determinants of off farm work and its effects on farm performance the case of norwegian grain farmers limited attention has been given in the literature to the impact of off farm work on farm performance more knowledge about the determinants of part time farming and its effects on farm performance could help policymakers to introduce better targeted rural development policies the aim in this article is to fill part of the above mentioned gaps by analyzing factors that influence the choices of off farm work by either the farmer alone or jointly by both the farmer and partner and simultaneously examining how off farm work influences farm performance these analyses were based on an unbalanced panel data set from norwegian grain farms during 1991 to 2005 among the determinants of off farm work hours we found that in addition to demographic time trend and some regional effects there was a significant negative effect of farm output on farmers off farm work hours the production function results revealed that off farm work had a positive effect on farm output at first increasing but then decreasing with increase in hours spent in off farm work furthermore our analysis revealed no systematic effect of off farm work on farm technical efficiency

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

farming efficiency and the determinants of multiple job holding by farm operators the extent to which farm families engage inoff farm employment activities is a topic ofcentralimportancetounderstandingthe nan cial well being of farm households the degreeof nancial stress experienced by u s farmfamilies is always a concern to policy makers yet policyconsiderationsoftenignorethesub stantial involvement of most farm householdsin nonfarm labor markets it has been shownthat whentheentirefarmhouseholdisconsid ered the average u s farm household hasa higher total income and much greater assetholdings than is the case for nonfarm house holds see e g goodwin mishra et al pre sented data for 2000 suggesting that when allfarms are considered 92 of total householdincomecamefromnonfarmsources ofcourse such gures depend on how one chooses to de neafarm whenoneconsiderslargeandverylarge commercial farms the share of farm in come in total household income ranges from50 to 75

estimating labor supply and production decisions of self employed farm producers abstract this paper proposes a model oriented towards integrating farm households production and consumption decisions into a unified theoretical and econometric framework it is argued that in contrast with other forms of economic organization farm households utility and profit maximization decisions are not likely to be independent econometric estimation of a farm household model using canadian data suggests that utility and profit maximizing decisions are not indeed independent and moreover that there are significant gains in explanatory power and efficiency by estimating the consumption and production equations jointly

how valuable is on farm work to farmers in this article we estimate a rural household model that allows specific tastes for working on farm and can fit the data as well as the general model of lopez we use two samples that are matched by individual characteristics and adopt the method for matched surveys proposed by arellano and meghir we replicate using french data the empirical finding of elhorst who reports evidence that implicit wages of on farm family labor are significantly below off farm wages we then provide estimates of the lower bounds for preferences for on farm work for males and females which are significant and positive

poverty labor markets and trade liberalization in indonesia abstract we measure the effects of trade liberalization over the period of 1993 2002 on regional poverty levels in 259 indonesian districts and investigate the labor market mechanisms behind these effects the identification strategy relies on combining information on initial regional labor and product market structure with the exogenous tariff reduction schedule over four three year periods we add to the literature on local labor market effects of trade policies by distinguishing between tariffs for output markets and for intermediate inputs and finding that poverty reduced especially in districts with a greater sector exposure to input tariff liberalization among the potential channels behind this effect we show that low skilled work participation and middle skilled wages were more responsive to reductions in import tariffs on intermediate goods than to reductions in import tariffs on final outputs these results point towards increasing firm competitiveness as a driving factor behind the beneficial poverty effects

sequential adoption of site specific technologies and its implications for nitrogen productivity a double selectivity model this paper analyzes the sequential decision to adopt two site specific technologies soil testing and variable rate technology and the impact of adoption on nitrogen productivity the results indicate that while farm location was a key variable influencing adoption of soil testing farm size human capital and innovativeness of farmers had a significant impact on adoption of variable rate technology in four midwestern states a double selectivity model applied to correct for sample selection bias shows that adoption leads to significant gains in nitrogen productivity for farms with below average soil quality but statistically insignificant gains for farms with above average soil quality copyright 2001 oxford university press

modeling supply response in a multiproduct framework the paper models multiproduct supply response in agriculture and tests key assumptions traditionally maintained in supply response studies the technology is approximated by a restricted profit function the properties of the restricted profit function are imposed during estimation the hypothesis that maintains the existence of output price and quantity indexes that satisfy the adding up property is rejected the existence of individual production functions for each output is also rejected unless joint production is permitted the estimates of responsiveness of a particular commodity to changes in own price or prices of competing outputs are likely to be considerably understated

principles for the provision of public goods from agriculture modeling moorland conservation in scotland this paper is concerned with policies for the supply of public environmental goods from the farm sector in particular we characterize the buying of these goods by the public from farmers using the provider gets principle this principle is well established in oecd countries as we demonstrate results from ecological economic modeling of the conservation of heather moorland in northern scotland using this principle are described this model enables us to identify spatially differentiated ecological targets and to calculate the minimum necessary payments needed to achieve these targets

trade liberalization and unemployment theory and evidence from india abstract a widely held view among the public is that trade liberalization increases unemployment using state and industry level unemployment and trade protection data from india we find no evidence of any unemployment increasing effect of trade reforms in fact our state level analysis reveals that urban unemployment declines with trade liberalization in states with flexible labor markets and larger employment shares in net exporter industries moreover our industry level analysis indicates that workers in industries experiencing greater reductions in trade protection were less likely to become unemployed especially in net export industries our results can be explained within a theoretical framework incorporating trade and search generated unemployment and some institutional features of the indian economy

farm income variability and the supply of off farm labor if farmers are risk averse greater farm income variability should increase off farm labor supply this effect is confirmed for a sample of kansas farmers off farm employment of farmers and their spouses is also found to be significantly influenced by farm experience off farm work experience farm size leverage efficiency and farm specific education in addition farm operators and spouses who receive significant income support through government farm programs are less likely to work off the farm this may suggest that policy changes reducing farm income support payments may increase off farm employment of farmers and their spouses

the effects of location and sectoral components of economic growth on poverty evidence from indonesia abstract in this paper we investigate the relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction by differentiating growth and poverty into their sectoral composition and urban rural location using data from indonesia we find that rural services growth reduces poverty in all sectors and locations however urban services growth has the largest effect on poverty in most sectors finally we also find that rural agriculture growth strongly reduces poverty in rural areas the largest contributor to poverty in indonesia this implies that while agriculture growth in rural areas still plays a major role in reducing poverty policies that enable strong growth in the services sector in both urban and rural areas would expedite poverty reduction

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

nonfarm employment agricultural intensification and productivity change empirical findings from uganda this article uses panel data from the living standards measurement study integrated surveys on agriculture for uganda to assess the farm level effects of nonfarm employment on agricultural intensification and productivity change a sample selection model is used to account for both unobserved heterogeneity and potential simultaneity between agricultural production and nonfarm income results show that nonfarm employment can have differential impacts on farm technology intensity and productivity nonfarm income is found to have a positive impact on farm hired labor and improved seed intensity a negative effect on on farm family labor use and no significant impact on fertilizer soil water management and joint use of farm technologies the econometric evidence also indicates that agricultural productivity declines as nonfarm income increases taken together our findings reveal important trade offs between nonfarm employment and income and farm productivity growth under smallholder agriculture the results indicated that targeted policies are required to reduce these potential trade offs between nonfarm employment and agricultural intensification and productivity change

evidence on the role of cash flow for investment abstract recent work in macroeconomics argues that imperfections in capital markets may lead to business cycle fluctuations by propagating relatively modest shocks evidence for such a mechanism also known as the financial accelerator consists largely of firm level studies showing that cash flow is an important predictor of investment but this evidence is often viewed with skepticism because cash flow is also a good indicator of investment opportunities in this paper we develop a framework for estimating the extent to which the predictive power of cash flow can be attributed to its role as a fundamental versus its role in alleviating credit frictions for firms with access to commercial paper and bond markets we find that the perfect capital markets model of investment can fully account for the role of cash flow for firms with only limited access to capital markets as indicated by lack of participation in public debt markets however investment appears to be excessively sensitive to fluctuations in cash flow these results thus clarify the role of cash flow in investment equations and provide support for the existence of a financial accelerator

input demands and inefficiency in u s agriculture markov chain monte carlo mcmc methods are used to estimate a seemingly unrelated regression sur system of input demand functions for u s agriculture our demand functions have flexible forms and allow for nonrandom technical inefficiency concavity constraints are imposed at individual data points and the distributions of measures of relative technical efficiency are constrained to the unit interval results are evaluated in terms of characteristics of the posterior distributions of parameters measures of relative technical efficiency and other nonlinear functions of the parameters

interrelated labor decisions of farm couples a censored response analysis of off farm work farm couples labor market responses are partly the discrete choice of entering the off farm labor market and partly the continuous choice of off farm working hours given entry such a setting is interesting when examining the increasing occurrence of multiple job holdings among farmers in western economies most existing analyses of off farm labor supply only model the decisions of the farmer not the joint decisions of the farm couple this article presents a framework for handling such interrelated discrete continuous choices involving also farm production and household consumption the derived two equation sub model for husband wife s censored labor responses is estimated from a 10 year norwegian panel data for 342 farms the results agree to some extent with earlier studies but are more informative because of the longer panels which allows a more extensive examination of latent heterogeneity and behavioral persistence because it provides cross effects in the spouses labor supplies the results show some interesting differences between how the independent variables influence the labor supply of operator and spouse this is most evident for the cross effects of education children and wage rate overall the results strongly support applying a panel censoring model that accounts for latent heterogeneity in this context

off farm work technical efficiency and rice production risk in taiwan this article investigates the differences in yield production production efficiency and yield risk for farmers both with and without off farm work using a nationwide survey of rice farmers in taiwan we estimate two stochastic production frontier models that accommodate technical inefficiency and production risk simultaneously for farmers both with and without off farm work the stochastic dominance criterion is then applied to compare the differences in the distributions of the estimated technical efficiency and yield risk between groups the empirical results indicate that these two groups of farmers use resources in different ways and off farm work is not necessarily associated with lower technical efficiency for farmers in the lower percentiles of the efficiency distribution those with off farm work are more efficient than their counterparts without off farm work in addition farmers with off farm work face higher production risk and this result is robust for the entire distribution

incentive payments to encourage farmer adoption of water quality protection practices farmers can be encouraged to voluntarily adopt environmentally sound management practices through the use of incentive payments this paper uses both a bivariate probit with sample selection model and a double hurdle model on data from a survey of farmers to predict farmer adoption of the practices as a function of the payment offer the five management practices addressed here are integrated pest management legume crediting manure testing split applications of nitrogen and soil moisture testing also estimated are models that predict the acreage on which these practices would be applied given the decision to accept the incentive payments estimated

cartel overcharges survey and meta analysis abstract the article presents a novel meta regression analysis of the size of cartel overcharges from a sample of more than 800 observations collected from a wide variety of published sources the analysis of a subsample of 395 cartel episodes finds that duration legal environment and organizational characteristics of cartels explain variation in overcharge rates to a greater extent than the type of publication or the method of calculation overcharges tend to be significantly higher for durable international cartels secular decline is observed as antitrust enforcement regimes have stiffened