Colonialism, planters, sugarcane, and the agrarian economy of Caguas, Puerto Rico, between the 1890s and 1930

This article presents new research on the impact and consequences of the incorporation of Puerto Rico into the American economic sphere of influence and how much change truly took place during the first decades of the twentieth century. As reconstructed here, Puerto Rico's social and economic structure did change after the American invasion. However, a closer look at the data reveals that, contrary to the generally accepted conclusions, land tenure did not become concentrated in fewer hands. Puerto Rico did experience profound changes with the rapid growth of US agribusiness and the penetration of American capital. In the process of arriving on the island, these two interests found a land tenure system in the firm control of local farmers (small, medium, and large). The American invasion and subsequent incorporation of the island into the American economic/political system as a non-incorporated territory provided the conditions for the numerical increase of farms and farmers in the island during the first three decades of the twentieth century.     

Agriculture,transportation, and the COVID-19 crisis

In this short paper, I assess how COVID-19-related disruptions in transportation services, as well as new demands for transportation services, could impact Canadian agricultural supply chains. The brief analysis reveals that agricultural access to bulk ocean freight, rail movement, and trucking has generally improved in the pandemic, bolstered by the reduced demand for these transportation services by other sectors of the economy. The intermodal containerized movement of grains and food products has seen some disruption from the lack of empty containers in North America. The widespread consumer adoption of physical distancing measures has vastly increased the demand for retail food pickup and delivery services to the point where these services are being rationed by long wait times. From a policy perspective, there is an apparent need for (a) continued supply chain monitoring and industry engagement, (b) the proactive development of strategies to deal with absenteeism and other potential threats to the supply chain, and (c) an assessment of the economic and health merits of providing additional public resources to provide greater access to grocery pickup and delivery services.     

西部农业转移人口市民化的问题及对策研究

[目的]推进农业转移人口市民化,逐步把符合条件的农业转移人口转为城镇居民,是西部城乡一体化发展面临的首要难题,主要是解决"人往哪里去"的问题。[方法]定量分析和定性分析相结合、发展经济学中的刘易斯模型与托达罗模型是西部农业转移人口市民化所借鉴的主要方法。这些方法始终坚持把理论与实践、宏观分析与微观调研、批判与建构相结合,既注重共性与普遍性,又突出西部区域个性与特殊性。[结果]农业人口转移主要包括农村剩余劳动力的转移与农业人口向非农产业的转移2个部分,二者都是人口城市化过程。农业人口转移的方式主要是农业人口向非农业人口转移和农业人口从种植业向非种植业转移两种。西部地区农业人口转移应坚持城镇化、工业化、信息化和"三农"现代化"四化"并重发展,一方面,要推动实施工业化、城镇化战略转移农业剩余人口;另一方面,要大力推进农业、农民和农村的现代化,推动"美丽乡村"建设,重视农业和农村对剩余劳动力的吸纳,改变单向度的城市化和工业化思维。[结论]西部农业转移人口市民化的关键在于制度的安排与创新,主要解决"转的进、稳得住、有保障、可持续"的问题。     

Preferences, Technology, and the Environment: Understanding the Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis

We derive a simple expression for the income-pollution path using the standard static model of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). This expression makes it straightforward to identify the general characteristics of utility and pollution functions that lead to such a curve. We show that suitable preferences can always lead to an EKC while there is no technology that yields an EKC for all types of preferences, and we derive a sufficient condition for technology that leads to an EKC for almost all types of preferences. Our results hold for a model with multiple goods with different pollution intensities and for a production economy with nonconstant relative price of consumption and environmental effort. We derive our results without assuming specific functional forms and we encompass several other models as special cases.     

Reindeer husbandry, the Swedish market for reindeer meat, and the Chernobyl effects

Reindeer husbandry is a cornerstone in the culture of the Sami, northern Scandinavia's indigenous people. This paper presents a dynamic, theoretical model of the Swedish reindeer husbandry and the market for reindeer meat, as well as econometric results based on three‐stage least squares regression on annual data. The most striking feature of the empirical results is a “backward‐sloping” supply function, which is consistent with the theoretical model. The results also show effects of the Chernobyl accident. Prevailing winds at the time of the accident carried radioactive fallout over the grazing areas for the Swedish reindeer husbandry, causing effects on both supply and demand.     

Habit,BSE, and the Dynamics of Beef Consumption

Habit persistence is related to recurring food safety incidents in the context of the initial three cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in Canadian cows. We test Engel functions, using generalized method of moments procedures, to analyze the dynamics of monthly beef expenditure shares of a sample of Canadian households during years 2002 through 2005. From microlevel panel data which followed meat expenditures by Canadian households before and after the first three BSE cases, which were discovered in 2003 and 2005, it is seen that households’ reactions to these followed a similar general pattern: households reduced beef purchase expenditures following the discovery of BSE but expenditures subsequently recovered. Following the initial BSE event, we identify an immediate negative impact on beef expenditures. However, in the case of the second two BSE events, this negative impact was not evident until two months after the BSE announcements. The results suggest that habit persistence initially limited households’ reductions of beef purchases following the first BSE event. However, households with higher beef expenditure shares reduced expenditure more than others following the second two BSE events, suggesting that habitual patterns of high levels of consumption tended to change with the recurrence of these food safety events. La persistance des habitudes de consommation est liée aux incidents de sécurité alimentaire récurrents dans le contexte des trois premiers cas d’ESB décelés chez des bovins canadiens. À l’aide de la méthode des moments généralisés, nous avons estimé des courbes d’Engel pour analyser la dynamique des parts de dépenses mensuelles en viande de b?uf auprès d’un échantillon de ménages, au cours de la période de 2002 à 2005. D’après un panel de microdonnées sur les dépenses en viande des ménages canadiens effectuées avant et après la découverte des trois premiers cas d’ESB en 2003 et en 2005, la réaction des ménages semble avoir suivi une tendance générale similaire, à savoir une diminution des dépenses en viande de b?uf après l’annonce des cas d’ESB, suivie d’une reprise. Après l’annonce du premier cas d’ESB, nous avons observé un impact négatif immédiat sur les dépenses en viande de b?uf. Par contre, dans les deux autres cas, l’impact négatif ne s’est fait sentir que deux mois après leur annonce. Les résultats autorisent à penser que la persistance des habitudes a limité la diminution des dépenses des ménages en viande de b?uf après l’annonce du premier cas d’ESB. Toutefois, les ménages qui avaient une part des dépenses en viande de b?uf élevée ont diminué leurs dépenses plus que les autres ménages après l’annonce des deuxième et troisième cas, ce qui laisse supposer que les comportements habituels de consommation élevée ont eu tendance à changer avec la récurrence de ces incidents de sécurité alimentaire.     

Essential agriculture,sacrificial labor,and the COVID-19 pandemic in the US South

As farmworkers were reframed as “essential” workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, US growers demanded unfettered access to foreign farm labor. After initially announcing a freeze on all immigration processing, the Trump administration bowed to farmers' demands, granting a single exception for agricultural guestworkers under the H-2A visa program. Through a focus on H-2A farmworkers in Georgia, this paper highlights how the pandemic exacerbated farm labor conditions in the US South. The author interrogates these conditions through the lens of racial capitalism, exposing the legacies of plantation political economies and a longstanding agricultural labor system premised on devaluing racialized labor. These histories are obscured by the myth of agricultural exceptionalism—the idea that agriculture is too different and important to be subject to the same rules and regulations as other industries. Agricultural exceptionalism naturalizes the racial capitalist system and informs state responses that privilege agricultural production through the exploitation of farmworkers, remaking “essential” farmworkers as sacrificial labor.     

Navigating the perfect storm: reflections on the food,energy, and financial crises

The closely interlinked food, energy, and financial crises pose a significant new challenge to the global effort to reduce poverty. In 2008, food prices rose sharply in many countries, and global poverty and hunger levels increased quite markedly. The good news is that the agricultural supply response in many countries was also strong. The impacts of the financial crisis on poor countries have yet to fully roll out, but it is clear that more people have fallen into poverty and more are suffering from hunger. Lastly, there are strong indications that the global food system is fundamentally changing in a number of dimensions. Biofuels are here to stay, and energy and food prices appear to have adjusted to a higher equilibrium and will in turn raise the prospects of renewed volatility in agricultural commodity markets. Trade protection has also resurfaced, but so have renewed investments in agriculture. These fundamental shifts bring with them opportunities and risks that require internationally coordinated responses with strong national buy‐in, as well as timely and relevant research.     

Politics, Economics, and the Regulation of Direct Interstate Shipping in the Wine Industry

In 1986, California passed legislation restricting the direct importation of wine from another state by California residents unless the originating state allowed direct shipment from California wineries to residents in that state. The result has been a patchwork of direct shipment regulations across states. We examine how various economic and public interest factors affect the likelihood that a state adopts a change in its direct shipment regulation and the nature of that change. Our results suggest that private and public sector economic considerations lie at the root of direct shipment regulations in the wine industry.     

抓住机遇深化改革促进地勘经济发展

文章以《各省市、区地勘 (矿 )局工作报告汇编 ( 2 0 0 4年 )》中收集的各地勘局属地化以来主要经济指标和 2 0 0 4年工作报告中的主要资料为基础 ,概括总结了属地化以来地勘经济改革与发展的经验 ,客观地分析了地勘单位在经济发展中依然存在的诸多困难和问题。最后对各省局 2 0 0 4年及今后在深化改革和产业发展上的主要措施进行了整合、归纳。     

全员轮岗添动力 优化职能出效率

本文在结合轮岗工作实践的基础上，分析了如何优化全员轮岗的内部环境，提出了全员轮岗的建议。     

Measuring the relative importance of preferences for country of origin in China, France, Niger, and the United States

Recent labeling policies in developed countries place new focus on origin labeling, especially country of origin labeling, for a variety of food products. It is not clear if this new emphasis on origin is the result of more ethnocentric consumer preferences for food. We measure consumer preferences for country of origin in four different international locations and one domestic control location using a conjoint experiment to test the null hypotheses that consumers do not have stronger own-country preferences. In addition, we compare the relative importance of consumer preferences for origin to their preferences for genetically modified food and pesticide-free production using attribute coefficients from within location ordered probit models. The study was conducted in China, France, Niger, and the United States. We find consumers tend to prefer food from their own location indicating ethnocentric tendencies do play a role in shaping country-of-origin preferences. Country of origin is generally less important to consumers than genetically modified food content and pesticide use in food production.     

总结经验精心组织确保"十一五"规划顺利实施

《新疆生产建设兵团国民经济和社会发展第十一个五年规划纲要》确定了“十一五”期间兵团经济和社会发展的指导思想、发展目标和主要任务，对于促进兵团经济持续快速协调健康发展和社会全面进步，实现全面建设小康社会的宏伟目标，发挥好稳疆兴疆、富民固边作用具有重大现实意义。该文主要就兵团“十一五”规划编制工作取得的主要成绩以及取得的经验进行了分析与总结，并对精心做好“十一五”规划的实施工作提出了强化规划管理的制度化；处理好5年规划和年度计划的关系；建立规划实施的跟踪分析和评估制度；完善规划政策支撑体系；建立和落实规划带项目、项目带资金机制和加强对规划实施工作的组织领导等观点。进而就当前认真组织好新型团场规划的编制工作提出了规划要突出经济发展；规划要突出改善团场生产生活条件和提高职工收入；规划要突出经济社会协调发展；规划要突出生态环境保护与建设；规划要突出分类指导、因地制宜、分步骤实施和规划既要实事求是，也要适度超前等具体建议。