论印度粮食安全

独立前印度是一个粮食短缺饥荒频发的国家,独立后历届政府都相当注重粮食的发展,绿色革命的成功使印度实现了粮食自给并略有出口。本文依据联合国粮农组织提出的粮食安全理论为基础,来评析当前印度粮食安全的现状。本文结论是印度政府应当把粮食生产作为基础,同时,稳定供给和保障消费来实现粮食安全。     

Feeding the motherland: grain exports from the Swedish Baltic provinces during the Great Famine of 1696–1697

The research carried out so far has explained the Great Famine of 1696–1697 in the Baltic provinces as a result of the total crop failures in 1695–1696 and an inadequate Swedish economic policy that emptied all the stocks in the provinces through massive grain exports to Finland and Sweden. However, both these views are not consistent with the closer study of the grain exports from the major ports of the Baltic provinces during the famine years. The analysis of Tallinn's customs books shows that the grain exports occurred only on a small scale compared to the normal years, due to the strict ban on grain exports to foreign markets. Furthermore, there is no proof that the markets in the bigger towns lacked available grain in those years. It can also be concluded that the volume of the grain exports was hardly enough to alleviate the famine crisis in Finland or Sweden.     

Causes and consequences of the Great Vietnam Famine, 1944–5

This article analyses Vietnam's 1944–5 great famine, which, even beyond its sheer scale of a million deaths, is historically important as instrumental in the August 1945 Viet Minh and communist revolution. It is argued that typhoons which struck coastal areas resulted in a shortfall of available food and were the proximate cause of famine. The Japanese in occupation of Vietnam, the American government directing attacks on the transport system, or the country's French colonial administration could have acted to limit, or even reverse, the famine. However, under the pressure of war, no government or institution opted for an effective famine alleviation strategy. That was also true of Asia's other great Second World War famines in Bengal, Henan, and Java, which paralleled Vietnam's both in causation and in feasible avoidance strategies. In Vietnam, differences in endowments and entitlements largely explain who died in the famine.     

Determinants of software exports from India

Notable accomplishments in export have made India’s software sector conspicuous. This paper attempts to discuss the determinants of software exports from India. The study notes that—besides dynamic elements of economic development across the world—the policy measures and actions of the Indian government have played proactive and facilitating roles in the growth of the software sector. The study uses the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to estimate the impact of various explanatory variables on software exports from India. Since causality is found running in both directions for many variables, the study attempts to examine the determinants of software exports from India through the regression equation in first difference. The results suggest that changes in openness index, human capital, and the GDP of high-income OECD countries have exercised positive impact on change in software exports from India. The study finds a stable long run relationship among variables.     

Peasant supply response in rationed economies

When peasants do not have reliable access to goods on the black market, government price controls may result in rationing of peasants' demand for consumer goods. We show that supply response is then perverse and that the economy may collapse, as exports fall and rural shortages intensify. Such a crisis may initially be disguised as peasants sell export goods to build up money stocks. We consider the policy options for governments facing such problems.     

Does the Granary County Subsidy Program Lead to manipulation of grain production data in China?

Manipulation of food production data could lead to catastrophic social and economic consequences. The accuracy of official agricultural statistics has long been questioned in China. This paper studies the linkage between agricultural production data manipulation and the Granary County Subsidy Program (GCSP). Since 2005, Chinese government gave subsidies to those counties with five-year average grain production between 1998 and 2002 more than 200 thousand tons to encourage these local governments to give priority to grain production. The prospective counties with grain production slightly below the threshold may have incentives to over-report their grain production. Based on the McCrary (2008)'s density test, this paper provides suggestive evidence of over-reporting grain production caused by the GCSP in 2005, 2006 and 2008, though the over-reporting rates are only 3%, 2%, and 1.7% respectively. The policy implication would be that fiscal distribution rules of a central government should avoid data manipulation incentives in local governments, particularly should cut the linkage to the data which are self-reported by the local governments.     

Export variety and export performance: Empirical evidence for the OECD countries

Export Variety and Export Performance: Empirical Evidence for the OECD Countries. — Does product variety matter for export performance? This has been suggested by the new trade theory. In the present paper, we investigate empirically whether increasing export variety has contributed to the export growth of the OECD countries. We calculate direct measures of export variety and estimate pooled export demand equations for 15 OECD countries. The econometric results suggest that producing highly differentiated export goods gives a competitive advantage which allows to sell more products.     

How the Internet Promotes China's Exports: A Firm‐level Perspective

The development of information and communications technology (ICT), particularly the Internet, has reduced trade costs. However, it remains unclear whether these reduced costs are reflected in the “extensive margins” of firms’ exports (which refer to the probability of firms exporting) or the “intensive margins” (which refer to the value of firms’ export). To test this, we used the concepts of information cost and binary margins, an augmented trade model of firm heterogeneity, a two‐stage Heckman estimation, and data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey of Chinese firms in 2012. The results revealed that reduced trade costs from the use of ICT were positively related to extensive margins but that the connection with intensive margins was not significant. The results lead to the conclusion that reduced information costs related to a firm's exporting behavior were primarily reflected in variable trade costs. This study offers theoretical and empirical evidence for China's policies towards the Internet, which are relevant for the export of manufactured goods. The government should encourage the use of ICT to enhance firms’ export opportunities while facing current trade policy uncertainty.     

Taxation,fiscal capacity,and credible commitment in eighteenth-century China: the effects of the formalization and centralization of informal surtaxes†

This article explores a tax reform in eighteenth-century China that formalized county-level informal surtaxes and centralized control over them in the hands of provincial governors, in an effort to strengthen provincial fiscal capacity. The findings show that this reform increased the frequency of famine relief in cases of exceptional disaster relative to other weather conditions. The study shows that the effects were driven by the new fiscal revenues—public funds—at the governors’ discretion, not by the central government's relief actions, bureaucratic control over lower officials, or other concurrent fiscal reforms. Moreover, the reform facilitated intertemporal smoothing and inter-regional risk sharing. However, the effects declined as soon as the central government broke its promise and began to appropriate provincial fiscal revenues. These findings not only provide evidence that fiscal centralization could enhance the provision of public goods in a premodern context, but also highlight that it was the lack of a credible commitment by the central government to the provincial governments that accounted for the short-lived effects of the reform.     

Liquidity support to banks during Indonesia's financial crisis

During the 1997–98 financial crisis, Bank Indonesia provided liquidity support to many banks experiencing difficulties. This policy became controversial because of the magnitude of the likely losses to the government, which in the end would have to be borne by the general public. Suspicions of corruption involving bankers and officials of Bank Indonesia fuelled the debate. Surprisingly, however, concerns of this kind have not been raised in relation to the far larger amount of support provided to banks by the government in the form of recapitalisation bonds. The public's lack of understanding of the operations of the banking sector further complicated the debate. This paper attempts to shed some light on the central bank's actions and on the proposed solutions to the problems that arose from them.     

An analysis of the impact of the first phase of South Africa's motor industry development programme (midp), 1995–2000

The South African motor vehicle industry is an important branch of the local manufacturing sector, contributing significantly to manufacturing value added and employment. Over the last decade, the local industry has undergone a series of policy reforms, and in recent years has increasingly been exposed to globalisation. This article reviews the role of government policy in shaping the industry, and examines the impact of the first phase of the Motor Industry Development Programme on the industry for the period 1995–2000 in respect of domestic production, automotive industry employment, export performance and the automotive trade balance. The article concludes that even though the industry registered strong export growth that contributed to improving the automotive trade deficit, it was deficient in sustaining domestic production and employment levels. The imminent challenge for the local industry's development is to maintain its export growth trajectory in the long term in the absence of costly government protective incentive mechanisms.     

Corporate innovation in China and its implications

China's current economic transition policies focus on shifting from export‐driven manufacturing towards high‐end, high‐tech research and development (R&D), and domestic consumption. Since the early 2000s the government has issued a series of policies and guidelines to encourage innovation. Both in‐house R&D investment and the number of patent grants/applications have seen considerable growth in recent years. More specifically, industry‐funded R&D was responsible for more than three quarters of total in‐house R&D investment. Despite the rapid growth in R&D expenditure and the number of patents, China's corporate innovation still faces many obstacles and challenges. To further stimulate corporate innovation, the government may need to create an environment of fair competition for domestic enterprises, encourage the growth of institutional investors and their active participation in corporate governance, and improve the efficiency of financial systems. The experience of China in promoting innovation provides policy approaches and implications from which other emerging economies can learn.     

OPPORTUNITY OR CHALLENGE? AUSTRALIA AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION, 1950–57

This paper examines Australia's approach to Western European integration in the 1950s. While superficially supportive of steps towards greater Western European cooperation, the Menzies government had an ambivalent attitude towards the integration process. Ministers and officials in Canberra recognised the importance of a strong and prosperous Western Europe, but the formation of a tightly knit Continental grouping also posed a number of major challenges to the makers of post‐war Australian foreign policy. The Menzies government soon began to wonder whether attempts to create supranational bodies in Continental Europe accorded with Australian political, economic, and security interests.     

Global production networks and China's processing trade

This paper unveils a systematic pattern in China's processing trade. In a cross-section of Chinese provinces, the average distance traveled by processing imports (import distance) is negatively correlated to the average distance traveled by processing exports (export distance). To explain this pattern, we set up a three-country industry-equilibrium model in which heterogeneous firms from two advanced countries, East and West, sell their products in each other's markets. Each firm can use two modes to serve the foreign market. It can directly export its products from its home country. Alternatively, it can indirectly export to the foreign market by assembling its product in a third low-cost country, China, which is located in the vicinity of East. Our model establishes two theoretical predictions relating China's geographical location to its processing trade patterns. First, China's processing exports are negatively affected by both an increase in import distance and a rise in export distance. Second, China's processing exports to East Asian countries are more sensitive to export distance and less sensitive to import distance than its processing exports to non-Asian countries. We find empirical support for both predictions.     

Memory of famine: The persistent impact of famine experience on food waste behavior

The 1959–1961 Great Famine in China was one of the most devastating events in history and had long-term effects on economic behavior. This paper seeks to provide a novel explanation for heterogeneous food waste behaviors across age cohorts from the perspective of differing famine experiences. Based on 2004–2009 China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data, this paper constructs a difference-in-difference estimator to explore the long-term effects of the early-life famine experience of the household head on household food waste behavior in later life. The results indicate that the more serious famine that the household head experienced in early life was, the less wasted food and lost calories per capita there were, especially for adolescence during the famine. The mechanism analysis shows that households whose heads experienced the 1959–1961 Great Famine in early life tend to save more than those whose head did not. The findings contribute to a better understanding of the formation of preference and the variation in household food waste behaviors across age cohorts.     

Laissez‐faire,the Irish famine,and British financial crisis

The decision in 1847 to cut Treasury spending on public relief efforts during the Irish famine is generally attributed by economic historians to the pervasive influence of ‘laissez‐faire’ ideas on the Whig government of Lord John Russell. This article draws on the papers of political leaders and contemporary financial information to argue that economic reasons were the trigger for the change in policy. Robert Peel and Charles Wood's macroeconomic policies of the 1840s, including the gold standard, the Bank Charter Act, and corn law repeal, left the Whigs unable to borrow to finance relief efforts in Ireland without panicking markets. The scaling back of public assistance programmes that resulted from this—and which increased mortality at the height of the Irish famine—was the unintended result of Peel and Wood's economic policies, in the context of the Whig government's parliamentary weakness.     

Does uncertainty affect economic growth? An empirical analysis

Does Uncertainty Affect Economic Growth? An Empirical Analysis. — This paper investigates the effect of uncertainty on economic growth. We construct measures of export uncertainty, government policy uncertainty and price uncertainty to augment a growth model, and using econometric techniques we test for robustness of the effects of these measures on economic growth in a cross-section of 138 developing and developed economies during the 1970–1995 period. The result clearly shows a robust and negative effect of uncertainty on economic growth. These results underline the importance of export stability and policy credibility.     

An assessment of agricultural development policies in Iran

Agricultural development policies in Iran for the past two decades have been based on important misconceptions derived from a dualistic analysis of the economy. The government concentrated on the development of the ‘dynamic’ oil and industrial sector at the expense of the ‘static’ rural sector. As a result Iranian self-sufficiency in food and agricultural produce has been seriously eroded and the country has become increasingly dependent on the international market both in terms of importing foodstuffs and in gaining its main income through the export of a single item: oil. The present government's attempts at alleviating this problem should extend beyond revolutionary rhetoric and blanket policies and return the means of production to the cultivator and encourage the emergence of a peasant-based and independent agricultural sector.     

The role of multinational corporations in the less developed countries' trade in technology

Multinational corporations sell technology - both for production and for consumption - on highly imperfect international markets to less developed countries. The buyers must concern themselves both with appropriateness and with price. Despite some experience to the contrary, multinational firms may increasingly be prepared to sell more labour-intensive technologies and more essential-intensive products. Political influences upon the governments of less developed countries make it likely that the role of multinational corporations in the future sale of more appropriate technologies will be concentrated in manufacturing for export.     

Social inequalities in famine mortality in the manorial system of the tsarist Russian province of Livland in the mid-1840s

By relying on longitudinal data on two rural parishes in the Russian Baltic province of Livland, the article analyses two questions concerning famine's short-run effects on mortality in a manorial system: (1) whether there is evidence of a social gradient in mortality during the famine of 1844–6 and (2) whether the manors could protect the peasants against the hardships. The analysis reveals that neither the status of a farmer peasant nor the landlord saved the local inhabitants from an increased risk of dying during the famine of 1844–6. The conventional assumptions about the protective effect of the higher socio-economic status or type of manor against subsistence crisis found very little support in the study.