product and price competition in a duopoly this paper examines the role of consumer preferences costs and price competition in determining the competitive product strategy of a firm in the model studied here there are two identical firms competing on product quality and price they face consumers who prefer a higher quality product to a lower quality product but differ in how much they are willing to pay for quality the consumers can also choose a substitute if they don t like the product price offerings of the two firms for the firms a higher quality product costs more to produce than a lower quality product the paper shows that the equilibrium strategy for each firm should be to differentiate its product from its competitor with the firm choosing the higher quality choosing the higher margin as well this differentiation however is not efficient that is it is possible to choose two other products and offer them at prices that cover their marginal cost and still satisfy consumers needs better in the aggregate a monopolist by contrast would differentiate his product line efficiently this suggests that cannibalization has different effects on product strategy than competition the paper also shows that if one firm enters the market first then it can defend itself from later entrants and gain a first mover advantage by preempting the most desirable product position

buyer search costs and endogenous product design buyer search costs for price are changing in many markets through a model of buyer and seller behavior i consider the effects of changing search costs on prices both when product differentiation is fixed and when it is endogenously determined in equilibrium if firms cannot change product design lower buyer search costs for price lead to increased price competition however if product design is a decision variable lower search costs for price may also lead to higher product differentiation which decreases price competition in this case the overall effect of lower buyer search costs for price may even be higher prices lower social welfare and higher industry profits the result is especially interesting because recent technological changes such as internet shopping can affect the market structure through lowering buyer search costs

signaling quality with a money back guarantee the role of transaction costs direct marketing is witnessing explosive growth as consumers increasingly purchase products from their homes their ability to judge the quality of products they buy is significantly reduced in this paper we study how money back guarantees can signal product quality in such environments we interpret product quality broadly to mean both the level of attributes promised as well as the firm s consistency in delivering on those promises key aspects of our formulation are the explicit consideration of transaction costs and alternative signals of product quality transaction costs are the costs the seller or buyer faces when redeeming a money back guarantee we show that money back guarantees signal quality by exploiting the higher probability of returns for a lower quality product and the attendant higher transaction costs however if the seller s transaction costs are very large then there are less costly ways to signal namely charging a high price we compare the signaling performance of 1 price 2 price with uninformative advertising and 3 price with a money back guarantee whereas uninformative advertising does not work at all in our model under certain conditions a money back guarantee is necessary to signal and under other conditions a money back guarantee is a useful supplement to price

a multiplier decomposition method to analyze poverty alleviation abstract the objective of this paper is to present a multiplier decomposition method focusing on poverty alleviation the decomposition captures the various mechanisms and linkages through which a production sector s output contributes to poverty alleviation within a socioeconomic system represented by a social accounting matrix sam it is shown that a multiplier can be broken down into two multiplicative effects the distributional and interdependency effects the decomposition method is applied to the case of indonesia a key policy implication is that the human capital of the poor needs to be enhanced if they are not to be sealed off from the industrialization process

a methodology for measuring food poverty applied to kenya abstract this paper proposes a new way of establishing a food poverty line taking into account regional food preferences and prices it uses this poverty line to derive a food poverty measure which satisfies the desirable fundamental properties of such measures and has the additional advantage of being additively decomposable the measurement of food poverty is further generalized to heterogeneous groups of households facing different sets of relative prices and exhibiting different food preferences finally the above methodology is applied to the empirical estimation of food poverty among kenyan smallholders and the results contrasted with those obtained by two other methods

the impacts of petroleum price fluctuations on income distribution across ethnic groups in malaysia crude oil price hikes have compelled governments of developing countries to let domestic prices of energy increase fiscal priorities made it impossible to fully compensate the hikes by raising energy subsidies this paper examines the potential impacts of a limited deregulation of the petroleum price on the income distribution in malaysia paying specific attention to differences in impacts on major ethnic groups we introduce an extended social accounting matrix sam model which not only incorporates substitution possibilities among production inputs and consumption goods but also allows for the exogenous determination of the price of intermediate inputs the results of simulations indicate that distributional impacts of rising petroleum prices tend to be regressive affecting poor people more severely than richer people all ethnic groups experience income loss with the real incomes of malay households which are relatively poor on average more than the chinese and indian households which are the generally richer

land contingent poverty alleviation schemes abstract target groups for rural poverty alleviation schemes in south asia and elsewhere have often been identified in terms of their landholding class with landless or near landless households being the intended beneficiaries this paper offers a quantitative approach to the analysis and design of land contingent poverty alleviation schemes an application to bangladesh suggests that when income is generally unobserved landholding class is a good instrument for targeting poverty relief in that it is strongly correlated with the informationally feasible allocations which minimize aggregate poverty for a given budget it is however far from being a perfect instrument even under otherwise ideal conditions the maximum feasible reduction in poverty which is attainable by relying solely on land based targeting is substantially less than that attainable with perfect income information indeed the poverty alleviation impact of domestically financed and revenue neutral transfers across 10 landholding classes in rural bangladesh could also be achieved without targeting by simply giving every household a lump sum payment equivalent to 10 of mean rural income political restrictions on tax powers or errors made in administration will further reduce the gains from land contingent targeting greater impact on poverty for a given budgetary cost will require more precise targeting within landholding classes

food energy intake and cost of basic needs measuring poverty in bangladesh past estimates of poverty in bangladesh based on the food energy intake method found decreasing poverty over time and similar poverty in urban and rural areas using the cost of basic needs method we find increasing poverty for 1984 92 and higher poverty in rural than urban areas examples of lack of consistency in past estimates are highlighted a method is introduced to assess the gap narrowing and re ranking impacts on poverty measures of changes in poverty lines the article also estimates the marginal impact of household characteristics such as household size education occupation and land ownership on the probability of being poor

environmental and social accounting for brazil an environmentally extendedsocial accounting matrix sam has beenconstructed for brazil for the first time wereview in detail previous studies in thisfield describe the construction structure anddata sources of the brazilian sam anddemonstrate the effect of system closure examining a range of type i and type iimultipliers we show that incomes generated byfinal consumption are highly skewed towardsrich households but energy requirements andcarbon emissions are higher for the consumptionof the poor a significant negative correlationexists between employment and income on onehand and energy requirements and carbonemissions on the other while a significantpositive correlation exists between imports and energy and carbon these correlationsdemonstrate that there is scope for policiesthat pursue imports substitution and reduceenergy consumption and carbon emissions whilstincreasing employment and income

microdeterminants of consumption poverty growth and inequality in bangladesh using household data from five successive national surveys the author analyzes the microdeterminants of and changes in consumption poverty growth and inequality in bangladesh from 1983 to 1996 education demographics land ownership occupation and geographic location all affect consumption and poverty the gains in per capita consumption associated with many of these household characteristics tend to be stable over time returns to demographics variables in household size have the greatest impact on growth perhaps because of improving employment opportunities for women education in urban areas and land in rural areas contribute most to measures of between group inequality location takes second place in both urban and rural areas the author introduces the concept of conditional between group inequality existing group decompositions of the gini index along one variable do not control for other characteristics correlated with that variable conditional between group ginis avoid this pitfall he also shows how to use unconditional and conditional between group ginis for simulating policies

an empirical test of monopoly behaviour an application to the hardwood case a comment a recent article in this journal alexander 1988 tests whether the exchange of price information in the 1921 hardwood case was a means of fixing prices or a way of coping with costly information alexander makes two serious errors both errors involve the incorrect use of a technique used to measure price cost margins to determine the extent to which an industry is monopolistic competitive or somewhere in between i reestimate alexander s model correcting his two errors in addition i improve his data set alexander s conclusion that the price association was pro competitive although drawn incorrectly is shown to be correct

the employment effects of an income redistribution in developing countries the 1970 ilo mission report to colombia first proposed the notion that since the poor tend to consume a more labour intensive basket of commodities than the rich a redistribution of income in their favour will tend to increase employment this proposal gave rise to a host of attempts in the 1970s to demonstrate its empirical validity in a number of developing countries the results however provided only a very limited degree of support to the ilo hypothesis indeed by 1978 the clear conclusion of the general equilibrium macroeconomic models was that income redistribution would have only a tiny effect on employment 1

growth and inequality in india analysis of an extended social accounting matrix summary based on an extended social accounting matrix sam for 2002 03 this study shows how sectoral growth in india affects inequality a breakdown of the wage account into three educational levels and 10 sectors of employment improves the link between sectoral expansion and household income in the sam the results show that only agricultural growth reduces inequality while growth in heavy manufacturing and services sectors raises inequality given india s current growth pattern inequality is likely to increase further in an analysis of the standard sam growth in any sector would appear to reduce inequality which underlines the importance of our extension

market segmentation self selection and product line design the purpose of this paper is to develop a theory of market segmentation based on consumer self selection the extant theory is based on the third degree price discrimination model of pigou central assumptions of which are that the firm can directly address individual segments and isolate them by using consumer self selection i am relaxing these assumptions in the context of a monopolist designing a product line i show that this relaxation has significant implications for how the products and prices are chosen and what they look like in particular segments may be aggregated even though there are no economies of scale furthermore consumer self selection enables us to model cannibalization and competition among firms

consideration set formation with multiproduct firms the case of within firm and across firm evaluation costs we consider a theoretical setting in which firms carry multiple products and consumers incur evaluation costs not only across firms but also within firms consumers judiciously decide the number of firms to include in their consideration sets as well as how many products from those firms this decision depends on the relative trade offs of evaluating an additional product and whether it is from a firm already included in the consideration set or from an entirely new firm the composition of consumers consideration set affects how firms compete in prices and in the number of products to offer contrary to previous literature we find that firm differentiation can reduce firms product lines and within firm evaluation costs have either a positive or a negative effect on firms prices interestingly we show that within firm evaluation costs and across firm evaluation costs are different constructs the number of products firms offer in equilibrium can exceed the socially optimal level if within firm evalua

measuring changes in poverty a methodological case study of indonesia during an adjustment period analysis of the effects of policy changes on the poor is often hindered by the difficulties inherent in measuring poverty and comparing levels of poverty before and after policy changes this article outlines two techniques which can overcome many of these measurement problems stochastic dominance conditions which can facilitate a robust poverty ranking of distributions of living standards and a decomposable poverty index which allows measured changes in aggregate poverty to be disaggregated into their various components such as the changes among population subgroups and growth and redistributive components these techniques can be applied to a wide range of indicators of economic well being and poverty lines and to assumptions about the poor the approaches are illustrated using household survey data from indonesia before and after external shocks and the subsequent structural adjustment program in the mid 1980s the study finds that favorable initial conditions and pro poor pattern of growth enabled indonesia to maintain its momentum in poverty alleviation during the period

technology choice and income distribution within the context of the agricultural sector one can point to numerous attempts to assess the macro economic effects of alternative technologies on the distribution of income one of the most influential early efforts for example was undertaken mainly in the indian context by john mellor 1 who was seeking to redefine agriculture s role in development strategy and policy in rejecting the then existing capital intensive and industry led development model and advocating instead a rural led employment intensive path to development mellor was concerned among other things with the relationships between increased foodgrain production using alternative technologies and the growth rate of non agricultural employment non agricultural sector capital labour ratios and the course of per capita incomes of the labour force more recently haggblade and hazell2 have used an input output based model to examine how differences in the choice of agricultural technology and farm size influence the indirect or multiplier effects of increases in agricultural output they show for example that the input intensity consumption profile of targeted farms and processing characteristics of the farm output all affect the size and composition of nonfarm spinoffs 3 the finding that consumption linkages generally dominate the total multiplier confirms mellor s emphasis on the importance of this particular type of linkage effect

food poverty profile applied to kenyan smallholders that can be used to test conflicting hypotheses this paper analyzes data from the first kenyan integrated rural survey irs i household expenditure data collected by the central bureau of statistics to estimate the magnitude distribution of and factors associated with food poverty among kenyan small farmers the analysis uses a new methodology with three improvements over previous empirical studies 1 food poverty is estimated using an additively decomposable measure that allows poverty to be distributed among population subgroups 2 the food poverty line is based on observed dietary preferences in response to regional food prices and 3 the food poverty measure is adjusted to use regional food poverty lines without sacrificing its theoretical properties or decomposability this paper consists of two main parts section ii reviews the methodology underlying the setting of the regional food poverty line on the basis of a detailed integrated rural survey of kenyan smallholders the cost of food consumption corresponding to the recommended dietary allowance rda of calories is computed since this food poverty line was calculated on the basis of the observed diet consumed it presumably reflects the prevailing regional food preferences and prices faced by households consuming around the calorie rda level the next part of section ii presents a food poverty measure that in addition to satisfying the major fundamental properties of such measuresis decomposable and allows regional food poverty deprivation to be estimated

the effects of location and sectoral components of economic growth on poverty evidence from indonesia abstract in this paper we investigate the relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction by differentiating growth and poverty into their sectoral composition and urban rural location using data from indonesia we find that rural services growth reduces poverty in all sectors and locations however urban services growth has the largest effect on poverty in most sectors finally we also find that rural agriculture growth strongly reduces poverty in rural areas the largest contributor to poverty in indonesia this implies that while agriculture growth in rural areas still plays a major role in reducing poverty policies that enable strong growth in the services sector in both urban and rural areas would expedite poverty reduction

product variety and endogenous pricing with evaluation costs one important decision firms must make is to select the product line characteristics and number of products to offer consumers this paper explores the effect of the interaction between consumer evaluation costs and pricing on the optimal product line length to offer consumers before deciding to buy a product among all products offered a consumer learns the product line length given the product line length a consumer decides whether to evaluate the products available and their prices this decision to evaluate depends on the expected consumer surplus after the evaluation being greater than the evaluation costs when the firm offers few products the firm may not attract many consumers because of lack of product fit and may be forced to offer low prices when the firm offers many products all consumers will find a great product fit that is the variance of consumer valuations per product chosen is lower this allows the firm to charge high prices to extract ex post consumer surplus resulting in lower ex ante expected consumer surplus which may lead consumers not to evaluate the products in the first place that is by offering fewer products a firm can commit not to extract all possible consumer surplus these two forces may then lead to the existence of an interior optimal number of products to offer the optimal number of products offered is decreasing in the evaluation costs

why has economic growth been more pro poor in some states of india than others abstract we use 20 household surveys for india s 15 major states spanning 1960 1994 to study how the sectoral composition of economic growth and initial conditions interact to influence how much growth reduced consumption poverty the elasticities of measured poverty to farm yields and development spending did not differ significantly across states but the elasticities of poverty to urban and rural non farm output varied appreciably and the differences were quantitatively important to the overall rate of poverty reduction states with higher elasticities did not experience higher rates of non farm growth the non farm growth process was more pro poor in states with initially higher literacy higher farm productivity higher rural living standards relative to urban areas lower landlessness and lower infant mortality

structural path analysis and multiplier decomposition within a social accounting matrix framework the main purpose of this paper is to apply structural path analysis to a social accounting matrix sam framework because the sam is a comprehensive essentially general equilibrium data system the whole network through which influence is transmitted can be identified and specified through structural path analysis the latter provides an alternative and much more detailed way to decompose multipliers as compared with the traditional treatment of stone 1978 and pyatt and round 1979 this paper consists of five sections the first one reviews the sam framework as a basis for multiplier analysis and multiplier decomposition in particular the additive decomposition in terms of transfer open loop and closed loop effects is succinctly presented section ii applies this conventional decomposition to a sam of south korea to illustrate with eleven specific cases the effects of an exogenous injection on the endogenous accounts of the sam i e the incomes of the factors household groups and production activities section iii is devoted to the presentation of the elements of structural analysis and more particularly the transmission of economic influence within a structure finally section iv applies structural path analysis to the south korean sam and compares and contrasts the multiplier decomposition which it yields with the alternative decomposition discussed in section ii the comparison is the more significant in that the two decomposition methods are applied to the same eleven selected cases spanning a variety of sectors i e poles of origin for the injection and sectors poles of destination the empirical analysis in section iv suggests that structural path analysis applied to a sam is a potentially operationally useful technique within which a whole series of policy issues can be addressed the final section is devoted to a brief summary and conclusions

an empirical test of monopoly behaviour an application to the hardwood case 1988 an empirical test of monopoly behaviour an application to the hardwood case applied economics vol 20 no 8 pp 1115 1127

contextual inference in markets on the informational content of product lines context can influence decisions this malleability of choice is usually invoked as evidence that people do not maximize stable preference orderings in a market equilibrium however context conveys payoff relevant information to consumers consequently these consumers rationally violate naive formulations of standard choice theoretic principles i identify informational asymmetries under which apparently anomalous behaviors namely the compromise effect and choice overload arise as market equilibria firms respond to consumers contextual inference in case of the compromise effect a firm may introduce premium loss leaders expensive goods of overly high quality that increase the demand for other goods

signaling low margin through assortment oftentimes close competitors carry partially overlapping assortments in seeming contradiction to the principle of maximum differentiation one of the justifications of such practice is that an overlapping assortment with competitive prices on the common products may prevent further consumer search and therefore could be useful even when profits from the overlapping products do not justify the costs of carrying them in this paper we examine the validity of this intuition and show that such strategy may indeed be optimal when consumers are uncertain about prices they might find elsewhere and face shopping costs for discovery of all prices specifically we show that the larger assortment with product overlap may signal a competitive price of the relatively unique product and prevent further consumer search for a lower price on it an implication of this finding is that a consumer may rationally behave as if she likes a larger assortment even if the assortment is enlarged by adding products the consum

price and advertising signals of product quality we present a signaling model based on ideas of phillip nelson in which both the introductory price and the level of directly uninformative advertising or other dissipative marketing expenditures are choice variables and may be used as signals for the initially unobservable quality of a newly introduced experience good repeat purchases play a crucial role in our model a second focus of the paper is on illustrating an approach to refining the set of equilibria in signalling games with multiple potential signals

demand signalling under unobservable effort in franchising linear and nonlinear price contracts we study the signalling strategy of a principal who is privately informed about its high demand potential to an uninformed risk neutral agent we analyze the model in the context of a contract between a franchisor and a franchisee we examine the distortions of a two part pricing scheme necessary to credibly inform the franchisee agent we also study whether the inability of the franchisor principal to observe the agent s effort moderates or exaggerates the distortions from the first best two part pricing scheme a surprising outcome is that even though the principal incurs greater signalling cost the magnitude of distortion in the two part scheme is smaller when service is unobservable than when it is not thus a signalling strategy employing the fixed and variable fees is harder to detect under moral hazard empirical studies failing to control for moral hazard may incorrectly conclude that signalling strategy does not occur we later consider a three part scheme to verify whether or not the schem

sectoral growth and poverty alleviation a multiplier decomposition technique applied to south africa abstract how does an increase in a sector s output affect poverty alleviation in this paper a multiplier decomposition for a socioeconomic system represented by a social accounting matrix sam is used to study this linkage the decomposition applied to south africa reveals that growth in agriculture services and some manufacturing sectors can alleviate poverty for the black african population for sectoral growth to be effective however the need for appropriate skill acquisition for the poor must be addressed directly only long term policies geared towards improving both economic growth and the human capital stock of the poor can lead to significant poverty alleviation

testing for switching market conduct this paper tests for switching market conduct in an oligopsonistic industry the model adopts bresnahan s procedure for identifying the oligopoly solution and integrates the procedure with a switching regression model applied to the us beef slaughter industry two distinct regimes of conduct in the industry were identified the two regimes are consistent with the time periods during which the industry has undergone major structural change

vertical differentiation with variety seeking consumers we analyze price and quality competition in a vertically differentiated duopoly in which consumers have a preference for variety the preference for variety is a consequence of diminishing marginal utility for repeated experiences with the same product we find consumer variety seeking can either soften or intensify price competition depending on the difference in firm qualities and the strength of consumer preference for variety when the qualities are similar or the consumer preference for variety is strong prices and profits are higher than would be obtained in the absence of variety seeking on the other hand if qualities differ enough or the preference for variety is weak stronger preferences for variety are associated with more intense price competition and lower profits when firms set their qualities before competing on price and the range of feasible qualities is restricted such that variety seeking softens competition competing firms choose to minimally differentiate themselves from each other the preference for variety can drive the firms to offer multiunit discounts and the greater price flexibility from these discounts does not necessarily reduce profits relative to simple unit pricing this paper was accepted by j miguel villas boas marketing

the composition of growth matters for poverty alleviation this paper contributes to explain the cross country heterogeneity of the poverty response to changes in economic growth it does so by focusing on the structure of output growth the paper presents a two sector theoretical model that clarifies the mechanism through which the sectoral composition of growth and associated labor intensity can affect workers wages and thus poverty alleviation then it presents cross country empirical evidence that analyzes first the differential poverty reducing impact of sectoral growth at various levels of disaggregation and the role of unskilled labor intensity in such differential impact the paper finds evidence that not only the size of economic growth but also its composition matters for poverty alleviation with the largest contributions from labor intensive sectors such as agriculture construction and manufacturing the results are robust to the influence of outliers alternative explanations and various poverty measures

poverty in bangladesh measurement decomposition and intertemporal comparison this article using the methodology developed by foster greer and thorbecke to measure and decompose poverty provides estimates of the levels of poverty in rural and urban areas in bangladesh it investigates in the context of bangladesh the most powerful effect of poverty in terms of a shortfall in food for daily calorie intake by the poor it provides intertemporal comparison of poverty and its decomposition among subgroups it also makes comparisons between the results obtained in this study with those currently available the results of the study show a significant improvement in poverty situations in rural areas from 1982 to 1986 the article also discusses the policy implications of its findings

the sectoral structure of poverty during an adjustment period evidence for indonesia in the mid 1980s the authors examine the structure of poverty in indonesia by sector of employment and how it changed during the adjustment period 1984 to 1987 they find that while aggregate poverty decreased during the period the gains to the poor were quite uneven across regions and sectors gains to the rural sector in key regions were quantitatively important to indonesia s success in alleviating poverty they found most poverty exists and most gains in alleviating poverty were made in the rural farming sector these gains were associated with crop diversification and continued growth in off farm employment the government s adjustment program favored rural areas and were crucial to indonesia s evident success at maintaining momentum in alleviating poverty however one should not underrate the favorable conditions in indonesia when adjustment started

when more alternatives lead to less choice this paper shows that when the alternatives offered to consumers span the preference space as it would be chosen by a firm search or evaluation costs may lead consumers not to search and not to choose if too many or too few alternatives are offered if too many alternatives are offered then the consumer may have to engage in many searches or evaluations to find a satisfactory fit this may be too costly and result in the consumer avoiding making a choice altogether if too few alternatives are offered then the consumer may not search or choose fearing that an acceptable choice is unlikely these two forces result in the existence of a finite optimal number of alternatives that maximizes the probability of choice

agricultural technology and farm nonfarm growth linkages abstract agricultural growth stimulates rural nonfarm activity by boosting demand for production inputs and consumer goods but different kinds of agricultural technology promote different patterns of nonfarm linkages to explore how key features of agricultural technology affect growth in the rural nonfarm economy this paper reviews an array of cross section and time series evidence bearing on the dynamics of the rural nonfarm economy then using consumption and production parameters associated with different agricultural technologies it introduces a simple model which isolates the effects of different technologies on nonfarm growth linkages

agricultural growth and poverty in an archetypical middle income country chile 1987 2003 is a reduced share of agriculture in the economy an obstacle for the agricultural sector to play an important role in poverty alleviation what is the key channel if any by which agriculture is benefiting the poor in chile that would be worthwhile to promote in other countries by answering these questions we expand the literature on poverty and composition of growth by proposing a methodology that allows to disentangle the mechanisms by which agricultural growth can be poverty reducing we find that in chile agriculture plays a large role in reducing poverty and most of this effect is channeled through the labor market

beyond agriculture versus non agriculture decomposing sectoral growth poverty linkages in five african countries summary africa s development debate is often cast as agriculture versus non agriculture with agriculture s proponents arguing that agricultural growth is more effective at reducing poverty this dual economy perspective overlooks the heterogeneity within and synergies between these two broad sectors recent studies decompose agriculture into subsectors and find that agricultural growth led by smallholder farmers is even more effective at reducing poverty than larger scale estate farms in contrast few studies estimate subsectoral growth poverty linkages for non agriculture yet we strongly expect for example that growth led by informal traders or foreign owned mining companies will have quite different implications for poverty reduction different perspectives on what constitutes non agriculture might therefore explain divergent views on its relative importance for poverty reduction to address this gap in our understanding we estimate sectoral poverty growth elasticities using economy wide models for five african countries while our estimated elasticities are higher for agriculture than for non agriculture as a whole the extent to which this is true varies considerably across nonagricultural subsectors and across countries we find that the poverty growth elasticities for trade and transport services and manufacturing especially agro processing are often close to and sometimes exceed agriculture s this means that growth led by these nonagricultural subsectors might be as effective as agriculture at reaching the poor this confirms the need for a more nuanced treatment of non agriculture in africa s policy debate and may explain conflicting perspectives on agriculture s role vis a vis non agriculture