Empirical investigation of the agriculture–malnutrition nexus in Africa: Spatial clustering and spillover effects

Many studies have been conducted to examine the direct effect of agriculture on the prevalence of malnutrition; however, there is little solid evidence on spatial spillover effects and much less on the heterogeneous effects stemming from spatial differences in nutritional conditions. We make up this gap by using a dynamic spatial Durbin model to characterize the impact of agricultural productivity on malnutrition in Africa. Our results show that countries in Eastern Africa are more likely to suffer from severe malnutrition than other regions. We find evidence for convergence in agricultural productivity across countries with moderate and high prevalence of malnutrition as disparities in their agricultural productivity narrow down over the sample period. It appears that the negative effect of agriculture on malnutrition is more evident in countries where the prevalence of malnutrition is lower. This implies that agricultural development does not play a substantial role in reducing malnutrition in the worst affected areas. We also report that poor agricultural development can deteriorate the nutritional status among neighboring countries in the short term, consistent with the spatial-locking effect of agriculture.     

省级社会保障公共支出分类比较研究

中国省级社会保障公共支出存在着类型化的可能。通过选取"社会保障公共支出水平"、"经济发展水平"和"政府力量"三个变量作为分类框架和指标,利用2005—2008年度截面数据测算,可以将各省份区分为东中西三大类型区域。统计分析发现,这三类区域不仅在省级社会保障公共支出相对比重之间存在着显著的差异,而且各区域也形成了不同的社会保障发展机制。     

全球粮食危机背景下的埃及农业发展和中埃农业技术合作建议

农业在埃及经济社会发展中历来占据首要地位。在当今世界粮食短缺、粮价暴涨、发展中国家粮食安全受到严重威胁的特殊时刻,积极促进农业发展,努力增加粮食产量,是目前埃及政府面临的头等大事。本报告通过分析埃及现阶段的环境、地理和人口概况,以及埃及在全球粮食危机冲击下受到的诸多影响,阐述农业发展和粮食供应对于埃及的重要意义。通过研究埃及最新的农业发展情况和一些重要数据及指标,以及《埃及经济社会发展第六个“五年规划”2007—2012》中有关农业发展的若干政策,介绍埃及的农业技术研究体系和推广体系,结合我国科技援外总体战略,就未来中埃农业科技合作提出建议：探索以育种和种质资源合作、农业机械化技术合作、沙漠化治理、土壤改良及旱作农业作为重点领域;建议突出科技在中非农业合作中的重要性,强化培训、建立农业科技示范试点和规划农业战略基地。通过加强中埃及中非农业合作,推动我国农业国际化进程。     

Environment and Trade: The Relationship of International Trade and Environmental Policy

Followers of urban affairs and public policy have written much over the years about the rise of suburbia and development beyond older city boundaries in the US, whether such development is called urban, suburban, or ex-urban sprawl. Many researchers have focused on various issues concerning sprawl, especially on the unintended consequences that new development has had for municipal finances, neighborhood income and residential segregation, and transportation planning, among other issues. Over the last decade, a new area in the literature on sprawl has focused on how the “built environment” of residential areas can impact health and emergency services. We contribute to this latest set of papers on sprawl by trying to empirically estimate the impact of sprawl in metropolitan regions on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) spending on “public assistance.” This assistance encompasses spending on debris removal, emergency protective measures, and rehabilitating or rebuilding of infrastructure, public buildings, public utilities, parks and recreational areas, in post-disaster relief efforts. In our exploratory analysis, the results indicate that urban sprawl is a factor in influencing the level of FEMA’s public assistance spending.     

Does women’s participation in agricultural technology adoption decisions affect the adoption of climate‐smart agriculture? Insights from Indo‐Gangetic Plains of India

Increased participation of women in the agricultural technology adoption decision by farm households is one of the key indicators of gender empowerment in the agricultural sector. This study examines whether women’s participation in the household decision to adopt agricultural technology affects the adoption of climate‐smart agriculture (CSA), using data collected from 1,267 farm households from two Indian states of Bihar and Haryana. When we considered the sex of the household head (using a dummy variable for male‐headed vs female‐headed household) as a basis of analyzing the role of gender in the adoption of CSA, we found that women in Haryana had no role in the adoption of CSA. On the contrary, when we considered women’s participation in technology adoption decisions as a basis of gender analysis, we found that women’s participation in technology adoption decisions in Haryana is much higher as compared to Bihar. Consequently, the likelihood to adopt CSA is higher in Haryana than in Bihar. We also found that wealth, training, and access to extension and market positively influenced CSA adoption. Qualitative analysis shows that women farmers prioritize family food security rather than farm income, and therefore, they are more likely to focus on CSA to ensure food security.     

当前统筹城乡发展中的八个重大问题

文章认为,在统筹城乡发展的过程中,粮食安全是实现统筹城乡发展的基础;城乡居民收入差距是否缩小是衡量推进城乡一体化政策措施正确与否的根本标准;中国现代农业发展的主体应该是以专业合作社形式组织起来的农民;农村金融体制改革的重点应放在发展农民之间的资金互助上;宏观调控必须遵循价值规律公平调控;地方政府绝不能与民争利;不断加大对农业和农民的补贴应作为今后"三农"政策的基本导向;农村社区化的本质是要让农民与市民一样过上现代文明的幸福生活,而不是要化掉村庄。     

后疫情时代全球农业创新趋势与中以农业科技创新合作

新冠疫情全球大流行引起国际社会对未来粮食供应链安全问题的普遍担忧,部分国家奉行贸易保护主义,开始限制粮食出口,对全球粮食和食品供应产生不利影响。后疫情时代,稳定粮食供应链和食品安全成为全球关注的热点问题,以数字化技术为代表的农业新技术、新模式、新业态和新型食品技术的创新发展日益得到各国政府重视。本文对全球农业科技发展现状和后疫情时代发展趋势、以色列农业科技优势、中以农业创新合作现状以及未来推动双方农业领域创新合作的方向与路径进行了梳理、总结和思考。     

From the Global Food Crisis to the Age of Austerity: The Anxious Geopolitics of Global Food Security

The impacts of recent food, financial, and energy crises have reinvigorated a geopolitical enframing of global food security that makes foreign development assistance a primary component of national security strategies. This centres elite fears of hunger and underdevelopment and strongly shapes policies and strategies adopted in response. Geopolitical fears of hungry and food insecure populations are compounded by the politics of austerity and cuts to foreign aid budgets and social spending. This paper examines the geopolitics of food security, fear, and austerity as expressed in the rhetoric and strategies of major aid donor governments, especially the US and UK, and proposes an alternative geopolitics that builds from the affective dimensions of hunger, food insecurity, and vulnerability as experienced by the hungry and poor. The example of farmer suicides and agrarian political mobilisation in India demonstrates how this affective alternative geopolitics may be constructed and examined.     

The ‘Global Food Crisis’ and the Geopolitics of Food Security

Growing anxieties over food security have recently brought sharp geopolitical overtones to debates about the agro-food sector. Contending that this ‘geopolitical moment’ highlights the mutually constitutive nature of geopolitics and political economies of food, we examine how dominant geopolitical framings of food security extend and deepen neoliberal models of agro-food provisioning, and highlight the need for further attention to these dynamics from political geographers. We develop a preliminary research agenda for further work in the field, focusing on the recent spate of global farmland acquisitions, questions of agro-food governance, the securitisation of hunger and obesity, and the environmental impacts of dominant agro-food systems. Throughout, we highlight the value of a counter-geopolitics of food security for re-situating agro-food politics outside hegemonic policies and institutions, and of the alter-geopolitics of food pursued by communities embodying concrete alternative food production and consumption systems.     

Did fiscal institutions affect Wagner’s law in Italy during 1951–2009 period? An empirical analysis

In this article, we test Wagner’s assumption of the one-sided directional flow moving from economic growth to public spending in Italy for the 1951–2009 period. We pay particular attention to the impact of certain regime shifts related to changes in Italian budget regulations and procedures and the relevance of fiscal institutions to the fiscal performance equation, i.e. the public spending–national income nexus. The Error Correction Model is estimated to measure short-run dynamic effects and the long-run equilibrium between the two time series. The empirical evidence suggests that Wagner’s law is supported. In regard to policy implications, we find that public spending reacted less to positive changes in economic growth when the strengthening of the Ministry of Finance occurred in 1997 (Ciampi’s reform). Some sensitivity analyses confirm our empirical evidence.     

Cereal production,undernourishment, and food insecurity in South Asia

South Asia remains one of the major strongholds of hunger in the world, despite the fact that, following the Green Revolution, cereal production in the countries of this region tripled during the second half of the 20th century. This study examines the role played by this increase in cereal production in improving the region’s nutrition and food security situation. We study the association between the different aspects of food security and cereal production in South Asia that have prevailed over the past 25 years. We find a beneficial role of the production and yield of cereals in lowering the extent of undernourishment. A 1% increase in cereal production and yield is associated with up to 0.84% decrease in the prevalence of undernourishment. The impact is significant over a period of 3 years. The positive effect is particularly evident in the case of rice and maize production. An improvement is seen in the aspects of availability, stability, and utilization of food security but not in the aspect of access. These findings are robust to alternative specifications and techniques. The results explain, in part, the means by which South Asian nations have managed to stall relative increases in extreme hunger and food insecurity.     

Fiscal Competition and Higher Education Spending in Germany

The present paper studies the determinants of higher education spending by the German federal states with a focus on the interplay between higher education spending of neighboring states. More specifically, the paper asks whether the German federal states free‐ride on one another's higher educational spending or whether they employ higher education spending to attract university graduates. We identify a positive relationship between the states' higher education spending and conclude that the states compete for graduates rather than free‐ride. We also consider the effect of the recent introduction of tuition fees in some, but not all German states. We do not find evidence that tuition fees led to crowding out of public higher education funds.     

Agriculture production versus biodiversity protection: The impact of North-South unconditional transfers

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether international income transfers can improve or worsen the global level of biodiversity and global social welfare by changing the relative contributions to biodiversity protection and to agricultural production. Because of the public good nature of biodiversity, Warr's neutrality theorem suggests that such transfers may have no effects at all (Warr, 1983). A model is developed, based on the simplifying assumption that northern countries have little biodiversity whereas southern countries are endowed with natural capital in the form of (generally unspoilt) biodiversity-rich land. Southern countries allocate optimally land and capital to two competing productive activities, agriculture and eco-tourism. When transfers are organized from the North to the South, we show that Warr's neutrality theorem collapses. Transfers can either reduce or increase the natural capital in the South, depending on some empirically verifiable hypotheses concerning the characteristics of the eco-tourism and agricultural production functions. In addition, we demonstrate that welfare improvements can be obtained even with reductions in the level of biodiversity.     

公共支出结构对收入不均等影响研究——基于公共服务均等化视角分析

收入不均等影响到社会公平与经济发展,而收入公平分配是政府的主要责任,也是政府公共支出的依据之一.影响收入分配不均等的因素有很多,其中由于政府相应责任缺位,公共支出结构偏向,使得公共支出中基本公共服务支出不足是其主要原因.本文实证分析得出公共支出总量与结构严重影响基本公共服务供给,进而影响着收入不均等的水平,成为社会公平和稳定的重要因素.政府应从制度上进行公共支出改革,规范督促地方政府优化公共支出结构,不断提高对民生支出的主动性,逐步缩小基本公共服务的差距,缩小收入不均等的水平.     

中外农业保险发展的政策支持体系比较与借鉴

由于农业保险的公共物品性质和农业在国民经济中的重要地位,农业保险的发展需政府的支持。世界上大多数国家都建立了较完善的农业保险政策支持体系。我国农业保险发展滞后,其根本原因就是政府的政策支持体系不健全。文章对中外农业保险政府支持的方式、范围、标准和层次进行了比较分析,总结国外农业保险发展的经验,发现我国农业保险的政府支持存在的问题,提出适合我国基本国情的农业保险发展的政策支持体系。     

农村基础设施公共投资与农业增长——基于省际面板数据的例证

农业增长离不开生产要素投入的增加和农村基础设施的完善。由于农村基础设施具有技术不可分性、低排他性、不可贸易性等特征,因而应当主要由政府的公共投资来提供。运用1994—2009年期间中国各省、市、自治区的面板数据,通过模型的比较分析,发现耕地投入和农业劳动力投入是不断递减的,但由于农业经营制度变革、公共投资增多、农业技术进步导致劳动生产率提高等原因,农业总产值仍稳步提升。农田水利灌溉、农业科研、农村教育和农村电力等方面的公共投资都能推动农业增长,但由于各项投资的边际影响不同,需要在不同地区有所侧重。研究还发现,农村基础设施公共投资能够明显缩小西部地区与中东部地区的农业发展差距,促进区域经济协调可持续发展。     

Short- and long-term relation between economic development and government spending: the role of quality of institutions

ABSTRACT

This paper tests the Wagner’s assumption of the one-sided directional flow moving from economic growth to public spending considering an international database over the 1996–2012 period. By using indicators on the level of country control of corruption, government effectiveness, political stability, rule of law, regulatory quality and voice and accountability, the paper analyses the economic performance-public spending nexus controlling for the quality of the institutions. The empirical evidence supports the existence of the Wagner’s law, showing that, in the short-run, public spending positively reacts to a positive shock in national income, with a lower magnitude for democratic countries. In the long run, the error-correction model shows the convergence between public spending and national output occurring less quickly for non-democratic, low-income and to a smaller extent for non-OECD countries. Institutional quality, such as effort in controlling corruption and the presence of regulations that permit and promote private sector development, may help reducing the amount of per capita public spending and making it more productive. Higher expenses in compositional amenities such as public services for the elderly may explain why public spending per capita will increase the most in economies with a higher share of the population that need healthcare facilities.     

全球气候变暖背景下农业干旱灾害与粮食安全——基于西南五省面板数据的实证研究

干旱灾害是我国农业生产的最大风险,严重影响农产品生产供给与粮食安全。通过构建农业干旱灾害与粮食安全之间的计量模型,利用西南五省样本数据,实证检验了1997—2008年间农业干旱灾害对粮食安全的影响。结果表明,农业干旱灾害对粮食安全具有明显的影响。由此提出应对全球气候变暖下农业干旱灾害风险的策略:加强农田水利基础设施建设,通过增强水资源的时空调配能力达到农业抵御干旱灾害风险;选育耐旱作物品种,提高作物干旱忍耐力;调整粮食生产布局,在高旱灾频率地区,减少高耗水作物生产等。     

Trade,poverty, and social protection in developing countries

How do shifts in trade affect social protections for the poor? Although the fraction of the world's population considered the “extreme” poor has fallen by over one-half over the past quarter century, many of those lifted above the global poverty line remain vulnerable to shocks that could place them back into poverty. These are the groups that require social protection to stabilize their incomes. Among the shocks to which the absolute poor have been exposed are those created by trade liberalization, particularly of the agricultural sector. The resulting risks, uncertainties, and threats to social stability from this type of trade require that the poor be provided with some forms of adjustment assistance. We examine the effects of trade components on several dimensions of social protection in developing countries, including spending, coverage, and adequacy over the past two decades. We find that, contrary to previous studies, disaggregating trade may be a key to determining which international market variables drive expansion of social protection. Disaggregating trade balances in agricultural vs. manufactured goods reveals that net food and agricultural exporters provide better social protection than countries that report agricultural trade deficits. Meanwhile, countries with manufacturing trade surpluses tend to experience reduced social protection coverage. We reason that governments of net agricultural exporters face incentives to invest in social programs that extend eligibility to the rural poor. Manufacturing export-driven economies, on the other hand, are likely participants in global production chains that limit the capacity of the public sector to extend social protection.     

是何因素制约着中国居民消费

居民消费增长相对缓慢给我国经济的持续健康发展带来挑战,扩大居民消费加快形成消费、投资、出口协调驱动经济增长的新局面是我国经济发展到新阶段后的客观要求。本文基于预防性储蓄理论分别从不确定性、收入分配和公共支出三个视角系统地研究中国居民消费的制约因素。研究分析表明,居民谨慎的消费行为、收入分配的不合理,公共支出转型滞后等都严重地制约着我国居民消费的增长,并据此提出相应的政策建议。