tax policy asset prices and growth a general equilibrium analysis abstract this paper presents a computable general equilibrium tax policy model that combines a consideration of disaggregate industry effects with an integrated treatment of short and long run adjustments to policy initiatives the model s explicit consideration of forward looking investment decisions and adjustment dynamics permits assessments of short run effects of tax policy on asset values as well as long term impacts on capital accumulation simulations reveal that effects on asset values and investment depend critically on whether policies are oriented toward new or old capital investment tax credits yield significant increases in investment without conferring windfall gains to corporate shareholders corporate tax cuts with the same revenue cost on the other hand yield large windfalls to shareholders while providing only a modest investment stimulus incidence and growth effects differ considerably across sectors particularly between business and housing

environmental regulation and u s economic growth in this article we quantify the costs of pollution controls by reporting the results of simulations of the growth of the u s economy with and without regulation for this purpose we have constructed a detailed model of the economy that includes the determinants of long term growth we have also analyzed the interaction between industries in order to capture the full repercussions of environmental regulations however we have not attempted to assess the benefits resulting from a cleaner environment we find that pollution abatement has emerged as a major claimant on the resources of the u s economy the cost of emission controls is more than 10 of the total cost of government purchases of goods and services

dualism and reform in china according to the dual economy tradition of economic development models less developed economies at an early stage of development are marked by a dichotomy between a modern sector in which workers are hired at an institutional wage in numbers that rise with the growth of the industrial capital stock and a traditional sector in which workers subsist at an income level that is somewhat below the indus

input orientated data envelopment analysis framework for measuring and decomposing economic environmental and ecological efficiency an application to oecd agriculture this paper presents an input orientated data envelopment analysis dea framework which allows the measurement and decomposition of economic environmental and ecological efficiency levels in agricultural production across different countries economic environmental and ecological optimisations search for optimal input combinations that minimise total costs total amount of nutrients and total amount of cumulative exergy contained in inputs respectively the application of the framework to an agricultural dataset of 30 oecd countries revealed that i there was significant scope to make their agricultural production systems more environmentally and ecologically sustainable ii the improvement in the environmental and ecological sustainability could be achieved by being more technically efficient and even more significantly by changing the input combinations iii the rankings of sustainability varied significantly across oecd countries within frontier based environmental and ecological efficiency measures and between frontier based measures and indicators

potential implications of a special safeguard mechanism in the world trade organization the case of wheat the special safeguard mechanism both quantity and price based was key in the july 2008 failure to reach agreement in the world trade organization wto negotiations under the doha development agenda a stochastic simulation model of the world wheat market is used to investigate the effects of the special safeguard mechanism as expected the quantity based safeguard is found to reduce imports raise domestic prices and boost mean domestic production in the countries that implement it however rather than insulating developing countries in those regions from price volatility the quantity based safeguard increases domestic price volatility largely by restricting imports when domestic output is low and prices are high the quantity based safeguard shrinks average wheat imports nearly 50 percent in some regions and global wheat trade falls by 4 7 percent the price based safeguard discriminates against lower price exporters and contributes to producer price instability

the who and why of lottery empirical highlights from the seminal economic literature lotteries operate today in many countries around the world this type of gambling is usually run by governments and is sometimes described as regressive lottery is an unfair bet so explaining the purchase of lottery tickets by risk averse consumers has been a challenge for economic theory lotteries can be analysed from either of two economic perspectives as a source of public revenue or as a consumer commodity in this paper the state of economic research on lotteries is reviewed focusing on its main empirical findings

are the poverty effects of trade policies invisible beginning with the wto s doha development agenda and establishment of the millennium development goal of reducing poverty by 50 percent by 2015 poverty impacts of trade reforms have become central

eco thermodynamics economics and the second law the laws of physics especially the first and second laws of thermodynamics have significant implications for economic theory the major implications of the first law conservation of mass energy are straightforward and have been discussed at length elsewhere in brief raw material inputs to economic processes are not consumed having been extracted from the environment in the first place they eventually return to the environment as wastes the economic implications of the second law entropy law are far more subtle there is considerable literature initiated by the work of georgescu roegen on the supposed constraints on economic growth imposed by the fact that economic processes utilize low entropy raw materials fossil fuels and high grade metal ores and discard high entropy wastes however as a practical matter the flux of available low entropy energy exergy from the sun is extremely large and certainly adequate to sustain economic activity in the solar system indefinitely even though fossil fuel and metal ore stocks may eventually be exhausted it is argued in this paper that the real economic significance of the second law lies in the fact that exergy is i not conserved and ii is a useful common measure of resource quality as well as quantity applicable to both materials and energy thus exergy can be used to measure and compare resource inputs and outputs including wastes and losses this is potentially important in itself moreover since exergy is not conserved it is truly consumed i e used up in economic processes hence exergy is no less a factor of production than labor or capital this fact has strong implications for economic growth theory especially with regard to assessing the role of technical progress

tracking distortions in agriculture china and its accession to the world trade organization this article examines the impacts of china s accession to the world trade organization wto on prices in its agricultural sector the analysis uses a new methodology to estimate nominal protection rates in china s agricultural sector before its accession to the wto these new measures account for differences in commodity quality within china and between china and world markets the analysis shows that some of china s agricultural commodities are well above world market prices and others are well below the article also assesses market integration and efficiency in china it finds high degrees of integration between coastal and inland markets and between regional and village markets the remarkable improvements in market performance in recent years mean that if increased imports or exports affect china s domestic price near the border producers throughout most of china will feel the price shifts

innovation and bureaucracy under soft and hard budget constraints because of the inherent uncertainty promotion of innovation critically depends on screening mechanisms to select projects this paper studies the relationship between bureaucracy and financial constraints as two such mechanisms the lack of commitment to hard financial constraints interferes with its ex post screening capability ex ante bureaucratic screening is optimally chosen as a substitute however bureaucracy makes mistakes by rejecting promising projects and delays innovation and the efficiency loss due to soft financial constraints increases as prior knowledge becomes worse and as research stage investment requirements become lower in a centralized economy bureaucracy may reduce the number of parallel projects particularly for projects with higher uncertainties and less research stage requirements this theory fits much of the evidence and in particular it explains why the computer industry but not the nuclear or aerospace industries has fared so poorly in centralized economies the fundamental importance of innovation to the survival and evolution of economic systems and organizations has long been recognized marx 1978 schumpeter 1950 innovation is characterized by its inherent uncertainty because it is a process whose every element takes considerable time in revealing its true features and ultimate effects schumpeter 1950 p 83 and people are unable to anticipate the future impact of successful innovations even after their technical feasibility has been established rosenberg 1994 an understanding of how different systems and organizations deal with the uncertainties associated with innovation and the resultant consequences is crucial for understanding alternative economic systems and organizations in this paper we provide a theory to analyse how different systems screen uncertain innovative projects and the impact of the various screening mechanisms on those systems we distinguish two alternative screening mechanisms the bureaucratic screening mechanism vs the market screening mechanism the latter is directly linked to financial constraints with this perspective our theory explains why centralized economies did well in certain areas of innovation but fared poorly in others for instance in the early 1960s the west was frightened by the ussr s great success in launching the first unmanned satellite and the first manned space capsule while in the 1980s in contrast the centralized system

factors influencing the adoption of state lotteries this paper explores the factors influencing the adoption of state lotteries in the united states the conceptual framework utilizes a common utility framework in which a representative legislator maximizes utility derived from the current and expected fiscal position of a state subject to a political constraint the empirical results support the theoretical hypotheses including the finding that changes in the fiscal health of the state the predicted profit potential of a lottery and the political climate of the state all affect the likelihood that a lottery is adopted by introducing a sound conceptual framework using better data than used in previous studies utilizing an appropriate estimation technique and obtaining strong results this study advances our knowledge of why states adopt lotteries

grain price spikes and beggar thy neighbor policy responses a global economywide analysis when prices spike in international grain markets national governments often reduce the extent to which that spike affects their domestic food markets those actions exacerbate the price spike and international welfare transfer associated with the terms of trade change several recent analyses have assessed the extent to which those policies contributed to the 2006 08 international price rise but only by focusing on one commodity or using a back of the envelope method this paper provides a more comprehensive analysis that uses a global economywide model that is able to take account of the interactions between markets for farm products that are closely related in production or consumption the model is able to estimate the impacts of those insulating policies on grain prices and on the grain trade and economic welfare of various countries the results support the conclusion from earlier studies that there is a need for stronger world trade organization disciplines on export restrictions

transition and integration in europe implications for agricultural and food markets policy and trade agreements several central and eastern european countries are on their way to becoming members of the european union agriculture and agricultural policy is an important issue in eu enlargement this paper reviews the changes that have occurred in the agricultural and food sector of the ceecs and draws implications for the impact of eu enlargement on agri food markets and policy first those countries which have reformed most rapidly and most thoroughly are now doing best and their reform efforts have resulted in significant recovery and efficiency improvements second the impact of eastern enlargement will be less dramatic than initially feared although some uncertainty remains the possibility that the accession of the ceecs into the cap will cause a conflict with wto commitments has been reduced but cannot be excluded for some specific commodities depending on the ceec supply evolution however the likelihood of a wto conflict and the impact on the cap will depend more on the outcome of the negotiations in the wto millennium round than on enlargement similarly the impact of enlargement on the eu budget depends mostly on the political decision on the allocation of direct payments to ceec farmers and or of the extent of structural funds for ceecs

the creation and spread of technology and total factor productivity in china s agriculture the overall goal of this study is to create a framework for assessing the trends of china s national and international investment in agricultural research and to measure its impact on total factor productivity the main methodological contribution is to provide more convincing measures of crop specific technologies from china s national research program and of those imported from the international agricultural research system our results find that from 1980 to 1995 china s total factor productivity for rice wheat and maize grew rapidly and new technology accounts for most of the productivity growth

rural urban disparity and sectoral labour allocation in china this study examines china s rural urban segmentation and its causes in the context of economic reforms household survey and aggregate data indicate a v shaped process in which rural urban consumption and income differentials decreased between 1978 and 1985 but then have continually increased to historically high levels this sectoral division is consistent with production function estimates based on provincial data that reveal higher labour productivity in urban state owned industries than in rural industries and agriculture to explain the v shaped change we argue that the precedent of successful rural reforms raised farmers relative earnings but the remaining obstacles to an efficient sectoral allocation of labour have prevented china from eliminating dualism recent financial policies consisting of urban price subsidies and increased investment credits have also had influential distribution effects that are biased against the rural sector

changes in trade and domestic distortions affecting china s agriculture this paper assesses the implications of china s trade and domestic policies for incentives to producers in china it uses a price comparison methodology nominal rates of assistance at the border and the farmgate with adjustments for exchange rate distortions in the first part of the sample period 1981 1994 on average distortions to agricultural incentives have been reduced in the early 1980s on average china s domestic prices were far below international prices there were substantial variations however between imported which were being protected and exported goods during the 1980s and 1990s the gap between domestic and international prices for both imports and exports narrowed initially mainly due to the elimination of domestic policy distortions between the mid 1990s and 2004 trade liberalization policy furthered narrowed the gap between world and china farmgate prices by the mid 2000s china s agriculture was operating with only small price distortions

thermodynamics and process analysis for future economic scenarios economists are increasingly interested in forecasting future costs and benefits of policies for dealing with materials energy fluxes polluting emissions and environmental impacts on various scales from sectoral to global computable general equilibrium cge models are currently popular because they project demand and industrial structure into the future along an equilibrium path but they are applicable only to the extent that structural changes occur in or near equilibrium independent of radical technological or social change the alternative tool for analyzing economic implications of scenario assumptions is to use leontief type input output i o models i o models are unable to endogenize structural shifts changing i o coefficients however this can be a virtue when considering radical rather than incremental shifts postulated i o tables can be used independently to check the internal consistency of scenarios or i o models can be used to generate scenarios by linking them to econometric macro drivers which can in principle be cge models explicit process analysis can be integrated in principle with i o models this hybrid scheme provides a natural means of satisfying physical constraints especially the first and second laws of thermodynamics this is important to avoid constructing scenarios based on physically impossible processes process analysis is really the only available tool for constructing physically plausible alternative future i o tables and generating materials energy and waste emissions coefficients explicit process analysis also helps avoid several problems characteristic of pure cge or i o models viz 1 aggregation errors 2 inability to handle arbitrary combinations of co product and co input relationships and 3 inability to reflect certain non linearities such as internal feedback loops

chinese urbanization and development before and after economic reform a comparative reappraisal abstract this paper analyzes the recent process and consequences of china s urbanization by weighing the short term policies and long term strategies concerning national development and urban growth against the objective material conditions and competing group interests in chinese society comparative insights are drawn from the experiences of other late developing countries where the effects of political decisions concerning urban growth have been fundamentally modified by social and economic forces thus china s urbanization is examined here in terms of the four major aspects of third world urbanization overurbanization urban bias and the parasitic versus generative nature of cities rural development and the role of small urban places and interregional balance in urbanization and development the rapid and complex process of urbanization certainly helps boost the dynamic of the post mao chinese economy but not without the problematic symptoms of congestion and inequality

on the past and future of china s township and village owned enterprises abstract this paper proposes an explanation of the historical success of industrial enterprises owned by township and village governments in china i argue that conditions peculiar to china s prereform economy fostered the growth of a skilled workforce and high savings created unusual market niches and encouraged entrepreneurial undertakings by local political elites especially in areas adjacent to certain cities i then discuss the allocative and technical efficiency of local public enterprises in china from a theoretical standpoint and review some relevant econometric findings finally i consider proposals for reform of town and village enterprise tve ownership and discuss the possible advantages of cooperative forms

common fallacies in the debate on the transition to a market economy fallacies and other lessons leszek balcerowicz words and the concepts they express exert a powerful influence on political debate and policy decisions in transition economies in this introductory essay the principal architect of the first radical reform programme in europe after the fall of the berlin wall develops a lexicon of common fallacies in the political debate and introduces many of the main themes of the volume one common fallacy is that of country specificity ukraine is different what worked or did not work elsewhere is not relevant here some countries may indeed have specific economic problems viz the huge military industrial sector in ukraine but economic theory is clear about which policies are best for basic problems macroeconomic stabilization as the appropriate response to hyperinflation price liberalization and liberalization of supply are the prescribed therapy for massive shortages etc so there are useful lessons to be learned from prior experience by the same token erroneous interpretation of those experiences can give credence to mistaken policy arguments for example the argument that whatever has been done before in the west must be right is itself clearly wrong similarly balcerowicz argues that china s success does not prove the universal merits of gradualism the agricultural reforms of the late 1970s in china were in practice surprisingly radical the essay identifies many other pitfalls in reasoning about transition experience several having to do with the failure to apply ceteris paribus reasoning for example the fall in output in 1991 in all the countries connected with the former soviet union including finland was caused in large part by the collapse of their trade with the union and certainly not exclusively by the policies they followed there are numerous other examples

determinants of the probability and timing of commercial casino legalization in the united states the adoption of lotteries by state governments has received significant attention in the economics literature but the issue of casino adoption has been neglected by researchers casino gambling is a relatively new industry in the united states outside nevada and new jersey as of 2007 11 states had established commercial casinos several more states are considering legalization we analyze the factors that determine a state s decision to legalize commercial casinos using data from 1985 to 2000 a period which covers the majority of states that have adopted commercial casinos we use a tobit model to examine states fiscal conditions political alignments intrastate and interstate competitive environments and demographic characteristics which yields information on the probability and timing of adoptions the results suggest a public choice explanation that casino legalization is due to state fiscal stress to efforts to keep gambling revenues and the concomitant gambling taxes within the state and to attract tourism or export taxes

instant winners legal change in transition and the diffusion of state lotteries this paper investigates the determinants of legal change in a public choice framework an empirical model explaining the timing and probability of decisions to adopt state operated lotteries is developed employing a tobit estimator and explicitly considering the effects of state specific constitutional and political structures spending and tax policies and federal revenue importation evidence is presented showing that legal change is much like economic change lotteries are more likely to be adopted and to be adopted earlier where the costs are lowest relative to expected benefits state legislatures appear to be the main beneficiaries of this public choice process

why is there controversy regarding china s staple grain food market integration evidence and implication from price convergent club analysis there remains ongoing controversy regarding the degree to which chinese food markets are integrated some economists conclude that china s grain economy is well integrated while others argue that china s gradual reforms have led to fragmented domestic markets while others conclude that previous studies have produced mixed results to reconcile the debate this article models and analyses the behaviour of china s food grain retail markets by testing for the existence of the convergent price clustering clubs using appropriate econometric methods and price data over 1997 2010 the article finds evidence as to why the controversy remains by identifying a number of small divergent price clustering clubs where it is hard to conclude that china s food grain markets are fully integrated however given that large convergent clustering clubs were also identified it can be concluded that the degree to which chinese grain food retail markets are integrated is high this finding is important for those who plan to

the transition to a market economy pitfalls of partial reform we present a theory of a partial economic reform of a planned economy similar to the one that took place in russia since 1988 and in china earlier in such a reform some markets are liberalized in the sense that producers can sell output to whomever they want including private firms at free prices but at the same time must sell to state firms at state prices we show that such a reform can result in a substantial diversion of subsidized inputs away from state firms and toward private firms even when state firms value these inputs more the result may be a reduction of total output the simple analysis sheds light on many consequences of the soviet reform such as breakdown of coordination of production increased state policing of delivery quotas prohibitions of trading cooperatives and opposition to privatization the model also explains why partial reform failed in russia but worked in china

prohibition of factor market exchanges and technological choice in chinese agriculture this article constructs a model of technological choice in an economy where market exchanges in land and labour are prohibited empirical data on demand for tractors tractor usage and chemical fertilisers in china are employed to test several hypotheses derived from the theoretical model the theory implies that the impact of relative factor scarcity on the pattern of technological choice in such an economy is similar to that in a market economy as postulated by the hicks ruttan hayami binswanger hypothesis of induced technological change the empirical evidence is found to be consistent with the implications of the model

global models applied to agricultural and trade policies a review and assessment the continuing process of global integration bears implications for farmers and related supplying and processing industries in all parts of the world but also for the rest of the world economy an assessment of agricultural and trade policy impacts is bound to be complex and is often supported by quantitative modeling analysis this article provides an assessment of the present state of applied modelling in the area of trade and agricultural policies we provide in this paper a comparative assessment of alternative modelling approaches considering a total of 16 partial equilibrium and general equilibrium models the assessment includes theoretical modelling foundations datasets employed and institutional aspects such as model maintenance and dissemination of results a typology of models is provided by structuring the assessment along a clear set of evaluation criteria

the impact of china s economic reforms on agricultural productivity growth this paper presents a method for assessing the relative importance of price increases and strengthened individual incentives due to the introduction of the responsibility system for the post 1978 increase in china s agricultural productivity data on post 1978 chinese agricultural performance suggest that a little over three quarters of the measured productivity increase is due to payment system changes and the remainder to price increases we also use our method to calculate incentive indices giving an estimate of the fraction of their marginal product that peasants received under the pre 1978 regime

the virtues of gradualism and legitimacy in the transition to a market economy this paper presents a simplified model of sectoral restructuring in eastern europe a move towards allocative efficiency is desired by the reform minded government but the shift to higher productivity which such efficiency requires would lead to massive layoffs and labour reallocation in the transition period we look at the impact of political constraints unanimity and or majority worker approval on reform proposals when the government faces a heterogeneous workforce holding private information on relative outside opportunities when the budgetary consequences of exit compensations are so important as to make partial reforms preferable to full reforms gradualism emerges as the optimum in a dynamic context without government commitment it is also shown that under democratic majority rule a government in control of the agenda of reforms can win majority approval for plans which end up hurting majority interests intertemporally by threatening to switch majorities in future reform proposals this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

production organization and efficiency during transition an empirical analysis of east german agriculture enterprise restructuring is expected to improve efficiency in transition economies with data from former east germany we compare the efficiency of family farms and partnerships with large scale successor organizations of the collective and state farms lsos using parametric and nonparametric techniques we show that lsos display lower technical efficiency than do family farms and partnerships but that this difference is small and declining during transition mainly as a result of structural changes in agriculture family farms are not as scale efficient as partnerships and lsos and partnerships are superior to all other organizational forms

russian poverty muddling through economic transition with garden plots abstract household level analysis based on a comprehensive survey in three regions of russia sheds some light on new dimensions of poverty an important aspect of households responses to economic stress in the transition economy is home gardening and subsistence agriculture in urban and rural areas subsistence agriculture plays an important role in real income and food consumption of the middle income strata the income poor also tend to have poor plots and gardens household labor force distance to plots and opportunity costs of time are the main determinants of the level of labor allocation to household agriculture while on average marginal returns to labor in household plots are about 0 50 us day they are not different from zero for the poor agriculture policy neglects this sector which now provides almost 40 of russia s agricultural output

validating energy oriented cge models although cge models have received heavy usage they are often criticized as being insufficiently validated key parameters are often not econometrically estimated and the performance of the model as a whole is rarely checked against historical outcomes as a consequence questions frequently arise as to how much faith one can put in cge results in this paper we employ a novel approach to the validation of a widely utilized global cge model gtap e by comparing the variance of model generated petroleum price distributions driven by historical demand and supply shocks to the model with observed five year moving average price distributions we conclude that energy demand in gtap e is far too price elastic over this time frame after incorporating the latest econometric estimates of energy demand and supply elasticities we revisit the validation question and find the model to perform more satisfactorily as a further check we compare a deterministic global general equilibrium simulation based on historical realizations over the 2001 2006 period during which petroleum prices rose sharply along with growing global energy demands as anticipated by the stochastic simulations the revised model parameters perform much better than the original gtap e parameters in this global general equilibrium context

general equilibrium effects of environmental policy a cge modeling approach estimation of emission control cost functions is often carried out in a partial equilibrium framework i e under the assumption that emission control measures have negligible effects on input and output prices in this paper a computable general equilibrium model is used for simulation of the impact on factor prices and resource allocation of reductions of so infx sup no infx su and co2 emissions thus the model includes markets for tradable emission permits and the equilibrium prices of permits reflect the marginal costs of emission control the results suggest that major emission reductions are likely to have general equilibrium effects and thus that emission control cost functions that fail to take these effects into account may give a distorted picture of the economic impact of emission control

production consumption and general equilibrium with physical constraints abstract this paper analyzes the consequences of integrating the conservation laws of mass and energy into the microeconomic models of production consumption and general equilibrium we show that abstract models and especially general equilibrium theory are consistent with these physical constraints but most applied and environmental economic models are not we analyze the consequences of physical conservation laws for substitution possibilities and show that these constraints limit the number of independent substitution processes but not the value of the substitution elasticities finally we propose a method for integrating physical constraints into static microeconomic models with a minimum of changes

cross constrained measuring the cost environment efficiency in material balance based frontier models frontier models based on the material balance principle mbp constitute a major group of environmentally adjusted efficiency methods that produce environmental and economic outcomes but fail to integrate them with measures of allocative efficiency in order to perform a joint cost environmental efficiency analysis drawing insight from the literature on multi criteria analysis the objective of this paper is to extend the mbp framework to new measures of cross constrained cost and environmental allocative efficiency using data envelopment analysis dea cross constrained measures seek for efficiency improvement in one of the two relevant criteria cost and environment consistent with given levels of both production and the outcome of the other criteria the incorporation of these measures into the mbp framework provides an extra decomposition of allocative efficiency in efficiency gains that involve an economic environmental trade off and those that do not the proposed approach is illustrated with an application geared to assessing the efficiency of a sample of greenhouse horticultural production units in almeria spain the results for this case show that it is possible to increase environmental allocative efficiency by up to 34 on average without incurring additional costs

the design of reform packages under uncertainty the authors present a model of large scale economic reforms modeled on the transition process in eastern europe with aggregate and individual uncertainty concerning the outcome of reforms the government is assumed to choose the speed and sequencing of reforms the authors compare big bang strategies with gradualist reform packages they show that gradualist reform packages may be easier to get started optimal sequencing of reforms should aim at creating constituencies for further reforms and gradualism may generate a higher investment response because of a lower option value of waiting than would a big bang approach copyright 1995 by american economic association

rural reforms and agricultural growth in china this paper employs province level panel data to assess the contributions of decollectivization price adjustments and other reforms to china s agricultural growth in the reform period decollectivization is found to improve total factor productivity and to account for about half of the output growth during 1978 84 the adjustment in state procurement prices also contributed positively to output growth its impact came mainly from the responses in input use the effect of other market related reforms on productivity and output growth was very small reasons for slowdown in agricultural growth after 1984 are also analyzed copyright 1992 by american economic association

measurement of agricultural total factor productivity growth incorporating environmental factors a nutrients balance approach this article proposes to use nutrient orientated environmental efficiency ee measures to construct a nutrient total factor productivity index ntfp since nutrient orientated ee measures are consistent with the materials balance principle ntfp index is superior to other existing tfp indexes an empirical study on the environmental performance of an agricultural sector in 30 oecd countries from 1990 to 2003 yielded several important findings first these countries should be able to produce current outputs with at least 50 less aggregate eutrophying power implying that they should have been able to substantially reduce the potential for eutrophication second traditional tfp has grown by 1 6 per annum due to technical progress however there are lags in the responses of several countries to this technical progress third environmental tfp has grown at a slower rate than traditional tfp growth due to reductions in nutrient orientated allocative efficiency finally changes in input combinations could have significantly improved environmental efficiency and productivity these findings favor policy interventions and faster technological transfer to improve environmental performance

lotto nothing the budgetary impact of state lotteries lottery revenues are often touted as an independent revenue source for states using 32 years of state financial data the fallacy of such thinking is demonstrated being the first to control for the self selection of being a lottery state it is found that overall tax revenues decline with increased lottery sales moreover it is discovered that this decline is driven by a decrease in revenues from general sales and excise taxes which is only partially offset by increases in income tax receipts such findings are attributed to a combination of behavioural and political responses following the lottery s implementation

assessing alternative options for allocating oil revenue in iran abstract the present paper focuses on medium term effects of alternative windfall management strategies for a resource abundant country where the resource revenues are expected to last over a prolonged period in particular the trade off between spending and saving is analyzed within the framework of a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model the model is further validated against historical data available for 2001 2010 the total factor productivity is calculated endogenously in the model based on a function that reflects the changes in factor productivity the results suggest that saving oil revenues whether in an oil fund or through physical investment in domestic sectors leads to a higher economic growth however physical investment is superior in the short to medium term based on the resultant gdp while creating an oil fund might be more beneficial in the post oil era

variability in wheat export demand elasticity policy implications abstract agricultural economists and policy makers in the united states believe that the magnitude of the export demand elasticity is one of the most important parameters used in farm policy decisions however past empirical estimates show wide variation in the size of the u s export demand elasticity reasons for this wide variation go beyond differences in model specification estimation methods and period of estimation to involve factors such as trade policies and changes in the supply and demand conditions of foreign countries in view of the continual variation in magnitude the elasticity of export demand should be viewed as a variable rather than as a parameter in this study u s wheat export demand elasticities are computed using a world wheat trade model the estimates show that the elasticities vary significantly over time they also reveal that elimination of trade barriers would more than double wheat export demand elasticities

the impact of positive agricultural income shocks on rural chinese households in the post collectivization period rural chinese households were required to sell part of their grain output to the state at a below market price however increases in this quota price beginning in 1993 generated substantial positive income shocks these income shocks also varied cross sectionally in accordance with crop composition given that quotas were systematically larger for rice producing households generating a quasi random source of variation in the size of the shock driven by climatic variation in suitability for rice cultivation households induced to experience relatively larger income shocks show evidence of decreased agricultural investment increased investment in non agricultural businesses and increased migration as households gain increased income consistent with the hypothesis that credit constraints may have constrained some households from entering non agricultural production ex ante in addition there is evidence that these households were concentrated among households who had not previously diversified out of agriculture

assessing global computable general equilibrium model validity using agricultural price volatility computable general equilibrium cge models are commonly used for global agricultural market analysis concerns are sometimes raised however about the quality of their output since key parameters may not be econometrically estimated and little emphasis is generally given to model assessment this article addresses the latter issue by developing an approach to validating cge models based on the ability to reproduce observed price volatility in agricultural markets we show how patterns in the deviations between model predictions and validation criteria can be used to identify the weak points of a model and guide development of improved specifications with firmer empirical foundations

success and failure of reform insights from the transition of agriculture this paper analyzes the linkages between the reform strategies in transition countries and economic performance the authors focus on agriculture because of the sharpness of the policy changes fundamental differences among countries and relative simplicity of agricultural relationships the authors document post reform performance in the transition countries of asia and europe the authors show how a pricing reform and subsidy reductions b land rights reform and policies that affect farm restructuring and c the presence institutions that facilitate exchange either markets or market substitutes affect output and productivity the paper ends with general lessons on reforms and transition

land market imperfections and agricultural policy impacts in the new eu member states a partial equilibrium analysis this article analyses how transaction costs and imperfect competition in the land market affect the welfare effects of agricultural subsidies in the new eastern member states of the european union benefits of land subsidies end up with landowners in new eastern member states also with imperfections in the new eastern member states land markets with unequal access to subsidies small tenant farmers may even lose out from the subsidies decoupling of payments shifts policy rents to farmers but constrains productivity enhancing restructuring using reserve entitlements to mitigate this effect reduces the intended benefits on distortions and target efficiency

measuring and decomposing sustainable efficiency in agricultural production a cumulative exergy balance approach environmental efficiency measures constructed using the materials balance principle have two important shortcomings 1 the ambiguity in the treatment of immaterial inputs and the various types of energy and 2 the lack of universally accepted weights for various material inputs these two limitations are primarily caused by the fact that the materials balance condition is strictly regulated by the law of mass energy conservation and that mass energy content cannot be a good physical common unit of various inputs the use of cumulative exergy content overcomes these problems the use of cumulative exergy content allows the inclusion of life cycle assessment hence facilitates the analysis of the cumulative pollution and total affects on natural resources the present study uses cumulative exergy content to construct new efficiency sustainable measures and decomposes them into technical efficiency and cumulative exergy allocative efficiency in agricultural production empirical applications on oecd agriculture yielded a number of important findings 1 oecd has the potential to save 72 3 of cumulative exergy consumption and improvements can be achieved by being more technically efficient and choosing a better combination of inputs 2 the sustainable efficiency varied enormously across countries and 3 the efficiency levels in 2003 was lower than in 1990 copyright 2010 elsevier b v all rights reserved

economic analysis of an aviation bioenergy supply chain abstract this study develops a regional economic model that can mimic stages of a potential aviation fuel supply chain based on the oilseed camelina a general equilibrium model is developed that accounts for key sectors of the supply chain and is parameterized using detailed data for the pacific northwest region of the united states model scenarios are developed to evaluate the potential effectiveness of policies that would promote the development of the supply chain while the existing low price of conventional fuel makes camelina based fuel economically infeasible at present the supply chain could be viable if consumers e g airline passengers are willing pay more to use the biofuel such as if they perceive an environmental benefit from it alternatively if use of the oilseed is consistent with the energy policy priorities of policymakers one of the following approaches could potentially work a 17 subsidy on the alternative fuel a 20 tax on the conventional fuel or a combination 9 subsidy on the alternative and 9 tax on the conventional fuel implications for economic efficiency regional employment and economic welfare are quantified

a discrete time hazard model of lottery adoption this paper uses conventional logit probablitities to estimate a discrete time hazard model of lottery adoption the data set consists of a time series of cross sections on states in the us our findings suggests that politicians are more likely to support the decision a lottery is more likely to be adopted of ther is a favourable climate for gambling in the state and if a bordering state has adopted a lottery

local food prices and international price transmission world food prices spiked in the periods 2007 8 and 2010 11 the impact of these spikes in world food prices on local food prices and thus on local consumers is determined by the food price pass through pass through is defined as the extent to which changes in world food prices lead to changes in local food prices we examine the determinants of variation in food price pass through from global to local consumer prices in a global sample of 147 countries using fao data on world food prices and ilo data on food prices for consumers while market integration matters our study finds that income per capita is the dominant factor explaining cross country variation in pass through of food prices we estimate an elasticity of about 0 3 of pass through with respect to income per capita this means far greater price transmission of food price shocks at the commodity level to final consumers in low income countries than in high income countries the implication is that future swings in world food prices will in particular jeopardize food security in poor countries trade policy measures of market integration also affect the pass through significantly whereas infrastructure and geography measures play no significant role

total factor productivity change in china s farming sector 1952 1989 a crucial problem in economic development is choosing institutions that are relatively efficient in resource allocation and conducive to growth however institutional innovations usually take time and it is often difficult to isolate these effects from the effects of noninstitutional factors modern china is one of the few exceptions it offers a rich experience in dramatic institutional changes after 1949 a smallholder system was experimented with immediately after the land reform this was quickly followed by various forms of collectivization since 1979 the household responsibility system hrs has gradually replaced the commune system thus china provides a unique opportunity for a comparative study of these different rural institutions in terms of the total factor productivity index tfpi this index measures the change in output relative to the change in inputs the examination of the tfpi also has policy implications the apparent plateau in grain production and the slow growth in other crop production from 1985 to 1989 constitute a sharp contrast to the period 1979 84 which witnessed rapid growth in both grain and economic crop production in china public ownership is favored by orthodox ideology and noneconomic factors often play an important role in economic life 2 in facing slower growth in crop production whether the hrs should or should not be the long term rural institution has become a sensitive question again and has kindled a heated debate within china in this study i will examine the performance of the successive rural institutions in china in terms of changes in the tfpi over the period 1952 89 using 1989 as the final year of my study the most important finding of this study is that the hrs showed a clear advan

a discrete time hazard model of the adoption of legislative television evidence from the us congress 1961 1986 the present study examines the probability of the adoption of legislative television over time 1961 1986 in the us congress using a discrete time hazard model against a theoretical construct where political services are modelled as search experience goods evidence is provided suggesting that constituent homogeneity relative power struggles involving the legislative branches of congress and the white house and the potential prowess of legislators in congress regarding skilful use of television are all important facets in this probability model use of alternative data sources and statistical techniques such as those presented here works to provide a greater foundation of knowledge regarding the relationship between representative democracy and modern means of communication

recent and prospective adoption of genetically modified cotton a global computable general equilibrium analysis of economic impacts abstract this article provides estimates of the economic impact of initial adoption of genetically modified gm cotton and of its potential impacts beyond the few countries where it is currently common use is made of the latest version of the gtap database and model our results suggest that if other developing countries especially in sub saharan africa were to follow the lead of china south africa and most recently india adoption of gm cotton varieties could provide even larger proportionate gains to farmer and national welfare than in those early adopting countries furthermore those estimated gains are shown to exceed and reinforce those from a successful campaign under the wto s doha development agenda to reduce remove cotton subsidies and import tariffs globally

a north american free trade agreement analytical issues and a computational assessment abstractthe following sections are included introductionissues in analyzing the economic impact of the naftathe computational modelcomputational resultsconclusionsstudy questionsreferencessuggested further reading this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

jackpot promotion model for taiwan lotto lotto was inaugurated in january 2002 and immediately became a popular activity in taiwan as the big craze following its initial introduction has subsided the growth of lotto game sales has slowed to maintain lottery sales momentum operators have conducted numerous jackpot promotions this study examines the effectiveness of various jackpot promotional strategies the analytical results can provide a valuable reference for operators and governmental authorities regarding ways of increasing lottery earnings the empirical findings of this investigation include the following 1 the effective price elasticity of lotto is 0 382 taipei fubon bank can increase the revenue gained from lotto by increasing the effective price 2 operators can significantly increase lottery sales by declaring the jackpot as an unconditional added fixed or variable bonus

global models of trade in agriculture and related environmental modelling a review and assessment the continuing process of global integration bears implications for farmers and related supplying and processing industries in all parts of the world but also for the rest of the world economy an assessment of agricultural and trade policy impacts is bound to be complex and is often supported by quantitative modeling analysis this article provides an assessment of the present state of applied modelling in the area of trade and agricultural policies we provide in this paper a comparative assessment of alternative modelling approaches considering a total of 16 partial equilibrium and general equilibrium models the assessment includes theoretical modelling foundations datasets employed and institutional aspects such as model maintenance and dissemination of results a typology of models is provided by structuring the assessment along a clear set of evaluation criteria

the impacts of india s food security policies on south asian wheat and rice markets we quantify the extent to which india s success in stabilizing its wheat and rice markets affects other countries in south asia we deal with the variability of indian trade and price policies by a

responsiveness flexibility and market liberalization in china s agriculture been at most only limited gains from market liberalization if one were to take the findings of this admittedly scant literature seriously it would appear as if there is at most only a relatively small impact from market reforms in china we believe there are three possible but only one plausible explanations for the findings first if market liberalization actually contributes little to no growth or increases in output or incomes this would of course in part explain why economies that lead reform with market liberalization do not experience significant gains theory and the experiences of other economies in other settings however would argue against such an interpretation second it could be that china s agricultural market liberalization has just proceeded so slowly that it is still too early for output to have been positively affected by market liberalization however as seen above the record on the market expansion and the observations of many researchers would not support this view

completing china s move to the market beginning in late 1978 by luck as much as design china arrived at a strategy for market oriented economic reform that combined substantial reform with rapid growth in gdp and exports the sequencing of reform began with the easy to reform sectors agriculture and foreign trade and then took up the more difficult task of reforming the large state owned enterprises with respect to agriculture small scale industry and foreign investment china found ways of introducing meaningful property rights into the increasingly marketized system a partially unreformed financial system and inadequate autonomy of large state enterprises accounts however for the current stop go nature of chinese development

international real business cycles we ask whether a two country real business cycle model can account simultaneously for domestic and international aspects of business cycles with this question in mind we document a number of discrepancies between theory and data the most striking discrepancy concerns the correlations of consumption and output across countries in the data outputs are generally more highly correlated across countries than consumptions in the model we see the opposite

state lotteries as duopoly transfer mechanisms government sponsored lotteries can be traced back at least as far as caesar augustus who instituted legalized gambling for the purpose of rebuilding rome mote 1984 we are also told that queen elizabeth introduced a lottery in 1549 and that lotteries were used to provide financial support for the virginia company s founding of jamestown johnson 1960 no less authority on the topic than captain john smith reported that lotteries were the reall and substantial food by which virginia has been nourished johnson 1960 161 later lotteries were used by the continental congress and several colonies to fund the revolutionary war and such venerable institutions as harvard yale princeton and dartmouth benefited from their use kaplan 1984 in more recent times lotteries provided an important source of revenues for the depressed post civil war southern states but criticism regarding their moral implications and corruption in their operation is given as the explanation for congressional action that foreclosed state lotteries in 1895 by prohibiting the use of the mail for distributing lottery tickets and information tillett 1983 in that same year congress passed a national income tax which was struck down by the court some might argue that the demise of state lotteries was related to the federal government s attempt to extend its ability to collect

how to reform a planned economy lessons from china the countries of eastern europe and the former soviet union have been flooded with advice from the west on how to liberalize their planned econo mies this advice is unfortunately offered in an empirical vacuum no one knows how these econo mies will react to the proposed liberalization meas ures there exists however a neglected source of information china offers a long time series of data over a decade s worth on the effects of reforms on a planned economy china s reforms were gradual but their cumulative effect has been large and they have been remarkably successful china s experiments provide some practical les sons on what kinds of reforms can work elsewhere the dominant school of thought among economists favours the big bang policy of reforming quickly and according to a comprehensive plan partial reforms in this view are useless they will be negated by the remnants of the planning system the proponents of big bang reform have been influential with poland czechoslovakia and rus sia announcing plans for a rapid transition to capi talism