SOME GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM EFFECTS OF MINING GROWTH ON THE ECONOMY

The effects of mining sector growth are analysed with a five-sector general equilibrium model. The effect of the mineral discoveries is to cause the agricultural sector to contract, but to cause the import-competing sector to expand by a small amount–a result which differs from Gregory's (1976) analysis. However, a mining boom caused by increases in external demand, rather than by new discoveries, leads to a different set of results. Some likely effects of the boom on the growth rates of the different sectors in the economy are reported. Finally, the effects of an export tax on minerals are considered.     

SOME IMPLICATIONS OF THE GROWTH OF THE MINERAL SECTOR*

The rapid growth of Australian mineral exports, through its effect on the balance of payments, is a significant force for structural change in other sectors. From the viewpoint of the rural sector which exports and the manufacturing sector which competes with imports, this force will be similar to that which would flow from very large tariff changes. Consequently, by observing the adjustments of the rural and manufacturing sectors to the rapid growth of mineral exports, it is possible to calculate indirect estimates of the effect of the Australian tariff on them. It is calculated that the mineral discoveries have had a much greater effect on these sectors than the recent across the board 25 per cent general reduction of tariffs.     

Multifunctionality of agriculture: an inquiry into the complementarity between landscape preservation and food security

Without support, the levels of agricultural public goods suchas food security and landscape preservation would fall shortof demand in high-cost countries. However, as demonstrated byNorway as a case study, the current level of support is disproportionatefrom a public goods perspective, and the policy instrumentsare badly targeted at the public goods in question. Becauseagricultural land is a major component of both food securityand landscape preservation, giving rise to a high degree ofcost complementarity between the public goods, it would be moreefficient to support land-extensive production techniques thanproduction per se.     

THE VALUE OF AGRICULTURAL LAND

Ricardo's discovery that the rents of agricultural lands arise essentially out of the differences between them can be restated by saying that the rent of land should depend on its marginal product. In come countries the Ricardian situation persists; where agricultural labour has “nowhere else to go” rents rise as a function of rural population density. The paper reviews the measures of marginal product which have been made using three methods of estimation: the production function (Cobb Douglas): estimates made by precise linear programming; and estimates of the “residual” income to land. The production function technique has been applied in countries at all stages of development ranging from African hand hoe agriculture to Australia and Belgium, and for a range of farm sizes. There are fewer examples of measures made by the other two methods; they are more suitable for use in advanced economics.     

加强钼资源宏观调控 限产保价提高话语权

钼矿是我国重要的优势战略资源。2005年以来我国钼矿产量的增长速度快于需求量的增长,产量远远超过需求量,钼产量的30%以上用于出口。目前我国钼行业存在投资过热,开采无节制,产能过剩,以及采权权管理混乱等问题。政策建议：将钼矿资源纳入我国总量调控矿种;调整优化矿产资源消费结构,发展钼深加工产品;加强对钼矿资源的战略储备;提高开发准入门槛,推动资源整合,走产业集聚化道路;调整出口政策,将出口压缩到合理的水平。     

当前矿产资源市场形势分析

当前,国际矿产市场呈现＂疲软＂状态：全球基本金属供应过剩,产品库存高位运行;大宗矿产品价格虽有反弹,但仍属于＂箱体震荡＂;矿业资本大幅缩水,矿企融资困难。国内矿业市场继续＂降温＂：主要矿产品生产规模继续扩张,进口量继续增长;矿业投资虽然继续增长,但是呈现趋冷迹象;矿产品价格下跌,反弹乏力;新材料矿产＂苦乐不均＂。受全球资源垄断格局加剧、国外掌握大宗矿产品定价话语权、地缘政治博弈与运输通道安全及发展中国家的资源竞争等因素影响,我国利用境外资源难度和风险加大。对策建议：抓住机遇,积极推动资源领域国际合作;参与全球资源市场治理及非洲等地资源开发;推进重要战略资源储备体系建设。     

EXTENSION ECONOMICS—THE NEXT TEN YEARS1

In summary, let me emphasize a few highlights of the subject—Extension Economics—the next ten years.

• 1 Changing farm problems will require major adjustments by agriculture and its advisors.
• 2 Structural reform in farming and marketing arrangements of one kind or another will lead these adjustments.
• 3 Clientele of extension economists will include producers (in two basic groups), agri-business, non-agricultural rural residents and consumers.
• 4 Our approach should be on the basis of educators and we must keep up-to-date in the teaching methods and media used. Agricultural extension could logically become the center for a new broad program of continuing adult education.
• 5 Subject matter areas of concern to the economist must be broadened to actively include marketing, processing and public affairs.
• 6 A sound program of physical and economic research must be provided as a companion to effective extension work. Greater collaboration is necessary—both ways.
• 7 Personnel for extension economics will be forthcoming only if salary adjustments are made and university curricula revised to better train extension people.
• 8 Extension economists must use care and diplomacy in their relationships with University, Federal and Provincial officials.
• 9 We still have responsibility to more completely demonstrate the usefulness of our knowledge to other extension workers, administrators, and the farm public. Recognition must also be given to working closely with advisors in agri-business and private consulting firms.
• 10 Program evaluation, internal and external, are essential for a healthy program in extension economics.

     

Critical success factors for governing farmer-managed public goods in rural areas in the Netherlands

Multifunctional land use has become a widely supported pathway for Europe's countryside. Brussels and the national governments stimulate farmers to integrate primary production with non-agricultural practices from which they can also benefit. In favour of this development different stakeholders are encouraged to collaborate to produce the so-called farmer-managed public goods. This paper explores critical success factors for the production and maintenance of these public goods. In two Dutch case study regions we show a chronology of major events from 1975 leading to a shift from primary agricultural production towards a successful multifunctional land use. We evaluated which critical success factors crucial for managing public goods manifest themselves in our case study regions. Besides six critical success factors described in literature (Property rights, Asymmetric information, Administrative complexity, Governance, Time lags and Market structure) four other factors appear to be crucial in governing farmer-managed public goods: (1) establishing a system of rewards; (2) a mix of governance forms; (3) visionary leadership with networks in both the public and the private sectors and (4) time for new ideas to mature and to build commitment among the actors.     

Building an empirically-based framework to value multiple public goods of agriculture at broad supranational scales

Agricultural landscapes deliver multiple, highly valued goods such as cultural amenities, biodiversity conservation and climate stability. These goods are often delivered as side-effects of farmers' production decisions driven by broad-scale, supranational changes in agricultural, trade or other policies. Human well-being is thus affected in ways not taken into account in these macro-policy decisions. To avoid this policy failure, there is a growing demand for the valuation of broad-scale changes in public goods by the general public. For this purpose, context-rich valuation scenarios at this broad scale need to be developed which are empirically-based, policy-relevant and understandable by the general public. In this way, respondents are focused on actual trade-offs rather than invited to give symbolic reactions. This paper presents and discusses a valuation framework developed to fulfil these criteria. The approach is based on a typology of Macro-Regional Agri-Environmental Problems (MRAEP). Each MRAEP is defined by: (1) prevailing farming systems and agricultural landscapes; (2) current levels of public-good delivery; (3) expected direction of land-use change; and (4) expected effects of such change on public-good provision in each macro-region. Multivariate analysis of EU-wide data on agricultural landscapes and farming-systems led to identify thirteen macro-regions in the EU. Current public-good provision was described using public-good indicators. Only those public goods that are expected to change or could be improved by available policy options (core public goods) were used to generate choice alternatives for survey respondents. The paper ends by discussing innovative elements in the proposed approach, achievements, shortcomings and possible policy uses.     

继续对钨锡锑稀土等优势矿产实行总量控制

对钨锡锑稀土等８种优势矿产实行暂停颁发采矿许可证,暂停审批用地是国土资源部组建以后采取的一项重大宏观调控政策。本文作者通过这项政策实施一年半以来的实际效果调研,根据８种矿产开发利用中存在的突出问题迄今尚未得到根本解决的现实,提出国家仍需继续对这８种优势矿产资源实行生产和出口总量控制的７项政策建议。     

Subsistence Response to Market Shocks

Microeconomic models posit that transaction costs isolate subsistence producers from output market shocks. We integrate microeconomic models of many heterogeneous households into a general equilibrium model and show that supply on subsistence farms may respond, in apparently perverse ways, to changes in output market prices. Price shocks in markets for staple goods are transmitted to subsistence producers through interactions in factor markets. In the case presented, a decrease in the market price of maize reduces wages and land rents, stimulating maize production by subsistence households; however, real incomes of subsistence households fall.     

Agrarian Change and the Initial Development of an Aboriginal Bourgeoisie in Australia

While the commercial ambitions of indigenous capitalists are continuously displayed in Australia, little is known about the origins and initial development of the class. In this essay one area of the country, the north‐west of Western Australia (WA), is chosen to show how changes in the principal agricultural industry opened space for Aboriginal commerce. Despite the opposition of State governments and existing firms that dominated cattle and sheep production, this space was enlarged as pastoralism underwent major changes. The rise of the indigenous bourgeoisie was also facilitated by the growing power of the class's political representatives in electoral and in executive politics. Parallel with changes in Australian federalism, which gave the national government increased financial and other powers, Aboriginal representatives captured this shift for commercial advantage.     

Store loyalty, bargaining power and the private label production issue

One of many explanations offered for the rise of private labels(PLs) is that they increase the bargaining power of the retailer.The prior question of the PL production assignment has not beenanalysed in an economic framework. The retailer can either entrustthe production of his PL to the national brand (NB) manufacturerat a low unit cost, with the disadvantage that both products(NB and PL) are held by the same agent, or he can choose a firmfrom the competitive fringe with a higher unit production cost.In a framework where loyalty (presence of store-switching andbrand-switching consumers) and bargaining strength count, weshow that the retailer will assign his PL production to theNB manufacturer when the latter's bargaining power is low. However,a higher consumer loyalty for the NB can reverse the retailer'sdecision.     

On Why Agriculture Declines with Economic Growth

When economic growth is characterised by a slow rise in the demand for food and rapid growth in farm relative to non-farm productivity, it is understandable that agriculture in a closed economy declines in relative terms as that economy develops. But why should agriculture decline in virtually all open growing economies as well, including those able to retain a comparative advantage in agricultural products? A key part of the answer is that the demand for non-tradable goods tends to be income elastic, so resources are diverted to their production even in open economies.     

Market Integration and Market Efficiency under Seasonal Tariff Rate Quotas

Switzerland applies seasonal tariff rate quotas (TRQs) for the import of many fruits and vegetables during the domestic harvest season. We examine how this system affects the relationship between Italian and Swiss tomato prices and test for physical market integration and spatial equilibrium conditions over time. We use detailed, transaction‐based data on trade flows and trade costs and estimate an extended parity bounds model, following Barrett and Li (2002). We confirm that in the summer season, when TRQs are in place, markets are inefficient. While quota holders receive positive rents, the marginal rents for importers without quota shares are negative. This inhibits trade flows above the in‐quota import quantity allowed by TRQs. Hence, despite leading to inefficiencies and creating rents for importers, seasonal TRQs are effective in protecting domestic production against competing imports.     

A scale invariant model for the expansion of agricultural land and government spending on the agricultural sector

The expansion dynamics of the agricultural surface is a complex process, since it requires decisions among different actors under a multitude of socioeconomic and natural conditions, expectations, and risks. This paper shows that despite this complexity, and at odds with the intuition, the density of agricultural lands and the government spending to foster agriculture around a human settlement displays a simple power-law relationship regarding the distance to such a settlement. The theoretical proof of this relationship is based on theoretical and empirical findings made by several authors on the expansion of population centers, river networks, species and ecosystem’s distribution. The empirical proof is made by fitting a simple power-law model having as response variables: density of agricultural land; government spending coverage, and government spending per unit of agricultural surface, while the distance to the centroid settlement is used as independent variable. Results show that the scaling exponents of the power-law relationship estimated from those models, with data from rural settlements in Mexico, are similar statistically to the expected values from theoretical models for the three expansion processes tested. Three applications of the scale-invariant attribute characterizing the expansion process of agricultural lands are presented:

• i)monitoring agricultural activities at the territories;
• ii)a proxy to estimate the expected growth of the agricultural surface; and
• iii)a typology to characterize government assistance at local level.

     

Auctions as a Means of Creating a Market for Public Goods from Agriculture

The paper looks at the possibility of creating a market for environmental goods and services in the countryside by awarding conservation contracts to farmers on the basis of competitive bidding. Auctions have several theoretical advantages over alternative allocation mechanisms (such as standard-rate payments) because they allow the participants to deal with informational asymmetries and the uncertainty about the value of the (non-market) goods being traded. A formal model of bidding behaviour in ‘green auctions’ shows that bidding strategies are determined by the individual farmers' costs of implementing the conservation contracts and their beliefs about the maximum acceptable payment level, making the auction an imperfect cost revelation mechanism. Auctions can reduce the information rents accruing to farmers and can increase the cost-effectiveness of public goods provision. Strategic bidding behaviour in multiple-signup auctions as well as high transaction costs are potential sources of reduced efficiency.     

四川秦巴山区矿产资源绿色开发策略研究

四川秦巴山区矿产资源种类丰富,矿产资源的开发利用已成为经济发展的支柱产业之一,但矿业生产过程中产生了严重的矿山环境地质问题。在分析了研究区矿产资源现状的基础上,总结了四川秦巴山区油气开发和固体矿产开发中产生的环境问题,结合国内外矿产资源开发利用实例研究,提出了四川秦巴山区矿产资源的绿色循环开发策略与建议:完整的矿山环境法规是矿产资源绿色开发的根本保障;完善的规划和严格的环境评价是矿产资源可持续开发的第一要务;推进矿山相关科学技术创新是提高矿产开发利用率、矿山生态环境治理的唯一途径,最终使得四川秦巴山区矿业在促进经济腾飞的同时实现绿色可持续发展。     

Derivation of an aggregate supply curve for U.K. beet production

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between real agricultural land prices and real rents for farmland using annual data. Taking account of inflation as a third variable there is evidence to suggest that rents and land prices are cointegrated; that is, changes in rents are mirrored in the long run by changes in land prices. It is also found that the implied real rate of return in the land market is around 3%.     

Asset Pricing in Created Markets

We investigate the applicability of the present-value asset pricing model to fishing quota markets by applying instrumental variable panel data estimation techniques to 15 years of market transactions from New Zealand's individual transferable quota (ITQ) market. In addition to the influence of current fishing rents, we explore the effect of market interest rates, risk, and expected changes in future rents on quota asset prices. The results indicate that quota asset prices are positively related to declines in interest rates, lower levels of risk, expected increases in future fish prices, and expected cost reductions from rationalization under the quota system.