testing for behavioral objective and aggregation opportunities in u s agricultural data to guide formulation of an aggregate model of u s agricultural production this paper reports nonparametric test results for both behavioral objective and aggregation level nonparametric tests are implemented as heuristics to determine empirical support for simplified analytical structures evidence does not refute the joint hypothesis that producers behave collectively as though they are a price taking profit maximizing firm with a convex technology subject to nonregressive technical change the empirical results also support exhaustive aggregation of input categories but much less aggregation of outputs this paper reports the first known implementation of the nonparametric homothetic separability tests

the expansion of modern agriculture and global biodiversity decline an integrated assessment the world is banking on a major increase in food production if the dietary needs and food preferences of an increasing and increasingly rich population are to be met this requires the further expansion of modern agriculture but modern agriculture rests on a small number of highly productive crops and its expansion has led to a significant loss of global biodiversity ecologists have shown that biodiversity loss results in lower plant productivity while agricultural economists have linked biodiversity loss on farms with increasing variability of crop yields and sometimes lower mean yields in this paper we consider the macro economic consequences of the continued expansion of particular forms of intensive modern agriculture with a focus on how the loss of biodiversity affects food production we employ a quantitative structurally estimated model of the global economy which jointly determines economic growth population and food demand agricultural innovations and land conversion we show that even small effects of agricultural expansion on productivity via biodiversity loss might be sufficient to warrant a moratorium on further land conversion

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

profits and politics coordinating technology adoption in agriculture abstract this paper examines the political economy of government led coordination of economic activity in a simple two sector model in which individuals choice of agricultural technology affects industrialization we demonstrate the existence of multiple equilibria the economy is either characterized by the use of a traditional agricultural technology and a low level of industrialization or the use of a mechanized technology and a high level of industrialization relative to the traditional technology use of the mechanized technology increases output but leaves some population groups worse off we show that the distributional implications of choosing the mechanized technology restrict the possibility of pareto improving coordination by an elected policy maker even when we allow for income redistribution

induced innovation in american agiculture a reconsideration this paper investigates the role of induced innovation in the development of american agriculture from 1880 to 1980 the induced innovation hypothesis most closely associated with the work of hayami and ruttan argues that successful economies develop technologies in accordance with market price signals to loosen constraints on growth imposed by factor scarcities our analysis employing new state and regional level data fails to find support for hayami and ruttan s hypothesis this paper suggests that many of the fundamental generalizations about american agricultural development need to be reconsidered and redirects attention to the role of settlement changing crop patterns and biological investments in explaining changes in factor utilization in american agriculture

assessing output performance of information technology service industries productivity innovation and catch up abstract the purpose of this paper is to assess the output performance of information technology it service industries of twelve organization of economic cooperation and development oecd countries over the years from 2000 to 2011 we use malmquist productivity index mpi as the performance metric and stochastic production frontier spf as the measurement approach we then decompose mpi into two ingredient components that represent technological change for innovation capability and efficiency change for catch up effort it is found that the it service industries display an impressive annual rate of 7 4 for productivity growth during the study period the parametric decomposition of mpi unveils that almost all of the productivity growth observed is enabled by technological advance made to the production process by it service providers while efficiency change has little effect moreover each country s it service industry demonstrates a distinctive pattern relating to the three measures of productivity growth technological change and efficiency change this observation suggests that each country s it service industry possesses certain strengths that become the sources of its competitive advantage and there are weaknesses that could be targets for performance improvement based on our empirical results we offer practical implications and identify future research topics for performance evaluation of it service and other industries

green revolution land reform and household income distribution in the philippines income of agricultural households consists of returns to labor capital and land from farming supplemented mainly by labor earnings from nonfarm sources agricultural technology affects farmers income through its effect on factor demands and factor prices which in turn induce changes in the allocation of farmers own resources to different uses income from farming is also affected by village institutions such as land tenure which governs the distribution of income between landlords and tenants as well as resource allocations

induced innovation evolutionary theory and path dependence sources of technical change the i960s to the i98os were very productive of new theory and empirical insights into the sources of technical change in the i96os and i970s major attention focused on the implications of changes in demand and relative factor prices on the rate and direction of technical change in the late i 970s and early i980s attention shifted to evolutionary models inspired by a revival of interest in schumpeter s insights into the process of economic development since the early i98os these have been complemented by the development of historically grounded path dependent models of technical change each of these models has contributed substantial insight into the sources of technical change this paper was motivated by a perception that each of the three research agendas is approaching a dead end the three models induced evolutionary and path dependent represent elements of a more general theory that has not yet been invented ruttan 1996 a in a closing comment i suggest some steps toward the development of a more general theory of the sources of technical change

marketed surpluses of agricultural households in sierra leone an agricultural household model is used with household level data from sierra leone to estimate elasticities of marketed surplus for several outputs and for labor with respect to price and nonprice variables positive own price elasticities are found with magnitudes considerably above own price output elasticities changes in household characteristics and production technology also affect marketed surpluses but not always in anticipated directions elasticities are reported for households when grouped by their total expenditure not just for the sample mean the differences are important showing that low expenditure households respond as much as high expenditure households

an error correction model of induced innovation in uk agriculture cointegration techniques are applied to a model of induced innovation based on the two stage constant elasticity of substitution ces production function this approach results in direct tests of the inducement hypothesis which are applied to agricultural data for the united kingdom from 1953 to 2000 the time series properties of the variables are checked cointegration is established and an error correction model ecm constructed which attempts to separate factor substitution from technological change finally the ecm formulation is subjected to causality tests which show that the factor price ratio for chemicals and land is granger prior to the factor saving bias of technological change however long run relative prices are not causally prior to the machinery labour ratio this results from perturbations in the user cost of machinery caused by oil price shocks thus the induced innovation hypothesis iih may explain long run transformations like the mechanical and fertilizer revolutions that

causal relationships between public sector agricultural research expenditures and output allocative decisions concerning public sector agricultural research appear to be driven by both supply and politically mediated demand forces in sample granger tests along with post sample predictive tests suggest that simultaneity issues should not be ignored when modeling the research expenditure output relationship the results also provide strong evidence that the impact of research expenditures on agricultural output may persist for as long as thirty years these lags are substantially longer than those commonly used for agricultural research to date the lagged effect of output on research appears to be shorter though still between ten and twelve years in this article we analyze the empirical relationship between public sector agricultural research and agricultural output our interest in this question was spurred on two fronts first emphasis of the contemporary economic literature has shifted from an analysis of the consequences of technical change to an explanation of the observed rate and direction of inventive activity a substantial proportion of this literature has focused on appropriable technologies originating in the private sector and remained largely silent on related issues in the public sector here we analyze the dynamics of public sector research in particular publicly sponsored agricultural research in the

agriculture in the global economy agriculture is diverse and full of contradictions the sector accounts for a griculture is diverse and full of contradictions the sector accounts for a comparatively small share of the global economy but remains central comparatively small share of the global economy but remains central to the lives of a great many people in 2012 of the world s 7 1 billion to the lives of a great many people in 2012 of the world s 7 1 billion people an estimated 1 3 billion 19 percent were directly engaged in farming people an estimated 1 3 billion 19 percent were directly engaged in farming but agriculture including the relatively small hunting fi shing and forestry sectors but agriculture including the relatively small hunting fi shing and forestry sectors represented just 2 8 percent of overall income world bank 2012 however in represented just 2 8 percent of overall income world bank 2012 however in today s middle and low income countries where most of the world s farmers are today s middle and low income countries where most of the world s farmers are to be found agriculture accounts for a much greater share of national income and to be found agriculture accounts for a much greater share of national income and employment for instance in india agriculture represents 18 percent of national employment for instance in india agriculture represents 18 percent of national income and 54 percent of employment income and 54 percent of employment 1

induced innovations and farm mechanization cal change in agriculture then they come mainly from the public agent of farm technology the agricultural research system the research system should be held responsible for the social consequences of farm mechanization and it should be budgeted and directed accordingly on the other hand if mechanization and exit from farming are caused mostly by external price and wage changes the responsibility of the research system is limited principally to technology improvement in this note we discuss the newly emerging tradition of induced innovation and its relation to the alternative explanations of machine labor substitution in agriculture we first clarify the conceptual basis of the induced innovation hypothesis and the related innovation possibility function second we call into question the validity of some of the empirical applications we argue that an incomplete conceptualization of the induced innovation idea has led to invalid empirical tests and to inappropriate implications on the causes of american farm mechanization

the measurement and sources of technological change biases with an application to postwar japanese agriculture technological change bias in agriculture has important effects on and is affected by other changes in an economy labour saving technological change for example enables more farm labour to migrate to the non farm sector kako 1978 a land using bias on the other hand may stimulate efficiency differentiation among farm groups and lead to a rise in farm land prices lee 1980a while a machinery using bias accelerates the rate of investment in agricultural machinery all of these affect the income distribution as well as the economic growth path of the economy in spite of its importance there are relatively few empirical studies of biases in technological change the purpose of this paper is to present first an empirical method of measuring technological change biases in many factor production with an application to postwar japanese agriculture and then to investigate the factors that guided the evolution of biases in agriculture sources of biases have been one of the critical concerns of growth economics relative factor prices have been asserted to be the prime motivator of biases however land size per farm output price and innovation lags are also important factors affecting technological change biases the fundamental method used here to test these hypotheses is to measure the biases in four regions among which economic variables have been lifferent or have moved at different rates and then to examine the relationship between the measured biases and the economic variables since the japanese agriculture sector has undergone substantial technological changes in the rapid economic growth since the second world war it provides an ideal case study which is of considerable relevance to similar but less developed countries in south east asia in the first section we present a theory of measuring biases in many factor production using a production function approach in section ii the homogeneous translog production function is estimated with micro farm data on rice production in postwar japan section iii analyses the characteristic structure of technological change in postwar japanese agriculture and then investigates the sources of the biases following the method presented in the final section we draw conclusions about the sources and implications of the measured biases

rural infrastructure transactions costs and market participation in kenya abstract we develop a conceptual framework for quantifying fixed transactions costs facing semisubsistence households using household survey data from a sample of 324 kenyan maize farmers we jointly estimate household supply and demand schedules and transactions costs econometric results indicate that on average the ad valorem tax equivalent of fixed transactions costs for households in our sample is 15 additional analysis indicates that economic isolation is positively associated with the size of transactions costs to the best of our knowledge ours are the first empirical estimates of the magnitude of fixed transactions costs for agricultural households in developing countries

the induced innovation hypothesis and u s public agricultural research applicability of the induced innovation hypothesis that a change in relative input prices induces innovation to economize use of the increasingly expensive input hicks 1932 is examined for u s public agricultural research a reduced form test is developed using input prices from the agricultural production sector expenditures from the public research sector aimed at developing new technology to save specific agricultural inputs and variables to control for innovation marginal cost differences and nonhomotheticity unlike recent demand side studies that soundly reject the induced innovation hypothesis for agriculture support for the hypothesis is found for several input pairings through these tests of public agricultural research using state level panel data

assessing energy price induced improvements in efficiency of capital in oecd manufacturing industries to assess how capital stocks adapt to energy price changes it is necessary to account for the impacts on different vintages of capital and to account separately for price induced and autonomous improvements in the energy efficiency of capital stock the results of econometric analysis for five manufacturing industries in 19 oecd countries between 1990 and 2005 indicate that higher energy prices resulted in smaller energy use due to both improved energy efficiency of capital stock and reduced demand for the energy input the investment response to energy prices varied considerably across manufacturing industries being more significant in energy intensive sectors the results of policy simulations indicate that a carbon tax can deliver significant reductions in energy consumption in the medium run with modest declines in energy using capital stock

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

food security strategies under extremely adverse conditions the determinants of household income and consumption in rural mozambique abstract this paper uses household survey data from war torn northern mozambique to examine the factors associated with higher incomes and improved rural household food security incomes and calorie consumption were found to be low and variable in each district and both are highly correlated with land holdings the central role of land holdings is largely a result of serious market failure food market participation rates and the proportion of net buyers are lower than in other sub saharan africa ssa research purchased food as a percentage of total caloric intake and off farm income as a percentage of total income are both very low by ssa standards in short surveyed smallholders have adopted a strategy of marked reliance on farm based own production to ensure their survival it is suggested that land holdings will continue to be key determinants of household income and consumption for the foreseeable future broad based rural development efforts possibly organized around existing cotton growing enterprises may offer one way out of the poverty trap for smallholders

growth and distribution a test of the induced innovation hypothesis for the korean economy this study investigates technical change biases and their effects on distribute shars in korea we are particularly concerned with whether technical change biases have been induced by changes in relative factor prices accompanied by rapid economic growth in korea our test results show that technical change in korea has been biased in the direction in the direction for saving labour and using capital thus rendering support to the induced innovation hypothesis these findings are roughly in parallel with empirical studies on the induced innovation hypothesis for the us and japanese economies the similar pattern in technical change biases between korea and the two advanced economies is noteworthy in light of their basic differences in factor endowments another salient feature of our empirical analysis is that the price corrected labour share in korea has continually shrunk in the process of rapid economic growth which has been partly precipitated by factor price disorting policies

market based systems for reducing chemical use in agriculture in the united states this study uses a computable general equilibrium cge model of the u s economy to estimate the economic effects of agricultural fertilizer and pesticide input reductions on individual farm sectors and on the economy as a whole the costs of reducing agricultural chemicals using a market based approach and a command and control approach are compared the real cost to society of restrictng fertilizer and pesticide use by 20 percent across all uses is estimated to be 2 3 billion a market based approach that would provide incentives to reduce chemical use in the most cost efficient manner would be about 10 percent less costly

technology adoption and agricultural price policy market interventions such as price supports or fertilizer subsidies can lead to gains from speeding up adoption of new technologies but the policies distort resource allocation a framework is developed for optimizing policies in light of the adoption allocation trade off based on adoption coefficients and production parameters from third world agriculture levels and duration of policies are estimated sensitivity analyses are performed gains are small at best and may be zero or negative in view of farmer costs of adjustment and deadweight losses from taxes profit technology adoption if new technologies are desirable why not use price supports or input subsidies to encourage faster technology adoption while frequently raised in policy deliberations this question has received little serious analysis particularly neglected has been the conflict or trade off between a gains in output as producers switch from old to new technologies and b the losses from resource use distortions brought about by price policies when output prices are raised or prices of inputs such as fertilizer are lowered the

shareholder value stakeholder management and social issues what s the bottom line we test the relationship between shareholder value stakeholder management and social issue participation building better relations with primary stakeholders like employees customers suppliers and communities could lead to increased shareholder wealth by helping firms develop intangible valuable assets which can be sources of competitive advantage on the other hand using corporate resources for social issues not related to primary stakeholders may not create value for shareholders we test these propositions with data from s p 500 firms and find evidence that stakeholder management leads to improved shareholder value while social issue participation is negatively associated with shareholder value copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

labor productivity measurement in japanese agriculture 1956 1990 abstract this paper investigates the factors responsible for a drastic decline in the growth rate of labor productivity of the agricultural sector for the 1956 1990 period this investigation is carried out by a newly devised procedure which decomposes the growth rate of labor productivity into 1 the total substitution effect which consists of the effects due to factor price changes and biased technological change and 2 the tfp effect composed of the effects due to scale economies and technological progress based on empirical estimation of the translog cost function it was found that the total substitution effect contributed to the growth of labor productivity much more than the tfp effect did for the period under question

rationing and adjustment in the market for tenancies the behavior of landowning households in thanjavur district a large proportion of peasants cultivate only their own land even when there are active markets for tenancies as well as labor however rationing of tenancies can occur under moral hazard or adverse selection a model that includes as possible outcomes both rationing and full adjustment through trading is analyzed and estimated using data from south india on this basis households can be characterized as rationed or adjusted and confidence intervals for these assignments can be calculated while some households achieved full adjustment a majority were rationed in the tenancy market many of them completely

transition and enterprise restructuring the development of individual farming in romania economic reforms have induced enterprise restructuring in transition countries in agriculture the most dramatic form of restructuring is the break up of state and collective farms into individual farms the development of individual farming varies strongly between countries regions and households this paper uses household level data from a 1996 survey in romania to analyze which household and regional characteristics determine the shift to individual farming individual farming is influenced by several household characteristics such as the human capital education age farming experience physical capital endowments ownership of land buildings machinery livestock and access to other finance sources off farm wages pensions furthermore environmental factors such as infrastructure local access to inputs and the pre reform importance of individual farming in the region all affect the development of individual farming

a flexible model of factor biased technological change an application to japanese agriculture abstract results indicate that when restrictive assumptions on production structure and parameter constancy are avoided and quality adjusted flow variables employed an explanation of factor biased technological change emerges that is consistent with observed patterns of factor use while substitution possibilities during this period were limited biol nearly as strong a substitute for labor as for land technological change was found to be significantly labor saving and using in biological inputs and machinery and only weakly land saving descriptions of pre world war ii technology as primarily land saving miss the significant contribution of labor saving technology in agricultural transformation and ignore the dynamics of inter sectoral factor demand

spatial patterns of market participation and resource extraction fuelwood collection in northern uganda while distance to markets is a key determinant of market participation for households that are dependent on natural resources the distance to the resource stock is also essential thus a household s location with respect to markets and the resource stock determines household market participation and associated resource degradation applying a discrete choice framework for fuelwood collection in a developing country we characterize the spatial pattern of market participation regimes and forest use all else being equal autarkic households are closest to the forest and furthest from the market buyer households are closest to the market and furthest from the forest and seller households are at intermediate distances empirical tests based on survey data from northern uganda support the predictions from our theoretical model our findings have important implications for understanding the spatial patterns of forest degradation and determining the control group when designing impact evaluations of the effectiveness of development and conservation interventions

global population growth technology and malthusian constraints a quantitative growth theoretic perspective we structurally estimate a two sector schumpeterian growth model with endogenous population and finite land reserves to study the long run evolution of global population technological progress and the demand for food the estimated model closely replicates trajectories for world population gdp sectoral productivity growth and crop land area from 1960 to 2010 projections from 2010 onwards show a slowdown of technological progress and because it is a key determinant of fertility costs significant population growth by 2100 global population reaches 12 4 billion and agricultural production doubles but the land constraint does not bind because of capital investment and technological progress

access to capital and agrarian production organisation there are two problems both universal that entrepreneurs in any economy must contend with firstly an agent generally has access only to a limited amount of working capital secondly workers hired by an agent are subject to moral hazard and this necessitates their supervision this paper models for an agrarian economy the constraints imposed on entrepreneurs activities by these two problems and endogenously determines the various organisational forms of production as well as the allocation of resources that will obtain with a simple model we endeavour to explain a diverse set of empirical observations pertaining to the less developed countries in terms of the general processes that determine the distribution of income among the various agents and the hierarchical relationships that develop among them agricultural production typically involves a period of several months between the time the inputs are purchased and the time the output is marketed access to working capital and hence to the credit market thus plays an important role in a farmer s production decisions the distribution of access to credit in turn tends to be an important determinant of income distribution in poor agrarian economies credit is invariably rationed according to the ability to offer collateral the amount of working capital a farmer can mobilise therefore depends on the amount of land he owns which is often a good proxy for his overall wealth and thus his ability to offer collateral further since hired hands have a propensity to shirk they need to be supervised and therefore the

geographic aggregation and induced innovation in american agriculture the induced innovation hypothesis is tested for the usa and western regions using cointegration procedures an error correction model separates short run and long run effects of relative price changes a significant difference in the elasticities of factor substitution along the isoquant and the innovation possibility curve implies induced innovation the estimated results support the hypothesis for washington the pacific northwest and the western region but not for the nation corroborative tests of weak exogeneity fail to support the hypothesis in any of the geographic units changes in output level and research investment do not significantly bias agricultural technology in the usa

a resource based perspective on corporate environmental performance and profitability drawing on the resource based view of the firm we posited that environmental performance and economic performance are positively linked and that industry growth moderates the relationship with the returns to environmental performance higher in high growth industries we tested these hypotheses with an analysis of 243 finns over two years using independently developed environmental ratings results indicate that it pays to be green and that this relationship strengthens with industry growth we conclude by highlighting the study s academic and managerial implications making special reference to the social issues in management literature

the production structure and demand for labor in postwar japanese agriculture 1952 82 this paper analyzes the factor relations of postwar japanese agriculture to identify the factors which explain a significant decline in labor in the agricultural sector a nonhomothetic and hicks non neutral translog cost function is estimated the results of the decomposition analysis based on the estimates show that biased technical changes and nonhomotheticity together with price induced factor substitutions play an important role in easing the transfer of agricultural labor to the nonagricultural sectors the results also suggest that the biased technical change is consistent with the hicksian induced innovation hypothesis

smallholders institutional services and commercial transformation in ethiopia this article examines the role of institutional services of credit input supply and extension in the overall commercial transformation process of smallholder agriculture in ethiopia survey data collected in 2006 from 309 sample households in three districts of ethiopia are used for the analyses tobit regression models are used to measure the effect of access to services on the intensity of inputs use for fertilizer and agrochemicals a probit model is used to measure these effects on the adoption of improved seeds intensity of use of seeds is analyzed using an ordinary least squares model logarithmic cobb douglass functions are estimated to analyze the effect of access to services on crop productivity heckman s two stage estimation is used to examine determinants of household market participation and the extents of participation results show that access to institutional support services plays a significant role in enhancing smallholder productivity and market orientation our results imply that expanding and strengthening the institutional services is critical for the intensification and market orientation of smallholder agriculture in ethiopia in particular appropriate incentives and regulatory systems are urgently needed to encourage the involvement of the private sector in the provision of agricultural services

research and extension expenditures and productivity in japanese agriculture 1960 1990 abstract this paper investigates the cause for the decline in the growth of productivity in japanese agriculture since the late 1960s for this objective it investigates the effects of research and extension r e activities on the extent and the direction of the bias of technological change in japanese agriculture for the period 1960 1990 based on the translog cost function framework empirical results show that the cost reducing effects of r e measured in terms of the absolute value of the cost r e elasticity increased slightly from 0 194 in 1960 to 0 205 in 1965 and then decreased consistently to 0 110 in 1990 this finding is broadly consistent with the finding of the decline or slowdown in agricultural productivity since the late 1960s the bias due to r e was found to be toward labor intermediate inputs and other inputs saving on the one hand and machinery and land using on the other labor saving and machinery using biases are consistent with the hicksian induced innovation hypothesis

household inventories and marketed surplus in semisubsistence agriculture a model of semisubsistence agriculture explicitly accounting for the ability of farm households to hold inventories of staple foods is developed comparative statics analysis highlights the potential importance of wealth effects attributable to price induced changes in the value of household inventories empirical results for three groups of households in an indian village confirm that failure to account for household inventories leads to an overstatement of the responsiveness of both consumption demand and marketed surplus

green revolution and labour demand in rice farming the case of central luzon 1966 90 while the adoption of modern rice varieties mvs increased labour requirements for crop care and other activities it might have induced the adoption of labour saving technologies thus whether the net impact of mv adoption on labour demand is significantly positive is still debated in the green revolution literature using farm level survey data collected in central luzon from 1966 to 1990 this study estimated simultaneously the labour saving technology adoption and the labour demand functions we found among other things that mvs increased labour demand significantly without inducing the widespread adoption of labour saving technologies

induced technical change adjustment costs and environmental policy modelling in this paper i develop a neo schumpeterianmodel of induced technical change where firms polluters determine their effort in environment saving technical change two technological scenarios are distinguished depending on whether basic research is endogenous or exogenous building on this analytical setting i show that in the presence of non linear adjustment costs the choice of instruments of environmental policy should be tailored to the actual characteristics of the firms polluters technological environment moreover this analysis confirms that searching for efficient environmental policy mixes is more rewarding than focusing on single instruments notably pollution taxation

prohibition of factor market exchanges and technological choice in chinese agriculture this article constructs a model of technological choice in an economy where market exchanges in land and labour are prohibited empirical data on demand for tractors tractor usage and chemical fertilisers in china are employed to test several hypotheses derived from the theoretical model the theory implies that the impact of relative factor scarcity on the pattern of technological choice in such an economy is similar to that in a market economy as postulated by the hicks ruttan hayami binswanger hypothesis of induced technological change the empirical evidence is found to be consistent with the implications of the model

agricultural productivity revisited this paper describes production accounts for agriculture output is defined as gross production leaving the farm as opposed to real value added inputs are not limited to capital and labor but include intermediate inputs as well we derive index numbers of gross output capital labor and intermediate inputs these data are used to construct indexes of total factor productivity we then compare the contributions of input growth and productivity growth to economic growth the important role of productivity growth in agriculture becomes immediately apparent

informing food security decisions in africa empirical analysis and policy dialogue discussions of economic and agricultural development in africa have focused heavily in recent years on structural adjustment i e basic policy changes aimed at allowing international and domestic markets to play a greater role in coordinating national economic activities often these structural adjustments and accompanying policies aimed at improving economic performance have been based on several implicit assumptions about how african food systems operate yet for many countries little empirical information has been available to test these assumptions hence designing policies too often becomes an exercise in planning without facts this paper argues that not only is there a need to base food security and structural adjustment policies more firmly on empirical information but that the process by which the information is obtained is as important as the information itself agricultural economists and other social scientists can and increasingly should design policy research in africa in ways that simultaneously increase effective demand for empirical information as an input into the ongoing policy process and augment african capacity continually to inform policy deliberations we illustrate the payoffs to such an approach by drawing on selected experience in several african countries weber

an analysis of selectivity in the productivity evaluation of biotechnology an application to corn we investigate selectivity bias in the evaluation of biotech hybrid productivity the analysis is applied to experimental data on wisconsin corn yields from 1990 to 2010 relying on a heckman like factor that accounts for selectivity we find evidence of selection bias indicating that some of the observed yield advantage associated with gm hybrids can be attributed to their conventional genes we document how the rising market concentration of biotech firms has contributed to increasing selectivity bias in corn yield the impact however is offset by the negative effect of the rising adoption rate of gm corn on selectivity bias copyright 2013 oxford university press

technical change and factor bias in polish industry 1962 1983 this paper provides improved estimates of technological change and the first estimates of factor bias in polish industry the analysis uses newly generated data on western capital the factor assumed responsible for technical change adjusts capital for capacity utilization and tests for more complex specifications of the production function the major findings are 1 the trend in technical change was nonincreasing over the period and technological change was western capital using in only two industries suggesting the government misallocated resources and 2 technical change was nonneutral in six of the eight industries suggesting the existing literature suffers from misspecification copyright 1993 by mit press

a nonparametric analysis of the influence of research on agricultural productivity nonparametric productivity analysis is extended by modeling technical progress as a function of public and private research expenditures results indicate that 30 year lags are required to fully capture the effects of public research expenditures on u s agricultural productivity compared to public research private research has a stronger influence on farm productivity in the short term but a smaller influence in the longer term the internal rate of return is 0 28 for public research and 0 17 for private research

on risk transactions and economic development in the semiarid tropics recent interest in the institutions and production relations of tropical agriculture seem to hold promise for increased collaboration between economists and anthropologists in efforts to explain existing patterns of production and socioeconomic interaction this focus on customs and on the more formal institutional arrangements is encouraging given the continuing concern for food production in much of the semiarid tropics two recent papers are particularly germane to this growing literature h p binswanger and m r rosenzweig have offered a foundation for addressing the production relations in agriculture with a general focus on conditions in south asia more recently binswanger and j mcintire provide an explanation for the major institutions and customary features of production relations in three agroclimatic subzones of the land abundant tropics that have simple technology and high transport costs 2 they also offer predictions of how these institutions and features might change in response to the opening up of subsistence economies and to population growth our approach here is consistent with this recent work in several respects first it is explanatory in that we offer possible explanations for observed behavior in the land abundant tropics where agriculture is a mixture of cropping and livestock management second it is predictive in that we draw on economic theory to hypothesize likely changes in behavior in the face of institutional change finally it is offered in the interest of stimulating a concern for the institutional preconditions of economic development by such preconditions we have in mind the institutional arrangements that can stimulate the economic development process in particular we focus on the role of transactions in the economy we do not believe that there is anything intrinsically undesirable about transactions that are restricted to a circle of family and acquaintances on the contrary such transactions play an important

testing expected utility maximization under price and quantity risk with a heterogeneous panel refutable implications based on the curvature properties of the indirect utility function for the competitive firm operating under uncertainty are extended to the case of both price and quantity uncertainty using unit roots and cointegration tests for heterogeneous panels a model of us agricultural production is developed based on the time series properties of a panel of state level data most refutable hypotheses under output price and output quantity risk are not rejected but symmetry conditions implied by a twice continuously differentiable indirect utility function are rejected the same test conclusions are obtained from a traditional model that presumes stationarity in all variables

an ordered tobit model of market participation evidence from kenya and ethiopia do rural households in developing countries make market participation and volume decisions simultaneously or sequentially this article develops a two stage econometric method to test between these two competing hypotheses regarding household level marketing behavior the first stage models the household s choice of whether to be a net buyer autarkic or a net seller in the market the second stage models the quantity bought sold for net buyers sellers based on observable household characteristics using household data from kenyan and ethiopian livestock markets we find evidence in favor of sequential decision making the welfare implications of which we discuss

welfare impacts of alternative public policies for agricultural pollution control in an open economy a general equilibrium framework a general equilibrium approach is used to evaluate the welfare impacts of alternative policies for reducing agricultural pollution in an open economy with preexisting distortions caused by income taxes and agricultural subsidies the policies examined here include the removal of distortionary agricultural subsidies we find that even though these distortions are small compared to others in the economy removing them and imposing nitrogen reduction subsidies and or output taxes can enhance welfare and reduce nitrogen pollution thereby leading to a substantial double dividend the relative efficiency of the alternative policies examined here depends on the level of the nitrogen reduction target copyright 2008 oxford university press

specification of production functions for analyzing technical change and factor inputs in agricultural development abstract this paper focuses on some vital issues involed in specifying the number of variables to be included in agriculture s production function and on the functional form that the agricultural production function should assume in the context of a computable general equilibrium model when land and intermediate inputs seeds and fertilizers as well as capital and labor are included modeling the agricultural sector can best be done in a more disaggregated format than simple cobb douglas or ces specifications after examining the transcendental logarithmic production function the paper proposes to adopt nested ces specifications on the basis of empirically observed elasticities of substitution

the impact of environmental management on firm performance environmental management has the potential to play a pivotal role in the financial performance of the firm many individuals suggest that profitability is hurt by the higher production costs of environmental management initiatives while others cite anecdotal evidence of increased profitability a theoretical model is proposed that links strong environmental management to improved perceived future financial performance as measured by stock market performance the linkage to firm performance is tested empirically using financial event methodology and archival data of firm level environmental and financial performance significant positive returns were measured for strong environmental management as indicated by environmental performance awards and significant negative returns were measured for weak environmental management as indicated by environmental crises the implicit financial market valuation of these events also was estimated cross sectional analysis of the environmental award events revealed differences for first time awards and between industries first time award announcements were associated with greater increases in market valuation although smaller increases were observed for firms in environmentally dirty industries possibly indicative of market skepticism this linkage between environmental management and financial performance can be used by both researchers and practitioners as one measure of the benefits experienced by industry leaders and as one criterion against which to measure investment alternatives

transaction costs information technologies and the choice of marketplace among farmers in northern ghana using a transactions costs framework we examine the impact of information and communication technologies mobile phones and radios use on market participation in developing country agricultural markets using a novel transaction level data set of ghanaian farmers our analysis of the choice of markets by farmers suggests that market information from a broader range of markets may not always induce farmers to sell in more distant markets instead farmers may use broader market information to enhance their bargaining power in closer markets finally we find weak evidence on the impact of using mobile phones in attracting farm gate buyers

a triple hurdle model of production and market participation in kenya s dairy market existing analyses of market participation are based on a double hurdle modeling approach such models are appropriate only when all members of the population of interest actually produce the good in some contexts however e g smallholder farmers many members of the population do not produce particular goods that they could produce and that their neighbors do produce policies influencing market participation among producers may thus also induce additional farmers to become producers previous double hurdle approaches do not allow explicitly for this possibility to address these limitations this article presents a triple hurdle approach with an initial stage that includes nonproducers the model is used to identify the factors associated with kenyan smallholder farmers choosing to participate in dairy production and the role that these producers choose to play or not in the marketplace in the midst of debates underway over the privatization of the parastatal kenya creameries company new knowledge about smallholder participation in dairy could be an important contribution results suggest the importance of rural electrification training and improved grazing practices we find that expected net sales are significantly higher when farmers have access to informal private markets we also describe a version of the ordered tobit model that includes nonproducers and is nested in our triple hurdle model a likelihood ratio test shows the latter to be a significantly better fit to our data we discuss how insights gained from this study differ from the insights that would come from a double hurdle ordered tobit that also includes nonproducers

modeling farm households price responses in the presence of transaction costs and heterogeneity in labor markets we develop a farm household model to analyze price responses of farm households this model incorporates various types of transaction costs as well as labor heterogeneity nonproportional variable transaction costs or labor heterogeneity imply that production and consumption decisions become nonseparable even when the household buys or sells labor an empirical model is estimated using data from midwest poland the results show that nonproportional variable transaction costs and labor heterogeneity significantly influence household behavior not all price elasticities however change significantly if these are neglected

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

agricultural production technologies with systematic and stochastic technical change a production system modeling tool is developed that implements recent work on autoregressive and endogenous stochastic production technologies associated with generalized fechner thurstone gft optimizing functions a gft class production system is used to evaluate the empirical support for technology specifications inherent in the neoclassical theoretic structure of an agricultural production region little likelihood support is found for zero serial correlation elimination of systematic technology changers from the production system strict neoclassical production technologies hicks neutral technical change or zero homogenous factor demand functions

the application and economic interpretation of selectivity models substantial differences in economic interpretations may be inferred from the estimated selectivity model results using the demand for frozen concentrated orange juice fcoj as an example the study suggests that the consumption patterns are quite similar between national brand and private label when the marginal effects and elasticities are evaluated based on actual observations rather than unobserved latent variables results show that private label fcoj is considered as a normal inferior good if the income effect is assessed based on actual potential purchases the estimated cents off elasticities for private label fcoj also vary substantially depending on which approach is used

testing the induced innovation hypothesis an error correction model of south african agriculture abstract this paper applies cointegration techniques to a model of induced innovation based on the two stage constant elasticity of substitution ces production function this approach results in direct tests of the inducement hypothesis which are applied to data for south african commercial agriculture for the period 1947 1991 south african data is used because the policy changes have been substantial enough that the factor and price ratios have turning points rather than being monotonic the time series properties of the variables are checked cointegration is established and an error correction model ecm constructed allowing factor substitution to be separated from technological change finally the ecm formulation is subjected to causality tests which show that both the factor price ratios and r d and extension expenditures are granger prior to the factor saving biases of technological change thus each stage of the analysis corroborates the inducement hypothesis however straightforward price inducement is only part of the explanation of changes in factor ratios policy induced innovation in response to tax concessions and subsidised credit is also present

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

international entrepreneurship the pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities across national borders in this editorial for the special issue on international entrepreneurship we inter relate key concepts about the pursuit of opportunities from the entrepreneurship and international business literatures in doing so we consider the assessment of opportunities as an individual level cognitive activity the construction of opportunity as a firm level innovative activity and the shaping of opportunity as an institutional level structuring activity we then extend the discussion to explore the notion of a distributed global ecosystem of opportunities and opportunity seekers which we believe may provide a platform for valuable future research

hired labor use decisions in cassava producing households of sub saharan africa sub saharan africa is the only developing region of the world where agricultural output has been trailing population growth for most of the last three decades farming systems in the region are inherently risky because they are fundamentally dependent on the vagaries of weather in addition it is a region of crises poverty civil strife and hiv aids attention must therefore be focused on improving the production of crops that could thrive under these circumstances because of its tolerance of extreme drought and low input use conditions cassava is perhaps the best candidate in this regard and cassava is a basic food staple and a major source of farm income for the people of the region the use of hired labor is important for its production growth because cassava root yield responds positively to the application of hired labor this article based on farm level information collected from six major cassava producing countries of africa within the framework of the collaborative study of cassava in africa identifies strategic variables affecting the hired labor use decisions of producing households the characteristics of the household head age and number of years of formal education the size of the household farm good market access and population pressure are found to motivate households to apply hired labor in cassava production these observations underscore the need for investing in people education and in infrastructure market access as possible tools for improving food production in the region the positive effect of farm size also suggests that some kind of land reform which would put more farmland at the disposal of farm households could be favorable to improving cassava production

global economic growth and agricultural land conversion under uncertain productivity improvements in agriculture we study how stochasticity in the evolution of agricultural productivity interacts with economic and population growth at the global level we use a two sector schumpeterian model of growth in which a manufacturing sector produces the traditional consumption good and an agricultural sector produces food to sustain contemporaneous population agriculture demands land as an input itself treated as a scarce form of capital in our model both population and sectoral technological progress are endogenously determined and key technological parameters of the model are structurally estimated using 1960 2010 data on world gdp population cropland and technological progress introducing random shocks to the evolution of total factor productivity in agriculture we show that uncertainty optimally requires more land to be converted into agricultural use as a hedge against production shortages and that it significantly affects both optimal consumption and population trajectories

biased technological change and factor demand in postwar japanese agriculture 1958 84 abstract the objective of this study is to gain a better understanding of factor substitutions in postwar japanese agriculture by shedding special light on biased technological change such biased technological change is first measured then associated with the movements of factor prices and then tested for the hicksian induced innovation hypothesis in addition a decomposition analysis is carried out in order to quantitatively examine the importance of the biased effects for determining changes in factor cost shares and factor proportions during the 1958 84 period a slightly modified stevenson greene model of the translog cost function is employed this model has at least two important advantages over ordinary translog cost functions first it incorporates time into the model such that all coefficients of the ordinary translog cost function may change over time this is more realistic than the ordinary translog cost function which assumes that all coefficients are constant over the period of estimation another attractive feature is that it enables us to test the induced innovation hypothesis directly the model is applied to the 1958 84 period by making use of farm level data the results show that technological change was biased towards saving labor and other inputs and using machinery intermediate inputs and land this biased technological change is found to be in principle consistent with the induced innovation hypothesis furthermore it is shown through decomposition analyses that the biased technological change had significant impacts on changes in factor cost shares and factor proportions during these years the empirical results of this study imply that technological change in japanese agriculture has in general proceeded in a manner consistent with factor endowments conditions since the late 1950s an implication of this study for agriculture in less developed countries is that agricultural policies seeking development through technological progress should be carried out so as to take advantage of peculiar factor endowments conditions in the individual countries

induced bias of technical change in agriculture the united states and japan 1880 1980 because of extreme differences in factor endowments and price ratios among factors between the united states and japan both countries have experienced sharply different patterns of factor use and productivity growth in agriculture for the past 100 years of modern economic growth in this study the method of testing the hicksian hypothesis of induced innovation was developed using the two level ces production function the model was applied to the historical data of u s and japanese agricultural development for 1880 1980 the results were consistent with the hypothesis that different patterns of technical change in the two countries were induced by differences in the levels and the movements in relative factor prices

induced innovation and marginal cost of new technology abstract lacking data on development and implementation costs for input saving technologies we develop a nonparametric procedure to estimate relative differences in marginal technology costs for technical change to be consistent with the induced innovation hypothesis we apply it to u s agriculture

why architecture does not matter on the fallacy of sustainability balanced scorecards in a recent review article published in this journal hansen and schaltegger discuss the architecture of sustainability balanced scorecards sbsc they link the architecture of sbscs to the maturity of the value system of a firm as well as to the proactiveness of a firm s sustainability strategy we contend that this argument is flawed and that the architecture of sbsc does not matter since irrespective of their architecture sbscs are ill suited to achieve substantive corporate contributions to sustainability first we assess the sbsc against three fundamental conditions for an effective management of corporate sustainability the generation of positive outcomes at the societal level the consideration of complexities and tensions and the integration of heterogeneous and competing logics to show that the sbsc is diametrically opposed to the complex and multi facetted nature of corporate sustainability and ill suited to achieve transformational change of for profit organisations towards sustainability second we address the question whether architecture of the sbsc matters and find that it is a fallacy to believe that the architecture of sbscs can address this fundamental misfit rather our argument reveals that irrespective of its architecture the sbsc is not a suitable tool for achieving strategic change for sustainability beyond incrementalism because it is deeply rooted in the idea of aligning sustainability with established core business routines we propose that the emerging integrative view on corporate sustainability offers a more promising route for scholars and practitioners who are truly concerned with a deep transformation of private firms towards more sustainability

profit maximization returns to scale and measurement error a nonparametric analysis of agricultural production behavior was conducted for each of the contiguous forty eight states for the period 1956 82 under the joint hypothesis of profit maximization convex technology and nonregressive technical change tests were conducted in each state for profit maximization and for constant returns to scale although considerable variability was observed among states measurement errors of magnitudes common in secondary data yielded test results fully consistent with the profit maximization hypothesis in all states with complete output and input data copyright 1992 by mit press

uniform and non uniform second best input taxes we investigate second best input based taxes foragricultural nonpoint pollution control when marketprices are endogenous and production isheterogeneous theoretically we derive the optimalforms of taxes which take account of heterogeneity non uniform taxes and a tax which does not auniform tax empirically we use a multi factor market equilibrium simulation model to determineoptimal tax rates and associated equity effects particularly differences in landowner gains lossesacross a heterogeneous region when market prices areendogenous second best tax policies result inpecuniary externalities that affect existingenvironmental externalities in particular thepecuniary externalities amplify the effect of producerheterogeneity on determination of sub regionaldifferences in tax rates and returns to land particularly for the uniform policy with endogenousprices the uniform tax rate is considerably higherthan any of the non uniform rates and ironically thenon uniform taxes result in less dispersion oflandowner gains across sub regions than the uniformtax

induced innovation in u s agriculture time series direct econometric and nonparametric tests the hypothesis of induced innovation is tested for u s agriculture using a high quality state level panel data set and three disparate testing techniques time series direct econometric and nonparametric we find little support for the hypothesis that conclusion is robust across testing techniques however as with all empirical tests of this hypothesis conducted to date ours focus only on the demand side of the hypothesis the hypothesis could have been rejected simply because the marginal cost of developing and implementing input saving technologies for the relatively expensive inputs is greater than for the relatively cheap inputs copyright 2009 oxford university press

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

short on time intertemporal tensions in business sustainability this inductive study of five firms in alberta s oil sands examines how organizations attend to the intertemporal tensions between the short term and long term that are inherent in business sustainability grounding our insights in organizational responses to the climate change issue we find that firms that juxtapose the short term and long term also confront the tension between business and society these firms are therefore more likely to recognize the complexity of climate change and the need for integrated multidimensional solutions these insights contribute to prior research in business sustainability

patterns of state productivity growth in the u s farm sector linking state and aggregate models this article focuses on agricultural productivity growth at both sector and state levels it does so in a way that preserves the economic integrity of national and state production accounts a model accounting for interstate transactions in farm goods links sectorwide and state specific measures of total factor productivity growth an interesting conclusion is that the smooth persistently positive trend typically observed for farm sector productivity growth masks considerable variation across states and regions the results also indicate that farm sector productivity growth is wholly a function of productivity trends in the individual states interstate shifts in production activity and resource reallocations have had little impact