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

the political economics of agricultural price support in turkey an empirical assessment the present study is an attempt to explain the variations in the extent of protection provided to the producers of four selected agricultural crops in turkey by a set of independent variables representing various economic and political events of the 1962 1983 period the economic variables were selected in order to assess the divergence between the intentions of the policy makers and their actions as reflected in the level of support actually provided while the political variables were chosen to assess the impact of elections military takeovers and noticeable shifts in the underlying philosophy of the policy makers on the support provided the regression analysis suggested that the political power of the agricultural producers was an important determinant of the policies implemented especially during times of democratic practices that during times of military regimes the agricultural sector tends to be less protected that there is indirect evidence for the existence of political business cycles synchronized to political elections and that general conditions in the economy can influence the behavioral rule of the policy makers

measuring agricultural policy bias general equilibrium analysis of fifteen developing countries the measurement issue is the key issue in the literature on trade policy induced agricultural price incentive bias this paper introduces a general equilibrium effective rate of protection ge erp measure which extends and generalizes earlier partial equilibrium nominal protection measures for the 15 sample countries the results indicate that the agricultural price incentive bias which was generally perceived to exist during the 1980s was largely eliminated during the 1990s the results also demonstrate that general equilibrium effects and country specific characteristics including trade shares and intersectoral linkages are crucial for determining the sign and magnitude of trade policy bias the ge erp measure is therefore uniquely suited to capture the full impact of trade policies on agricultural price incentives a monte carlo procedure confirms that the results are robust with respect to tradability assumptions

market clearing with stochastic security part i formulation the first of this two paper series formulates a stochastic security constrained multi period electricity market clearing problem with unit commitment the stochastic security criterion accounts for a pre selected set of random generator and line outages with known historical failure rates and involuntary load shedding as optimization variables unlike the classical deterministic reserve constrained unit commitment here the reserve services are determined by economically penalizing the operation of the market by the expected load not served the proposed formulation is a stochastic programming problem that optimizes concurrently with the pre contingency social welfare the expected operating costs associated with the deployment of the reserves following the contingencies this stochastic programming formulation is solved in the second companion paper using mixed integer linear programming methods two cases are presented a small transmission constrained three bus network scheduled over a horizon of four hours and the ieee reliability test system scheduled over 24 h the impact on the resulting generation and reserve schedules of transmission constraints and generation ramp limits of demand side reserve of the value of load not served and of the constitution of the pre selected set of contingencies are assessed

the role of market forces in assuring contractual performance the conditions under which transactors can use the market repeat purchase mechanism of contract enforcement are examined increased price is shown to be a means of assuring contractual performance a necessary and sufficient condition for performance is the existence of price sufficiently above salvageable production costs so that the nonperforming firm loses a discounted steam of rents on future sales which is greater than the wealth increase from nonperformance this will generally imply a market price greater than the perfectly competitive price and rationalize investments in firm specific assets advertising investments thereby become a positive indicator of likely performance

pitfalls in the measurement of real exchange rate effects on agriculture abstract studies of the effects of real exchange rates on agriculture commonly assume that these effects can be identified as those which pertain to traded goods in the standard australian model of an open economy further it is common to assume that the indirect effects of changes in the real exchange rate have the same impact on the various production activities within agriculture this paper discusses the extent to which these stylized facts reflect reality focusing in particular on the extent of tradibility in agricultural markets the irrelevance of results based on free trade equilibria to policy analyses and the importance of the characteristics of crop production functions in estimating the effects of real exchange rate changes ignoring these considerations can cause errors in the measurement of policy effects on agricultural incentives

implications of agricultural trade liberalization for the developing countries abstract the developing countries as a group could expect to experience only small welfare gains if they chose not to actively participate in agricultural trade liberalization and relied solely on the benefits of partial liberalization in the oecd countries participation along the lines of the dunkel package with the developing countries reducing positive assistance by less than the developed countries would yield gains of the order of us 20 billion more comprehensive participation in trade liberalization involving reductions of both positive and negative protection would almost triple these welfare gains while some developing countries do not gain from trade liberalization even with full participation the number of such countries and the magnitude of their losses are greatly reduced

the political economy of regulations and trade wine trade 1860 1970 dramatic changes in the 1860 1970 wine trade provide insights on the political economy of regulations and policy instrument choice and trade an invasion of phylloxera in the 1870s turned france from the world s leading exporter to a massive importer of wine and grapes when french production recovered a combination of tariffs safety regulations and quality standards were introduced to protect its french producers causing dramatic changes in global wine and grape production and trade including in spain italy turkey greece algeria tunisia and morocco changes in wine regulations were caused by relative income and loss aversion factors in political economy tariffs were the preferred policy instruments as they directly restrict imports bring in revenues have low transaction costs and are preferred political instruments when there are information imperfections safety regulations and quality standards including labelling and input prohibitions reduce asymmetric information for consumers or undesirable externalities and simultaneously protected domestic producers regulations were often targeted at imported products wine and raisins when tariffs were ineffective or constrained by institutions such as on colonial wine hence tariffs and quality regulations were jointly used in wine policy both as complements and as substitutes in policy design

an analysis of the variation in billing charges of medical providers causes and implications the purpose of this paper is to review the billing methodology of physicians that participate in fee for service plans and using a data set of billing charges determine the significance of the variation in fees by providers of certain kind of procedures providers use cost plus pricing and take into account the medical aspects of the services and market forces using the current procedural terminologies cpt established by the american medical association the providers define the medical services by the six digit cpt code and bill accordingly the statistical evidence shows that there is some evidence that fees of providers who bill under the medicine codes tend to exhibit more variation in charges than other procedures

political economy of public policies insights from distortions to agricultural and food markets the agricultural and food sector is an ideal case for investigating the political economy of public policies many of the policy developments in this sector since the 1950s have been sudden and transformational while others have been gradual but persistent this paper reviews and synthesizes the literature on trends and fluctuations in market distortions and the political economy explanations that have been advanced based on a rich global data set covering a half century of evidence on commodities countries and policy instruments the paper identifies hypotheses that have been explored in the literature on the extent of market distortions and the conditions under which reform may be feasible

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

agricultural price distortions trends and volatility past and prospective thanks are due to the australian research council the rural industries research and development corporation and the world bank for financial assistance

assessing the competitiveness of demand side bidding demand side bidding dsb provides a very flexible way of meeting the peak load in a production schedule this paper demonstrates that in a competitive electricity pool dsb and other forms of flexible generation can cause sharp and unwarranted price increases if the production schedule is established on the basis of a minimization of the total production cost furthermore the competitiveness of dsb is artificially inflated if the load recovery periods which accompany these load reductions are not taken into consideration by the scheduling program it is argued that the actual value of dsb should be re examined in the light of these findings

distorted agricultural incentives and economic development asia s experience earnings from farming in many low income countries have been depressed by a pro urban bias in own country policies as well as by governments of richer countries favouring their farmers with import barriers and subsidies both sets of policies reduce national and global economic welfare the rapid development of many asian emerging economies has been accompanied by a gradual reduction in their anti agricultural policies but many distortions remain and some countries have moved from negative to positive assistance for farmers following the earlier examples of first japan and then korea and taiwan drawing on results from a new multi country research project this paper examines the extent of these changes relative to those of other developing countries over the past five decades it concludes by pointing to prospects for further policy reform in asia

the stagnation of smallholder agriculture in malawi a decade of structural adjustment abstract malawi s efforts at structural adjustment have revolved around reforming the marketing and pricing of outputs and inputs in smallholder agriculture in practice the price oriented adjustment policies were not thorough enough and have led to disappointing results there is clearly a need to push for further reforms in pricing however structural adjustment in malawi will have to go beyond just getting prices right policies must also concentrate on structural and institutional weaknesses that constrain smallholder agriculture and contribute to widespread food insecurity and malnutrition

market clearing with stochastic security part ii case studies this paper analyzes the market clearing formulation with stochastic security developed in its companion paper through two case studies solved using mixed integer linear programming techniques the generation and reserve schedules as well as the nodal prices of energy and security are assessed under various conditions such as a line flow limits b when nonspinning reserve is excluded from the formulation c demand side valuation of energy not served d generator ramping limits and e the set of pre selected contingencies

modeling load recovery impact for demand response applications in this paper we develop a novel mathematical model to describe the localized economic impact of load recovery by electricity consumers following demand response dr event participation in this model termed securitization cost and benefit associated with an amount of load recovery change exponentially with time varying stochastic discount rates these volatile rates which can be estimated using the principle of brownian motion are further examined via case studies on the roy billinton test system a formal application of the proposed recovery model to the crucial task of global dr scheduling is then studied the study indicates that it is possible to optimize a dr schedule to cater for uncertainty in the subsequent load recovery

issues of state and market from interventionism to deregulation of food markets in nicaragua abstract the transition from interventionism toward laissez faire policies vis a vis agricultural and food markets in ldcs is examined by focusing on the changing role of the state toward the market it is concluded that both sets of policies and underlying theories were and are not founded on an analysis of the real dynamics of markets it is argued that a new type of state intervention is needed which will actually promote the development of agricultural markets at a concrete level the transition from interventionist policies toward liberalization and deregulation of markets and their outcomes are analyzed in the case of nicaragua comparing the post 1979 period under sandinista rule with that of the post 1990 epoch under the uno government

aggregate agricultural supply response in developing countries a survey of selected issues the authors review several studies of the aggregate agricultural supply response using both economic and econometric reasons they argue that time series estimation typically generates a downward biased estimate of the response to a credible reform even though time series estimates can provide an accurate picture of past behavoiral relations they do not provide an adequate basis for forecasting the impact of policy reform this is especially true in developing countries where policy reforms involve large changes and have included agricultural price reform industrial trade liberalization financial sector reform and macroeconomic stabilization under those circumstances parameters values obtained under the former policy regime have little relevance in the new regime the authors also argue that investment in public goods should be viewed as complementary to not competitive with price policy they claim that to select the policy with the biggest impact on output makes no sense they provide what they consider to be better criteria for choosing the best from alternative policies

the poor and the social sectors during a period of macroeconomic adjustment empirical evidence for jamaica considerable uncertainty remains about the human impact of macroeconomic adjustment analysis of the impact of adjustment on the poor and on the social sectors is difficult because it involves evaluating a counterfactual situation in which households are affected by prices incomes and public services with the possibility of substantial substitutions all within an economywide framework with complicated concurrent and lagged interactions time series data for jamaica is utilized in this article to examine whether macroeconomic adjustment initiated in the early 1980s but intensified in 1984 85 was associated with significant deterioration in various indicators of health nutritional and welfare outcomes particularly among the poor although the authors find evidence of substantial cuts in governmental expenditures on social services there is little confirmation of significant short run deterioration in human capital indicators during the adjustment period

physician price fixing under the sherman act an indirect test of the maricopa issues the expression price fixing usually indicates an attempt by competitors to put a floor under the minimum price they will charge but a recent decision of the supreme court arizona v maricopa county suggests that attempts to fix maximum prices are equally economically objectionable in this paper i propose an explanation of simultaneous minimum and maximum price fixing i also investigate empirically the distribution of physicians fees in a closely related instance of alleged physician price fixing the data reject any inference of successful price fixing and instead conform to the usual predictions of the economics of costly market information

profitability analysis of foodgrain in the sudan s irrigated agricultural sector abstract this paper discusses the situation of irrigated sorghum and wheat with respect to their financial and economic profitability and international competitiveness in use of domestic resources in light of declared government policy which emphasizes shifting from traditional rainfed sector to irrigated sector for production of staple foodgrain domestic resource cost analysis has been employed using official and shadow exchange rates measures of domestic resource cost ratio international value added international competitiveness nominal and effective protection coefficients were also estimated results indicate that the economic profitability has been significantly higher than the financial one due mainly to variability in international prices yields and overvalued exchange rates but devaluation of the currency is not a sufficient condition for paying higherprices to farmers

poverty food intake and malnutrition implications for food security in developing countries the relation between household income food intake and nutritional status in less developed countries is examined and a framework that explicitly relates household behavior patterns with public policy options designed to improve the nutritional status of the rural and urban poor is presented for rural areas nutritional and health status depends largely upon the levels of private inputs provided by households in turn level depends upon income consequently increasing income may also lead to improvements in nutrition and health status regrettably post world war ii development strategy in most developing countries has undervalued the potential contribution of agricultural development to economic development domestic economic policies practiced thus far have most probably had serious negative effects upon the nutrition and heal status of the poorest segments of developing nations economic development policy reform is therefore called for as a measure to alleviate rural poverty in developing countries

estimating the level of protection the implications of seasonal price fluctuations abstract the nominal protection coefficients npcs effective protection coefficients epcs and producers subsidy equivalents pses are usually estimated from annual prices which are the unweighted average of seasonal prices in the presence of seasonal fluctuations in prices the npcs epcs and pses estimated from annual data can seriously over underestimate the actual protection received by the producers and consumers the bias results from the fact that price and quantity traded normally relate negatively and unweighted average price consistently overestimates the trade weighted average price the bias in the npc estimates is demonstrated both theoretically and empirically in most cases quantity traded at each price is not known and the paper suggests empirical methods for estimating the trade weights

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

feeding and fueling china in the 21st century abstract this paper addresses the questions to what extent will china become a significant net importer of food and fuel in the foreseeable future and what will be the impact of that import demand growth on international markets it first summarizes what standard trade and development economics and the experiences of other asian economies suggest we should expect of china and then examines china s experience to date before turning to some forecasts for the next decade or so our review suggests that before long china will become a significant net importer of both food and fuels especially petroleum contrary to chinese fears however becoming more interdependent with the rest of the world need not be threatening and it may even offer more supply security for china in the long run

the pattern of agricultural price distortions in central and eastern europe abstract nominal and adjusted protection rates for nine agricultural commodities in seven central european and three baltic states are estimated for the transition period 1990 1995 our estimates indicate that agricultural and food price distortions differ strongly between central and east european countries between commodities and varied over time the average level of price distortions decreased in 1991 and 1992 after price and trade liberalization but increased again in 1993 as many of these countries reintroduced protectionist price and trade policy measures since 1994 the average level of price distortions has declined again accounting for exchange rate policy effects further reduces estimates of protection of agricultural producers

measuring soil quality dynamics a role for economists and implications for economic analysis measuring soil quality is extremely difficult yet it has clear economic importance in particular there is a great deal of empirical interest in the dynamics of soil quality evolution when land managers respond to policies and other incentives yet current methodologies for measuring changes in agricultural land quality are largely static and rely heavily either on incomplete measures such as proxy variables or ad hoc indexes of selected soil characteristics moreover much empirical work relies on static econometric techniques or simulation models in this paper we develop a means to infer soil quality changes from input and output data using a dynamic production function model using data from field experiments we estimate the model in a way that allows the recovery of a dynamic measure of soil quality whose evolution depends on variations in management practices our methodology and findings will help provide firmer empirical foundations for analyses of the economic implications of land degradation and the soil quality implications of agricultural policies

how do agricultural policy restrictions on global trade and welfare differ across commodities for decades the world s agricultural markets have been highly distorted by national government policies but very differently for different commodities hence a weighted average across countries of nominal rates of assistance or consumer tax equivalents for a product can be misleading as an indicator of the trade or welfare effects of policies affecting that product s global market this is especially the case when some countries tax and others subsidize its production or consumption this article develops a new set of more satisfactory indicators for that purpose drawing on the recent literature on trade restrictiveness indexes it then exploits a global agricultural distortions database recently compiled by the world bank to generate the first set of estimates of those two indicators for each of 28 key agricultural commodities from 1960 to 2004 based on a sample of 75 countries that together account for more than three quarters of the world s production of those agricultural commodities these reveal the considerable extent of reforms in agricultural policies of developing as well as high income countries over the past two decades

the role of agriculture in economic development visible and invisible surplus transfers the financial surplus of agriculture has been central to theories of the role of agriculture in economic development morrisson and thorbecke mt have used a constant price social accounting matrix sam framework to measure rigorously the financial surplus of agriculture and decompose the mechanisms of surplus extraction history and theory have however stressed the role of prices as an invisible transfer mechanism in addition to the visible transfers identified in the sam framework we extend the mt approach by defining and measuring the real surplus of agriculture and decomposing the mechanisms of surplus extraction between visible and invisible financial transfers using an archetype computable general equilibrium model for poor african nations we trace the generation transfer and use of an agricultural surplus created by a productivity gain in agriculture this shows that prices indeed play an overwhelmingly important role in transferring a surplus from agriculture to the benefit of the rest of

the chilean experience with agricultural price bands abstract while the opening of national economics through the devaluation of the real exchange rate leads to an improvement in agricultural incentives it also exposes producers to the effects of instability in international commodity markets sector specific interventions may be needed to reduce the price fluctuations transmitted from international to domestic markets the chilean price band scheme for wheat discussed in this article represents one possible attempt to achieve this objective

energy and reserve pricing in security and network constrained electricity markets this paper analyzes some unresolved pricing issues in security constrained electricity markets subject to transmission flow limits although the notion of separate reserve types as proposed by ferc can be precisely and unambiguously defined when transmission constraints are active the very existence of separate reserve prices and markets is open to question when the prices are based on marginal costs instead we submit here that the only products whose marginal costs can be separately and uniquely defined and calculated are those of energy and security at each node thus under marginal pricing at any given network bus all scheduled reserve types should be priced not at separate rates but at a common rate equal to the marginal cost of security at that bus furthermore we argue that nodal or area reserves cannot be prespecified but must be obtained as by products of the market clearing process simulations back up these conclusions

towards full integration of demand side resources in joint forward energy reserve electricity markets this paper proposes a security constrained forward market clearing algorithm within which the inherent characteristics of demand flexibility are acknowledged when the provision of reserve from the demand side is considered in the proposed formulation we co optimize the cost of scheduling the appropriate resources to guarantee the security of the system and the expected cost of operating under any credible system state in addition we consider that consumers can offer to provide spinning reserve capacity deployable by voluntary load reductions in response to contingencies due to the load recovery effect i e since energy usage is essentially postponed when demand side reserve is deployed in post contingency states any voluntary reduction in the load has to be accompanied by a subsequent increase in demand from the initial forecast we demonstrate that the marginal value of the reserve provided by the demand can only be calculated taking into account the cost of supplying the recovery consumption flexible consumers can reduce their payments on average if energy is settled through real time prices

agriculture reform and food crisis in syria impacts on poverty and inequality abstract the paper pursues a twofold objective from a methodological viewpoint it shows how to carry out an impacts evaluation of exogenous shocks on poverty and inequality in a context characterised by out of equilibrium poorly adjusting markets as it is the case in many developing countries using a social accounting matrix framework from an empirical viewpoint it provides an assessment of how the cereal price spikes of 2007 2008 and the global recession of 2008 2009 have impacted the welfare of syrian households and how did they compound with the on going agricultural sector liberalisation implemented by the government of syria since mid 1990s this will contribute to shed some lights on the economic background behind the spreading of unrest across the country over the last couple of years or so the results show that liberalisation impacts are very different and largely affected by the adopted budget closure rules while reforms aiming at reducing agricultural market distortions such as production subsidies and price support for strategic crops could generally have a positive effect on growth poverty and inequality the elimination of food security interventions such as food stamp schemes determines an adverse distributional impact against rural household and an increase of poverty the recent macroeconomic shocks food price crisis and the global recession determined a generalised poverty increase and showed an income distribution bias against rural households three fundamental policy implications can be drawn by this study first the liberalisation of agricultural sector shows a significant growth potential and is likely to determine positive effects on poverty through a generalised increase of incomes as well as public budget savings that could be used for pursuing other policy goals second in the short run there is a structural trade off between equity improvements and poverty alleviation the policy options that will more likely reduce absolute poverty show undesirable distributive biases both on overall inequality and on rural households vis a vis urban households third the reform should include a careful design of the use of budget savings mainly to address equity goals that are likely to be generated in the short run by liberalisation

agricultural incentives and international competitiveness government interventions and exogenous shocks in four east african countries abstract real agricultural prices depend on international prices the real exchange rate and sector specific price interventions for the case of four east african countries this article decomposes the evolution of agricultural prices during the 1980s into these three components additionally the article computes the relative agricultural prices that would have prevailed in the absence of sectorspecific and macroeconomic distortions results indicate that a strong anti trade bias within the agricultural sector prevailed importable products tended to be protected while exportables were disprotected on the other hand government interventions and inefficiencies in the marketing process precluded the increases in the real exchange rate that took place during the second half of the 1980s from being fully transmitted into higher agricultural prices finally and depending on the country the removal of sector specific and macroeconomic distortions would have caused real agricultural prices to increase by an amount fluctuating between 10 and 68

the political economy of public research investment and commodity policies in agriculture an empirical study the paper tests a political economy theory of simultaneous government decision making on income redistribution through commodity policies and on public research investment in agriculture we use data from 37 countries on agricultural protection and public agricultural research expenditures pari the empirical results are consistent with the political economy hypotheses the analysis suggest that structural changes in the economy have important effects on the political incentives for governments not only to subsidize or tax farmers but also to invest in public agricultural research furthermore the analysis supports the hypotheses that the impact of such structural changes on government decision making on pari is non linear and conditional on other factors regarding the impact of political institutions the results suggest that more democracy neither leads to more distortionary transfers agricultural protection nor to lower investment in public goods pari

going beyond crosscountry averages growth inequality and poverty reduction in the philippines summary this paper analyzes the processes of growth and poverty reduction simultaneously under a neoclassical growth model framework using provincial data from the philippines we obtain a high rate of provincial income convergence and a tradeoff between equity and growth the lack of political competition inhibits growth land reform is positively associated with growth and poverty reduction while higher agricultural terms of trade facilitate poverty reduction the growth elasticity of poverty reduction is low by international standards but is sensitive to sectoral income composition and initial conditions in poverty incidence mortality rate and irrigation coverage

the elusive quest for supply response to cash crop market reforms in sub saharan africa the case of cotton little cross cutting conclusions emerge from comparative studies on the impact of structural adjustment on sub saharan african agricultural performance this paper aims to illuminate this long standing debate by adopting a novel quantitative sectoral and long term approach controlling for country specific determinants it incorporates detailed information on the pace of reforms and the nature of post reform market structure pre reform policies and weather conditions at the cultivation zone level the cotton sector is the focus of this paper because of its particularly interesting institutional history the authors find that the changes in market structure brought about by reforms have had very different impacts in francophone west and central africa and in the rest of sub saharan africa in the former region production has been higher but productivity lower on average in regulated markets than in monopolistic markets conversely in the liberalized markets of the rest of sub saharan africa productivity has been higher in than in monopolistic markets but highly competitive markets seem to have produced less than monopolistic sectors

welfare implications on chilean agriculture as a result of collective action abstract chilean governments have simultaneously used a combination of price policies and expenditures on agricultural research in their efforts to enhance the performance of the agricultural sector the welfare implications of agricultural price policies on the funding of agricultural research are explicitly considered in a set of structural equations for a unique path of chilean political history a public choice model includes four blocks of simultaneous equations estimated as an interdependent system the level of price policies and public research investments result from the collective action exerted on the government by pressure groups of producers consumers and taxpayers involved in the production consumption and funding of agriculture

the uruguay round agreements impact on developing countries abstract implementation of the results of uruguay round will bring about significant increases in trade investment income and welfare for developing countries this derives from increased market access to developed countries markets and from enhanced efficiency originating from their own liberalization commitments although the distribution of benefits will be uneven developing countries will also benefit from improved rules for trade and investment coupled with enhanced institutional enforcement of these rules and greater exposure to global competition within a more predictable secure and credible international trading environment to maximize the benefits however developing countries will need to continue with recent unilateral reforms to improve their supply response

the economics of poverty in poor countries this paper which examines recently studied links between 1 poverty high fertility and undernourishment and 2 environmental degradation and civic disconnection in developing countries opens by reviewing the limitations of orthodox discussions of economic institutions and property rights and the orthodox dichotomy that has located the cause of poverty in the suppression of markets the introduction also notes that much of the analysis in this paper is based on data from sub saharan africa and india the next section of the paper summarizes evidence on the magnitude and extent of world poverty section 3 exposes the connection between undernourishment and a persons capacity to work as one of the pathways to the poverty trap sections 4 and 5 consider the dependence of impoverished rural populations on common property resources and how the conventional process of economic growth can break down this system and make certain sections of the population especially vulnerable to economic shocks the next two sections explore the possibility that links between poverty high fertility and environmental degradation may constitute another pathway to the poverty trap the eighth section reviews the methodology of using net national product which includes resource depletion and environmental deterioration as an evaluation criterion and argues that mainstream development economists may have neglected environmental and population problems because they have been relying on the wrong economic indices the final section concludes that a number of policies must be used to improve options for people

assessment and simulation of the responsive demand potential in end user facilities application to a university customer many problems have appeared with the practical implementation of restructured electrical business in the u s and european union such as lack of generation network constraints etc a good example of these problems is the scarce participation of the demand in the electricity markets energy reserve and other ancillary services problems that could be solved through new demand responsive programs aimed to replace the traditional demand side management programs into voluntary demand participation programs a methodology for the generation of demand side bids and offers in large customer facilities and a real application to a university customer is presented in this paper the methodology is based on the knowledge of the physical processes involved in the electricity consumption and on the flexibility of the required supply the result of the methodology proposed is a set of demand packages that can be used to participate in different electricity markets whose possibilities in the market arena will be explored in a consequent paper

exchange rates and fiscal policy in a popular model of international trade this paper develops a reinterpretation of the devaluation analysis in a popular model of international trade developed by charles bickerdike joan robinson and lloyd metzler it has come to be known as the elasticity approach 1 that model developed in terms of independent markets for imports and exports has been criticized for its apparent lack of general equilibrium properties the assumptions underlying the model have remained by and large implicit and vary across users and the integration of this analysis with the absorption approach and macroeconomics has never been demonstrated all this is very much recognized and indeed application of the model is consistently accompanied by appropriate partial equilibrium impact effect or upper bound caveats these shortcomings notwithstanding the model continues to enjoy substantial popularity in policy discussions and interpretations of current events in empirical work and in recent textbooks in the field of international economics the brm model is likely to remain the preferred tool in the analysis of trade balance issues along with the foreign trade multiplier model it is therefore interesting and useful to enquire into its formal general equilibrium implications this paper is concerned with one such interpretation involving a nontraded goods sector and a well defined government policy that makes the analysis consistent with the absorption approach while it may well be possible to generate alternative interpretations the present analysis would seem to have the advantage of simplicity while at the same time pointing out the essential properties that would have to be satisfied by alternative treatments in section i a brief review of the brm approach is offered in section ii that approach is interpreted in terms of a simple model with nontraded goods and constant terms of trade the implicit assumptions of the brm model are brought to the f oreground by an explicit consideration of the market for home goods the equilibrium conditions and the role of the relative price of nontraded goods 3 following that analysis section iii considers the subsidiary issues that are raised by variable terms of trade the notion of total elasticities is given an interpretation in section iv where we return to the composite traded good model to explore alternative assumptions about absorption policies

pricing energy and reserves using stochastic optimization in an alternative electricity market this paper presents a stochastic linear programming model that can be used for pricing in electrical energy and reserve markets it addresses capacity energy and reserve dispatch problems that may arise from n 1 contingency scenarios possible market solutions focusing on generator compensation using real time day ahead and hybrid schemes are enumerated along with opportunities for consumer pricing and transmission costing this model is illustrated on a 6 bus test system as well as a larger 66 bus system representing the ontario network a key difference among schemes is the degree of risk to the generators measured by variance in profit

the origins of agricultural policy in ivory coast 1960 86 there is a more limited degree of urban bias in cote d ivoire than in most other african countries different explanations for relatively high producer price shares reliable extension services etc are required for the periods 1960 70 and 1970 86 the arguments offered focus on the composition of the income portfolios of senior political elites and on the rise of special kinds of urban informal associations that have acted as lobbying organisations on behalf of rural household members the article seeks to dispel the notion that differences in opportunities for political participation alone can account for the variations in the outcomes observed in the african cases

promoting resource degradation in latin america tropical deforestation soil erosion and coastal ecosystem disturbance in ecuador throughout the developing world depletion of natural resources hampers the ability of many countries to meet expanding agricultural demands in africa asia and latin america the benefits of water resource management is being jeopardized by pollution the total impact of the depletion of natural resources in developing countries can be felt all over the world damage to natural ecosystems threatens biological diversity and the conversion of forests into agricultural land contributes to the greenhouse effect there are solutions such as pricing timber more realistically to end the waste of forest resources in several southeast asian countries and eliminating tax breaks that stimulate excessive land clearing in brazil to reduce deforestation the international agricultural research centers have failed to develop and implement sustainable farming practices for small holders in environmentally fragile areas it is difficult to identify and implement effective conservation strategies for developing countries because the use and management of natural resources remains at an incipient stage the complex of national policies contributing to renewable resource degradation in latin america is discussed in great detail primary attention is paid to ecuador with sections devoted to the causes of resource degradation governmental intervention in markets failure to invest in the national scientific base the causes extent and consequences of tropical deforestation soil erosion disturbance of coastal ecosystems and policies reform

the uruguay round and welfare in some distorted agricultural economies abstract the uruguay round s induced changes in world agricultural prices will affect the welfare of developing countries the standard terms of trade effect calculation can mislead since the distortion effect operates alongside the terms of trade effect this study of the uruguay round s impact on nine agricultural economies reveals distortion effects which are many times larger than terms of trade effects in three of nine cases the distortion effect reverses the impact of the terms of trade effect in two other cases the distortion effect raises trivial terms of trade effect up to around 1 of national income

load following reserves procurement considering flexible demand side resources under high wind power penetration the variable and uncertain nature of the leading renewable energy resources such as wind power generation imposes the development of a sophisticated balance mechanism between supply and demand to maintain the consistency of a power system in this study a two stage stochastic programming model is proposed to procure the required load following reserves from both generation and demand side resources under high wind power penetration besides a novel load model is introduced to procure flexible reserves from industrial clients load following reserves from load serving entities lse are also taken into account as well as network constraints load shedding and wind spillage the proposed methodology is applied to an illustrative test system as well as to a 24 node system

evaluation of external market effects and government intervention in malaysia s agricultural sector a computable general equilibrium framework the purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of changes in the external trade environment and domestic economic policies on the agricultural development of malaysia the scope of this research also includes providing further insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the computable general equilibrium cge methodology for agricultural policy analysis the first analysis focuses on the export agriculture sector which encompasses malaysia s two primary agricultural commodities rubber and palm oil heavily dependent on exports of rubber in the 1950s and 1960s malaysia has since built a more diversified economy with strong emphasis on manufacturing export agriculture however is still an important component of the national economy the second objective examines the influence of domestic policy on agricultural development the simulation results demonstrate the growing resiliency of the malaysian economy to external shocks also they point to the domestic economy s ability to buffer internal policy induced distortions

evaluation of the incentive structure a survey and application to cameroon abstract this article uses a simple general equilibrium framework to evaluate the incentive structure of a country pursuing a mixed import substitution export promotion strategy it illustrates how features of general equilibrium analysis can be incorporated into the traditional balassa corden effective protection framework which is supplemented by the evaluation of the incidence of protection on firms importing and exporting households consumers and taxpayers and the government its application to a less developed country ldc cameroon shows that the burden of tariff protection is shifted 25 in the short run and 64 in the long run on to the unprotected sectors especially exports as a result average nominal protection 58 8 is much higher than protection actually provided to the protected sectors the welfare effect of protection is ambiguous households viewed only as final consumers lose when they are viewed as taxpayers protection may become beneficial in the long run taking substitution possibilities into account when measuring protection has an impact on the ranking of firms according to their nominal and effective protection

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

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

determinants of agriculture s relative decline thailand during economic development agriculture declines as a proportion of aggregate national output a number of theoretical explanations for this phenomenon have been advanced in the economic literature but their relative historical significance has not been clear this paper develops an econometric methodology to analyze this issue and applies it to time series data for thailand the study investigates the importance of relative commodity prices factor endowments and technical progress as explanations for changing sectoral gdp shares of agriculture manufacturing and services it is concluded that the movement in thailand s aggregate factor endowment relative to labor was the most important determinant of agriculture s relative decline

the evolving role of agriculture in poverty reduction an empirical perspective abstract the role of agriculture in development remains much debated this paper takes an empirical perspective and focuses on poverty as opposed to growth alone the contribution of a sector to poverty reduction is shown to depend on its own growth performance its indirect impact on growth in other sectors the extent to which poor people participate in the sector and the size of the sector in the overall economy bringing together these different effects using cross country econometric evidence indicates that agriculture is significantly more effective in reducing poverty among the poorest of the poor as reflected in the 1 day squared poverty gap it is also up to 3 2 times better at reducing 1 day headcount poverty in low income and resource rich countries including those in sub saharan africa at least when societies are not fundamentally unequal however when it comes to the better off poor reflected in the 2 day measure non agriculture has the edge these results are driven by the much larger participation of poorer households in growth from agriculture and the lower poverty reducing effect of non agriculture in the presence of extractive industries

regional integration and agricultural trade in central america abstract the renewed movement toward regional integration in central america has adopted for the first time a multisectoral approach in which agriculture has been included the liberalization of regional trade in basic agricultural products and the establishment of a common protection scheme with respect to agricultural imports are the main components of the program of agricultural integration this article assesses the impact of freeing agricultural trade within the region with maize rice and sorghum being the case studies selected a partial equilibrium model of pure trade creation is adapted to the data available and applied empirically to each central american country

international capital markets and interest groups capital market integration has increased the scale and mobility of capital movements within and among nations to unprecedented levels integration is fairly recent frankel concludes from his review of the literature that barriers in the major world financial markets were sufficiently low that by 1989 financial markets could be viewed as being fully integrated the scale and mobility of capital flows among nations has numerous implications to currency values interest rates wealth and through current capital account linkages to relative product and factor prices capital flows that have real economic effects also affect the functioning of policy instruments and how effective they are in remunerating an interest group at the expense if any of others this paper provides insights into the process and linkages by which the integration of capital markets has altered economic policy through interest group pressures on government if economic policy is viewed as the outcome of interest groups seeking through the power of the state that which cannot be provided by the market alone then capital market adjustments that affect the return to policy instruments can also affect the returns to lobbying resources and hence the balance of political influence among the various groups 2 this type of explanation for economic policy has been forwarded under the rubric of models of rent seeking krueger 1974 3 the paper is organized as follows 4 selected historical evidence linking capital markets to pressures for legislation in the united states and other countries is briefly reviewed in some cases capital market adjustments have eased pressures for protection while in other cases adjustments either forced policy change because of a liquidity constraint or made unprofitable the lobbying for sustaining policy in face of these adjustments the discussion in the next section provides deeper insight into capital market lobbying linkages discussion focuses on the results from a simple model of rent seeking where government intervenes in markets and provides sector specific public goods

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

demand side reserve offers in joint energy reserve electricity markets we propose a market model that includes demand side reserve offers and where energy and reserve are jointly dispatched generators and consumers can submit offers and bids on five distinct products energy upspinning reserve downspinning reserve and two kinds of standby reserve the resources are scheduled and dispatched in a joint auction through a mixed integer optimization program the extra scheduling flexibility introduced by demand side reserve offers can lead to significant gains in economic efficiency thus the results suggest that not only do the consumers increase their profits but in addition the market power of the generators is reduced

the dynamics of real asset prices the real exchange rate trade reforms and foreign capital inflows abstract this paper explores the dynamics of real asset prices in chile in the last 15 years in a framework where a central role is played by the real exchange rate tariffs and foreign capital inflows working with time series models the real prices of land capital stocks and housing the empirical results show that at a time when structural reforms took place 1976 1982 including a trade liberalization tariffs contributed significantly to explain the real price of land while macroeconomic conditions were dominated by foreign capital inflows after 1982 the real exchange rate plays a key role in many respects

economic growth convergence and agricultural economics after nearly two centuries of lagging behind the industrial countries growth in many developing countries has surged since the early 1990s this outperformance has major implications for almost all areas of agricultural economics and if continued will likely do so into the future this article aims to identify the key ways in which the changes in rich and poor country growth rates matter for agricultural economists as a basis for formulating better research agendas a key impact arises through sharp increases in demand for agricultural resources as demand for livestock products increases this changing structure of food demand has important implications for nutrition studies and policies with the emergence of a double burden of malnutrition on the supply side growth in developing countries tends to increase domestic food supply which is also boosted by increases in research and development spending growth in developing countries both stimulates and benefits from increases in infrastructure investment evaluation of which requires new analytical tools negative impacts include the contribution of increased demand for livestock products to global greenhouse gas emissions in terms of trade policy growth in developing country is tending to lead to convergence of agricultural policies with the pattern of assistance seen in today s developed countries raising concerns about the future need to deal with collective action problems particularly those that increase the volatility of world prices

tax incidence in madagascar an analysis using household data this article discusses tax incidence in madagascar and asks who pays the taxes that finance government spending its main concern is to identify the progressivity of different taxes levied in madagascar based on the consumption and income patterns found in the 1994 enquete permanente aupres des menages a nationally representative survey the results suggest that most taxes are progressive meaning that wealthy households pay proportionately more of these taxes relative to their expenditures than do poor households two notable exceptions are taxes on kerosene and export duties on vanilla both of which are regressive these results are consistent with those of a study of ghana the only other comparable research on tax incidence in africa that study found taxes on kerosene and cocoa exports to be the most regressive taxes in ghana making firm policy recommendations for tax reform would require an analysis of the economic efficiency and administrative efficacy of different taxes to complement this article s work on their equity implications nevertheless the results suggest that the movement away from trade taxes especially export duties and toward broadly based value added or income taxes would be more equitable and more economically efficient the only legitimate impediment to such reforms in madagascar is administrative that is the government s ability to collect different taxes effectively although administrative efficiency may be a problem for value added or income taxes taxes on petroleum products except kerosene are highly progressive and provide a good tax handle