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

impacts in uganda of rising global food prices the role of diversified staples and limited price transmission this study assesses the potential impact of rising world food prices on the welfare of ugandan households while uganda experienced sharply higher food prices in 2008 as a landlocked food exporting country the causes of those price changes were mainly regional and indirect rather than directly transmitted from global markets using trade volumes food prices and household survey data we describe how uganda unlike some other countries is partially shielded from direct impacts of global food price movements although the majority of ugandans are net food buyers the adverse impact at household level of rising global prices is moderated by the relatively large quantity and range of staples consumed that come from home production moreover several of these are not widely traded some population groups in uganda are vulnerable to rising food prices however primarily those for whom maize is an important staple including those dependent upon humanitarian relief and the urban poor only a relatively small group of ugandan households will benefit directly and immediately from rising food prices the significant net sellers of food crops constituting between 12 and 27 of the population in this assessment we do not estimate the level and extent of wider second round effects from these higher prices jel classification q18 r22

private food safety and quality standards for fresh produce exporters the case of hortico agrisystems zimbabwe abstract there is evidence that the challenges of complying with stricter food safety and quality standards are acting to exclude small scale producers from export supply chains for high value agricultural products the case of hortico agrisystems illustrates the considerable challenges and costs faced by supermarket suppliers in sourcing from a broad base of small scale producers in the context of evolving food safety and quality standards while small scale producers are able to achieve levels of compliance at least equal to those of large scale producers multi tiered and dynamic systems of control are required to maintain control these need to include measures that facilitate compliance incentives to reward good performance and penalties to punish non compliance in establishing a sustainable supply system in this context both exporters and small scale producers face a steep learning curve in adjusting to new requirements further emphasising the need for supply chains to be responsive to change

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

agricultural dis incentives and food security is there a link using the world bank database distortions to agricultural incentives this paper analyzes the impact that agricultural dis incentives have on food security for a wide sample of countries over the 1990 2010 period we adopt a continuous treatment approach applying generalized propensity score matching to reduce potential biases stemming from differences in observed country characteristics the results provide strong evidence of self selection and heterogeneous food security impacts at different levels of policy intensity estimates of the dose response functions show that both discrimination against agriculture and large support for it lead to poor performance in the availability access and utilization dimensions of food security

information to guide policy responses to higher global food prices the data and analyses required abstract national decision makers must understand the degree to which their country and population groups within it are exposed to the negative effects of higher global food prices or could exploit new economic opportunities offered by higher prices this paper provides a conceptual overview of the range of data and analyses that will permit leaders and analysts serving them to assess the broad implications of higher global food prices for a country and its population groups what we find is that there are a relatively small number of types of policy responses that governments might take in the face of a food price rise consequently relatively well defined sets of data need to be compiled and types of analyses used by government to generate the information needed to broadly guide efforts to prevent food price increases from becoming crises and to derive any possible benefits international joint action can be employed profitably both to collect this data and to build national capacity to conduct the analyses needed to guide policy formulation and general program design in the face of the risks and the opportunities of higher food prices and to evaluate the effectiveness of those policy responses

smallholder dairying under transactions costs in east africa abstract it is argued that dairying is vital to future viability of many small farms in east africa and that high transactions costs for dairy production and marketing limit participation by asset and information poor smallholders case studies from kenya and ethiopia illustrate the role of dairy cooperatives in reducing transactions costs analysis of the determinants of producer prices received by a sample of dairy producers near addis ababa suggests that different levels of access to infrastructure assets and information explain why they contemporaneously accept widely different producer prices for fluid milk

residual supplier model of coarse grains trade the influence of domestic agricultural policies on trade in agricultural commodities has been discussed at length by economists some have emphasized the interaction of policy determined residual supplies and demands of all participants in world trade for example mccalla concludes therefore the international market in grains is the interaction of policy induced residuals from national markets and the principal objective is to export domestic instability mccalla 1980 p 39 other analyses have emphasized the role of the united states in world trade in this context the united states often has been described as the residual supplier for example kelly harrison then general sales manager of the u s department of agriculture usda presented the following view of the united states as the residual supplier

producer cooperative resettlement projects in zimbabwe lessons from a failed agricultural development strategy abstract zimbabwe epitomizes the contradictions driving the failure of state directed agricultural development policies in its second decade of independence the government takes the credit for the country s agricultural and rural development success zimbabwe s green revolution record in africa is enviable yet this peasantry led success story is problematic it hides serious policy flaws in development strategy namely lack of performance and waste characterizing the model b producer cooperative resettlement projects individually and collectively the cooperatives the government s preferred mode of production are a complete failure lessons for development programs elsewhere and in emergent south africa in particular are clear the political economy of government assistance is not sufficient to produce agricultural surpluses and sustainable development the social economy of cooperation in production organization by africa s traditional farmers also does not necessarily translate into modern cooperatives as zimbabwe s policy makers assumed producer cooperatives are unproductive because of the prevailing organizational culture which enables leading members to seek individual self interest and private gain making it hard for the rank and file to cooperate and work for the common good

shirking and sorting in a political market with finite lived politicians this paper analyzes principal agent slack in the context of a political market composed of voters challengers and incumbents the introduction of a last period via finite livedness in combination with voters imperfect information about politicians preferences causes time varying shirking behavior on the part of politicians political markets eventually sort out those politicians with significantly deviant policy preferences potentially providing a solution to the last period problem and enabling politicians to make credible commitments in the extreme sorting can insure that it is not worthwhile for potential shirkers to run for office a systematic relationship between political shirking and number of terms in office may exist and depends on how quickly sorting takes place we show that evidence of little if any shirking is quite consistent with politicians having diverse and strongly held policy preferences in addition if sorting is a significant feature of political markets cross sectional studies will tend to oversample little and non shirking politicians compared to longitudinal studies reinterpretations of existing empirical work are also discussed

how do stakeholder interactions influence national food security policy in the caribbean the case of saint lucia abstract increasingly multi stakeholder processes have been recognized as being necessary to the development of public policies seeking to promote systemic innovation in response to complex and multidimensional challenges such as household food security rural development and environmental change saint lucia a small island developing state located in the caribbean has been grappling with a wide range of agriculture food and nutrition security challenges with varying degrees of policy success recognizing the significance of the challenge this paper explores the nature of the stakeholder interactions surrounding the development of saint lucia s 2009 2015 national agricultural policy and considers some of the implications for food and agriculture related policy outcomes results reveal a general lack of supportive conditions for effective multi stakeholder processes including low stakeholder participation levels conflicting roles of different forms of social capital in the interactions between stakeholders and missing boundary organizations capable of facilitating a transition towards more flexible and adaptive institutions enhanced knowledge exchange and learning and greater trust among stakeholders in the policy network future avenues for research and development are subsequently identified

cooperative membership and dairy performance among smallholders in ethiopia this study assesses the impact of cooperative membership among dairy producers in selale ethiopia we selected ten impact indicators proportion of dairy income to total household income total dairy income proportion of crossbreed cows to the total number of cows in the herd indicator of technological innovation amount of feed bought another indicator of technological innovation milk production milk productivity commercialization price per liter of milk price per kg of butter and the share of milk production that is processed at the household level in order to minimize the biases that may arise by simply comparing members and non members we employed a propensity score matching technique the empirical analysis shows that cooperatives are strong in facilitating technological transformations and commercialization but weak in offering better prices these findings suggest structural trade offs between different domains of cooperatives action overall our study concludes that cooperatives can be efficient business institutions to foster rural development and food security

agricultural diversification and export promotion in sub saharan africa abstract declines in world commodity prices have emphasized the need in africa for diversification away from a few agricultural exports market reforms are not enough high transfer costs and imperfect factor markets imply that many consumer goods frequently including food staples are non tradables raising the possibility of major demand constraints in agriculture commodity specific zone specific and sequenced production and marketing policies are necessary to speed supply response of agricultural exports to market reforms then supply responsiveness must be increased for non tradable wage goods especially in non export producing zones to cope with new domestic demand created by export growth

do rice prices follow a random walk evidence from markov switching unit root tests for asian markets this study revisits the issue of mean reversion in the import rice prices of six asian countries over the period between 1995 and 2015 augmented dickey fuller tests with a conventional linear regression model support the presence of a unit root in the levels of the price data however when regressions allow for markov switching in coefficients and variances to capture periodic shifts in levels and volatilities there is strong evidence against the unit root null hypothesis in favor of stationarity over much of the observation period

agricultural market integration in india an analysis of select commodities one of the main arguments against agricultural trade liberalization in india is that the markets are not sufficiently integrated the present study makes a systematic attempt to assess the extent and degree of integration among select agricultural markets in india we have used the common factor representation of the cointegrated series called gonzalo granger g g model to assess the extent of market integration degree of market integration has been assessed using the persistence profile approach our results indicate that the commodity markets that do not face inter state or inter regional movement restrictions like gram and edible oils appear well integrated on the contrary rice market subject to the maximum inter state movement restrictions does not show integration at the national level the broad implication of the study is that the markets can play a more effective role if supplemented with more open policy initiatives

indian farmers valuation of yield distributions will poor farmers value pro poor seeds abstract potential poverty traps among the rural poor suggest a need to reduce poor farmers vulnerability by stabilizing crop yields and limiting yield losses advances in biotechnology will help address this need directly with crops that tolerate climate fluctuation or resist biotic stresses evaluating ex ante how farmers will value these pro poor seeds is important for delivery design but also challenging this paper describes an experimental economic approach to understanding farmers valuation of such seeds using data from a survey and experiment i assess indian farmers valuation of changes in the mean variance and skewness of payoff distributions these farmers value increases in expected value but seem indifferent about higher moment changes in payoff distributions farmer traits such as wealth and risk exposure affect their valuation of these changes only mildly while various limitations to the experimental approach must qualify practical implications of these findings the experiment demonstrates the viability of conducting valuation experiments with open ended questions in developing countries

conservation agriculture organic marketing and collective action in the honduran hillsides conservation agriculture ca is often perceived to provide win win outcomes for farmers leading to reduced erosion and off site sedimentation as well as improved soil fertility and productivity however adoption rates for ca in many regions of the world remain below expected levels this article looks at the effects of participation in organic markets and farmers organizations on the adoption of soil conservation practices based on original survey data from 241 small scale farm households in honduras we find that both participation in organic markets and farmer based groups have positive effects on the number of soil conservation practices adopted the results indicate that besides supply oriented policy measures such as the provision of technical assistance and extension demand related factors are likely to play an important role in sustainable soil management demand oriented policy measures include support for labeling initiatives and consumer education to facilitate value added product differentiation and market segmentation jel classifications q01 q12 q13 q16

linking smallholders to markets determinants and impacts of farmer collective action in kenya summary this article investigates determinants and impacts of cooperative organization using the example of smallholder banana farmers in kenya farmer groups are inclusive of the poor although wealthier households are more likely to join employing propensity score matching we find positive income effects for active group members yet price advantages of collective marketing are small and high value market potentials have not yet been tapped beyond prices farmer groups function as important catalysts for innovation adoption through promoting efficient information flows we discuss the conditions under which collective action is useful and through what mechanisms the potential benefits emerge

changing food prices and rural welfare a nonparametric examination of the cote d ivoire changes in and absolute levels of agricultural pricing and food production may affect consumer food prices producer incentives income distribution and government revenue the nature of these relationships and effects are of especial policy concern in developing countries nonparametric estimation techniques are applied to 1985 living standards household survey data of the cote divoire to estimate the impact of a food price change on income distribution this study examines how food prices are related to agricultural income across rural income in the country in examining a different country considering a wider variety of crops estimating engel curves and applying confidence bands the analysis extends work of a s deaton analysis indicates that while food grown for home consumption is important net food sales and a percentage of total expenditure seem inconsequential at any level of welfare agricultural households grow crops to meet their consumption needs and sell the surplus only when harvests are especially bountiful income elasticities with respect to prices are therefore small these findings suggest that no simple set of small price changes will significantly increase the marketed surplus of food and that structural adjustment policies may be pursued without concern for devastating poor households research is needed into ways of increasing food production through methods other than price changes results also indicate that price increases do not necessarily benefit only large well off farms and that a wide range of issues may be considered with nonparametric estimation techniques

a revised tobit procedure for mitigating bias in the presence of non zero censoring with an application to milk market participation in the ethiopian highlands fixed transactions costs that prohibit exchange engender bias in supply analysis due to censoring of the sample observations the associated bias in conventional regression procedures applied to censored data and the construction of robust methods for mitigating bias have been preoccupations of applied economists since tobin econometrica 26 1958 24 this literature assumes that the true point of censoring in the data is zero and when this is not the case imparts a bias to parameter estimates of the censored regression model we conjecture that this bias can be significant affirm this from experiments and suggest techniques for mitigating this bias using bayesian procedures the bias mitigating procedures are based on modifications of the key step that facilitates bayesian estimation of the censored regression model are easy to implement work well in both small and large samples and lead to significantly improved inference in the censored regression model these findings are important in light of the widespread use of the zero censored tobit regression and we investigate their consequences using data on milk market participation in the ethiopian highlands

increasing returns and market efficiency in agricultural trade abstract using detailed trader surveys in benin madagascar and malawi this paper investigates the presence of increasing returns in agricultural trade after analyzing margins costs and value added we find little evidence of returns to scale motorized transport is found more cost effective for large loads on longer distances but transporters appear to pool quantities from multiple traders margin rates show little relationship with transaction size personal travel costs are a source of increasing returns but the effect is small consequently total marketing costs are nearly proportional to transaction size working and network capital are key determinants of value added constant returns to scale in all accumulable factors working capital labor and network capital cannot be rejected this implies that policies to restrict entry into agricultural trade are neither necessary nor useful governments should focus instead on technological and institutional innovations to upgrade agricultural markets

evidence and implications of non tradability of food staples in tanzania 1983 1998 economic reform programmes assume that major goods are tradable such that depreciation of the real exchange rate raises the value of output compared to factor costs in domestic currency in tanzania major food staples that account for most real income are non tradables in at least one quarter of the country this conclusion is demonstrated and the implications are assessed for the constraints imposed on macroeconomic led adjustment strategies

the duration of employment opportunities in u s manufacturing long duration employment opportunities are a necessary condition for workers to hold lifetime jobs this paper uses longitudinal data on individual u s manufacturing plants from 1963 1982 to estimate the age and completed spell distributions for employment positions the results indicate that of the employment opportunities in progress in the u s manufacturing sector in 1982 30 0 were at least 19 years old and 59 6 would have a completed length of at least 20 years high rates of turnover in employment positions coexist with a large number of long duration employment opportunities because the turnover tends to be concentrated within a subset of the producers copyright 1991 by mit press

the dynamics of job separation the case of federal employees summary in this paper we develop a model of workers quit decisions using panel data on a sample of us federal government employees we use maximum likelihood techniques to determine how much of the observed decline in quits with job tenure is a result of declining individual quit propensities state dependence rather than dynamic sample self selection heterogeneity the latter is found to be much more important than the former the effects of relative federal government wages and other variables on quits are also estimated the results are useful for analysing federal compensation policies

government intervention and market integration in indonesian rice markets abstract long run spatial price relationships in indonesian rice markets and factors affecting the degree of market integration are evaluated using multivariate cointegration tests with weekly price data for the 1982 1993 period the analysis includes evaluation of pre self sufficiency and post self sufficiency periods as well as for the entire period the cointegration tests for entire indonesian rice market represented by the nine most relevant price series indicate that relative to the pre self sufficiency period the post self sufficiency period has a smaller degree of market integration the change of the degree of market integration over time indicates that rationalizing of the indonesian rice price policy beyond 1984 rice self sufficiency has resulted in a less integrated market this suggests that the policy shift has allowed the government to decrease its intervention without significantly decreasing market integration indicating that the private sector is responding to price signals appropriately it is possible that further reduction in intervention through widening the band between the floor and ceiling price could be accomplished without greatly affecting market integration regression results show that government intervention in terms of rice procurement significantly influenced market integration during the period of post self sufficiency 1985 1993 and the entire period of 1982 1993 this indicates that this aspect of government intervention has had positive influences on market integration in contrast to distribution efforts which were not found to be statistically significant procurement prices may be high and could perhaps be lowered reducing program costs regional per capita income is also found to be positively related to higher levels of market integration suggesting that in periods of economic growth government intervention may be decreased thereby reducing program costs

the global financial crisis and the european single market the end of integration using various versions of the feldstein horioka fh coefficient we measure the time varying degree of capital mobility and economic integration in the european union prior research shows high correlation between domestic investment and savings implying low capital mobility this surprising result has led to subsequent research on the feldstein horioka puzzle our empirical findings show that the puzzle is less puzzling with a coefficient of 0 52 in the period 1990 1995 in eu countries approaching its minimum value of 0 02 in the period 2003 2008 this clearly indicates that the fh coefficient is time varying signalling a deepening of economic integration in the european union yet with the advent of the global financial crisis the fh coefficient has increased to 0 26 underlining worrying signs of disintegration

kenyan dairy policy change influence pathways and economic impacts summary marketing transporting processing and consuming dairy products contribute significantly to the livelihoods of many poor kenyan households this study analyzes the impact of recent research supporting policy changes to liberalize informal milk markets the study found that behavioral changes in dairy sector participants arising from the research evidence supported policy and regulatory changes led to an average 9 reduction in milk marketing margins and a significant increase in the number of licensed small scale milk vendors high welfare benefits arising from the policy change with a net present value of us 230 million are captured by consumers producers and milk vendors

new institutional arrangements for rural development the case of local woolgrowers associations in the transkei area south africa until recently smallholder farmers in the transkei area had very limited access to a profitable market outlet for their wool in response the south african wool industry built shearing sheds managed by a local association that sells directly to the brokers this article investigates the effect of joint wool marketing through the shearing shed on the farmers revenue from wool a three step regression model of the revenue from wool indicates that the farmers selling through the shearing shed obtain better financial results as compared to those who use alternative channels this analysis shows how new institutional arrangements may contribute to economic development

efficient labor contracts with employment risk this article analyzes efficient employment agreements where the demand for consumption insurance can be satisfied by noncontractual means we assume that workers can save and that consumption is determined by a strong form of the permanent income hypothesis under conditions of asymmetric information about exogenous shocks to labor demand we derive a unique compensation schedule that efficiently guides decisions by both workers and employers efficient employment outcomes are generated without a need for third party enforcement or monitoring and workers choose a consumption policy that leaves them indifferent among realizations of labor demand within this solution it is both costless and efficient for workers to delegate employment decisions to the firm within the context of the model we analyze implications for the equilibrium distribution of wages and for empirical studies of labor supply

agroindustrialization through institutional innovation transaction costs cooperatives and milk market development in the east african highlands abstract some small holders are able to generate reliable and substantial income flows through small scale dairy production for the local market for others a set of unique transaction costs hinders participation cooperative selling institutions are potential catalysts for mitigating these costs stimulating entry into the market and promoting growth in rural communities trends in cooperative organization in east african dairy are evaluated empirical work focuses on alternative techniques for effecting participation among a representative sample of peri urban milk producers in the ethiopian highlands the variables considered are a modern production practice cross bred cow use a traditional production practice indigenous cow use three intellectual capital forming variables experience education and extension and the provision of infrastructure as measured by time to transport milk to market a tobit analysis of marketable surplus generates precise estimates of non participants distances to market and their reservation levels of the covariates measures of the inputs necessary to sustain and enhance the market policy implications focus on the availability of cross bred stock and the level of market infrastructure both of which have marked effects on participation the velocity of transactions in the local community and inevitably the social returns to agroindustrialization

demand supply and willingness to pay for extension services in an emerging market setting although it may be wholly inappropriate to generalize the most important resource available to a subsistence household is the total amount of time that its members have available to spend in productive enterprises in this context services that minimize the time that it takes to perform productive activities are valuable to the household consequently the household is willing to relinquish quantities of other resources in exchange for quantities of the time saving service these simple observations motivate a search for the values that subsistence households place on time saving services this search is especially important when it is realized that extension services promote productivity enhance the surplus generating potential of the household and can as a consequence promote immersion into markets that are currently constrained by thinness and instability in this capacity extension visitation has the potential to overcome one of the principal impediments to economic development namely lack of density of market participation in this article we consider this issue in the context of a rich data set on milk market participation by small holder dairy producers in the ethiopian highlands

post uruguay round price linkages between developed and developing countries the case of rice and wheat markets the uruguay round agreement on agriculture attempted to lower distortions in global agricultural markets however the significant fall in commodity prices in the late 1990s may have reduced the incentives for both developed and developing countries to better integrate into world markets this study analyzes price linkages and adjustment between developed and developing countries during the post uruguay round period prices of two key commodities long grain rice and medium hard wheat are assembled for major exporters and producers results of multivariate cointegration analysis suggest partial market integration between developed and developing countries in the post uruguay round period developed countries are found to be price leaders in these two markets and in most cases changes in their prices have relatively large impacts on those of the developing countries developing countries e g vietnam and argentina have faced considerable price adjustment due to changes in the developed countries prices

capital mobility and the relationship between saving and investment rates in oecd countries abstract this paper considers tests that use data on saving and investment rates to determine the degree of international capital mobility two types of evidence are presented to show that a high correlation between saving and investment rates across oecd countries can be consistent with a high degree of capital mobility this evidence qualifies the conclusions of previous studies and casts doubt on the usefulness of testing hypotheses about capital mobility with data on saving and investment rates

cereal price shocks and volatility in sub saharan africa what really matters for farmers welfare the lack of information as well as some misperceptions about the distinction between the welfare consequences of higher versus more volatile cereal prices has limited the effectiveness of policy interventions during the recent food crises in many developing countries this article proposes an integrated empirical strategy to investigate and compare the different effects of these two phenomena and tests it using nationally representative household survey data from four sub saharan countries results show that the negative impacts of a cereal price increase substantially outweigh the effects of price volatility on household welfare across the entire income distribution the amplitude and the distribution of those effects depend heavily on specific factors such as the weight of food consumption over total expenditure the budget share devoted to cereals the substitution effect among food groups and the relative number of net sellers versus net buyers accessing the market we also show that volatility mainly harms the poorest quintile of the population

estimation of unemployment duration from grouped data a comparative study economists have often found it useful to look at the average length of an unemployment spell in evaluating labor market conditions and in considering the labor market experience of the unemployed usually this statistic has to be estimated from grouped observations on interrupted incomplete unemployment spells this paper is a comparative study of some nonparametric and parametric methods of estimating this quantity using australian department of social security data on unemployment benefit recipients

effect of off farm income on smallholder commercialization panel evidence from rural households in ethiopia this article investigates how off farm income affects crop output market participation decisions and marketed surplus of smallholder farmers in ethiopia a double hurdle model is estimated using three waves of panel data from the ethiopian rural household survey unobserved heterogeneity is controlled for using a correlated random effect procedure and potential endogeneity of explanatory variables using a control function approach the results show that off farm income has no significant influence on household crop output market participation however conditional on market participation additional off farm earnings negatively affect the marketed surplus this indicates that farmers use off farm earnings for consumption rather than for investment in agricultural production policy measures that promote rural investment may help increase returns to labor for land poor households participating in off farm work in the process of agricultural commercialization

food price changes and household welfare what do we learn from two different approaches the use of a marginal approach can significantly distort the predicted effects of large price variations on monetary welfare over the medium to longer term this paper aims at shedding some light

policy options promoting market participation among smallholder livestock producers a case study from the phillipines we investigate the factors precipitating market entry where smallholders make decisions about participation a discrete choice about whether to sell quantities of products and supply a continuous valued choice about how much quantity to sell in a cross section of smallholders in northern luzon philippines in a model that combines basic probit and tobit ideas is implemented using bayesian methods and generates precise estimates of the inputs required in order to effect entry among the non participants we estimate the total amounts of cattle buffalo pig and chicken livestock input required to effect entry and compare and contrast the alternative input requirements to the extent that our smallholder sample may be representative of a wide and broader set of circumstances our findings shed light on offsetting impacts of conflicting factors that complicate the roles for policy in the context of expanding the density of participation

a note on the nerlove model of agricultural supply response judged by the number of studies which follow a particular approach more or less closely nerlove s famous formulation of agricultural supply response is certainly one of the most successful econometric models introduced into the literature the surveys of askari and cummings 1976 1977 provide clear evidence even though they are restricted to the english literature they contain the results of well over one hundred empirical studies in the nerlovian tradition in examining askari and cummings very helpful summary tables one is unavoidably struck by some extreme discrepancies in long run supply elasticities found by different researchers for the same crops and regions and almost identical observation periods while such discrepancies may be due to different definitions of the key variables or to certain modifications of the basic model and thus to aspects which are extensively discussed by askari and cummings they might alternatively reflect a serious collinearity problem that appears to be built into the nerlove model and which may not be resolvable it is the purpose of this note to draw attention to this apparently largely overlooked problem briefly discuss its consequences and provide another empirical example in which the suggested collinearity may be responsible for obviously unreliable supply elasticity estimates

a roller coaster ride an empirical investigation of the main drivers of the international wheat price over the last decade commodity prices have registered substantial booms and busts marked by extreme volatility wheat in particular one of the main nonoil commodities has registered a roller coaster in price levels which seems to be inconsistent with supply and demand fundamentals to acutely investigate the drivers of wheat prices and quantify their impact a vector error correction model vecm has been used the exogenous variables have been distinguished into four groups market specific factors broad macroeconomic determinants speculative components and weather variables the quadriangulation of the determinants will enable us to better understand the movements in wheat price and identify the specific role of each component the results show that a mix of factors are contributing to wheat price movements including speculation global demand and real effective exchange rate

keeping time an analysis of errors in the measurement of unemployment duration this study uses longitudinal microdata from the current population survey to examine the consistency with which unemployment duration is reported an estimate of measurement error is proposed and analyzed a significant negative relationship is found between the initial month s unemployment duration and the reported change between surveys on average persons who begin spells of unemployment in the second month report durations greater than the actual time elapsed overall the average duration of unemployment in this sample may be overstated by at least two weeks a brief discussion of some implications for empirical labor market research concludes the article

why do small scale producers choose to produce under contract lessons from nontraditional vegetable exports from zimbabwe summary this article explores the motivations behind the decision of small scale producers to grow nontraditional vegetables under contract for export based on a survey of small scale producers in zimbabwe four factors are identified as motivating contracting namely market uncertainty indirect benefits e g knowledge acquisition income benefits and intangible benefits respondents are clustered according to the relative importance of these factors in their contracting decision four clusters are identified and related to the characteristics of these farmers including size of the farm amount of land devoted to export crops access to alternative markets and the proportion of family income derived from export crops the results suggest that there are systematic differences between farmers in their decisions to contract which needs to be recognized in contract design and management 2005 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

dynamic relationships between us and thai rice prices abstract relationships between the united states department of agriculture s usda estimated world market price the thai milled rice price us transportation adjusted cash rough rice price and the chicago rice and cotton exchange rough rice futures price are examined for the 1987 1991 marketing years specifically a cointegration analysis is used to address the pricing and informational efficiency of the respective markets testing indicates the system is described by two cointegrating vectors the analysis preformed herein provides insight into the pricing performance of several world rice markets

business cycles and compositional variation in u s unemployment in this article we study u s unemployment dynamics using grouped unemployment data from the current population survey over the period 1968 1992 we estimate a model that traces variation in these unemployment data both over time and between demographic groups back to the underlying variation in the inflow and the outflow in turn we model the outflow as a transition process in which we allow the exit probabilities to depend on calendar time duration and demographic group we use the estimation results to provide a decomposition of aggregate u s unemployment dynamics in various incidence and duration components

impact of global cotton markets on rural poverty in benin world cotton prices fell by about 40 over 2001 2002 focusing attention on the effect of subsidies for cotton growers in depressing world prices this paper combines farm survey data from benin with assumptions about the decline in farm level prices to estimate the direct and indirect effects of cotton price reductions on rural income and poverty in benin the results indicate that there is a strong link between cotton prices and rural welfare in benin a 40 reduction in farm level prices of cotton results in an increase in rural poverty of 8 points in the short run and 6 7 points in the long run under the assumptions of the partial input output model we estimate the multiplier to be in the range of 2 96 meaning that 1 us of reduced income by cotton growers results in a contraction of 2 96 us in overall income finally econometric analysis of the determinants of the demand for hired agricultural labor suggests that falling cotton prices will not greatly reduce labor demand since the labor intensity of cotton is similar to that of competing crops in benin overall the study demonstrates the impact of changes in world cotton prices on rural poverty in benin thus highlighting the likely negative effects of cotton subsidies in the united states and elsewhere on benin farmers

are we overestimating the negative impact of higher food prices evidence from ghana most studies of the welfare impact of higher food prices adopt deaton s approach based on the first order effect of prices changes using income and expenditure survey data this paper explores the impact of higher maize and food prices in ghana and considers the sensitivity of results to changes in several assumptions if second order effects are included incorporating household response to price changes the welfare impact of food price increases is more positive but only modestly so however if we assume that marketing margins are constant in real terms rather than proportional to prices the welfare impact is substantially more positive these findings highlight the need for more research on the behavior of marketing margins under volatile prices

applying cointegration and error correction to measure trade linkages maize prices in the united states and mexico the impact of u s grown maize on mexican markets is a subject of heated debate and is complicated by limited substitution between white and yellow maize as well as regional price differences within mexico this article improves on previous analyses using a detailed data set of white maize prices reported weekly in 11 states across mexico from 1998 through 2005 using cointegration analysis and the error correction model we find that prices between the united states and mexico do not share a common long run relationship within mexico prices in michoacan and oaxaca are only weakly related with prices in neighboring states whereas prices in sinaloa and jalisco exert considerable influence on prices elsewhere in mexico we conclude that despite north american free trade agreement nafta white maize prices in mexico are determined by local conditions including particularly the degree of integration to other regions within mexico

rice prices and income distribution in thailand a non parametric analysis rice is a staple crop in thailand significantly entering both household production and consumption this paper examines the effect of rice prices on the distribution of real income across households taking into account household characteristics and geographical location the data set is a large scale survey of 11 893 households simple nonparametric techniques for regression and density estimation are used these methods depend on few assumptions and generate flexible graphical results that are directly informative about the problem at hand the main results are that higher rice prices should benefit all rural households but the largest benefits accrue to rural households in the middle of the income distribution copyright 1989 by royal economic society

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

crossbred cow adoption and its correlates countable adoption specification search in sri lanka s small holder dairy sector considerable specification choice confronts countable adoption investigations and there is need to measure formally the evidence in favor of competing formulations this article presents alternative countable adoption specifications hitherto neglected in the agricultural economics literature and assesses formally their usefulness to practitioners reference to the left side of de finetti s 1937 famous representation theorem motivates bayesian unification of agricultural adoption studies and facilitates comparisons with conventional binary choice specifications such comparisons have not previously been considered the various formulations and the specific techniques are highlighted in an application to crossbred cow adoption in sri lanka s small holder dairy sector

food crops exports and the short run policy response of agriculture in africa the response of agriculture to changes in relative prices is an important factor in the success of structural adjustment programs in africa in this paper i estimate supply functions for total agricultural output food crops and export crops in 14 african countries for the years 1975 to 1990 food and export crops are substitutes in production in the short run total agricultural output responds negatively to increases in export prices and positively to increases in food prices a plausible explanation is that as farmers shift resources to export crop production food supply falls in the short run while the increase in export supply may take several years to materialize the exchange rate is significant in explaining both food and export crop production and aggregate agricultural supply suggesting that the exchange rate is acting as a proxy for excluded macroeconomic variables or that changes in the exchange rate are not passed immediately through to prices

explaining a miracle intensification and the transition towards sustainable small scale agriculture in dryland machakos and kitui districts kenya abstract the transition to sustainable agriculture in tropical small scale farming has been discussed intensively since boserup published her theory on the role of population pressure as a leading factor bosemp s work challenged the malthusian approach to rural transformation recent evidence supports the boserup theory as applied to machakos district kenya this paper aims to establish how much of terracing is directly explained by population density increases as opposed to other district and village level variables by using a retrospective multivariate analysis in machakos and kitui districts kenya the findings suggest that variables such as the distance to major urban markets and the windfall profits from the coffee boom in the late 1970s are at least as important in explaining the investment in the quality of land in machakos and kitui districts

is full banking integration desirable abstract we analyze the links between banking integration and economic development for a sample of oecd countries we measure banking integration considering indicators that merge not only openness but also connectedness with other banking systems we plug these indicators into income regressions also controlling for other relevant variables considered by the literature in contrast to previous initiatives this second stage explicitly takes into account the differing levels of economic development of the countries in our sample since the benefits of enhanced banking integration might not be generalizable to this end we implement quantile regression also considering the presence of endogenous regressors results show that bank connectedness is more important for economic development than bank openness but the combined effect i e banking integration overall is positive and significant the quantile regression models used in the second stage show that the effects are stronger for the poorest economies

does cooperative membership improve household welfare evidence from apple farmers in china this paper examines the impact of cooperative membership on farm performance indicators such as apple yields net returns and household income using cross sectional data from a survey of farmers in china an endogenous switching regression model that accounts for selection bias is employed in the analysis the empirical results reveal that cooperative membership exerts a positive and statistically significant impact on apple yields farm net returns and household income a disaggregated analysis also reveals that small scale farms tend to benefit more from cooperatives than medium and large farms

export liberalization and household welfare the case of rice in vietnam vietnam has rapidly become one of the three largest rice exporters in the world in spite of a binding export quota this article uses a multimarket spatial equilibrium model to examine the effect of further liberalization on regional rice prices household data are then used to calculate the welfare impact of these price changes on different household groups the results suggest that although rice export liberalization would raise food prices and exacerbate regional inequality it would also increase average real income and reduce slightly the incidence and severity of poverty we explore several explanations of these apparently paradoxical results

employer size and labor turnover the role of pensions the well documented lower labor turnover in large firms than in smaller firms has been cited as evidence that large firms pay workers above their opportunity wage this study investigates whether t

more than you think an inclusive estimate of business entries abstract the wells fargo nfib series on business entries and exits collected data throughout 1995 from 36 000 households regarding the business formation activity occurring among adults within those households after adjusting for the 1 37 owners per firm and the 10 of households with more than one entry there were an estimated 4 553 million business entries in the 12 month period involving 6 211 million active owners seventy eight and one half 78 5 percent of those businesses were de novo starts 20 0 purchases and the remainder other forms of entry including missing responses most of the entries were quite small whether started or purchased the number of business entries is significantly larger than prior estimates however the 4 553 million figure when dissected into component parts is consistent with other measures of business entry the primary reason for the larger estimate is that this research was able to capture the significant number of very small entries that either do not appear in other databases or appear only after a substantial delay these new data offer a significantly expanded view of the american business population and its dynamics more specifically they provide quantification of the smaller end of the entry scale thereby introducing new population distributions and raising fundamental research and marketing questions about the unit of analysis what is a business what constitutes a reasonable survey sample to what population do we generalize survey data what are the market segments of the small business population and how do they differ what are the public policy requirements of these segments and how do they coincide and conflict and what do real entry numbers tell us about the operation of the american economy on both a secular and cyclical basis the foregoing are obvious however there are more subtle and perhaps more interesting questions for example the more people try to go into business for themselves the more our collective american experience is influenced by the experience of business ownership small business draws enormous empathy from the american public few americans institutions are as popular this is obviously a complex phenomenon however one explanation for its popularity is that so many americans are exposed to business ownership either personally or through someone they know part of this research not yet published shows that small business ownership pervades every class income category racial grouping etc the penetration of business formation into the american experience therefore is not only deep it is also broad and when its dimensions are so great the remaining issue is not the existence of influence but its degree if there are more starts than previously recognized there must also be more exits and if there are more exits the dynamics of the business entry exit process become even more tumultuous than previously recognized particularly for those interested in either policy or management the question becomes why is exit so common one path of inquiry leads to motivation for entry including career alternatives and income supplementation to what extent do people intend to grow their businesses and to what extent do they intend their businesses to fill financial occupational or time gaps until something better comes along another path of inquiry leads to resources do resource constraints or constraints of other natures impede business development then there is the issue of preparation how well prepared are entrants and what reasonable steps can be taken to improve their assessments of potential opportunities or to effectively implement plans to capitalize on them these are not necessarily new issues but they become more conspicuous and pressing when the large number of exits is appreciated the technique used to capture these data at a reasonable cost is called an omnibus or caravan survey this survey technique is not well known outside the commercial survey industry but it presents considerable opportunity for researchers either with limited budgets or desirous of asking fewer than 10 15 minutes worth of questions from a sample of the adult population its advantage is financial multiple sponsors can ask a limited number of proprietary questions at their own expense but they then share the costs and results of reaching respondents and of asking the demographic questions for example age or sex of respondent the current research posed two screen questions to all 36 000 households interviewed the sponsors paid for those 72 000 questions but only about 2 000 respondents passed one of the screens these respondents were led through several more questions thus the sponsors paid just for the screen questions and those questions administered to the 2 000 an extensive set of demographic data about the respondents was thrown in free

internal labour markets causes and consequences the paper analyzes the causes and consequences of internal labor market rules that yield long tenure promotion from within seniority pensions and due process in dismissals about half the workforce are estimated to be in such markets competitive reasons for internal labor markets as a response to specific training and arms length relationships between workers and firms are surveyed these reasons are found to be consistent with the pattern of internal labor markets among non union firms however some internal labor markets e g among small unionized firms are probably a response to union pressure and government regulations in these circumstances low labor mobility could pose problems for policy copyright 1991 by oxford university press

vignettes on the world capital market this paper is motivated by a sense that we as a profession need to understand much better than we now do how the world capital market works we seem to be genuinely schizophrenic in the ways we build models many of them are closedeconomy models in which the rest of the world does not even appear yet others of them are models of the small open economy in which hardly any degree of freedom is left for economic policy to influence events lying behind the schizophrenia is i believe a genuine ignorance on our collective part of how the world capital market

raising offtake from cattle grazed on natural rangelands in sub saharan africa a transaction cost economics approach farmers in sub saharan africa are constrained by large transaction costs associated with marketing of their livestock however transaction costs are often not taken into account in the analysis of factors hampering the development of livestock marketing in this region this article empirically measures the influence of transaction costs on the offtake from cattle grazed on natural rangelands in uganda the study is based on the monitoring of 696 cattle transactions in three districts of uganda from august 2004 to august 2005 the estimated models suggest that proportional transaction costs represented by the state of roads distance to markets and time taken to reach the market are important variables constraining market participation in order to raise offtake from the national herd it is essential to explicitly address these costs one potential solution is collective action in marketing of livestock in which proportional and fixed transaction costs are reduced and shared among the group members

incentive policies and export performance in sub saharan africa abstract the paper presents the results of an econometric investigation which shows that exports in general and agricultural exports in particular are responsive to price incentives in sub saharan africa it is further shown that within sub saharan africa market oriented countries generally gained and interventionist countries lost export market shares the differences in export performance are even greater if comparisons are made between private market economies and etatist countries in a three fold classification scheme that puts some countries in an intermediate category

implications of higher global food prices for poverty in low income countries in many poor countries the recent increases in prices of staple foods raise the real incomes of those selling food many of whom are relatively poor while hurting net food consumers many of whom are also relatively poor the impacts on poverty will certainly be very diverse but the average impact on poverty depends upon the balance between these two effects and can only be determined by looking at real world data results using household data for ten observations on nine low income countries show that the short run impacts of higher staple food prices on poverty differ considerably by commodity and by country but that poverty increases are much more frequent and larger than poverty reductions the recent large increases in food prices appear likely to raise overall poverty in low income countries substantially

a selectivity model of household food marketing behavior in sub saharan africa the agricultural household s discrete decision of whether to participate in coarse grain markets is separated here from the continuous decision of how much to sell or buy conditional on participation failure to participate in markets results from high fixed transactions costs a selectivity model endogenously switches households into alternative market participation states correcting for bias caused by the exclusion of unobservable variables affecting both discrete and continuous decisions improved market information increases the probability of participation by sellers while access to cereals processing technology increases quantities transacted by both sellers and buyers conditional on participation

smallholder market participation under transactions costs maize supply and fertilizer demand in kenya abstract this paper assessed the effects of transactions costs relative to price and non price factors on smallholder marketed surplus and input use in kenya a selectivity model was used that accounts for the effects of transactions costs assets technology and support services in promoting input use and generating a marketable surplus output supply and input demand responses to changes in transactions costs and price and non price factors were estimated and decomposed into market entry and intensity the results showed that while transactions costs indeed have significant negative effects on market participation institutional innovations such as group marketing are also emerging to mitigate the costs of accessing markets output price has no effect on output market entry and only provides incentives for increased supply by sellers on the other hand both price and non price factors have significant influence on adoption and intensity of input use overall the findings suggest that policy options are available other than price policies to promote input use and marketed surplus the paper concludes with implications for policy to induce greater input output market participation among smallholders in africa

trade matters in the fight against poverty narratives perceptions and lack of evidence in the case of fish trade in africa two opposing views exist in the literature on the potential role that international fish trade plays in economic development while some claim that fish trade has a pro poor effect others denounce the negative effect of fish export on local populations food security and doubt its contributions to the macro economy in this paper we explore this debate in sub saharan africa our analysis did not find any evidence of direct negative impact of fish trade on food security neither did it find evidence that international fish trade generates positive pro poor outcomes this paper discusses the possible reasons for this apparent lack of development impact and highlights the unsupported assumptions underlying the current discourse about international fish trade we suggest that given lack of evidence for the development benefits of fish trade between africa and developed countries fisheries policy could consider support for regional africa to africa trade that meets the growing african demand for lower value fish means of overcoming barriers to intra african trade in fish are discussed

testing market integration a model of spatial price differentials for a tradable good is proposed which avoids the inferential dangers of received methods using static price correlations the proposed method also extracts more information on the causes of price differentials from the same data the method is illustrated using monthly rice price data for postindependence bangladesh including the very substantial regional price shocks during the 1974 famine impediments to market integration are indicated

compounding food and income insecurity in yemen challenges from climate change this paper provides a model based assessment of local and global climate change impacts for the case of yemen focusing on agricultural production household incomes and food security global climate change is mainly transmitted through rising world food prices our simulation results suggest that climate change induced price increases for food will raise agricultural gdp while decreasing real household incomes and food security rural non farm households are hit hardest as they tend to be net food consumers with high food budget shares but farm households also experience real income losses given that many of them are net buyers of food the impacts of local climate change are less clear given the ambiguous predictions of global climate models gcms with respect to future rainfall patterns in yemen local climate change impacts manifest itself in long term yield changes which differ between two alternative climate scenarios considered under the mir scenario agricultural gdp is somewhat higher than with perfect mitigation and rural incomes rise due to higher yields and lower prices for sorghum and millet under the csi scenario positive and negative yield changes cancel each other out as a result agricultural gdp and household incomes hardly change compared to perfect mitigation

dynamic spillovers among major energy and cereal commodity prices abstract over the past decade the sharp increases in the prices of oil and agricultural commodities have raised serious concerns about the heightened volatility of these markets and the possible negative interactions between them this article deals with the dynamic return and volatility spillovers across international energy and cereal commodity markets it also examines the impacts of three types of opec news announcements on the volatility spillovers and persistence in these markets for this purpose we make use of the var bekk garch and var dcc garch models for the daily spot prices of eight major commodities including wti oil europe brent oil gasoline heating oil barley corn sorghum and wheat our results provide evidence of significant linkages between these energy and cereal markets moreover the opec news announcements are found to exert influence on the oil markets as well as on the oil cereal relationships finally we show that the persistence of volatility decreases increases for the crude oil and heating oil gasoline returns after accounting for the opec announcements in these multivariate garch models however the results are more mixed for the cereal markets overall our results can be used to improve the risk adjusted performance by having more diversified portfolios and also serve to hedge the oil risk more effectively

reconstructing the pattern of american unemployment before the first world war this paper calculates the distribution of unemployment duration lengths and transition rates for massachusetts workers in the late nineteenth century using data on time spent out of work and assuming that the spell durations followed a weibull distribution i parameterize a model of the timing of transitions from unemployment to employment and vice versa i then simulate the employment experience of representative workers and construct distributionis of completed spell lengths the experience of most out of work workers in a year seems to have been in one rather long spell rather than in shorter multiple ones