The Swedish Model: Relevant for Other European Countries?

By the late 1970s, supply-side theory had become something of a new economic orthodoxy. From the supply-side perspective, labour market inflexibility explains mass unemployment. In this context the presumably greater flexibility of the labour market in the USA was seen as an explanation of its superior employment record relative to European economies. Unlike most European countries, Sweden, which is highly regulated, does reasonably well in employment terms. The authors conclude that the Swedish model has proved its value with regard to labour market policy, especially with regard to the duration of unemployment, and that the Swedish model still contains relevant characteristics for other European countries. Active labour market policy is a way out of the unemployment trap. The active labour market policy may serve as an alternative for deregulation in order to augment the flexibility of the labour market.     

加入WTO对我国农业政策性银行的影响与对策

农业发展银行作为我国惟一一家农业政策性银行。势必受到“入世”后金融业逐步放开的影响，具体而言，既有作为“银行”而受到的经营环境，服务理念、制度、技术等方面的直接影响，也有因其“农业政策性”而受到的诸如业务范围、资产质量、经营效益等方面的间接影响，农发行应在做好收购资金封闭管理工作的前提下，从发展的角度去完善机制，改革用人制度，加强国际合作，转变单纯对粮棉流通环节的支持方式，从增强农业后劲、提高农业综合生产力的角度充分发挥农业政策性银行的支农、护农作用。     

The disappearing budget constraint on EU agricultural policy

Concern over budgetary costs has been the traditional driving force behind changes to the EU's Common Agricultural Policy. While the recent MacSharry reform of this policy was more related to external pressures arising from the need to reach an agreement on agriculture in the GATT Uruguay Round, many expect the budgetary constraint to re-emerge towards the end of this decade, particularly in the light of the impending accession of a number of Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs). This paper argues that it is unlikely that there will be any budgetary need to further reform Europe's agricultural policy to accommodate the CEECs. Applying the agricultural guideline to estimate resources and using a simple forecasting model of FEOGA Guarantee budget expenditure, the paper demonstrates that, under a range of plausible assumptions for the key variables affecting resources and expenditure, a significant positive margin should emerge between available resources and the cost of EU agricultural policy by the beginning of the next decade. This margin should be sufficient to pay the estimated costs of extending the present CAP to the CEEC countries without further significant reform. However, even though the budget cinstraint on EU farm policy may disappear, other factors, such as GATT disciplines and concern about agriculture's impact on the environment, will remain as pressures for further CAP reform.     

Evidence of slowing yield growth – The example of Swiss cereal yields

We analyze trends in crop yields and yield variability of barley, maize, oats, rye, triticale and wheat in Switzerland from 1961 to 2006. It shows that there have been linear increases in crop yields since the 1960s. However, yields of barley, oats, rye, triticale and wheat have leveled off in Switzerland since the early 1990s, which contrasts linear trends in cereal yields that is usually assumed for Europe. We show a relationship between the introduction of agricultural policy measures towards environmentally friendly cereal production that fostered widespread adoption of extensive farming practices and the observed leveling-off of crop yields. Thus, this paper emphasizes that agricultural policy can be an important reason for slowing crop yield growth. Agricultural policy measures will be one of the key driving forces of future crop yields. Thus, the potential leveling-off of crop yields that is indicated in this study should be considered in analyses of future land use and food supply as well as in the evaluation of agri-environmental measures and policy reforms.     

Agricultural technologies for climate change in developing countries: Policy options for innovation and technology diffusion

Climate has obvious direct effects on agricultural production. The reverse is more apparent than ever as greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture are tallied. The development and effective diffusion of new agricultural practices and technologies will largely shape how and how well farmers mitigate and adapt to climate change. This adaptation and mitigation potential is nowhere more pronounced than in developing countries where agricultural productivity remains low; poverty, vulnerability and food insecurity remain high; and the direct effects of climate change are expected to be especially harsh. Creating the necessary agricultural technologies and harnessing them to enable developing countries to adapt their agricultural systems to changing climate will require innovations in policy and institutions as well. Potential constraints to innovation involve both the private and public sectors in both developing and developed countries. The process of transferring agricultural innovations across agroecological and climatic zones is often subject to agronomic constraints. Often, the most binding constraints occur at the adoption stage, with several factors that potentially impede poor farmers’ access to and use of new technologies. Based on discussions of these constraints, we derive six policy principles and use these principles to suggest several specific investments and policy priorities.     

国外农业政策性银行的运行经验及借鉴

国外农业政策性银行的发展已有上百年的历史,然而,我国的农业政策性银行仍然处于一个研究、探索的初级发展阶段,综合考察分析并借鉴国外农业政策性银行运行实践经验,强化农业政策性银行的职能应从法律保障和监督制约体系、资金来源渠道、职能范围调整、经营管理机制完善等方面分别采取对策.     

The new US farm policies

This article is an early assessment of the agricultural policies of the Carter administration, particularly as they relate to Western Europe. The author examines emerging US farm policy with regard to: price and production, grain reserves, attitude toward the Common Agricultural Policy of the EEC, trade in agricultural products, and commodity agreements.     

National interests and the CAP

Development of the CAP is heavily circumscribed by differing national interests reflecting the usual agricultural policy conflicts between different regional and sectoral interests. But as a supranational policy with principles of community preference and common financing, the CAP also redistributes the burdens and benefits of agricultural support between Member States. The implications of these features of the CAP with reference to specified alternative policies are explored and conclusions drawn. The conflict between national and supranational interests is inadequately reflected to decision makers; the single instrument of price support at a common level is inadequate to meet a mix of differing national objectives; and, the assumption that the Common policy serves unification and integration of the Community may be incorrect.     

Incentive policy in Chinese collective agriculture

The author explains the provisions of China's agricultural incentive policy for rural collectives and details its mechanisms of taxes and fiscal incentives, price policies, subsidies, loans and technical assistance. The role of this policy in agricultural development and the issues of motivation and mobilization in collective agriculture are discussed, as well as certain technical and operational difficulties Chinese planners have encountered.     

Functional separation in Swedish broadband market: Next step of improving competition

Technological development together with liberalization policy has led to competition in the telecommunications market. Broadband has been recognized as a driving force in the social and economic development of nations, and many countries have introduced policies and/or regulatory frameworks to improve competition in broadband markets. An evolution can be seen from the 1980s until the present day through open access to local loop unbundling to several degrees of separation including functional separation. There are several countries implementing functional separation such as the UK, Italy, Sweden and, recently the EU. It has been suggested that functional separation can be an effective policy for increasing competition in broadband markets under certain circumstances. Sweden has implemented functional separation by amending the Swedish Telecommunications Act in 2008 to include mandatory functional separation as one of the powers of the PTS, the Swedish telecommunications regulator. Although TeliaSonera, the incumbent fixed line operator decided to voluntarily separate part of their business, the amendments to the law were debated with arguments similar to the debates in the EU following the new regulatory framework implemented in 2009. Against this background, this paper provides an overview of the development of functional separation in the EU and European countries such as Sweden and the UK. The paper also provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the implementation of functional separation. The evolution of functional separation in Sweden is explained and ends with a discussion of the implementation of functional separation in the Swedish broadband market.     

Cerrado meets savannah,family farmers meet peasants: The political economy of Brazil’s agricultural cooperation with Mozambique

Brazil’s development cooperation policy with sub-Saharan Africa has intensified since the end of the 2000s, with Mozambique being the country’s largest partner. This South–South Cooperation enterprise has shown intentions to share elements drawn from previous experiences of programmes implemented in Brazil, particularly in the rural sector. However, Brazilian agricultural policy is notorious for its dualistic structure, and dominant political strategy has been marked by the accommodation of two different – occasionally contradictory – agricultural policy agendas, reflecting how current political forces are organized. This article demonstrates how such a dualistic structure shapes Brazil’s technical cooperation with Mozambique, pointing out that it is still unclear how far rural development perspectives rooted in the particularities of Brazilian agrarian dynamics would be useful for projects implemented in different rural contexts. We argue that, since Mozambican agricultural plans primarily emphasize a perspective that focuses on market-oriented agricultural modernization, a potential reform of the current cooperation policy toward more inclusive agenda, focused on family farming, faces political economy constraints. We conclude that the appropriation of a foreign project relies on the political economy dynamics of related contexts and power relations of involved stakeholders, an area that could deserve further attention from researchers investigating Brazil–Mozambique relations.     

The impact of decoupled payments on farm choices: Conceptual and methodological challenges

In this paper we review the methodological framework for analysing decoupled payments in models of agricultural production. Market and technological uncertainty, farm efficiency, credit constraints, farm household choices involving extra-agricultural decisions, policy uncertainty and long-run impact of decoupling on investment and land values are the relevant issues that should be pursued by methodological and empirical analysis. Future research should refine the analysis of decoupled payments, mainly trying to provide results that can be useful for policy simulation, to bridge the gap between analysis at the individual level and sector policy models.     

Economic environment and agricultural development: The importance of macroeconomic policy

This article explores the ways in which the macroeconomic balance of the economy, and related policies, impinge on agriculture in developing countries, and considers implications for the design of policies. It argues that the extent of macroeconomic balance, and the quality of the policies influencing that balance, to a large extent define the scope for effective agricultural policies. The avoidance of severe balance-of-payments deficits and rapid inflation are seen as a necessary condition for the promotion of agricultural growth. They also have an important influence on the nature and range of agricultural policy options available to governments.     

The changing public role in services to food and agriculture : The legal regulation of food markets in India

A framework allowing the commercial transfer of property rights is an essential prerequisite to market exchange widely considered the prerogative of the state. Here, the social history of the legal regulation of agricultural markets in central, south and northeast India is examined. Regulatory law is shown to be riven with unanticipated outcomes, working as intended only under rare conditions of competition and absence of preharvest commercial debt. Meso level institutions of collective action and micro level behaviour by firms also regulate exchange, unsystematically according to their multiple objectives. Foreign funded projects and another layer of customary procedure. In the light of this analysis, the current policy debates over agricultural market reform are discussed and an analytical framework and suggestions for reform are offered.     

Policy coherence and food security: The effects of OECD countries’ agricultural policies

There have been important changes to agricultural policies in many OECD countries over the past decade and the international spill-over effects of support and protection have diminished. Now would be a good time to eliminate remaining distortions and put in place more efficient alternatives, including social safety nets and tools to help farmers manage risk. This would lock in the benefits of reform and simultaneously address charges of policy incoherence. In the context of high food prices, new issues have emerged with potential implications for food security. They include export restrictions, the use of biofuel mandates, and the opportunities and threats presented by increased foreign investment in agriculture. On these issues, as well as in terms of conventional support mechanisms, policies in emerging economies (in particular the BRIICS) are increasingly important. A pro-active agenda for policy coherence would involve not just eliminating policies that distort trade, but also enacting positive measures to increase food availability, for example by raising agricultural productivity, using resources sustainably, and eliminating waste and over-consumption. Across countries, there are important gains to be realised from knowledge sharing, and from multilateral action to provide global public goods – not least smoother functioning of the multilateral trading system.     

农村劳动力流转、粮食商品化程度对粮食主产区农户的农机购置行为的影响分析——基于全国587户粮农数据

利用全国587户粮农数据,通过单因素相对影响比率与Logit模型研究了粮食种植户农机购置行为的影响因素。研究结果表明,外出劳动力数与粮食收入比重对农户购置农机具具有显著的负向激励;粮食生产商品化程度以及粮食直补政策对农户购置农机具有显著的正向激励;耕地面积越大、耕地细碎化程度越低则农户购置农机具的倾向越强;粮食主产区农户的农机购置程度显著较高,而粮食主销区则显著较低;小麦种植户的农机购置程度显著较高,而水稻种植户则显著较低。     

Japan's agricultural policy failure

Despite Japan's great advances in industry and technology, the country's agricultural policy has not enjoyed the same success. The costs of agricultural products such as rice and beef are much higher in Japan than in other countries. The main reason for this is the low efficiency of Japanese farming methods. This article looks at the reasons for low agricultural productivity, consumer acceptance of high commodity prices, and ways to stimulate reduced production costs and thus improve the situation.     

多哈回合谈判中的农业补贴问题分析

多哈回合农业谈判将在2004年7月达成的《框架协议》下对农业补贴政策进行具体的磋商。与乌拉圭回合《农业协议》相比,《框架协议》中对农业补贴政策进行了调整：对具有贸易扭曲作用的农业补贴政策提出了新的削减方式,对“蓝箱”政策进行了改革,对“绿箱”政策进行审议和澄清。框架协议中的农业补贴政策改革对新一轮农业谈判具有重要的指导作用,对WTO各成员国的影响也有所不同。     

REDD policy impacts on the agri-food sector and food security

Recent research shows that the combined contributions of deforestation, forest degradation and peat land emissions account for about 15% of greenhouse gas emissions. The REDD policy which preserves forests and values standing forests, enables substantial emission reductions. Since agricultural production and area expansion is a primary driver of tropical deforestation, REDD policies might limit the expansion possibilities of agricultural land use and therefore influence competitiveness of the agricultural sector, agricultural prices, trade patterns, agricultural production and therefore food security in the world. This paper studies the impact of REDD policies on the agri-food sector and food security with a global CGE model called MAGNET using a scenario approach. It focuses on the restrictions on agricultural land expansion within the REDD policy package. Simulation results show that REDD policies start to affect the agri-food sector in some lower developed countries if more than 15% of potentially available agricultural areas are protected from deforestation. A stringent REDD policy that protects 90% of land reserves that could potentially be used for agriculture production results in a global real agricultural price increase of almost 7.6%, and a worldwide agricultural production decrease of 1.7%. Regional differences are large, with real agricultural price changes ranging from 4% in North America to about 24% in Sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia. Food access rapidly deteriorates for low-income population in these regions in the case of high forest protection levels. Compensatory payments are necessary from a food security point of view if the level of forest protection increases. Our results indicate that from a food security perspective REDD policy should stop short of trying to protect more than 40% of global carbon if the compensation mechanism is not effectively implemented within REDD.