food quality changes and implications evidence from the rice value chain of bangladesh summary in dhaka the share of the less expensive coarse rice is shown to be rapidly decreasing in rice markets and it thus seems that the role of rice as only a cheap staple food is being redefined the increasing demand for the more expensive varieties is seemingly associated with a more important off farm food sector in particular milling retailing and branding as well as a transformed milling industry we further find that the labor rewards for growing different rice varieties are not significantly different and that farmers do not benefit directly from consumers increased willingness to pay for rice

toward a public choice theory of monopoly regulation its many dimensions from the perspective of market economics this new thrust was consolidated in 1976 by s peltzman who developed a formal market model in which regulations were viewed as commodities brokered via political markets in response to bids and counter bids by those who stood to gain or to lose from specific regulation outcomes the subsequent contribution by becker 1983 added insights and institutional flesh to the stigler peltzman embryo confirming regulation as an integral component of mainstream market economics an important implication of such contributions especially those from the chicago perspective is that regulation for the most part confirms resource efficiency within market process that political markets in the absence of entry barriers are just as effective as are competitive commodity markets in achieving economic efficiency defined within a comparative institutions framework nowhere is this complacency more apparent than in the conclusion drawn by becker 1983 from a detailed formal analysis of competition among pressure groups for political influence

selling at the farmgate or traveling to market using detailed survey data from uganda this article examines whether coffee producers sell to itinerant traders or directly to markets where they can get a higher price but must incur a transport cost we find that selling to the market is more likely when the quantity sold is large and the market is close by wealthy farmers are less likely to sell to the market possibly because the shadow value of their time is higher but if they have a large quantity of coffee for sale they are more likely to sell it to the market they are also more likely to travel to a distant market these findings are consistent with their better ability to pay for public transportation we find no evidence that the decision to sell at the farmgate is driven by a self control motive

environment health and human capital in this review we discuss three major contributions economists have made to our understanding of the relationship between the environment and individual well being first in explicitly recognizing how optimizing behavior particularly in the form of residential sorting can lead to nonrandom assignment of pollution economists have employed a wide range of quasi experimental techniques to develop causal estimates of the effect of pollution second economic research has placed a considerable focus on the role of avoidance behavior which is an important component for understanding the difference between biological and behavioral effects of pollution and for proper welfare calculations lastly economic research has expanded the focus of analysis beyond traditional health outcomes to include measures of human capital including labor supply productivity and cognition our review of the quasi experimental evidence on this topic suggests that pollution does indeed have a wide range of effects on individual well being even at levels well below current regulatory standards given the importance of health and human capital as an engine for economic growth these findings underscore the role of environmental conditions as an important factor of production jel i12 i31 j24 q51 q53

a household hedonic model of rice traits economic values from farmers in west africa abstract new crop varieties often have been promoted in developing countries based upon superior yield vis a vis locally available varieties this research presents a hedonic price model for upland rice by drawing upon the input characteristics and consumer good characteristics model literature model specification tests determine that a combination of production and consumption characteristics best explains the willingness to pay for new upland rice varieties the household model specification determined that five traits explain the willingness to pay for new rice varieties plant cycle length plant height grain colour elongation swelling and tenderness yield was not a significant explanatory variable of the willingness to pay for seed the implications of this model are two fold first varietal development and promotion must include post harvest characteristics in addition to production traits when determining which varieties to promote for official release secondly non yield production characteristics such as plant height and cycle length are significant factors in producer s assessments of the value of a new variety overall this paper provides an alternative explanation for limited adoption of modern upland rice varieties in west africa varietal evaluation programs have focused too narrowly on yield evaluation and have not promoted varieties with superior non yield characteristics than locally available varieties

food safety as a global public good globalization of the food system increases the shared risks from food safety making it a global public good globally shared food safety risks include microbial pathogens pesticide residues or mycotoxins food safety is addressed as a global public good through improved private sector information institutional innovations such as the sanitary and phytosanitary standards agreement under the world trade organization and trade capacity building to improve food safety in developing country exports although meeting standards for high income consumers motivates trade facilitation there could be large positive spillovers for developing country consumers from such investments

productivity health and inequality in the intrahousehold distribution of food in low income countries a model is formulated incorporating linkages among nutrition labor market productivity health heterogeneity and the intrahousehold distribution of food and work activities in a subsistence economy empirical results based on a sample of households from bangladesh indicate that despite considerable intrahousehold disparities in calorie consumption households are averse to inequality furthermore consistent with the model the results also indicate that both the higher level and greater variance in the calories consumed by men relative to women reflect in part the greater participation by men in activities in which productivity is sensitive to health status copyright 1990 by american economic association

price transmission and trader entry in domestic commodity markets abstract using detailed data from three simultaneous surveys of producers traders and exporters this paper examines the transmission of international coffee prices through the domestic value chain in uganda we find that producer price fluctuations are inconsistent with constant transaction costs we investigate three possible explanations for this finding storage and contango marketing costs that increase with price and trader entry that raises search time we test and reject the storage and marketing costs explanation but we find some evidence of trader entry in response to a rise in export price our findings suggest that small itinerant traders enter in response to an export price increase probably taking advantage of farmers ignorance of the rise in wholesale price

contract farming in staple food chains the case of rice in benin abstract in this paper we analyze the impact of smallholder participation in a contract farming scheme in the rice sector in benin we use data from a cross sectional farm household survey and different propensity score matching estimations to reveal how participation in a contract farming scheme affects smallholder rice production we find that contract farming results in expansion of the rice area intensification of rice production increased commercialization of rice and higher farm gate prices and ultimately contributes to rice output growth and increased income our findings imply that contract farming can contribute to upgrading the rice supply chain and the development of the rice sector in benin promoting and supporting the spread of contract farming schemes in the sector might be an effective way to contribute to reaching the government goals of expanding rice production to become self sufficient and improving rice quality to compete with imported rice while there is a large empirical literature on contract farming in high value and commodity export sectors studies on contract farming in staple food sectors are very scarce our results document that contract farming for staple food crops can be sustainable and benefit smallholder farmers which is against theoretical expectations that contracting for staple food crops is not feasible because of contract enforcement problems that stem from a low value of produce low storage and transport costs and a larger number of buyers in the chain our study contributes to understanding the role that contract farming might play in the much needed upgrading of domestic and staple food crop sectors in developing countries

estimating the intrahousehold incidence of illness child health and gender inequality in the allocation of time in this paper the authors develop and implement a method for estimating the effects of infant morbidity on the differential allocation of time of family members based on discrete indicators of health and activity participation commonly available in survey data and within the context of a household model in which health is determined endogenously their estimates that take into account the simultaneity of health activity associations indicate that increased levels of infant morbidity significantly exacerbate existing differentials in the accumulation of human capital across teenage boys and girls in indonesia copyright 1990 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

impact of contract farming on income linking small farmers packers and supermarkets in china summary this study compares contract and non contract growers of apples and green onions in shandong province china in order to explore the constraints on participation and the impact of contract farming on income we find little evidence that firms prefer to work with larger farms though all farms in the area are quite small using a heckman selection correction model we find that contract farming raises income even after controlling for observable and unobservable household characteristics these results suggest that contract farming can help raise small farm income though questions remain regarding the number of farmers that can be brought into such schemes 2009 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

arsenic mitigation in bangladesh a household labor market approach rural families in bangladesh one of the poorest countries in the world face financial risks from major illness both from the cost of medical care and from the loss of income associated with reduced labor supply and productivity chronic exposure to arsenic in drinking water has often been associated with the development of skin cancers and internal cancers especially of the bladder liver and lungs and a wide variety of other health conditions such as diabetes respiratory problems cardiovascular diseases hyperpigmentation hypopigmentation and keratosis a condition in which painful nodules grow on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet most of the economic work on arsenic contamination in bangladesh has had an epidemiological focus that has tried to effectively monetize a dose response relation using either a cost of illness or a willingness to pay approach

access pricing and competition abstract in many industries electricity telecommunications railways the network can be described as a natural monopoly a central issue is how to combine the necessary regulation of the network with the organization of competition in activities which use the network as an input and are potentially competitive generation of electricity value added services road transportation in this paper we derive access pricing formulas in the framework of an optimal regulation under incomplete information first we study how access pricing formulas take into account the fixed costs of the network and the incentive constraints of the natural monopoly over the network second we examine the difficulties coming from the accounting impossibility to disentangle costs of the network and costs of the monopoly s competitive goods third the analysis is extended to the cases where governmental transfers are prohibited where the competitors have market power and where competitors are not regulated fourth the possibility some consumers bypass the network is taken into account finally the role of access pricing for inducing the best market structure is assessed the conclusion summarizes our results and suggests avenues of further research

aids treatment and intrahousehold resource allocation children s nutrition and schooling in kenya this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled acquired immunodeficiency syndrome aids treatment and intra household resource allocation children s nutrition and schooling in kenya conducted in late 2003 till present in kenya the study observed the impact of antiretroviral arv medications to human immunodeficiency virus infection hiv or aids on the time allocated to various household tasks by treated hiv positive patients and their household members on the individual level treating adult aids patients with arv treatment results in substantial improvements in the welfare of children living with the patients after nine months of treatment the increases in school attendance are maintained with no significant drop off over the time period of study for boys in particular the increase in hours of attendance is almost exactly equal to the treatment driven decrease in their hours of market labor supply the short term nutritional status of young children in adult patients households improves significantly also within six months after treatment is initiated for the patients not presented separately for boys and girls these gains in nutritional status can be expected to improve the physical and cognitive abilities of children and eventually their post school productivity levels funding for the study derived from the economic and social research council pfizer the world bank yale university s center for interdisciplinary research on aids the national institute of mental health the social science research council and the calderone program at columbia university

consumer demand for rice grain quality and returns to research for quality improvement in southeast asia abundant world rice supply has led to renewed interest in improving grain quality of modem rice varieties implicit prices of grain characteristics are estimated for thailand indonesia and the philippines these prices are used to evaluate rice breeding goals and to estimate returns to research for quality improvement results indicate that the past focus on physical quality improvement was appropriate and future welfare gains are possible from chemical quality improvement returns to quality improvement are substantial and indicate underinvestment in this type of research as asian rice production grew faster than population from 1965 to 1980 the real price of rice declined in world markets and several asian countries flinn and unnevehr greater supply and falling prices have increased concern for rice grain quality improvement in national and international research programs in tropical asia khush in this article the consumer goods characteristics model develo ed bv ladd and suvannunt is used to estimaie thedimplicit prices of rice grain quality characteristics in thailand indonesia and the philippines these estimated implicit prices answer three questions a do observed consumer preferences correspond to measures of quality used to screen material in breeding programs b are consumer preferences similar across countries so that quality improvement can be undertaken at the international level c what are the returns to re

market power and rents in global supply chains market power and competition policy in food supply chains has emerged as an important economic issue in economics and a highly sensitive item on the policy agenda consolidation is taking place in the food industry both in high income countries and in emerging economies but the impact of concentration in global food chains on efficiency and rent distribution is more nuanced and complex than often claimed we review the literature and extend it by developing a model which explicitly takes into account market imperfections and contract enforcement problems in supply chains increased competition benefits farms by improving contract conditions but contract enforcement becomes more complicated

trade standards and poverty evidence from senegal summary in the debate on trade and poverty it is argued that standards act as trade barriers and cause marginalization of the poor this paper quantifies income and poverty effects of high standards trade and integrates labor market effects by using company and household survey data from the vegetable export chain in senegal we find that exports grew sharply despite increasing standards contributing importantly to rural incomes and poverty reduction tightening standards induced a shift from smallholder contract farming to integrated estate production altering the mechanism through which poor households benefit through labor markets instead of product markets

westernization of asian diets and the transformation of food systems implications for research and policy abstract rapid economic and income growth urbanization and globalization are leading to a dramatic shift of asian diets away from staples and increasingly towards livestock and dairy products vegetables and fruit and fats and oils while the diversification of diets away from the traditional dominance of rice with rising incomes is expected and observed current food consumption patterns are showing signs of convergence towards a western diet the diet transition is characterized by increased consumption of wheat temperate fruit and vegetables and high protein and energy dense food globalization and the consequent global interconnectedness of the urban middle class is the driving force behind the convergence of diets the rapid spread of global supermarket chains and fast food restaurants is reinforcing the above trends the growing demand for diet diversity cannot be met solely by the traditional food supply chain it requires the modernisation of the food retail sector and the vertical integration of the food supply chain in effect linking the consumers plate to the farmers plow as a consequence asian agriculture is on an irreversible path leading away from its traditional pre occupation with cereal crop production especially rice towards a production system that is becoming increasingly commercialized and diversified this paper describes the determinants and trends in the diversification and westernization of asian diets implications of the evolving demand trends for food supply and retail systems are presented the paper discusses the prospects for small farmer participation in the emerging food supply system with a particular emphasis on asian rice production systems finally the paper considers emerging challenges for food policy small holder welfare and agricultural research and development priorities

demand for environmental quality information and household response evidence from well water arsenic testing access to information about environmental quality may facilitate low cost preventive measures that protect human health in this paper we study the demand for information about environmental quality and the behavioral response to the information provided with a field experiment conducted in bihar india we estimate the price sensitivity of demand for diagnostic testing of drinking water wells for arsenic of natural origin a serious threat to the health of tens of millions of villagers across south and southeast asia demand is substantial but sensitive to price uptake falls from 68 to 31 of households over our price range rs 10 to rs 50 we further assess how households respond to information regarding the contamination level in their wells about one third of households with unsafe wells switch to a safer water source finally we demonstrate that households that received adverse test outcomes are more likely to selectively forget test results and proactively remove evidence of their wells arsenic status

the social performance and distributional consequences of contract farming an equilibrium analysis of the arachide de bouche program in senegal abstract this paper is an empirical analysis of the impact of a contract farming program in senegal we examine the access of poorer community members to contracts and the effect of the program on the income of participants the program performs very well on both counts participants and nonparticipants are indistinguishable by wealth measures and farmers increase their income substantially by participating in the program we attribute the former to the program s mobilization of local information through its use of village intermediaries permitting the substitution of social collateral for physical collateral and making the program more accessible to the poor

profit efficiency among bangladeshi rice farmers abstract production inefficiency is usually analyzed by its three components technical allocative and scale efficiency in this study we provide a direct measure of production efficiency of the bangladeshi rice farmers using a stochastic profit frontier and inefficiency effects model the data which are for 1996 include seven conventional inputs and several other background factors affecting production of modern or high yielding varieties hyvs of rice spread across 21 villages in three agro ecological regions of bangladesh the results show that there are high levels of inefficiency in modern rice cultivation the mean level of profit efficiency is 77 suggesting that an estimated 23 of the profit is lost due to a combination of technical allocative and scale inefficiency in modern rice production the efficiency differences are explained largely by infrastructure soil fertility experience extension services tenancy and share of non agricultural income

regulating vertically integrated utilities when transfers are costly but revenues are beneficial this paper considers regulating a vertically integratedutility under asymmetric information about efficiency gainsdue to integration the benchmark case benevolentregulation implies a divestiture of a technically efficientintegration unless the cost savings due to integrating aresubstantial this highlights how private information causes adeviation from the standard perfect information framework this result is at odds with the worldwide experience withpublic utilities that remained integrated almost throughoutthe 20th century despite that integration offered meager or nosavings as now becomes evident of course this divergencebetween normative analysis and facts is no surprise for publicchoice indeed a rather mild kind of a leviathan motive regulators dislike transfers to the utility and by symmetry like revenues coupled with the secrecy only integrationoffers due to private information explains why a regulator hasan interest to keep even economically inefficiently integratedfirms integrated this is in line with crew and rowley 1988 that public regulation serves to milk rather than to imposeefficiency

the food system transformation in developing countries a disaggregate demand analysis for fruits and vegetables in vietnam abstract food systems in developing countries are currently undergoing a rapid transformation towards high value products and modern supply chains while supply side aspects of this transformation have been analyzed previously issues of consumer demand have received much less attention this article analyses demand patterns for fresh fruits and vegetables in vietnam using household survey data and a demand systems approach demand for products from modern supply chains particularly supermarkets and non traditional imports is highly income elastic and the income effect is stronger than the impact of prices and supermarket penetration this highlights the importance of considering demand side aspects when projecting future trends our results imply a continued restructuring of the food sector in the further process of economic development

will a shrink make you richer gender differences in the effects of psychotherapy on labour efficiency this paper provides a first theoretical and empirical analysis of the effects of psychotherapy on individual productivity we build a simple model in which a deterioration of mental health endogenously causes a decrease in productivity which is counterbalanced by psychotherapy we test our hypotheses on the british household panel survey data we find that individuals suffering from mental health problems benefit economically from consulting a psychotherapist moreover we find that the returns are higher for men than for women even though women are more likely to seek help

are the poor less well insured evidence on vulnerability to income risk in rural china the authors test how well consumption is insured against income risk in a panel of sampled households in rural china they estimate the risk insurance models by generalized method of moments treating income and household size as endogenous insurance exists for all wealth groups although the hypothesis of perfect insurance is universally rejected those in the poorest wealth decile are the least well insured with 40 percent of an income shock being passed on to current consumption by contrast consumption by the richest third of households is protected from almost 90 percent of an income shock the extent of insurance in a given wealth stratum varies little between poor and nonpoor areas

agrifood industry transformation and small farmers in developing countries summary this article introduces this special issue on the rapid transformation of the agrifood industry in developing countries and its effects on small farmers we review the literature from the late 1980s to the present and find evidence first of food processing then retail transformation and mixed evidence of impacts on small farmers both inclusion particularly with resource providing contracts and exclusion sometimes from scale constraint sometimes from inadequate non land assets the special issue papers contribute to the debate by confirming the mix of cases of inclusion and exclusion the cases are main in horticulture and dairy key hopes for smallholder development

giffen behavior and subsistence consumption this paper provides the first real world evidence of giffen behavior i e upward sloping demand subsidizing the prices of dietary staples for extremely poor households in two provinces of china we find strong evidence of giffen behavior for rice in hunan and weaker evidence for wheat in gansu the data provide new insight into the consumption behavior of the poor who act as though maximizing utility subject to subsistence concerns we find that their elasticity of demand depends significantly and nonlinearly on the severity of their poverty understanding this heterogeneity is important for the effective design of welfare programs for the poor jel d12 012

insuring consumption against illness one of the most sizable and least predictable shocks to economic opportunities in developing countries is major illness we investigate the extent to which families are able to insure consumption against major illness using a unique panel data set from indonesia that combines excellent measures of health status with consumption information we find that there are significant economic costs associated with major illness and that there is very imperfect insurance of consumption over illness episodes these estimates suggest that public disability insurance or subsidies for medical care may improve welfare by providing consumption insurance

supermarkets farm household income and poverty insights from kenya summary the expansion of supermarkets in developing countries may have important implications for poverty and rural development while previous studies have compared farm profits between participants and non participants in supermarket channels wider income effects have hardly been analyzed moreover most existing studies do not account for structural differences between the two groups we address these issues by using endogenous switching regression and building on a survey of vegetable farmers in kenya participation in supermarket channels is associated with a 48 gain in average household income which also contributes to poverty reduction to realize these benefits on a larger scale will require institutional support

a critical comment on niskanen s model niskanen s model has been largely criticized but it still remains a standard explanation of bureaucracy s behaviour in this paper we criticize the monopoly power that niskanen assigns to the bureaucracy a bilateral monopoly between bureaucrats and politicians might be a much more adequate framework for explaining the bureaucracy s behaviour than niskanen s original formulation of a perfect discriminating bureaucracy in a bilateral monopoly model in no case the type of relationship which holds between the sponsor and the bureau leads to an oversupply of output should an excess output occur it would be a consequence of the political decision making mechanisms this result stands in sharp contrast to the niskanen s model but at the same time it is coherent with the fact that when the sponsor introduces control and monitoring mechanisms the sponsor does not pretend to decrease the output but rather to supervise and to reduce the costs of producing the output

food safety issues and fresh food product exports from ldcs fresh food products have a high income elasticity of demand and few traditional trade barriers in high income markets as such they represent an important opportunity for less developed country ldc exporters fresh food product exports account for half of all food and agricultural exports from ldcs to high income countries but these products may be subject to greater food safety risks and potential trade barriers arising from sanitary regulation this paper reviews the challenges and issues facing ldcs in meeting food safety standards for export these issues include a the importance of fresh food product trade by region and the kinds of issues that arise from those products b the role of farm to table approaches and hazard analysis critical control points haccp in ensuring safety c the role of the public sector in ldcs in facilitating trade d the potential role of the sps agreement in resolving disputes and determining equivalency of standards between high and low income countries