a globally flexible almost ideal demand system the almost ideal demand system is combined with the fourier expenditure system subject to the assumption that preferences are of the price independent generalized logarithmic class the resulting demand system has the desirable features of each of its components aggregate demand equations are consistent with preferences of a representative consumer and consistent estimates of elasticities are obtained for all observed prices application of the new demand system to u s consumption of meats and fish reveals that it fits the data well and that the restriction to the usual specification is rejected

tax innovations and public revenues in sub saharan africa we study the effect of two tax innovations value added taxes vat and autonomous revenue authorities ara on tax revenues in sub saharan africa the dataset consists of 47 countries over 1980 2010 we find that vats have no effect on total tax revenues neither in the short nor in the long run aras lead to higher tax revenues in the short and medium run but the effect dissipates over time the main conclusion is that tax innovations are not a panacea to overcome the revenue shortages in african countries but they are helpful in the short and medium run

econometric developments in agricultural and resource economics the first 100 years this article reviews the major contributions of agricultural and resource economists in the area of econometrics over the past 100 years early on a number of agricultural economists were in on the ground floor in terms of developing new econometric methods over time as the economics profession became more empirically oriented agricultural and resource economists increasingly assumed the role of early adopters of new econometric methods even so agricultural and resource economists continue to make useful modifications to econometric techniques in order to adapt the methods to the unique nature of the problems and applications that we study

regional sub contract suppliers to prime defence contractors evidence of their performance in response to recent changes in demand oakey r p james a and watts t 1998 regional sub contract suppliers to prime defence contractors evidence of their performance in response to recent changes in demand reg studies 32 17 29 there is considerable evidence that technological change occurs unevenly over geographical space and that change is faster in core areas of national economies than at their peripheries the principal result of this paper is a confirmation that south east firms similarly initiate diversification technology strategies more readily than their regional counterparts it is noted that defence spending is a disguised form of regional aid when contracts are awarded in peripheral parts of the united kingdom thus it is concluded that given the laggard behaviour of peripheral firms regarding diversification recent defence spending cut backs in these areas are likely to have a strong negative impact on industrial activity oakey r p james a et watts t 1998 les soutraitants regionaux aux premiers fournisseurs mi

spatial divisions of welfare the geography of welfare benefit expenditure and of housing benefit in britain hamnett c spatial divisions of welfare the geography of welfare benefit expenditure and of housing benefit in britain regional studies this paper examines the structure of state welfare expenditure in britain it argues that the geography of state welfare expenditure and its impacts have been relatively neglected given their importance in terms of state expenditure regional distribution and spatial equality it shows that welfare spending is a key component of government expenditure and that it has a distinct regional and local geography the paper shows that there are distinct differences in the geographical incidence of different welfare benefits some of which function to redistribute income from the south to the north of britain and it focuses on the geography of housing benefit as an example of what has been termed spatial divisions of welfare hamnett c les ecarts geographiques de l aide sociale la geographie des prestations sociales et des allocations logement en grande bretagne regional

policy debates government output and expenditure in uk regions and sub regions an analysis of the new experimental accounts data gripaios p and bishop p 2005 government output and expenditure in uk regions and sub regions an analysis of the new experimental accounts data regional studies 39 805 813 this paper examines the regional and sub regional distribution of uk state spending by analysing new data available from recently published regional government accounts the data indicate wide variations in public spending per head across regions with london being a particular beneficiary the results do not indicate any relationship between gross domestic product per head and public spending and they suggest that in total government spending is doing little to ameliorate regional inequality if the state wishes to pursue an active regional policy it hence needs to consider the regional dimension of all state functions not simply those associated with traditional regional policy

missed opportunities the wto trade policy review for the east african community the east african community eac comprising kenya tanzania and uganda came into force on 7 july 2000 with a common external tariff cet established in january 2005 this trade policy review tpr of the eac is timely as all three countries had implemented significant trade liberalisation since the late 1980s while the cet represented an asymmetric change kenya and tanzania essentially reduced tariffs whereas uganda increased tariffs the tpr provides considerable information on the cet and on trade and related policies in each of the member countries however the eac and the tpr missed a number of opportunities the eac included no coordinated export promotion or investment provisions while the tpr says little on the potential for intra regional trade and nor does it address the position of the eac in the economic partnership agreements epas being negotiated with the eu this review concentrates on these omissions to explore the implications of the eac for developments in trade policy in the region

military expenditure and the restructuring of capitalism the military industry in britain the character of the british defence industry since the 1940s has reflected a regime of accumulation which was shaped by both fordism and the cold war the decline of both these influences means that the political economy of defence spending and the internal organization of the defence industry are changing while the outbreak of peace in europe should lead to some reduction in defence spending on cold war items the world s arms industry is not about to disappear the global arms industry remains huge and is increasing beyond the control of individual national governments the concentration of capital and intensified search for markets is likely to increase the volatility of the industry and affect individual companies and nations with varying results britain may remain disproportionately important in the new military economy copyright 1990 by oxford university press

tariff equivalents of nontariff measures the case of european horticultural and fish imports from african countries in the context of the partnership agreements between the european union eu and the african caribbean and pacific countries this study estimates ad valorem tariff equivalents of european food safety standards on imports of key horticultural and fish products from kenya tanzania uganda and zambia the study uses an extension of the price wedge method to account for imperfect substitution and factor endowment in monopolistic competition the estimated tariff equivalents are 55 and 98 for imports of fresh peas from zambia to the netherlands and the u k respectively they range from 39 to 64 for imports of green beans and avocados from kenya and from 63 to 270 for imports of frozen fish fillets in eu countries from the east african community we also observe large variations in tariff equivalents for the horticultural and fish products over time and eu importing countries 2012 international association of agricultural economists

defence procurement and industrial structure in the u k defence ministries being monopsonists with considerable regulatory authority have the power to shape the electronics aerospace and engineering industries that supply them this paper uses the u k experience to investigate whether and how the government should influence industrial structure after reviewing market structure and policy it provides a quantitative measure of the impact of the new more competitive procurement practices on the size distribution of contracts and assesses the role of policy on the likely evolution of the structure of the european arms industry

evaluating prior beliefs in a demand system the case of meat demand in canada an almost ideal demand system for meats is estimated using canadian data a bayesian approach is used to impose inequality restrictions on substitution elasticities via monte carlo integration and importance sampling in order to conform with prior beliefs about curvature and monotonicity restrictions and substitution relationships results are more consistent with the concavity and monotonicity restrictions from demand theory than with the added restriction that all meats are substitutes

wheat demand in japanese flour milling industry a production theory approach a production approach based on the translog cost function is used to analyze import demand for wheat differentiated by class and country of origin in the japanese wheat flour milling industry results indicate that us wheat faces strong competition in the japanese wheat market but its multiple classes and end use characteristics enable the us to preserve the largest market share in japan

strategic responses to defence sector restructuring an analysis of lancashire based companies this paper investigates the factors affecting the likelihood of lancashire based companies involved in defence production pursuing strategic responses to defence sector restructuring data covering 100 lancashire based companies form the lancashire defence survey database which is analysed results of the data analysis are of interest to organizations involved in local economic development policy making they suggest that the effects of restructuring are most profound in large core defece companies most directly involved in defence production other effects are passed on to companies that carry out subcontracting but there is less evidence of strategies being implemented in response to structural change among these companies company size product type and degree of defence dependency are uncovered as significant factors influencing whether a strategic response is instigated

trade policy in burundi reform without political stability this paper evaluates burundi s progress with trade policy reform by comparing earlier analyses of burundi s trade policies undertaken in the 1980s with that of the wto s recent trade policy review since the mid 1980s burundi has been trying to reform its trade and macroeconomic policies against the background of continuous socio political tensions and periodic outbreaks of violent tribal conflict a then and now comparison allows us to assess both the extent of the trade reforms and of the economic return to those reforms it is evident that there has been a significant rationalisation and simplification of trade policy burundi has eliminated most quantitative import restrictions and reduced the average level and range of its tariffs the scope for allocative distortions undesirable redistributive effects and for impediments to investment and growth has been substantially reduced however a return to reform in terms of export growth or diversification and of overall economic growth is not discernible yet this is unsurprising given the scale of the economic disruption sustained socio political stability among other things will be required to induce the investment in human and physical capital needed for a positive return to trade policy reform

consistent estimation of armington demand models traditional methods of empirically implementing the popular armington trade model are shown to result in theoretically and statistically inconsistent parameter estimates a method for removing these inconsistencies within the framework of the armington model is provided along with a comparison of results of our new consistent procedure with those of the previous procedure

estimating a demand system with nonnegativity constraints mexican meat demand a new information based approach for estimating systems of many equations with nonnegativity constraints is presented this approach called generalized maximum entropy gme is more practical and

economic partnership agreements between sub saharan africa and the eu a development perspective this paper draws on hinkle and schiff 2003 it analyses the planned economic partnership agreements epas between the eu and sub saharan africa ssa from a development perspective it does not take a position on whether ssa should enter into epas with the eu rather it starts from the notion that the process of forming epas is unlikely to be reversed and examines the conditions that will maximise ssa s benefits from the epas if this notion is correct then the analysis presented in the paper applies on the other hand pascal lamy the eu trade commissioner made a proposal at the may 2004 g 90 summit in dakar that might lead to a change in the epa process he proposed that the g 90 a group consisting of acp and non acp ldc countries should not have to make concessions at the wto doha round of multilateral trade negotiations i e he proposed a free round for the g 90 this proposal opens the door to the possibility that the same might apply to the acp countries in the eu acp negotiations and that the epa process might be reversed the paper considers the key issues raised by the planned epas their relationship to the wto s doha round and the eu s everything but arms initiative the changes needed to make the epas internally consistent the domestic reforms in ssa that would need to accompany trade liberalisation in both goods and services and the potential effects of the epas on regional integration in ssa the epas will pose a number of policy challenges for ssa countries including restructuring of indirect tax systems reduction of mfn tariffs liberalisation of service imports on an mfn basis and related regulatory reforms in the services sector and liberalisation of trade in both goods and services within the regional trading blocs in ssa the paper also finds that the epas provide an opportunity to accelerate regional and global trade integration in ssa to realise the potential development benefits of the planned epas two steps are essential first the eu must as it has stated truly treat the epas as instruments of development subordinating its commercial interests in the agreements to the development needs of ssa second the ssa countries need to implement a number of epa related trade policy reforms however the latter is far from certain given the lack of reform momentum in ssa

high technology industry in the bristol sub region the aerospace defence nexus boddy m and lovering j 1986 high technology industry in the bristol sub region the aerospace defence nexus reg studies 20 217 231 this paper presents a detailed study of high technology industry in the bristol region which comprises an important element of the uk s m4 corridor growth area high technology industry in the region is found to be primarily identified with the aerospace industry in terms of both products process and occupational structure aerospace is central to high technology industry as a whole in terms of sub contracting and purchasing and through its domination of the labour market the origins of the electronics based aerospace sector are traced in the development of the aircraft and guided weapons industries as they related to the bristol sub region in the post war period this indicates the key role of defence related production and ministry of defence procurement to the genesis and continuing importance of the advanced technology sector in the sub region demonstratin

the economic consequences of reduced uk military expenditure the last few years have seen a variety of proposals for uk disarmament for a re orientation of defence policy towards a less expensive non nuclear stance more commen surate with britain s present economic position in the world unfortunately these proposals become suddenly coy and tentative as they approach the economic implications of their programme in complete contrast to the detailed quantitative calculations they pro vide for other aspects the alternative defence commission 1983 and prins 1983 are typical examples of this the difficulties this lacuna creates are illustrated by the ordeal the labour party faced in the 1983 election campaign they advocated it appears a reduc tion of british defence expenditure which now accounts for just over 5 of gdp to about the european average of around 3 5 but they proved unable to counter the claim of the conservative defence secretary mr heseltine that this policy would cost 400 000 jobs 1 the hesitancy with which proponents of reductions in military expenditure approach the economic consequences is surprising given the near unanimity in the technical litera ture two major studies in the uk eiu 1963 and brown 1964 studies in the us leontief 1965 and a recent survey kennedy 1983 all indicate that disarmament represents an economic opportunity rather than an economic problem nonetheless the tenor of the recent policy literature suggests that it would be useful to provide a detailed assessment of the economic consequences of a reduction in uk military expenditure from 5 to 3 5 of gdp since the results obtained below are broadly in line with those of the studies cited above the contribution of this paper does not lie in the novelty of its conclusion rather it provides a detailed quantitative review of the economic issues cur rently involved in a transition to lower levels of military expenditure since there is a wide literature already available which provides arguments to suggest that such a transition could provide real security benefits the strategic aspects will only be mentioned in passing d smith 1980 and alternative defence commission 1983 provide detail on this

trade policy issues in a small african economy the trade policy review of the gambia 2004 the gambia displays many of the classic characteristics of a small open economy with the vulnerabilities that implies the sum of its imports and exports are around 100 per cent of gdp with a limited number of export commodities and a wide variety of imports including some key staple foods the trade policy review of the gambia 2004 provides a very helpful review and assessment of current trade patterns and policies the latter rely predominantly on import and export taxes while quite substantial trade reform measures have been implemented recently these have led to only a very small reduction in the average tariff rate and trade policy displays a substantial anti export bias other important issues highlighted by the trade policy review include serious capacity constraints relating to trade policy and a failure to discuss connections between trade policy and growth and poverty reduction again common characteristics of many small economies

assessing the regional economic impacts of defense activities a survey of methods defense activities exercised in a specific region may alter the region s economic performance an accurate assessment of the potential economic impacts of defense activities is a valuable undertaking to enable regional planners to prepare for changes the variety in the methods among others input output models economic base models keynesian regional multipliers fixed effects estimators and case study approaches inspired by geography sociology and political science can pose a dilemma we detail the historical and theoretical background of each method as well as select exemplary cases where these methods were applied by examining old and new methods we aim to construct a typology that could be valuable to all stakeholders in this sense defense economics can also contribute to the allied social sciences by outlining evaluation methods that may be applicable to other fields

imports and implementation neglected aspects of trade in the report of the commission for africa i i ntroduction the report of the commission for africa aims to provide a blueprint for what is needed to reverse decades of stagnation and decline in africa and enable the region to achieve sustained economic growth and poverty reduction the core argument is for a big push to improve governance reduce corruption invest in people especially health and education and infrastructure and create a favourable business climate an essential source of resources for the big push will be a doubling of aid flows to africa and the potential exists to absorb and spend these resources effectively trade has two functions in this as elaborated below export led growth and increased imports to absorb foreign exchange while the report is quite clear and often detailed in discussing how resources can be increased and spent and on how to address issues of governance there is very little discussion of the sequencing inherent in the trade context will import demand be increasing at the time aid inflows are greatest and over what timeframe should exports expand the report gives good coverage of trade issues and has many sensible things to say chapter 8 more trade and fairer trade is devoted to trade and other chapters cover related issues in particular section 7 3 on policies for growth including agriculture and infrastructure it has long been recognised that africa as a region has been marginalised in the process of globalisation especially regarding trade for many reasons africa has failed to benefit from the expansion of world trade over the past two decades morrissey and filatotchev 2001 the basic argument of the report is that more needs to be done globally and within african

an error correction almost ideal demand system for meat in greece this paper represents a dynamic specification of the almost ideal demand system aids based on recent developments on cointegration techniques and error correction models based on greek meat consumption data over the period 1958 1993 it was found that the proposed formulation performs well on both theoretical and statistical grounds as the theoretical properties of homogeneity and symmetry are supported by the data and the lechatelier principle holds regardless of the time horizon beef and chicken may be considered as luxuries while mutton lamb and pork as necessities in the short run beef was found to have price elastic demand pork an almost unitary elasticity whereas mutton lamb chicken and sausages had inelastic demands in the long run beef and pork were found to have a demand elasticity greater than one whereas mutton lamb chicken and sausages still had inelastic demands all meat items are found to be substitutes to each other except chicken and mutton lamb and pork and chicken

modeling the pattern of structural change in u s meat demand the hypothesis of structural change in u s meat demand is tested in a four meat almost ideal demand system with parameters following a gradual switching regression model the results support the notion that structural change partly explains the observed u s meat consumption patterns structural change is biased against beef neutral for pork in favor of chicken and fish and it does not affect estimated elasticities the estimated path of structural change implies a rapid transition to a new regime in the mid 1970s although a smooth path cannot be ruled out

structural change in factor demand relationships in the u s food and kindred products industry this analysis utilizes multivariate gradual switching regression techniques and bayesian inferential procedures to evaluate structural change in factor demand relationships in the food manufacturing industry food materials are included as an input into the food manufacturing industry the results confirm a significant gradual structural change that initiated in 1980 price elasticities indicate that the demands for raw food materials and energy have become more elastic while the demand for labor has become less elastic morishima elasticities of substitution indicate that nearly all factors are substitutes and that the degree of substitutability has significantly increased in recent years

the political economy of military expenditure an introduction this paper shows that although the military burden has declined since the korean war in the oecd it still represents an important component of government spending the magnitude of military spending does not provide a measure of its importance to the economy the relation between military spending and accumulation has to be seen as a complex historical dialectical process in which military spending plays a contradictory role the other contributions to the symposium are then discussed within this framework they deal with the empirical analysis of the economic costs of military spending the impact of changing military spending and the problems of conversion copyright 1990 by oxford university press

a two stage analysis of the effectiveness of promotion programs for u s apples export promotion programs are intended to help u s exporters enter maintain and expand foreign markets but little is known of their success in achieving each of these goals in this paper we attempt to determine the effectiveness of export promotion in increasing both u s market share and total import consumption using apple imports by singapore and the united kingdom as case studies estimates of a two stage linear expenditure system les almost ideal demand system aids model show that promotion increases consumption of apples in both the united kingdom and singapore but increases u s market share only in the united kingdom the results suggest that free riding on u s promotion can be significant

explaining armington what determines substitutability between home and foreign goods for decades trade economists have modeled imperfect substitution between home and foreign goods in consumption often called the armington assumption with little analysis of what explains the wide variation in these substitution elasticities across sectors using a varying coefficients model the authors estimate armington elasticities between u s domestic and foreign goods across over one hundred industrial sectors from 1980 to 1988 and examine the role of product industry political and home bias factors as determinants they find strong support that the presence of foreign owned affiliates affects armington elasticities in important ways and some support that entry barriers and union presence have an effect

government research establishments state capacity and distribution of industry policy in britain heim c e 1988 government research establishments state capacity and distribution of industrial policy in britain reg studies 22 375 386 location decisions concerning government research establishments are examined to understand why defence and civil establishments were concentrated in the south in the late 1940s when regional policy to disperse economic activity was being actively promoted by the labour government world war two while increasing state capacity generally strengthened individual departments within central government with opposing views on regional policy thus having both positive and negative implications for pursuit of particular policies such as distribution of industry defence departments and the department of scientific and industrial research favouring southern locations generally prevailed over the board of trade the major exception the national mechanical engineering laboratory sent to scotland owed its location to political pressure more difficult to mobilize for oth

the semiflexible almost ideal demand system abstract the concept of a semiflexible functional form is applied to the almost ideal ai demand system this yields a demand model that is more parsimonious than standard ones while preserving a degree of flexibility that satisfies the curvature property of concavity of the underlying expenditure function at least locally and that preserves the desirable properties of the ai model aggregation across consumers and nonlinearity of the engel curves the model is illustrated with an application to a relatively large demand system emphasizing food consumption

product aggregation bias as a specification error in demand systems inherent in all demand studies is some form of product aggregation which can lead to product aggregation bias this article develops a simple procedure for incorporating product aggregation bias in demand systems that permits testing of product aggregation bias with a standard likelihood ratio test an empirical illustration of the procedure demonstrates the importance of proper product aggregation

testing restrictions on a model of japanese meat demand tests for quasi separability net substitutability and perfect substitutability are developed and implemented on an almost ideal demand system model of the japanese meat sector the data set satisfies both symmetry and homogeneity there is evidence of net complimentarity between chicken and dairy beef and chicken and pork the tests indicate that japanese wagyu beef is considered a separate commodity to both imported beef and dairy beef the results also indicate that fish can be treated as separable in the japanese meat demand system

south asia does preferential trade liberalisation make sense this paper systematically analyses the issue of trade liberalisation in the south asia region and offers a qualitative assessment of alternative approaches i compare two broad approaches to trade liberalisation non discriminatory and preferential the former approach can be pursued on a unilateral basis by each country in the region on a concerted basis by the countries in the region or multilateral basis under the auspices of the wto the latter approach can take the form of criss crossing bilateral free trade areas between various countries in the region or a region wide free trade area the view i take in the paper is that the move towards preferential trading is a mistake at least from the viewpoint of india india continues to have very high trade barriers so that the scope for trade diversion and the losses accompanying it are likely to be considerable business lobbies being relatively powerful in most of the countries in the region they are likely to exploit the rules of origin and sectoral exceptions in these arrangements in ways that will maximise trade diversion and minimise trade creation inasmuch as the rules of origin give bureaucrats power employment and opportunities to share in the rents created by tariff preferences they too will become active parties to the diversionary tactics of business lobbies therefore the member countries are better advised to proceed along non discriminatory lines in achieving further liberalisation

conversion policy in the uk the democratization of eastern europe the disintegration of the warsaw pact the proposed strategic arms reduction talks start and the conventional forces in europe cfe agreements are concrete evidence of the end to the cold war for nato these events have precipitated an overhaul of strategic policies resulting in major cutbacks in the defence budgets of member states in the u k this has given rise to a growing debate on the economic effects of cuts in the military burden and the possible benefits to be derived from what has become popularly labelled the peace dividend however the way in which resources are transformed for the military into civil use and the interpretation of the objectives of the conversion process lie at the centre of a controversy about the optimal use of the peace dividend this paper provides a critical assessment of the contributions to this debate copyright 1990 by oxford university press

did the world bank drive tariff reforms in eastern africa this paper explores tariff reform in ethiopia kenya tanzania and uganda between the early 1990s and early 2000s tariffs were reformed in an across the board manner consistent with implementing world bank programs the average tariff was reduced and the dispersion of tariffs was compressed with the highest tariffs being eliminated there is limited evidence of political economy influences on the cross sector pattern of tariffs and reforms except for a tendency to offer greater protection to larger manufacturing sectors in all countries except uganda the technocratic reforms have diluted relative protection and political economy influences in all the four countries

elasticities in aids models in the literature a variety of approaches have been used to calculate demand elasticities in almost ideal demand system aids models of demand it is common to estimate the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids instead of the aids when the la aids is estimated all of the previously reported approaches to compute elasticities are theoretically incorrect this paper presents correct formulas for la aids elasticities and illustrates the potential errors from using incorrect computing the almost ideal demand system aids of deaton and muellbauer 1980a b has become popular in recent years anderson and blundell blanciforti and green 1983a b blanciforti green and king chalfant eales and unnevehr fujii khaled and mak fulponi heien and willett murray parsons ray a variety of approaches to computing elasticities has been used and some of the approaches may lead to significant errors this paper clarifies the differences between alternative approaches to estimating demand elasticities in aids models

accounting for changes in tastes health concerns are thought by many to have shifted consumption away from red meats though econometric evidence is mixed testing for structural change is difficult especially when one time series is used for both estimating demand equations and testing their stability specification errors may suggest a shift where none has occurred using nonparametric demand analysis we find that meat consumption patterns in the united states and australia can be explained using only relative prices and expenditures only imposing particular functional forms can reverse the conclusion suggesting that specification errors in econometric demand studies can account for findings of taste changes

non stationarity and the import demand for virgin olive oil in the european union the aim of this study is to analyse the importation of virgin olive oil to european union countries paying special attention to the spanish export contribution the method used is based on the estimation of an imports demand system the novelty of the paper lies not in the modelling approach but in the explicit consideration of the univariate characteristics of series that is included in the analysis since prices are non stationary cointegration among them has been tested results indicate that they are cointegrated and that homogeneity holds as a result relative prices are included in the imports demand system structural change is also considered so as to account for the entrance of both spain and greece into the eu during the period studied results demonstrate the leadership of spain within the eu virgin olive oil market as well as the increasing competitiveness of greek oil

the changing geography of the military industry in britain lovering j 1991 the changing geography of the military industry in britain reg studies 25 279 293 a number of studies have suggested that defence spending has had a significant impact on the location of industry and the geography of labour markets this paper drawing on a recent study of the employment of research and development professionals in the uk defence industry confirms that defence spending and related employment has been concentrated in the south and west of england it also shows that a number of changes are underway the unusually large british defence industry is restructuring as a result of changes in supply and in demand following the end of the cold war major job losses are in process which may amount to a third of a million jobs in the 1990s this is associated with a spatial reorganization the effect of which is generally to consolidate high level activities in the industry in the south of england and deepen the spatial division of labour a key locational influence in this

theoretical production restrictions and agricultural technology in the united states agricultural production studies are usually conducted using classical econometrics that make it difficult if not impossible to impose conditions derived from economic theory on flexible functional forms therefore such conditions need not hold in estimation we apply bayesian econometrics to estimate a flexible production function using u s agricultural data under alternative restrictions dictated by theory including a fully theoretically consistent model that satisfies all restrictions at each point of the data the probability density functions of parameters output elasticities scale elasticity and productivity gains vary substantially across models output elasticities from the fully theoretically consistent model suggest that agricultural production in the united states has typically been more responsive to land than to other factors of production however output became more responsive over time to changes in materials and less responsive to changes in land and labor by the early 2000s the elasticity of output to materials was very similar to the elasticity of output to land the elasticity of output to capital remained relatively stable over the entire sample the estimates from the fully theoretically consistent model also show a slight increase in the average rate of productivity gains between the 1960s and the 1970s a relative slowdown in the 1980s and 1990s and a relative stabilization afterwards all inputs are substitutes in production all the elasticities of substitution have increased through the decades though at different rates

policy and non policy barriers to trade and implicit taxation of exports in uganda uganda has made significant progress in reducing policy induced anti export bias in its trade policy in the 1990s taxes on exports have been abolished and import protection has been reduced considerably such trade barriers are only a component of thee transaction costs associated with trade poor infrastructure notably by increasing transport costs and institutional inefficiencies can significantly increase trade costs the effective protection of imports and implicit tax on exports due to transport costs is calculated and compared to effective protection due to trade policy barriers for uganda the results reveal that transport costs are often very high in many cases representing a greater cost tax to exporters than trade policy

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