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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
University of Verona
Date: 2007-02-10
Papers: 12
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. Economic changes and afforestation incentives in rural China
Sylvie Demurger; Weiyong Yang
2. Nonparametric Measures of Economies of Scope
Alfons Oude Lansink; Spyro Stefanou
3. Geographic Indications for Javanese Teak: A constitutional
change
Dwi R. Muhtaman; Philippe Guizol; Jean-Marc Roda; Herry
Purnomo
4. Africa's Lagging Demographic Transition: Evidence from
Exogenous Impacts of Malaria Ecology and Agricultural
Technology
Dalton Conley; Gordon C. McCord; Jeffrey D. Sachs
5. Differentiated products and evasion of import tariffs
Javorcik, Beata S.; Narciso, Gaia
6. Curvas de Engel de Alimentos, Preferencias Heterog?neas y
Caracter?sticas Demogr?ficas de los Hogares: Estimaciones
para Argentina
Georgina Pizzolitto
7. Managing Firm Competitiveness in Global Markets
Mark Gehlhar; Anita Regmi; Spyro Stefanou; Barry Zoumas
8. Poverty and environmental impacts of electricity price
reforms in Montenegro
Silva, Patricia; Klytchnikova, Irina; Radevic, Dragana
9. Health Security for rural poor:study of community based
health insurance
Sudha, venu Menon
10. Measuring Environmental Efficiency of Industry: A Case Study
of Thermal Power Generation in India
M N, Murty; Kumar, Surender; Dhavala, Kishore
11. The Farm, the City, and the Emergence of Social Security
Elizabeth M. Caucutt; Thomas F. Cooley; Nezih Guner
12. Incentives, supervision, and sharecropper productivity
Jacoby, Hanan G.; Mansuri, Ghazala
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1. Economic changes and afforestation incentives in rural China
Sylvie Demurger (HIEBS - Hong Kong Institute of Economics
and Business Strategy - [The Hong Kong University], GATE -
Groupe d'analyse et de th?orie ?conomique - [CNRS :
UMR5824] - [Universit? Lumi?re - Lyon II] - [Ecole
Normale Sup?rieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines])
Weiyong Yang (University of International Business and
Economics (Beijing) - [University of International Business
and Economics (Beijing)])
This paper uses provincial macro-data from the mid 1980s onwards
to investigate the determinants of land-use choice in rural China,
by paying particular<br />attention to the decision to plant
trees as competing with agriculture. The evidence supports the
importance of economic motivations in the afforestation decision.
A profitseeking behavior is found to be at stake in the decision
to plant trees, which is made according to both the relative
profitability of forestry against agriculture, and their relative
risks. Afforestation is also found to strongly depend on the
pressure upon land as well as<br />on household wealth.
Keywords: afforestation incentives; rural China
Date: 2007-01-30
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:papers:halshs-00120383_v1&r=agr
2. Nonparametric Measures of Economies of Scope
Alfons Oude Lansink (Business Economics, Wageningen
University -The Netherlands)
Spyro Stefanou (Pennsylvania State University)
Measuring economies of scope provides a tool for explaining and
predicting trends towards specialization or diversification
within sectors like agriculture and horticulture. Focusing on
nonparametric measurement and decomposition of scope economies
into pure economies of scope, allocative efficiency, congestion
efficiency and pure technical efficiency, an application to a
sample of Dutch cash crop farms over the period 1995-1999 is the
empirical focus. The results show that the potential economies of
scope are lowered largely by allocative inefficiency and to a
lesser extent by congestion inefficiencies and technical
inefficiency, and the contraction impact of the various sources
of inefficiencies drive these farms, on average, well into the
diseconomies of scope range. The economic losses associated with
allocative, congestion and technical inefficiencies lead to the
potential to reduce costs by 25%, 7% and 6%, respectively. An
analysis of results of diversified vis-?-vis specialized farms
shows that policies should enhance particularly small and cereal
farms to diversify. Also, increases of prices of pesticides and
fertilizer substantially reduce the potential for cost savings
from diversification. Hence fertilizer and pesticide taxes may
have a large impact on the decisions of farmers to either
diversify or specialize. This study also finds that capital is
shareable factors of production, while labor and land are not.
Date: 2006
Date: 2006-10-25
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crt:wpaper:0713&r=agr
3. Geographic Indications for Javanese Teak: A constitutional
change
Dwi R. Muhtaman
Philippe Guizol
Jean-Marc Roda
Herry Purnomo
The central issue addressed in this paper is whether geographic
indication (GI) can be applied as a tool to encourage some
furniture industries and teak producers to take collective action
to improve teak product quality and increase global market
competitiveness. This paper explores the possibility of
implementing GI on teak as a means to improve local community
rights to manage teak resources, Perum Perhutani revenues and the
perception of teak wood products on national and international
markets, as well as employment in the furniture industry. The
paper also discusses the institutional arrangement necessary to
enable GI implementation on teak. After the 1998 financial crisis,
Javanese furniture industries experienced a boom, but illegal
logging in state forests surged as well. Unfortunately this
development was disconnected from forest resources capacities.
Stakeholders made a living from bad practices and misuse of
forest resources. Furniture was rejected because of its bad
quality, and wood was wasted. Instead of producing high-quality
teak products, Java turned to mass production of cheap furniture
for national and international markets. As a result wood supply
was shrinking, putting many furniture enterprises and their
hundreds of thousands of employees in jeopardy. Indonesian
furniture is getting a bad reputation on the international market.
Indonesians by culture have the perception that teak wood is
something special, and on the world market teak is the best-known
tropical species. In other good news, local community enthusiasm
for planting teak is growing. Building on this we expect that GI
to help maintain a common interest among stakeholders. GI
designation is a sign that goods have a specific geographic
origin and possess qualities or have a reputation because of that
place of origin and the knowledge of local communities. Most
commonly, a GI consists of the name of the place of origin of the
goods. Agricultural products typically have qualities that derive
from their place of production and are influenced by specific
local factors, such as climate and soil.
Keywords: Teak; Geographic Indication; Furniture; Community;
Collective action
JEL: K42 L73 O13 Q16 Q17 Q23 Q34 Q56 Q57
Date: 2006-01
Date: 2006-02
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:epf:wpaper:40402&r=agr
4. Africa's Lagging Demographic Transition: Evidence from
Exogenous Impacts of Malaria Ecology and Agricultural
Technology
Dalton Conley
Gordon C. McCord
Jeffrey D. Sachs
Much of Africa has not yet gone through a "demographic
transition" to reduced mortality and fertility rates. The fact
that the continent's countries remain mired in a Malthusian
crisis of high mortality, high fertility, and rapid population
growth (with an accompanying state of chronic extreme poverty)
has been attributed to many factors ranging from the status of
women, pro-natalist policies, poverty itself, and social
institutions. There remains, however, a large degree of
uncertainty among demographers as to the relative importance of
these factors on a comparative or historical basis. Moreover,
econometric estimation is complicated by endogeneity among
fertility and other variables of interest. We attempt to improve
estimation (particularly of the effect of the child mortality
variable) by deploying exogenous variation in the ecology of
malaria transmission and in agricultural productivity through the
staggered introduction of Green Revolution, high-yield seed
varieties. Results show that child mortality (proxied by infant
mortality) is by far the most important factor among those
explaining aggregate total fertility rates, followed by farm
productivity. Female literacy (or schooling) and aggregate income
do not seem to matter as much, comparatively.
JEL: I1 J11
Date: 2007-02
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12892&r=agr
5. Differentiated products and evasion of import tariffs
Javorcik, Beata S.
Narciso, Gaia
Emerging literature has demonstrated some unique characteristics
of trade in differentiated products. This paper contributes to
the literature by postulating that differentiated products may be
subject to greater tariff evasion due to the difficulties
associated with assessing their quality and price. Using product-
level data on trade between Germany and 10 Eastern European
countries during 1992-2003, the authors find empirical support
for this hypothesis. They show that the trade gap, defined as the
discrepancy between the value of exports reported by Germany and
the value of imports from Germany reported by the importing
country, is positively related to the level of tariff in 8 out of
10 countries. Further, the authors show that the responsiveness
of the trade gap to the tariff level is greater for
differentiated products than for homogeneous goods. A one-
percentage-point increase in the tariff rate is associated with a
06 percent increase in the trade gap in the case of homogeneous
products and a 2.1 percent increase in the case of differentiated
products. Finally, the data indicate that greater tariff evasion
observed for differentiated products tends to take place through
misrepresentation of the import prices.
Keywords: Free Trade,International Trade and Trade Rules,Water
and Industry,Markets and Market Access,Commodities
Date: 2007-02-01
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4123&r=agr
6. Curvas de Engel de Alimentos, Preferencias Heterog?neas y
Caracter?sticas Demogr?ficas de los Hogares: Estimaciones
para Argentina
Georgina Pizzolitto (Centro de Estudios Distributivos,
Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS) - Universidad Nacional de La
Plata)
El presente trabajo analiza el gasto en alimentos que realizan
los hogares en Argentina mediante la estimaci?n de curvas de
Engel, teniendo en cuenta tanto caracter?sticas demogr?ficas de
los hogares como la presencia de heterogeneidad en sus
preferencias de consumo. La estimaci?n de distintas formas
funcionales para la curva de Engel, realizadas mediante t?cnicas
econom?tricas param?tricas y semi-param?tricas, sugiere que
tanto las especificaciones no lineales, como las formas flexibles
de Fourier presentan un mejor ajuste de los datos. Mediante
regresiones por cuantiles, se comprueba la existencia de
heterogeneidad no observable en el consumo de alimentos a la vez
que se confirma la importancia de caracter?sticas demogr?ficas
del hogar en el nivel y los patrones de consumo que ?stos
realizan. This paper examines food consumption in Argentinean
households through the estimation of food Engel curves. It also
considers households demographic characteristics and
heterogeneity in consumption preferences. The estimation of
different functional forms for the Engel curves, using parametric
and semiparametric techniques, suggests that both, non linear and
Fourier flexible functional form are the best approximations to
work with and adequate represent the data. Quantile regression
confirms that the relation between the share of budget spend on
food and the logarithm of household expenditure per head differs
at different points in the conditional distribution. Household
demographic characteristics are also important in determining the
share of the household budget devoted to food and the consumption
patterns.
Keywords: Consumo Alimentos, Curva de Engel, Regresi?n por
Cuantiles, Argentina.
JEL: D12 C14
Date: 2007-01
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dls:wpaper:0045&r=agr
7. Managing Firm Competitiveness in Global Markets
Mark Gehlhar (Economic Research Service, USDA)
Anita Regmi (Economic Research Service, USDA)
Spyro Stefanou (Pennsylvania State University)
Barry Zoumas (Pennsylvania State University)
The globalization profile of US food firms is mixed. US sales
from foreign direct investment is now over six times the level of
exports, while US processed food trade balance has moved from +$9
billion in 1995 to -$7 billion in 2004. Competitive forces drive
firms to seek new areas of growth, with either portfolio
expansion or penetration and expansion in new markets. Although
the forces that weigh heavily on a firm are recognized, their
influence in determining a firm?s action in choosing a
particular strategy is not well understood. As the nature of food
manufacturing is evolving and the operational scope of a food
manufacturing firm has grown from local, to regional, national,
and global, is there a new role for policy? What we do know is
that a firm trades with other firms and that aggregate trade
patterns do not fully reflect how firms view prospects, make
decisions and factor in policies as they organize themselves for
trade. Addressing the potential characterizations of
competitiveness for the industry and the firm followed by the
conflicting influences of R&D on competitiveness, we focus on
what is meant by a global food firm with the use of the
experiences of three industry case studies.
Keywords: Competitiveness, Food Manufacturing, Globalization,
Case study
JEL: L2 F2 Q18
Date: 2006-06-16
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crt:wpaper:0714&r=agr
8. Poverty and environmental impacts of electricity price
reforms in Montenegro
Silva, Patricia
Klytchnikova, Irina
Radevic, Dragana
The Government of Montenegro is preparing an electricity tariff
reform due to recent developments in the national and regional
electricity markets. Electricity tariffs for residential
consumers in Montenegro are likely to gradually increase by
anywhere from 40 to over 100 percent. This significant price rise
will impose a heavy burden on poor households and it may
adversely affect the environment. In an ex-ante investigation of
the welfare impact of this price increase on households in
Montenegro, the authors show that the anticipated price increase
will result in a significant increase in households ' energy
expenditures. A simulation of alternative policy measures
analyzes the impact of different tariff levels and structures on
the poor and vulnerable households in particular. Higher
electricity prices could also significantly increase the
proportion of households using fuelwood for space heating.
Keywords: Energy Production and Transportation,Electric Power,
Environment and Energy Efficiency,Energy and
Environment,Engineering
Date: 2007-02-01
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4127&r=agr
9. Health Security for rural poor:study of community based
health insurance
Sudha, venu Menon
ABSTRACT For many people living in developing nations, illness
represents a permanent threat to their income earning capacity
and, therefore, their livelihood .Health insurance has been
progressively more recognized as a tool to finance healthcare
provision in the developing world. The high demand for good
quality healthcare and the extreme underutilization of existing
health services have given rise to the need for community health
insurance?an arrangement that may both increase access to
healthcare as well as theoretically improve its quality. While
alternative forms of healthcare financing have been scrutinized,
the option of insurance seems to be promising as it offers the
opportunity to pool risk by converting unpredictable healthcare
costs into fixed annual premiums. The typical dialogue
surrounding health financing cites three main types of insurance
as viable options to provide care. First is social health
insurance, a practice initiated in several European countries
where the working population of society provides health funds for
the entire population, working and non-working. Social health
insurance utilizes basic socialist principles to hold all
sections of society accountable for the good of the community.
The next type of insurance model is private health insurance, a
structure that generally prevails in capitalist societies.
Private insurance favors those who can afford to pay regular
premiums, i.e. the middle class and the wealthy. Private
insurance, therefore, inherently excludes the poor and only
provides benefits to paying members. Finally, and most notable in
discussing health for the rural poor, is community-based health
insurance (CBHI). Studies conducted in various developing
countries, including India, show that community-based health
insurance (CBHI) schemes are highly effective in reaching poor
populations. According to Friends of Women's World Banking, CBHI
is defined as "any not-for-profit insurance scheme that is aimed
primarily at the informal sector and formed on the basis of a
collective pooling of health risks, and the members participate
in its management." Such schemes frequently function in
conjunction with healthcare providers or community organizations,
such as local religious institutions, self-help groups (SHGs), or
non-governmental organizations (NGOs).CBHI requires that people
make a small contribution (i.e. pay a premium), which is then
pooled to provide benefits, such as medical costs, to those
within the pool who may need assistance. Unlike social or private
health insurance schemes, CBHI is distinct in that it is
generally initiated and managed by the community it benefits.
This characteristic of CBHI is particularly important as it
entails that the features of any specific CBHI scheme tailor to
the local needs of the people. Against this background, the
present paper attempts to analyze the Public Private Partnership
[PPP] model in Health Insurance. As an example of the above-
examined PPP, Chaitanya and HDFC-Chubb General Insurance, located
in the Pune district of Maharashtra is taken as case study.
Chaitanya and HDFC have recently joined in an endeavor attempting
to provide CBHI coverage to SHG -women and their families in the
Chaitanya field area. Founded in 1993, Chaitanya focuses on the
establishment and strengthening of SHGs and development through
micro-finance programs. Chaitanya's work has motivated the
formation of the Grameen Mahila Swayamsiddha Sangha, the first
independent federation of SHGs in Maharashtra. Currently,
Chaitanya also carries out developmental activities including
water & sanitation, agriculture, livelihood, and health. HDFC
Bank and Chubb Corporation, USA entered a venture together in
2002 to jointly offer general insurance services. Specifically,
HDFC-Chubb GIC offers a rural initiatives program tailored to
meet the needs of the rural poor and offer insurance services at
reduced costs.
Keywords: hEALTH SECURITY; POOR; INSURANCE.
JEL: H51
Date: 2006-12-15
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:1649&r=agr
10. Measuring Environmental Efficiency of Industry: A Case Study
of Thermal Power Generation in India
M N, Murty
Kumar, Surender
Dhavala, Kishore
Technical and environmental efficiency of some coal-fired
thermal power plants in India is estimated using a methodology
that accounts for firm?s efforts to increase the production of
good output and reduce pollution with the given resources and
technology. The methodology used is directional output distance
function. Estimates of firm-specific shadow prices of pollutants (
bad outputs), and elasticity of substitution between good and bad
outputs are also obtained. The technical and environmental
inefficiency of a representative firm is estimated as 0.10
implying that the thermal power generating industry in Andhra
Pradesh state of India could increase production of electricity
by 10 per cent while decreasing generation of pollution by 10
percent. This result shows that there are incentives or win-win
opportunities for the firms to voluntarily comply with the
environmental regulation. It is found that there is a significant
variation in marginal cost of pollution abatement or shadow
prices of bad outputs across the firms and an increasing marginal
cost of pollution abatement with respect to pollution reduction
by the firms. The variation in marginal cost of pollution
abatement and compliance to regulation across firms could be
reduced by having economic instruments like emission tax.
Keywords: environmental and technical efficiency; shadow prices
of bad outputs; air pollution.
JEL: Q52 Q51 Q53
Date: 2006-04
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:1693&r=agr
11. The Farm, the City, and the Emergence of Social Security
Elizabeth M. Caucutt
Thomas F. Cooley
Nezih Guner
During the period from 1880 to 1950, publicly managed retirement
security programs became an important part of the social fabric
in most advanced economies. In this paper we study the social,
demographic and economic origins of social security. We describe
a model economy in which demographics, technology, and social
security are linked together. We study an economy with two
locations (sectors), the farm (agricultural) and the city (
industrial). The decision to migrate from rural to urban
locations is endogenous and linked to productivity differences
between the two locations and survival probabilities. Furthermore,
the level of social security is determined by majority voting.
We show that a calibrated version of this economy is consistent
with the historical transformation in the United States.
Initially a majority of voters live on the farm and do not want
to implement social security. Once a majority of the voters move
to the city, the median voter prefers a positive social security
tax, and social security emerges.
JEL: E61 H2 H55
Date: 2007-01
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12854&r=agr
12. Incentives, supervision, and sharecropper productivity
Jacoby, Hanan G.
Mansuri, Ghazala
Although sharecropping has long fascinated economists, the
determinants of this contractual form are still poorly understood
and the debate over the extent of moral hazard is far from
settled. The authors address both issues by emphasizing the role
of landlord supervision. When tenant effort is observable, but at
a cost to the landlord, otherwise identical share-tenants can
receive different levels of supervision and have different
productivity. Unique data on monitoring frequency collected from
sharetenants in rural Pakistan confirm that, controlling for
selection, " supervised " tenants are significantly more
productive than " unsupervised " ones. Landlords ' decisions
regarding the intensity of supervision and the type of incentive
contract to offer depend importantly on the cost of supervising
tenants.
Keywords: Contract Law,Economic Theory & Research,Investment and
Investment Climate,Municipal Housing and Land,Urban
Housing
Date: 2007-02-01
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4125&r=agr
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