Agricultural Exports and Economic Growth in Developing Countries: A Panel Cointegration Approach

This paper quantifies the contribution of agricultural exports to economic growth in developing countries. We estimate the relationship between GDP and agricultural and non‐agricultural exports for 42 countries using panel cointegration methods. Results show that a long‐run relationship exists, the agricultural export elasticity of GDP is 0.07 whereas that of non‐agricultural exports is 0.13, and total exports Granger‐cause GDP, which supports the export‐led growth hypothesis. Structural differences exist in the relationship by broad income group. Balanced export‐promotion polices are implied for the poorest countries, but, for those with higher incomes, higher economic growth is achieved from non‐agricultural exports.     

The effect of barge and ocean freight price volatility in international grain markets

Short‐run responses of export and domestic shares of total agricultural output to changes in stocks of domestic savings (SAV), development assistance (ODA), private foreign commercial capital (PFX) and other variables is investigated. A profit function approach is used. Time series data for 19 sub‐Saharan African countries are pooled into three panels using similarities in changes in economic policy regime. Statistical evidence suggests that for the panel of countries that were undertaking liberalized economic reforms, the slope coefficients of some of the variables in the models have changed significantly between 1970–1980 and 1981–1993. For the 1981–1993 period, the impacts of ODA, PFX and SAV on export and domestic shares were different for this panel. The effect of increases in agricultural labor was different across the three panels. There is also evidence that productivity growth in the export agriculture sub‐sector is negative in all the groups. It is recommended that to halt the decline in export share of agricultural output in the group of countries that have undertaken substantial improvements in economic policy environment, efforts must be made to reduce the negative impact of domestic savings and agricultural labor, while at the same time working to reduce the bias of development assistance against food security.     

Agricultural Growth and Inter‐Sectoral Linkages in a Developing Economy

Does growth in the manufacturing sector of an economy spillover to agriculture, or do sectors share similar growth rates only when they share some common exogenous stimuli? The limited number of investigations of this issue, for cross‐sections of countries, have found some evidence in favour of spillovers, though the methodologies used cannot readily separate correlation from causation. Adapting the Feder (1982) model of sectoral externalities to a time‐series context, we examine how far agricultural output in Malaysia has been affected by inter‐sectoral spillovers. Our results suggest that expansion of manufacturing output, though associated with reduced agricultural output in the short‐run, is associated with agricultural expansion over the long‐run. Service output growth on the other hand seems to have been inimical to agricultural growth in both the short‐ and long‐runs, while causality testing supports the case for spillovers rather than “common causes”. Evidence on sectoral productivity is consistent with neoclassical arguments suggesting that the benefits of higher productivity in manufacturing tend to spill over to agriculture, encouraging productivity convergence.     

Planning for Agricultural Change and Economic Transformation in Tanzania?

Recently, Tanzania witnessed a revival of economic planning that explicitly aimed to combine rapid economic growth with accelerated structural transformation of the economy. To achieve these planning targets would require a relatively modest drop in the share of agriculture in GDP, but a dramatic fall in its share in employment by 2025. Tanzanian planners assume that labour is locked in agriculture because agricultural productivity is low, from which they conclude that, to release labour to fuel the expansion of manufacturing, it is imperative to raise agricultural productivity by appropriate land policies, leveraging private investment and developing public–private partnerships. We argue that, analytically, this planning argument leaves out the possibility that causality may run the other way – from high labour retention in agriculture to low agricultural productivity – and that, empirically, the observed patterns inherent in actual processes of economic transformation in Tanzania do not tally well with the assumptions of planners. More specifically, in so far as labour flows out of agriculture, it flows towards informal‐sector activities, both rural and urban, rather than towards formal manufacturing.     

FACTOR SHARES IN AGRICULTURE: THE CANADA-U.S. EXPERIENCE

The class shares of income in the Canadian economy and public policy developments are closely related. A comparison of the levels and trends in functional income shares with those in the United States economy generates a number of testable hypotheses. In this paper, the functional shares in all Canadian agriculture and agricultural regions are also observed and compared to US. agriculture and adjacent type of fanning regions.
The analysis indicates a marked similarity in the total economy income shares despite dissimilar factor supply functions. In both countries there has been a slight upward trend in the labor share over time. The rate and pattern of growth has also been similar in the two countries; however, a serious divergence has developed in recent years. In contrast to the total economies, declining farm labor income shares characterize both agricultures. Real estate shares also have followed a similar pattern in the two countries, with the past two decades witnessing a reversal in the historical decline. Nevertheless, there are a number of differences between factor shares in Canadian and United States agriculture. In part, these can be explained by comparing adjacent regions. It is clear, however, that the different impact of technological change and economic growth has bad a great impact on regional shares. The operation of capital and labor markets within Canadian agriculture also contribute to the differences in agricultural factor shares between the two countries.     

吉林省农产品进出口对农业经济增长的效应———基于出口扩展型生产函数的实证研究

吉林省是一个农业大省,农产品进出口在整个对外贸易中占有举足轻重的地位,进出口贸易与经济增长之间的相互关系历来也是学术研究的重点。文章首先分析吉林省农产品贸易的发展状况与特点,研究了吉林省农产品贸易对农业经济的贡献率与拉动率;然后以柯布道格拉斯生产函数为基础,构建出口扩展型生产函数模型,对吉林省农产品进出口与农业经济增长,农业劳动投入、资本投入与农业经济增长的关系进行了实证分析,结果表明吉林省农产品进出口、农业固定资本投入对农业经济增长均具有正向的促进作用,农业就业人数的变化对农业经济增长的作用不显著。其中吉林省农产品出口额每增加1%,会促进农业地区生产总值增加0.198%,进口每增加1%,促进农业经济增长0.205%,农产品进出口总额每增加1%,农业地区生产总值增加0.227%。因此,吉林省要努力发展外向型农业,提高优势农产品在国际市场上的份额;同时增加农业资本投入,优化投资结构。     

Structural transformation away from agriculture in growing open economies

Understanding how and why economies structurally transform away from agriculture as they grow is crucial for developing sensible growth strategies and farm and food policies. Typically, analysts who study this and related structural change issues focus on sectoral shares of gross domestic product (GDP) and employment. This article draws on trade theory to focus as well on exports. It also notes that the trade costs of some products are too high at early stages of development to make international trade profitable, so a nontradables sector is recognized. The general equilibrium model presented in the theory section provides hypotheses about structural transformation in differently endowed open economies as they grow. Those hypotheses are tested econometrically with a new annual endowments dataset covering 1995–2018 for more than 130 countries. The results are consistent with long run de-agriculturalization in the course of national economic growth in terms not only of sectoral shares of GDP and employment but also of exports. We find those shares are not significantly affected by either differences across countries in relative factor endowments or relative rates of sectoral assistance from government; but the agricultural GDP and employment shares are higher the higher is the share of agriculture in national exports.     

Impact of Ghana's agricultural mechanization services center program

Use of mechanization in African agriculture has returned strongly to the development agenda, particularly following the recent high food prices crisis. Many developing country governments—including Ghana, the case study of this article—have resumed support for agricultural mechanization, typically in the form of subsidies for tractor purchase and establishment of private‐sector‐run agricultural mechanization service centers (AMSECs). The aim of this article is to assess the impact of Ghana's AMSEC program on various farm household outcomes, using data from surveys that were conducted with 270 farm households. A two‐stage propensity score matching and difference‐in‐difference estimation procedure is used to estimate the impacts of the program, employing different definitions of treatment, model specifications, and matching algorithms to assess sensitivity of the estimator to different assumptions. The results indicate that the AMSEC program has had a mixed impact on different outcome indicators. For example, whereas the program has contributed to improving availability of mechanization services, reducing drudgery, and raising yield, it has had no impact on the change in the prices paid by farmers for the services used and the change in the amount of area plowed. Implications of the results on labor‐mechanization substitution and for raising and sustaining productivity further are drawn.     

Simultaneous Estimation of Cost and Distance Function Share Equations

The study considers the simultaneous estimation of share equations using cost and distance functions. Simultaneous rather than single system estimation utilizes full as opposed to limited information. Econometric results exploit the nonstationary nature of the data and that variables are cointegrated. Under cointegration all variables are endogenous and so it is not necessary to undertake the somewhat ad hoc exercise of choosing instruments to achieve parameter consistency. Johansen's maximum likelihood estimator is applied to data from Central Canada and Western Canada (1935–2006). Symmetry and homogeneity restrictions are not rejected for either region. Monotonicity held for all data points and concavity held at 92% of the data points. Long‐run constant returns and Hicks neutral technological change are rejected for both regions. Morishima elasticity estimates coming from the cost function in Western Canada indicate highly elastic long‐run substitution between the land/fertilizer input pair and mildly elastic long‐run substitution between land and both machinery and labor. In contrast, substitution for land and other inputs is inelastic for the land/machinery pair and the land/labor pair, with only the land/fertilizer pair being mildly elastic. The results indicate the limiting nature of land as a fundamental constraint on long‐term agricultural production is a real possibility in Central Canada because other inputs are inelastic, or at best only mildly elastic, substitutes for land. In Western Canada, fertilizer is the only factor that is highly substitutable for land and, therefore, could mitigate the limiting nature of land in that region. However, given that fertilizer applications are often considered to be environmentally unfriendly, the long‐run substitution of fertilizer for land as a fundamental mitigating factor to land scarcity in Western Canada is at a cost to the environment.     

农业适度规模经营及其效益实证研究——以四川省为例

[目的]文章利用生产函数法分析农业适度规模经营影响因素,依据"成本-效益"理论建模,试图为掌握农业发展规律提供参考依据。[方法]以四川省为实证,收集2006~2015年四川省农村居民农业生产基本情况和数据形式,其中数据形式主要包含土地资本、流动资本、固定资本以及劳动资本的投入等,采用软件SPSS分析人均耕地规模指数,并根据数据分析农业规模经营适度范围,寻求四川省农村居民的最佳经营规模点Q及农业适度规模经营区间[Q_1,Q_2]。[结果]分析得出四川省农村居民人均耕地适度经营范围为:0.227 456~0.412 534 hm~2。[结论]农业适度规模经营受多方面因素的影响,通常与土地产出弹性和劳动力工资成正比,与劳动力产出弹性及地租成反比;规模经营效益在发展农业适度规模经营过程中应注重各个方面效益的同时提高,既要追求经济效益,也要注重社会效益和生态效益,以确保整体效益的最大化。     

How sensitive is U.S. agricultural trade to the bilateral exchange rate? Evidence from bulk,intermediate, and consumer‐oriented products

This article examines the dynamic effects of changes in bilateral exchange rates on changes in bilateral trade of bulk, intermediate, and consumer‐oriented agricultural products between the United States and its 10 major trading partners. We find that, for consumer‐oriented products, U.S. exports are highly sensitive to bilateral exchange rates in both the short and long run, while U.S. imports are mostly responsive only in the short run. For bulk products, on the other hand, U.S. exports and imports are relatively insensitive to exchange rate changes in both the short and long run. For intermediate products, exports and imports are responsive to exchange rate changes in the short run, but not in the long run. It is also found that income of the United States and its trading partners has a significant effect on U.S. exports and imports of the three types of agricultural products in both the short and long run.     

Moral hazard: the effect of insurance on risk and efficiency

While there is a large body of literature investigating the effect of crop and livestock insurance on input and yield, limited attention has been paid to the effect of insurance on efficiency. This article investigates how insurance affects technical efficiency and whether insurance alters the utilized input quantity to a riskier bundle using the Norwegian salmon farming industry as a case. The results illustrate that insurance has an enhancing effect on production and efficiency and changes the utilized input mix—a well‐insured farmer uses more feed and less capital and labor than a less‐insured farmer. When linking this to each input's risk profile, the results indicate that insurance will induce the use of the risk‐increasing factor (feed) and reduce the use of the risk‐decreasing factors (labor and capital)—thereby increasing production risk and indicating moral hazard.     

Structural Variations of Agriculture in the Pacific

Agricultural shares of output and employment in thirteen Pacific basin countries are analyzed with reference to a global baseline for 1980. Per-capita output parity ratios are lower in the ASEAN, ANICs, and Japan as compared to their trading partners in North America and Oceania. Wide differences in land-labor ratios influence the directions of technological change, economies of scale, and dynamic comparative advantage. Differential changes in the partial productivities of land and labor between the high and middle income economies suggest that there has been a narrowing of the gap in land productivities and a widening of the gap in labor productivities across the Pacific. The implication is that there has been a regressive international impact on wages for farm labor. Further, since agriculture's share of land resources does not tend to fall as fast as its share of output and labor, increasing structural imbalance in terms of differential land rents to agriculture vis-à-vis non-agriculture results in greater adjustment pressures on the property and derived institutional systems that control natural resource allocation decisions. The results are consistent with the heavy adjustment burdens that agriculture and developing economies have been bearing as a result of expanding trade and capital flows, and the need to focus more attention on the structure, functioning, and performance of the different institutional systems that control resource allocation decisions in these countries.     

Transition and agricultural labor

Reforms have strongly affected agricultural employment in transition countries but in remarkably different ways. We present a theoretical model and an empirical analysis to explain differences in labor adjustment during transition. We show that the differences are due to a combination of variations in initial conditions and differences in reform policies and effects. The removal of price distortions and subsidies caused wage and price adjustments during transition and a reduction in labor demand in agriculture. Surplus labor outflow from agriculture was further stimulated by the privatization of the farm assets as they improve incentives and remove constraints for optimal factor allocation and structural adjustment. The shift to individual farms, which was especially strong in labor‐intensive production systems with low labor productivity in agriculture, has reduced the outflow of labor from agriculture by improving farm governance and labor efficiency, although this effect was mitigated by losses in scale economies due to disruptions and market imperfections in transition. In general, labor outflow was considerably lower on individual farms than on corporate farms, due to a combination of factors related to human capital, access to finance, and physical capital. In the last section of the article we present a general framework for understanding labor adjustments in transition countries. Specifically, we show that there are several patterns of labor transition. In one pattern, followed by, e.g., the Czech Republic and Hungary, there is initially a strong survival of the restructured large‐scale corporate farms that have laid off many workers. In the second phase of transition, gradually the importance of individual farms increases. In other countries, such as Romania, the opposite has happened. In these countries there is an immediate strong shift to individual farms, while labor use increases on average in agriculture. After this initial phase, the shift to individual farms continues, albeit more slowly, and labor use in agriculture starts to decline. Finally, our analysis shows that in countries such as Russia and Ukraine much of the surplus labor is still employed by little‐reformed former collective and state farms. Major adjustments await more progress in agricultural and general reforms.     

劳动力转移、资本深化与农地流转

随着工业化和城镇化的深入,大量农村劳动力外出工作,户均资本投入增加,农业生产趋于资本深化,农地流转市场日渐活跃,过往的研究大多关注劳动力转移对农地流转的影响,少有提及资本深化是否及如何影响农地流转。本文首先建立了相关影响机制并提出研究假说,进而使用CFPS数据进行检验,不仅估算资本深化对农地流转的直接影响,也分析劳动力转移如何通过资本深化间接改变农地流转。研究结果表明,劳动力转移显著地促进了农户农业生产的资本深化进程,资本对劳动力投入进行了替代,同时,资本深化显著提升了种粮大户的农地经营规模。如果将农地流转细分为转入与转出,资本深化促进了转入,但抑制了转出。本研究对于优化农地资源配置,提高农地规模经营水平,促进农业生产提供了新的研究视角。     

Economic and Household Impacts of Projected Policy Changes for the Irish Agri‐food Sector

The policy environment for the Irish agri‐food sector could change rapidly in the coming decade. A potentially positive factor will be the elimination of milk quotas in 2015, although a potentially negative factor will be further trade liberalisation and increased import competition. These changes come on top of the move to decouple direct aids to farmers in 2005 as part of the Mid‐Term Review of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy agreed in 2003. This paper examines these reforms and their impacts on the Irish economy and income distribution using a CGE model particularly rich in detail on the agri‐food sectors, differentiated household groups, and agricultural policy instruments including their links to productive factors and households. The results suggest that the past and projected changes in the policy environment have, in sum, a small positive impact on GDP and household income. However, the gains and losses are unequally distributed across sectors and household groups due to the highly differentiated distribution of support and protection. Although all households generally gain from the sequence of policy reforms in the long run, some experience strong adverse effects from particular reforms and in the medium term.     

Estimating labor supply of farm households under nonseparability: empirical evidence from Nepal

This paper examines the labor supply of farm households in Nepal using a recently developed methodology that accounts for the simultaneity between production and consumption decisions of the households. Estimates of marginal products of male and female labor or shadow wages are obtained from an agricultural production function. An instrumental variable approach is then used to recover the household's structural labor supply from variations in the shadow wages and income, as well as other household characteristics. The findings reveal that both male and female total labor supply are sensitive to changes in shadow wages and income. Human capital embodied in education is found to exert a significant positive effect on output, but has no statistically significant impact on total labor supply of individuals. The results also rejects the existence of efficient labor markets in rural Nepal.     

农业劳动力老龄化对生计效率的影响

目的 随着农业劳动力老龄化问题日益加剧,农户家庭生计资本和生计产出结构也发生了显著的变化。文章主要探讨农业劳动力老龄化对生计资源要素配置的影响及作用机理,进而为缓解农业老龄化危机、提高农户的自我发展能力提出合理化建议。方法 基于2021年陕南秦巴山区农户实地调研数据,运用DEA-Tobit二阶段模型验证二者之间的关系。结果 （1）陕南秦巴山区农户生计效率的规模效率最高,纯技术效率略低于规模效率,综合效率最低。大部分农户生计活动呈现规模收益递减状态,生计产出的增长低于生计投入的增长。（2）农业劳动力老龄化抑制了生计效率的提高,且在低收入水平家庭和户主低受教育程度家庭表现更为明显。（3）农业资金投入的增加能够缓冲农业劳动力老龄化对生计效率的负向影响。结论 因此,要正视农业劳动力老龄化现象,引导农户合理配置生计资源,提高农业资金投入使用效率,促进农户家庭自我发展能力。     

中国天然橡胶消费与经济增长实证研究

本研究基于C-D生产函数,采用1980～2008年的数据,并将其扩展引入天然橡胶消费量(NRC),轮胎外胎产量(LT),通过建立多变量的VAR模型与脉冲响应函数分析中国天然橡胶消费与经济增长的关系。研究发现:劳动、资本、天然橡胶消费、轮胎外胎产量与GDP之间存在长期均衡的关系,经济的增长对与天然橡胶消费量的增加具有较强的带动作用,相反天然橡胶消费量的波动对GDP的影响却很小。最后根据分析结果提出相关政策建议。     

中国农业资源错配的测算、时空演变特征及影响因素分析

目的 探究中国农业生产要素错配的时空演变特征及其影响因素,为改善要素空间错配,提高农业生产效率提供相关参考和政策建议。方法 文章以资源错配理论为基础构建农业资源错配指数测算框架,选取2000—2019年中国30个省（市、自治区,不含港澳台和西藏）的经济数据测算出农业资本错配指数、劳动力错配指数、土地错配指数以及相关影响因素指标,采用空间计量模型分析其对农业资源错配的影响。结果 （1）农业资本错配、劳动力错配和土地错配在时空上分别展现出不同的演变发展特征,但都呈现出要素错配不断改善的趋势。（2）从实证结果来看,农业经营规模的提高能够显著改善农业资本错配和土地错配,农业种植结构升级能够有效改善农业劳动力错配和土地错配,政府的宏观调控能够有效改善农业资本错配,同时提高农村金融发展水平是改善农业资本错配一种重要方式。（3）区域经济发展水平提高能够通过促进农业生产要素重新组合来改善农业资本错配和劳动力错配,城镇化发展水平提高能够改善劳动力错配和土地错配。结论 中国农业生产要素在不同区域的错配程度在不断改善,农业经营规模、种植结构和经济发展水平是影响要素错配的关键因素,消除要素流动障碍,完善区域联动机制是改善要素错配的重要方式。