study of tanzania abstract government intervention in food grain markets is a common feature of ldc development efforts this paper investigates the motivation for and the consequences of such intervention for the case of maize wheat and rice markets in tanzania the authors formulate and estimate an econometric model for each crop comprising four government behavioral equations in addition to domestic demand and supply equations and the social accounting identity that succeeds in explaining government interventions in both the long and short run the results suggest that the government has been following a policy of relative food grain self sufficiency that has insulated the domestic market from the international market a simulation analysis shows that this policy has had a substantial impact on food grain production and external trade

the structure and contradictions of productive relations in socialist agrarian reform a framework for analysis and the chinese case this article attempts to develop a complex analytical framework for analysing socialist agrarian reform and to apply it to the case of post mao china perhaps the most sweeping agrarian reform in the history of socialism the purpose of doing so is to disaggregate the complex changes which have been wrought under the responsibility systems in order to get a more nuanced sense of what has and has not changed how the various parts fit together and where the axes of contradiction posed by the reform may lie this analytical framework may also be of use in comparative analysis of socialist agriculture though that enterprise is not attempted here one basic argument of this study is that the responsibility systems of the recent chinese reforms are neither socialist nor capitalist but something distinctive whose potentially heterogeneous elements must be identified disaggregated analysed one by one and then reconstituted in order to expose their nature dynamics and contradictions

balance of payments adjustment in low income developing countries the experiences of kenya and tanzania in the 1970s abstract in the wake of the oil price shock of the mid 1970s the two low income economies of kenya and tanzania adopted growth oriented adjustment strategies the oil shock also coincided with drought which affected tanzania much more adversely by the end of the 1970s the glaring failures in the two countries adjustment performance was in relation to balance of payments and in particular to export growth pricing policies in agriculture were actively applied in the two countries the results of these policies continue to underline the importance of a farmer rewarding price policy but also indicate a strong possibility of crop substitution problems in low income economies special measures were applied to promote manufactured exports subsidies in kenya and primary export processing in tanzania but they were a conspicuous failure policy lessons from these experiences are briefly indicated

optimal inventory policy for a perishable item with demand function sensitive to price and time abstract we formulate a model for determining the optimal pricing order quantity and replenishment period for perishable items with price dependent and time dependent demand the items have a fixed shelf life and the demand rate decreases linearly in the selling price and polynomially over the time after replenishment until it vanishes either at the reservation price or at expiration time we prove that the three variable profit maximization problem can be reduced into a single variable problem in which the variable is the duration of the replenishment period we show that the profit function is strictly pseudo concave and provide means of obtaining the optimal policy three numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the model accompanied by a sensitivity analysis

manufactured goods supply and cash crops in sub saharan africa abstract this paper deals with the impact of manufactured goods supply mainly consumer goods on cash crop expansion in sub saharan africa a close link between agricultural performance and trends of manufactures supply becomes apparent through a descriptive analysis concerning 12 african countries this is confirmed by the econometric analysis undertaken we improve significantly on the results of nerlove s model by adding a variable which reflects manufactures supply moreover a new model taking into account this supply as well as short term price effects represents in an acceptable way the reality of some countries

the distributional dimensions of revolutionary transition ethiopia this study attempts to investigate some of the distributional costs that have attended upon the process of revolutionary transition in ethiopia focusing on the crucial role of the rural sector in this regard the central variable through which this sector influenced national economic performance was the marketed proportion of output the study deals with this linkage and with the macroeconomic distributional outcomes of the growth process for the rural and urban sectors the probable distributional implications of the ten year plan are elicited and the sobering findings provide the motivational force behind a few strategic policy considerations that are briefly outlined it is argued that the national economic growth process was seriously imbalanced and the sluggishness of agriculture meant that the growth was financed through an inflationary process which passed on the costs of accumulation substantially on to the poorer sections of the population

optimal replenishment policies for non instantaneous deteriorating items with stock dependent demand abstract wu et al 2006 an optimal replenishment policy for non instantaneous deteriorating items with stock dependent demand and partial backlogging international journal of production economics 101 369 384 established an inventory model for non instantaneous deteriorating items with stock dependent demand and obtained the optimal replenishment policy in this paper we first amend wu et al s model by changing the objective to maximizing the total profit secondly we set a maximum inventory level in the model to reflect the facts that most retail outlets have limited shelf space thirdly we relax the restriction of zero ending inventory when shortages are not desirable we then establish the theoretical results and provide an algorithm to find the optimal solution finally we present some numerical examples to illustrate the results

agrarian reform as a model of accumulation the case of nicaragua since 1979 despite the fact that the historical experience of the construction of socialism has taken place in predominantly agrarian societies it is notorious that the agrarian question remains unresolved and constrains their progress to a greater or lesser degree this is all the more crucial for those revolutions of the second half of the twentieth century which generated in the third world by the liberation struggle not only seek an increased food supply as the basis for raising popular living standards but also greater exports from the primary sector to secure imports of producer goods thus the agrarian question becomes central to the accumulation model not only as a source of investible surplus but also as part of the articulation between the different forms of production which underlie the inherited social structure an account of the nicaraguan experience of agrarian reform in its first five years 1980 84 should have some intrinsic interest it also serves to illustrate this central problem of th