a novel inclusion of intermittent generation resources in long term energy auctions abstract long term energy auctions are positioning as a valuable tool in order to attract new investments into power systems especially in latin american countries where emergent economies characteristics and their correspondent risks are usually present even though the focus of these auctions is the long term there are short term issues involved which actual auction designs fail to include resulting in an energy allocation that is not necessarily optimal for the system a condition which becomes more evident in the presence of intermittent renewable technologies a novel mechanism is formulated to obtain the optimal allocation in long term energy auctions considering short term generation profiles from both intermittent and conventional base load technologies and also their risk aversions the proposed mechanism is developed and simulations are made for some scenarios in the chilean power market with different levels of renewable penetration significant cost savings are achieved for the final consumers in relation to energy purchases in comparison with a mechanism that follows the demand profile as more renewable intermittent capacity enters the power system it is evident the need for changes in the energy auctions allocation mechanisms including elements to exploit the synergies among participants in the short term

the impact of integrated aquaculture agriculture on small scale farms in southern malawi sustainable agricultural intensification is an urgent challenge for sub saharan africa one potential solution is to rely on local farmers knowledge for improved management of diverse on farm resources and integration among various farm enterprises in this article we analyze the farm level impact of one recent example namely the integrated aquaculture agriculture iaa technologies that have been developed and disseminated in a participatory manner in malawi based on a 2004 survey of 315 respondents 166 adopters and 149 nonadopters we test the hypothesis that adoption of iaa is associated with improved farm productivity and more efficient use of resources estimating a technical inefficiency function shows that iaa farms were significantly more efficient compared to nonadopters iaa farms also had higher total factor productivity higher farm income per hectare and higher returns to family labor

the economic impact of genetically modified cotton on south african smallholders yield profit and health effects abstract results of a large scale survey of resource poor smallholder cotton farmers in south africa over three years conclusively show that adopters of bt cotton have benefited in terms of higher yields lower pesticide use less labour for pesticide application and substantially higher gross margins per hectare these benefits were clearly related to the technology and not to preferential adoption by farmers who were already highly efficient the smallest producers are shown to have benefited from adoption of the bt variety as much as if not more than larger producers moreover evidence from hospital records suggests a link between declining pesticide poisonings and adoption of the bt variety

long term contract auctions and market power in regulated power industries a number of countries with oligopolistic power industries have used marginal cost pricing to set the price of energy for small customers this course of action however does not necessarily ensure an efficient outcome when competition is imperfect the purpose of this paper is to study how the auction of long term contracts could reduce market power we do so in a two firm two technology linear cost static model where demand is summarized by a price inelastic load curve in this context we show that the larger the proportion of total demand auctioned in advance the lower are both the contract and the average spot price of energy

auction approaches of long term contracts to ensure generation investment in electricity markets lessons from the brazilian and chilean experiences the implementation of auctions of long term electricity contracts is arising as an alternative to ensure generation investment and therefore achieve a reliable electricity supply the aim is to reconcile generation adequacy with efficient energy purchase correct risk allocation among investors and consumers and the politico economic environment of the country in this paper a generic proposal for a long term electricity contracts approach is made including practical design concepts for implementation this proposal is empirically derived from the auctions implemented in brazil and chile during the last 6 years the study is focused on practices and lessons which are especially useful for regulators and policy makers that want to facilitate the financing of new desirable power plants in risky environments and also efficiently allocate supply contracts among investors at competitive prices although this mechanism is generally seen as a significant improvement in market regulation there are questions and concerns on auction performance that require careful design and which are identified in this paper in addition the experiences and proposal described can serve to derive further mechanisms in order to promote the entrance of particular generation technologies e g renewables in the developed world and therefore achieve a clean electricity supply

term limits and electoral accountability abstract periodic elections are the main instrument through which voters can hold politicians accountable from this perspective term limits which restrict voters ability to reward politicians with re election appear counterproductive we show that despite the disciplining effect of elections term limits can be ex ante welfare improving from the perspective of voters by reducing the value of holding office term limits can induce politicians to implement policies that are closer to their private preferences such truthful behavior by incumbents in turn results in better screening of incumbents we characterize under which circumstances two term or even longer term limits are the optimal institution for voters

fiscal policy outcomes and electoral accountability in american states clear fiscal policy effects appear in american state gubernatorial and legislative elections between 1968 and 1992 independent of the effects of incumbency coattails term limits and macroeconomic conditions the results show that accountability is generally stronger following a period of unified party control than under divided government voter reactions to taxes and spending relative to the state economy are conditional on expectations which differ for each party net of these expectations republican gubernatorial candidates lose votes if their party is responsible for unanticipated increases in the size of the state budget democrats do not and indeed may be rewarded for small increases independent of this the incumbent governor s party is punished in legislative elections for failing to maintain fiscal balance taken together these results show how electoral accountability for fiscal policy outcomes is strong but highly contingent on a complex configuration of party labels partisan control expectations and institutions

the impact of agricultural research in africa aggregate and case study evidence abstract this paper presents case study results and aggregate data to evaluate the impact of research in african agriculture of 32 case studies all but eight report annual returns over 20 and many are far higher with most gains arising in the late 1980s and 1990s spurred by policy reforms and changing incentives these innovations have led to sustained growth in aggregate cereal crop yields since 1985 africa s belated green revolution is based on new varieties often with early maturation for drought escape complemented by new management techniques typically labor intensive efforts to conserve soil moisture and build soil fertility

efficiency of research investments in the presence of international spillovers wheat research in developing countries expenditures on agricultural research in the public sector including the international agricultural research centers iarcs have stagnated and in some cases declined sharply in recent years this has focused attention on issues of efficiency of agricultural research systems especially the number size scope type and locations of their programs this paper examines the issue of research efficiency through a case study of wheat improvement research in developing countries the basic premise of this study is that the optimal level of research investment should be determined in a global model that incorporates direct research spill ins an analytical framework is developed to determine the threshold levels of crop production in a country or a region within a country needed to justify crop improvement research programs of different sizes in the presence of spill ins from abroad spill in coefficients are estimated from yield performance of varieties of different origins grown across a range of environments the model is then applied to analyze the efficiency of current investments in 69 wheat improvement research programs in 35 developing countries a major conclusion of the paper is that given the magnitude of potential spill ins from the international research system many wheat research programs could significantly increase the efficiency of resource use by reducing the size of their wheat research programs and focusing on the screening of varieties developed elsewhere 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

economics and policy preferences causal evidence of the impact of economic conditions on support for redistribution and other ballot proposals abstract using california ballot proposition returns and exogenous shifts to labor demand we provide the first large scale causal evidence of the impact of economic conditions on policy preferences consistent with economic theory we find that positive economic shocks decrease support for redistributive policies more notably we find evidence of a need for cognitive consistency in voting behavior as economic shocks have a smaller significant impact on voting on noneconomic ballot issues while we also demonstrate that positive shocks decrease turnout we present evidence that our results reflect changes in the electorate s preferences and not simply to its composition

electoral cycles in savings bank lending we provide evidence that german savings banks which are controlled by county level politicians systematically adjust lending policies in response to local electoral cycles the different timings of county elections across states and the existence of a comparable group of cooperative banks that are very similar to savings banks but lack their political connectedness allow for identification of the effects of county elections on savings bank lending these effects are economically meaningful and very robust to various specifications we find that election induced lending negatively impacts savings bank profitability and is associated with an increase in credit defaults roughly three years after an election examining the political economy aspects of our findings we provide evidence that savings bank excess lending and public spending at the county level are substitute levers for county politicians finally we find indications that subpar pre election economic county performance hurts re election prospects and increases the intensity of lending cycles

sales location among semi subsistence cassava farmers in benin a heteroskedastic double selection model in much of rural africa high transaction costs limit farmers market participation and thus their potential for income growth transaction costs can affect not only whether a farmer sells product but also whether sales occur at the farm gate or at a market if production behavior is related to a chosen sales location then analysis of interventions can be improved by explicit consideration of the decision of where to sell this article develops a double selection model that explains consumption and production decisions by semi subsistence farmers who first decide whether to be a seller and then whether to sell at the farm gate or at an off farm location before deciding on production and consumption the study tests the validity of this dual criteria model against a single criterion model in which a grower first decides to be a seller and then decides production consumption and sales location simultaneously the results suggest that the dual criteria model provides more information than the single criterion model using a sample of cassava producer in benin

returns from research in economies with policy distortions hybrid sorghum in sudan conventional estimates of the economic return to agricultural research use market prices for the values of products and inputs on this basis economic rates of return are typically well above the cost of capital suggesting that more investment in research would be socially desirable but these estimates may be incorrect if as is often the case market prices are distorted by market failures or government policies and hence do not reflect social values this paper presents a simple partial equilibrium methodology with which to improve the measurement of social returns to research by taking account of multiple distortions in the market prices of products inputs and foreign exchange the method also takes account of variation in domestic and world prices making a product tradable in some years and nontradable in others the method is applied to the case of hageen dura 1 hd 1 sub saharan africa s first commercially successful hybrid sorghum hd 1 was released in the sudan in 1983 from the start of research in 1979 to 1992 the hd 1 breeding program had an estimated irr of 97 when all major policies in the sorghum market the fertilizer market and the exchange rate are taken into account the high rate of return to hd 1 research was due to the program s low cost and rapid payoff pointing to the potential value of small adaptive research programs taking full advantage of foreign technology and genetic material to produce locally appropriate crosses in a short period of time even in the highly distorted economies of africa such programs can yield very high payoffs

unemployment and the democratic electoral advantage this article calls into question the conventional wisdom that incumbent parties are rewarded when unemployment is low and punished when it is high using county level data on unemployment and election returns for 175 midterm gubernatorial elections and 4 presidential elections from 1994 to 2010 the analysis finds that unemployment and the democratic vote for president and governor move together other things being equal higher unemployment increases the vote shares of democratic candidates the effect is greatest when republicans are the incumbent party but democrats benefit from unemployment even when they are in control the explanation for these findings is that unemployment is a partisan issue for voters not a valence issue and that the democratic party owns unemployment when unemployment is high or rising democratic candidates can successfully convince voters that they are the party best able to solve the problem

two round elections one round determinants evidence from the french municipal elections using a new database of french municipalities that covers 821 towns and two elections 2001 and 2008 we examine how the budget structure degree of electoral competition and the economic context affect the share of votes for the incumbent we take into account the institutional details of the two round structure of the electoral process created by french electoral rules dual ballot under plurality rules we show that in the first round of the electoral process spending on equipment including infrastructures can influence the voter and that electoral competition has a strong impact on the incumbent s score in the second round the incumbent s vote is affected more by national considerations and local budget variables have no effect we show that the dynamics between the first and the second rounds are intense the results suggest that the determinants of each round s outcome in a two round electoral process are different

political uncertainty and public financing costs evidence from u s gubernatorial elections and municipal bond markets this research investigates how political uncertainty around u s gubernatorial elections in uences the borrowing costs of public debt measured by yields of municipal bonds our evidence from both the new issuance market and the secondary market shows that yields of municipal bonds increase sharply by 6 to 8 basis points before elections and then reverse afterward elections have more pronounced impact during economic downturns when outcomes are less predictable and when states have more outstanding debt several state institutions such as gaap budgeting spending limits and tax increase limits help to mitigate the adverse impact of political uncertainty

returns to policy oriented agricultural research the case of barley fertilization in syria summary in 1984 icarda and its syrian partners initiated farming systems research that led to a change in national fertilizer allocation policy evidence is assessed on the policy influence of the fertilizer response research and on the impact of switching to a more inclusive policy that relaxed the government s probation of fertilizer allocation to barley interviews with key informants make a persuasive case for attribution estimates from economic surplus models are consistent with a high rate of return on investment in the policy oriented research this case study provides a contribution to the limited empirical literature on returns to research under policy distortions

do increases in petroleum product prices put the incumbent party at risk in us presidential elections this article investigates the impact of petroleum product prices on recent united states presidential elections by modelling the probability of the incumbent presidential party losing a state under the united states electoral college system it had carried the previous presidential election the main finding is that the probability of the incumbent party losing a state previously carried increases with petroleum product prices but only in those states that have primarily energy consuming economies we also find that increases in the number of international conflicts increases in real state per capita income growth and increases in state per capita grants in aid all reduce the likelihood of losing previously carried states while higher taxation growth increases this likelihood

discussion of the influence of elections on the accounting choices of governmental entities kido petacchi and weber 2012 investigate whether the occurrence of a state gubernatorial election is important to understanding the accrual choices of preparers of the state s comprehensive annual financial report central to the authors argument is the idea that voters do not like budget deficits politicians in response have incentives to use accounting choices to mask deficits in the period before elections focusing on a specific accrual the changes in compensated absences liability the authors find evidence that the discretionary part of this accrual is smaller in the period before an election which is consistent with politicians attempting to improve the picture of the state s financial health in addition the authors show that accrual manipulation is positively associated with the vote share of incumbent governors in elections in my discussion i ask two questions 1 how strong are governors political incentives to manipulate accruals in the run up to elections 2 can the association between discretionary compensated absence accruals and elections be explained by forces other than politically motivated accounting manipulation i argue that the incentives to manipulate accruals might well be weak given strong disciplinary mechanisms that induce politicians to transparency what s more i document that elections might produce patterns in state employment as the compensated absences liability is linked to the payroll election induced changes in state employment might be reflected in this accrual evidence of an association between the compensated absences accrual and elections then does not necessarily imply that politicians manage accounting numbers to further illustrate this point i show empirically that gubernatorial elections have little explanatory power for state financial reporting choices that are unaffected by state employment jel classification h70 h72 m41

investments in african agricultural research abstract over the past three decades africa s public agricultural research systems have changed in substantive ways the total number of researchers increased fourfold the dependency on expatriate researchers significantly declined while the education levels of national researchers improved initially the growth in research staff was matched by growth in expenditures but since the late 1970s real research spending has stagnated in addition loans and grants from donor agencies now account for a sizeable share of total funding for many african agricultural research systems many of the developments of the past decade in personnel expenditures and sources of support for public sector research and development r d in africa are not sustainable spending per scientist has declined continuously during the past 30 years most dramatically during the 1980s resources are spread increasingly thin over a growing group of researchers which has negative effects on the efficiency and effectiveness of agricultural research in africa

ex post impacts of improved maize varieties on poverty in rural ethiopia public agricultural research has been conducted in africa for decades while many studies have examined its aggregate impacts few have investigated how it affects the poor this paper helps fill this gap by applying a new procedure to explore the ex post impacts of improved maize varieties on poverty in rural ethiopia plot level yield and cost changes due to adoption are first estimated using instrumental variable and marginal treatment effect techniques where possible heterogeneity is carefully accounted for a backward derivation procedure is then developed to link treatment effect estimates with an economic surplus model to identify the counterfactual household income that would have existed without improved maize varieties poverty impacts are finally estimated by exploiting the differences between observed and counterfactual income distributions improved maize varieties have led to a 0 8 1 3 percentage drop of poverty headcount ratio and relative reductions of poverty depth and severity however poor producers benefit the least from adoption due to the smallness of their land holdings

fiscal expansion and political instability in the iberic latin region recent research by public choice oriented economists and political scientists points to a negative relation between fiscal expansion and voter support for the incumbents real per capita federal spending is negatively associated with the vote for the incumbent party s candidate in american presidential elections niskanen 1979 there is a negative relation between increases in the percent of gross national product spent by the central government and incumbent party reelection to the white house and the british parliament cuzain and heggen 1984 1985 furthermore the incumbent party s vote in american gubernatorial elections varies inversely with increases in the ratio of state general revenues to state personal income between elections peltzman 1987 fiscal expansion is also associated with the overthrow of latin american governments cuzin 1986 fiscally expansionist latin american regimes whether civilian governments or military juntas tend to be overthrown while democracies and dictatorships practicing fiscal restraint usually survive together these findings suggest that fiscal expansion costs the incumbent party a loss of political support resulting in its being voted out or forced out of office since the stability of any government depends partly on support for the incumbents it is hypothesized that ceteris paribus fiscal expansion is a cause of political instability according to this hypothesis fiscal expansion has a boomerang effect on the incumbents increasing the likelihood that the party will lose executive office either by election or coup the purpose of this paper is twofold one is to bring additional empirical

divided government fiscal institutions and budget deficits evidence from the states does partisan control of american state government have systematic effects on state spending and taxing levels does divided control affect the government s ability to make hard decisions do institutional rules like legal deficit carryover restrictions matter using a formal model of fiscal policy to guide empirical analysis of data covering the american states from 1968 to 1987 we conclude that 1 aggregate state budget totals are driven by different factors under democrats and republicans the net result being that democrats target spending and taxes to higher shares of state level personal income 2 divided government is less able to react to revenue shocks that lead to budget deficits particularly where different parties control each chamber of the legislature and 3 unified party governments with restricted ability to carry deficits into the next fiscal year outside the south have sharper reactions to negative revenue shocks than those without restrictions

running for office again evidence from portuguese municipal elections using a data set that covers all portuguese mainland municipalities for the period 1979 2005 this study performs an empirical analysis of the economic determinants of mayors decisions to run for another term in office the literature on the subject is mainly centered on the united states and as far as we know there are no papers addressing the economic factors influencing those choices

global agriculture r d and the changing aid architecture agriculture research knowledge and technology that transcends national borders has played a crucial role in enhancing developing country productivity growth over the past 50 years the demand for international agriculture research iar continues to be strong today even while becoming increasingly differentiated by the stage of development that a particular country or region is in the supply of iar to developing country research programs is however becoming increasingly constrained by variable donor support a push toward downstream product adaptation and dissemination activities relative to innovation and product development and a lack of clear links between international public good research and national agriculture development priorities country level donor coordination and alignment mechanisms specified in the paris declaration on aid effectiveness do not explicitly account for the role of iar in the development process while the movement toward national ownership of its development agenda and donor alignment around it is unquestionably good an unintended consequence could be a break in the r d pipeline that supplies public good research and technologies for enhancing developing country agriculture productivity growth the article presents options for rebuilding synergies between international public good research and national agriculture development priorities

state economies and state taxes do voters hold governors accountable theory states have sufficient autonomy in the policies they adopt that voters hold state officials partly responsible for the condition of the state economy as the best known state official elected by a statewide constituency governors in particular are held accountable for the economic performance of their states with respect to taxes the clear locus of responsibility in state actions and the high visibility of certain taxes suggest that governors will also be held responsible for increased rates hypotheses the performance of the state economy tax increases and voters personal financial situations all influence voting behavior in gubernatorial elections methods logit equations using 1986 abc washington post exit polls in 34 of 36 gubernatorial races combined with economic and tax data from the states results a poor state economy increases in taxes and lowered personal finances all contribute to votes against incumbent governors and their parties

equilibrium political budget cycles political business cycle theories generally rely on nominal rigidities and voter myopia this paper offers an equilibrium theory that preserves some basic insights from earlier models though with significant refinements the political budget cycle emphasized here is in fiscal policy rather than output and inflation it arises via a multidimensional signal process one can consider the welfare implications of proposals to mitigate the cycle and the effects of altering the electoral structure copyright 1990 by american economic association

technical efficiency in developing country agriculture a meta analysis abstract a meta analysis is performed to review empirical estimates of technical efficiency te in developing country agriculture the objective of the study is to contribute to a better understanding of the factors that influence estimates of mean te a data set of 51 observations of te from 32 studies is used in order to test if specific characteristics of the data and econometric specifications account for systematic differences in the efficiency estimates results using the two limit tobit procedure indicate that factors such as primal versus dual number of fixed inputs and number of variable inputs increase average te estimates on the other hand using the cobb douglas functional form and cross sectional data yields a lower level of te other factors including the number of variables in the model crop type stochastic versus deterministic frontiers and sample size do not seem to significantly affect estimates of te across studies

the economic and poverty impacts of maize research in west and central africa this article assembles the results of three multicountry surveys on variety performance and adoption patterns to measure the impacts of maize research in west and central africa from 1981 to 2005 and uses cost data since 1971 to compute social rates of return on public investments in maize research in the region adoption of modern varieties increased from less than 5 of the maize area in the 1970s to about 60 in 2005 yielding an aggregate rate of return on research and development r d investment of 43 the estimated number of people moved out of poverty through adoption of new maize varieties rose gradually in the 1980s to more than one million people per year since the mid 1990s over half of these impacts can be attributed to international maize research at iita and cimmyt the article concludes with a discussion of strategic options to enhance the impacts of maize research in the region

impacts of food crop improvement research evidence from sub saharan africa abstract the paper reviews and summarizes evidences of impacts of crop improvement research of major food crops in africa it provides evidence of increased availability of improved varieties of major food crops to farmers in africa increased food production in regions where adoption has occurred and positive returns to research investment indicating that agricultural research in africa has had productivity increasing impacts on its agriculture however research impacts vary considerably across countries and regions within a country as a result of agroclimatic factors and policy environment which affects the supply of seeds and other inputs and the continuity and stability of research investments the paper points to a number of important issues both internal and external to the agricultural research system organization that need to be addressed if agricultural research is to provide a stimulus for modernizing african agriculture given the small size of food crop production area in many african countries it is important for research systems to take full advantage of research spill ins from regional and international research organizations there is a great potential to increase the efficiency of research systems by improving the coordination among members of national research systems and continuing improvements in collaborations between narss and regional and international organizations

on the existence of a political monetary cycle this paper examines electoral influence on monetary policy as measured by ml money growth i find a significant four year electoral cycle in money growth even when controlling for the influence of interest rates income and budget deficits further the residual electoral cycle produces the income and inflation movements associated with the political business cycle when it is used in simulations of simple reduced form macro models the paper concludes by discussing the difficulties in rationalizing cyclical monetary policy with rational expectations

interpreting changes from the 1970s to the 1990s in african agriculture through village studies abstract assessments of the performance of agriculture in sub saharan africa are typically based on official production statistics at national level between the early 1970s and the mid 1990s these often show alarmingly poor rates of growth but there are good reasons to doubt the statistics and their interpretation an alternative is to examine the record from the village level upward this paper looks at the evidence from 26 case studies of change between the mid 1970s and the mid 1980s at the district or village level these suggest less cause for alarm than the national statistics they confirm that access to markets is essential for agricultural development the single biggest idea in the policy reforms of the 1980s but they also underline the importance of the detail of policy in remedying failures in product capital and insurance markets and in public investment in technology

economics of biological control of cassava mealybug in africa abstract pest populations of the cassava mealybug phenacoccus manihoti mat ferr homoptera pseudococcidae were reduced successfully by the biological control agent apoanagyrus epidinocarsis lopezi de santis hymenoptera encyrtidae throughout most of sub saharan africa the economics of the project were evaluated based on data from field trials socio economic surveys published results and financial information provided by the international institute of tropical agriculture iita and the national programmes costs and benefits for the biological control of p manihoti were calculated over 40 years 1974 2013 for 27 african countries for four different scenarios taking into account that impact by a lopezi and speed of the impact differ between ecological zones a reasonable calculation considering compounded interest resulted in a benefit cost ratio of about 200 when cassava was costed at world market prices and of about 370 740 when inter african prices were considered

returns to food and agricultural r d investments in sub saharan africa 1975 2014 research enabled growth in agricultural productivity is pivotal to sub saharan africa s overall economic growth prospects yet investments in research and development rd median 38 0 py around 78 5 of the evaluations relate to the commodity specific consequences of agricultural research while 5 5 report on the returns to an all agriculture aggregate the weight of commodity specific evaluation evidence is not especially congruent with the composition of agricultural production throughout africa nor to the best that can be determined the commodity orientation of public african agricultural r d

economic returns to crop management research in a post green revolution setting returns to research studies have neglected research on crop management cmr which may account for half of all crop research because cmr enhances the efficiency of input use returns to cmr are hypothesized to increase in settings characterized by high input levels and high yields a method is developed to estimate returns to cmr and this method is applied to wheat research in a post green revolution setting in northwest mexico the results suggest that returns to cmr are positive over a range of model assumptions

challenger entry and voter learning we develop a model of strategic interaction between voters and potential electoral challengers to sitting incumbents in which the very fact of a costly challenge conveys relevant information to voters given incumbent failure in office challenger entry is more likely but the threat of entry by inferior challengers creates an incentive for citizens to become more politically informed at the same time challenges to incumbents who perform well can neutralize a voter s positive assessment of incumbent qualifications how a voter becomes politically informed can in turn deter challengers of different levels of competence from running depending on the electoral environment the model permits us to sharpen our understanding of retrospective voting the incumbency advantage and the relationship between electoral competition and voter welfare while pointing to new interpretations of and future avenues for empirical research on elections

does a cassava research for development program have impact at the farm level evidence from the democratic republic of congo this paper evaluates the impact of a cassava research for development program on farm level outcomes the program was implemented in the democratic republic of congo from 2001 to 2009 we apply propensity score matching rosenbaum bounds on treatment effects altonji et al method of selection on observables and unobservables and endogenous switching regression to farm survey data collected during the 2009 cropping season we use these methods to test whether the r4d program has a statistically significant effect on outcomes of interest and if these are not driven by selection on unobservables using propensity score matching we find statistically significant positive effects on household participation in cassava markets adoption of improved varieties and crop management practices and household food adequacy and no statistically significant effects on yields and profits the results show that bias due to selection on unobservables is not severe enough to invalidate the impact estimates bias may still be a problem that is present in the analysis but there is evidence that it is not substantial although the program does not have a statistically significant positive effect on yields and profits the significant program effects on market participation variety adoption and food adequacy merit further promotion of the program since these positive outcomes tend to be pre conditions for realizing long term yield and profit benefits

state government efforts in industrial modernization using theory to guide practice gittell r j and kaufman a 1996 state government efforts in industrial modernization using theory to guide practice reg studies 30 477 492 this paper presents a theoretical framework that incorporates economic and political considerations to gain insight into state government industrial modernization efforts the discussion highlights how information asymmetries and traditional business norms may justify the organization of a public manufacturing extension service we suggest however that if left solely to private or to public means one might expect either the provision of too few or too many manufacturing extension services difficulties in calculating benefits and in sharing information can inhibit spontaneous private collective action on the other hand we suggest that public officials have incentives to institute manufacturing services independent of private demand to balance private and public incentives we suggest the need for a public private partnership along with specific recommen

economic performance and u s senate elections 1958 1986 despite the use of several alternative estimation model specifications no relationship was found between state economic performance and u s senatorial votes on the other hand a significantly positive relation was found between election year national real per capita income growth and the vote share of candidates of the incumbent president s party both of these results are broadly consistent with earlier findings for other state level elections upon further examination we find this effect to be operative only in the negative sense that the presidential party s senatorial vote share declines when economic performance is poor but is not positively associated with above average economic performance further the vote share of incumbent candidates independent of party affiliation is found to be lower in slow growth pre election years than in years of above average growth the estimate of the difference is such as to suggest a large and direct impact of national economic performance on votes for incumbent candidates themselves independent of effects acting through party affiliation such an effect despite its intuitive plausibility has been sought and found in one previous study adams and kenny since the high growth and the low growth sample means differ by about three percent the 4 to 6 percent difference in vote plurality associated with incumbent candidacy in good versus poor performance periods translates into about the same impact as that operating through presidential party affiliation taking these effects together one may surmise than an incumbent senator of the president s party may rightly fear a pre election recession

price distortions and resource use efficiency in indian agriculture a restricted profit function approach this paper develops a generalized profit function that incorporates price distortions resulting from imperfect market conditions sociopolitical and institutional constraints as well as technical and allocative inefficiency the model is applied to test 1 the appropriateness of the neoclassical profit function and 2 the effect of education and farm size on allocative performance using farm level data from indian agriculture empirical results reject the neoclassical profit maximization hypothesis based on market prices in favor of the general model with price distortions and therefore help to improve allocation of inputs and output farm size is found to reduce price distortions only for small farmers copyright 1992 by mit press

estimating overall returns to international agricultural research in africa through benefit cost analysis a best evidence approach this study offers a best evidence approach to summarizing recent benefit cost analyses of international agricultural research in africa first from an extensive literature review and the resulting global inventory of impact studies 23 studies are identified that calculate aggregate rates of return for consultative group on international agricultural research cgiar and partner investments in sub saharan africa ssa these studies are then appraised against a review framework consisting of principles criteria and indicators for study rigor subsequently the economic benefits reported by studies grouped on the basis of its analytical rigor are aggregated and set against total investment by the cgiar and national agricultural research systems to determine if the total investment to date can be justified by documented benefits under a range of assumptions as a result the study finds that aggregate investment is justified under a fairly wide range of suppositions under all scenarios the vast majority of documented benefits stem from a relatively limited array of activities with a majority of benefits stemming from biological control 80 close to 20 of total benefits result from crop genetic improvement and less than 1 result from all other activities the implications of these results for research investment strategies in ssa and impact assessment are discussed

measurement of profit efficiency using behavioural and stochastic frontier approaches the objectives of this study are to estimate profit inefficiency of farms in the north west frontier province of pakistan using stochastic frontier and the behavioural profit functions the derived measure of inefficiency based on a half normal distribution of the stochastic error term is related to socio economic variables and of these the size of holding fragmentation of land subsistence needs the higher age of farmers contribute positively to inefficiency the behavioural approach satisfies most of the assumptions of the dual profit function and the likelihood ratio test rejects the market efficiency hypothesis it is also shown that use of manures labour and fertilizers is below the optimum small farms seem to have higher productive efficiency than large farms and therefore small farm ownership needs to be encouraged

economic performance and political outcomes an analysis of the turkish parliamentary and local election results between 1950 and 2004 the results of twenty five turkish elections for parliament and local administrations between 1950 and 2004 are studied turkish voters are found to take government s economic performance into account but not look back beyond one year furthermore they are found to hold the major incumbent party responsible for both growth and inflation but minor incumbent parties only for inflation also they appear to vote strategically especially in local and parliamentary by elections to diffuse power finally all parties exhibit a steady depreciation in their political capital while in office these conclusions are essentially in conformity with the literature on other countries

economic voting and multilevel governance a comparative individual level analysis an important component of incumbent support is the reward punishment calculus of economic voting previous work has shown that clarity of responsibility within the central state government conditions national economic effects on incumbent vote choice where clarity is high low economic effects are greater less this article advances the clarity of responsibility argument by considering the effect of multilevel governance on economic voting in institutional contexts of multilevel governance the process of correctly assigning responsibility for economic outcomes can be difficult this article tests the proposition that multilevel governance mutes effects of national economic conditions by undermining responsibility linkages to the national government individual level data from the comparative study of electoral systems module 1 are used to test this proposition results demonstrate that economic voting is weakest in countries where multilevel governance is most prominent findings are discussed in light of the contribution to the economic voting literature and the potential implications of multilevel governance

maize is life malawi s delayed green revolution abstract the pattern of maize seed development in malawi demonstrates the importance of farmers capacity to articulate their interests through collective action and institutions despite the vital significance of maize as a wage good in malawi limited effective demand for maize seed research prolonged the period of technical stagnation analysis of the institutional factors shaping the demand for maize seed research complements previous work on malawi s political economy the supply of seed technology and adoption with implications for current political changes in that nation the importance of farmers organizations and state commitment to agricultural research in sub saharan africa

agricultural intensification in ghana evaluating the optimist s case for a green revolution abstract while there are valid reasons for a renewed interest in adapting the lessons of the asian green revolution to the african setting research must go further in identifying the main and potentially unique drivers of agricultural intensification within and across african countries in this study we look at the case of ghana to identify whether fast population growth and the remarkable agricultural performance the country has enjoyed in recent years have resulted in favorable conditions for the adoption of asian style green revolution technologies through descriptive analysis combined with empirical assessment of the economic efficiency of agriculture in different production systems and agroecologies we are able assess the relevance of green revolution technologies for agricultural production in ghana in particular we analyze whether fertilizer use in ghana is associated with high population density and intensive cereal production and whether land intensive innovations are associated with more efficient production practices overall we do not find evidence of asian style green revolution agricultural intensification in ghana in fact we find no correlation between population density and input intensity we also find that labor costs still play a major role in ghanaian agricultural development in limiting the adoption of labor intensive technologies even in relatively high population density areas

the role of economic issues in elections the case of the 1988 chilean presidential referendum in this paper we tested the hypothesis that the performance of the economy is a determinant factor in the voter s preferences the results obtained enable us to corroborate this notion since the model has a high predictive value and the behavior of the economy both in terms of level of activity as well as in its changes comes up consistently as a determinant factor of voting behavior these results are also consistent with those obtained through chilean polls in which it has been ascertained that economic events particularly in the case of those who favored the anti pinochet option no were of utmost importance in the voters decisions the results also confirm the idea that in chile women tend to give economic issues a lesser weight in their political preferences

the impact of agricultural research on productivity and poverty in sub saharan africa while it is widely recognized that agricultural research is a key driver of broad based technological change in agriculture that benefits the poor in many different ways little is known about its aggregate impacts on productivity growth and poverty reduction in sub saharan africa ssa using a polynomial distributed lag structure for agricultural research within a simultaneous system of equations framework this paper first demonstrates that agricultural research contributes significantly to productivity growth in ssa productivity growth is again shown to raise per capita incomes with income increases finally having significant poverty reducing effects with an aggregate rate of return of 55 the payoffs to agricultural research are also impressive agricultural research currently reduces the number of poor by 2 3 million or 0 8 annually while the actual impacts are not large enough to more than offset the poverty increasing effects of population growth and environmental degradation the potential impacts of agricultural research are far greater apart from low research investments ssa faces several constraints outside the research system that hinder realization of potential research benefits the results show that doubling research investments in ssa would reduce poverty by 9 annually however this would not be realized without more efficient extension credit and input supply systems

agricultural technology adoption and child nutrition enhancement improved maize varieties in rural ethiopia adoption of improved crop varieties can lead to multiple benefits to farm households including increased productivity incomes and food consumption however possible impacts of adoption on child nutrition outcomes are rarely explored in the literature this article helps bridge this gap through an impact assessment of the adoption of improved maize varieties imvs on child nutrition outcomes using a recent household survey from rural ethiopia the conceptual linkage between imv adoption and child nutrition is first established using an agricultural household model instrumental variable estimation suggests the overall impacts of adoption on child height for age and weight for age z scores to be positive and significant quantile instrumental variable regressions further reveal that such impacts are largest among children with poorest nutrition outcomes finally by combining a decomposition procedure with system of equations estimation it is found that the increase in own produced maize consumption is the major channel through which imv adoption affects child nutrition

political control and public sector savings evidence from the states the right to access and ultimately spend public sector savings is determined by the party which can control the politicaloutcome this implies that anticipatedfuture changes in the state s controllingpolitical party may systematicallyadversely affect current savings extendingthe life cycle permanent income model ishow that a representative legislator willopt to forgo current saving in favor ofspending when his prospects for futurepolitical control diminish estimating apanel data model of 39 states from1973 1995 i find that an actual futurechange in the controlling party of astate s lower house significantly reducescurrent saving

the response of peasant farmers to price incentives the use and misuse of profit functions recent famines in chad ethiopia and the sudan have highlighted a major problem facing less developed countries how does an ldc become self sufficient in food production the answers to this question range from the narrowly defined economic one or economistic approach to the more widely based institutional reforms approach the former approach typified by say schultz 1964 or the world bank 1982 would emphasise the importance of mainly price incentives the latter approach as typified by myrdal 1968 in his monumental work asian drama would emphasise the importance of land reforms as a pre condition for agricultural development the debate has sometimes followed a misleading path and discussed whether peasants are rational or whether they are lazy inert tradition bound etc the aim of this article is to show that the use of profit functions to model peasant behaviour in ldcs is seriously flawed neo classical economic theory within which profit functions are embodied ignores the historical social institutional and political context within which peasant farmers operate peasant farmers do not operate in full blooded capitalist impersonal competitive input and output markets the article is structured as follows section ii outlines the profit function approach and section iii provides a survey and critique of applications of the profit function to ldc agriculture section iv concludes with some general remarks on analysing peasant behaviour in an alternative paradigm

long term evidence of retrospective voting a natural experiment from the german democratic republic abstract the paper investigates long lasting electoral punishment decades of communist socialization and the repressive rule of a single party have left their left wing fingerprint on east germany in this paper we show that voters act rationally given negative life circumstances experienced under the rule of the communist party they display retrospective voting even decades later our insight is based on the analysis of 19 years of revealed and stated party preferences we argue that life at the border region to west germany was particularly hard and find that east german voters who lived close to the inner german border before the reunification of the two states are 5 9 percentage points less likely to lean toward the successor party to east germany s communists given that over the years roughly every fifth person has revealed preferences for the communists in the east this translates to over thirty percent reduction we confirm the preferences with administrative data the electoral punishment estimated at the district level amounts to a reduction of 1 3 percentage points of votes for the party

market distortions and benefits from research the benefits from cost reducing research and their distribution under a range of price policies are compared with those that would arise in the absence of the policies while any price policy affects the distribution of research benefits the net national or world benefits may be reduced lef unchanged or increased depending on the nature of the policy and the significance of the country in the world market for the commodity some implications for decisions on price policies and for distortions in incentives for the allocation of resources to research are raised

analysis of adoption and impacts of improved maize varieties in eastern zambia summary this paper analyzes the adoption and welfare impacts of improved maize varieties in eastern zambia using data obtained from a sample of over 800 farm households using both propensity score matching and endogenous switching regression models the paper shows that adoption of improved maize leads to significant gains in crop incomes consumption expenditure and food security results further show that improved maize varieties have significant poverty reducing impacts in eastern zambia the paper concludes with implications for policies to promote adoption and impacts of modern varieties in zambia

integrated pest management for resource poor african farmers is the emperor naked abstract the success of integrated pest management ipm with rice in asia has not been replicated with staple smallholder food crops in sub saharan africa this is variously blamed on inadequate extension underinvestment in agricultural research and unfavorable government policies this article argues that it reflects the slow progress of africa s green revolution which has reduced economic incentives for chemical forms of crop protection and thus the potential cost savings from the adoption of ipm strategies in this context ipm must re think its approach ipm is more likely to be adopted by resource poor african farmers if it focuses on host plant resistance and biological control high value commodities and helps meet farmers wider objectives of increasing household food security and earning cash income the argument is illustrated from secondary literature and recent project experience in southern malawi

the calculation of returns to research in distorted markets reply abstract most of the emperical literature calculating rates of return to publicly sponsored research assumes that research is the only relevant government intervention for most countries this assumption is untenable this paper shows that improperly measuring government inducedmarket distortions can severely bias research rate of return calculations if the interaction between successful research and other government interventions increases the cost of the other interventions then neglecting market distortions unambigously increases the calculated rate of return three examples of government induced distortions show that the magnitude of the upward bias in calculated rates of return can be extremely large in some cases more than 100 percentage points a normative implication is that governments should account for interactions between research and price interventions when determining research support levels a positive implication is that existing government research funding patterns are more readily explainable as reasonable behavior by a government that accounts for these interactions

genetic improvements in major us crops the size and distribution of benefits the distribution of welfare gains of genetic improvements in major us crops is estimated using a world agricultural trade model multi market welfare estimates were 75 larger than estimates based on the price exogenous change in revenue method frequently used by plant breeders annual benefits of these genetic improvements range from us 400 600 million depending on the supply shift specification of this 44 60 accrues to the us 24 34 accrues to other developed countries developing and transitional economies capture 16 22 of the welfare gain the global benefits of a one time permanent increase in us yields are us 8 1 billion discounted at 10 and us 15 4 billion discounted at 5 gains to consumers in developing and transitional economies range from us 6 1 billion 10 discount rate to us 11 6 billion 5 discount rate

on the use and misuse of profit functions for measuring the price responsiveness of peasant farmers a comment the standard profit function approach has been applied successfully in a number of ldcs to measure the price responsiveness of peasant farmers yet various problems afflict this approach including but not restricted to the existence of non competitive market structures zero valued observations exclusion of relevant variables lack of participation in output and or input markets and endogeneity of input and or output prices the impact of these problems on estimation results however can be minimised through modifications and adaptations of the standard approach better specification of the underlying technology and the use of selected functional forms

the reflections of a grump over time maybe a consequence of ageing i have become somewhat of a grump i have increasing difficulty with child proof packaging as my eyesight has weakened i am only partially comforted by the illusion of greater strength when i was a kid for example i could hardly lift 10 worth of groceries now i can hardly see 10 worth of groceries

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