Farm and farmer characteristics and off‐farm work: evidence from Algeria

Off‐farm work is a widespread, two‐edged, phenomenon that can help both the survival and the demise of small‐ and medium‐sized agricultural exploitations. Given the prevalence of poverty in rural areas, nonfarm income has been credited with helping farmers to survive. But the observed shrinking of rural areas has also raised the question of whether off‐farm work is pulling farmers permanently away from farming. This paper explores the impact of farmer characteristics on the decision to work off‐farm in developing countries where this phenomenon has been largely neglected. A review of theory and prior empirical work suggests four main hypotheses which we test empirically. The results suggest that while some farmer characteristics appear to be universal, others appear to be country‐ or culture‐specific.     

标识解析与区块链技术在供应链管理上的集成应用

供应链成员彼此间的信息可信共享是实现供应链"四流合一"发展模式的技术基础.通过对传统供应链管理存在的诸多痛点进行分析,将工业互联网标识解析体系和区块链技术进行集成应用到供应链管理领域,形成一种新型的供应链管理解决方案.方案采用标识解析体系将供应链各信息流的异构数据统一映射到资源池,依托区块链技术去中心化及数据不可篡改等特点,将资源池标识数据进行分配及管理,保证供应链标识数据的安全存储与解析,构建互信共赢的供应链生态体系,实现产业链上下游企业协同.     

产业互联下基于双循环的供应链合作稳定性研究

以一条由制造商和零售商组成的二级供应链为研究对象,通过测算产业互联度与双循环程度,研究对供应链合作稳定性的影响.研究发现:在国内环境中,产业互联度与内循环程度呈正比关系,产业互联度越高,内循环程度越高;内循环度程度提高,内需扩大,供应链上的企业选择合作时的整体收益要大于不合作时的收益,因此达到供应链长期稳定合作.通过从国内角度寻找出的规律应用于国际供应链中,为企业参与全球经济提供启示.     

从疫情看中美关系:表现、原因及对策

在2020年暴发的新冠肺炎疫情中,中美本应借机缓和前期的贸易冲突危机,但美国不仅没有缓和与中国的关系,反而从医疗产品进口、供应链转移、舆论战等方面,加大与中国的分歧,这背后的原因包括:美国对中国的战略打压、借机转移国内矛盾、中美发展模式之争,以及科技竞争加剧等。为此,本文建议中美之间增进相互信任,中国应谨防陷入美国的话语陷阱,专注于解决自身国内问题,以及加强底线思维,做好最坏打算。     

Labor issues and COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted Canada and several other countries to impose an economic shutdown to prevent a deadly public health crisis from becoming much deadlier. In the agriculture and food sector, several hundred thousand restaurant workers have lost their jobs. The rise in unemployment, the closing of restaurants and schools, and social distancing have triggered demand reductions for certain commodities and foods and demand increases for others, bringing along changes in demand for inputs including labor. Canadian employers of temporary foreign workers (TFWs) are facing delays and additional constraints in recruiting, but so have US and European employers of TFWs. Rising food security concerns are making protectionist trade policies popular. Domestic and foreign firms may export less and do more foreign direct investment, inducing trade in jobs.     

Impacts of trade liberalization in Canada's supply managed dairy industry

Trade is an integral part of the Canadian economy. The main institutional drivers governing trade are bilateral and multilateral agreements outlining permissible trade distorting measures. Since its inception in 1972, Canada's supply management system has remained protected throughout trade negotiations. The system appears, by any economic measure, to be having an increasingly disproportional influence in recent trade negotiations. However, trade agreements serve not only to maximize social surplus, but also to maximize some measure of political welfare. Canada has recently negotiated three prominent trade agreements: the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) came into effect in the latter part of 2017; the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) came into effect at the end of 2018; and the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) could come into effect in 2020. Collectively, these agreements have guaranteed increased market access for fresh and processed dairy products. We build a spatial partial equilibrium model of the Canadian dairy industry consisting of three regions and 10 commodities to assess the individual and cumulative effect of these trade agreements. We pay particular attention to the institutional drivers within today's dairy sector: milk protein isolates; component pricing, including Class 7; and differential demand growth. We find that the aggregate impacts are: (a) a 1.4% decrease in the marginal retail price; (b) a 4.8% decrease in the blended producer price; and (c) an overall increase in social welfare of 7.8%. Worth noting, the decrease in producer surplus varies from 0.7% in the western region to 1.5% in Ontario. Our results may be relevant to future negotiations as well as the publicly promised compensation package for dairy producers.     

The impact of RFID adoption on donor subsidy through for-profit and not-for-profit newsvendor: Implications for Indian Public Distribution system

Subsidy programs are sponsored by government and international agencies to improve affordability and accessibility of food and health products for socially deprived community. Although the donors in such programs allocate substantial resources to fund subsidies, a lot of it is wasted due to the inefficiency in the system arising out of product shrinkage and misplacement. This study analyzes the impact of private participation and advanced technology like RFID adoption on the donor subsidy under target consumption level. We formulate the problem as a donor funding the subsidy program through for-profit/not-for-profit newsvendor and compare the equivalent subsidy per consumption with and without RFID. We perform numerical analysis, collecting data from the public distribution system of India, and the results indicate that, unless the for-profit firm operates under a substantially reduced level of shrinkage and misplacement, the donor should always prefer a not-for-profit firm for program implementation. We also observe that among all the scenarios, a not-for-profit firm with advanced technology like RFID requires minimum donor subsidy to generate the target expected consumption.     

Policies for managing peak stock of food grains for effective distribution: A case of the Indian food program

The Indian food program has encountered a significant shortfall in storage due to slow expansion of storage facilities in comparison with procurement. The open storage of food grains results in substantial loss and deterioration of quality. While increasing storage capacity is a viable but costly and time consuming option, the adoption of policies for peak storage reduction would go a long way towards effective food grains management. On this background, this study proposes policy adoption for peak storage reduction for effective inventory management. A dynamic simulation model was built by replicating the complex flow process and incorporating the process variability for finding the bottleneck and significant factors. It was found that steep wheat procurement is the critical bottleneck factor for peak storage requirements. Two practical and straightforward, yet effective policies are proposed from the few existing strategies for peak storage reduction owing to the constraints associated with the food program. With the actual data of the food program, reduction in peak stock was estimated for the recommended policies, including the operational cost saving in storage. The practical implications of these policies within the system were also discussed. Through peak reduction, the use of open storage can be significantly reduced, and this leads to better food grains management for effective food distribution.     

供应链视角下餐饮O2O模式的配送路径优化

O2O最后一公里配送往往需要综合考虑时间和成本的关系,研究平台对订单的分配和路径优化对提升O2O供应链的整体效率和产业链升级具有十分重要的意义。从餐饮商家和O2O平台两个主要参与者出发对物流配送系统进行研究,提出了适合于O2O餐饮供应链的配送网络,并考虑道路阻塞、最大里程数等约束,搭建了上层模型最短时间、下层模型最低成本的双层规划模型,进而通过NSGA-Ⅱ算法求得可行解,最后验证了算法的可行性,为进一步研究O2O配送提供了新的解决思路。     

Fertility and maternal labor supply in Japan: Conflicting policy goals?

Using panel data on Japanese mothers, this paper estimates the impact of fertility on maternal labor supply using twins as an instrument for the total number of children. We find that having twins actually has a longer term positive impact on maternal labor force participation in Japan. To understand this result, we present evidence that the effects of age and cost of children can generate this finding, are particularly salient in Japan and differ in important ways between twins and non-twin families of the same size. Implications for fertility and labor supply policy in Japan are discussed.