growing sub systems vertically hyper integrated sectors and the labour theory of value the author starts from piero sraffa s notion of subsystem and from his own notion of vertically integrated sector and goes on to a complete generalization to dynamic analysis a production system is partitioned into a set of self contained growing subsystems each of which compactly considered is characterized by one single unit of consumption good at one extreme and one single labor coefficient at the other extreme a vertically hyper integrated sector this logical construction is shown to possess remarkable analytical and normative properties particularly suitable for dynamic analysis among these properties a complete generalization is obtained of ada m smith s pure labor theory of value copyright 1988 by oxford university press

the impact of the gatt agreement on eu fruit and vegetable policy abstract this paper examines the eu s plans for implementing the uruguay round gatt agreement on agriculture with respect to fresh fruits and vegetables it considers the import access export subsidy and domestic support commitments in particular the eu has decided to retain a minimum import price regime for fresh fruits and vegetables the new entry price system displacing the old reference price system is to apply on a consignment basis the entry price and reference price systems are compared and some conclusions drawn about the likely impact of entry prices on potential third country suppliers of the eu market

dynamic home made rations of commodities the application of pasinetti s vertical hyper integration to trade in capital goods commodities are not completely home made if their production requires imported capital goods directly or indirectly applying the concept of vertical hyper integration developed by pasinetti to the global economy this paper defines the dynamic home made ratio for each commodity which can explain the effects of home and overseas changes in technology and growth rates of consumption demand on the balance of payments the analysis deepens the understanding of the concept of home made ratios which is often referred to without exact definition and of nies which have repeatedly suffered unfavourable trade balances despite the strong performance of their exporting industries

the thrifty food plan and low income households in the united states what food groups are being neglected food assistance programs in the united states provide low income households with the resources to purchase a healthy nutritious and palatable diet if they buy the market baskets of food outlined in the thrifty food plan this study compares the cost of these baskets with actual spending on food at home by low income households simulations reveal at home food spending by low income households to represent only 86 of what is needed to follow the thrifty food plan married couples with children and female headed households with children spend only 73 and 82 respectively and just 43 and 50 for at home fruits and vegetables

in kind benefits and household behavior the impact of snap on food away from home consumption abstract supplemental nutrition assistance program snap formerly known as the food stamp program provides in kind benefits that can generally be utilized for food at home fah only according to economic theory snap benefits are fungible with cash for inframarginal households which may allow participants to spend benefits on non fah items however empirical evidence for this theory is mixed this paper exploits an underutilized source of state level variation the early 2000 s recession to determine the impact of snap participation on household food away from home fafh consumption in a difference in difference framework i compare households in high post recession snap growth states to households in low post recession snap growth states the results show that snap participation causes a significant decrease in fafh expenditure and fafh s share of total food expenditure

much ado about two reconsidering retransformation and the two part model in health econometrics in health economics applications involving outcomes y and covariates x it is often the case that the central inferential problems of interest involve e y x and its associated partial effects or elasticities many such outcomes have two fundamental statistical properties y 0 and the outcome y 0 is observed with sufficient frequency that the zeros cannot be ignored econometrically this paper 1 describes circumstances where the standard two part model with homoskedastic retransformation will fail to provide consistent inferences about important policy parameters and 2 demonstrates some alternative approaches that are likely to prove helpful in applications

trade and agroindustrialization in developing countries trends and policy impacts there have been important changes in the international trade of processed and high value added food products from developing countries over the past several decades one of them has been the emergence of oilseeds and fruits and vegetables replacing traditional products such as sugar coffee and cocoa as the main exports from developing countries another trend has been the collapse of african agroindustrial exports and the increase of exports from asia the paper highlights key trends and explores possible reasons for the trends focusing on trade policies in less developed countries ldcs and developed countries dcs the paper argues that national trade policies and other economic policies appear to have been relatively supportive of agroindustrial production and exports in asia in contrast policies have had more mixed effects in latin america and the caribbean lac and seem to have been just one component in a larger array of forces inhibiting economic development in africa the performance of agroindustrial production and exports from ldcs may be now more dependent than ever on the completion of reforms in the agricultural trade policies of dcs for africa however a more supportive international environment and better macroeconomic and trade policies will not be enough to ensure a thriving agroindustrial sector within a broader process of economic development until military confrontations stop

gdp and the value of family caretaking how much does europe care this study estimates the size and value of unpaid family caretaking activities at a european level while at a country level several studies are available a comprehensive evaluation for europe as a whole was missing so far mainly due to data limitations this article fills this gap using a method that merges the information of the european survey of income and living conditions eu silc with the harmonised european time use surveys hetus monetary values of unpaid family domestic work and unpaid family childcare work are obtained applying both the opportunity cost and the market replacement approaches for europe as a whole the total value of these activities ranges between 17 and 31 6 of the eu gross domestic product gdp depending on the applied methodology the national values of these activities are discussed and an interpretation of the country and gender differentials in family caretaking costs is given in terms of differences in culture economic development and welfare state

household consumption of food away from home total expenditure and by type of food facility consistent with prior expectations based on household production theory household income time value size and composition and the environment in which production and consumption occurred were all important determinants of total household expenditures on food away from home however the importance of these factors varied by type of food facility conventional restaurants fast food facilities and other commercial establishments decomposition of the tobit elasticities indicated the differential importance of market participation effects of household size income and time value by level of the variable and by type of food facility

estimates of returns to scale elasticity of substitution and the thrifty food plan meal poverty rate from a direct household meal production function abstract many nutritional policies are designed to make home food production more affordable and yet very little is actually known about the home food production process a better understanding of home food production can be used to help explain shortcomings in current nutrition policies and consequently help in designing better nutrition policies this paper provides results from several home meal production function specifications that are rather robust the median returns to scale and elasticity of substitution between money and time is in the 1 2 1 9 range and 33 56 range respectively indicating increasing returns to scale but difficulty in substituting money for time in home meal production a home meal poverty rate is estimated which is the percentage of the sample that produces fewer meals at home than consistent with dietary guidelines the estimated home meal poverty rate is about 85 which is consistent with recent research taking a less rigorous approach though the approach taken here is novel the overall message is consistent with the recent literature time is a more important factor in achieving nutritional targets than money

are snap benefits adequate a geographical and food expenditure decomposition abstract the supplemental nutrition assistance program snap provides resources to supplement household food expenditures in order to achieve a nutritious diet determining the amount of support required or extent of food expenditure poverty entails comparing available resources for food to a nutrition determined threshold clearly the value of the threshold will affect the degree of food expenditure poverty if the threshold value is inaccurate the calculated degree of poverty will be inaccurate usda uses a threshold for setting snap benefits that does not vary geographically or temporally so consequently food expenditure poverty may be understated or overstated in different regions and time periods this article compares food expenditure poverty estimates for snap participants when geographical differences in the threshold are ignored versus not ignored in addition the article decomposes household food expenditures into food away from home fafh food at home fah personal funded fah and snap funded fah in order to assess the degree to which each of these contribute to reducing food expenditure poverty the general findings are that all food expenditure poverty measures are worse when geographical differences are taken into account in addition the analysis shows that fah expenditures and in particular snap fah expenditures contribute the most to reducing food expenditure poverty in snap households the policy implications are that food expenditure poverty is currently underestimated in the us by ignoring geographical differences in thresholds but the food expenditure poverty would be even worse without snap benefits geographical adjustments to the national threshold could help reduce food expenditure poverty across regions

the price stabilization effects of the eu entry price scheme for fruit and vegetables the paper assesses the stabilization effects of the eu import regime for fresh fruit and vegetables based on the entry price system the analysis is carried out on the eu prices of tomatoes and lemons and those of imports from some of the main competing countries on the eu domestic markets morocco argentina and turkey it is based on the estimation of a threshold vector autoregressive econometric model that is shown capable of taking the workings of the import regime into account the model shows that prices behave differently when import prices are above below the trigger entry price this paper allowed to highlight the cases for which the isolation effect of eps seems reached and the resulting stabilization effects

the effects of trade policies for fresh fruit and vegetables of the european union abstract this paper examines the economic effects of the trade policies for fresh fruit and vegetables adopted by the european union eu after the uruguay round agreement on agriculture uraa the new import regimes are based on entry prices that in effect work as minimum prices at the same time the eu has signed trade preference agreements particularly with southern mediterranean countries that are important suppliers of fruit and vegetables to the eu the management of the import regime is a balance between two conflicting objectives to support internal producers and to preserve trade flows from preferred countries on the side of export subsidies to handle the reduction commitments under the uraa the eu has introduced rationing trough tender procedures the analysis shows that such subsidies do not seem able to boost the exports of eligible products therefore eu policy makers should ask whether the eu should continue to offer such subsidies

analysis of food away from home expenditure patterns for u s households 1982 89 the two step decision process for food away from home fafh consumption is empirically estimated using a generalization of the heien and wessells approach household information gathered by the national panel diary group is used for the analysis marginal effects are corrected by untangling the respective variable impacts on the inverse mills ratio expenditure and participation probability elasticities are similar to previous studies income elasticities are about 0 20 suggesting that the fafh commodity is a necessary good for u s society northeastern households are less likely to consume fafh than other households but their expenditures are higher on average

not enough money or not enough time to satisfy the thrifty food plan a cost difference approach for estimating a money time threshold abstract food production at home requires money and time food assistance programs focus exclusively on the money cost while ignoring the time cost this one dimensional focus could undermine the effectiveness of food assistance programs in the spirit of vickery 1977 this paper uses a cost difference approach to develop a money time threshold and several related metrics to determine whether money or time is the most limiting resource in reaching the thrifty food plan tfp target in our empirical analysis we find that when time is ignored single headed households spend on average 35 more than required to meet the tfp target however when time is included these households spend on average 40 less than required to meet the tfp target in addition we find that when time is ignored 62 of single headed households on average spend enough money to reach the tfp target but when time is included only 13 of single headed households spend enough on average to reach the tfp target our empirical results suggest that time is more constraining than money in reaching the tfp target these results imply that metrics solely focusing on money could severely underestimate the gap between actual expenditures and those required to reach the tfp target

the time cost of food at home general and food stamp participant profiles little is known about the cost of time in food preparation at home yet this economic variable is a common thread running through recent concerns about obesity and the food stamp fs program this article provides initial estimates of the time cost in food preparation at home for the united states two standard methods of estimation are implemented and three demographic profiles are considered i the general population ii the typical fs participant and iii the typical fs participant following the united states department of agriculture thrifty food plan for the general population and averaging across methods the time cost share of total food cost is about 30 if the individual works in the market and at home but it is about 49 if the individual does not work in the market for the typical fs participant especially one following the thrifty food plan the time cost share of total food cost can be as much as 26 higher than the general population these substantial percentages provide strong i

seasonal protection of f v imports in the eu impacts of the entry price system the measures of border protection applied by the european union eu to imports of fruits and vegetables fv are complex and usually not well represented in trade models not only because of the range of instruments still constraining trade but also because of product differentiation and seasonality in these products this article assesses the impact of eliminating entry price ep constraints applied to a group of fv products the proposed model is of a partial equilibrium nature and takes seasonality into account we have applied the model to imports of tomatoes cucumbers clementines and table grapes trade impacts of eliminating ep are significant for particular origins during specific seasons most notably for moroccan tomatoes the volumes and prices of products originating in the eu experience moderate reductions

direct estimates of household production abstract using time diary and expenditure data for a set of american households in 2003 and 2004 i examine the relation between the inputs into eating time food purchasing preparation consumption and clean up and goods purchased foods goods and time expenditures are positively correlated and direct estimates of a ces household production function indicate the relative difficulty of goods time substitution in producing this commodity

a sample selection model for prepared food expenditures the factors affecting household expenditures on four types of prepared food products from a sample selection model estimated using a two step method are explored results suggest that several variables affect household expenditures on various prepared food products factors examined are presence of children number of earners region household size seasonality age race education and income

the eu entry price system for fresh fruits and vegetables paper tiger or powerful market barrier abstract the eu protects eu growers of 15 kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables against international competition by the entry price system eps which is designed to restrict imports below the product specific politically designated entry price level this study investigates the relevance of the eps per product and country of origin we develop two indicators for the effectiveness of the eps which serve as variables in a cluster analysis identifying four classes differing in the relevance of the eps the relevance of the eps is found to be heterogeneous among products as well as countries of origin it is highest for artichokes courgettes cucumbers lemons plums and tomatoes the influence of the eps on apples clementines and pears is significantly lower and of least relevance for apricots mandarins oranges peaches and nectarines and table grapes the eps has the greatest effect on countries which neighbour the eu whereas it is of minor importance for exports from far away countries with the exception of china and south africa

capping the cap implementation of the uruguay round agreement by the european union abstract this paper considers the detailed implementation of the uruguay round agreement on agriculture by the european union eu and its likely impact on the cap the agreement sets three constraints to agricultural support in developed countries the commitment to reduce domestic support by 20 per cent will have no effect tariffication and the new access provisions will only marginally improve the competitiveness of imports into the eu in the short run but do set the scene for more meaningful tariff cuts in the next round it is the constraints on subsidized exports which will most limit the cap and impact on world markets although even here the effects could easily be exaggerated the export constraints will bite deeper in the longer run particularly in the context of an enlargement of the eu to embrace several states from central and eastern europe which could trigger a more fundamental cap reform despite its limited impact the agreement should be judged a success in that it does impose limits on the cap and sets the scene for the next round of negotiations proposed to begin in 1999