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NEP: New Economics Papers
Agricultural Economics
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Edited by: Angelo Zago
http://ideas.repec.org/e/pza49.html
Universita degli Studi di Verona
Date: 2005-12-01
Papers: 10
This document is in the public domain, feel free to circulate it.
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In this issue we have:
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1. DETERMINANTS OF TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY IN AGRICULTURE AND
CATTLE RANCHING: A SPATIAL ANALYSIS FOR THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON
Danilo Camargo Igliori
2. Farm Productivity and Market Structure. Evidence from Cotton
Reforms in Zambia
Irene Brambilla; Guido Porto
3. Individuals? opinion on agricultural multifunctionality
performance
Esperanza Vera-Toscano; Jos? A. G?mez-Lim?n; Eduardo
Moyano Estrada; Fernando Garrido Fern?ndez
4. Biosecurity and Infectious Animal Disease
Hennessy, David A.
5. Biodiversity Conservation under an Imperfect Seed System: the
Role of Community Seed Banking Scheme
Bezabih, Mintewab
6. The Role of Water Quality Perceptions in Modeling Lake
Recreation Demand
Jeon, Yongsik; Herriges, Joseph A.; Kling, Catherine L.;
Downing, John
7. Convergent Validity of Contingent Behavior Responses in
Models of Recreation Demand
Jeon, Yongsik; Herriges, Joseph A.
8. Cod Today and None Tomorrow: The Economic Value of a Marine
Reserve
Yusuf Tashrifov
9. EFICI?NCIA T?CNICA E DE ESCALA DE COOPERATIVAS E SOCIEDADES
DE CAPITAL NA IND?STRIA DE LATIC?NIOS DO BRASIL
Marco Aur?lio Marques Ferreira; Marcelo Jos? Braga
10. Heterogeneity and Common Pool Resources: Collective
Management of Forests in Himachal Pradesh, India
Sirisha C. Naidu
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1. DETERMINANTS OF TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY IN AGRICULTURE AND
CATTLE RANCHING: A SPATIAL ANALYSIS FOR THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON
Danilo Camargo Igliori
The determinants of technical efficiency in agriculture and
cattle ranching are closely related with the debate involving the
conservation-development trade-off in the Brazilian Amazon.
Concerned with balancing development and environmental
conservation, policy makers and academics have emphasized the
importance of choosing ways of selecting areas where land use
restrictions would be established. In order to understand the
relationship between spatial patterns of deforestation and the
associated distribution and characteristics of economic activity,
issues regarding technical efficiency are clearly important. This
paper aims to identify the socio-economic and environmental
determinants of technical efficiency in agriculture and cattle
ranching in the Brazilian Amazon emphasizing their relationship
with spatial processes of deforestation and development. The
study is structured in two parts. The first part is concerned
with measuring technical efficiency for agriculture and cattle
ranching in each geographical unit focusing on the production
relationship between inputs and outputs. The second one focuses
on the variation in the efficiency measure explained by exogenous
factors and includes the spatial analysis. We adopt the model
proposed by Battese and Coelli (1995) where the production
function and the exogenous effects influencing technical
efficiency are estimated simultaneously.
JEL: Q10 Q24 R12
Date: 2005
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:137&r=agr
2. Farm Productivity and Market Structure. Evidence from Cotton
Reforms in Zambia
Irene Brambilla
Guido Porto
This paper investigates the impacts of cotton marketing reforms
on farm productivity, a key element for poverty alleviation, in
rural Zambia. The reforms comprised the elimination of the
Zambian cotton marketing board that was in place since 1977.
Following liberalization, the sector adopted an outgrower scheme,
whereby firms provided extension services to farmers and sold
inputs on loans that were repaid at the time of harvest. There
are two distinctive phases of the reforms: a failure of the
outgrower scheme, and a subsequent period of success of the
scheme. Our findings indicate that the reforms led to interesting
dynamics in cotton farming. During the phase of failure, farmers
were pushed back into subsistence and productivity in cotton
declined. With the improvement of the outgrower scheme of later
years, farmers devoted larger shares of land to cash crops, and
farm productivity significantly increased.
JEL: O12 O13 Q12
Date: 2005-11
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11804&r=agr
3. Individuals? opinion on agricultural multifunctionality
performance
Esperanza Vera-Toscano
Jos? A. G?mez-Lim?n
Eduardo Moyano Estrada
Fernando Garrido Fern?ndez
This paper aims to contribute further insights into the
valuation individuals make of agriculture performance taking into
account its multifunctional feature. Using data from the 2003
Survey on Individuals? Opinion on Rurality and Agriculture in
Andaluc?a (Agrobarometre 2003) an ordered probit model is
applied to explore the effect of regional characteristics and
individual preferences on this issue after accounting for
personal heterogeneity. Results show how individuals?
perceptions about this sector performance are site-specific (
depending on the surrounding farming systems) and are also based
on their particular preferences (individuals? ranking of
multifunctional agriculture attributes). The research further
highlights those functions developed by agricultural sector which
do not fully satisfy individuals? expectations. Overall, it
provides a useful empirical tool for policy-makers concerned on
improving satisfaction with the perception of the
multifunctionality of the agricultural sector.
Keywords: Agricultural multifunctionality, agricultural policies,
attitudes and perceptions, regional differences,
Ordered Probit.
Date: 2005
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esa:iesawp:0506&r=agr
4. Biosecurity and Infectious Animal Disease
Hennessy, David A.
The spatial dimension of agricultural production is important
when a communicable disease enters a region. This paper considers
two sorts of biosecurity risk that producers can seek to protect
against. One concerns the risk of spread: that neighboring
producers do not take due care in protecting against being
infected by a disease already in the region. In this case,
producer efforts substitute with those of near neighbors. For
representative spatial production structures, we characterize
Nash equilibrium protection levels and show how spatial
production structure matters. The other sort of risk concerns
entry: that producers do not take due care in preventing the
disease from entering the region. In this case, producer
heterogeneity has subtle effects on welfare loss due to strategic
behavior. Efforts by producers complement, suggesting that inter-
farm communication will help to redress the problem.
Keywords: circle and line topologies, complements and
substitutes, epidemic, public good.
Date: 2005-11-15
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:12475&r=agr
5. Biodiversity Conservation under an Imperfect Seed System: the
Role of Community Seed Banking Scheme
Bezabih, Mintewab (Department of Economics, School of
Economics and Commercial Law, G?teborg University)
The study is an empirical investigation of agrobiodiversity
conservation decisions of small farmers in the central highlands
of Ethiopia. The primary objective is to measure the
effectiveness of Community Seed Banking (CSB) in enhancing
diversity while providing productivity incentives. The analytical
framework draws from the synergetic nature of the possible
improvment of the working of the seed system and enhanced
diversity. We employ Amemiya?s GLS estimator to investigate
simultaneity between participation and the level of diversity.
Our results indicate a significant impact of participation in CSB
on farm-level agrobiodiversity. However, farmer knowledge and
experience associated with biodiversity conservation were not
found to have the expected reinforcing impact on the degree of
biodiversity. CSB participation also led to a moderate
productivity increase consistent with the need for such
incentives to enhance diversity at a farm level. Our assessment
of the performance of the GLS estimator yielded a significant
discrepancy between the GLS and bootstrap estimates. This led to
the conclusion that bootstrapping asymptotic estimations might be
required for appropriate inference even when sample sizes are
reasonably large. <p>
Keywords: Agrobiodiversity; Seed system; Amemiya?s GLS;
Bootstrapping
JEL: C35 Q12 Q29
Date: 2005-10-31
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0185&r=agr
6. The Role of Water Quality Perceptions in Modeling Lake
Recreation Demand
Jeon, Yongsik
Herriges, Joseph A.
Kling, Catherine L.
Downing, John
Recreation demand models typically incorporate measures of the
physical attributes of recreational sites; e.g., Secchi depth or
phosphorous levels in case of water quality. Moreover, most
studies show that individuals do respond to these physical
characteristics in choosing where to recreate. However, the
question remains as to whether the available physical measures
accurately capture individual perceptions of water quality and if
there is a additional role to be played by elicited perception
measures in modeling recreation demand. In this paper, we use
data from the 2004 Iowa Lakes Survey to model recreation demand
as a function of both the physical water quality at 131 lakes in
the state and household perceptions of lake water quality. In
general, water quality perceptions are correlated with the
available physical measures, but not perfectly so, and both
actual and perceived water quality are found to significantly
impact recreational site choice.
JEL: Q5
Date: 2005-11-14
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:12474&r=agr
7. Convergent Validity of Contingent Behavior Responses in
Models of Recreation Demand
Jeon, Yongsik
Herriges, Joseph A.
Recreation demand modeling efforts are often limited by the
range of variation in observed environmental quality. To address
this limitation, the practitioners increasingly makes use of
contingent behavior (CB) data; i.e., asking survey respondents to
forecast their trip patterns under hypothetical quality
conditions. However, relatively little is know as to whether
these stated responses are consistent with how households
response to actual quality variation. The purpose of this paper
is to investigate the convergent validity of CB data with
observed trip patterns. Toward this end, we jointly model the
recreation lake usage for in Iowa using observed and CB trip data
collected from the 2004 Iowa Lakes Survey. The Iowa lakes survey
collected three sets of trip data for 131 lakes in the state: (a)
actual trips in 2004, (b) anticipated trips in 2005 to the same
lakes given current lake conditions and (c) anticipated trips in
2005 given hypothetical improvements to a subset of the lakes.
The three types of recreation demand data provide a unique
opportunity to investigate the convergent validity of individual
responses to actual versus hypothetical environmental conditions.
JEL: Q5
Date: 2005-11-14
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:12473&r=agr
8. Cod Today and None Tomorrow: The Economic Value of a Marine
Reserve
Yusuf Tashrifov
This study examines the effects of market reform on the
agriculture sector of Tajikistan. It investigates the level and
determinants of technical efficiency for a sample of cotton
growing regions in Tajikistan. Using unbalanced panel data of 11
years covering the transition period 1992-2002, 34 cotton-
producing regions are analysed with a translog stochastic
production frontier, including a model for regional-specific
technical inefficiencies. The output elasticities, marginal
productivities of inputs, returns to scale, and indices of
convergence are also examined. They reveal that the technical
inefficiency effects are found to be highly significant in
indicating the ranges and variation in regional outputs. The
results show that market reforms had a significant positive
impact on technical efficiency of cotton production, which, in
turn, has a substantial contribution to the process of economic
development of Tajikistan.
JEL: D20 Q16 Q13 Q10
Date: 2005
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idc:wpaper:idec05-8&r=agr
9. EFICI?NCIA T?CNICA E DE ESCALA DE COOPERATIVAS E SOCIEDADES
DE CAPITAL NA IND?STRIA DE LATIC?NIOS DO BRASIL
Marco Aur?lio Marques Ferreira
Marcelo Jos? Braga
The objective of this work is to analyze the efficiency of
cooperatives and non cooperatives in the Brazilian dairy industry.
In the study, the conceptual bases of efficiency in the two
different organizational forms are interpreted based on agency
and property rights theories. The efficiency was measured by
using Data Envelopment Analysis in a sample of 107 fluid milk
processors. The results support the hypothesis that the
cooperatives are less efficient than the non cooperatives in
productive efficiency. Tobit models is used to investigate the
variables more associated to the efficiency in the dairy industry,
and to measure the impact in the level of efficiency of the
organizations. The results argue about the importance of
promoting differentiated politics for the improvement of the
efficiency in the dairy industry.
JEL: Q13
Date: 2005
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:144&r=agr
10. Heterogeneity and Common Pool Resources: Collective
Management of Forests in Himachal Pradesh, India
Sirisha C. Naidu (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
This paper explores the role of group heterogeneity in
collective action among forest communities in northwestern
Himalayas. Based on data from 54 forest communities in Himachal
Pradesh, India, this paper finds that heterogeneity has at least
three dimensions: wealth, social identity and interest in the
resource, and each may significantly affect collective actions
related to natural resource management. However, their effects
are far from simple and linear. The empirical results suggest
that cooperation need not depend on caste parochialism, that very
high levels of wealth heterogeneity can reduce cooperation, and
that there can be a divergence between ability and incentive to
cooperate which reduces the level of cooperation in the community.
Keywords: common pool resources, group outcomes, heterogeneity,
forests, Himachal Pradesh
JEL: D63 D71 H41 Q23
Date: 2005-11-19
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwpot:0511004&r=agr
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