Are returns to research quality lower in agricultural economics than in economics?

We compare effects of research quality and quantity on the salary of academics in agricultural economics and economics departments of the same universities. Agricultural economists get a significantly lower payoff to research quality, whether measured by quality‐weighted journal articles (based on nine different weighting schemes) or by citations. Instead, salary depends on the quantity of journal articles, while article counts have no independent effect on economist salaries. These differences in the reward structure for research are not due to either the extension focus of agricultural economists or to disciplinary differences in publishing with students and instead may reflect institutional factors that govern incentives within universities. One‐third of academics in the agricultural economics departments studied here have doctoral training in economics; the very different disciplinary reward structures may cause frustration for these faculty due to the muted returns to research quality that agricultural economics departments seem to offer.     

Trends in University Ag-Biotech Patent Production

This work exploits information on U.S. patents to identify trends in university ag-biotech patenting and citation performance. It sets forth some key issues concerning patterns of university ag-biotech patenting and then provides an empirical analysis of the evolving trends. Land grant universities account for most U.S. ag-biotech patents. The data show a path-dependent innovation pattern, in which there also seems to be a culture of patenting that develops at certain universities. Evidence shows that ag-biotech patents are more cited than the average university patent. Inequalities across land grant universities are also evident in the production of ag-biotech patents, although perhaps not to a much greater degree than underlying inequalities in funding and research qualities. The paper closes by considering how the evidence offered might be used to advance the public discussion regarding trends in agricultural biotechnology research in the United States.     

成本负担与中国权利登记制的建构

研究目的:通过对权利登记制成本负担及其影响因素的分析,为中国的登记立法提供建议。研究方法:经济分析法和实证比较法。研究结果:相比于契据登记制,权利登记制不但增加了间接成本,且直接成本的负担也具有集中、强制、公共开支和垄断收费等特点,而影响因素则包括规范层面和事实层面等。研究结论:制度建构应尽可能采取降低成本的措施,包括登记权行使的规范化和科学化、降低管制、不采纳总登记、保持制度开放性等。     

Nonpecuniary Benefits to Farming: Implications for Supply Response to Decoupled Payments

We develop a household model wherein farmers allocate labor to maximize utility from leisure, consumption, and nonpecuniary benefits from farming. The model shows that farmers with decreasing marginal utility of income respond to higher decoupled payments by decreasing off-farm labor and increasing farm labor, resulting in greater agricultural output. We then estimate the difference between farm and off-farm returns to labor using data from three nationally representative farm household surveys. The finding of a large on-farm/off-farm wage differential provides compelling evidence of substantial nonpecuniary benefits from farming.     

MARKETING AGENCIES AND THE ECONOMICS OF MARKET SEGMENTATION*

Increasing importance is being attached to market segmentation strategies as a means of increasing producer returns. In this paper, a generalised model of price discrimination without supply control is developed to analyse the implications of optimal segmentation strategies for non-homogeneous products. It is shown that the magnitude of producer returns is dependent on demand and supply conditions, with increases in returns falling as price elasticities of demand and supply increase. The model is applied to the New Zealand sheep meats industry to reveal that returns to producers from market segmentation strategies could be quite low in the long run.     

Scale Economies and Inefficiency of U.S. Dairy Farms

This study employs data drawn from the 2000 Agricultural Resource Management Survey, a U.S. Department of Agriculture-sponsored farmers' survey. The article estimates returns to scale relationships across dairy farms of different sizes and across different regions, incorporating variables hypothesized to influence farm performance. Results point to significant scale economies in U.S. dairy farms and underscore the importance of taking account of inefficiency when estimating scale economies. Contrary to previous research, the preferred cost function specification does not show a region of decreasing returns to scale. This finding helps explain why the average size of dairy farms has been increasing.     

Farmer responses to changing risk aversion,enterprise variability and resource endowments

The focus of this article is on assessing how risk aversion, enterprise variability and resource endowments affect farm land‐use decisions and economic returns. A theoretical model of a two‐enterprise, two‐constraint farm is developed, and then, an empirical illustration for an Australian farm is provided. The methodology used builds on previous expected mean‐variance (EV) models by incorporating land and budget constraints. The Kuhn–Tucker conditions of the EV model are examined to highlight that changes in resource endowments have larger effects on economic returns, than do changes in risk aversion or enterprise gross margin variability. It was also found that combinations of enterprise mixes that do not use all available resources can produce higher economic returns, relative to some enterprise mixes that use all available resources.     

Population growth,agricultural intensification,induced innovation and natural resource sustainability: An application of neoclassical growth theory

Using a simple neoclassical type growth model including both man-made and natural capital as inputs to production, the theoretical basis for a U-shaped relationship between agricultural intensification and farm household investment in renewable resource capital is established. As development of technology, infrastructure, or markets increase the relative return to investment in man-made capital over natural capital, resource depletion occurs as man-made capital is substituted for lower return natural capital. Once returns are equalized, both man-made and natural capital are accumulated. If labor and these forms of capital are complementary, the output effects outweigh the substitution effects in the long run, leading to net accumulation of natural as well as man-made capital as a result of such technological or market development. Population growth also induces investment in both man-made and natural resource capital in the long run by increasing their marginal products. However, population growth causes declining per capita levels of both natural and man-made capital and production per capita in the long run, if technology is fixed and decreasing returns to scale. The model thus supports the Boserupian argument of induced intensification and resource improvement, as well as the Malthusian argument of the impoverishing effects of population growth. However, population growth may also induce development of infrastructure, markets, and technological or institutional innovation by reducing the fixed costs per capita of these changes, though these developments may not occur automatically. Government policies can play a large role in affecting whether these potential benefits of population growth are realized. In addition, credit policies may reduce resource degradation caused by substitution of man-made for natural capital, by allowing farmers to accumulate man-made capital (such as fertilizers) without depleting their natural capital. Policies to internalize the external environmental costs of using man-made capital will reduce both types of capital and production, indicating a clear trade-off between addressing environmental concerns on the one hand and reducing poverty and promoting resource conservation investments on the other. By contrast, internalizing the external benefits of investments in resources increases wealth and production per capita in the long run. The ‘intertemporal externality’ due to a higher private than social rate of time preference does not justify interventions to promote investments in resource capital; rather it argues for the promotion of savings and investment in general.     

The Contribution of Financial Management Training and Knowledge to Dairy Farm Financial Performance

Cooperative Extension and other institutions (e.g., technical colleges, on-line self study programs, university short courses, etc.) frequently stress the importance of financial management education for successful farming operations. The research reported in this paper attempts to quantify the contributions of such training to the financial performance of dairy farms in Wisconsin. Our results suggest a link between a deeper understanding of financial concepts and greater financial returns but that it is a relatively weak one. Moreover, simple exposure to farm management training programs and self-confidence in farm financial decision-making ability are not significantly related to farm financial outcomes.     

Graduate Agribusiness Management Programs: Too Many and Too Cheap

Nearly two dozen graduate programs in agribusiness management have emerged in the last decade. All are at public universities. This pattern raises several questions: Why have private universities stayed out of this market? Is this trend good for our students? Who is benefiting the most from this trend? In this paper, I present some hypotheses regarding the answers to these questions.     

韩国高等农业教育的发展道路与模式探析

韩国高等农业教育走过了一条综合化的发展道路，农科院校从专业设置、学校更名，到升格、合并都适应了当时的经济与社会发展需求，在综合化趋势下各院校都保持了各自的专业特色。韩国本科以上的高等农业教育主要经历了三种发展模式：农科学院独立发展成综合性大学、农科学院并入综合性大学或在综合性大学框架下新设立农科院系。目前本科以上的高等农业教育主要在涉农综合性大学的农科学院及研究生院中进行，本科以下的高等农业教育则是在专门的农业大学或非农专门大学的农科系中实施。     

城乡统筹视野下农村干部培训体系构建——基于高校培训模式的研究

城乡统筹背景下新农村建设对农村干部培职能提出了新要求，高校迎合时代需求参与农村干部培训，既是干部培训发展的必然趋势，也是高校服务农村发展的重要途径。本文在总结以往培训经验的基础上，结合当下遇到的问题，提出高校应充分利用自身优势，科学论证培训项目；不断创新培训模式；逐步建立和完善培训管理长效机制；在课程设置上应适应农村产业结构调整。     

The rise and fall of public sector plant breeding in the United Kingdom: a causal chain model of basic and applied research and diffusion

This paper examines the barley and wheat breeding programmes of the Plant Breeding Institute (PBI), which was the most successful public plant breeding institute in the UK, until privatization in 1987. The PBI's shares in barley and wheat seed sales are explained, showing that the success with barley was largely a matter of serendipity, whereas the wheat programme followed a more normal pattern. For wheat, the causal chain, or recursive, model decomposes the well-documented link between research expenditures and increases in agricultural productivity into three stages. These are the effects of R&D expenditures on basic research output, measured by publications, the effect of publications and applied R&D expenditures on trial plot yields, and the diffusion of the trial plot technologies, which raises yields on farms. Applying the model to the FBI's wheat varieties allows estimation of the lag structures. In contrast to the results for aggregate agricultural research, for a single plant breeding programme alone there is a considerable lead time before there is any response, followed by a lag distribution only a few years long. The returns to the R&D investments are calculated from the causal chain model, from single equation estimates and by evaluating the yield advantage of the PBI varieties. All three approaches give consistent results, which show that the returns to barley and wheat alone were sufficient to support the entire PBI budget and still give rates of return to applied research of between 14 and 25%. The return to the basic science expenditures of the John Innes Institute has a lower bound of 17%, but must have been even higher than for the PBI if the other Institutes were taken into account. The paper concludes by commenting on the effects of the privatization of the PBI.     

浅析企业全面预算管理

预算管理是保证企业按计划运营的有效手段,近年来,财政部相继发布了有关预算管理的暂行办法及指导意见,并引进了发达国家的全面预算管理机制,为企业全面预算管理的实施提供了制度性指南。地勘企业推行全面预算管理将有助于提高其经营效益,全面预算管理包括编制预算、预算执行、预算考核三个环节。企业在实施全面预算管理过程中,应注意以下几个方面的问题:明确产权关系、完善公司治理结构;加强员工培训、树立全员预算管理观念;预算管理要与企业战略目标相一致、设置专门的预算管理机构,建立科学的预算管理信息系统。     

Productivity and farm size in Australian agriculture: reinvestigating the returns to scale

A positive relationship between farm size and farm productivity is often considered to be largely due to increasing returns to scale in farm production. However, using farm‐level data for the Australian broadacre industry, we found that constant or mildly decreasing returns to scale is the more typical scenario. In this study, the marginal returns to various farm inputs are compared across farms with different sizes. We found that large farms achieved higher productivity by changing production technology rather than increasing scale alone. The results highlight the disparity between ‘returns to scale’ and ‘returns to size’ in the industry, suggesting that productivity improvement among smaller farms can be made through increasing their ability to access advanced technologies, rather than simply expanding their scale.     

地质调查项目预算管理初探

地质项目预算管理取得的成绩包括出台了一系列预算管理制度;制订了一系列预算标准,完善了预算体系;进行了人员培训和教材编写.地质项目预算管理的不足表现为预算约束力缺位;预算编制程序错误;对预算工作重视不够;预算人员水平相对不高.做好地质预算管理工作的对策(1)加强预算审查力度,强化预算约束力;(2)建立完善的"标准"更新制度;(3)预算与核算应建立规范对应关系;(4)加强人员培训和业务能力锻炼;(5)建立地质项目预算考核体系.     

试论加强项目预算理的对策——以中国地质调查局西安地质调查中心预算管理为例

预算管理是项目管理的基础,应完善预算控制体系,健全业务管理机构,按照项目运行规律逐步细化项目预算,提升预算管理水平;建立科学可行的项目绩效考评制度,合理设置考核指标,正确引导项目经费支出行为,发挥资金使用效益;加大对预算管理知识培训,积极争取法人对财务管理工作的支持,推进预算管理制度创新。     

Gains to Research in the Presence of Intellectual Property Rights and Research Subsidies

The influx of private investment into crop research, which has accompanied the establishment of intellectual property rights (IPRs) and the introduction of biotechnology, suggests high rates of return. However, the empirical analysis of the canola research sector shows a decline in the total net return to research during a period of increased investment, indicating that net marginal returns to research have been negative. The indication of immiserizing research suggests that the combined effect of IPRs and public incentives has driven the quantity of research beyond the socially optimal level.     

The tilling of land in a changing climate: Empirical evidence from the Nile Basin of Ethiopia

Empirical studies point to reduced tillage as a means to increase yields and reverse land degradation. A relatively neglected avenue of research concerns why farmers increase tillage frequencies. Using household-plot level panel data from the Nile Basin of Ethiopia, this article applies a random effects ordered probit endogenous switching regression model to empirically investigate the impact of weather events and other conditioning factors on farmers’ choice of tillage intensity and the effect of changing tillage frequencies on differences in farm returns. Results indicate that, while low frequency tillage is more likely in drier areas, plot-level shocks (such as pests and diseases) are key variables in the choice of high-frequency tillage. Adoption of a low-till approach leads to increasing farm returns in low-moisture areas but high-frequency tillage provides higher returns in high-rainfall areas. Understanding how farmers’ tillage options correlate with climatic conditions and farm economies is salient for developing effective adaptation and mitigation plans.     

ASSESSING SOME EFFECTS OF INFLATION ON THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR*

The time pattern of effects of inflation on prices received, prices paid, asset returns, and real incomes of different members of the agricultural sector is described. In the long run it is argued that inflation will have very small, if any, effects on relative prices or real incomes. For the short run, which may be several years, it is likely that some prices will rise more slowly than others and cause income losses. Included in the group of losers are producers of export products.