smallholder market participation concepts and evidence from eastern and southern africa abstract this paper reviews the evidence on smallholder market participation with a focus on staple foodgrains i e cereals in eastern and southern africa in an effort to help better identify what interventions are most likely to break smallholders out of the semi subsistence poverty trap that appears to ensnare much of rural africa the conceptual and empirical evidence suggests that interventions aimed at facilitating smallholder organization at reducing the costs of intermarket commerce and perhaps especially at improving poorer households access to improved technologies and productive assets are central to stimulating smallholder market participation and escape from semi subsistence poverty traps macroeconomic and trade policy tools appear less useful in inducing market participation by poor smallholders in the region

a comparison among various partial backlogging inventory lot size models for deteriorating items on the basis of maximum profit abstract during the past few years there are many researches that deal with different inventory shortage models for deteriorating items and then use minimizing cost as objective to find the optimal replenishment policy over a finite planning horizon in contrast to the other articles we here use maximizing profit as the objective to find the optimal replenishment policy we consider the case of partial backlogging for deteriorating items with four different inventory models not only the opportunity cost due to lost sale but also the purchase cost is taken into account we then make an appropriate comparison among these four alternatives finally some numerical examples are provided

analysis of an inventory system with exponential partial backordering abstract in this paper we study an inventory model with partial backlogging where unsatisfied demand is partially backlogged according to an exponential function in this model the total cost is the sum of the order cost the holding cost the backorder cost which includes a fixed cost and a cost proportional to the length of time for which the backorder exists and the cost of lost sales a general approach for finding the optimal policy is developed numerical examples are used to illustrate how the approach works

credit market constraints consumption smoothing and the accumulation of durable production assets in low income countries investments in bullocks in india in this paper we formulate and estimate a finite horizon structural dynamic model of agricultural investment behavior that incorporates the major features of low income agricultural environments income uncertainty constraints on borrowing and rental markets and the use of investment assets to generate income and smooth consumption the model is fit to longitudinal indian household data on farm profits bullock stocks and pump sets the estimated structural parameters are used to assess the effects on the life cycle accumulation of bullocks agricultural profits and welfare associated with complete markets and bullock liquidity and with second best policies that provide assured sources of income to farmers and weather insurance

agroindustrialization globalization and international development an overview of issues patterns and determinants this paper offers an overview for a special issue on agroindustrialization globalization and international development it sets out a conceptual framework for understanding the links among these three broad phenomena and then discusses emerging issues and evidence concerning the factors conditioning agroindustrialization in developing countries and the subsequent effects on employment poverty and the natural environment we conclude with a research agenda

optimal dynamic pricing for deteriorating items with reference price effects when inventories stimulate demand abstract in this paper we incorporate reference price effects into a deteriorating inventory problem when the demand rate depends on displayed stock level and selling price simultaneously reference price effects are formed empirically by customers to adjust current price perception on the basis of past purchases the market demand is assumed to be responsive to the difference between the current selling price and the reference price which is perceived as a loss or a gain we consider three scenarios of market demand loss neutrality loss aversion and loss seeking an optimal dynamic pricing model is established to determine a pricing strategy maximizing the discounted total profit over an infinite time horizon theoretical results are derived to demonstrate the existence of the optimal solutions and to explore the relationships between optimal pricing decisions and an initial reference price based on mild assumptions numerical example and sensitivity analysis are presented to illustrate the theoretical results and managerial insights finally concluding remarks are offered

inventory model with stock level dependent demand rate and variable holding cost inventory models in which the demand rate depends on the inventory level are based on the common real life observation that greater product availability tends to stimulate more sales previous models incorporating inventory level dependent demand rate assume that the holding cost is constant for the entire inventory cycle this paper considers the inventory policy for an item with a stock level dependent demand rate and a storage time dependent holding cost the holding cost per unit of the item per unit time is assumed to be an increasing function of the time spent in storage two time dependent holding cost step functions are considered retroactive holding cost increase and incremental holding cost increase procedures are developed for determining the optimal order quantity and the optimal cycle time for both cost structures

agrifood supply chain private sector standards and farmers health evidence from kenya this article evaluates the impact of adoption of european union eu private sector standards on farmers health in rural kenya the study utilizes cross sectional farm household level data collected in 2006 from a randomly selected sample of 439 small scale export farmers we estimate the casual impact by utilizing a two stage poisson regression model two stage standard treatment effect model as well as by regression based on propensity score to assess the robustness of the results using these techniques we demonstrate that the pesticide ascribed incidence of acute illness symptoms and the associated cost of illness significantly decrease with the adoption of standards ceteris paribus farmers who adopt standards experience 70 lesser incidence of acute illness and spent about 50 60 less on restoring their health than nonadopters although standards can potentially prevent resource poor smallholders from maintaining their position in lucrative export markets they can also result in positive changes in the health of those farmers who do adopt them as shown by these results this implies that if adopted on a large scale standards may reduce production externalities corroborating the view that they may serve as a catalyst to transform production systems in developing countries

partial backlogging inventory lot size models for deteriorating items with fluctuating demand under inflation abstract in this paper the traditional inventory lot size model is extended to allow not only for general partial backlogging rate but also for inflation the assumptions of equal cycle length and constant shortage length imposed in the model developed by moon et al moon i giri b c ko b 2005 economic order quantity models for ameliorating deteriorating items under inflation and time discounting european journal of operational research 162 3 773 785 are also relaxed for any given number of replenishment cycles the existence of a unique optimal replenishment schedule is proved and further the convexity of the total cost function of the inventory system in the number of replenishments is established the theoretical results here amend those in yang et al yang h l teng j t chern m s 2001 deterministic inventory lot size models under inflation with shortages and deterioration for fluctuating demand naval research logistics 48 2 144 158 and provide the solution to those two counterexamples by skouri and papachristos skouri k papachristos s 2002 note on deterministic inventory lot size models under inflation with shortages and deterioration for fluctuating demand by yang et al naval research logistics 49 5 527 529 finally we propose an algorithm to find the solution and obtain some managerial results by using sensitivity analyses

poverty comparisons over time and across countries in africa abstract we use demographic and health surveys dhs to compare poverty at two or more points in time within and between african countries our welfare measure is an index resulting from a factor analysis of various household characteristics durables and household heads education an advantage of this measure is that for intertemporal and intraregional comparisons we need not rely on suspect price deflators and currency conversion factors the wide availability and similarity of questionnaires of the dhs facilitate comparisons over both time and countries our results generally show declines in poverty during the previous decade largely due to improvements in rural areas

private agri food standards implications for food policy and the agri food system abstract this paper provides a brief introduction to the evolution and nature of private food safety and quality standards highlighting the resultant impacts on the structure and modus operandi of supply chains for agricultural and food products and the challenges posed for processes of agricultural development it serves as an introduction to a series of papers that provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge regarding private food safety and quality standards in both an industrialised and developing country context in so doing it aims to provide a catalyst for further research on this rapidly evolving field of inquiry

an inventory model for deteriorating items with stock dependent consumption rate and shortages under inflation and time discounting this paper derives an inventory model for deteriorating items with stock dependent consumption rate and shortages under inflation and time discounting over a finite planning horizon we show that the total cost function is convex with the convexity a simple solution algorithm is presented to determine the optimal order quantity and the optimal interval of the total cost function the results are discussed with a numerical example and particular cases of the model are discussed in brief a sensitivity analysis of the optimal solution with respect to the parameters of the system is carried out

why don t the poor save more evidence from health savings experiments using data from a field experiment in kenya we document that providing individuals with simple informal savings technologies can substantially increase investment in preventative health and reduce vulnerability to health shocks simply providing a safe place to keep money was sufficient to increase health savings by 66 percent adding an earmarking feature was only helpful when funds were put toward emergencies or for individuals that are frequently taxed by friends and relatives group based savings and credit schemes had very large effects

hoping for the best unprepared for the worst abstract we explore the incentives for a career minded policymaker to take preventative action to protect a principal against a possible crisis the policymaker s ability and the action he takes are unobserved but the principal draws inferences about the policymaker s ability based on the resulting outcome before deciding whether to retain him when the crisis is potentially catastrophic it is in the principal s interest for the policymaker to take preventative action however when the crisis is sufficiently rare he fails to do so instead the policymaker directs his efforts toward activities that enhance the principal s welfare when the crisis doesn t materialize this distortion is driven by the policymaker s desire to be retained together with the inability of the principal to observe the policymaker s action our framework provides a novel explanation for why policymakers often fail to prepare effectively for rare disasters and other potential crises and contributes to a growing literature on electorally induced distortions in multi task problems

strategic entry deterrence and terrorism theory and experimental evidence using a two stage rent seeking framework we present a simple model of strategic entry terrorism deterrence and test the model using laboratory experiments our contest success function highlights the potential for strategic spillovers the theory illustrates that relative to a cooperative outcome negative externalities lead to over spending on deterrence and positive externalities lead to under spending on deterrence our experimental results are broadly consistent subjects in the negative externality treatment had higher expenditures in contrast to theoretical predictions participation decisions while primarily driven by the probability of winning a contest were influenced by a subject s ability to participate in multiple contests

the economics of poverty traps and persistent poverty an asset based approach abstract longitudinal data on household living standards open the way to a deeper analysis of the nature and extent of poverty while a number of studies have exploited this type of data to distinguish transitory from more chronic forms of income or expenditure poverty this paper develops an asset based approach to poverty analysis that makes it possible to distinguish deep rooted persistent structural poverty from poverty that passes naturally with time due to systemic growth processes drawing on the economic theory of poverty traps and bifurcated accumulation strategies this paper briefly discusses some feasible estimation strategies for empirically identifying poverty traps and long term persistent structural poverty as well as relevant extensions of the popular foster greer thorbecke class of poverty measures the paper closes with reflections on how asset based poverty can be used to underwrite the design of persistent poverty reduction strategies

small farmers and big retail trade offs of supplying supermarkets in nicaragua summary in nicaragua and elsewhere in central america small scale farmers are weighing the risks of entering into contracts with supermarket chains we use unique data from cooperatives supplying supermarkets to study the effect of supply agreements on producers mean output prices and price stability we find that prices paid by the domestic retail chain approximate the traditional market in mean and variance while mean prices paid by walmart are significantly lower than the traditional market however the walmart contract is found to systematically reduce price volatility we find some evidence however that farmers may be paying too much for this contractual insurance against price variation

welfare dynamics in rural kenya and madagascar this paper presents comparative qualitative and quantitative evidence from rural kenya and madagascar in an attempt to untangle the causality behind persistent poverty we find striking differences in welfare dynamics depending on whether one uses total income including stochastic terms and inevitable measurement error or the predictable structural component of income based on a household s asset holdings our results suggest the existence of multiple dynamic asset and structural income equilibria consistent with the poverty traps hypothesis furthermore we find supporting evidence of locally increasing returns to assets and of risk management behaviour consistent with poor households defence of a critical asset threshold through asset smoothing

inflation and the optimal inventory replenishment schedule within a finite planning horizon abstract the subject of this paper is the problem of finding the optimal replenishment schedule for an inventory subject to time dependent demand and deterioration within a finite time planning horizon it is shown that taking inflation into account has a profound effect on the solution of the problem for instance there is a critical number of replenishment periods in excess of which the optimal schedule is characterized by the inclusion of token orders at the end of the planning horizon this and other conclusions obtained via a careful mathematical analysis of the problem rectify those of earlier studies

an inventory model under inflation for deteriorating items with stock dependent consumption rate and partial backlogging shortages abstract in this paper we extend teng j t chang h j dye c y hung c h 2002 an optimal replenishment policy for deteriorating items with time varying demand and partial backlogging operations research letters 30 6 387 393 and hou k l 2006 an inventory model for deteriorating items with stock dependent consumption rate and shortages under inflation and time discounting european journal of operational research 168 2 463 474 by considering an inventory lot size model under inflation for deteriorating items with stock dependent consumption rate when shortages are partial backlogging the proposed model allows for 1 partial backlogging 2 time varying replenishment cycles and 3 time varying shortage intervals consequently the proposed model is in a general framework that includes numerous previous models as special cases we then prove that the optimal replenishment schedule exists uniquely and provide a good estimate for finding the optimal replenishment number furthermore we briefly discuss some special cases of the proposed model related to previous models finally numerical examples to illustrate the solution process and some managerial implications are provided

political accountability and sequential policymaking abstract we develop a model of political accountability with sequential policymaking when a bureaucrat s actions are transparent his overseer faces a political time inconsistency problem she is tempted to revise her retention rule in the middle of the policymaking process as a result the bureaucrat s equilibrium behavior overemphasizes later tasks if the overseer knows the technology by which policies translate into outcomes then she can eliminate these distortions using task specific budget caps however if the overseer is uncertain about this technology such budget caps introduce ex post inefficiency when uncertainty is sufficiently large and consequential the overseer prefers an institutional environment with a fungible budget and no transparency such an environment allows the overseer to exploit the bureaucrat s expertise though at the cost of weaker overall incentives

review of inventory systems with deterioration since 2001 abstract this paper presents an up to date review of the advances made in the field of inventory control of perishable items deteriorating inventory the last extensive review on this topic dates back to 2001 goyal s k and giri b c recent trends in modeling of deteriorating inventory european journal of operational research 134 1 16 since then over two hundred articles on this subject have been published in the major journals on inventory control indicating the need for a new review we use the classification of goyal and giri based on shelf life characteristics and demand characteristics contributions are highlighted by discussing main system characteristics including price discounts backordering or lost sales single or multiple items one or two warehouses single or multi echelon average cost or discounted cash flow and payment delay

joint pricing and inventory control for fresh produce and foods with quality and physical quantity deteriorating simultaneously abstract a great number of models have been proposed to investigate the deterioration inventory however most of models assume that a fixed physical quantity of items deteriorates over time the quality of items does not decay before their expiration dates in practice the quality and physical quantity of many products including fresh produce and foods often deteriorate over time the quality of an item usually plays an important role in influencing the demand for products in this paper we consider the pricing and lot sizing problem for products with quality and physical quantity deteriorating simultaneously the deterioration rate of quality and physical quantity is taken to be time proportional the demand rate is assumed to be deterministic and dependent on the quality of an item the selling price per unit and the on display stock level the theory for finding the optimal solution of problem is discussed and numerical examples are used to illustrate the model and the solution procedure finally sensitivity analysis of the optimal solution with respect to price sensitive parameter and values of different deterioration functions is carried out

political violence cycles electoral incentives and the provision of counterterrorism how do electoral incentives affect the counterterrorism policies chosen by reelection seeking incumbents this article tests the argument that governments alter their choice of security strategies

impact of contract farming on income linking small farmers packers and supermarkets in china summary this study compares contract and non contract growers of apples and green onions in shandong province china in order to explore the constraints on participation and the impact of contract farming on income we find little evidence that firms prefer to work with larger farms though all farms in the area are quite small using a heckman selection correction model we find that contract farming raises income even after controlling for observable and unobservable household characteristics these results suggest that contract farming can help raise small farm income though questions remain regarding the number of farmers that can be brought into such schemes 2009 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

contract farming and food security contract farming has often been associated with an increase in the income of participating households it is unclear however whether contract farming increases other aspects of household welfare using data from six regions of madagascar and a selection on observables design in which we control for a household s marginal utility of participating in contract farming which we elicited via a contingent valuation experiment we show that participating in contract farming reduces the duration of a household s hungry season by about ten days on average and that it makes participating households about 20 percent more likely to see their hungry season end at any point in time further we find that these effects are more pronounced for households with a larger number of children and for households with a larger number of girls this is an important result as children especially girls often bear the burden of food insecurity

saving and liquidity constraints this paper is concerned with the theory of saving when consumers are not permitted to borrow and with the ability of such a theory to account for some of the stylized facts of saving behavior the models presented in the paper seem to account for important aspects of reality that are not explained by traditional life cycle models copyright 1991 by the econometric society

the impact of the tomato agroindustry on the rural poor in mexico this article addresses the issue of whether the tomato agroindustry tai has been an effective instrument in the reduction of rural poverty the tai is by far the most important agroindustry in mexico in terms of exports and employment creation most of the laborers employed by the tai in northwest mexico are temporary migrants coming from poverty stricken regions in southern mexico conditions of poverty induced migration are explained the characteristics and strategies of large modern tomato enterprises are analyzed the main conclusion is that migrant income earned in the tomato fields and packing plants is fundamental for the bare survival in villages in poverty stricken regions however this does not provide a solution to poverty alleviation because migrant income is not sufficient to contribute to capital formation in the migrating communities or the to create the conditions for endogenous local development

contract farming smallholders and rural development in latin america the organization of agroprocessing firms and the scale of outgrower production abstract this paper demonstrates how contract farming functions as an economic institution and explores the causes of the observed variation in the scale of outgrower production in latin america we outline how market imperfections and transaction costs influence the decision of agroprocessing firms to contract out vertically integrate or use spot markets to obtain raw product the paper demonstrates how market conditions are likely to be associated with particular outgrower characteristics under contract farming an analysis of the mexican frozen vegetable industry illustrates determinants of successful and unsuccessful small scale contracting and suggests alternative policies to promote contract farming with smallholders

agricultural growth and economic development a view through the globalization lens this article re visits the age old proposition that agriculture growth contributes to overall economic development and asks whether the relationship still holds in an increasingly globalized world there is overwhelming empirical support for the above proposition indeed it is hard to find exceptions barring a few city states where sustained economic development has not been preceded by robust agricultural growth however there are a large number of countries that have witnessed neither agricultural growth nor economic development even in countries where agricultural growth has been significant dramatic inter regional differences persist this article examines the factors that contribute to or constrain the process of agricultural transformation does the process of globalization and the resultant changes in agrifood systems offer new opportunities for agriculture led growth or will it further marginalize excluded countries regions and groups the factors that cause exclusion are examined both in terms of globalization forces and in terms of domestic shortcomings in policies and governance policy interventions that attempt to reduce the costs of transition to a globalized agricultural system are explored including safety nets for those left behind

impacts of supermarkets on farm household nutrition in kenya summary many developing countries experience a food system transformation with a rapid growth of supermarkets we analyze impacts of supermarkets on farm household nutrition with survey data from kenya participation in supermarket channels is associated with significantly higher calorie vitamin a iron and zinc consumption we use simultaneous equation models to analyze impact pathways supermarket supplying households have higher incomes a higher share of land under vegetables and a higher likelihood of male control of revenues furthermore income and the share of land under vegetables have positive impacts while male control of revenues has negative impacts on dietary quality policy and further research implications are discussed

incumbent performance and electoral control in the pure theory of electoral competition citizens compare the platforms of the candidates and vote for the one whose platform is preferred candidate strategies are identified with promises about future performance in office models of this sort have been developed in both static mckelvey 1975 and dynamic kramer 1977 i settings and all appear to have the property that if the set of alternatives is large enough in some sense equilibrium platforms rarely exist but these models have another feature that is quite as disturbing as their instability in the static setting discussed by mckelvey little attention is paid to the possibility that once in office the politician s preferences may diverge from those of his constituents and that he may therefore choose policies at variance from his platform instead it is simply assumed that promises will be kept whether or not such behavior is congruent with the interest of the officeholder it is sometimes argued that an enforcement mechanism may exist to discipline politicians for failing to keep promises but without a specification of the mechanism it is not obvious that it would be in the interests of the

electoral terms and terrorism many terror attacks occur at the beginning of electoral terms we present a game theoretical model with incomplete information to account for this empirical pattern both terrorists and governments can be of weak or strong types we find that the risk of terror attacks is highest at the beginning of electoral terms because striking early allows the terrorists to collect valuable information about the government s type and also because terrorists know that even initially weak governments sometimes retaliate to show toughness closer to an upcoming election the model s predictions are consistent with anecdotal evidence

the system of rice intensification and its impacts on household income and child schooling evidence from rural indonesia the yield potential of a set of improved rice management practices known as the system of rice intensification sri has attracted much attention yet we know surprisingly little about sri s socio economic impact using data from indonesia in 2009 this study assesses the impact of sri on household incomes and child schooling we find that sri generates significant estimated yield gains however because sri induces a reallocation of family labor from non farm to farm sri users enjoy no household income gains despite the increased labor demand for farming we find no evidence that sri has a child labor effect

governance and trade in fresh vegetables the impact of uk supermarkets on the african horticulture industry production of fresh vegetables for export has grown rapidly in a number of countries in sub saharan africa over the last decade this trade brings producers and exporters based in africa together with importers and retailers in europe large retailers in europe play a decisive role in structuring the production and processing of fresh vegetables exported from africa the requirements they specify for cost quality delivery product variety innovation food safety and quality systems help top determine what types of producers and processors are able to gain access to the fresh vegetables chain and the activities they must carry out the control over the fresh vegetables trade exercised by uk supermarkets has clear consequences for inclusion and exclusion of producers and exporters of differing types and for the long term prospects for the fresh vegetables industry in the two major exporting countries studied kenya and zimbabwe

small farmers ngos and a walmart world welfare effects of supermarkets operating in nicaragua despite more than a decade of ngo and government activities promoting developing world farmer participation in high value agricultural markets evidence regarding the household welfare effects of such initiatives is limited this paper analyzes the geographic placement of supermarket supply chains in nicaragua between 2000 and 2008 and uses a difference in difference specification on measures of supplier and non supplier assets to estimate the welfare effects of small farmer participation though results indicate that selling to supermarkets increases household productive asset holdings they also suggest that only farmers with advantageous endowments of geography and water are likely to participate

comparative politics and public finance we propose a model with micropolitical foundations to contrast different political regimes compared to a parliamentary regime the institutions of a presidential congressional regime produce fewer incentives for legislative cohesion but more separation of powers these differences are reflected in the size and composition of government spending a parliamentary regime has redistribution toward a majority less underprovision of public goods and more rents to politicians a presidential congressional regime has redistribution toward powerful minorities more underprovision of public goods but less rents to politicians the size of government is smaller under a presidential regime this last prediction is consistent with cross country data

profits from participation in high value agriculture evidence of heterogeneous benefits in contract farming schemes in southern india abstract this paper assesses the variable impact of participation in high value agriculture through contract farming arrangements in southern india using survey data for 474 farmers in four commodity sectors gherkins papaya marigold and broiler an endogenous switching model is used to estimate net profits from participation findings suggest that average treatments effect vary widely across contract commodities papaya and broiler contracting offer clear net gains for participants whereas marigold contracting leaves participants worse off for gherkins while contracting holds net gains for participating farmers overall this is true of contracts with some firms but not others the standard deviations of point estimates of treatment effects are quite large indicating variability in profit gains even within the same commodity sectors thus notwithstanding the sign of average treatment effects contract farming arrangements have diverse impacts on income for individual farmers and these could have implications for sustained participation of farmers in high value agriculture

poverty livelihood and class in rural south africa abstract using data from a national living standards survey undertaken in late 1993 this paper disaggregates and explores the economics of livelihood generation and class in rural south africa in an effort to contribute to the ongoing and vociferous debate in south africa about poverty and its alleviation pursuant to the suggestion of participants in a recent participatory poverty assessment this paper analyzes what might be termed the class structure of poverty after exploring the range of claiming systems and livelihood tactics available in rural south africa the paper offers a first look at who the poor are by disaggregating the rural population into discrete livelihood strategy classes non parametric regression methods are used to then estimate and graphically explore the nature of the livelihood mapping between endowments and real incomes in addition to identifying those endowment combinations that map to consumption levels below the poverty line the asset basis of poverty the topography of the estimated livelihood mapping helps identify the constraints that limit household s ability to effectively utilize their assets and endowments these results suggest that poverty is a matter of not only having few assets but also of constraints which limit the effectiveness with which those assets are used and poverty and livelihood policy needs to be designed accordingly

trade standards and poverty evidence from senegal summary in the debate on trade and poverty it is argued that standards act as trade barriers and cause marginalization of the poor this paper quantifies income and poverty effects of high standards trade and integrates labor market effects by using company and household survey data from the vegetable export chain in senegal we find that exports grew sharply despite increasing standards contributing importantly to rural incomes and poverty reduction tightening standards induced a shift from smallholder contract farming to integrated estate production altering the mechanism through which poor households benefit through labor markets instead of product markets

the impact of farm input subsidies on maize marketing in malawi abstract this paper investigates the effects of subsidised fertilizer on marketing of maize in malawi it uses the nationally representative two wave integrated household panel survey ihps data of 2010 and 2013 the results suggest that subsidised fertilizer on average increases farmers maize market participation as sellers total quantity of maize sold and maize commercialisation in addition participation in subsidised fertilizer programme is found to increase the probability of farmers to be net sellers and increases net quantity of maize sold however the study finds no evidence of effect on net quantity of maize bought and on household maize self sufficiency these results suggest that the farm input subsidy programme has contributed toward an increased level of maize market supply engagement for small farmers and in this sense the policy has the potential to provide the wider external benefits furthermore the results have implication on the sustainability of the subsidy programme policy formulation and design of programmes for the agricultural sector and small farmers in developing countries

a comparison between two pricing and lot sizing models with partial backlogging and deteriorated items abstract recently abad 2003 optimal pricing and lot sizing under conditions of perishability finite production and partial backordering and lost sale european journal of operational research 144 677 685 studied the pricing and lot sizing problem for a perishable good under finite production exponential decay partial backordering and lost sale in this article we extend his model by adding not only the backlogging cost but also the cost of lost goodwill we then analytically compare the net profits per unit time between abad s 2003 model and goyal and giri s 2003 the production inventory problem of a product with time varying demand production and deterioration rates european journal of operational research 147 549 557 model in abad s model the cycle starts with an instant production to accumulate stocks then stops production to use up stocks and finally restarts production to meet the unsatisfied demands by contrast in goyal and giri s model the cycle begins with a period of shortages then starts production until accumulated inventory reaches certain level and finally stops production and uses up inventory our theoretical results show that there is no dominant one between these two models furthermore we provide certain conditions under which one model has more net profit per unit time than the other finally we give several numerical examples to illustrate the results

supermarkets wholesalers and tomato growers in guatemala the article shows the asset related determinants and the impacts of the participation of small farmers in supermarkets versus traditional market channels in guatemala compared to farmers selling only to the traditional market channels farmers selling to supermarket channels are larger but are in the upper tier of the small farmer category have more capital and are much more specialized in commercial horticulture in general and in tomatoes in particular while they have higher yields they also have higher input use including use of chemicals in fact they severely overuse pesticides and fungicides moreover these greater input expenditures mean that their profit rates are roughly similar to those of farmers in the traditional market channel supermarket channel farmers prefer the more demanding wholesale supermarket channel because it offers lower risks and lower transaction costs to market a variety of quality grades of tomatoes all year long in turn the supermarkets who do not buy direct but rather source from a few specialized dedicated wholesalers rely on this year round supply lower transaction costs and consistency of quality

public private partnerships and collective action in high value fruit and vegetable supply chains accessing developed country food markets entails meeting stringent food safety requirements food retailers impose protocols relating to pesticide residues field and pack house operations and traceability to enable smallholders to remain competitive in such a system new institutional arrangements are required in particular public private partnerships can play a key role in creating farm to fork linkages that can satisfy market demands for food safety while retaining smallholders in the supply chain furthermore organized producer groups monitoring their own food safety standards through collective action often become attractive to buyers who are looking for ways to ensure traceability and reduce transaction costs this paper compares the ways in which small producers of fruits and vegetables in kenya and india have coped with increased demands for food safety from their main export markets

commercialization of the small farm sector and multidimensional poverty abstract global poverty rates have declined considerably but the number of people living in extreme poverty remains high many of the world s poor are smallholder farmers agricultural commercialization meaning a shift from subsistence to more market oriented farming can play a central role in improving smallholder welfare previous studies evaluated the impact of agricultural commercialization on income poverty but whether income gains from commercialization are really used for satisfying basic needs was hardly analyzed up till now here we evaluate the effect of commercialization on income poverty as well as on the multidimensional poverty index that looks at deprivations in terms of education nutrition health and other dimensions of living standard using data from 805 farm households in kenya we estimate average treatment effects and also analyze impact heterogeneity with quantile regressions results show that commercialization reduces both income poverty and multidimensional poverty the magnitude of the income gains is positively correlated with income level meaning that market linkage support for marginalized farms may be needed to avoid rising inequality however the effect in terms of reducing basic needs deprivations is stronger for the poorest households suggesting that agricultural commercialization contributes effectively to achieving the sustainable development goals

the strategy of manipulating conflict two decision makers choose hawkish or dovish actions in a con ict game with incomplete information the decision making can be manipulated by extremists who send publicly observed cheaptalk messages the power of extremists depends on the nature of the underlying con ict game if actions are strategic complements a hawkish extremist provocateur can increase the likelihood of con ict by sending messages which trigger a fear spiral of hawkish actions this reduces the welfare of both decision makers if actions are strategic substitutes a dovish extremist paci st can send messages which cause one decision maker to back down and become more dovish this reduces his welfare but bene ts the other decision maker the hawkish extremist is unable to manipulate the decision makers if actions are strategic substitutes and the paci st is equally powerless if actions are strategic complements

planning for shortages net present value analysis for a deteriorating item with partial backlogging abstract this paper develops inventory models to help answer strategic questions concerning whether planning for shortages offers financial benefits a production inventory system producing a deteriorating product in batches at a finite production rate with partial backordering is considered customers pay a deposit when placing a backorder backordered items receive a discount on the sales price as lost sales may lead to customers not returning the demand rate may depend on the fraction of lost sales we develop a cash flow based profit maximising net present value npv model without the inventory cost parameters commonly used in this context unit holding cost unit backorder cost unit deterioration cost and unit lost sales cost the model finds the optimal inventory policy just like npv models that discount the traditional parameters but has the advantage of not needing to estimate the value of the traditional parameters it is shown that in models based on discounting the traditional parameters the parameters are not exogenously determinable but are non trivial functions of non financial endogenous system parameters such as the production rate annual demand rate and backorder rate extensive numerical experiments illustrate how cash flow npv models provide insights into the value of planning for shortages and strategic choices about the design of the production inventory system it also provides insight into the classical problem of how to interpret unit backorder cost and unit lost sales cost the study indicates that these insights cannot be reliably obtained from npv models based on discounting unit backorder costs and unit lost sales costs

agricultural commercialization and diversification processes and policies abstract agricultural commercialization and diversification involve the gradual replacement of integrated farming systems by specialized enterprises for crop livestock poultry and aquaculture products changes in product mix and input uses are determined largely by the market forces during this transition commercialization of agricultural production is an endogenous process and is accompanied by economic growth urbanization and withdrawal of labor from the agricultural sector this paper provides a selective overview and synthesis of the issues involved in the commercialization and diversification process of agriculture drawing in significant part from the papers in this volume based on an assessment of the process observed in selected countries we show that the commercialization process should not be expected to be a frictionless process and significant equity and environmental consequences may occur at least in the short to medium term particularly when inappropriate policies are followed however we highlight that appropriate government policies including investment in rural infrastructure and crop improvement research and extension establishment of secure rights to land and water and development and liberalization of capital markets can help alleviate many of the possible adverse transitional consequences

welfare effects of vegetable commercialization evidence from smallholder producers in kenya we investigate whether smallholder horticultural commercialization is able to as often stipulated reduce poverty in developing countries with the help of panel household survey data from kenya we find evidence for a positive association between vegetable commercialization and household welfare even when controlling for unobserved heterogeneity across households interestingly the effect differs depending on which market vegetables are being produced for commercialization through the export market is consistently positively associated with income but not wealth while there is some limited evidence for commercialization through the domestic market channel being positively related to welfare measured by asset holdings and income depending on the specification

farmers welfare and changing food prices nonparametric evidence from rice in madagascar this paper uses nonparametric density estimation and kernel smoothing techniques to examine the instantaneous distributional implications of rice price changes in madagascar while many farmers do not participate in product markets as either buyers or sellers and net sales or marketable surplus are fairly small for many others the roughly one third of rice farmers who fall below the poverty line face significant negative first order welfare effects from increases in the mean or variance of rice prices conversely the first order gains from rice price increases are highly concentrated among the largest rice farmers and particular regions in madagascar

smallholder participation in contract farming comparative evidence from five countries summary supermarkets specialized wholesalers processors and agro exporters are transforming the marketing channels into which smallholder farmers sell produce in low income economies we develop a conceptual framework with which to study contracting between smallholders and a commodity processing firm we then synthesize results from empirical studies of contract farming arrangements in five countries ghana india madagascar mozambique and nicaragua the resulting meta narrative documents patterns of participation the welfare gains associated with participation reasons for nonparticipation the significant extent of contract noncompliance and the considerable dynamism of these value chains as farmers and firms enter and exit frequently

one kind of freedom poverty dynamics in post apartheid south africa abstract a 1993 south african living standards survey documented the legacy of apartheid in the form high levels of inequality and human insecurity drawing on a 1998 re survey of households in the 1993 study this paper explores whether this legacy has been superseded or whether apartheid s end has been only one kind of freedom that has left households in a poverty trap from which they cannot escape after proposing a theoretically grounded dynamic poverty typology that distinguishes stochastic from structural poverty transitions the paper goes on to estimate that significant numbers of the south african poor are potentially trapped in a structural poverty trap and lack the means to escape poverty over time

an epq model of ramp type demand with weibull deterioration under inflation and finite horizon in crisp and fuzzy environment abstract this paper deals with an economic production model for deteriorating items with ramp type demand rate a single item is produced and the finite rate of production is proportional to the demand rate the deterioration rate of the item is taken as two parameter weibull s distribution we also have considered the effect of inflation when there is no shortage in the stock and the model is under finite time horizon the inventory model is solved under crisp and fuzzy environment to evaluate the optimum solution of the model in different cases we illustrate the model with an example by taking various number of replenishment we present sensitivity analysis to illustrate the example under crisp and fuzziness thus the objective of the paper is to find the optimal solution of production time so as to minimize the present value of total cost of the whole replenishment cycle and to check which environment crisp or fuzzy is desirable

finding missing markets and a disturbing epilogue evidence from an export crop adoption and marketing intervention in kenya in much of the developing world many farmers grow crops for local or personal consumption despite export options that appear to be more profitable thus many conjecture that one or several markets are missing this paper reports on a randomized controlled trial conducted by drumnet in kenya that attempts to help farmers adopt and market export crops drumnet provides smallholder farmers with information about how to switch to export crops makes in kind loans for the purchase of the agricultural inputs and provides marketing services by facilitating the transaction with exporters the experimental evaluation design randomly assigns pre existing farmer self help groups to one of three groups 1 a treatment group that receives all drumnet services 2 a treatment group that receives all drumnet services except credit or 3 a control group after one year drumnet services led to an increase in production of export oriented crops and lower marketing costs this translated into household income gains for new adopters however one year after the study ended the exporter refused to continue buying the cash crops from the farmers because the conditions of the farms did not satisfy european export requirements drumnet collapsed in this region as farmers were forced to sell to middlemen and defaulted on their loans the risk of such events may explain at least partly why many seemingly more profitable export crops are not adopted

the peer effect in counterterrorist policies existing accounts posit that defensively oriented counterterrorist policies create negative externalities and result in regulatory competition that induces governments to increasingly tighten their policies we argue that rather than causing an unconditional global race to the top spatial dependence in counterterrorist policies is limited to within groups of countries exposed to a similar level of threat from international terrorism countries strongly differ in their propensity to become the target of an international terror attack governments can safely ignore counterterrorist policies enacted by countries outside their peer group but they must pay attention to measures undertaken by their peers we test several predictions derived from our theory in an empirical analysis of counterterrorist regulations in twenty western developed country democracies over the period 2001 to 2008

politics and the suboptimal provision of counterterror i present a model of interactions between voters a government and a terrorist organization the model focuses on a previously unexplored conceptualization of counterterrorism as divided into tactic specific observable and general unobservable tactics when there is divergence between voters and government preferences strategic substitution among different modes of attack by terrorists and agency problems between the voters and government create a situation in which the politically optimal counterterrorism strategy pursued by the government in response to electoral and institutional incentives is quite different from the security maximizing counterterrorism strategy in particular in response to electoral pressure the government allocates resources to observable counterterror in excess of the social optimum this problem is particularly severe when governments put great weight on rent seeking or care less about counterterror than do voters and when terrorists have a large set of tactics from which to choose voters can decrease the magnitude of the agency problem by increasing the benefits of reelection by for example slackening requirements for nonsecurity related public goods i have received valuable comments and advice from bruce bueno de mesquita randy calvert martin cripps james fearon amanda friedenberg robert powell matthew stephenson and barbara walter i thank the weidenbaum center on the economy government and public policy at washington university for financial support

saving in developing countries theory and review in the literature on economic development much of the interest in saving has been focused on the relation between saving and growth but saving is not only about accumulation it is about smoothing consumption in the face of volatile and unpredictable income and helping to ensure the living standards of poor people whose lives are difficult and uncertain this paper develops a model of households which cannot borrow but which accumulate assets as a buffer stock to protect consumption when incomes are low such households dissave as often as they save do not accumulate assets over the long term and have on average very small asset holdings but their consumption is markedly smoother than their income much of the evidence is as consistent with this view of saving as it is incosistent with standard views of smoothing over the life cycle and with explanations of the link between saving and growth in terms of life cycle saving behavior consumption smoothing is also a useful way of thinking about government policy where volatility in the world prices of taxed commodities can generate sharp fluctuations in government revenues as well as reallocations of revenue between the private and public sectors many important policy issues in developing countries hinge on issues of consumption and smoothing and research on these issues is currently likely to be more productive than work on the relation between saving and growth

a comprehensive extension of optimal ordering policy for stock dependent demand under progressive payment scheme in a recent paper soni and shah 2008 presented an inventory model with a stock dependent demand under progressive payment scheme assuming zero ending inventory and adopting a cost minimization objective however with a stock dependent demand a non zero ending stock may increase profits resulting from the increased demand this work is motivated by soni and shah s 2008 paper extending their model to allow for 1 a non zero ending inventory 2 a profit maximization objective 3 a limited inventory capacity and 4 deteriorating items with a constant deterioration rate for the resulted model sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness of the optimal solution are provided finally several economic interpretations of the theoretical results are also given

global terrorism deterrence versus pre emption this paper analyses two anti terrorism policies when a targeted nation s people and property are in jeopardy at home and abroad a country s deterrence decision involves both external benefits and costs as the terrorist threat is deflected while its preemption decision typically gives external benefits when the threat is reduced for all potential targets with damages limited to home interests a country will overdeter while for globalized terror a country will underdeter pre emption is usually undersupplied leader follower behaviour is apt to lessen inefficiency for deterrence but worsen inefficiency for pre emption compared with simultaneous choice equilibrium allocations targeted nations can never achieve the proper counterterrorism policy through leadership ce memoire analyse deux politiques anti terrorisme quand la population et la propriete des nations visees sont en danger tant au pays qu a l etranger la decision de dissuasion d un pays entraine des avantages et des couts externes a proportion que la menace terroriste est evitee alors que la decision de preemption produit typiquement des avantages externes quand la menace est reduite pour toutes les cibles potentielles dans le cas de dommages limites aux cibles dans le pays un pays va etre portea sur dissuader alors que dans le cas de terreur globalisee un pays va etre portea sous dissuader la preemption est generalement sous offerte le comportement leader suiveur est susceptible de reduire l inefficacite de la dissuasion mais d empirer l inefficacite de la preemption par rapport a ce qui se passe quand les choix sont simultanes les nations visees ne peuvent jamais en arriver a la politique d anti terrorisme appropriee par la voie du leadership

supermarkets farm household income and poverty insights from kenya summary the expansion of supermarkets in developing countries may have important implications for poverty and rural development while previous studies have compared farm profits between participants and non participants in supermarket channels wider income effects have hardly been analyzed moreover most existing studies do not account for structural differences between the two groups we address these issues by using endogenous switching regression and building on a survey of vegetable farmers in kenya participation in supermarket channels is associated with a 48 gain in average household income which also contributes to poverty reduction to realize these benefits on a larger scale will require institutional support

a survey of deterministic models for the eoq and epq with partial backordering models for the basic deterministic eoq or epq problem with partial backordering or backlogging make all the assumptions of the classic eoq or epq model with full backordering except that only a fraction of the demand during the stockout period is backordered in this survey we review deterministic models that have been developed over the past 40 years that address the basic models and extensions that add other considerations such as pricing perishable or deteriorating inventory time varying or stock dependent demand quantity discounts or multiple warehouses

understanding developing country strategic responses to the enhancement of food safety standards this paper explores the competing concepts of standards as barriers and standards as catalysts in the context of food safety standards in international trade in agricultural and food products through a review of existing evidence of the impact of food safety standards on developing country exports of agricultural and food products and the results of a series of country and product specific case studies it is suggested that food safety standards can act as both a barrier to trade and the basis of competitive positioning for developing countries in international markets this suggests that broad conclusions about the trade effects of food safety standards on developing countries are problematic rather the level and ways in which agricultural and food exports are impacted can be product country standard and even firm specific

non traditional crops traditional constraints long term welfare impacts of export crop adoption among guatemalan smallholders this study documents the long term welfare effects of household non traditional agricultural export ntx adoption the analysis uses a unique panel dataset which spans the period 1985 2005 and employs difference in differences estimation to investigate the long term impact of non traditional agricultural export adoption on changes in household consumption status and asset position in the central highlands of guatemala given the heterogeneity in adoption patterns the analysis differentiates the impact estimates based on a classification of households that takes into account the timing and duration of non traditional agricultural export adoption the results show that while on average welfare levels have improved for all households irrespective of adoption status and duration the extent of improvement has varied across groups long term adopters exhibit the smallest increase in the lapse of two decades in spite of some early gains conversely early adopters who withdrew from non traditional agricultural export production after reaping the benefits of the boom period of the 1980s are found to have fared better and shown greater improvements in durable asset position and housing conditions than any other category

supply chain coordination contracts with inventory level and retail price dependent demand abstract in this paper three unlike coordinating contracts namely i joint rebate contract ii wholesale price discount contract and iii cost sharing contract are proposed for two echelon supply chain coordination perspective under stock and price induced demand it is found analytically that the manufacturer s and the retailer s preferences among three contractual forms are not always aligned by applying bargaining theory it is established that stock elasticity plays an important role to select coordination contract and a threshold value stock elasticity is also determined below which cost sharing contract is not feasible it is also found that the retailer with higher bargaining power always prefers wholesale price discount contract among considered three contracts results are illustrated analytically as well as numerically