Effects of Free Trade on Women and Immigrants: CAFTA and the Rural Dominican Republic

We construct a disaggregated rural economywide model with a focus on gender and immigration as well as on the allocation of time to wage work, household production activities, and housework (reproduction). We use this model to simulate the impacts of the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) on rural incomes and welfare in the Dominican Republic. We find that elimination of agricultural import tariffs hurts both agricultural and non-agricultural households, via adverse factor-market effects, but impacts vary substantially by workers’ gender and country of origin. Females and Haitian immigrants tend to fare better than Dominican males, and there are ramifications for both market and non-market activities.     

Biofuels and the poor: Global impact pathways of biofuels on agricultural markets

This study seeks to assess the future impacts of biofuel production on regional agricultural and related sectors over the next decade with a specific focus on the vulnerable regions of developing nations. Using a modification of the GTAP modeling platform to account for the global interactions of regional biofuel and food markets, the analysis shows that biofuel production levels depend on the assumption about the future price of energy and the nature of the substitutability between biofuels and petroleum-based transport fuels. Low energy prices reduce the demand for biofuels and thus require greater government support to meet the desired production targets. At the other extreme, when prices are high and there is scope for substituting biofuels for petroleum-based fuels, the volume of biofuels produced will exceed the mandates. Even when biofuels are being mainly produced in developed countries, our results indicate that there are impact pathways that extend far beyond the borders of the US, Brazil and the EU. Prices of feedstock and non-feedstock commodities rise in developing countries. There is also a rise in value added from the agricultural sector—a gain that is enjoyed by the owners of land and labor, including unskilled. Hence, to the extent that agriculture is a key sector in getting growth started and addressing poverty needs, the emergence of biofuels can (in this way at least) be a positive force.     

Effect of changes in population density and crop productivity on farm households in Malawi

This study examines the ex‐ante farm‐household effects of changes in family size, yield potential, and yield gaps using a farm‐household simulation model that reflects the economic and biophysical conditions of central Malawi. Disparities between growth in human population and crop yields present challenges for farm‐household crop production and income in sub‐Saharan Africa. We focus on the effect of growth in yield potential and a more efficient use of livestock manure as approaches to improving crop production and incomes in the face of looming population pressures. Our results suggest that, even without considering climate change, expected changes in population density and crop prices in 2050 mean that per person crop production and income may fall by 21% compared to 2013 values if yield potential and yield gaps remain constant. However, per person crop production and income could increase in 2050 by 8% compared to 2013 values if (1) growth rates of yield potential rise for maize by 1.13% each year and for legumes rise by at least 0.4% each year, and (2) farmers use livestock manure more efficiently. Our foresight approach to considering crop production at the farm‐household scale supplements macro‐scale analyses of the production dimension of food security.     

Biofuels and developing economies: is the timing right?

In this article, we discuss some key aspects of biofuel production in developing countries, and where constraints and tradeoffs are likely to occur. We use the example of two countries, Senegal and India, to highlight some of the issues of cost competitiveness, problems with ensuring stable supply of feedstock as well as critical missing links in the biofuels value chain that pose problems to scaling up national programs in these countries. We discuss the particularly problematic nature of jatropha, as a biodiesel feedstock, and underline some helpful guiding principles that can help country‐level policy. We point to an underlying “duality” between a well‐functioning food system and favorable conditions for agribusiness enterprises, such as biofuels, and the relevance it has to achieving food security goals.     

Estimating Intertemporal Preferences for Natural Resource Allocation

In this article, we show how the degree of risk aversion, discounting, and preference for intertemporal substitution for a natural resource manager can be structurally estimated within a recursive utility framework. We focus on the management of a reservoir in California, and test the data for consistency with a recursive utility model specification versus standard time-additive separability. The results show that the data are consistent with a risk-averse manager with recursive preferences. The data also reject time-additive separability, with or without risk aversion, such as the standard constant relative risk aversion utility model. The improvement in model fit when recursive preferences are used is notable.