Does farmer economic organization and agricultural specialization improve rural income? Evidence from China

This paper builds simultaneous equations model based on survey data of 2445 Chinese villages to do empirical analysis of the relationship among farmer economic organization, agricultural specialization and rural income. It finds that raising the level of agricultural specialization can improve rural income significantly, and the development of farmer economic organization is an effective way to raise the level of agricultural specialization; The factors, which affect whether farmers participating in farmer economic organization, are characteristics of farmers, situation of farmer economic organization and relevant policies promoting the development of farmer economic organization. Therefore, it has great significance to agricultural specialization and rural income growth for government to take measures to promote development of farmer economic organization.     

On the transaction values of land use rights in rural China

Land Use Rights (LURs) in China affect farmers’ productivity through investment incentives and the way land is allocated across households. LURs have implication and trade-offs between equity and growth. This paper examines how Chinese farmers might respond if the Chinese government made it legal for farmers to buy or sell LURs. Livelihood choices, labor substitution, market infrastructure, a lack of property right protections, entrepreneurship, bureaucracy, and political will are all influential factors that will determine whether such a program would work. The purpose of this paper is to examine the economics of transaction in LURs, estimate the value at which LURs could transact in equilibrium, and to analyze factors that would affect these price changes. We evaluate farmer’s intention to buy and sell LURs and how much they are willing to pay and receive for LURs.     

Comparative costs and conservation of wild species in situ, e.g. orangutans

The extent to which conservation is feasible is constrained by budgets and the financial sacrifice stakeholders are willing to bear. Therefore a possible objective for conserving a species is to minimise the cost of achieving that stated aim. For example, if a minimum viable population (MVP) of a species is to be conserved, the size and type of habitats reserved for this could be selected to minimise cost. This requires consideration of the comparative (relative) opportunity costs of reserving different land types for conservation. A general model is developed to demonstrate this and is applied to the case of the orangutan. In the ecological literature, recommendations for reserving different types of land for conservation have been based on comparisons of either the absolute economic returns they generate if converted to commercial use or on differences in the density of a species they support. These approaches are shown to be deficient because they ignore relative trade-offs between species population and economic conversion gains at alternative sites. The proposed model is illustrated for orangutan conservation.     

Savings growth and the path of utility

Abstract.  We derive an expression relating the change in instantaneous utility to the growth of net (genuine) saving in an economy with multiple stocks and externalities that maximizes welfare in the utilitarian sense. This result is then shown to hold for decentralized competitive efficient economies as well, to yield an extension of the Hartwick rule: instantaneous utility is non-declining along a development path if genuine saving is decreasing. By way of example the rule is applied as a constant genuine saving rate rule in a simple Dasgupta-Heal-Solow-Stiglitz economy. The rule yields a path with unbounded consumption and higher wealth than on the standard Hartwick constant consumption path.     

The environmental Kuznets curve when the environment exhibits hysteresis

The relevance and implications of the environmental Kuznets hypothesis are examined in the presence of stock effects and non-linearities associated with pollution generation. Stock effects lead to hysteresis and irreversibilities in environmental quality that are overlooked when emphasis is placed on the flow effects of pollutants only. It is demonstrated here that an optimal growth plan in the presence of stock effects shifts the focus away from prescribing economic growth as a panacea for environmental ills. Implications for currently industrializing economies are discussed.     

The market for bushmeat: Colobus Satanas on Bioko Island

Species conservation is an important issue worldwide. The market for monkeys consumed as food on Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea, is modeled as a bargaining game. The bargaining set-up leads to the conclusion that black colobus are being over-hunted. Using daily data an empirical density is fit to the price-quantity pairs resulting from exchange between buyers and retailers. The density provides support for the bargaining model. Quantile regressions are also fit to the data. The median quantile indicates buyers have greater bargaining power than retailers. Knowing who has bargaining power aids in the design of policy to reduce bushmeat hunting. Strategic elasticities are constructed from the quantiles. Given the harvest rate of monkeys and the elasticity estimates, the monkeys of Bioko Island are under considerable pressure.     

U.S. trade remedy law and agriculture: trade diversion and investigation effects

Abstract .  We study U.S. agricultural antidumping and countervailing duty cases from 1980 to 2005, and gauge the effectiveness of trade remedy law as a form of protection. The purpose is to measure the resulting investigation and trade diversion effects. Previous research on trade in manufactured products has shown that the domestic protection offered by AD and CV duties is largely offset by trade diversion. In contrast, we find that for agriculture, trade diversion is relatively unimportant. So AD and CVD cases are very effective forms of protection for U.S. agriculture.     

Climate change and the transition to a low carbon economy – Carbon targets and the carbon budget

Carbon intensive fuels generate a significant negative externality which is quite relevant for climate change mitigation policy. We propose a dynamic growth model where output is produced using two types of energy sources: fossil fuel and renewable energy. Fossil fuel discovery, extraction, and associated costs are incorporated in our model together with the dynamics of greenhouse gas emissions and consequent damages. Consistent with the empirical facts, our numerical solutions suggest that fossil fuels, especially coal, should not be exploited to depletion. Furthermore, renewable energy should be gradually phased in to meet targets consistent with the Paris 2015 agreement. We show that adopting those policies should slow down the growth rate of cumulative emissions; but the outcome is contingent upon the carbon emission targets set for advanced countries, as distinct from those assigned to developing countries.     

Import sensitive products and perverse tariff‐rate quota liberalization

Abstract This paper shows that a Tariff‐Rate‐Quota's (TRQ) minimum access expansion can perversely trigger domestic price increases. Often, TRQs have prohibitive over‐quota tariffs to mimic import quotas in providing minimum market access. In the WTO's Doha Round, it is likely that countries using TRQs will avoid aggressive tariff reductions if they increase the quota portion of TRQs. We show that when the import price lies between the unit cost of production and the price received by domestic upstream firms, an increase in import quota as a share of domestic production may cause an increase in the domestic retail price.