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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: 2006-02-12
Papers: 9
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. Global Retail Chains and Poor Farmers: Evidence from
Madagascar
Bart Minten; Lalaina Randrianarison; Johan F.M. Swinnen
2. Foreign Investment, Supermarkets, and the Restructuring of
Supply Chains: Evidence from Eastern European Dairy Sectors
Johan F.M. Swinnen; Liesbeth Dries; Nivelin Noeva; Etleva
Germenjia
3. Land, labour and market forces in Tokugawa Japan
Osamu Saito
4. Labor Contracts, Incentives, and Food Security in Rural
Myanmar
Takashi Kurosaki
5. Child Labor, Urban Proximity and Household Composition
Marcel Fafchamps; Jackline Wahba
6. Guidelines for Building Sustainable Market Information
Systems in Africa with Strong Public-Private Partnerships
Michael T. Weber; Cynthia Donovan; John M. Staatz; Niama
Nango Demb?l?
7. Broadband Access, Telecommuting and the Urban-Rural Digital
Divide
Song, Moohoun; Orazem, Peter; Singh, Rajesh
8. Environmental policies relating to the use of pesticides:
proximities and innovations (In French)
V?ronique SAINT GES (E3i-IFReDE-GRES & INRA)
9. Efficiency and Productivity Changes of the Italian Agrifood
Cooperatives: a Malmquist Index Analysis
Andrea BONFIGLIO
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1. Global Retail Chains and Poor Farmers: Evidence from
Madagascar
Bart Minten
Lalaina Randrianarison
Johan F.M. Swinnen
Global retail companies (?supermarkets?) have an increasing
influence on developing countries, through foreign investments
and/or through the imposition of their private standards. The
impact on developing countries and poverty is often assessed as
negative. In this paper we show the opposite, based on an
analysis of primary data collected to measure the impact of
supermarkets on small contract farmers in Madagascar, one of the
poorest countries in the world. Almost 10,000 farmers in the
Highlands of Madagascar produce vegetables for supermarkets in
Europe. In this global supply chain, small farmers? micro-
contracts are combined with extensive farm assistance and
supervision programs to fulfill complex quality requirements and
phyto-sanitary standards of supermarkets. Small farmers that
participate in these contracts have higher welfare, more income
stability and shorter lean periods. We also find significant
effects on improved technology adoption, better resource
management and spillovers on the productivity of the staple crop
rice. The small but emerging modern retail sector in Madagascar
does not (yet) deliver these benefits as they do not (yet)
request the same high standards for their supplies.
Date: 2006
URL: http://d.repec.or
g/n?u=RePEc:lic:licosd:16406&r=agr
2. Foreign Investment, Supermarkets, and the Restructuring of
Supply Chains: Evidence from Eastern European Dairy Sectors
Johan F.M. Swinnen
Liesbeth Dries
Nivelin Noeva
Etleva Germenjia
The combination of transition and globalization since the early
1990s has caused dramatic changes in supply chains globally. This
paper uses survey evidence from several Eastern European
countries (Albania, Bulgaria, Poland, Slovakia, Romania and
Russia) on how these forces affect the dairy sector. In many
countries dairy farms are small family farms. Investments by
foreign companies in processing and retailing and the opening to
international markets have introduced higher standards, leading,
in turn, to extensive contracting and vertical coordination in
the dairy chain. In countries close to the EU the restructuring
of the dairy chain was mostly driven by investments in dairy
processing, while in countries further from the EU, and less
advanced in transition, retail investments are playing a more
important role in driving change throughout the dairy chain.
There have been significant efficiency gains, and the vertical
coordination had positive effects on farm investments and
productivity, especially since the late 1990s. Evidence suggests
that small dairy farms have generally benefited from the vertical
coordination processes.
Date: 2006
URL: http://d.repec.or
g/n?u=RePEc:lic:licosd:16506&r=agr
3. Land, labour and market forces in Tokugawa Japan
Osamu Saito
Tokugawa Japan was a land of peasants who accounted for 80 per
cent of the population. This percentage may suggest that land was
hardly a commodity while the size of the workforce in industry
and trade was small. Under Tokugawa rule (1603-1868)
institutional frameworks for land and labour markets were never
favourable for the flexible use of land and people as factors of
production. However, given a recent consensus that Tokugawa Japan
achieved Smithian growth, a gradual process of market-led output
growth, with rural industrialisation and agricultural
improvements as major engines of progress, how could such a
picture of factor markets be consistent with the rural-centred
growth scenario? In order to answer this question, the paper will
go over land and labour markets in traditional Japan. It will be
shown that the market size for both land and labour was actually
small, yet that the factor markets that existed functioned well,
so well that market forces must have played an indispensable part
in the process of Tokugawa Japan's Smithian growth.
Date: 2006-01
URL: http://d.repec.
org/n?u=RePEc:hst:hstdps:d05-135&r=agr
4. Labor Contracts, Incentives, and Food Security in Rural
Myanmar
Takashi Kurosaki
This paper develops an agency model of contract choice in the
hiring of labor and then uses the model to estimate the
determinants of contract choice in rural Myanmar. As a salient
feature relevant for the agricultural sector in a low income
country such as Myanmar, the agency model incorporates
considerations of food security and incentive effects. It is
shown that when, possibly due to poverty, food considerations are
important for employees, employers will prefer a labor contract
with wages paid in kind (food) to one with wages paid in cash. At
the same time, when output is responsive to workers' effort and
labor monitoring is costly, employers will prefer a contract with
piecerate wages to one with hourly wages. The case of
sharecropping can be understood as a combination of the two: a
labor contract with piecerate wages paid in kind. The predictions
of the theoretical model are tested using a crosssection dataset
collected in rural Myanmar through a sample household survey
which was conducted in 2001 and covers diverse agroecological
environments. The estimation results are consistent with the
theoretical predictions: wages are more likely to be paid in kind
when the share of staple food in workers' budget is higher and
the farmland on which they produce food themselves is smaller;
piecerate wages are more likely to be adopted when work effort is
more difficult to monitor and the farming operation requires
quick completion.
Keywords: contract, incentive, selection, food security, Myanmar
JEL: J33 Q12 O12
Date: 2006-01
URL: http://d.repec.
org/n?u=RePEc:hst:hstdps:d05-134&r=agr
5. Child Labor, Urban Proximity and Household Composition
Marcel Fafchamps (University of Oxford)
Jackline Wahba (University of Southampton and IZA Bonn)
Using detailed survey data from Nepal, this paper examines the
determinants of child labor with a special emphasis on urban
proximity. We find that children residing in or near urban
centers attend school more and work less in total but are more
likely to be involved in wage work or in a small business. The
larger the urban center, the stronger the effect is. Urban
proximity is found to reduce the workload of children and improve
school attendance up to 3 hours of travel time from the city. In
areas of commercialized agriculture located 3 to 7 hours from the
city, children do more farm work. Urban proximity effects are
accounted for by a combination of local labor supply and demand
conditions, most notably the local importance of agriculture, the
education level of the parents, and the local wage rate. Child
servants, which represent a small proportion of all children,
work much harder than other children and appear particularly at
risk.
Keywords: child labour, Nepal, child schooling, urban proximity
JEL: J10 J22 J24 J40 N35
Date: 2006-02
URL: http://d.repec.o
rg/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1966&r=agr
6. Guidelines for Building Sustainable Market Information
Systems in Africa with Strong Public-Private Partnerships
Michael T. Weber (Department of Agricultural Economics,
Michigan State University)
Cynthia Donovan
John M. Staatz
Niama Nango Demb?l?
This paper contains policy messages for six essential factors
for successful design and implementation market information
systems in Africa.
Keywords: food security, food policy, market information systems
JEL: Q18
Date: 2005
URL: http://d.repec.org/
n?u=RePEc:msu:polbrf:078&r=agr
7. Broadband Access, Telecommuting and the Urban-Rural Digital
Divide
Song, Moohoun
Orazem, Peter
Singh, Rajesh
We investigate the role of broadband access on the probability
of telecommuting and whether individuals who work from home
receive greater compensation. We also assess whether
telecommuting differs between more- and less-densely populated
areas. Telecommuting responds positively to local average
commuting time and to local access to High-Speed Internet service.
Differences in broadband access explain three-fourths of the gap
in telecommuting between urban and rural markets. Telecommuters
and other IT users do not earn significantly more than otherwise
observationally comparable workers. Already highly skilled and
highly paid workers are the most likely to telecommute and so
they do not earn more because they telecommute. As broadband
access improves in rural markets, the urban-rural gap in
telecommuting will diminish. The urban-rural pay gap will also
decrease if improved broadband access induces some already highly
paid urban workers to move to rural areas.
Keywords: Broadband, Telecommuting, Commuting, Earnings, Urban,
Rural
JEL: O3
Date: 2006-02-02
URL: http://d.repec.or
g/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:12495&r=agr
8. Environmental policies relating to the use of pesticides:
proximities and innovations (In French)
V?ronique SAINT GES (E3i-IFReDE-GRES & INRA)
The aim of this paper is to question the cognitive capitalism
hypothesis: are the major transformations of the wage labour
nexus and regime of accumulation, created a new capitalism era? A
positive answer to this question then relegates to a second rank
the thesis of financial capitalism. For this last thesis, the
financialisation of accumulation deeply transforms the firms.
This paper develops this second point of view. Our conclusion is
disappointing for the cognitive capitalism hypothesis. If the
production of knowledge is important for the accumulation,
nevertheless this production of knowledge is subordinated to the
view of global finance. Indeed, it?s this global finance who
decides which are new profitable activities.
Keywords: Collective action, Environmental technologies,
Technology diffusion, Geographical proximity, organized
proximity, vine growing.
JEL: O13 Q16 Q Q
Date: 2006
URL: http://d.repec.
org/n?u=RePEc:grs:wpegrs:2006-06&r=agr
9. Efficiency and Productivity Changes of the Italian Agrifood
Cooperatives: a Malmquist Index Analysis
Andrea BONFIGLIO
The objective of this paper is to analyse efficiency and
productivity changes of a sample of Italian agrifood cooperatives
in the period 2000-2002. Towards this aim, a three-stage analysis
is carried out. Firstly, a Data Envelopment Analysis approach is
used to estimate technical and pure efficiency scores. Secondly,
DEA-based Malmquist indices are calculated to analyse inter-
temporal productivity changes. Thirdly, a Tobit regression
analysis is carried out to identify the reasons for the
differences existing among the cooperatives in terms of technical
efficiency. The main results are as follows. The overall
efficiency of the agrifood cooperatives is not particularly high:
the technical efficiency and the managerial efficiency are, on
average, 35% and 63% of the "relative" optimal ones, respectively.
In the period analysed, productivity improves by about 2% due to
a positive technological change. The technical efficiency worsens
because of deterioration of scale efficiency attenuated by an
increase in managerial efficiency. Milk and zootechnic
cooperatives show the highest average levels of technical and
pure efficiency. Their productivity increased in the period
considered, owing to improvements in both managerial and scale
efficiency. Wine cooperatives present the lowest average levels
of technical and pure efficiency. Moreover, their productivity
decreased due to a worsening of managerial capabilities. Fruit
and vegetables and oil cooperatives represent middle situations.
Finally, technical efficiency seems to be affected positively by
the scale, technology, structural elasticity and middle-long term
balance whilst is negatively affected by financial exposure.
Keywords: Malmquist index, Tobit regression analysis, agrifood
cooperatives, data envelopment analysis, efficiency
JEL: C14 C24 O40 Q13
Date: 2006-02
URL: http://d.repec.org/
n?u=RePEc:anc:wpaper:250&r=agr
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