conceptual framework for regional competitiveness budd l and hirmis a k 2004 conceptual framework for regional competitiveness regional studies38 1007 1020 the concept of territorial competitiveness has gained ground in academic policy and practitioner circles in particular urban competitiveness has generated a large literature however there is a danger that competitiveness at a territorial level becomes a conceptual chimera the essential problem is that territorially based actors and agencies seek to position and maintain the utility of their regions and subregions by reference to a set of measures and indicators that are conceptually suspect and often empirically weak the degree to which regions compete depends on a manifold set of factors the paper proposes a conceptual framework for regional competitiveness based on combining the competitive advantage of firms and the comparative advantage of a regional economy the conceptual transmission mechanism to regional competitiveness combines liebenstein s theory of x inefficiency and aggl

residential energy demand in oecd countries and the role of irreversible efficiency improvements abstract after undergoing substantial changes during a period of high energy prices household energy demand did not rebound in times of declining energy prices as might have been expected hence other factors such as irreversible improvements in technical efficiency must be understood in order to describe both past and future household energy demand in this paper we consider irreversible efficiency improvements as a major reason for the moderate growth in energy demand after the plummeting of the oil price in 1985 we test different econometric models to take into account efficiency indicators the major conclusions of our investigation are i price elasticities are different for rising and falling prices for the latter they are close to zero implying a low rebound effect in the residential sector ii technical efficiency is an important parameter for describing and forecasting energy demand and iii income elasticities turn out to be higher once we incorporate indicators of technological efficiency in the process of estimating energy demand

making sense of the competitiveness debate the debate over national competitiveness is marked by some basic misperceptions with few exceptions those who use the term have a crude essentially mercantilist view of world trade in which competition among nations is just like competition between corporations not only do the authors and readers of reports on national competitiveness usually not understand comparative advantage they are unaware of the most basic adding up constraints economists however find it hard to believe that seemingly well informed people can really be this naive and assume that there must be more sophisticated ideas lying behind what they say the rationales offered by economists in turn offer false comfort to the would be sophisticates who like the term competitiveness they believe that they have transcended conventional economic theory when the fact is that they have failed to comprehend it in short the actual level of discussion is lower than any of the participants imagines copyright 1996 by oxford university press

upgrading in global value chains lessons from latin american clusters it has been shown that clustering helps local enterprises in industrial districts overcome growth constraints and compete in distant markets in advanced and less developed countries nevertheless recent contributions have stressed that more attention needs to be paid to external linkages and to the role played by global buyers to foster upgrading at cluster levels in this study we contribute to this debate focusing on the analysis of the relationships existing between clustering global value chains upgrading and sectoral patterns of innovation in latin america we find that sectoral specificities matter and influence the mode and the extent of upgrading in clusters integrated in global value chains

the impact of globalisation on different social groups competitiveness social cohesion and spatial segregation in istanbul the main objective of this paper is to explore relations between competitiveness and social cohesion in istanbul it mainly questions whether it is possible to expect a positive change in socio spatial inequalities if increasing competitiveness generates not only international business and high level services but also traditional low cost production activities the findings show that competition in different types of activities has generated large numbers of jobs but has not been able to overcome existing income disparities the increasing income differences however do not mean an increase in socio spatial segmentation since the non market processes and policies related to education gender and the urban land and housing markets have played important roles in the redistribution of different social groups within urban space in addition to the endogenous dynamics of labour markets

exact welfare measurement for producers under uncertainty many useful results have been derived for different characterizations of uncertainty in the theory of the firm for example sandmo batra and ullah pope and kramer blair however the limited literature available on producer welfare measurement under uncertainty pope chavas and just pope and chavas just hueth and schmitz is pessimistic about the possibilities for deriving exact welfare measures from ex ante supply functions the only exception is pope and chavas who derive error bounds for the use of producer s surplus as an approximation for true welfare change that are analogous to willig s bounds for consumer s surplus as an approximation of compensating or equivalent variation however these results are presumably subject to the same shortcomings noted by hausman and amended by haveman gabay and andreoni for willig s error bounds even though compensating or equivalent variation is approximated well a poor approximation of deadweight loss may result pope chavas and just show that the ex ante supply function derived from an uncertainty model is generally not sufficient for determining true welfare change except in the special case of constant absolute risk aversion because decisions depend on the firm s wealth for nonneutral risk preferences a parameter price change induces a wealth effect in addition to an ordinary output effect thus for exact welfare measurement under price uncertainty the unobservable compensated constant expected utility supply function is needed newbery and stiglitz among others have shown that the area above an expected supply function is generally not a valid welfare measure

fuel taxes an important instrument for climate policy abstract this article shows that fuel taxes serve a very important role for the environment and that we risk a backlash of increased emissions if they are abolished fuel taxes have restrained growth in fuel demand and associated carbon emissions although fuel demand is large and growing our analysis shows that it would have been much higher in the absence of domestic fuel taxes people often assert that fuel demand is inelastic but there is strong research evidence showing the opposite the price elasticity is in fact quite high but only in the long run in the short run it may be quite inelastic which has important implications for policy makers had europe not followed a policy of high fuel taxation but had low us taxes then fuel demand would have been twice as large hypothetical transport demand in the whole oecd area is calculated for various tax scenarios and the results show that fuel taxes are the single most powerful climate policy instrument implemented to date yet this fact is not usually given due attention in the debate

replacement of agricultural price supports by area payments in the european union and the effects on pesticide use this article determines the contribution of recent european union agricultural policy reforms on the use of pesticides our theoretical model extends the multioutput generalization of the lichtenberg zilberman damage control technology model developed by chambers and lichtenberg our empirical analysis uses farm level data for a sample of french farms results suggest that price effects on the use of pesticides are always more elastic than area payment effects this indicates that policy reforms consisting of a reduction in price supports in favor of area payments may reduce application of crop protection inputs such policy changes which represent a certain degree of decoupling took place under the 1992 common agricultural policy reforms

climate change and agriculture in developing countries most analysts agree that the poorest countries agricultures are likely to be the most vulnerable to and least capable of adapting to climate change or other environmental disruptions research has only recently begun to assess what the likely impacts of climate change on developing countries agricultures may be how these agricultures might adapt to climate change and how policies might be designed to facilitate adaptation this paper begins with a discussion of what researchers currently believe the impacts of climate change could be on developing country agriculture principally tropical agriculture climate changes are expected to occur from thirty to more than one hundred years in the future these time horizons mean that predictions of the key factors determining impacts and adaptation population income institutions and technology are probably as uncertain as predictions of climate change itself rates of productivity growth and technological adaptation will be critical to future food supplies with or without climate change continuation of the trend of the past forty years could make so abundant that climate change effects would be inconsequential but lower rates of growth could result in population growth outstripping food supplies the second section of this paper addresses the critical issue of predicting the long term trend inmore productivity by building on the substantial knowledge we have about the economic factors determining agricultural innovation and adaptation considering the time horizons and uncertainties involved in climate change the wise policy strategy is to pursue investments that are economically justified whether or not climate change occurs a better understanding of managed ecosystems would improve our understanding of agricultural sustainability as well as climate change impacts and adaptation the third section of this paper outlines an economic approach to modeling managed ecosystems 21 refs less

on the concept of territorial competitiveness sound or misleading in an era of globalisation the issue of territorial competitiveness is of increasingly central importance for regional development policies this paper aims to deal directly with the issue from a theoretical viewpoint in particular examining two related questions more thoroughly the question of the soundness of the concept of territorial competitiveness itself in terms of economic theory and the question of the new foundations on which this competitiveness is based using a cognitive evolutionary type approach

competitiveness indices and developing countries an economic evaluation of the global competitiveness report developing countries policy makers worry about national competitiveness and closely watch indices ranking international competitive performance this paper analyzes from a development economics perspective if competitiveness is a legitimate concern and if the leading indices deserve the attention they get it assesses the best known index the global competitiveness report of the world economic forum and finds deficiencies at several levels its definitions are too broad the approach biased and the methodology flawed many qualitative measures are vague redundant or wrong these weak theoretical and empirical foundations reduce the value of the indices for analytical or policy purposes

spatial heterogeneity contract design and the efficiency of carbon sequestration policies for agriculture abstract in this paper we develop methods to investigate the efficiency of alternative contracts for carbon c sequestration in cropland soils taking into account the spatial heterogeneity of agricultural production systems and the costs of implementing more efficient contracts we describe contracts being proposed for implementation in the united states and other countries that would pay farmers for adoption of specified practices per hectare contracts we also describe more efficient contracts that would pay farmers per tonne of soil c sequestered and we show how to estimate the costs of implementing these more efficient contracts in a case study of a major agricultural region in the united states we confirm that the relative inefficiency of per hectare contracts varies spatially and increases with the degree of spatial heterogeneity the results also show that per hectare contracts are as much as five times more costly than per tonne contracts a degree of inefficiency similar to that found in assessments of command and control industrial emissions regulations measurement costs to implement the per tonne contracts are found to be positively related to spatial heterogeneity but are estimated to be at least an order of magnitude smaller than the efficiency losses of the per hectare contract for reasonable error levels this finding implies that contracting parties could afford to bear a significant cost to implement per tonne contracts and achieve a lower total cost than would be possible with the less efficient per hectare contracts

heterogeneity and distributional form of farm level yields representing farm level crop yield heterogeneity and distributional form is critical for risk and crop insuranceresearch moststudieshaveusedcountydata understatingbothsystematicandrandomvariation comparison of systematic versus random intra county variation is lacking few studies compare the various distributional forms that have been proposed this study utilizes the extensive potential of government farm level crop insurance data results show that systematic intra county variation is surprisingly strong a newly applied reverse lognormal distribution is preferred when county wide variation is removed but the normal distribution fits surprisingly well in the crop insurance relevant percentiles when county wide variation is not removed representing and accounting for both spatial and temporal heterogeneity is a major problem in agricultural economics and policy analysis due to the fact that most data are aggregated to at least the county level e g gardner and kramer 1986 just and pope 1999 both systematic and random components of crop yields are major factors in intra county farm level heterogeneity that are critical for modeling risk producer behavior and crop insurance participation most studies have either used aggregate at least county level data or relied on relatively few farm level observations the former makes results primarily illustrative while the latter limits statistical significance this article characterizes intra county crop yield heterogeneity both spatially and temporally with the most extensive dataset utilized to date and evaluates a broader set of parametric distributional possibilities than previously

efficiency of second generation biofuel crop subsidy schemes spatial heterogeneity and policy design policy schemes that aim to stimulate the cultivation of biofuel crops typically ignore the spatial heterogeneity in costs and benefits associated with their production because of spatial heterogeneity in biophysical and current agricultural production factors potential gains from stimulating biofuel crops are non uniformly distributed across space this paper explores implications of this type of heterogeneity for the net benefits associated with different subsidy schemes we present a simple framework based on discounted cash flows to assess potential gains from introducing the notion of heterogeneity into stimulation schemes we show that agricultural subsidy spending can be reduced in a pareto efficient way and simultaneously improve the total stimulation potential of biofuel policies when schemes 1 are production based instead of land based 2 accommodate differences in opportunity costs and 3 target sites where subsidies for conventional agricultural land use types are high these results are robust for a range of different bioenergy prices and the relative gains of addressing these key elements in policy compared to conventional stimulation schemes increase with lower bioenergy prices and are largest when low prices coincide with high emission reduction ambitions

towards sustainability of energy systems a primer on how to apply the concept of energy services to identify necessary trends and policies virtually all goods and services that characterize modern societies welfare depend on the provision of commercial energy the core objective of this paper is to identify necessary changes in trends for achieving a transition towards more sustainable energy systems and development paths the major conclusions of this analysis are i a rigorous rethinking process has to take place to identify which level of energy services per capita lead to enhancing human welfare and quality of life ii a significant increase in energy conversion efficiency has to be triggered to finally provide energy services with far less input of energy than today iii a continuous increase in the share of renewable energy sources and other low emission options has to be brought about iv however as history has shown this process of technological learning has to be accompanied by proper energy price and regulatory policies otherwise it is very likely that energy conservation gains due to technical efficiency improvements will be outweighed again by increases in energy service demand and straightforward energy consumption and co 2 emissions

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

environmental and distributional impacts of conservation targeting strategies abstract resource purchasing funds have become a major tool for environmental protection and resource conservation these funds use various strategies to target resources for conservation the choice of which may lead to striking differences in environmental performance this paper develops an analytical framework to analyze the impact of alternative targeting strategies on different interest groups including consumers producers labor and environmentalists we show that ignoring the output price effect of purchasing funds reduces environmental gain and in some cases may make a purchasing fund counterproductive and we argue that the optimal design of targeting criteria must consider the price feedback effect

testing for nonnormality in farm net returns cash returns from farming are expected to be nonnormally distributed under a wide range of joint price yield distributions adequate testing for such nonnormality requires use of proper whitening procedures as well as appropriate statistics with tests and sample sizes commonly employed a false imputation of normality often will be made however positive correlation between skewness and kurtosis reduces the likelihood of associated decision errors these results are illustrated with data for

are crop yields normally distributed a reexamination this article demonstrates that normality test procedures that include individual detrending of short term panel data can severely reduce the power of normality tests and strongly bias normality tests in a type ii direction an alternative error component implicit detrending procedure is suggested that demonstrates higher power for the distributions examined both procedures are applied to a large data set with normality of yield residuals being rejected assuming normality is shown to reduce potential premium rates for a large number of producers in an existing crop insurance product

crop insurance acreage decisions and nonpoint source pollution the redirection of farm policy in the 1996 farm bill has generated much interest in seeking environmentally friendly and economically viable ways to protect farm income agricultural insurance has been suggested as such an instrument this article estimates the effect of crop insurance on crop mix and the resulting change in chemical use in the central nebraska basin providing corn insurance will shift land from hay and pasture to corn which will increase chemical use at the extensive margin this extensive margin effect dominates the effect of crop insurance on the application rate leading to an increase in total chemical use

measuring the national competitiveness of southeast asian countries national competitiveness is a measure of the relative ability of a nation to create and maintain an environment in which enterprises can compete so that the level of prosperity can be improved this paper proposes a methodology for measuring the national competitiveness and uses the 10 southeast asian countries for illustration the basic idea is to deconstruct the complicated concept of national competitiveness to measurable criteria the observations data on the criteria are then aggregated according to their importance to obtain an index of national competitiveness for data collected from questionnaire surveys a calibration technique has been devised to alleviate bias due to personal prejudice in data aggregation the importance is expressed by both a priori weights and a posteriori weights these two types of weights consistently show that singapore malaysia and thailand have the highest national competitiveness while myanmar cambodia and laos are the least competitive countries the performance of each country in every criteria measured also provides directions for these countries to make improvements and for investors to allocate resources

an almost ideal supply system estimate of us energy substitution abstract this paper introduces a linear almost ideal supply system laiss model to examine aggregate us energy demand based on the almost ideal demand system aids model the laiss model is a flexible functional form for imposing and testing properties of demand for the inputs of production own and cross price elasticities are derived for aggregate capital labor and energy and compared to the translog cost function both models reduce to estimating a system of input share equations on input prices and output with output normalized by the stone s input price index in the laiss model results indicate that all inputs are substitutes in both models but elasticities differ a log likelihood dominance criterion shows that the laiss model dominates the translog cost function for this dataset results suggest that inputs are substitutes and that an energy import tariff would increase demand for labor and capital

environmental costing for agriculture will it be standard fare in the farm bill of 2000 this paper starts by discussing and estimating the environmental costs of agricultural production the author uses a separate benefit transfer intended to expose methodological issues to construct each cost category of agricultures s external effects this is followed by a simple description of the framework for production decisions that account for environmental costs included are attribution of environmental externalities and measurement of environmental costs finally the author discusses research implications of environmental costing including tqm and environmental policy analyses environmental services and their unit values strategies for measuring environmental values and prognosis for agricultural adders 42 refs 1 fig 1 tab

nonparametric estimation of crop yield distributions implications for rating group risk crop insurance contracts we use nonparametric density estimation procedures to evaluate county level crop yield distributions implications for rating area yield crop insurance contracts are discussed the procedures developed are used to measure yield risk and calculate insurance premium rates for wheat and barley in the 1995 96 group risk program

u s soybean yields estimation and forecasting with nonsymmetric disturbances national average soybean yields are skewed with a relatively high chance of low yields maximum likelihood estimates support this hypothesis revised forecasts which account for skewed yields are positioned higher than forecasts based on the illusion of a symmetric distribution also yield instability has been increasing steadily the standard deviation of the soybean yield distribution is twenty five percent higher in the late 1980s than it was in the early 1970s

implications of heterogeneity for theory and practice in production economics virtually all products of the agricultural economics profession rest upon theory and measurement of agricultural production yet some of the most basic theoretical propositions are rejected by a predominance of empirical production analyses shumway for example monotonicity homogeneity convexity and symmetry hereafter the standard properties implied by theory are often rejected there are two views of this conflict a the theory is inappropriate or b empirical methods and or data are flawed in the latter case theory may be useful for measuring behavior and performing policy analysis in the former case the theory must be regarded as not useful and or in need of substantive modification

refutable implications of the firm model under risk curvature properties of the indirect utility function are shown to be necessary and sufficient for refutable behavioural postulates in the form of comparative static results reciprocity relations and restrictions on output and input responses for firm models under risk these postulates are independent of onerous restrictions on risk preference technology or random variable distribution as an exposition the complete set of refutable implications for a multi output firm operating under price risk is derived at the data means these implications are not rejected when they are tested using firm level data but both risk neutrality and constant absolute risk aversion are rejected at individual observations one implication is rejected almost as frequently as risk neutrality and constant absolute risk aversion

interdependencies between transport fuel demand efficiency and quality an application to austria abstract this paper focuses on the interdependencies between technical efficiencies and energy demand which are often either treated in isolation or do not get the sufficient attention in the literature more precisely this paper uses technical efficiencies as one crucial determinant of energy demand in order to integrate at least two issues that are usually investigated separately from each other the rebound effect resulting from improved technical efficiencies and the asymmetry of energy demand in this regard our paper sets out a theoretical framework which has the following implications higher efficiency increases service demand first order rebound low fuel prices and higher efficiency increases the demand for quality second order which in turn increases service demand further third order ceteris paribus energy price shocks should increase scrapping rates fuel prices direct the rd those on engine efficiency are irreversible which has the consequence that energy price elasticities depend on the history of energy prices rather than being asymmetrical derived implications are subsequently tested on austrian data in particular the purchasing decision diesel versus gasoline powered cars allows to refute the myth that consumers apply high implicit rates for discounting the future benefit from efficient cars

homogeneity and supply supply functions in the ubiquitous gorman class are examined for their homogeneity properties homogeneity places surprisingly strong restrictions on functional forms these forms facilitate testing of aggregability given homogeneity or homogeneity given aggregability or testing both

network governance for competitiveness the role of policy networks in the economic performance of settlements in the izmir region some cities and regions grow faster than others and they increase their relative shares in the global economy the literature offers a wide list of factors of competitiveness most of which define individual capacities of cities recently however there has been an increasing focus on the importance of network governance and the policy networks formed between different cities this paper examines the importance of policy networks compared with other widely recognised factors of competitiveness to the economic performance of settlements in the izmir region and investigates the importance of classical competitiveness indicators and network relations on their economic performance with the use of econometric methods in conclusion it discusses the importance of policy networks in administrative reform processes and economic development policies

adverse selection in crop insurance actuarial and asymmetric information incentives adverse selection is often blamed for crop insurance indemnities exceeding premiums plus subsidies however nationwide empirical evidence has been lacking or based on inadequate county level data this article uses nationwide farm level data on corn and soybeans to decompose incentives for participation in u s multiple peril crop insurance into a risk aversion incentive the conventional justification for insurance an actuarial or subsidy incentive reflecting government subsidization and an asymmetric information incentive which reflects farmers information advantage results show that the risk aversion incentive is small farmers participate in crop insurance primarily to receive the subsidy or because of adverse selection possibilities

joint risk preference technology estimation with a primal system applied studies of the firm in a risky environment have concentrated either on the firm s technology or on its risk preferences these models result in generally inconsistent and inefficient parameter estimates a primal model is proposed which allows a firm s preferences and technology to be estimated jointly in the presence of risk the model is applied to iowa corn production and estimated technology parameters are compared with those from other approaches modest risk aversion leads to inelastic even backbending per acre supplies and input demands yield heteroskedasticity in inputs leads to supply heteroskedasticity in prices especially for risk neutral firms

the role of efficiency improvements vs price effects for modeling passenger car transport demand and energy demand lessons from european countries abstract the objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of changes in fuel prices and fuel intensity i e liters of fuel used per 100 kilometers on overall fuel gasoline and diesel consumption and on the demand for vehicle km driven in car passenger transport this is important for deriving effective policy portfolios consisting of fuel taxes and technical standards such as fuel intensity mandates or specific co 2 emission limits to extract these impacts we apply cointegration analyses to six european countries and their aggregate over the period 1970 2007 we consider the impact of fuel prices household income and fuel intensity on fuel consumption furthermore we investigate how changes in fuel prices and fuel intensity interact analyzing the rebound effect due to lower fuel intensity and due to the switch to diesel because we find a high rebound effect with 44 more km driven if fuel intensity is improved 100 the major conclusion of our analysis for policy makers is that technical standards as the only policy instrument will have limited success rather we recommend increased fuel taxes along with fuel intensity standards so that the taxes compensate for the rebound due to the standards

from microlevel decisions to landscape changes an assessment of agricultural conservation policies the growth in conservation programs has created a need for modeling frameworks capable of measuring microlevel behavioral responses and macrolevel landscape changes this paper presents an empirical model that predicts farmers production practices and the resulting levels of agricultural runoffs at more than 42 000 agricultural sites in the upper mississippi river basin under alternative conservation policies results suggest that payments for conservation tillage and crop rotations increase the use of these conservation practices however the acreage response is inelastic and the programs are not likely to be cost effective on their own for addressing hypoxia problem in the gulf of mexico

a virtually ideal production system specifying and estimating the vips model we characterize the class of profit functions termed vips for virtually ideal production system vips is consistent with all derived demands being linear in numeric functions of output prices a flexible but parsimonious version of the vips profit function is specified and the implied supply response system is estimated using aggregate u s agricultural data

does the law of supply hold under uncertainty a widely held conjecture of economists is that the quantity supplied by pricetaking producers increases with an increase in output price law of supply this cornerstone of economics has been proven repeatedly with many techniques under many different sets of assumptions and is found in all textbooks on principles of economics most of these proofs assume full certainty of production relationships single product technology and or risk neutrality in a world of uncertainty one of the most crucial aspects of economic behaviour is risk aversion with risk aversion diversification is a basic response to economic uncertainty thus models of producer behaviour under uncertainty need to consider multioutput technology where diversification is a possibility this paper points out that the widely held law of supply may fail when these generalities risky multioutput production with risk aversion are introduced simultaneously where diversification is also affected by a capacity constraint in production conditions are developed under which the law fails holds the peculiar result occurs because increasing price can increase profit risk more than proportionally while expected profit increases proportionally this relative increase in risk causes a tendency to shift production capacity into an alternative activity the first section introduces a model of production under uncertainty the second section analyses the behaviour of supply in the special case of additive production risk without price risk the third section shows that similar problems can be encountered with other cases as well empirical examples which demonstrate relevance of the results are also given

analysing gasoline demand elasticities a survey this paper is a survey of studies on gasoline demand although there are very many dxerent studies in this eld which sometimes appear to arrive at contradictory results we find that with proper stratification of studies by model and data type much of the contict turns to consensus in this survey we classtfy studies by data type and by ten d erent categories of model and with the exception of estimates on seasonal data which tend to be unstable and of certain inappropriate model formulations we find a fair degree of agreement concerning average short run and even long run income and price elasticities

potential environmental impacts of increased reliance on corn based bioenergy this paper integrates economic and physical models to assess a how increases in agricultural commodity prices driven by ethanol production and other factors affect land use and cropping systems in the us midwest and b how the changes in land use and cropping systems in turn affect environmental quality in the region the empirical framework includes a set of econometric models that predict land conversion crop choices and crop rotations at the parcel level based on commodity prices land quality climate conditions and other physical characteristics at the sites the predictions are then combined with site specific environmental production functions to determine the effect of rising commodity prices on nitrate runoff and leaching soil water and wind erosion and carbon sequestration results suggest that increasing commodity prices will result in widespread conversions of non cropland to cropland fifty percent of the region s pasture and range land will be converted to cropland with 6 corn rising commodity prices will also result in dramatic changes in crop mix and rotation systems in the midwest with 6 corn the total acreage of corn will increase by 23 and 40 in the corn belt and lake states respectively the acreage of continuous corn will increase considerably in both regions as well these changes in land use and crop mix will have a large impact on agricultural pollution approaches to mitigating the environmental impacts are discussed

risk aversion and yield uncertainty in duality models of production a mean variance approach a duality model of production is developed that endogenizes stochastic output decisions under risk aversion the model incorporates both yield and price uncertainty and nonlinear mean variance risk preferences this permits modeling of the firm s expected output supply and input demand decisions under risk and also in principle the firm s output variance decisions the duality model is tractable for empirical research

ecosystem services and agriculture cultivating agricultural ecosystems for diverse benefits crop and rangelands are over 25 of the earth s land area and they are expanding agricultural ecosystems rely on a suite of supporting ecosystem services to provide food fiber and fuel as well as a range of accompanying but non marketed ecosystem services es ecosystem services from agriculture include regulation of water and climate systems aesthetic and cultural services as well as enhanced supporting services such as soil fertility many of these es are appreciated by people but they lack markets so they lack the incentives for provision that come with prices for public policy decisions to take them into account non market valuation techniques are needed such as travel cost contingent valuation hedonic valuation and cost based or factor income approaches this article offers an overview of es from agriculture and non market valuation methods as it introduces the articles in this special section on ecosystem services and agriculture understanding how ecological functions generate es is fundamental to management but so too is understanding how humans perceive and value those services research is required both to design cost effective incentives to provide es and to measure which kinds of es could provide the greatest overall welfare benefits to society agricultural ecosystems offer newly recognized potential to deliver more diverse ecosystem services and mitigate the level of past ecosystem disservices this special section of ecological economics conveys both how these are becoming possible and the challenges to science and public policy design of turning that potential into reality

how do flexible labour markets really work the role of profitability in influencing unemployment this paper assesses the theoretical justifications available for policies of flexible labour markets flms in reducing the level of unemployment in developed economies it empirically assesses the oecd s rationalisation of policy linking profitability to investment and job creation in four country cases new capital investment is found to be significant for unemployment in all cases but it is not found to be a consequence of the mechanistic achievement of normal profits without an empirically supported mechanism for how flms reduce unemployment the policy is open to the accusation of being no more than a political tool for altering distribution without concern for the wider socio economic consequences copyright the author 2008 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

econometric process models for integrated assessment of agricultural production systems this article develops the conceptual and empirical basis for a class of empirical economic production models that can be linked to site specific biophysical models for use in integrated assessment research site specific data are used to estimate econometric production models and these data and models are then incorporated into a simulation model that represents the decision making process of the farmer as a sequence of discrete and continuous land use and input use decisions an econometric process model of the dryland grain production system of the northern plains demonstrates the capabilities of this type of model to simulate decision making both within and outside the range of observed data copyright 2001 oxford university press

higher growth through the blue ocean strategy implications for economic policy a b s t r a c t higher growth is a key goal of companies governments and societies economic policies often attempt to attain this goal by targeting companies of certain sizes that operate in specific industries and focus on a specific business activity this approach to policy making has considerable shortcomings and seems to be less than fully effective in increasing economic growth we suggest a new approach to policy making that stems directly from the entrepreneurial perspective this approach examines a successful business strategy framework the blue ocean strategy to discover conditions for high growth we test the propositions on empirical data for two cases of successful high growth business namely slovenian gazelles and amazon com the results reveal a gap between the macro level of economic policy making to achieve higher growth and the micro level of business growth the findings call for a change in the focus of economic policies on specific size companies industries and business activities to intraindus try cooperation collaboration between companies of different sizes value innovation and creation of uncontested markets

designing frameworks to deliver unknown information to support market based instruments this article reports on an australian auction to procure multiple environmental outcomes ecotender ecotender uses a catchment modelling framework cmf to estimate the impact landholder actions have on carbon terrestrial biodiversity aquatic function water quality and quantity and saline land area this framework solves the problem of linking paddock scale land use and management to catchment scale environmental outcomes this is the first time a market based instrument has been fully integrated from desk to field with a biophysical model for the purchase of multiple environmental outcomes a multiple outcome auction provides several new economic and scientific challenges this article discusses the ecotender approach to incorporating agency preferences modeling the joint production of environmental outcomes and reporting environmental scores results indicate that linking ecotender to the carbon market reduced the cost of procuring the environmental goods by 26 further preliminary estimates show that the environmental gains from scoring the joint production of multiple outcomes are between 30 and 50 to the agency

integration of environmental concerns into agricultural policies of industrial and developing countries abstract the question which this paper addresses concerns the types of environmental and resource related agricultural policy adjustments that could properly address the costs of resource degradation and increase long term prospects for sustainable development various public policy approaches e g polluter pays principle fiscal measures regulations etc are discussed and analyzed with regard to their environmental and resource impacts the paper provides illustrative experiences from industrial and developing nations and where possible lessons and insights of relevance to policy making in developing countries are sought

aggregation of price risk over commodities an economic index number approach this article extends the economic theory of index numbers to the aggregation of price risk over commodities in production superlative indexes of aggregate price risk are related to tornqvist and fisher type output quantity indexes an application to major crops in manitoba illustrates the empirical importance of the analysis

resource management under production and output price uncertainty implications for environmental policy various environmental policies have been proposed to control agricultural runoff of nutrients and pesticides the impacts of these policies on input use are complicated because of the various sources of uncertainty farmers face and the precise nature of farmers risk attitude a risk averse farmer s response to changed profit input and output taxes under output price and production uncertainty is examined the impact of these policies on input use depends on the form of production uncertainty risk input relationships risk attitudes and degrees of output price and production uncertainty these results have implications for the design and implementation of environmental and other production related policies copyright 2002 oxford university press

ranking crop yield models using out of sample likelihood functions there has been considerable debate regarding which probability distribution best represents crop yields this study ranks six yield densities based on their out of sample forecasting performance the forecasting ability for each density was ranked according to its likelihood function value when observed at out of sample observations results show that a semiparametric model offered by goodwin and ker best forecasts county average yields

impacts of climate policy on the competitiveness of canadian industry how big and how to mitigate competitiveness concerns have been at the forefront of climate policy debates in canada particularly as a result of its high energy intensity and significant exposure to international markets this paper uses a dynamic computable general equilibrium model to assess the likely impacts on sectoral competitiveness that would accompany efforts to meet greenhouse gas mitigation targets that have been set by the canadian government additionally it evaluates several design mechanisms that could be used to reduce the negative competiveness impacts associated with adoption of domestic climate policies the analysis suggests that several sectors would likely face significant competiveness challenges under a reference scenario in which permits are given to emitters in lump sum however it finds that competiveness impacts can be minimized by using output based recycling of permits or by using border tax adjustments

competitiveness and industrial policy from rationalities of failure towards the ability to evolve this article elaborates a dynamic rationale of industrial policy focusing on how to strengthen the socio economic system s ability to evolve i e how to achieve high real income together with qualitative change it highlights that the ubiquitous rationalities of failure be it of markets governments or systems are rooted in a peculiar habit of accepting hypothetical perfect states as normative benchmarks in contrast a dynamic logic of intervention should start from the question what the system aims to accomplish combining the structuralist ontology of micro meso and macro with the functional principles of evolutionary change the paper proposes a general typology of economic policies based on their respective contributions to the system s ability to evolve

local economic policies as determinants of the local business climate empirical results from a cross section analysis among east german municipalities blume l 2006 local economic policies as determinants of the local business climate empirical results from a cross section analysis among east german municipalities regional studies 40 321 333 for the period after 1995 there is empirical evidence that differences in east german local economic policies explain a significant part of the variation in the local business climate a cross section analysis among 92 municipalities shows that successful economic policies consisted of a balanced mix of traditional instruments consulting real estate management investment in infrastructure and modern competition oriented activities city marketing new public management regional cooperation and public private partnerships at the current level of intergovernmental competition among east german municipalities there are no signs of a ruinous race in subsidies discriminating subsidies even have a negative effect on the business climate in cities that have implemented these blume l 2006 les politiques

the industrial policy of competitiveness a review of recent developments in the uk the article reviews the recent developments in uk competitiveness policy and explores its relationship with industrial policy including regional industrial policy it argues that competitiveness is virtually synonymous with productivity growth but that while four competitiveness white papers of the 1990s potentially broadened the scope of uk industrial policy the shift from sectoral to horizontal measures has in fact helped much reduce the content of this policy the article reviews current industrial policy and expenditure distinguishing between the areas of science and technology small firms and regional policy it argues that industrial policy is now a part of competitiveness policy being closely aligned to the efficiency role of government it finds that while policy has converged on a narrower set of measures the traditional boundaries between the science and technology small firm and regional policy components have become much less clear cut

embryonic knowledge based clusters and cities the case of biotechnology in scotland the cluster concept has been promoted in recent years as a panacea for economic development both locally and nationally one source of theoretical and empirical ambiguity in the concept is related to the spatial processes underpinning cluster development and to the relationship between cities and clusters in particular this paper examines the case of the biotechnology cluster in scottish cities with particular reference to glasgow and edinburgh the promotion of a biotechnology cluster has become a priority for scotland s economic development strategy because of its potential role in the knowledge driven economy the paper examines the major locational dynamics affecting biotechnology in scotland and interrogates the balance between the major forces driving the development of biotechnology firms in their urban location it concludes that the importance of cities to cluster growth lies mainly in the size and diversity of their labour markets in the presence of key research institutions and public sect

the lechatelier principle under production uncertainty under production uncertainty it is shown that the lechatelier principle holds for the derived demand of the ith factor if it is technically complementary competing with the riskincreasing risk reducing quasi fixed input and absolute risk aversion is decreasing in addition the lechatelier principle for the output supply function holds if the quasi fixed factor is an inferior normal and risk increasing risk reducing input and partial risk aversion is increasing

the incidence of agricultural policies abstract a general equilibrium model is used to analyze agricultural policy incidence in the presence of distortionary income taxation the incidence of lump sum transfers to farmers supply control through input retirement and production subsidies are considered partial equilibrium incidence calculations are shown to systematically overstate the benefits farmers receive from farm programs kaldor s compensation test is used to judge the relative efficiency inefficiency of alternative farm programs at the margin supply control through input retirement may dominate decoupled lump sum transfers if the tax system is very inefficient and subsidy payments are high

uncertainty duality and perversity an empirical test of the schultz baron hypothesis it has been suggested that supply curves may be negatively sloped under conditions of output price uncertainty and risk aversion if the effect of an increase in expected price is offset by the effect of an associated increase in uncertainty risk this hypothesis first articulated by schultz and given a more rigorous theoretical exposition by baron is tested using aggregate time series data to estimate a stochastic model of us agriculture based on a generalized leontief certainty equivalent profit function evidence of risk aversion and a positive correlation between mean output price and its variance are found however these factors are not strong enough to generate perversity thus the own price elasticity of supply of agricultural output is found to be positive with a value of 0 25 although no evidence of perversity is found the empirical results suggest that ignoring price uncertainty may bias estimates of aggregate supply response downwards by between 5 and 47 as well as testing the schultz

public infrastructure and productivity growth in greek agriculture recent research has focused on the effect of public infrastructure on economic performance in this paper a model of greek agriculture s technology and behaviour is constructed based on the dual cost function framework the model provides a decomposition of productivity growth into the components technical change returns to scale and public infrastructure the empirical estimates indicate that public infrastructure investment provides a significant return to agriculture and augments productivity growth over the period 1960 1995 the impact of public infrastructure on productivity growth in livestock and crop production is found to be positive although it has been declining since the late 1970s these results strongly suggest that a decline in public infrastructure investment can partly explain the observed decline in the productivity growth of greek agriculture in the 1980s

interactions between agricultural and environmental policies a conceptual framework agricultural policy has a well documented impact on farmers production decisions and those decisions land water and agricultural chemical use may in turn affect the environment there is a public perception that existing agricultural policies are linked to agricultural pollution as exemplified by the conclusions of the recent national research council report alternative agriculture 1989 there is only limited theoretical or empirical research addressing these linkages however this paper develops a conceptual framework that can be used to analyze the interactions between agricultural and environmental policies and pollution this framework integrates physical and economic models at a disaggregate level necessary to capture the heterogeneity of the physical environment and the economic behavior of farmers following e hochman and d zilberman 1978 the disaggregate units can be statistically aggregated to a level useful for policy analysis agricultural and environmental policies can be categorized according to their effects on the intensive and extensive margins combining the different policy instruments with the microeconomic heterogeneity we find that existing agricultural and environmental policies can have either positive or negative effects of nonpoint source pollution to infer an aggregate effect requires data that do not currently exist our framework provides a basis for empirical investigations of these effects given adequate data moreover we find that agricultural policy instruments can be used to mitigate pollution if used appropriately