substitution elasticities between ghg polluting and nonpolluting inputs in agricultural production a meta regression abstract this paper reports meta regressions of substitution elasticities between greenhouse gas ghg polluting and nonpolluting inputs in agricultural production which is the main feedstock source for biofuel in the u s we treat energy fertilizer and manure collectively as the polluting input and labor land and capital as nonpolluting inputs we estimate meta regressions for samples of morishima substitution elasticities for labor land and capital vs the polluting input much of the heterogeneity of morishima elasticities can be explained by type of primal or dual function functional form type and observational level of data input categories number of outputs type of output time period and country categories each estimated long run elasticity for the reference case which is most relevant for assessing ghg emissions through life cycle analysis is greater than 1 0 and significantly different from zero most predicted long run elasticities remain significantly different from zero at the data means these findings imply that life cycle analysis based on fixed proportion production functions could provide grossly inaccurate measures of ghg of biofuel

profit function approximations and duality applications to agriculture monte carlo simulations of profit functions indicate that flexible functional forms may be ranked nearly the same with respect to allen uzawa partial substitution elasticities or price and fixed factor elasticities flexible functional form approximations of output price elasticities are generally worse than approximations of input price or fixed factor elasticities minflex laurent functional forms did not appear to approximate underlying elasticities any better than did their translog and generalized leontief counterparts

substitution possibility between unpriced pulp and wastepaper in the u s paper and paperboard industry a greater use of recycled wastepaper would preserve virgin forests as well as reducing the amount of wastepaper going to landfills these environmental goals depend critically on the elasticity of substitution between pulp and wastepaper in producing paper and paperboard since most of the pulp consumed by u s paper mills and paperboard mills is transferred internally from vertically integrated pulp mills the price data on pulp is not available this paper constructs an econometric model which enables us to estimate the substitution possibility between unpriced pulp and wastepaper in the u s paper and paperboard industry empirical results show that the elasticity of substitution between unpriced pulp and wastepaper is positive but not statistically significant

corner solutions in duality models a cross section analysis of dairy production decisions comrner solutions are often observed in cross section samples of farm level production decisions an estimation strategy is presented and applied to a uniquely comprehensive data set for pennsylvania dairy farms a complete set of choice functions is derived consistent with multiple outputs and multiple inputs expected profit maximation and the existence of comrner solutions with respect to the labor hiring decision results illustrate that substantial estimation bias may occur if the existence of comrner solutions is not recognized estimated elasticities of choices with respect to input and net output prices indicate substantial responsiveness of choice to price results indicate that changes in education and acreage operated result in substantial changes in output and input mixes and that the differences in results for farms with and without hired labor are substantial

the effect of off farm work on the intensity of agricultural production changes in agricultural production methods have been associated with environmental pressure and a loss of natural habitats this paper explores the extent to which farmer participation in off farm work an increasing phenomenon in most developed countries changes the intensity of agricultural input use focusing in particular on fertilizer and crop protection product use a sample selection model that accounts for both unobserved heterogeneity between farms and the potential simultaneity between farm operations and hours worked off farm is estimated for 2 419 farms in england and wales the econometric evidence indicates that the input intensity of products which have well established links to environmental damage can increase as well as decrease the results suggest that that fertilizer intensity may decline as off farm labor increases while the use of crop protection per hectare increases as off farm work increases

a revenue function approach to the measurement of output substitution possibilities in agriculture the purpose of this article is to calculate hicksian and marshallian estimates of output substitution possibilities in an agricultural industry the hicksian elasticities or net substitution possibilities are measured within a revenue maximizing framework holding input levels constant the marshallian elasticities that encompass both net substitution and expansion effects are measured within a profit maximizing framework allowing both output and input levels to vary the results are empirically reasonable and consistent with the duality theory for revenue and profit maximizing behavior a notable empirical result is that in the very short run or market period with input levels held constant there exists considerable scope for changing the output composition between crops and cattle on cattle farms

farm level fertilizer demand in java a meta production function approach this paper models seed variety choice and the demand for variable inputs as jointly determined by profit maximizing cultivators the approach parallels that of hayami and ruttan who postulated that changes in the output fertilizer price ratio induce movements along a meta fertilizer response function the envelope of individual variety specific response surfaces ignoring the possibility of seed variety switching leads to underestimates of fertilizer demand elasticities in addition estimation with samples reflecting a single seed variety may involve serious selection bias a two stage procedure which adjusts for selectivity bias is used to estimate the model with farm level data from java

the capital energy controversy further results abstract the significance of capital energy k e relationship in manufacturing is important however the available econometric evidence is contradictory in the sense that support can be found for both k e substitutability and k e complementarity moreover the empirical studies are based mainly on production and cost functions few researchers have examined the k e relationship by assuming a profit function approach the objective of this paper is to investigate the k e controversy by estimating both a cost and a profit function the results should provide a better understanding of the relationship between model used and estimated k e elasticities in addition the two models are compared on the basis of their predictive performance

bureaucratic capacity delegation and political reform thecentraltensionmotivatingcontemporarytheories of delegation from politicians to bureaucrats lies in the potential conflict between the value of bureaucratic expertise on one hand and the desire for political control on the other this tension is well known and has been debated at least since weber s classic work on bureaucracy modern bureaucracies are staffed with individuals who by virtue of rational bureaucratic organization are highly skilled policy experts who in principle should be able to help less knowledgeable politicians achieve their goals however the very skills and expertise that bureaucrats enjoy create the possibility that bureaucrats will usurp the rightful role of politicians in policymaking processes because the way this tension is resolved determines the ultimate compatibility of democracy and bureaucracy existing theories of delegation typically focus on understanding how and to what extent politicians can resolve it 1 in many contexts particularly developing democracies bureaucracy does not fit the weberian characteristics that are assumed in the existing delegation literature the bureaucracies may be staffed with individuals who lack the personal capacity to execute orders effectively the organizational structure may lead to breakdowns within bureaucratic hierarchies making it difficult for senior administrators to control their subordinates departments and ministries may lack basic budgets and resources to undertake implementation actions they may suffer from incentives for

profit efficiency among basmati rice producers in pakistan punjab farm specific profit inefficiency among basmati rice producers was estimated from a variable coefficient profit frontier the mean level of inefficiency at farm resources and price levels was 28 with a wide range 5 87 average loss of profit was rs 1 222 per hectare socioeconomic factors related to profit loss were the farm household s education nonagricultural employment and a credit constraint institutional determinants of profit loss were a water constraint and the late application of fertilizer punjab wide benefits of increasing farmer s profit efficiency are large a 25 reduction in profit loss among basmati rice producers may generate over rs 240 million in extra profits each rice season rice is a major export commodity for pakistan generating about 2 5 billion pakistan rupees rs annually or 20 of foreign exchange earnings from commodity trade in the early 1980s two varieties dominate in pakistan s international trade in rice basmati 370 a high quality long grained aromatic variety and the medium long grained irri 6 distinct export markets exist for these rices over 90 of the basmati is exported to oil rich middle eastern nations while the mediumlong varieties are mainly marketed in southeast asia in 1983 the export price of basmati was about rs 7 900 per ton while the price of medium long grained varieties averaged rs 2 700 per ton pakistan has a comparative advantage in the international market for basmati but probably not for medium long grained rices azhar and mamhud historically pakistan had a near monopoly in international trade in basmati but now faces increased competition from thailand and the united states efferson therefore pakistan must strive to increase the efficiency of basmati production to retain its comparative advantage and competitive edge in foreign rice markets basmati 370 is a pure line selection made in

is the troika bad for the environment an analysis of eu countries environmental performance in times of economic downturn and austerity memoranda abstract in this paper we examine the effect of the current economic crisis on the environmental performance of the eu countries by employing hierarchical linear multilevel hlm modeling we find that for the period 2000 2015 a drop in the national gdp a recession effect as well as endorsing a memorandum of understanding mou for receiving a imf eu ecb financial rescue package a troika effect have non significant to positive impacts on a number of national environmental quality and policy indicators over and above other economic political and governance predictors for eurozone and non eurozone countries alike nevertheless this changes drastically if we examine these two factors interaction experiencing a recession while being a recipient of a troika sponsored rescue package has detrimental effects on an eu country s national environment

agricultural product supplies and input demands regional comparisons governmental agencies at federal state and local levels in the united states are heavily involved in intervention in agricultural input and output markets to effect desired social goals the most pervasive intervention activities occur at the federal level they are available throughout the nation to most producers of specified commodities how

quality quantity and spatial variation of price this paper develops and implements a method for estimating price elasticities of demand using cross sectional household survey data geographically clustered households report unit values which when corrected for quality effects and for measurement error indicate the underlying spatial variation in prices and can be matched to variation in demand patterns a simple model of quality choice is proposed while the correction for measurement error exploits the clustered design of such surveys data from a 1979 household survey from the ivory coast are used to estimate price elasticities for beef meat fish cereals and starches copyright 1988 by american economic association

public participation and poverty alleviation the experience of reform communists in india s west bengal abstract public participation is essential to making poverty alleviation programs responsive to the needs of the poor but it requires a political process that adequately represents their interests yet as long as the poor remain poor they are disadvantaged in securing equitable representation this article highlights the problems stemming from this paradox of participation it shows how implementing poverty alleviation programs through elected governing councils has simultaneously made policy more responsive to the poor while permitting the organizational interests of the ruling communist party to distort implementation the article highlights the importance of political competition among parties and nongovernment organizations for maximizing responsiveness to the poor

education experience and allocative efficiency a dual approach a generalization of the dual non frontier profit function approach to evaluating allocative efficiency is developed that allows for training human capital variables to influence the efficiency level directly an application to pennsylvania dairy indicates that education and experience are substitutes and play a significant role in the level of efficiency while these operators are not allocating their variable inputs in an absolutely efficient manner relative efficiency can be achieved for four of six possible input combinations for prescribed levels of education and experience furthermore the estimates of the efficiency measures suggest that these operators are maximizing production rather than short run profits

profit supply and factor demand functions comment in lau and yotopoulos 1972 a new method of estimating production relations was developed building on lau and yotopoulos 1971 this method bringing together estimates of profit and factor demand functions was further developed in yotopoulos and lau to incorporate a test of rationality their method has since been applied by yotopoulos lau and lin sidhu sidhu and baanante 1979 1981 jamison and lau and junankar 1980a b 1982 because the assumption of rationality is so fundamental to economics and because few tests of this hypothesis exist the lau yotopoulos method is very important however these studies rest on advanced economic theory and sophisticated econometrics so it is easy to be intimidated by them sophisticated estimators however are not necessarily free from er

standard errors for elasticities a comparison of bootstrap and asymptotic standard errors this article compares two methods of deriving standard errors for elasticities in a linear expenditure demand system with first order autoregressive errors the first is the ordinary taylor series method and the second is efron s bootstrap in an example problem these two methods yielded similar values for the standard errors with the exception of the income elasticity standard errors for which the asymptotic standard errors were apparently too large by a factor of two

usefulness of pretests for estimating underlying technologies using dual profit functions translog and generalized linear approximating forms are used to estimate dual profit functions from stochastically simulated data generated from a known relatively complex technology under profit maximizing conditions the hypotheses of monotonicity convexity and equality of parameters common to the profit function and demand equations are tested this last hypothesis is always rejected and monotonicity is never rejected convexity is rejected for about a third of the translog models and fewer than 5 percent of generalized linear models neither approximating form strongly dominates the other for accuracy in estimating the underlying elasticities of substitution copyright 1987 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

measuring the benefits of environmental change using a duality approach the case of ozone and illinois cash grain farms abstract the measurement of the economic effects of a changing environment can be complex and costly this study uses a duality approach to quantify the relationship between ambient levels of ozone and economic damage on illinois cash grain farms econometric estimates from producers profit functions indicate a significant negative relationship between ozone and the levels of profit and output these findings are consistent with results from more traditional ecosystem assessment procedures given the data and experimentation costs associated with traditional approaches this study s results point to duality as a potentially powerful tool for assessing the economic effects of various environmental phenomena

ozone pollution and farm profits in england and wales tropospheric ozone is an air pollutant known to adversely affect crop yields across europe experimental work is underway to quantify yield effects at ambient ozone levels for a number of crops in this article we undertake direct farm level evaluation of the impact of ozone by estimating a multi output profit function using a panel dataset of cereal farms in england and wales a system of equations comprising the profit function input and output share equations is estimated using a fixed effects seemingly unrelated regression technique with ozone as a quasi fixed input estimated parameters are used to calculate tropospheric ozone related profit and output supply elasticities the main findings from the profit function show that a 10 increase in average ozone levels would decrease variable profits by 1 3 and wheat output supply by 1 these results are of a significantly lower magnitude but qualitatively consistent with findings from similar studies carried out in north america

how reliable is duality theory in empirical work the neoclassical theory of production establishes a dual relationship between the profit value function of a competitive firm and its underlying production technology this relationship commonly referred to as duality theory has been widely used in empirical work to estimate production parameters such as elasticities and returns to scale we generate a pseudo dataset by monte carlo simulations which starting from known production parameters yield a dataset with the main characteristics of u s agriculture in terms of unobserved firm heterogeneity decisions under uncertainty unexpected production and price shocks endogenous prices output and input aggregation measurement error in variables and omitted variables production parameters are not precisely recovered when performing econometric estimation based on the duality approach and the elasticity estimates are inaccurate deviations of own and cross price elasticities from initial median values given our parameter calibration range between 6 and 690 with an average of 90 also own price elasticities are as imprecisely recovered as cross price elasticities sensitivity analysis shows that results still hold for different sources and levels of noise and sample size used in estimation

macroeconomic uncertainty precautionary saving and the current account abstract the relationship between current account developments and changes in the macroeconomic environment is a key issue in open economy macroeconomics this paper extends the standard intertemporal model of the current account to incorporate the effects of macroeconomic uncertainty on external saving behavior it is shown that the greater the uncertainty in national cash flow defined as output less investment less government consumption the greater will be the incentive for precautionary saving and ceteris paribus the larger the current account surplus empirical support for the model is found using post war quarterly data for the united states japan and the united kingdom as well as a long time series 1919 1990 for the united states

dynamic factor demand equations in u s and canadian agriculture abstract this research provides one of the first empirical estimates of a data based dynamic factor demand model for american and canadian agriculture models such as these deserve more widespread use in the empirical analysis of agriculture these models have the advantage that they do not impose inappropriate dynamics on the data rather they permit the data to select the appropriate dynamics we use a model originally developed by anderson and blundell this model is a general first order dynamic model which contains as testable hypothesis several simpler models this model permits us to estimate the long run agricultural production structure as a subset of the dynamic parameter estimates we will test this long run structure for symmetry homotheticity and neutral technical change the estimated models may be used to test for three alternative dynamic structures in the limit dynamics may not be needed and we can test for the static long run equilibrium model two intermediate cases are the autoregressive and the partial adjustment models which are simpler than the general model but still include dynamics our results suggest that the long run equilibrium model is unsatisfactory in both countries a dynamic model is needed in both countries the two more restricted dynamic models are rejected the general dynamic model is required in canada the long run equilibrium structure is homothetic with neutral technical change in the united states homotheticity is also accepted but neutral technical change is rejected

sustainable fisheries development in the tropics trawlers and licence limitation in malaysia sustainable fisheries development requires sound fisheries management area licence limitation programmes may form the cornerstone for most tropical multispecies fisheries management programmes an empirical analysis of peninsular malaysian fishing trawlers is used to design an area licence limitation programme that conforms to the multiproduct production technology and cost and revenue structures to best accommodate condtions of asymmetric information between the regulator and fishing vessels

measuring oligopsony power with shadow prices u s markets for pulpwood and sawlogs empirical estimation of input market power hindered by problems in measuring an input s value of marginal product vmp by estimating a variable profit function system however one can infer a factor s vmp through its shadow price this technique is used here to specify a structural equation system which is estimated using time series data for the u s sawmilling and paper industries to empirically measure the degree of oligopsony power for sawlog and pulpwood inputs respectively results evaluated at sample means indicate that pulpwood markets are more oligopsonistic than sawlog markets though both perform closer to perfect competition than monopsony time trends for market power differ for each product and perfect competition cannot be rejected for sawlogs in later years copyright 1995 by mit press

role of education and extension in the adoption of technology a study of upland rice and soybean farmers in central west brazil strauss j barbosa m teixeira s thomas d and junior r g 1991 role of education and extension in the adoption of technology a study of upland rice and soybean farmers in central west brazil agric econ 5 341 359 this paper explores reduced form determinants of the adoption of certain technologies by upland rice and soybean farmers in the center west region of brazil we merge community level data on the availability and quality of publicly provided infrastructure principally extension to the farm level data containing information on farmer human capital as well as land quantity and quality by using community level measures of availability and quality of extension we avoid problems of endogeneity of farm level measures of extension use we find positive impacts of farmer education on the diffusion process in accordance with other studies we also isolate effects of the quality in regional extension investment as measured by the average experience of technical extension staff these results indicate that investments in human capital of extension workers does have a payoff in terms of farmer adoption of improved cultivation practices

price aggregation when price taking firms prices vary in many cases heterogeneous prices occur in price taking environments in empirical work an aggregate price index is often created from such prices and used to explain aggregate supply and derived demands we show that consistent aggregation places strong restrictions on functional forms which may be used to describe behaviour unlike the case of aggregation of consumer income but similar to the case of aggregation of wages these functional forms are inconsistent with standard microtheory

a game theoretic model of reform in latin american democracies in this article the a develops a simple game theoretic model of administrative reform in latin american democracies the model which is based on the incentives facing the politicians who must initiate reforms if any are to occurt yields two predictions 1 reforms are more likely to pass the legislative hurdle when patronage is evenly distributed among the strongest parties and 2 initial reforms are more likely to be followed by further extensions of reform where the electoral weight of the top parties remains relatively even and stable attention to the incentives facing legislators and party leaders also results in the expectation that certain political institutions such as open list proportional representation and electoral rules that minimize party control over candidate lists reduce the probability of reform the a tests predictions and expectations on a set of latin american democracies and finds them consistent with historical events

supply demand and technology in a multiproduct industry texas field crops the purpose of this paper is to examine the structure of agricultural production for six texas field crops cotton grain sorghum wheat corn rice and hay which account for nearly 95 of recent field crop value specific objectives are to a test the structure of technology to determine i if output and input utilization choices for individual products are independent of production decisions about other outputs and ii if products and or inputs can be consistently aggregated b estimate a coherent set of interrelated supply functions for the six commodities and input demand functions for fertilizer and hired labor because the empirical focus of this paper is specific to one state the results will be of limited value for interpreting specific production relationships elsewhere however the problem is of common interest in production agriculture and the techniques used demonstrate an important application of dual modeling

regional and temporal impacts of technical change in the u s dairy sector the regional and temporal impacts of technical change in the u s dairy industry are assessed in terms of production and income distribution through a dynamic equilibrium model dynamic duality is used to obtain the production equations the traditional milk producing regions of the northeast and lake states will maintain their base of national output while the pacific region increases its base at the expense of the remaining regions regional dairy income varies temporally advancements in technology are likely to accelerate the treadmill process in agriculture the most dramatic impacts may initially occur in the dairy sector where growth hormones may soon be approved commercially given the anticipated productivity gains and adjustment problems an ex ante assessment of the distributional impacts of new technologies in the dairy sector

south korean and taiwanese development and the new institutional economics the publication of books by both alice amsden and robert wade provide an opportune moment to reflect on the study of east asian development after an initial surge of interest beginning in the 1970s the field has reached a plateau and scholars recently have cast a wide net in searching for ways to extend the field in assessing the state of the art regarding the economic development of the east asian newly industrialized countries nics this review will treat three themes first i will argue that the focus on states versus markets is becoming stale and that much of the scholarly interest lies in the politics behind the economics second i argue that political scientists have underexplored the historical origins of korean and taiwanese capitalism and that such attention promises to strengthen both theories and explanations of development third i argue that the international system has been more important in promoting development in east asia than accounts in the first wave have recognized the purpose of this review is to assess the field reveal

testing efficiency hypotheses in joint production a parametric approach n recent years a great deal of research has been directed to the modelling and measurement of technical and allocative efficiency in production with few exceptions this research has been restricted to single product firms however recent developments in duality theory have facilitated the extension of this research to multi product firms the main purpose of this paper is to develop a model of the multiproduct firm in which the possibilities of both technical and allocative inefficiency are incorporated in an econometrically useful way the first model we develop includes a nonneutral2 type of technical inefficiency and three distinguishable types of allocative inefficiency output mix input mix and scale each type of inefficiency is costly to the firm in the sense that each causes a reduction in profit beneath the maximum value attainable under full efficiency the cost of each type of inefficiency depends on the magnitude of the inefficiency and the structure of the underlying production technology in the second model we develop technical inefficiency remains nonneutral but allocative inefficiency is not generally decomposable into output mix input mix and scale components however both technical and allocative inefficiency remain costly to the firm the cost of each type of inefficiency depending on its magnitude and the structure of the underlying production technology we model the technology of a competitive profit maximizing multi product firm with the dual profit function this enables us to use hotelling s lemma to generate a system of profit maximizing output supply and input demand equations these equations are then modified to allow for the possibility of technical and three types of allocative inefficiency a virtue of using the profit function to represent production technology is that it permits a straightforward comparison of maximum profit under full efficiency with actual profit and with the profit that would result from any combination of the four types of inefficiency this enables us to allocate the cost of inefficiency to each of four components our model of inefficiency is parametric and is embedded in a generalized leontief profit function although any flexible specification of the profit function can be used the model is developed in sections ii iv estimation of the model is considered in section v an empirical example designed to illustrate the workings of the model is discussed in section vi section vii concludes

estimating farm level input demand and wheat supply in the indian punjab using a translog profit function application of the translog profit function to farm level data from punjab india allowed a more disaggregated analysis of the farm production structure compared to the case of cobb douglas formulation the flexibility afforded by translog formulation permitted measurement of the different impacts that exogenous variables have within and across input demand and output supply functions policy relevant elasticity estimates with respect to variable inputs and output prices fixed inputs a few soil related state of nature variables measured by soil analysis and education which are usually considered constraints to farm production were obtained and two examples of policy applications were developed

robust error specification in a production system economists estimating demand and supply systems face the question of using shares or quantities as dependent variables this article finds that inconsistent estimates are obtained if one makes the wrong choice a robust structure is presented to let the data choose the preferred form empirical applications to u s and texas agriculture using the generalized method of moments suggest that shares and quantities are rejected in favor of a more general functional form the texas application provides some evidence for fixed capital but not for labor copyright 2013 oxford university press

macroeconomic volatility and welfare in developing countries macroeconomic volatility and welfare in developing countries an introduction norman v loayza romain ranciere luis serven and jaume ventura macroeconomic volatility both a source and a reflection of underdevelopment is a fundamental concern for developing countries this article provides a brief overview of the recent literature on macroeconomic volatility in developing countries highlighting its causes consequences and possible remedies to reduce domestic policy induced macroeconomic volatility by controlling the level and variability of fiscal expenditures by keeping inflation low and stable and by avoiding price rigidity including that of the exchange rate which eventually leads to drastic adjustments the ability to conduct countercyclical fiscal policies is crucial and it depends largely on the ability of the authorities to reduce public indebtedness to internationally acceptable levels establish a record of saving in good times to provide for bad times and develop credibility tha

is economic volatility detrimental to global sustainability in a dynamic panel data model allowing for error cross section dependence output volatility is found to impede sustainable development through a financial development channel liquidity liability ratio output volatility exerts a significant effect on depletion of natural resources a key component of sustainability low income countries low energy intensity countries and low trade share countries tend to be especially vulnerable to macroeconomic volatility and shocks the findings highlight the interaction between global financial markets and the wider economy as a key factor influencing sustainable development with important implications for macroeconomic and environmental policies in an integrated global green economy

quality measurement errors and profit function estimation abstract a producer demand profit function estimator is developed which uses the structure of clustered samples to estimate the importance of variations in factor quality and errors in measurement of the wage and to correct for biases caused by these factors

macroeconomic volatility and welfare in developing countries an introduction macroeconomic volatility both a source and a reflection of underdevelopment is a fundamental concern for developing countries their high aggregate instability results from a combination of large external shocks volatile macroeconomic policies microeconomic rigidities and weak institutions volatility entails a direct welfare cost for risk averse individuals as well as an indirect one through its adverse effect on income growth and development this article provides a brief overview of the recent literature on macroeconomic volatility in developing countries highlighting its causes consequences and possible remedies it then introduces the contributions of a recent conference on the subject sponsored by the world bank and pompeu fabra university barcelona

another look at pesticide productivity and pest damage using the lichtenberg zilberman fox weersink damage specification we develop a short run supply response framework based on rational producer behavior in the presence of damage agents we show how representation can be used to measure and decompose the economic damage associated with the presence of pests how to measure the shadow prices of damage control agents how to measure the manner in which pesticide application biases variable input use and how pesticide application affects the relative returns to quasi fixed factors of production an econometric version of the model is estimated using a panel data set on greek olive producers both our theoretical and our empirical results suggest that the most traditional measure of pest damage understates actual economic losses and revenue losses due to pests

sources of growth in french agriculture since the slowdown in the growth of world agricultural trade in 1980 the united states and the european community ec have engaged in a series of debates over their respective agricultural policies high producer prices and the general absence of production controls in europe have been of particular concern in the united states as world grain stocks have risen and the ec has emerged with substantial subsidies as a net cereals exporter levels of frustration have increased on both sides of the atlantic as the united states has responded with its own export enhancement payments and other costly policies with current positions difficult to sustain the united states and some members of the european community now seek means to limit their conflict and obtain relief from the high costs of their agricultural programs the reduction of grain stocks resulting from the drought affect

estimating substitution and expansion effects using a profit function framework this study reports a first attempt to derive all the relevant information with respect to the structure of production of an industry using knowledge of only a profit function using estimates of a profit function for canadian agriculture a procedure to separate substitution and expansion effects for both inputs and outputs was implemented information concerning net input and output substitution and complementarity possibilities were obtained the most important empirical results suggest that the hypothesis of nonjoint production of crop and animal outputs in canadian agriculture cannot be rejected and that hired and operator labor are complements rather than substitutes

multiple input multiple output production choices and technology in the u s wheat region duality theory motivates a translog expected profit function consistent with multiple products price uncertainty preseason climate constraints acreage control policies and possibly nonhomothetic technology although multiple outputs are allowed enterprise specific data is not necessary instead time series measures of output revenues and expected prices input expenses and prices and fixed input flows are employed appropriate measures of elasticities of choice returns to size and biases in technological change are derived results indicated decreasing returns to size rather limited though complementary responsiveness of choices to price changes and the nature of biases in technological changes

crises volatility and growth how do volatility and liquidity crises affect growth when credit is constrained a bias toward short term debt can arise in financing long term investments generating maturity mismatches and leading potentially to liquidity crises the frequency of liquidity crises and the volatility of growth are found to have independent negative effects on growth financial development however dampens the growth cost of volatility but only in the case of normal volatility the growth cost of volatility therefore depends critically on the composition of normal and abnormal volatility the latter being more costly for growth

market deregulation trade liberalization and productive efficiency in bangladesh agriculture an empirical analysis the impact of trade liberalization and of market deregulation in general on the performance of agriculture remains contentious and empirical issue in the literature following the random coefficient frontier modelling framework this paper attempts to contribute to this debate by computing the farm specific productive efficiency indices in bangladesh agriculture before and after reform it also examines the impact of some farm specific and policy variables on productive efficiency the empirical results show that there are wide variations in productive efficiency across farms and regions and the average efficiency of all regions increased modestly by 8 percentage points from the pre reform to post reform period the efficiency differentials are largely explained by farm size infrastructure households off farm income and the reduction of government anti agricultural bias in relation to trade and domestic policies the implication of these results suggests the need for further policy reform to augment p

short and long run adjustments in dairy production a profit function analysis a dual profit model is developed to analyse the structure of dairy technology using farm level data for vermont potential short and long run effects of milk price reductions on output supply input demand farm size and profitability are studied the observed levels of the quasi fixed inputs family labour and herd size are found to be significantly lower than their optimal or long run equilibrium values which is consistent with a continuing shift towards fewer and larger dairy farms the analysis suggests that lower milk prices threaten the short run survival of small and medium size farms and reduce the optimal farm size in the long run

production economics worthwhile investment abstract agricultural production economics research is examined within a broad framework of scientific development and utilization recent findings in selected areas of the subdiscipline are examined and opportunities for further fruitful inquiry are identified a few stylized facts emerge from recent work and suggest the need for much careful hypothesis testing model exploration and empirical sensitivity analysis in the future

the structure of u s agricultural technology 1910 78 this paper utilizes 1910 78 time series data and a single product aggregate translog profit function to measure the structure of u s agricultural technology duality relations are used to devise a multifactor measure of biased technical change a measure of nonhomotheticity is introduced which indicates the effects scale change has had on aggregate cost shares the empirical analysis finds that different nonhomothetic technologies characterized the prewar and postwar periods differing technical change biases are consistent with relative price trends during the two periods showing that the long run structure of u s agricultural technology has been consistent with the hayami ruttan induced innovation theory

do exporters gain from vers previous literature has concentrated on the rent transfer accruing to exporting countries when a voluntary export restraint ver is binding this paper studies the efficiency and distributional effects arising when vers force factors out of industries in which they are most productive a theoretical model of the industry under the ver is developed to establish qualitative conditions under which a ver will result in spillovers of exports to unrestricted markets industry contraction and loss in national welfare key parameters of demand and supply are estimated for leather footwear exports from taiwan subject to the u s orderly marketing agreement and their implications explored in a calibrated simulation exercise the results make a strong indictment of vers for most plausible parameter values vers distort exports reduce industry size and cause overall economic losses especially if the affected industry is large

egypt s multiproduct agricultural technology and agricultural policy based on the hypothesis that egyptian farmers maximise economic profits the multiproduct translog profit function is used to estimate input demand and output supply functions for corn rice and cotton crops grown in egypt s nile delta elasticity estimates indicate a generally high degree of price responsiveness the estimates are used to evaluate egyptian agricultural policies concerning labour mechanisation and output prices the results show that egypt s agricultural policies of taxing output and subsidising certain inputs have hada substantial negative impact on agricultural productivity

how costly is the maintenance of the coal mining jobs in europe the spanish case 1989 1995 abstract the aim of this paper is to estimate the welfare effects of the coal policy in spain for the period 1989 1995 in order to carry out the study a partial equilibrium analysis has been used and the so called conventional or neo classical cost of protection is calculated the results indicate that the coal policy produces an important conventional cost even when applied to the most profitable areas of the industry thus the maintenance of coal mining jobs in spain appears to be quite expensive in terms of protection costs

are we consuming too much this paper articulates and applies frameworks for examining whether consumption is excessive we consider two criteria for the possible excessiveness or insufficiency of current consumption one is an intertemporal utility maximization criterion actual current consumption is deemed excessive if it is higher than the level of current consumption on the consumption path that maximizes the present discounted value of utility the other is a sustainability criterion which requires that current consumption be consistent with non declining living standards over time we extend previous theoretical approaches by offering a formula for the sustainability criterion that accounts for population growth and technological change in applying this formula we find that some poor regions of the world are failing to meet the sustainability criterion in these regions genuine wealth per capita is falling as investments in human and manufactured capital are not sufficient to offset the depletion of natural capital

the response of peasant farmers to price incentives the use and misuse of profit functions recent famines in chad ethiopia and the sudan have highlighted a major problem facing less developed countries how does an ldc become self sufficient in food production the answers to this question range from the narrowly defined economic one or economistic approach to the more widely based institutional reforms approach the former approach typified by say schultz 1964 or the world bank 1982 would emphasise the importance of mainly price incentives the latter approach as typified by myrdal 1968 in his monumental work asian drama would emphasise the importance of land reforms as a pre condition for agricultural development the debate has sometimes followed a misleading path and discussed whether peasants are rational or whether they are lazy inert tradition bound etc the aim of this article is to show that the use of profit functions to model peasant behaviour in ldcs is seriously flawed neo classical economic theory within which profit functions are embodied ignores the historical social institutional and political context within which peasant farmers operate peasant farmers do not operate in full blooded capitalist impersonal competitive input and output markets the article is structured as follows section ii outlines the profit function approach and section iii provides a survey and critique of applications of the profit function to ldc agriculture section iv concludes with some general remarks on analysing peasant behaviour in an alternative paradigm

new indices of money supply and the flexible laurent demand system the article begins by surveying the existing results on the new divisia monetary aggregates charts display the differences in behavior between the divisia aggregates and the federal reserve s official simple sum monetary aggregates the article then compares system wide fit for the simple sum and divisia monetary aggregates when used as data in the joint estimation of a system of demand equations the demand system is derived from a new laurent expansion approximation to the reciprocal indirect utility function the laurent expansion provides a better behaved remainder term than that of the more commonly used taylor series the results favor the divisia aggregates

public regulation and the structure of production in multiproduct industries an application to the new england otter trawl industry this article considers the problem of managing multispecies fishing industries as one of regulating the production of individual multiproduct firms the multispecies new england otter trawl industry is examined within this framework empirical results derived from estimating a multiproduct profitfunction indicate that management consistent with the structures ofmultiproduct production and costs would directly regulate inputs little support is provided for applying the traditional bioeconomic model to the fishery studied

a note on the application of the restricted generalised leontief profit function abstract the conditions for a restricted generalised leontief profit function to fulfil the requirements of profit functions are explored a specification is proposed in which homogeneity of degree 1 in the fixed inputs is nested in the non homogeneous case

emergence and persistence of inefficient states we present a theory of the emergence and persistence of inefficient states based on patronage politics the society consists of rich and poor the rich are initially in power but expect to transition to democracy which will choose redistributive policies taxation requires the employment of bureaucrats by choosing an inefficient state structure the rich may be able to use patronage and capture democratic politics so reducing the amount of redistribution in democracy moreover the inefficient state creates its own constituency and tends to persist over time intuitively an inefficient state structure creates more rents for bureaucrats than would an efficient one when the poor come to power in democracy they will reform the structure of the state to make it more efficient so that higher taxes can be collected at lower cost and with lower rents for bureaucrats anticipating this when the society starts out with an inefficient organization of the state bureaucrats support the rich who set lower taxes but also provide rents to bureaucrats we obtain that the rich bureaucrats coalition may also expand the size of bureaucracy excessively so as to generate enough political support the model shows that an equilibrium with an inefficient state is more likely to arise when there is greater income inequality when bureaucratic rents take intermediate values and when individuals are sufficiently forward looking jel p16 h11 h26 h41

volatility and development why is gdp growth so much more volatile in poor countries than in rich ones we identify four possible reasons i poor countries specialize in more volatile sectors ii poor countries specialize in fewer sectors iii poor countries experience more frequent and more severe aggregate shocks e g from macroeconomic policy and iv poor countries macroeconomic fluctuations are more highly correlated with the shocks of the sectors they specialize in we show how to decompose volatility into these four sources quantify their contribution to aggregate volatility and study how they relate to the stage of development we document the following regularities first as countries develop their productive structure moves from more volatile to less volatile sectors second the level of specialization declines with development at early stages and slowly increases at later stages of development third the volatility of country specific macroeconomic shocks falls with development fourth the covariance between sector specific and country specific shocks does not vary systematically with the level of development we argue that many theories linking volatility and development are not consistent with these findings and suggest new directions for future theoretical work

environmental impacts of technological change in bangladesh agriculture farmers perceptions determinants and effects on resource allocation decisions this article measures the impact of modern technology adoption in raising farmers environmental awareness and the impact of farmers environmental awareness on resource use by utilizing survey data from 21 villages in three agro ecological regions of bangladesh the econometric analysis is based on the application of the tobit model explaining farmers environmental awareness in the first stage and a profit function examining environmental awareness and resource use relationships in the second stage results reveal that the level and duration of involvement with modern technology raises farmers environmental awareness and that farmers environmental awareness reduces resource use including chemicals farmers who are aware of the adverse environmental impacts of modern agricultural technology use lower amounts of all inputs in order to avoid further environmental damage therefore efforts to raise farmers environmental awareness are expected to enhance intangible benefits accruing from a relatively less chemical intensive environment

testing short run factor demand models in canadian and u s agriculture equilibrium factor demand models are being replaced by a variety of short run and dynamic models in empirical production research in this paper the authors provide evidence on the usefulness of short run production models in aggregate canadian and american agriculture from 1961 to 1982 they offer an alternative data based dynamic model which encompasses the short run model this permits them to test for the short run models and for two simple dynamic models in favor of their most general dynamic model

farm size relative efficiency and agrarian policy in cote d ivoire profit function analysis of rice farms abstract this paper examines the relative economic efficiency of small and large rice farms in cote d ivoire using a profit function approach no differences in the relative economic efficiency of small and large farms were found this conclusion is robust under alternative model specifications agrarian reforms directed towards further concentration of landholding for large farms in cote d ivoire cannot be justified based on economic efficiency results show that access to credit and use of modern rice varieties significantly increase profits to improve technical efficiency of rice farms an accelerated program to provide information credit improved seeds and other inputs is needed when all the farms i e large and small are taken together there is evidence of allocative inefficiency strategies are needed to remove such management related inefficiencies in rice production either through the development of a better market price information system or effective farmer oriented technical training programs by rice extension workers

on the use and misuse of profit functions for measuring the price responsiveness of peasant farmers a comment the standard profit function approach has been applied successfully in a number of ldcs to measure the price responsiveness of peasant farmers yet various problems afflict this approach including but not restricted to the existence of non competitive market structures zero valued observations exclusion of relevant variables lack of participation in output and or input markets and endogeneity of input and or output prices the impact of these problems on estimation results however can be minimised through modifications and adaptations of the standard approach better specification of the underlying technology and the use of selected functional forms

the output bias of technological change in postwar japanese agriculture in order to explain the rapid change in the output mix this study tests the hypothesis that technological change in postwar japanese agriculture was biased towards livestock production a multioutput translog cost function was estimated for the 1958 84 period in which results are consistent with the hypothesis furthermore changes in the composition of crop and livestock production had significant impacts on relative factor uses above all expanding livestock production required relatively less labor than expanding crop production implying a positive contribution to the rapid exodus of labor to the nonagricultural sectors

confidence intervals for elasticity estimators in translog models this paper examines the distribution fu nctions of elasticity estimators in translog demand models the authors consider the normaland ratio of normals distributions and present confidence intervals for the elasticity estimators the results suggest that only elasticity estimato rs based on the means of the actual cost shares are likely to follow either the normal or ratio of normals distribution function examination of three published empirical studies demonstrates that inferences regarding the values of elasticities cannot be made from point estimates alone and suggests a trade off between the level of aggregation and the width of confidence intervals for the elasticit y estimators copyright 1986 by mit press

cross country evidence on the link between volatility and growth this paper presents empirical evidence against the standard dichotomy in macroeconomics that separates growth from the volatility of economic fluctuations in a sample of ninety two countries as well as a sample of oecd countries the authors find that countries with higher volatility have lower growth the addition of standard control variables strengthens the negative relationship the authors also find that government spending induced volatility is negatively associated with growth even after controlling for both time and country fixed effects copyright 1995 by american economic association

the relative demand for inputs a decomposition analysis of us agriculatural production 1988 the relative demand for inputs a decomposition analysis of us agriculatural production applied economics vol 20 no 5 pp 665 678