explaining the deteriorating entry earnings of canada s immigrant cohorts 1966 2000 abstract using the 1981 1986 1991 1996 and 2001 canadian censuses we explore causes of the deterioration in entry earnings of successive cohorts of immigrant men and women roughly one third of the deterioration is explained by compositional shifts in language ability and region of birth we find no evidence of a decline in the returns to foreign education for either immigrant men or immigrant women but a definite deterioration in the returns to foreign labour market experience most strongly among men from non traditional source countries we can explain roughly two thirds of the male and one half of the female deterioration without any reference to entry labour market conditions when we also account for entry conditions our results suggest canada s immigrants of the late 1990s would otherwise have enjoyed entry earnings equal to or higher than their counterparts of the 1960s

price distortions in agriculture and their effects an international comparison the central thesis of this paper is that agricultural pricing policies pursued by developing countries produce effects which are diametrically opposite to those produced by the pricing policies of many developed countries and that the policies of both are costly in terms of global welfare in general the agricultural sector in developing countries is heavily taxed while that in the developed countries receives substantial price protection the effects of agricultural price distortions on output consumption trade and rural employment are estimated for nine countries in addition the effects of price distortions on the distribution of income between producers and consumers on government revenue and foreign exchange and the net social losses of the policies are calculated the results indicate that there are large income transfers and impacts on migration from the rural to the urban sector in developing countries and from the urban to the rural sector in developed economies

are ghettos good or bad spatial separation of racial and ethnic groups may theoretically have positive or negative effects on the economic performance of those groups we examine the effects of segregation on outcomes for blacks in schooling employment and single parenthood we find that blacks in more segregated areas have significantly worse outcomes than blacks in less segregated areas we control for the endogeneity of location choice using instruments based on political factors topographical features and residence before adulthood a one standard deviation decrease in segregation would eliminate one third of the black white differences in most of our outcomes

on the transmission of world agricultural prices two questions are asked about the relationship between domestic prices and world prices of agricultural commodities are variations in world prices transmitted to domestic prices domestic prices are regressed on world prices in various forms taking into account the possible effects of exchange rates and inflation the empirical analysis is based on data from the food and agriculture organization of the united nations for 58 countries from 1968 78 and for the countries of the european community from 1961 85 the results show that most of the variations in world prices are transmitted and that they constitute the dominant component in the variations of domestic prices

a statistical model for condorcet efficiency based on simulation under spatial model assumptions this essay evaluates six single winner multicandidate electoral systems with respect to their tendency to choose condorcet candidates to this end i calibrate a logistic multiple regression model from monte carlo simulations based on a multivariate normal spatial model in which i vary the number of candidates number of dimensions correlation structure and relative dispersion of candidates and voters i investigate additional spatial model variations by comparing further simulation results with predictions of the basic statistical model the results suggest that for many electoral systems condorcet efficiency would increase with perceptual uncertainty of candidates positions and would be low in a polarized society of the voting systems studied approval voting and the coombs systems appear least sensitive to variations in assumptions

democratic elections and centralized decisions condorcet and approval voting compared with median and coverage locations abstract in this study we focus on the quality of condorcet and approval voting winners using median and maximum coverage problems as benchmarks we assess the quality of solutions by democratic processes assuming many dimensions for evaluating candidates we use different norms to map multidimensional preferences into single values we perform extensive numerical experiments the condorcet winner when he she exists may have very high quality measured by the median objective function but poor quality measured by the maximum coverage problem we show that the approval voting winner is optimal when the quality is measured by the maximum coverage objective and fairs well when the median objective is employed the analyses further indicate that the number of voters and the distance norm may increase while the number of candidates and dimensions may decrease the quality of democratic methods

calculating levels of protection is it always appropriate to use world reference prices based on current trading status abstract protection measures such as the nominal protection coefficient npc the effective protection coefficient epc the producer subsidy equivalent pse and the consumer subsidy equivalent cse are conventionally calculated using world reference prices based on current trading status under certain conditions the conventional approach can lead to incorrect estimation of the degree and sometimes even the direction of protection this paper spells out the conditions under which use of world reference prices based on current trading status is incorrect and presents data for wheat in pakistan to illustrate how failure to consider these conditions can lead to misleading policy recommendations

urban bias revisited in his book why poor people stay poor the author has argued that urban bias is the moving force behind needlessly slow and inequitable growth in contemporary developing countries this claim is defended against three main criticisms that the methods chosen to test it are not appropriate that the evidence tendered is not relevant or sufficient and that the rural urban polarity is not clear cut or does not represent the prime conflict within contemporary developing countries

household food demand in burkina faso implications for food policy abstract chronic food production deficits since the early 1970s have prompted policymakers of burkina faso to emphasize technological research with the goal of increasing the production of the most consumed locally grown cereals sorghum millet and maize meanwhile urban consumers have been developing preferences for rice and wheat cereals that are primarily imported this study estimates demand relationships among food items in ouagadougou burkina the results of the estimation suggest that prices income household composition education marital status and urbanization were jointly important in explaining household expenditure allocations both local and imported cereal consumption responded positively to an income increase however incremental income changes would lead to relatively greater consumption of locally produced cereals by low income households whereas high income households would consume relatively more wheat and rice the household model is then used to demonstrate its relevance in addressing food policy issues by forecasting the levels of urban grain demand under alternative income and demographic scenarios with increased production due to advances in technology the urban demand levels do not exhaust the rural surplus of local cereals but deficits persist in the rice wheat sector the results underscore the importance of technological research since burkina could become self sufficient in at least the production of sorghum millet and maize

food grain policy in the republic of korea the economic costs of self sufficiency governments in many countries have manipulated agricultural prices to achieve a variety of social economic and political objectives these policies which often conflict with the prescriptions of neoclassical trade theory have led economists toward attempts to estimate the welfare losses associated with government intervention in the marketplace of more interest to many governments is the performance of changes in policy aimed at attaining specific national goals this paper addresses the case of food grain policy in the republic of korea and assesses the impacts of the change in grain price policy that occurred at the end of the 1960s in particular the success of price policy in attaining self sufficiency and raising farm incomes is evaluated the implications for consumers producers foreign exchange earnings and price stability are also analyzed it is worth noting here that through policy nations pursue a wide range of noneconomic objectives that are impossible to quantify in considering the findings of this analysis the reader should be cognizant of these other objectives and implications that are not specifically included

quality of life firm productivity and the value of amenities across canadian cities we estimate quality of life and productivity differences across canada s metropolitan areas in a hedonic general equilibrium framework these are based on the estimated willingness to pay of heterogeneous households and firms to locate in various cities which differ in their wage levels housing costs and land values using 2006 canadian census data our metropolitan quality of life estimates are somewhat consistent with popular rankings yet find canadians care more about climate and culture quality of life is highest in victoria for anglophones montreal for francophones and vancouver for allophones and lowest in more remote cities toronto is canada s most productive city vancouver is the overall most valuable city qualite de vie productivite des entreprises et la valeur des avantages dans les diverses villes canadiennes on evalue les differences entre la qualite de vie et la productivite des entreprises entre les zones metropolitaines au canada a l aide d un cadre d analyse d equilibre general hedonique ces metriques sont basees sur l estimation de la volonte de payer de menages et d entreprises heterogenes pour se localiser dans diverses villes qui different tant pour ce qui est des niveaux de salaires des couts de l habitation et des prix des terrains a l aide des donnees du recensement canadien de 2006 on construit des evaluations de la qualite de vie des diverses zones metropolitaines qui s arriment convenablement aux ordonnancements en vogue mais on decouvre que les canadiens portent une attention particuliere au climat et a la culture la qualite de vie est la plus elevee a victoria pour les anglophones a montreal pour les francophones et a vancouver pour les allophones et la plus faible pour les villes eloignees des grands centres toronto est la ville la plus productive vancouver est generalement la plus appreciee

frequency of paradox in a common n winner voting scheme this paper investigates the extent to which a commonly used electoral scheme voting for n candidates when there are n vacancies to fill is likely to lead in practice to paradoxical results two types of paradox are investigated one occurs when an increase in the number of vacancies causes a candidate to drop from the list of winners the second occurs when the condorcet candidate fails to win using a monte carlo study we show that the likelihood of paradox can be substantial and depends critically on the degree of homogeneity of voters preferences and on the number of voters

the performance of the food producing sector in jamaica 1962 1979 a policy analysis the purpose of this article is to analyze the performance of the domestic food producing sector in jamaica such an evaluation is warranted on several grounds first jamaica stands out as a country that experienced approximately 8 consecutive years of negative rates of growth for its national economy from 1972 to 1980 however the domestic food sector grew at an average annual rate of 3 21 over the same period understanding the factors behind this growth during a downward cycle is needed second this increase in food production occurred while agricultural export production declined dramatically in this respect the agricultural sector s performance is unusual in latin america where most countries promoted agricultural exports during the 1970s largely at the expense of domestic food production third the populist government of michael manley 1972 80 has claimed that its programs designed to promote equity and efficiency among agricultural producers were responsible for the resulting rapid growth of domestic foodstuffs in jamaica in the late 1970s this analysis is of particular importance in view of a recent study suggesting that policies motivated by equity e g land reform and related rural development schemes frequently have negative consequences for efficiency and output 2 the degree to which the jamaican case may or may not constitute an exception to this rule forms the basis of this article in addressing this issue we also illustrate the misconceptions and the distortions that frequently accompany a populist food policy program to start we review the overall patterns of growth of the jamaican economy during this period and the major trends of structural change

the colour of money earnings differentials among ethnic groups in canada the literature on ethnically based earnings differentials in canada has focused on differences either between whites and visible minorities or between particular ethnic groups in this paper the authors examine both earnings differentials between whites and visible minorities and earnings differentials within the white and visible minority groupings among both men and women they find substantial earnings differentials both between and within the white and visible minority groupings differentials between whites and visible minorities suggest that the visible minority category is a useful indicator of economic discrimination differentials within these groupings however suggest that it is only a rough indicator

issues relating to agricultural pricing policies and their analysis in developing countries abstract agricultural pricing policies in developing countries are often the result of complex interactions between producer consumer and merchant groups and their relative effectiveness in influencing government decision making even within governments various ministries often have opposing views in this environment one of the contributions a policy analyst can make is to attempt to quantify the effects of different policy options this permits a more informed discussion which hopefully leads to better decision making and an improved incentive environment many analyses of agricultural pricing policies have used the standard partial equilibrium analysis where no linkages between commodity markets were considered in this paper we have considered cross price effects also we have discussed issues relating to other adjustments refinements of the standard method so that a practitioner not familiar with the various methods can form an opinion of what the options are and what adjustments may be appropriate for a particular case in question the adjustments relate to overvaluation of currencies input price distortions differences in the degree of distortions between producers and consumers and variability of border prices the inclusion of cross price elasticities was important for assessing production consumption and trade effects for argentina but for the other countries it resulted in only somewhat improved accuracy the adjustment for exchange rates had a large impact in egypt and was important for other countries as well this underlines the importance of exchange rates as key variables for agricultural pricing policies in general the numbers show that the traditional taxation policies of agricultural products in the sample of developing countries is somewhat less widespread than in the past these policies however continue to favor consumers over producers with significant losses for some of the latter the large size of welfare losses especially compared to efficiency losses highlights the importance of correcting distorted prices that adversely affect the poorest sections of society also the usual government objective of taxing producers to raise revenues is frequently defeated by the large subsidies provided to consumers for the partitioner for whom time is often of the essence the assessment of welfare effects using the partial equilibrium method may provide reasonably good first cut estimates of the order of magnitude of the impact of distortions but often these base case estimates can and should be adjusted for a number of possible factors the analyst needs to determine how important accurate estimates of key variables are to the policy makers he or she then needs to compare the costs involved in generating or gathering the data and doing the calculations with the benefits of a broader and more accurate analysis of the distortionary effects of the particular case in question

a new approach to the spatial theory of electoral competition in his unidimensional model of electoral competition downs argues that voters use party ideology as an informational short cut for forecasting the policies that a party will pursue if elected parties are perceived by voters as points on an ideological axis in the davis hinich multidimensional model on the other hand the axes are real issues and the principal actors are politicians who are modeled as points in the multi issue space this paper reformulates spatial voting theory in terms of a model that connects what we call predictive dimensions with political issues that are salient during a given election campaign this model is both a synthesis and an extension of the downs and davis hinich spatial models we obtain a median voter result for one predictive dimension that is similar to the downs result but with important differences we also obtain results showing the electoral advantage of incumbency and the tendency for incremental change when there is a great deal of heterogeneity in voter perceptions about the candidates

nash equilibrium strategies in directional models of two candidate spatial competition the standard approach to two party political competition in a multi dimensional issue space models voters as voting for the alternative that is located closest to their own most preferred location another approach to understanding voter choice is based on preferred direction of change with respect to some specified neutral point e g an origin or status quo point

plurality and runoff systems and numbers of candidates although political scientists have in the last few decades learned much about the abstract properties of multicandidate electoral systems we have accumulated little theoretical knowledge on the ways in which strategic behavior of voters and candidates changes when we move from one voting system to another this essay has illustrated how the relative desirability of voting systems can change when the number of candidates usually considered fixed in such comparisons is taken as endogenous to the voting system in force at the time our main conclusion is therefore that the method of voting must be understood in relation to the total electoral system it is not enough to analyze properties of voting systems in the abstract but also in terms of the interactions that voting systems have with political groups and the constitutional setting

the political economy of food pricing an extended empirical test of the interest group approach several recent studies have documented the magnitude and impact of distortions in food pricing however little attention has been paid to the nature of the political agendas that determine the levels of direct and indirect protection granted to producers and consumers this paper offers evidence that regardless of the degree of economic development the level of political pressure wielded by interest groups in food markets and hence the level of protection they receive is an inverse function of the relative size of their constituencies the results recommend the application of collective action concepts to the understanding of agricultural policies in countries which are at different stages of development

the long run consequences of living in a poor neighborhood author s oreopoulos philip abstract many social scientists presume that the quality of the neigborhood to which children are exposed affects a variety of long run social outcomes i examine the effect on the long run labor market outcomes of adults who were assigned when young to substantially different public housing projects in toronto administrative data are matched to public housing addresses to track children from the program for over 15 years the main finding is that neighborhood quality plays little role in determining a youth s adult earnings education attainment or welfare participation but does affect exposure to crime while living in contrasting housing projects cannot explain large variances in labor market outcomes family differences as measured by sibling outcome correlations account for up to 30 percent of the total variance in the data

a directional theory of issue voting from stokes s 1963 early critique on it has been clear to empirical researchers that the traditional spatial theory of elections is seriously flawed yet fully a quarter century later that theory remains the dominant paradigm for understanding mass elite linkage in politics we present an alternative spatial theory of elections that we argue has greater empirical verisimilitude based on the ideas of symbolic politics the directional theory assumes that most people have a diffuse preference for a certain direction of policy making and that people vary in the intensity with which they hold those preferences we test the two competing theories at the individual level with national election study data and find the directional theory more strongly supported than the traditional spatial theory we then develop the implications of the directional theory for candidate behavior and assess the predictions in light of evidence from the u s congress

technological change occupational tasks and declining immigrant outcomes implications for earnings and income inequality in canada the earnings and occupational task requirements of immigrants to canada are analyzed the growing education levels of immigrants in the 1990s have not led to a large improvement in earnings as one might expect if growing computerization and the resulting technological change was leading to a rising return to non routine cognitive skills and a greater wage return to university education controlling for education we find a pronounced cross arrival cohort decline in earnings that coincided with cross cohort declines in cognitive occupational task requirements and cross cohort increases in manual occupational task requirements the immigrant earnings outcomes had only a small effect on overall canadian earnings inequality resume changement technique t ches occupationnelles et resultats declinants pour les immigrants implications pour l inegalite des gains et des revenus au canada les auteurs analysent les gains et les prerequis des t ches occupationnelles des immigrants les niveaux d education croissants des immigrants dans les annees 1990 n ont pas entraine une grande amelioration dans les gains comme on aurait pu s y attendre si l informatisation accrue et les changements techniques qui s ensuivent ont entraine un rendement croissant sur des habiletes cognitives non routinieres et un rendement salarial plus grand sur l education universitaire normalisant pour le niveau d education on decouvre un declin entre cohortes dans les gains qui coincide avec un declin dans ce que reclament les t ches en termes d habiletes cognitives et un accroissement de ce que reclament les occupations manuelles l effet de ces changements sur les gains des immigrants n a eu qu un faible impact sur l inegalite des gains au canada

poverty and inequality under income and price dispersions many policies simultaneously affect the distribution of prices and incomes in the economy moreover a bias may occur when there is a stochastic relationship between prices and incomes and this relationship is being ignored it is therefore important to dispose of an analytical framework for welfare analysis that could account for changes in this joint distribution how can the joint influences of price and income distributions on poverty and inequality indicators be analysed we offer a method to deal with this problem by using parametric formulae of poverty and inequality measures we propose statistical indicators for the levels variabilities and a statistical link of price indices and nominal living standards these indicators are consistent with an approximation of the problem based on a bivariate lognormal distribution of price indices and nominal living standards our analysis provides hints about the social welfare impact of economic shocks or policies affecting levels variabilities and correlation of prices and incomes intuitive insights are obtained while using arithmetic means and variances instead does not lead to illuminating results the role of price and income variabilities for poverty and inequality is more complex than generally expected with the possibility of several variation regimes empirical investigation of these statistics would guide social policies

new players in an old game party strategy in multiparty systems this article compares two spatial models of party competition a the traditional proximity model and b the directional model of voter choice the article first lays out the differences between the two models in multiparty systems the traditional proximity model makes no clear prediction about the spatial structure of political parties the directional model predicts that optimal placement for parties will be along the circumference of a circle at a moderate distance from the center both theories have implications for overtime strategy and the success of new political parties traditional proximity theory emphasizes movement toward a location with high density of voters while directional theory emphasizes the importance of a distinct directional strategy the authors examine the norwegian political system from 1969 1985 and the swedish system from 1979 1982 and find the directional theory more strongly supported

distance versus direction the illusory defeat of the proximity theory of electoral choice in an extensive series of articles rabinowitz macdonald and listhaug have launched a new directional theory of electoral choice according to their claims the new theory is superior to the classical downsian proximity model such a conclusion however is not tenable first it fails to take proper account of the lower falsifiability of the directional model second it rests on empirical analyses that do not test the two theories on the predictions they actually make both are theories of individual choice which implies intrapersonal comparisons of utility prior tests however have predominantly taken the form of interpersonal comparisons a reanalysis based on the proper type of comparison yields an outcome diametrically opposed to that previously obtained it also reveals an eccentricity effect that largely accounts for the apparent success of the directional model

the structure of voter preferences the 1921 1925 1973 and 1975 northern irish parliamentary elections this article applies preference assumptions derived from the axioms of lexicographic utility to four of northern ireland s parliamentary elections the results are compared to those obtained from application of analogous spatial assumptions the principal findings are that rational choice based voting models are relevant to the northern irish electorate and that voters there display patterns of behavior consistent with both lexicographic and spatial preference assumptions

determinants of the u s wheat producer support price do presidential elections matter the paper s focus is on the determinants of the u s wheat producer support price the results of the time series analysis suggest that this price is largely determined by the previous price the expected u s share in world exports and expected program costs presidential elections also influence u s wheat price policies all other things being equal the support price tends to be lower in election years than in other years this suggests that small interest groups relative political economic power may be less pronounced in election years if they do not succeed in positioning themselves on the political economic market such that they contain the potentially decisive voter

the changing labor market position of canadian immigrants this paper uses pooled 1971 1981 and 1986 canadian census data to evaluate the extent to which 1 the earnings of canadian immigrants at the time of immigration fall short of the earnings of comparable canadian born individuals and 2 immigrants earnings grow more rapidly over time than those of the canadian born variations in the labour market assimilation of immigrants according to their gender and country of origin are also analysed the results suggest that recent immigrant cohorts have had more difficulty being assimilated into the canadian labour market than earlier ones an apparent consequence of recent changes in canadian immigration policy labour market discrimination against visible minorities and the prolonged recession of the early 1980s summary in fre excerpt

conceptualizing voter choice for directional and discounting models of two candidate spatial competition in terms of shadow candidates in contrast to the traditional modeling of voter choice based on proximity under directional models selection of candidates is based on the direction and or intensity of change from a status quo or neutral point voter choice can also be modeled as representing both approaches e g as a directional model with proximity restraint or alternatively in terms of proximity to discounted positions

canadian economics research on immigration through the lens of theories of justice we assess the current state of knowledge in the economics of immigration and consider how economic theories of knowledge can be used to further the goal of developing a just immigration policy in the process we highlight the contributions of economists working in canada and canadian economists internationally in furthering our understanding of this important research area we identify research gaps such as the need for more research on the underlying causes of the poor returns to foreign work experience for immigrants from non traditional source countries and the effect of immigrants on stimulating innovation more research is also needed on the implications of temporary foreign worker tfw programs and the growing importance of employers in immigrant selection systems la recherche canadienne en economie de l immigration a travers la lentille des theories de la justice on jauge l etat present des connaissances en economie de l immigration et on examine comment les theories economiques de la connaissance peuvent etre utiles dans la poursuite d un objectif qui serait de mettre en place une politique d immigration juste dans ce processus on souligne les contributions des economistes travaillant au canada a notre comprehension de ce chantier de recherche on identifie certaines zones d ombre comme la recherche pour comprendre les causes sous jacentes aux pauvres rendements de l experience de travail des immigrants en provenance des pays qui ne sont pas des sources d immigration traditionnelles et celle pour comprendre les effets des immigrants sur la stimulation de l innovation il faudra aussi davantage de recherches sur les implications des programmes pour attirer et accueillir les travailleurs etrangers temporairement et sur l importance croissante des employeurs dans les systemes de selection d immigrants

the performance of immigrants in the canadian labor market in this article we examine the economic assimilation of immigrants to canada we provide new evidence on immigrants who arrived in the 1970s and document an increase in the dispersion of labor market outcomes across immigrants of different vintages over time our results confirm u s evidence of permanent differences across immigrant cohorts what distinguishes the canadian experience is small or negative rates of assimilation for most cohorts over the sample period finally we test the overidentification of the assimilation process specified in previous studies and fail to reject the usual cohort fixed effect specification

food pricing policy in developing countries bias against agriculture or for urban consumers price policy discrimination against agricultural producers in order to provide cheap food for urban consumers has been widely cited in development forums as a cause of agricultural stagnation evidence is presented that suggests no consistent pattern of discrimination against producers for a major food commodity wheat however consumer subsidies and trade policies have reduced bread prices to urban consumers in many countries price data from the early 1980s are assembled for thirty one developing countries nominal protection coefficients for producers and consumers at official and corrected exchange rates and wheat fertilizer price ratios are estimated for each country price discrimination against agriculture arising from government policy interventions has been widely cited as a major factor in the poor agricultural performance of many developing countries several important studies published in the last five years have presented evidence ofgovernment policies that decrease prices re ceived by farmers for their produce peterson 1979 1983 analyzed official producer prices during the 1960s from a sample of twenty eight developing countries to show that producer price incentives in developing countries were consistently well below those in industrialized countries during the 1970s the world bank sponsored a series of case studies of agricul tural policy incentives in thailand pakistan egypt and argentina using data up to the mid 1970s which showed that governments of these countries were consistently taxing the agricultural sector through price policy see the authors are economists with cimmyt the international maize and wheat improvement centre based in pakistan and mexico respectively views expressed in this paper are not necessarily those of

immigrant earnings age at immigration matters a correlation between age at immigration and earnings is observed in canadian census data the evidence supports three underlying sources of the effect first work expe rience in the source country yields virtually no return in the host country second the return to education varies with age at immigration and finally an acculturation effect is observed for immigrants who are visible minorities or whose mother tongue is not english further it is found that educational attainment and relatedly earnings vary systematically across age at immigration with those arriving around age 15 to 18 obtaining fewer years of education

protectionary bias in agriculture a pure economic argument abstract empirical evidence suggests that the agricultural sector in the developed countries has enjoyed a greater degree of protection than the import competing manufacturing sectors usually this is attributed to strong farm lobbies and hence on political factors we provide a theoretical model and a possible explanation of this phenomenon based on purely economic arguments two importables are accommodated in a three good three factor model of trade and production one is a labor intensive manufacturing good and the other is an agricultural commodity this captures the trade pattern of a typical industrialized country with an agricultural sector such as europe and the usa we show that uniform tariffs in agriculture and labor intensive manufacturing will definitely hurt the land owners in real terms and may reduce their absolute return hence if there has to be protection it has to be biased in favor of agriculture

strategic decisions under one stage multi candidate voting systems we have seen that under the assumptions of this study the problem of maximizing a voter s total utility for a number of one stage decision rules for multi candidate elections may be specified as linear or quadratic programs potentially optimal strategies emerge as extreme points of the feasible region in the sense that no other strategies can be uniquely optimal categorical approval borda and z score decision rules are all minimal in the sense that for each the feasible region with abstentions excepted consists entirely of potentially uniquely optimal strategies for each of these decision rules we have determined the optimal strategies explicitly in terms of the voter s utility function among the minimal voting systems studies we argue that the voter s task of estimating his optimal strategy is least difficult under approval voting

nominal and effective protection in the egyptian agricultural sector a multicommodity analysis the estimation of effective protection coefficients is reported for 18 commodities produced in the egyptian agricultural sector both the corden and balassa formula are used attention is focussed on the effects on those estimates of using official and free market exchange rates and of the exclusion and inclusion of the value of by products it is concluded that when the market exchange rate is used egyptian agricultural production faces overall disincentives from the protective structure

the effects of trade liberalisation abstract the liberalisation of agricultural trade has been an important component of the uruguay round of multilateral trade negotiations under the gatt a considerable amount of research effort has been expended on estimating the costs of agricultural protectionism most of this activity has been based on a partial equilibrium framework with conventional quantification of the distributive benefits and costs to be expected from liberalisation attempts at general equilibrium analysis have been fewer but provide evidence of the economy wide gains from the removal of protection whilst these analyses have had a powerful influence on the nature of the political discussions on agricultural trade policy they have not helped define the details of politically acceptable alternatives to current agricultural supports the reasons are the technical economic data and statistical problems which restrict the interpretation of results to broad generalisations and the failure of analyses to focus on the most important political concerns indicating these concerns may help define the focus of future research but it is doubted if conventional economic analysis has very much more to offer

the effects of recent price liberalization on kenyan peri urban dairy a case study using the policy analysis matrix approach abstract when shortages of dairy products became severe in kenya early in 1992 prices of dairy products were de controlled to improve the incentives to producers the impact of that policy change is examined using the policy analysis matrix pam methodology a case study of the marketing chain involving small holder peri urban dairy producers in the nyeri region is considered the price policy reform removed only between 20 per cent and 30 per cent of the negative policy effects on most dairy producers depending on the technology used the market thus remains non competitive and a single large dairy processor was the biggest beneficiary of the policy change

network effects and welfare cultures we empirically examine the role of social networks in welfare participation using data on language spoken at home to better infer networks within an area our empirical strategy asks whether being surrounded by others who speak the same language increases welfare use more for those from high welfare using language groups this methodology allows us to include local area and language group fixed effects and to control for the direct effect of being surrounded by one s language group these controls eliminate many of the problems in previous studies the results strongly confirm the importance of networks in welfare participation

ethnic enclaves and the economic success of immigrants evidence from a natural experiment recent immigrants tend to locate in ethnic enclaves within metropolitan areas the economic consequence of living in such enclaves is still an unresolved issue we use an immigrant policy initiative in sweden when government authorities distributed refugee immigrants across locales in a way that may be considered exogenous this policy initiative provides a unique natural experiment which allows us to estimate the causal effect on labor market outcomes of living in enclaves we find substantive evidence of sorting across locations when sorting is taken into account living in enclaves improves labor market outcomes for instance the earnings gain associated with a standard deviation increase in ethnic concentration is in the order of four to five percent

endogenous supranational policy decisions the common agricultural policy of the european community the analysis of the supranational ec decisions on the cap indicates that they are endogenous and could largely be explained by past income growth and the development of budgetary expenditures prevailing at the time of the price decisions the empirical results corroborate the hypothesis that monetary compensatory amounts are integral part of common price decisions agricultural income growth could be explained by past price policy decisions whereas budget expenses are determined by u s world market prices and the exchange rate of the ecu against the u s

getting agricultural prices right abstract are agricultural price policies in developing countries inimical to both growth and equity in recent critiques of govenment policy such a view has been repeatedly affirmed this paper takes the view that a positive analysis of the constraints under which price and tax policies must be set is seriously lacking and that without such understanding both the direction and the consequences of reform must remain uncertain it attempts to lay the groundwork for such analysis by specifying a number of hypotheses concerning government policies and their consequences

voting behavior under the directional spatial model of electoral competition this paper contrasts voting behavior in multicandidate elections between the proximity and the directional spatial models of electoral competition under the traditionalproximity spatial model a voter s utility for a candidate is a declining function of distance between their respective positions under thedirectional spatial model introduced by rabinowitz and macdonald utility is specified as the scalar product of the vectors representing voter and candidate the present paper specifies and compares regions of candidate support for the two models and for several voting procedures the degree to which each model and voting system favors extremist versus centrist candidates is assessed it is shown that a pure directional model implies that candidates lying in the interior of the convex hull of the other candidates receive no support under the single vote plurality procedure a one parameter family of mixed proximity and directional models may provide more plausible descriptions of voter behavior than either pure model

explaining price policy bias in agriculture the calculus of support maximizing politicians a model is developed to explain observed patterns of policy intervention in agriculture we analyze the interaction between political support seeking politicians and supportsupplying citizens society consists of a rural and urban group we determine the effects on transfers of relative group size disparities in income endowments between groups and the deadweight loss of redistribution the framework advanced is an alternative to that of the interest group model and is used to explain for example why the export sectors in developing countries are taxed more and why the united kingdom is less adamant for higher price supports than germany

ethnic concentration and language fluency of immigrants evidence from the guest worker placement in germany this paper analyses the impact of regional ethnic concentration on the language proficiency and language use of immigrants it solves the endogeneity of immigrants location choices by exploiting a peculiar episode of the german immigration history the exogenous placement of guest workers after wwii one of the largest guest worker programs on record the econometric approach accounts for several sources of measurement error and provides a falsification exercise that hypothetically relocates the most language proficient immigrants into ethnic enclaves to test the extent of cross regional sorting necessary to render the results purely spurious the results show a robust negative effect of ethnic concentration on immigrants language ability which is driven by differences in contact rates with natives and not by differences in the willingness to integrate the paper discusses these findings against the background of a language production function and in the light of feasible policy options to foster the language acquisition of immigrants

the measurement of agricultural price distortion in developing countries the most common means of measuring agricultural price distortion in less developed countries has been through the estimation of variously defined nominal protection coefficients the objectives of this article are a to demonstrate that the coefficients which have been employed are inadequate for measuring price distortion b to develop a suitable method for measuring distortion at each point on domestic marketing chains and c to demonstrate using the example of maize in kenya the potential magnitude and direction of the differences between the conventional coefficients and the distortion coefficients developed in the article

identification of endogenous social effects the reflection problem this paper examines the reflection problem that arises when a researcher observing the distribution of behaviour in a population tries to infer whether the average behaviour in some group influences the behaviour of the individuals that comprise the group it is found that inference is not possible unless the researcher has prior information specifying the compisition of reference groups if this information is available the prospects for inference depend critically on the population relationship between the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes inference is difficult to implossible if these variables are functionally dependent or are statistically independent the prospects are better if the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes are moderately related in the population

agricultural incentives in developing countries measuring the effect of sectoral and economywide policies the impact of sector specific direct and economywide indirect policies on agricultural incentives for 18 developing countries for the period 1975 84 are estimated the direct effect is measured by the proportional difference between the producer price and the border price adjusting for distribution storage transport and other marketing costs the indirect effect has two components 1 the impact of the unsustainable portion of the current account deficit and of industrial protection policies on the real exchange rate and thus on the price of agricultural commodities relative to nonagricultural nontradables and 2 the impact of industrial protection policies on the relative price of agricultural commodities to that of nonagricultural tradable goods the authors found that a in almost all cases the direct effect is equivalent to a tax on exportable goods and to a subsidy for importables b the indirect effect also taxes agriculture and dominates the direct effect and c the direct policies for both importables and exportables stabilize domestic producer prices

a comparative study of national price levels agricultural prices and exchange rates abstract this paper attempts a comparison of national price levels agricultural prices and exchange rates across countries and over the years 1975 and 1980 using recently produced results from the united nations statistical office and the food and agriculture organization this paper suggests that in most developing countries official exchange rates are more overvalued relative to gdp based purchasing power parities ppps but less overvalued relative to agricultural output based ppps gdp based ppps in most developed countries are however closer to official exchange rates hence conventional opinion as to the existence of significantly lower agricultural output prices in most developing countries is not supported by this study at the same time protection afforded farmers in terms of higher agricultural output prices is indicated in many developed countries it is also observed that in asia agricultural output prices relative to nonagricultural prices have declined over the period 1975 1980 whereas the opposite trend seems to be the case in africa no distinct trend differences over the period are evident for the european experience however agricultural output prices in asia in 1980 were still higher than in africa a few policy implications of these observations are discussed briefly at the conclusion of the paper

are there efficiency gains from the removal of natural resource export restrictions evidence from british columbia log export bans lebs are a popular development tool utilised by developing nations with sizable endowments of timber however the actual impact of these policies is debatable british columbia has a developed forestry sector and still maintains a leb this trade restriction continually creates conflicts with canada s international trade partners including the united states this paper examines the efficiency implications of a hypothetical removal of roundwood export restrictions in british columbia using roundwood price and quantity data from 1995 to 2008 a time series econometric approach is utilised to determine supply and demand elasticities for british columbia s roundwood empirical results from a vector error correction model suggest that a removal of export restrictions will generate an overall increase of approximately 347 91 million us dollars per year to british columbia s forest economy

the political economy of third world food imports the case of wheat oping countries it focuses on wheat imports in the context of the wider food policy institutional and external trade environment in which these imports occur it departs substantially from the traditional econometric approaches which emphasize regional aggregates to analyze evidence at the country level where national food policies are made an analysis across countries interpreted in the light of national and international policies provides fresh insights into the political economy of rapidly increasing wheat imports wheat has special significance in the analysis of food policy and food imports in the third world first cereals constitute the bulk of third world food imports and among cereals wheat is by far the dominant food grain import in 1980 wheat accounted for an estimated 86 of food grain imports by third world countries 2 since the postwar years when europe was the major wheat buyer in international markets wheat imports have been increasingly destined for the third world including china which now accounts for two thirds of total world wheat imports in particular in the last decade wheat imports by developing countries have expanded extremely rapidly doubling

the un predictability of primaries with many candidates simulation evidence it is common to describe the dynamic processes that generateoutcomes in u s primaries as unstable or unpredictable in fact the way we choose candidates may amount to alottery this paper uses a simulation approach assuming10 000 voters who vote according to a naive deterministicproximity rule but who choose party affiliationprobabilistically the voters of each party then must choose between twosets of ten randomly chosen candidates in closed primaries finally the winners of the two nominations compete in thegeneral election in which independent voters also participate the key result of the simulations reported here isthe complete unpredictability of the outcomes of a sequence ofprimaries the winner of the primary or the party s nominee varied as much as two standard deviations from the medianpartisan voter the reason is that the median or any othermeasure of the center of the distribution of voters isof little value in predicting the outcome of multicandidateelections these results suggest that who runs may havemore to do with who wins than any other consideration if more than two parties or candidates are expected then thevote maximizing position is not close to your opponents butwell away from them tullock 1967 55

livestock pricing policy in sub saharan africa objectives instruments and impact in five countries abstract livestock pricing policies in many developing countries are often instituted without a good appreciation of the consequences of such policies for allocative efficiency output and trade this paper evaluates in a comparative cross country context the objectives and instruments of livestock pricing policy in five sub saharan african countries ivory coast mali nigeria sudan and zimbabwe during the period 1970 1986 it assesses the extent to which pricing policy objectives have been attained and also estimates the effects of price interventions on output consumption trade and government revenues in order to draw out lessons for the future the empirical results indicate that in comparison with real border prices a certain degree of success was achieved in stabilising real domestic producer prices in the study countries the results also show that since the early 1980s there has been a gradual shift away from taxation of producers however consumers still appear to gain as much as producers in three of the study countries with negative consequences for foreign exchange earnings and government revenues the analysis reveals the importance of domestic inflation and exchange rates as key variables for livestock pricing policies and highlights the need to address the macroeconomic imbalances that cause exchange rate distortions and high domestic inflation at the same time that direct price distortions are being tackled

the earnings of immigrant men in canada job tenure cohort and macroeconomic conditions using eleven cross sectional surveys spanning 1981 92 the authors compare the earnings of immigrant and native born men in canada apparently recent immigrant cohorts have suffered no decline in earnings job tenure is found to be a strongly significant determinant of earnings previous estimates of immigrant earnings differentials which have not incorporated job tenure information may partly reflect differences in tenure between immigrants and the native born when the sample is restricted to pairs of surveys that are close to the census survey years the estimates of cohort effects are sensitive to the choice of survey years one possible explanation for that sensitivity is suggested by the finding that macroeconomic conditions are a statistically significant determinant of the rate of assimilation of recent immigrants

approximating the effective protection coefficient without reference to technological data when proposals for reform of tariff or subsidy policies are made attempts to predict the effect on incentives are frequently hampered by the need for input output technical data this article develops and illustrates the use of a methodology for approximating effective protection coefficients epcs when such data are unavailable or outdated it derives the equations which approximate the epc from statistical analysis of a cross section of existing epc studies for four agricultural commodities corn cotton rice and wheat informational requirements for computing approximations include the nominal protection coefficients on output and tradable inputs and readily available macroeconomic data these approximation equations perform well in an out of sample test

evidence of new immigrant assimilation in canada previous studies of the labour market experience of male immigrants to canada have uncovered two disturbing trends declining entry earnings for successive new immigrant cohorts and low assimilation rates these findings suggest that many of these cohorts may never assimilate the 1991 census provides a first look at the immigrant cohorts arriving in the 1980s these immigrants appear to avoid the plight of their predecessors entry earnings have stopped falling and those immigrants arriving between 1981 and 1985 experienced a 17 per cent assimilation rate i am unable to explain this turnaround based on the observable characteristics recorded in the census data

impact and implications of price policy and land degradation on agricultural growth in developing countries abstract in many developing countries a high proportion of the population resides and works in rural areas agriculture is the dominant sector in rural areas and has the greatest concentration of poverty landless workers small tenant farmers and small farm owners thus any development strategy that is directed towards increasing employment and alleviating a country s hunger must concentrate on sustainable agricultural growth historically economic development in most countries has been based on exploitation of natural resources particularly land resources soil erosion and land degradation have been serious worldwide due to reasons such as high population pressure on land and limited fossil energy supplies land degradation is generally more serious in the developing world empirical studies show that soil erosion and degradation of agricultural land not only decrease the land productivity but they can also result in major downstream or off site damage which may be several times that of on site damage in promoting industrialization governments of many developing countries adopt a package of price and other policies that reduce agricultural production incentives and encourage a flow of resources out of agriculture increasing evidence shows that these policies cause a substantial efficiency or social welfare loss and a great loss in foreign exchange earnings in addition a world bank study on the effect of price distortions on economic growth rates concluded that neither rich resource endowments nor a high stage of economic development nor privatization are able to make up the adverse effects caused by high price distortions this analysis is primarily concerned with identifying the factors that determine the agricultural production growth rate and in testing the effects these factors have on agricultural growth in developing countries specifically this study involves statistical estimation of an aggregate agricultural growth function based on cross country data for 28 developing countries special attention is devoted to land degradation and agricultural pricing policy and to the policy implications resulting from the effects these variables have on agricultural and food production growth the overall results of this study show that price distortions in the economy and land degradation had statistically significant negative impacts while the change in arable and permanent land was positively related to the growth of agricultural production and food production in 28 developing countries from 1971 to 1980 these results emphasize the importance of getting prices right and implementation of sustainable land and water management practices if future growth in food and agricultural output is to be realized and sustained in developing countries

food pricing policy in developing countries further evidence on cereal producer prices recently two independent studies have produced contradicting evidence regarding the extent of price discrimination in developing countries the objective of this study is to reexamine the evidence of direct and indirect distortion in cereal producer prices nominal protection coefficients for wheat maize and rice are calculated for fifty one developing countries spanning the period 1980 86 black market exchange rates are used to adjust the nominal protection coefficients to reflect the indirect effect of price interventions through exchange rate policies the results confirm the conventional wisdom that although developing countries tend to protect domestic cereal producers taxation caused by overvaluation of official exchange rates exceeds any direct price protection offered domestic producers

ethnic enclaves and immigrant earnings growth the impact of living in an ethnic enclave on earnings growth of immigrants in canada is examined using the 1981 2001 censuses consistent with u s findings enclaves are found to have a negative impact on the earnings growth of male immigrants a negative impact is also found for female immigrants living in an enclave was found to be particularly harmful for individuals immigrating as adults especially for females but did not affect immigrants who arrived at a young age enclaves had a more negative impact on high skilled male immigrants especially if they had received the bulk of their education outside canada enclaves were also found to hinder language skills l impact du fait de vivre dans une enclave ethnique sur la croissance des gains des immigrants au canada est analysea l aide des donnees de recensements de 1981 a 2001 en concordance avec les resultats des etudes americaines on decouvre que les enclaves ont un effet negatif sur la croissance des gains des hommes immigrants il y a aussi un impact negatif sur la croissance des gains des femmes immigrantes vivre dans une enclave est particulierement dommageable pour les personnes qui immigrent au stade adulte et ce particulierement pour les femmes les effets negatifs ne se font pas sentir sur les immigrants qui arrivent en bas ge les enclaves ont un effet davantage negatif pour les hommes immigrants hautement qualifies en particulier s ils ont recu le gros de leur education hors du canada on montre que de vivre en enclaves retarde le developpement d habiletes langagieres

canadian immigration policy the effectiveness of the point system and other instruments this paper examines the effects of changes in canadian immigration policy on the occupational composition of immigration we focus on 1967 changes that created a regulatory system including the point system that still forms the framework of canadian immigration policy we find that the point system provides some control over occupational composition but that its effectiveness in fine tuning is limited by the large number of other characteristics it seeks to control we also find that entry class and source country composition of inflow have impacts that have swamped the effects of the point system in the last two decades summary in fre

food market reform the changing role of the state abstract the liberalization and privatization of food markets has been an important feature of economic reform programmes in many developing countries and donor conditionality has been applied to this end however the agenda needs to move beyond this to the establishment of efficient and equitable marketing systems a major constraint on this has been the weak base of theoretical and empirical knowledge about the characteristics of food markets on which reform programmes have been built three principal areas are identified where further research policy experimentation and sharing of experience are required the role of the state in relation to collective action by market participants the problem of food price instability and the delivery of support to the small scale private sector that has taken over many marketing functions