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

household level spillover effects from biofuels evidence from castor in ethiopia the indirect effects of biofuels are mostly considered negative in this paper we argue that there may be a positive indirect effect of biofuels on food security and poverty using micro level evidence and a matched plot pair design through which we control for plot and farmer characteristics we show that the introduction of castor production for biofuel in a poor country as ethiopia can significantly improve food productivity of rural households who produce raw material for biofuel production this spillover seems particularly linked to enhanced access to inputs and technical assistance which were provided as part of biofuel feedstock production contracts our results thus document another mechanism through which biofuels may influence smallholders food security a mechanism that did not receive attention so far

learning about a new technology pineapple in ghana this paper investigates the role of social learning in the diffusion of a new agri cultural technology in ghana we use unique data on farmers communication patterns to define each individual s information neighborhood conditional on many potentially confounding variables we find evidence that farmers adjust their inputs to align with those of their information neighbors who were surpris ingly successful in previous periods the relationship of these input adjustments to experience further indicates the presence of social learning in addition applying the same method to input choices for another crop of known technol ogy correctly indicates an absence of social learning effects jel d83 013 033 q16

tradeoffs or synergies assessing local and regional food aid procurement through case studies in burkina faso and guatemala we compare the impacts across a range of criteria of local and regional procurement lrp relative to transoceanic shipment of food aid in burkina faso and guatemala we find that neither instrument dominates the other across all criteria in either country although lrp commonly performs at least as well as transoceanic shipment with respect to timeliness cost market price impacts satisfying recipients preferences food quality and safety and in benefiting smallholder suppliers lrp is plainly a valuable food assistance tool but its advantages and disadvantages must be carefully weighed compared and prioritized depending on the context and program objectives

interrupted work careers depreciation and restoration of human capital the quantitative effects and even the existence of a human capital depreciation phenomenon have been a subject of controversy in the recent literature prior work however was largely cross sectional and the longitudinal dimension if any was retrospective using longitudinal panel data on married women in nls we have now established that real wages at reentry are indeed lower than at the point of labor force withdrawal and the decline in wages is greater the longer the interruption another striking finding is a relatively rapid growth in wages after the return to work this rapid growth appears to reflect the restoration or repair of previously eroded human capital the phenomenon of depreciation and restoration is also visible in data for immigrants to the united states however while immigrants eventually catch up with and often surpass natives returnees from the nonmarket do not fully restore their earnings potential

dynamics of smallholder participation in horticultural export chains evidence from ecuador we study the dynamics of smallholder participation in export value chains focusing on the example of small scale broccoli producers in the highlands of ecuador combining cross sectional data from a household survey with 11 year longitudinal data on export market transactions we explain the hazards of dropping out of a high value export chain we apply a multispell cox duration model that allows us to consider multiple entries and exits from the supply chain we also provide evidence on the welfare impacts associated with participation the results suggest that small scale farmers exit from the export sector is accelerated by high transaction risks experienced in the past while we find no particular evidence for the exclusion of small scale farmers from the export sector we do find that poorer households and female headed households tend to drop out faster especially as long as the sector is still prospering finally when considering welfare effects we do not find evidence that participation translates into tangible benefits for broccoli farmers we discuss some measures that could help improve the long term sustainability of smallholder integration in high value chains

large scale agricultural investments and smallholder welfare a comparison of wage labor and outgrower channels in tanzania summary this article evaluates household welfare effects of large scale agricultural investments in tanzania one of the main recipients of such investments in africa specifically the article compares households participating in sugar and rice investments through outgrower schemes or as agro industry workers with non participants in terms of household income and income poverty building on primary household data it is one of the first studies to empirically analyze ex post impacts of large scale agricultural investments in africa the analysis draws on cross section survey data of 516 households collected in kilombero district a priority cluster for the southern agricultural growth corridor of tanzania sagcot the results show overall positive household welfare differences between participants of the investments and the respective counterfactual however there are large differences between arrangements and subsectors estimated effects for outgrowers are largest yet for land rich outgrowers more so than for land poor effects for agro industry workers in the sugar investment are significantly larger than for those in the rice investment though in both investments land poor workers seem to benefit hence the study results suggest potential benefits of outgrower schemes and potentials of agro industry wage employment for the land poor to escape extreme poverty yet it also stresses particularly the need to address the constraints of land poor outgrowers qualitative interviews for example pointed to growing risks for land poor outgrowers in the context of rising elite capture by larger outgrowers

risk sharing and information revelation mechanism of a one manufacturer and one retailer supply chain facing an integrated competitor this paper develops an information revelation mechanism model of a one manufacturer and one retailer supply chain facing an outside integrated competitor under demand uncertainty we investigate how the manufacturer designs a wholesale price order quantity contract to induce the retailer to report his risk sensitivity information truthfully we try to explore the effects of the outside competitor and the risk sharing rule on the optimal price service level decisions of the retailer and the optimal wholesale prices of the manufacturer we find that the strategic interaction plays an important role in the effect of risk sensitivity on the order quantity for the retailer when the fraction of the risk cost shared by the manufacturer is sufficiently large small the optimal wholesale price for the high risk averse retailer is higher lower than that for the low risk averse retailer

certification and access to export markets adoption and return on investment of organic certified pineapple farming in ghana summary global food markets demand adherence to food standards by farmers in developing countries such as globalgap and organic certifications this paper analyzes the adoption and profitability of certified farming using farm level data of 386 ghanaian small scale pineapple farmers we employ an endogenous switching regression model to examine the adoption and impact of organic certification on the return on investment roi in pineapple farming the empirical results indicate that both organic and globalgap certification achieve a positive roi however organic certified farming yields a significantly higher roi than globalgap certified farmers mainly due to the price premium on the organic market

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

competition in durable goods markets the strategic consequences of leasing and selling in marketing durable goods manufacturers use varying degrees of leasing and selling to consumers e g cars photo copiers personal computers airplanes etc the question that this raises is whether the distinction between leases and sales is simply one of price or whether the proportion of leases and sales effects a firm s ability to compete in the market in this paper we use two approaches to argue that leasing and selling create strategic consequences that extend beyond prices first we develop a stylized theoretical model that shows that the optimal proportion of leases and sales depends on the competitiveness of the market and on the inherent reliability of the firm s product and second we find support for the implications of our theoretical model with data from the automobile industry the u s automobile industry has seen a large increase in leasing over the last five years however the extent to which leasing has been embraced varies widely across manufacturers for example in 1993 the sport utility segment had the following lease percentages ford explorer 29 jeep grand cherokee 24 toyota 4 runner 11 and chevrolet blazer 9 in addition manufacturers often vary lease percentages across models for example in 1993 ford leased 22 of its crown victoria model 35 of its taurus model and 42 of its probe model a popular argument for why we see these differences is that higher priced cars are leased more often because leasing makes them more affordable however this rationale is not compelling in the face of our data for example the ford probe was priced significantly lower than the crown victoria and yet it was leased almost twice as often to develop a better understanding of why we observe differences in the proportion of leasing we develop a two period model of a duopoly in which each manufacturer chooses its optimal quantity and the fraction of units it wants to lease we find that in equilibrium neither firm leases all its units either they use a mix of leasing and selling or they use only selling our analysis suggests that the fraction of leased cars decreases as the manufacturers products become more similar and the competition between them increases the intuition for this result is that a higher fraction of leases puts the firm at a competitive disadvantage in the future this occurs because unlike firms that sell their product firms that lease are at a price disadvantage another important finding in this paper is that the extent of leasing chosen by a manufacturer depends on the reliability of its product in particular all else being equal the lower a product s reliability the lower its proportion of leases within the context of the automobile industry this suggests that more expensive cars may be leased more often because they are of higher quality and not necessarily because they are more expensive finally we test the implications of our theoretical model with data from the u s automobile market in particular for 1993 model year cars we develop a measure of reliability using data from consumer reports in addition we develop a measure of the extent of competition in each segment of the automobile market we support our hypotheses by finding that the extent to which a car model is leased depends strongly on its predicted reliability and on the competitive intensity within the segment

the transition to modern agriculture contract farming in developing economies recent years have seen considerable interest in the impact of contract farming on farmers in developing countries motivated out of belief that contract farming spurs transition to modern agriculture in this article we provide a thorough review of the empirical literature on contract farming in bo

contract farming and smallholder incentives to produce high quality experimental evidence from the vietnamese dairy sector in emerging markets for high value food products in developing countries processing companies search for efficient ways to source raw material of high quality one widely embraced approach is contract farming but relatively little is known about the appropriate design of financial incentives in a small farm context we use the example of the vietnamese dairy sector to analyze the effectiveness of existing contracts between a processor and smallholder farmers in terms of incentivizing the production of high quality milk a framed field experiment is conducted to evaluate the impact of two incentive instruments a price penalty for low quality and a bonus for consistent high quality milk on farmers investment in quality improving inputs statistical analysis suggests that the penalty drives farmers into higher input use resulting in better output quality the bonus payment generates even higher quality milk we also find that input choice levels depend on farmers socio economic characteristics such as wealth while individual risk preferences seem to be less important implications for the design of contracts with smallholders are discussed

incomplete contracts and the theory of the firm what have we learned over the past 25 years incomplete contracts and the theory of the firm what have we learned over the past 25 years

pricing used products for remanufacturing remanufacturing is one of recovery options for used products as remanufacturing requires a continuous supply of used products the economic incentive is required to attract customers to return their used products called cores and the problem of pricing a core becomes an important issue such a pricing problem is analogous to pricing an option which can be used to sell the remanufactured cores called core products as sales price of core products follows a geometric brownian motion we propose a model here to evaluate the acquisition price of cores this model links core acquisition price with the sale price of core product but assumes other costs such as logistics and remanufacturing to be deterministic we have presented a numerical example to show its applicability since the model proposed here is generic it is believed that the proposed model can be used in setting the core prices in many situations

adoption of agricultural innovations in developing countries a survey this paper reviews various studies which have provided a description and possible explanation to patterns of innovation adoption in the agricultural sector the survey points out that the tendency of many studies to consider innovation adoption in dichotomous terms adoption nonadoption may not be appropriate in many cases where the actual decisions are defined over a more continuous range more attention needs to be given to the socio cultural and institutional environment in area studies so that their interrelation with economic factors affecting adoption can be inferred the presence of several interrelated innovations is another aspect that needs to be considered more carefully in future research since a number of simultaneous decisions may be involved furthermore the possibility of regular sequential patterns in adopting components of a new technological package should be specifically addressed in future studies finally the impact of differential adoption rates on land holding distribution merits attention in future research

postponing maternity in ireland as in many other developed countries ireland has experienced a postponement of maternity whilst a number of authors have commented on this trend suggesting greater female participation in the workforce results in delayed maternity to date little research has tested this proposition we develop a model to consider the main trends related to the phenomenon of maternity postponement considering changes in first and later births separately using retrospective life history data developed from the 1994 living in ireland survey we estimate a hazard model to empirically test the relationship between career planning and the timing of first and subsequent births we incorporate a declining marginal return to experience and thereby provide a human capital career planning explanation for maternity postponement the results of our analysis demonstrate that career planning has an impact on the timing of maternity the findings also establish an income effect that influences the timing of first births copyright the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

the effect of implementing trade in strategy on duopoly competition abstract we study a firm that makes new products in the first period and collects used products through trade in along with new product sale in the second period to conduct a convincing analysis we initially evaluate the problem in a duopoly situation in which one firm firm a implements trade in and the other one firm b does not we subsequently introduce the competitive environment in a two period planning horizon to identify thresholds that determine the trade in operations and then derive the equilibrium decisions of the resulting scenarios we characterize the optimal production quantities that are associated with parameter b the sum of used product salvage value and government subsidy in the nash equilibrium results indicate that adopting trade in could bring competitive advantage for firm a in terms of market share and profit if the new product sale is comparatively profitable then the trade in firm may forgo some of the collection margin by raising the trade in rebate and selling additional units to increase new product sale in the second period moreover the total collection quantity does not always increase with government subsidy we consequently expand the model to the case where both firms compete in trade in and derive the corresponding decision space of the duopoly firms finally we explore the effect of adopting trade in on consumer surplus and compare it in the two models

governance strategies and welfare effects vertical integration and contracts in the catfish sector in vietnam using an original dataset from the vietnamese catfish sector we study the impact of vertical coordination options on household welfare and the implications of different stages of vertical coordination for the success of the whole sector the welfare gain from contract farming and employment on processor owned estate farms is estimated using a maximum simulated likelihood estimator our results show positive welfare effects from participating in contract farming but not from employment on processor owned estate farms the results imply that contract farming presents opportunities for economic growth but additional effort is required to make the contracts more accessible to smallholders

contract farming in staple food chains the case of rice in benin abstract in this paper we analyze the impact of smallholder participation in a contract farming scheme in the rice sector in benin we use data from a cross sectional farm household survey and different propensity score matching estimations to reveal how participation in a contract farming scheme affects smallholder rice production we find that contract farming results in expansion of the rice area intensification of rice production increased commercialization of rice and higher farm gate prices and ultimately contributes to rice output growth and increased income our findings imply that contract farming can contribute to upgrading the rice supply chain and the development of the rice sector in benin promoting and supporting the spread of contract farming schemes in the sector might be an effective way to contribute to reaching the government goals of expanding rice production to become self sufficient and improving rice quality to compete with imported rice while there is a large empirical literature on contract farming in high value and commodity export sectors studies on contract farming in staple food sectors are very scarce our results document that contract farming for staple food crops can be sustainable and benefit smallholder farmers which is against theoretical expectations that contracting for staple food crops is not feasible because of contract enforcement problems that stem from a low value of produce low storage and transport costs and a larger number of buyers in the chain our study contributes to understanding the role that contract farming might play in the much needed upgrading of domestic and staple food crop sectors in developing countries

the welfare effects of trade in phytomedicines a multi disciplinary analysis of turmeric production summary international trade in medicinal herbal products is growing while value chains are becoming more complex and governed by a range of public and private standards there is a debate over the extent to which phytomedicine production can be beneficial for farmers in low and middle income countries more generally there are varied views about the extent to which small farmers are disadvantaged by stringent public health and private consumer standards in northern markets for agricultural products this paper proves a comparative analysis of value chains using case studies of turmeric production in india it marries a qualitative investigation of turmeric producing sites in india with an investigation into the chemical quality of various turmeric products the aim of the paper is to understand the way that varied structure and governance of value chains changes the benefits to both producer and consumer when production is for the organic northern market we found evidence of a captive value chain where the lead firm requires strict adherence to conditions of production and processing prices for farmers were relatively stable at a reasonably high level in contrast where farmers were producing for local markets including the major auction at erode prices were volatile and farmers bore considerable risk we found that competition and volatility in the market based chain can lead to turmeric adulteration and contamination both intentional and unintentional our case study suggests that many small turmeric farmers would find it difficult to meet both public and private health standards in contrast to some academic literature that argues that public health standards do not discriminate against small farmers more than this our study adds to the discussion of the impact of standards suggesting clear consumer benefits in northern markets however there are also indications that only larger and more dynamic farmers can participate in the lucrative phytomedicine trade as such our study tentatively supports previous literature suggesting that the application of standards in northern markets lead to increasing farmer differentiation

competing manufacturers in a retail supply chain on contractual form and coordination it is common for a retailer to sell products from competing manufacturers how then should the firms manage their contract negotiations the supply chain coordination literature focuses either on a single manufacturer selling to a single retailer or one manufacturer selling to many possibly competing retailers we find that some key conclusions from those market structures do not apply in our setting where multiple manufacturers sell through a single retailer we allow the manufacturers to compete for the retailer s business using one of three types of contracts a wholesale price contract a quantity discount contract or a two part tariff it is well known that the latter two more sophisticated contracts enable the manufacturer to coordinate the supply chain thereby maximizing the profits available to the firms more importantly they allow the manufacturer to extract rents from the retailer in theory allowing the manufacturer to leave the retailer with only her reservation profit however we show that in our market structure these two sophisticated contracts force the manufacturers to compete more aggressively relative to when they only offer wholesale price contracts and this may leave them worse off and the retailer substantially better off in other words although in a serial supply chain a retailer may have just cause to fear quantity discounts and two part tariffs a retailer may actually prefer those contracts when offered by competing manufacturers we conclude that the properties a contractual form exhibits in a one manufacturer supply chain may not carry over to the realistic setting in which multiple manufacturers must compete to sell their goods through the same retailer

optimal strategies for a three level contract farming supply chain with subsidy abstract we consider a three level contract farming supply chain with a risk averse farmer a risk neutral supplier and a risk neutral distributor in which the farmer faces a yield uncertainty and the government offers agricultural subsidy to the farmer the cvar criterion is used to describe the risk averse behavior of the farmer we derive the optimal strategies of the supply chain and perform some sensitivity analysis to investigate the effects of the government subsidy and other factors the results indicate that as the subsidy increases the farmer s total target production increases further analysis shows that the total production increase is mainly from the increased farm size and the farmer s endeavor actually decreases in addition the results indicate that the profits of the supplier and the distributor both increase with respect to the subsidy however the impact of the subsidy on the farmer s profit depends on the farmer s degree of risk averse in particular the impact of the subsidy to the farmer s profit tends to be positive for farmers with high degree of risk averse and the impact tends to be negative for those with low degree of risk averse the sensitivity analysis is also performed for the level of yield uncertainty in term of the standard deviation

a complementarity model for the european natural gas market abstract in this paper we present a detailed and comprehensive complementarity model for computing market equilibrium values in the european natural gas system market players include producers and their marketing arms which we call traders pipeline and storage operators marketers lng liquefiers regasifiers tankers and three end use consumption sectors the economic behavior of producers traders pipeline and storage operators liquefiers and regasifiers is modeled via optimization problems whose karush kuhn tucker kkt optimality conditions in combination with market clearing conditions form the complementarity system the lng tankers marketers and consumption sectors are modeled implicitly via appropriate cost functions aggregate demand curves and ex post calculations respectively the model is run on several case studies that highlight its capabilities including a simulation of a disruption of russian supplies via ukraine

understanding the role of trade ins in durable goods markets theory and evidence the act of trading in a used car as partial payment for a new car resonates with practically all consumers such transactions are prevalent in many other durable goods markets ranging from golf clubs to ct scanners what roles do trade ins play in these markets what motivates the seller to set up a channel to facilitate trade ins intuitively accepting a trade in would appear to stimulate demand for the producer s product but facilitating the resale of these used goods that substitute for new goods might also increase cannibalization although such transactions involve billions of dollars we know relatively little about this practice from the extant research literature this paper develops an analytical model that incorporates key features of real world durable goods markets i coexistence of new and used goods markets ii consumer heterogeneity with respect to quality sensitivity iii firms that anticipate the cannibalization problem arising from the coexistence of new and used goods and iv lemon problems in resale markets whereby sellers of used goods are better informed than buyers about the quality of their particular item in our analysis a trade in policy amounts to an intervention by the firm in the used goods market which reduces inefficiencies arising from the lemon problem it motivates owners to purchase new goods and reduces their proclivity to hold on to purchased goods because of the low price the latter would fetch in a lemon market we also show that trade in programs are more valuable for less reliable products as well as for products that deteriorate more slowly our analysis shows that producers in durable goods markets should consider trade in programs as a matter of routine despite cannibalization concerns arising from a more active resale market a producer s profits will inevitably rise from introducing trade ins given pervasive lemon problems we test the key predictions of the model about price and volume of trade by assembling a data set of transactions of u s automobile consumers and find broad support for our model

sugarcane outgrowers in ethiopia forced to remain poor contract farming is often seen as a panacea to many of the challenges faced by agricultural production in developing countries given the large heterogeneity of contract farming arrangements it is debatable whether all kinds of contract farming arrangements offer benefits to participating smallholders we apply matching methods to analyze the effects of a public sugarcane outgrower scheme in ethiopia participation in the outgrower scheme significantly reduces the income and asset stocks of outgrowers who contributed irrigated land to the outgrower scheme while the effect was insignificant for outgrowers who contributed rain fed land we provide several explanations and discuss policy implications

the influence of proximity to market on bean producer prices in nicaragua transport costs are an important determinant of smallholder welfare in developing countries in particular transport costs influence the prices that smallholders receive for their produce we propose a simple way of quantifying this influence taking the example of bean producers in nicaragua we employ a hedonic price model to estimate the effects of a smallholder s proximity to markets on the prices that he she receives while controlling for other factors such as the volume and quality of beans sold we find that on average each additional minute of travel time reduces farm gate prices by 2 5 cents per quintal based on these results the annual income from bean sales of the average smallholder in our sample would increase by between 24 and 110 usd if travel time to markets were reduced by 25 estimates of this nature can make an important contribution to cost benefit assessments of infrastructure investments

type of employer and fertility of working women does working in the public sector or in a large private firm matter this work investigates how fertility rates of working women have been influenced by employer characteristics public versus private sector and small versus large firms and features of the employment contracts using a representative sample of italian working women in the last 30 years of the twentieth century in particular we find that women working in the public sector have a higher probability of having a child during a working spell than women working in the private sector furthermore women working in large private sector firms who enjoy stronger employment protection have a higher probability of having a child than those working in smaller firms in turn more stable contracts also increase the likelihood of having a child during a working spell results are robust to controlling for individual unobserved heterogeneity and for the possible endogeneity of working in the public sector copyright oxford university press

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

dynamics of competing with quality and advertising based goodwill goodwill formation is a complex process and many factors influence the formation of goodwill of a firm the implications of advertising enabled goodwill formation are reported in several articles in the research literature in this paper we extend this stream of research by including quality in the goodwill formation process we adopt a dynamic model of competition utilizing a differential game approach and derive expressions for open loop markovian nash equilibrium investments in advertising and quality the insights gained from the analysis of our model and from the equilibrium solutions are presented in the form of research propositions

modeling technology adoption in developing countries an analysis of technology adoption decisions by poor farmers is provided some possible empirical models for studying technology adoption are reviewed the issue of theoretical consistency is dealt with in terms of the costs of such consistency measured in data needs and model complexity and the benefits measured in terms of understanding the micro economic foundations of adoption

fair trade organic coffee rural livelihoods and the agrarian question southern mexican coffee families in transition summary we use a random sample of coffee producing households in southern mexico to compare opportunities associated with government subsidies and migration to the role of fair trade organic coffee in household livelihoods although land and labor returns among fair trade organic coffee growers are higher than for conventional growers differences in yields are more important than price premiums moreover investment in education and labor opportunities outside coffee dominate those in fair trade organic coffee the results highlight the value of an integrated approach to the agrarian question that improves productivity and prices and supports other pathways for improving incomes

explaining the performance of contract farming in ghana the role of self efficacy and social capital abstract self efficacy is the belief of an individual to have the ability to be successful in a given domain social capital is the economic value of a person s relationships in the context of this study self efficacy is the belief of a farmer to be able to improve her income with contract farming which increases her actual ability social capital increases the ability of the farmers through social support we surveyed 400 smallholder pineapple farmers and find that both self efficacy and social capital are decisive for their successful integration into contract farming to identify causal effects we use two instruments which are also of interest on their own the historical presence of 1 cocoa cooperatives and 2 christian missionary schools during ghana s colonial period the british established cocoa cooperatives which differed in their performance as a function of biogeographic factors and thus persistently shaped the self efficacy of the farmers roughly at the same time christian missionaries established missionary schools which impacted the traditional societies so that social capital decreased the finding that self efficacy and social capital are still shaped by historic variables could indicate that these variables are only slowly changing or that they only do so in the absence of policy intervention the latter raises the possibility that effective policies could benefit from strong reinforcing feedbacks once self efficacy and social capital improve

modernizing wholesalers and guava farmers in mexico this article focuses on the rapid development of the modernizing wholesale channel with a study of guava traders and farmers in mexico this adds to a literature on modernization of food markets that has focused primarily on exports supermarkets and large processors and addressed less wholesale in general and rarely modernizing wholesale per se we find that participation in the modernizing wholesale channel relative to the traditional broker channel requires greater land regional and nonland assets as well as confers a premium controlling for quality and spurs employment in harvesting and handling locally

on the choice and impacts of innovative international food assistance instruments summary the rise of new food assistance instruments including local and regional procurement cash and vouchers has surpassed increase in understanding of the tradeoffs among and impacts of these options relative to traditional food aid response choices rarely appear to result from systematic response analyses further impacts along multiple dimensions timeliness cost effectiveness local market effects recipient satisfaction food quality impact on smallholder suppliers etc may be competing or synergistic no single food assistance tool is always and everywhere preferable a growing body of evidence including the papers in this special section nonetheless demonstrates the clear value added of new food assistance instruments

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

finding default understanding the drivers of default on contracts with farmers organizations under the world food programme purchase for progress pilot during the past two decades food assistance policy has shifted toward local or regional food purchases and away from purchases from donor countries while most local and regional procurement occurs through hard tendering processes open to large scale firms and farms there is growing interest in identifying how and whether to procure from smallholder farmer organizations to date little is known about the drivers of successful contracting with farmers organizations fos we utilize data from the united nations world food programme purchase for progress pilot in three east african countries to predict defaults on contracts we examine four possible explanations country contexts fo characteristics prior experience with contracts and contract modalities and their relationship to local spot market prices the single most important predictor of default is the increase in market prices between contract approval and delivery yet while increases in market prices are linked to increases in default this relationship is decreasing in contract size indicating search costs associated with breaking contracts our findings yield both generalizable and context specific insights about whether and when procuring from smallholder farmers can be successfully integrated into the food assistance toolkit this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

oil palm boom contract farming and rural economic development village level evidence from indonesia summary contracts between companies and local communities have been used in indonesia for over 20 years to involve smallholder farmers in the emerging palm oil industry impacts of these contracts have not been analyzed systematically here data from a village survey spanning a time period from 1992 to 2012 are used to evaluate effects on rural economic development panel regression models with village fixed effects show that contracts have significantly contributed to wealth accumulation contracts signed before 1999 were more beneficial than contracts signed afterward which is due to more public sector support and infrastructure investments during the earlier period contracts have contributed to decreasing inter village inequality not only because poorer villages were more likely to adopt a contract but also because they benefited more from contract adoption than richer ones the results suggest that well designed contracts can be important for smallholder farmers to benefit from the oil palm boom the village level approach has clear advantages to evaluate direct and indirect economic effects but it also has drawbacks in terms of analyzing environmental effects and issues of intra village inequality more research with various approaches is needed to better understand the multifaceted implications of oil palm contracts for sustainable rural development

finding our balance revisiting the randomization revolution in development economics ten years further on abstract ten years ago we offered reflections on the power and pitfalls of randomized controlled trials in development economics arguing that the research community had lost its balance between theory observational data and randomized experiments we remain convinced of both the importance and the limits of rcts for development economics research but with another decade of rcts under our collective belts three issues now strike us as having become increasingly important first ethical risks still loom large second increasing evidence that many interventions have highly heterogeneous impacts places a premium on reintegrating ex ante theorizing with rct methods to understand the heterogeneity in some cases heterogeneity may imply rcts are less desirable than other research methods third the increasing use of rcts to study informational behavioral and other perceptions mediated interventions creates an opportunity for non classical measurement error problems that undercut the statistical power of seemingly well designed studies in ways that remain underappreciated

limitations of contract farming as a pro poor strategy the case of maize outgrower schemes in upper west ghana summary contract farming cf arrangements have the potential to address market failures and improve technology adoption productivity and welfare in ghana government and donors use cf as a strategy for increasing adoption of new agricultural technologies and developing value chains yet to date there has not been a rigorous assessment of these cf schemes the focus in this paper is on different maize based cf schemes in the poorest and most remote region in ghana it assesses the profitability and potential impact of these cf schemes utilizing a unique plot level dataset that covers two periods of data and two maize plots scheme and non scheme per household and employing matching techniques and an instrumental variable approach to address selection bias and unobserved heterogeneity across farmers these are complemented by a community level survey in depth interviews with scheme operators and a series of key informant interviews results show that these schemes led to improved technology adoption and yield increases in addition a subset of maize farmers with high yield improvements due to cf participation have high profits maize cf schemes also enabled market coordination and consistent supply of quality maize to downstream industries however on average the impact of the cf schemes on profitability is negative even when input diversion is accounted for yield increases are not high enough to compensate for higher input requirements and the cost of capital under the schemes despite higher yields the costs to produce one metric tonne of maize under cf schemes are higher than on maize farms without cf schemes twice that of several countries in africa and more than seven times higher than that of major maize exporting countries the united states brazil and argentina sustainability of these cf schemes will largely depend on developing and promoting much improved varieties and technologies that boost yields in order to compensate for the high input and credit costs

small farmers in high value chains binding or relaxing constraints to inclusive growth summary considerable empirical work relates participation in contract farming with farm profitability however causation is far from settled as few studies control for endogeneity of participation moreover the link between contract farming and equity is ambiguous as the association between contract farming and farmer endowments is mixed this case study of smallholders in the tobacco industry addresses these issues and seems to be the first such econometric application in the philippines based on a treatment effects regression contract farming increases profitability with participation biased toward smaller farm sizes supporting the positive role of contract farming toward inclusive growth in rural areas

optimal contracts for experimentation this paper studies a model of long term contracting for experimentation we consider a principal agent relationship with adverse selection on the agent s ability dynamic moral hazard and private learning about project quality we find that each of these elements plays an essential role in structuring dynamic incentives and it is only their interaction that generally precludes efficiency our model permits an explicit characterization of optimal contracts

the real time price elasticity of electricity the real time price elasticity of electricity contains important information on the demand response of consumers to the volatility of peak prices despite the importance empirical estimates of the real time elasticity are hardly available this paper provides a quantification of the real time relationship between total peak demand and spot market prices we find a low value for the real time price elasticity which may partly be explained from the fact that not all users observe the spot market price if we correct for this phenomenon we find the elasticity to be fairly low for consumers currently active in the spot market if this conclusion applies to all users this would imply a limited scope for government intervention in supply security issues

the role of input vouchers in modernizing the fresh fruit and vegetable market in turkey contractual arrangements between farmers and traders aiming at providing input credit in return for output selling have been widely studied in the literature on agricultural economics nonetheless there is one issue which is barely mentioned in the literature how to enforce the contract terms when traders offer credit in cash rather than input advances this article aims to describe an innovation in farming contracts used by fresh fruit and vegetable wholesalers in turkey which involves a kind of private voucher system drawing on original data collected from wholesalers a segment in the supply chain hardly covered in the literature we investigate the factors determining contract adoption using a two limit tobit model our results suggest that this private voucher system contributes to supply chain coordination and facilitates smallholder farmer participation in export and supermarket channels which are growing rapidly in this developing country resume d auteur

modern value chains and the organization of agrarian production empirical studies of agrarian production in developing countries often find that small farms possess a productivity advantage over larger farms eswaran and kotwal 1986 famously derive this inverse farm size productivity relationship from the structure of agrarian production the focal prediction of their model is that in otherwise equivalent economies a more egalitarian land distribution raises both output and producer welfare the traditional spot procurement system implicit in the eswaran and kotwal model however diverges fundamentally from modern contractual procurement practices we therefore develop a new model of agrarian production in order to determine whether the introduction of a modern value chain alters the welfare effects of land redistribution the inverse farm size productivity relationship persists in our model but we find that more egalitarian land distribution leads to nonmonotonic changes in producer welfare we also find that the introduction of a modern sector can harm the laboring classes

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

wages for wives renegotiating gender and production relations in contract farming in the dominican republic abstract this study analyzes the intersection of gender and production relations in small scale contracting in nontraditional agriculture the case of the processing tomato industry in the dominican republic exemplifies patterns found throughout the region building on a critique of unitary household models i analyze the gendered relations mobilizing resources for contract farming as appears common contracting has heightened demand for women s farm labor contracting has simultaneously provided women with openings for contesting the appropriation of their unpaid labor and many women are claiming payment for work in contract farming this case demonstrates the importance of gender issues in informing contract farming debates and policy interventions

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

behind the market stage where real societies exist part i the role of public and private order institutions this two part article is an attempt to clarify the social conditions upon which the viability and efficiency of the market system rest it strives to show that the embeddedness thesis that is an explanation based upon the existence of long run personal ties involving the use of reputation mechanisms among transactors cannot fully elucidate the question as to how the problem of trust is solved in market societies as explained in part i there are difficulties of both theoretical and empirical historical kinds and these explain why the market order needs to be sustained by private and public order institutions in part ii the role of generalised morality in backing or supplementing such institutions is discussed in the light of game theory and particular emphasis is put on the ability of moral norms to sustain honest behaviour by generating the right kind of preferences and establishing trust the vexed problem of the dynamics of norm emergence and erosion is then addressed with a view to showing

fair trade and free entry can a disequilibrium market serve as a development tool abstract the fair trade ft coffee initiative attempts to channel charity from consumers to poor producers via increased prices we show that the rules of the ft system permit this rent to be eliminated due to free entry and costly excess certification of output using data from an association of coffee cooperatives in central america we verify that expected producer benefits are close to 0 when we take into account the output that is certified but not sold as ft our results illustrate how free entry undermines the attempt at extending charity via a price distortion in an otherwise competitive market

implications of breach remedy and renegotiation design for innovation and capacity amanufacturer writes supply contracts with n buyers then the buyers invest in innovation and the manufacturer builds capacity finally demand is realized and the firms renegotiate the supply contracts to achieve an efficient allocation of capacity among the buyers the court remedy for breach of contract specific performance versus expectation damages affects how the firms share the gain from renegotiation and hence how the firms make investments ex ante the firms may also engage in renegotiation design inserting simple clauses into the supply contract to shape the outcome of renegotiation for example when a buyer grants a financial hostage to the manufacturer or is charged a per diem penalty for delay in bargaining the manufacturer captures the gain from renegotiation tradable options which grant buyers the right to trade capacity without intervention from the manufacturer return the gain from renegotiation to the buyers this paper proves that under surprisingly general conditions the firms can coordinate their investments with the simplest of supply contracts fixed quantity contracts this may require renegotiation design and certainly requires that the firms understand the breach remedy and set their contract parameters accordingly

smallholder participation in vegetable exports and age disaggregated labor allocation in northern tanzania modern agricultural supply chains have been playing an increasingly important role in developing countries and have had significant effects on rural labor markets this article analyses the effects of smallholder farmer participation in export vegetable supply chains in northern tanzania on both household hired labor demand and off farm labor supply using an age disaggregated approach in our sample neither separability nor exogeneity of smallholder farmer participation in export supply chains can be rejected hence we apply lognormal double hurdle models and find that participation in export supply chains positively affects households decision to hire labor from all age groups we also find that it increases the unconditional overall level of hired labor demand while the age disaggregated analysis shows that these effects mostly benefit rural youth however our sample does not allow us to establish statistically significant evidence of an effect on household off farm labor supply although the point estimates point to nonnegligible positive effect sizes

modeling market power by natural gas producers and its impact on the power system strategic behavior by natural gas producers may influence the operation as well as the development of an electricity system within this paper a computational game theoretic investment model is presented which allows assessing market power by natural gas producers and its effects on the electricity market under consideration of emission markets the model is formulated as a mixed complementarity problem it uses typical time segments to represent both seasonal load fluctuations on the natural gas market and load fluctuations within a day on the electricity market investment is possible in natural gas production and lng infrastructure as well as power plants a test case is presented covering three regions and simultaneously optimizing power plant dispatch and utilization of transmission lines on the power market as well as supply transport and storage on the natural gas market we compute prices production volumes and power plant utilization for two different market power specifications to show the impact of oligopolistic market behavior

managing quantity quality and timing in indian cane sugar production ex post marketing permits or ex ante production contracts private sugar processors in andhra pradesh india use an unusual form of vertical coordination they issue permits to selected cane growers a few weeks before harvest these permits specify the amount of cane to be delivered during a narrow time period this article investigates why processors create uncertainty among farmers using ex post permits instead of ex ante production contracts the theoretical model predicts that ex post permits are more profitable than ex ante contracts or the spot market under existing government regulations in the sugar sector which include a binding price floor for cane and the designation of a reserve area for each processor wherein it has a legal monopsony for cane the use of ex post permits creates competition among farmers to increase cane quality which increases processor profits and farmer costs empirical analysis supports the hypothesis that farmers operating in private factory areas have higher unit production costs than do their counterparts who patronize cooperatives

time to change what to sow risk preferences and technology adoption decisions of cotton farmers in china this paper examines the role of individual risk attitudes in the decision to adopt a new form of agricultural biotechnology in china i conducted a survey and a field experiment to elicit the risk preferences of chinese farmers who faced the decision of whether to adopt genetically modified bt cotton a decade ago in my analysis i expand the measurement of risk preferences beyond expected utility theory to incorporate prospect theory i find that farmers who are more risk averse or more loss averse adopt bt cotton later farmers who overweight small probabilities adopt bt cotton earlier

salesforce incentives market information and production inventory planning salespeople are the eyes and ears of the firms they serve they possess market knowledge that is critical for a wide range of decisions a key question is how a firm can provide incentives to its salesforce so that it is in their interest to truthfully disclose their information about the market and to work hard many people have considered this question and provided solutions perhaps the most well known solution is due to gonik 1978 who proposed and implemented a clever scheme designed to elicit market information and encourage hard work the purpose of this paper is to study gonik s scheme and compare it with a menu of linear contracts a solution often used in the agency literature in a model where the market information possessed by the salesforce is important for the firm s production and inventory planning decisions

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

is late really better than never the farmer welfare effects of pineapple adoption in ghana export agriculture offers potentially high returns to smallholder farmers in developing countries but also carries substantial market risk in this paper we examine the intertemporal welfare impact of the timing of a farmer s entry into the export pineapple market in southern ghana we examine whether farmers who never cultivated pineapple are better or worse off than farmers who decided to adopt pineapple earlier or later relative to their peers and experienced a significant adverse market shock several years prior to our endline survey we use a two stage least squares model to estimate the causal effect of duration of pineapple farming on farmer welfare consistent with economic theory we find that earlier adoption of the new crop brings greater welfare gains than does later uptake but we find that the gains to later uptake of pineapple just before the market shock are small in magnitude just 0 1 standard deviations of a comprehensive asset index indicating that the gains to adoption may be precarious and depend on the context in particular on the severity of prospective market shocks

balladurette and juppette a discrete analysis of scrapping subsidies this paper studies the effects of subsidies on durable goods markets in particular we focus on a recent policy in france in which the governments of balladur and juppe subsidized the replacement of old cars with new ones to study this policy we construct a dynamic stochastic discrete choice model of car ownership at the household level the resulting decision rules and equilibrium conditions are used to estimate the underlying parameters of the model using aggregate data these policy functions are used to evaluate the short and long run effects of the french policies we find that these policies do stimulate the automobile sector in the short run but through the induced changes in the cross sectional distribution of car ages create the basis for subsequent low activity further while these policies increase government revenues in the short run revenues in the long run are lower relative to a baseline without intervention

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

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

linking smallholder farmers to markets on extensive and intensive margins evidence from nicaragua abstract access to modern commercialization channels is key for smallholder farmers to move away from subsistence farming and overcome poverty however achieving that goal is challenging for smallholders given their lack of appropriate managerial practices production technology and infrastructure this paper examines the association between receiving trainings in two distinct entrepreneurial practices one direct at the individual and farmer association level and another indirect at the community level and commercialization in non local markets at the extensive and intensive margins we exploit a panel dataset of bean producers in nicaragua that participated in an ngo program implemented between 2007 and 2012 we find opposite results for the two market linkage activities especially on the intensive margin or volume of sales while reciving direct training on entrepreneurial practices ep is positively associated with commercialization training on municipality engagement me activities is negatively associated these correlation patterns are mainly observed among entrant farmers as opposed to those already participating in commercial markets prior to the program implementation we also find varying results for me activities by plot size and leadership position additional estimations show that training activities that are positively correlated with bean commercialization are not necessarily correlated with the commercialization of other crops and vice versa

efficient determination of cournot equilibria in electricity markets this paper analyzes the deregulated electricity market using game theory and investigates the properties of cournot equilibrium points a new algorithm for the calculation of the cournot equilibrium of an electricity market in the absence of transmission constraints is presented the algorithm is based on the transformation of the cournot game into a three level decision making scheme with economic signal exchange the algorithm is tested on a hypothetical market in order to demonstrate the effects of market concentration and demand elasticity case studies indicate that the algorithm is very efficient computationally and therefore suitable for use with multi period production scheduling models for the electricity market

competitive advantage through take back of used products abstract motivated by a recent antitrust ruling against hill rom one of the two dominant american suppliers of hospital beds we develop a stylized model to investigate the consequences of used product take back on firms industry and customers our findings suggest that by taking back and reselling refurbished products a manufacturer can increase both profit margins and sales to the detriment of a non interfering competitor in our model customers are always better off under product take back but it depends on the degree of competition whether firms use the benefits of take back primarily to increase their margins or to pass them on to the customers by lowering their prices the first firm to offer take back in some cases can deter its competitors from following this profitable strategy especially if it has an existing advantage in terms of lower production cost or higher market share contrary to the claim of hill rom s competitor we find a legitimate business justification for hill rom s reduction of new product prices

choosing the right exchange old for new programs for durable goods with a rollover abstract by offering to trade in one unit of old product at a discounted price while selling new products exchange old for new eon programs have been considered efficient ways of expanding market for durable goods starting from the choice behavior of customers this paper studies optimal pricing and remanufacturing decisions for firms that adopt the eon program specifically considering a supply chain that consists of one manufacturer and one retailer we investigate two business models i in the manufacturer initiated scenario the manufacturer launches an eon program and owns all the old items that are returned he remanufactures all or a portion of the old items and sells them to a secondary market ii in the retailer initiated scenario any old items that are returned belong to the retailer she remanufactures the old items and sells them to the secondary market an in depth comparison between the optimal decisions in the two models is conducted in this paper we show it is possible that a firm may be even more profitable from being a free rider instead of offering an eon program by himself herself based on a centralized supply chain as a benchmark an exchange discount sharing contract is proposed to coordinate the supply chain and to improve the overall welfare of customers numerical experiments are conducted to show the profit impact for the supply chain members which uncover some interesting managerial insights for the proper adoption of the most efficient eon programs

agrifood industry transformation and small farmers in developing countries summary this article introduces this special issue on the rapid transformation of the agrifood industry in developing countries and its effects on small farmers we review the literature from the late 1980s to the present and find evidence first of food processing then retail transformation and mixed evidence of impacts on small farmers both inclusion particularly with resource providing contracts and exclusion sometimes from scale constraint sometimes from inadequate non land assets the special issue papers contribute to the debate by confirming the mix of cases of inclusion and exclusion the cases are main in horticulture and dairy key hopes for smallholder development

endogenous emergence of credit markets contracting in response to a new technology in ghana abstract access to credit is important for the productivity and overall welfare of farmers in developing countries we present a theoretical framework which shows that a change in the mode of shipping from air to sea in the ghanaian pineapple industry made it profitable for pineapple exporters to provide myopic farmers with both in kind loans to improve productivity and cash loans for consumption smoothing despite being unable to monitor farmers or enforce repayment the innovative theoretical result is that providing farmers with additional cash loans can enforce greater input use without compromising repayment we provide evidence in the form of a case study documenting the dramatic rise of informal credit through contract farming after the switch to sea freight between 1996 and 2001 using this anecdote we argue that credit arrangements can arise spontaneously absent non market interventions to meet market needs even in the absence of proper legal protections for creditors

study on china s low carbon development in an economy energy electricity environment framework abstract emissions mitigation is a major challenge for china s sustainable development we summarize china s successful experiences on energy efficiency in past 30 years as the contributions of energy usage management and integrated resource strategic planning which are essential for low carbon economy in an economy energy electricity environment e4 framework the paper studies the low carbon development of china and gives an outlook of china s economy growth energy electricity demand renewable power generation and energy conservation and emissions mitigation until 2030 a business as usual scenario is projected as baseline for comparison while low carbon energy and electricity development path is studied it is defined as low carbon energy electricity when an economy body manages to realize its potential economic growth fueled by less energy electricity consumption which can be characterized by indexes of energy electricity intensity and emissions per unit of energy consumption electricity generation results show that with eum china could save energy by 4 38 billion ton oil equivalences toes and reduce co2 emission by 16 55 billion tons with irsp china could save energy by 1 5 btoes and reduce co2 emission by 5 7 btons during 2010 2030 to realize the massive potential china has to reshape its economic structure and rely much on technology innovation in the future

contract farming and vulnerability to poverty among oil palm smallholders in indonesia abstractthis article addresses smallholder oil palm farming in indonesia and the risk of falling into poverty by comparing contract and non contract smallholders we use an asset based approach to define vulnerability and apply propensity score matching analysis to assess the impact of contract farming data were collected from a cross sectional survey conducted in 2010 of 245 oil palm smallholder households 126 of which were contract smallholders the study finds that approximately 40 per cent of oil palm smallholders can be classified as stochastic transient poor we also show that while contract participation reduces the negative impact of oil palm price shocks this is not the case for production shocks the study concludes that despite positive income effects contract smallholders also remain vulnerable to poverty

optimal ordering and pricing strategies in the presence of a b2b spot market abstract in the current paper we examine the effect of a b2b spot market on the strategic behavior and the performance of a reseller who continues to use the traditional channel while participating in a b2b spot market we analyze the case in which a risk neutral reseller faces an additive or multiplicative demand function and identify sufficient conditions under which the optimal order quantity and retail price exist and are unique we then analytically examine the case in which a risk averse reseller participates in a fully liquid spot market we also study numerically how varying liquidity spot price volatility demand variability and correlation coefficient affect a firm s strategies and performance we find that demand variability significantly affects both pricing and ordering strategies whereas the spot price volatility has less influence on pricing decisions our results also show that for a risk averse reseller to charge a lower retail price when the spot market liquidity increases is desirable we further show that a b2b spot market cannot always improve a reseller s utility these findings shed light on how resellers can adjust their procurement and pricing strategies to align with the new business environment created by the emergence of b2b spot markets as well as have obvious implications for the development of a b2b spot market

linear complementarity models of nash cournot competition in bilateral and poolco power markets two cournot models of imperfect competition among electricity producers are formulated as mixed linear complementarity problems lcps and a simple example is presented to illustrate their application the two models simulate bilateral markets the models include a congestion pricing scheme for transmission but other transmission pricing approaches can also be represented in this framework the two models differ from each other in that one has no arbitrage between nodes of the network while in the other model arbitragers erase any noncost based differences in price the latter bilateral model turns out to be equivalent to a cournot model of a poolco the models differ from other cournot market models in that they include both of kirchhoff s laws via a dc approximation can include arbitragers possess unique solutions and are readily solved by efficient lcp algorithms the key assumption that permits their formulation as lcps is that each producer naively assumes that its output will not affect transmission prices

coordination of channel members efforts and utilities in contract farming operations abstract one important driving force behind parties entering into contract farming agreements is to improve farmers production efforts e g buying agricultural machinery or using new planting techniques in this study we examine two widely used channel structures in contract farming operations namely firm farmer ff and firm cooperative farmer fcf structures to assess how each contract type influences the coordination of efforts and utilities by channel members first we study wholesale price and cost sharing contracts under the ff structure and find that the latter can result in a win win outcome for both channel members when the firm s cost sharing proportion is lower than a threshold level we also find that cost sharing contract effectively enlarges the opportunity of a successful ff contract farming agreement interestingly we show that the purchasing price offered by the firm has a unimodal pattern in its cost sharing proportion second under the fcf structure we consider two bargaining models based on the cooperative s commission contracts with the farmer we find that the farmer s production effort can achieve the system optimal level and the cooperative s high bargaining power helps ensure a steady fcf contract farming agreement we also find that there exists a win win win outcome for all three channel members when the cooperative s commission ratio is higher than a threshold level

influence of neighbor experience and exit on small farmer market participation this research analyzes the motivations and dynamics of small farmer participation in supermarket supply chains in developing countries why some small farmers join these new markets and continue their participation why others drop out or decline the relationship from the outset drawing on insights from the technology adoption literature on learning and experimentation and also on findings from a simple two period bayesian model of farmer decisions to participate in a new market we incorporate measures of neighboring farmers experience into the decision model results suggest that farmers delay entry to observe their neighbors outcomes we find a negative relationship between the number of neighbor participants in a given period and a farmer s own decision to enter the supply chain we find evidence that farmers delay entry for strategic reasons allowing neighbors to bear the costs associated with a first wave of adjustment to the market including higher product rejection rates and lower initial annual transactions with supermarkets compared to revenues from marketing in the traditional way results are robust to definitions of neighbors using both administrative and geographic designations our results raise questions about the optimal sequence and level of farmers market participation and exit which remain largely unexplored in the literature