tracking distortions in agriculture china and its accession to the world trade organization this article examines the impacts of china s accession to the world trade organization wto on prices in its agricultural sector the analysis uses a new methodology to estimate nominal protection rates in china s agricultural sector before its accession to the wto these new measures account for differences in commodity quality within china and between china and world markets the analysis shows that some of china s agricultural commodities are well above world market prices and others are well below the article also assesses market integration and efficiency in china it finds high degrees of integration between coastal and inland markets and between regional and village markets the remarkable improvements in market performance in recent years mean that if increased imports or exports affect china s domestic price near the border producers throughout most of china will feel the price shifts

optimizing the level of renewable electric r d expenditures using real options analysis abstract one of the primary objectives of the united states federal non hydro renewable electric r d program is to promote the development of technologies that have the potential to provide consumers with stable and secure energy supplies in order to quantify the benefits provided by continued federal renewable electric r d this paper uses real option pricing techniques to estimate the value of renewable electric technologies in the face of uncertain fossil fuel prices within the real options analysis framework the current value of expected future supply from renewable electric technologies net of federal r d expenditures is estimated to be 30 6 billion of this value 86 can be attributed to past federal r d efforts and 14 can be attributed to future federal r d efforts assuming continued federal r d funding at 300 million yr in addition real options analysis shows that the value of renewable electric technologies increases as current and future r d funding levels increase this indicates that the current level of federal renewable electric r d funding is sub optimal

endogenous structures of association in oligopolies the formulation of associations of firms in an oligopoly with linear demand is analyzed as a two stage noncooperative game in the first stage firms form associations in order to decrease their costs and in the second stage they compete on the market examples of associations include r d joint ventures and groups of firms adopting common standards in equilibrium the associations formed exhibit two general features they are asymmetric and inefficient

technological change rediscovering the engine of productivity growth in china s rural economy abstract this paper focuses on measuring the relative importance of the role of technology versus that of institutional innovation in china s rural economy a six equation rice sector model explaining provincial level technology adoption yield and factor demand are econometrically estimated using data from china s 13 rice growing provinces for the period 1975 1990 growth decomposition analysis identifies technology adoption as the most important determinant of rice yield growth during 1978 1984 accounting for nearly 40 percent the change institutional reform accounted for 35 percent of the growth in 1985 1990 technology accounts for all of the increase in rice yields the study demonstrates earlier studies may have over estimated the impact of decollectivization

the creation and spread of technology and total factor productivity in china s agriculture the overall goal of this study is to create a framework for assessing the trends of china s national and international investment in agricultural research and to measure its impact on total factor productivity the main methodological contribution is to provide more convincing measures of crop specific technologies from china s national research program and of those imported from the international agricultural research system our results find that from 1980 to 1995 china s total factor productivity for rice wheat and maize grew rapidly and new technology accounts for most of the productivity growth

trends in female labor force participation in sweden labor force participation of married women increased from 49 1 to 83 5 during the past 2 decades by cross section estimates on micro data of the probability of labor force participation in 1967 1973 and 1980 and by using these estimates for predicting changes in labor force participation we have found that increases in own wage has been by far the most important explanatory factor women s real wages have increased relative to husband s after tax earnings both as an effect of the introduction of compulsory separate taxation in 1971 and as an effect of dramatically decreased sex differentials in pay partly associated with increased female education

china s uneven progress against poverty while the incidence of extreme poverty in china fell dramatically over 1980 2001 progress was uneven over time and across provinces rural areas accounted for the bulk of the gains to the poor though migration to urban areas helped the pattern of growth mattered rural economic growth was far more important to national poverty reduction than urban economic growth agriculture played a far more important role than the secondary or tertiary sources of gross domestic product gdp rising inequality within the rural sector greatly slowed poverty reduction provinces starting with relatively high inequality saw slower progress against poverty due both to lower growth and a lower growth elasticity of poverty reduction taxation of farmers and inflation hurt the poor external trade had little short term impact

networks of collaboration in oligopoly abstract in an oligopoly prior to competing in the market firms have an opportunity to form pair wise collaborative links with other firms these pair wise links involve a commitment of resources and lead to lower costs of production of the collaborating firms we study the incentives of firms to form links and the architecture of the resulting collaboration network we find that incentives to form links are intimately related to the nature of market competition our analysis also suggests that collaborations are used by firms to generate competitive advantage and that strategically stable networks are often asymmetric with some firms having many links while others have few links or are isolated specifically we show that networks with the dominant group architecture stars and inter linked stars are stable we also present some results on the architecture of socially efficient networks

the household responsibility system reform in china a peasant s institutional choice since 1978 the chinese government has implemented a series of major reforms including diversification of the rural economy production specialization crop selection in accordance with regional comparative advantage expansion of free markets and a marked rise in state procurement prices these reforms have brought about dramatic changes in china s rural areas however the most important change was the emergence and eventual prevalence of the household responsibility system hrs which restores the individual household and replaces the production team system as the unit of production and accounting in rural areas after the chaos of the cultural revolution china s moderate leaders started to reconsider china s rural policies although the government admitted that solving the labor management problems within production teams was the key to improving productivity and recommended measures to relate rewards to performance more closely the hrs was considered the reverse of the socialist principle of collective farming and was prohibited editorial board of china agriculture yearbook 1980 p 58 the official position at that time maintained that the production team was to remain the basic unit of production and accounting nevertheless toward the end of 1978 first secretly and later with the blessing of local authorities a small number of production teams in anhui province which was frequently victimized by flood and drought began to experiment with contracting land other resources and output quotas to individual households

co2 emissions and poverty alleviation in china an empirical study based on municipal panel data abstract industrial transition and climate change regulation to reduce co2 emissions will affect employment and further influence social poverty in this study we measured co2 emissions and the poverty alleviation index based on socio economic and energy consumption statistic data from 286 municipal cities in china for 2007 2014 analyzed relationships between co2 emissions employment rate and poverty alleviation index using simultaneous equations and interpreted the mechanism by which co2 emissions influence social poverty at the municipal level the results indicate that average co2 emissions from china increased by 32 9 with a rapid initial rise and then steady growth from 2007 to 2014 while the average poverty alleviation index increased by 25 19 during the same period co2 emissions had a significant positive relationship with employment rate in all industries in addition employment rate was negatively correlated with poverty alleviation in primary industry and positively correlated with poverty alleviation in non agricultural industry studying the mechanisms for co2 emission impacts on poverty alleviation can provide important references for adapting to global climate change promoting sustainable development and safeguarding the legitimate development rights of all countries especially developing countries

comparison of indicators of women s labour between turkey and eu member states by employing multidimensional scaling analysis and clustering analysis abstractat present because of social cultural and economic changes women support the economies of their countries by their status as workers in this research we aim at comparing the status of turkey in terms of indicators of women in the labour force with that of eu countries thereby revealing the similarities and differences the variables indicating women in the labour forces of the 28 eu countries and turkey were analysed utilizing multidimensional scaling analysis mdsa and clustering analysis ca according to the mdsa the countries form three different groups in two dimensional space the clusters formed by the ca are congruent with the groups formed according to the mdsa when compared with eu members turkey has very low values particularly in terms of the ratio of working women the ratio of jobless females who are primary or secondary school graduates and the ratio of women who are senior high school graduates

china s food economy to the twenty first century supply demand and trade this paper accounts for the structural changes now taking place in china and suggests that china is not likely to become either an enormous importer or exporter of grain ultimately though china s grain balances will depend on decisions made by chinese policymakers rather than natural resource constraints p v this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

endogenous formation of research coalitions with spillovers abstract we examine the endogenous formation of research coalitions with high spillovers among symmetric firms members of a research coalition set their r and d investments in order to maximize the aggregate profits of members of their coalition the exclusive membership rule supports a more concentrated coalition structure and thus leads to higher industry r and d investments for high spillovers than the open membership rule does however due to free riding problems the grand research coalition which is the socially efficient outcome is rarely an equilibrium outcome under either rule our results suggest that government subsidies to research consortia for basic research with high spillovers can improve social welfare by encouraging wider participation to a research consortium that is by alleviating free rider problems in coalition formation from a more theoretical viewpoint our results on stable coalition structures are applicable to a wide variety of economic coalitions with positive externalities

the impact of china s economic reforms on agricultural productivity growth this paper presents a method for assessing the relative importance of price increases and strengthened individual incentives due to the introduction of the responsibility system for the post 1978 increase in china s agricultural productivity data on post 1978 chinese agricultural performance suggest that a little over three quarters of the measured productivity increase is due to payment system changes and the remainder to price increases we also use our method to calculate incentive indices giving an estimate of the fraction of their marginal product that peasants received under the pre 1978 regime

an analysis of trends in female labor force participation in japan until recently the aggregate female labor force participation rate in japan has shown a secular declining trend throughout the postwar period of economic development participation of paid female employees alone exhibits a steadily rising trend more or less comparable to that in the united states and european countries although the fertility rate dropped drastically shortly after world war ii in the subsequent period increases in female education and a relative improvement of female wages appear to have promoted a substantial increase in paid female employment labor supply equations for paid employees estimated from time series data provide negative income and positive wage elasticities cross sectional analysis gives reasonable results particularly for middle age wives absolute values of estimated wage elasticity notably have almost always been smaller than income elasticity unlike many research findings in the united states

the household responsibility system reform and the adoption of hybrid rice in china abstract this paper studies the diffusion of hybrid rice before and after the recent institutional change from the collective team system to the household based farming system in rural china a simple model which treats the adoption of hybrid rice as a portfolio selection problem is presented the model is tested against time series cross county data collected from hunan province in south china the empirical evidence suggests that 1 adoption behavior in the collective system was not consistent with the predictions of the theoretical model this evidence indicates the existence of administrative intervention in influencing production decisions in the collective system 2 there was a significant change in the structure of the adoption function following the transition from the collective system to the household based system and 3 adoption behavior in the household system is consistent with the predictions of the theoretical model

social capital structural holes and the formation of an industry network the formation of a network is determined by the opposition of two forces the first is the reproduction of network structure as a general social resource for network members the second is the alteration of network structure by entrepreneurs for their own benefit the idea of reproduction is a conventional one in organizational sociology but has taken on increased importance due to the work of bourdieu and coleman in contrast burt stresses the entrepreneurship of individual agents in exploiting structural holes that lie between constrained positions though complementary the theories of social capital and structural holes have fundamentally different implications for network formation this paper investigates these theories by examining empirically the formation of the interorganizational network among biotechnology firms we propose that network structure determines the frequency with which a new biotechnology firm or startup establishes new relationships network structure indicates both where soci

r d networks we develop a model of strategic networks that captures two distinctive features of interfirm collaboration bilateral agreements and nonexclusive relationships our analysis highlights the relationship between market competition firms incentives to invest in r d and the architecture of collaboration networks in the absence of firm rivalry the complete network where each firm collaborates with all others is uniquely stable industry profit maximizing and efficient by contrast under strong market rivalry the complete network is stable but intermediate levels of collaboration and asymmetric networks are more attractive from a collective viewpoint this suggests that competing firms may have excessive incentives to form collaborative links

irrigation agricultural performance and poverty reduction in china the overall goal of our paper is to understand the impact that irrigation in china has had on grain production and incomes in general and income and poverty alleviation in poor areas in particular the paper seeks to meet three objectives first we describe the relationship among irrigation status yields and household crop revenue second we seek to understand the magnitude and nature of the effect that irrigation has on yields and crop revenue finally we seek to understand the impact that irrigation has on incomes in poor areas our analysis shows that irrigation contributes to increases in yields for almost all crops and in income for farmers in all areas the importance of crop income in poor areas and the strong relationship between crop revenue and irrigation provides evidence of the importance of irrigation in past and future poverty alleviation in china we also show that in the majority of the villages that invested in new irrigation returns are positive even after accounting for increases in capital and production costs 2005 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

growth in china s grain production 1978 1997 a disaggregate analysis abstract this paper analyzes china s grain production during 1978 97 using disaggregate approach to explore disparities in growth patterns of respective crops the study reveals that during this period almost all the increased output can be attributed to the growth of rice wheat and corn the contribution of other crops as a whole was almost negligible the disparities in growth patterns were partly the result of crop adjustments induced by changes in food demand and dominated by substitutions of high yield crops for low yield crops in this process the adoption of new technologies played an important role varying opportunity costs of grain production in different areas also affected growth patterns of respective crops the trend in china s grain production in the past two decades suggests that the adherence to grain self sufficiency has become not only increasingly costly but also unnecessary

agricultural productivity and sources of growth in south asia estimates of partial factor productivity growth for rice and wheat in india bangladesh and pakistan show relatively rapid growth in yields per hectare since adoption of modern rice and wheat varieties began in the mid to late 1960s byerlee rosegrant while partial factor productivity growth for rice and wheat in south asia has been extensively analyzed there is relatively little understanding of total factor productivity growth and the sources of productivity growth in the crops sector or of the relative contribution to output growth from productivity growth compared to increased factor use this paper assesses total factor productivity tfp growth in india examines the sources of productivity growth and estimates the rates of return to public investments in research and extension a comparison is made with results for bangladesh dey and evenson and pakistan azam bloom and evenson the paper describes the methodology for estimation of tfp decomposition of tfp and estimation of rates of return to public investments describes the data and presents results and policy implications

unskilled urban migrant women and disguised employment home working women in istanbul turkey abstract formal and informal labor market opportunities for women are examined for turkey data collected from three surveys are used to describe types of home work and hourly wages are imputed for home work to compare with formal sector wages the number of migrant women who take home work in the city of istanbul is estimated

technical and allocative efficiency of irrigation water use in the guanzhong plain china due to increasing water scarcity accelerating industrialization and urbanization efficiency of irrigation water use in northern china needs urgent improvement based on a sample of 347 wheat growers in the guanzhong plain this paper simultaneously estimates a production function and its corresponding first order conditions for cost minimization to analyze efficiency of irrigation water use the main findings are that average technical allocative and overall economic efficiency are 0 35 0 86 and 0 80 respectively in a second stage analysis we find that farmers perception of water scarcity water price and irrigation infrastructure increase irrigation water allocative efficiency while land fragmentation decreases it we also show that farmers income loss due to higher water prices can be offset by increasing irrigation water use efficiency

rural reforms and agricultural growth in china this paper employs province level panel data to assess the contributions of decollectivization price adjustments and other reforms to china s agricultural growth in the reform period decollectivization is found to improve total factor productivity and to account for about half of the output growth during 1978 84 the adjustment in state procurement prices also contributed positively to output growth its impact came mainly from the responses in input use the effect of other market related reforms on productivity and output growth was very small reasons for slowdown in agricultural growth after 1984 are also analyzed copyright 1992 by american economic association

non cooperative networks in oligopolies in an oligopoly prior to competing in the market firms have an opportunity to pick up externalities from other firms by setting links the links formation defines an industrial network we study the incentives for firms to form links and the effect of this links formation on the architecture of the resulting networks our analysis shows that equilibrium networks differ dramatically depending on the nature of market competition cournot or bertrand more precisely in the case of cournot oligopoly we should expect to see networks in which each firm obtains access to externalities of either all firms or no firm in the case of bertrand oligopoly we should expect to see networks in which one firm derives benefits from externalities of all other firms while the latter get no externality we also present some results on the architecture of socially efficient networks

gender agricultural production and the theory of the household virtually all models of the household assume that the allocation of resources is pareto efficient within many african households agricultural production occurs on many plots controlled by different members of the household pareto efficiency implies that factors should be allocated efficiently across these plots i find in contrast that plots controlled by women are farmed much less intensively than similar plots within the household controlled by men the estimates imply that about 6 percent of output is lost because of inefficient factor allocation within the household the paper suggests a new approach to modeling intrahousehold allocation consistent with the empirical results

feminization of the labor force the effects of long term development and structural adjustment abstract using crosscountry data pooled for 1985 and 1990 we analyze the relationship between women s share of the labor force and the processes of long term economic development and macroeconomic changes associated with structural adjustment we find that the relationship between long term development and women s share of the labor force is u shaped controlling for the feminization u we also find that structural adjustment policies have led to an increase in feminization of the labor force via worsening income distribution and increased openness

dynamic r d investment policies this paper examines dynamic r d investment policies and the valuation of r d programs in a contingent claims framework we incorporate the following characteristics of r d programs into our model learning by doing collateral learning between different projects in the program interaction between project cash flows periodic reevaluations of the program different intensities of investment capital rationing constraints and competition we show that a firm may invest in multiple projects even if only one can be implemented after development is complete furthermore the firm may significantly alter its funding policy over time for example it may simultaneously develop multiple projects for a period of time then focus on a lead project and potentially resume funding of a backup project if the lead project fails to deliver on its early promise we show how a firm can forecast expected r d spending through time for an optimally executed r d program while project volatility plays an important role in determining r d program value we find that for high volatility projects the optimal investment policy is not very sensitive to changes in or misestimation of volatility in considering whether to accelerate development of a project a firm should balance the adverse effects of increased costs and the loss of investment flexibility against the positive effects of rapid uncertainty resolution and accelerated cash flows in the presence of a budget constraint that prevents the firm from simultaneously accelerating projects and developing projects in parallel we find that if one project significantly dominates another early in the development stage the option to accelerate the lead project is likely to be more valuable than the option to exchange projects thus the backup project would be shelved in order to commit extra resources to development of the lead project finally competition from other firms leads to more parallel investment in the early development stages of projects less parallel investment in the latter stages of development and lower overall investment

the effects of the east asian crisis on the employment of women and men the philippine case abstract this paper analyzes the differential employment impacts on women and men brought about by the east asian crisis and the preceeding periods of boom bust cycles and increased openness it is found that the growth period in the second half of the 1980s favored male employment more than female employment the economic decline due to the east asian crisis reversed this process and increased male unemployment more than female unemployment especially in urban areas despite a more rapid displacement of women workers from the manufacturing sector one contributing factor to this is the resilience of the community social and personal services and wholesale and trade sector during the crisis evidence such as increased female labor force participation and longer working hours for women relative to men during the crisis points to increased female employment and work hours in the labor market as a major coping mechanism during the crisis the paper therefore argues that the boom bust cycles in the macroeconomy are not gender neutral and contributes to increasing earnings and labor time disparities between women and men to the detriment of the women

uncertainty networks and real options abstract two pervasive features of industries experiencing rapid technological progress are uncertainty with regard to the technological feasibility and marketabilility of an innovation and networks the dense web of research alliances and joint ventures linking firms to each other this paper connects the two disparate phenomena using the notion of real options it visualizes firms as nodes and the links connecting them as call options that give each pair of interlinked firms the right but not the obligation to sink additional resources into a project at some future date conditional on favorable technical market information the formation of networks is endogenous as firms establish links with others by appraising their value using option pricing methods our model explains the following why networks are particularly ubiquitous in industries that are subject to high uncertainty why networks often display an interconnected hubs and spokes architecture why small or peripheral spoke firms often sink resources into relatively higher risk higher return investment projects and those too with only large or hub firms and why so many research alliances are continuously formed and dissolved our paper also outlines the conditions under which ex ante symmetric firms end up ex post forming complex asymmetric networks

effects of technological change and institutional reform on production growth in chinese agriculture recent rapid agricultural production growth in chinese agriculture could be attributed to an increase in inputs technological change and institutional reform an accounting approach was used to separate the relative contribution of these three factors institutional change like the introduction of the household production responsibility system has contributed to past growth in production however technological change is crucial to furthering production growth because of the limited potential for significant increase in the use of conventional inputs in particular land continued institutional change must accompany corresponding technological changes

china s agriculture drivers of change and implications for china and the rest of world the overall goal of this article is to identify major changes in china s agriculture food economy and their implications for both china itself and more importantly to the rest of world china has become one of the fastest growing economies in the world since late 1970s gdp grew at about 10 annually in the past 30 years china s experience shows the importance of both domestic and external policies in achieving sustainable growth the results from this study provide significant policy implications to many countries that are currently china s major trade partners or those seeking greater economic and trade relations with china the main conclusions on the implications of china s rapid economic growth are that china s growth will provide more opportunities than challenges to the rest of the world on average overall the rest of the world will gain from china s economic expansion though this general conclusion may not hold for some countries

public investment and china s long term food security under wto abstract as the world s most populous nation china has taken various measures to increase grain production output in the past several decades however many of the policy interventions to promote grain production are not in conformity with wto rules and also lead to misallocation of resources and loss of production efficiency while adequately steady growth of grain output may still be a policy goal for the world s most populous nation with continuous population growth and economic development it is crucial that the country moves away from many of its past measures and explores alternative policy tools to strengthen domestic grain production by using agricultural research and irrigation as a proxy this paper examines the effects of public investment in irrigation and agricultural research on the output increase of grain production in china in a crop specific manner the research finds that increasing public investment in agricultural research will bring about higher output in a cost effective manner increasing public investment in agricultural r d etc should be considered with high priority in the future to be utilized as a policy tool to enhance long term food security

agricultural water management and poverty in ethiopia the main focus of this article is to explore whether access to selected agricultural water management awm technologies has led to significant reduction in poverty and if they did so to identify which technologies had higher impacts in measuring impact we estimated the average treatment effect for the treated on crop income and measured the differences in consumption expenditures per adult equivalent of those with access and without access using matched data the estimated average treatment effect was significant and amounted to usd 82 per season moreover there was 24 less poverty incidence among users of awm technologies compared to nonusers all technologies were found to have significant poverty reducing impacts with micro dams deep wells river diversions and ponds leading to 37 26 11 and 9 reduction in poverty incidence compared to rainfed system finally our study identified the most important correlates of poverty on the basis this we made the policy recommendations to build assets awm technologies livestock etc to enhance human resource development and improve the functioning of labor markets for enhanced impact of awm technologies on poverty

a strategic model of social and economic networks we study the stability and efficiency of social and economic networks when self interested individuals can form or sever links first for two stylized models we characterize the stable and efficient networks there does not always exist a stable network that is efficient next we show that this tension persists generally to assure that there exists a stable network that is efficient one is forced to allocate resources to nodes that are not responsible for any of the production we characterize one such allocation rule the equal split rule and another rule that arises naturally from bargaining of the players

reforms investment and poverty in rural china shenggen faninternational food policy research institute and institute of agriculturaleconomics of the chinese academy of agricultural scienceslinxiu zhangcenter for chinese agricultural policy of the chinese academy of sciencesxiaobo zhanginternational food policy research institutei introductionchina is one of the few countries in the developing world that has madeprogress in reducing its total number of poor over the past 25 years

preemption and rent equalization in the adoption of new technology we study the adoption of a new technology to illustrate the effects of preemption in games of timing we show that the threat of preemption equalizes rents in a duopoly but that this result does not extend to the general oligopoly game if the gain to preemption is sufficiently small then the optimal symmetric outcome which involves late adoption is an equilibrium this contrasts with reinganum s result that in precommitment equilibria there must be diffusion we develop a new and richer formalism for modeling games of timing which permits a continuoustime representation of the limit of discrete time mixed strategy equilibria

how access to irrigation influences poverty and livelihoods a case study from sri lanka abstractthis study combines a livelihoods approach with a regression approach to quantify the effectiveness of irrigation infrastructure investment on improving people s livelihood strategies using a unique dataset based on households in southern sri lanka and a natural experimental setting we estimate from a two stage income regression model to show that irrigation access has a positive effect on income through livelihood choices we also show through qualitative approaches that factors not linked to irrigation infrastructure may contribute to changes in livelihood portfolios in addition we highlight factors that result in certain households being unable to move out of poverty despite access to the improved irrigation infrastructure

gradualism versus big bang speed and sustainability of reforms a beneficial reform may be blocked by a majority if it is implemented by a big bang but the same reform may succeed with an optimally designed gradualist approach a gradualist approach can sometimes split opposition force and is in this sense more politically sustainable on the other hand if both approaches are politically preferred to no reform a big bang is often preferred to gradualism in terms of both political support as well as economic efficiency

control in a dynamic village economy the reforms and unbalanced development in china s rural economy abstract a dynamic control framework is used to model the chinese village economy in order to explain the rural sector s unbalanced growth in the post reform period village leaders are assumed to maximize a multi attribute utility function by manipulating local policy instruments subject to the structural relationships in the economy the model s parameters are estimated econometrically using a data set from forty villages in eastern china the empirical results identify important linkages between agriculture and rural industry in village economies unbalanced growth can partially be explained by the way economic incentives induce individuals in rural areas to move resources toward the rural industrial sector and away from agriculture

bridging the gap between partial and total factor productivity measures using directional distance functions technical dependencies as well as data constraints limit our ability to allocate inputs across sectors and hence our ability to measure sectoral productivity we adapt a directional measure of efficiency to the measurement of sector specific productivity that does not require allocating all inputs across sectors applied to the agricultural sector of a group of countries the results show important differences in livestock and crops productivity growth commonly used partial factor productivity measures for livestock and crops tend to overestimate productivity growth in most developing countries while underestimating it in european countries

empowerment and efficiency tenancy reform in west bengal the paper analyzes the effect of agricultural tenancy laws offering security of tenure to tenants and regulating the share of output that is paid as rent on farm productivity theoretically the net impact of tenancy reform is shown to be a combination of two effects a bargaining power effect and a security of tenure effect analysis of evidence on how contracts and productivity changed after a tenancy reform program was implemented in the indian state of west bengal in the late 1970s suggests that tenancy reform had a positive effect on agricultural productivity there

education and allocative efficiency household income growth during rural reforms in china this paper studies the contribution of schooling to rural income in china during factor market liberalization between 1986 and 1995 the relaxation of controls permitted farm households to reallocate productive inputs from agriculture to nonagricultural activities it is hypothesized that education facilitates this adjustment panel data from sichuan province suggest that schooling enhanced the ability of farmers to devote labor and capital to nonfarm production given the evidence that less than optimum levels of these inputs were allocated to nonagricultural uses during the transition the expansion of nonfarm activities contributed significantly to household income growth

collective agricultural production a solution for transition economies abstract the paper examines theoretical reasons and provides examples for productivity differences between agricultural service cooperatives and collectives service cooperatives can utilize economies of scale enhance competitiveness and provide technical information advantages that often outweighed problems of free riding low investment and excessive political intervention agricultural collectives while not adding substantial advantages are in addition associated with problems of supervision and effort supply tendencies to substitute casual workers or mechanization for regular members and low investment incentives while collective forms of organization in transition economies respond to high risk and market imperfections they do so inefficiently policies that create conditions for service cooperatives to compete may lead to large productivity gains

consequences of the rise in female labor force participation rates questions and probes this paper discusses three independent inquiries into consequences of the rise in women s labor force participation rate lfpr in the united states since 1946 1 the growth in women s lfpr is decomposed by decade age marital status presence of age specific children and years of schooling 2 evidence on the impact of the growth on the inequality in income among husband wife families is summarized and the impact on income inequality in other family structures is discussed the effect on the level of family real income is considered and money illusion in measuring the change in income is noted 3 bivariate autoregressive time series are estimated with annual data from 1950 to 1980 indicating that lagged values of women s lfpr are systematically correlated with measures of flow fertility marriage schooling and men s income while only fertility has a strong persistent lagged correlation with lfpr