The Social Welfare Loss from Egg and Poultry Marketing Boards, Revisited

Continuing conflict over supply management warrants another look at its costs. The authors' model combines the traditional welfare triangle with the social welfare loss created when farmers bear the investment risk associated with possible termination of quota protection. The annual net social welfare loss from egg and poultry marketing boards likely exceeds $100 million, with consumers losing more than $500 million. Half the net social welfare loss is the cost of risk bearing. Quota prices imply that farmers expect quota lives to be relatively short. Therefore, changing to short fixed terms might halve the social welfare loss without imposing capital losses on farmers and might facilitate a return to a free market or auctioning new fixed term quotas.     

水库移民贫困原因的经济分析

本文将经济学的理论、方法和模型应用于水库移民贫困原因的研究中。根据水库移民贫困问题的特点，分别从移民的实物资本、人力资本和社会资本三个方面进行了分析，认为对于移民的货币补偿不足以弥补移民的福利损失是导致移民贫困的根本原因。     

The role of health,experience, and educational attainment in agricultural production: Evidence from smallholders in Burkina Faso

We apply parametric and nonparametric methods to data from smallholders in Burkina Faso and assess the role that human capital characteristics play in the agricultural production process. Our results point to the technology‐changing nature of health, education, and experience. However, effects are rather heterogeneous. The productivity elasticity of health is much larger for households in the lowest landholding quintiles, while returns to experience are larger for households in the upper quintile. In terms of policy implications, our results suggest that productivity can be stimulated through the allocation of expenditure to social services that enhance certain types of human capital. Interventions aimed at improving the health status of households with smaller landholdings could have particularly strong welfare effects.     

社会资本参与流域综合治理的现状、问题和建议

实施流域综合治理有利于加快生态文明建设,提高水安全保障能力,为探索社会资本与政府合作参与公益性项目建设提供广阔空间。总结了社会资本参与流域综合治理项目的现状、特征、模式以及存在的问题,并提出相关建议。     

国有林区森林资源经济转型职工家庭福利研究

以2014年和2015年国有森工集团全面停止天然林商业性采伐为时间节点,选取"重点国有林区民生监测"项目中2013年和2016年的数据,在Sen的可行能力框架下,应用模糊评价法,分析东北、内蒙古国有林区森林资源经济转型中职工家庭的福利状况。研究结果表明:2016年职工家庭总福利较2013年有所提升,但仍处于较低水平;从福利功能来看,2016年家庭经济状况、社会保障较2013年有所恶化,但社会资本、居住条件和心理状态得到了改善,经济状况、居住条件的边际改善对职工家庭总福利的提升影响最大;从福利差距来看,2016年职工家庭之间的内部福利差距较2013年有所缩小,中低福利水平的职工家庭增多,高福利水平的职工家庭减少。因此,提出帮助职工开展林下经营、改进居住环境的配套设施、完善职工养老体系,加强职业技术培训等建议。     

家庭禀赋对农户公益林收益权质押贷款需求影响研究

基于浙江省丽水市调查数据,采用Logistic模型和Tobit模型,实证分析家庭禀赋对农户公益林收益权质押贷款需求及其额度的影响。结果表明:大多数农户对贷款有需求;农户存在以中长期生产性借贷为主的潜在贷款需求特征;家庭的人力资本、社会资本、自然资本、经济资本均是影响农户公益林收益权质押贷款需求的因素;公益林大户相对于公益林小户贷款需求意向更为强烈;家中发生大事、政府贴息、贷款期限、林权抵押贷款经历均对农户公益林收益权质押贷款需求和需求额度具有显著正向影响;贷款用途限制对农户公益林收益权质押贷款需求和需求额度具有显著负向影响。因此,政府机构应鼓励各地加大贴息力度,为农户提供融资增信,银行业金融机构应合理确定贷款期限,农户应注重自身资源禀赋的积累和利用,政府及各地基层、相关金融机构应加大金融宣传力度。     

Property rights, production technology, and deforestation: cocoa in Cameroon

In this article, we use a vintage‐capital model with risk of eviction to assess cocoa farmers' response to changes in their tenure security and to the introduction of a new, faster‐maturing cocoa variety. The model is calibrated with data from Cameroon in calendar year 2000, and then used to simulate the effects of institutional and technical change on farmer welfare and deforestation rates. Our findings can be summarized in three points. First, improved tenure security over cocoa fields increases farmers' consumption and welfare, but at the expense of more deforestation. Second, the introduction of new cocoa varieties with faster maturity and higher input response also unambiguously raises farmers' consumption and welfare. Doing so increases deforestation under insecure land tenure, but slows down deforestation under secure land tenure. Third, when introducing the two innovations together (more security and also new varieties), there is both an increase in welfare and a decline in deforestation. In sum, the availability of new cocoa cultivars calls for stronger tenure security, to accommodate investment in the new technology without increasing deforestation.     

Perpetuating poverty through exclusion from social programmes: lessons from Andhra Pradesh

ABSTRACT

What factors underlie the exclusion of some poor households from welfare programmes? This article analyses the question through a comparative examination of households’ demographic characteristics, social capital and communities’ spatial (dis)advantage as determinants of enrolment in three social programmes in Andhra Pradesh, India. The main findings indicate that traditionally marginalised demographic groups do not experience programme exclusion significantly more than other groups, but that households’ social-network capital and communities’ spatial advantage increase households’ programme inclusion. The importance of social capital for programme inclusion wanes, however, in spatially more advantaged communities.     

基于森的功能和能力福利理论的失地农民福利水平评价

研究目的:测算农民失地前后的福利水平。研究方法:模糊综合评价法。研究结果:失去土地后,农民的福利水平略有提高,模糊评价值从0.342上升到0.373,居住条件和发展空间的改善是失地农民福利水平提高的主要原因,而失地农民的经济状况、心理状况和居住环境则呈现出恶化趋势。研究结论:应该通过提升失地农民的人力资本、完善失地农民的社会保障制度、建立失地农民的心理调适机制,从而提高失地农民的福利水平。     

Land for welfare in China

Drawing on firsthand observations, Party and government documents, and survey data, this study examines the causes and processes of the land for welfare policy in China. The implementation of the land for welfare program cannot be understood in isolation from the profound urban–rural gap in the land property rights regime and social welfare provision in China. The dual land tenure system allows local officials to generate revenue by expropriating rural land, which, to rural households, functions as a social insurance as well as an income-generating property. In the process of land requisition, land-losing villagers are provided with social welfare benefits to compensate for their loss of their land's insurance function. Such provision, however, is not developed out of the local governments’ benign intention, but their strategic reaction to the central government's development program that combines rural social welfare provision with a land rewarding system, which provides an opportunity for local officials to gain more land, a valuable asset for local governments. The provision of social welfare benefits is selective: affected rural households are provided with welfare benefits that are less costly to the local government, typically in the form of a pension insurance.     

SOCIAL GAIN,WELFARE, POLITICAL ECONOMY AND A' THAT

The economic criterion of public investment choice is aggregate consumers' surpluses and producers' rents generated by the investment. Its analytical model is a social revenue function and a social cost function. It is a welfare criterion only so far as efficiency is a welfare component and then subject to severe limitations. It is argued here that the economist's conclusions rest in part on a set of value preferences; therefore, the test of their rightness is in part their acceptability to the public choice-maker.     

土地整治社会评价内涵、原则及框架方法

研究目的:讨论土地整治社会评价的内涵、原则、内容、方法和步骤等。研究方法:文献法、专家法。研究结果:土地整治社会评价是应用社会学相关理论和社会科学的调查研究方法,分析土地整治已经产生和将要产生的社会影响,分析项目与社区相互适应性和社区的接受程度,发现已经实施的项目或将要实施的项目过程中可能出现的社会问题和社会风险,并提出针对性的项目建议,保证项目的顺利实施和可持续性。研究结论:土地整治社会评价是进行项目普及、公众参与、引导利益相关者建立参与协商机制的过程。引入土地整治社会评价可以全面评价土地整治产生的经济、社会和生态效益;提高公众认可,突出土地整治的公共性和公益性;实现土地整治效益的可持续性,促进社会和谐发展。     

Social capital for rural revitalization in China: A critical evaluation on the government’s new countryside programme in Chengdu

In the context of urbanisation and decline of its countryside in the 21^st century, the Chinese government has initiated a campaign namely “building a socialist new countryside” in 2006 which is now renamed as “rural revitalisation”. Bringing together social capital, government intervention and other capital, we argue that rural revitalisation can be viewed as a process of the interaction between land transfer and community building leading to multiple gains of all stakeholders. Given the predomination of top-down government intervention and external capital investment in its campaign, this paper sheds new light on social capital in terms of not only mobilising community members’ participation, but also reaching a balance with interests of government and other stakeholders. The importance of social capital can be illustrated from critical evaluation on governmental pilot projects in the suburban zone of Chengdu, a model municipal in China in urban-rural integration. In particular, this paper aims to address the following questions: How does social capital engage and contribute to rural restructuring for sustainable rural livelihoods? What role can social capital play in the decision making of land transfer and community building? This paper contributes to rural revitalisation and land use debates in three aspects. Firstly, we post a triangular model by bringing together government intervention, social and other capital to emphasize the interwoven nature of the relationship between land transfer and community building for better understanding of the intrinsic dynamics within the communities and their interests interfaced with external stakeholders. Secondly, with respect to the impact of land transfer on sustainable livelihoods, we propose an evaluation framework to account and compare the roles of social capital against government intervention and other conditions in land transfer decision making. Thirdly, applying the above framework to sample villages, we identify three types of rural restructuring: government-led, farmer self-organising, and returned entrepreneur-oriented. Policy implications and further research direction are discussed.     

基于Fuzzy-DEMATEL的水环境治理PPP项目风险因素分析

在绿色城镇化建设加快的背景下,水环境治理PPP项目对于稳投资、补短板、惠民生具有积极的作用。针对当前水环境治理PPP项目准公益性强、治理技术集成难度大、治理效果考核复杂、项目统筹协调困难等特点导致社会资本方参与风险较高的问题,基于文献阅读法,整理归纳出融资风险、财务风险、项目技术与管理风险、政府规制风险和环境风险5个一级指标和16个二级指标,利用Fuzzy-DEMATEL方法对社会资本方面临的风险进行分析,借助MATLAB软件计算相关参数,确定了水环境治理PPP项目中的关键因素,并建立风险因素原因结果图。最后提出了创新项目回报支付机制、改革政府财税体制、明确考核标准变更处理原则、建立约束惩戒机制、提升政府公信力等建议以降低项目风险,为推动我国水环境治理PPP项目的快速发展提供参考。     

我国公益林经营现状与经济政策改进

从我国公益林建设现状入手,分析公益林经营现存的问题。以经济学理论为支撑,借助森林分类经营理论对公益林进行经济学划分,将其按照非私有物品的特性,分为完全公共物品属性的公益林、非完全公共物品属性的公益林、部分具有私人物品属性的公益林、可参与市场交易的公益林。在这种划分的情况下,采取不同的资金来源方式、补偿方式及管护方式。最后给出了政策创新建议。     

Judging agricultural policies: a survey

This survey provides a structured picture of 40 years of literature which uses welfare economic tools to judge agricultural policy. Challenges and developments of normative agricultural policy analysis are discussed in an easily accessible graphical framework. It is shown how the literature has gone from examining a very small discrete set of simple policies to a much broader (often continuous) set of policies that combine policy instruments simultaneously. The importance of the Pareto criterion, used to explore the limits of how government can affect welfare, is revealed. Moreover, given the importance of the objective of income redistribution in agricultural policy, agricultural economists have often departed from the purely efficiency‐oriented tradition in economics. It is shown that they have tried to incorporate equity considerations by either adding these criteria as constraints to the social welfare function, or directly incorporating these criteria in the functional form of the social welfare function.     

Social capital,risk preference and adoption of improved farm land management practices in Ethiopia

Many developing countries grapple with high rates of farmland degradation and low agricultural productivity amidst increasing climate variability. Considerable efforts have been exerted to promote the diffusion of improved farmland management to address these challenges. Despite these efforts, adoption rates, especially of soil conservation and water harvesting technologies, are still low, which has been the subject of investigation in several studies in Ethiopia and elsewhere. Most studies on the adoption of these technologies, however, tend to focus on economic incentives only, paying little attention to the role of social capital. This article provides evidence of the effects of different dimensions of social capital on innovation adoption across households holding different levels of risk aversion. We address this issue by using cross section and panel data from Ethiopia. Results show that social capital plays a significant role in enhancing the adoption of improved farmland management practices. We also find evidence that the effect of social capital across households with heterogeneous risk taking behavior is different.     

Changes in farmers’ welfare from land requisition in the process of rapid urbanization

The marked impact of the welfare gap on total welfare within collectives has rarely, if at all, been addressed in traditional welfare theories and in Amartya Sen's theory of welfare functioning and capabilities. With this observation as our starting point, we constructed a research framework that combined welfare functioning, the welfare gap, and welfare capability to assess and analyze changes in the welfare of farmers whose land was requisitioned in Zhejiang province. The findings of our study were as follows. (1) The total welfare functioning of farmers whose land was requisitioned increased by 11.8% as a result of improvements in economic and dwelling conditions and community surroundings. However, social security and psychological conditions deteriorated. (2) Although total welfare functioning has improved, gaps are widening in the distribution of welfare functioning among farmers who underwent land requisition. This was evidenced by the increase of the weighted Gini coefficient, which rose from 0.26 to 0.32 after land requisition. (3) As a result of the improvement in welfare capability, a judgmental bias is evident when farmers assess whether they have gained or lost welfare after land requisition. We conclude that welfare studies should focus not only on the quantitative aspects of welfare distribution, but should also pay more attention to its fairness and impartiality. This can prevent social problems posed by an oversized welfare gap. Moreover, after land requisition, the government and community should provide education and training services, and the current one-time compensation model should be replaced by a lifelong compensation model. At the same time, endowment insurance should be extended in rural areas and urban medical insurance should be progressively incorporated into the social security benefits of farmers who have undergone land requisition.     

市场垄断程度对社会福利的影响——基于价格不确定性

采用社会福利和价格不确定的有关理论与方法,研究了非完全竞争市场的垄断程度对社会福利所造成的影响。研究结果表明:垄断程度给社会福利带来负面影响,并且随着垄断程度的提高,负面影响日显,与市场垄断程度呈负相关。在一定条件下,即使考虑价格不确定性因素,社会福利也是随垄断程度的增大而渐减。     

Urban integration of land-deprived households in China: Quality of living and social welfare

This study finds that the land-deprived households who have migrated from rural to urban areas (the land-deprived urban households) in all regions of China are not well integrated into urban society, which is reflected by their lower quality of living and inferior social welfare compared to normal urban households. However, we find an anomaly that land-deprived urban households, compared to the normal urban households, have lower quality of living and lower participation rate in urban social security, but have similar level of self-evaluated happiness. This anomaly can be explained by the fact that the land-deprived urban households self-select into inferior communities with neighbors of similar living and social conditions, and their happiness and social utility depend more on their status relative to their neighbors than on their status relative to the whole urban society. In addition, this study finds that land acquisition raises the quality of living and social welfare of the land-deprived households, migrating into urban areas does not improve their quality of living or social welfare, but better education and younger age facilitate their integration into urban society.