Grain inflation: Identifying agent discretion in response to a conditional school nutrition program

Many incentive programs rely on local agents with significant discretion to allocate benefits. We estimate the degree of discretion exercised by teachers within a conditional transfer program designed to improve nutrition and encourage student attendance in Mumbai, India. The program allocates grain to students every month their attendance exceeds 80% , creating an incentive for teachers to inflate attendance to benefit certain students. We find that teachers manipulate students' records, altering the incentives to attend school. The teachers' response also varies across students. Teachers inflate more for girls, better students, and students from lower castes, but less for Muslim students.     

Measuring farm sustainability and explaining differences in sustainable efficiency

A major objective of European agricultural policy is to have a sustainable and efficient farming sector that is applying environmentally-friendly production methods. Policy makers aim to combine a strong economic performance and a sustainable use of natural resources. Therefore, it is important to measure and to assess farm sustainability. For a large dataset of Flemish dairy farms, a valuation method that is based on the concept of opportunity costs is used to calculate and analyze differences among the sample farms with respect to the creation of “sustainable value”. But more important than measuring the creation of sustainable value is to analyze differences in sustainable efficiency. Therefore, sustainable efficiency measures are calculated and differences in sustainable efficiency are explained. Using panel data, an effect model captures the determinants of sustainable efficiency of the studied farms. The empirical model shows that, in general, larger farms have a higher sustainable efficiency. Also farmer's age and dependency on support payments proved to be determining characteristics for observed differences in sustainable efficiency.     

Ozone pollution and farm profits in England and Wales

Tropospheric ozone is an air pollutant known to adversely affect crop yields across Europe. Experimental work is underway to quantify yield effects at ambient ozone levels for a number of crops. In this article, we undertake direct, farm-level evaluation of the impact of ozone by estimating a multi-output profit function using a panel dataset of cereal farms in England and Wales. A system of equations, comprising the profit function, input and output share equations is estimated using a fixed-effects seemingly unrelated regression technique, with ozone as a quasi-fixed input. Estimated parameters are used to calculate tropospheric ozone-related profit and output supply elasticities. The main findings from the profit function show that a 10% increase in average ozone levels would decrease variable profits by 1.3% and wheat output supply by 1%. These results are of a significantly lower magnitude, but qualitatively consistent with findings from similar studies carried out in North America.     

External military threat and the response of the member states of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC)

The study shows that procurements of traditional arms by two countries have the possibility of moving together over time. This is demonstrated with reference to Iran and the member states of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) for the period 1961- 1996. Acquiring arms by the member states of the GCC is shown to be only a response to the perception of their leaders to the external threat posed by Iran throughout the varying regimes that have ruled Teheran. In the light of the recent emergence of macroeconomic problems such as unemployment in the economies of the GCC coupled with the ineffectiveness of the financially exhausting build-up of arms as a military deterrent policy, one important implication of the study is that the priority of the GCC leaders will have to turn to a more effective deterrent policy such as acquiring nuclear technology rather than engaging in a costly and unsuccessful Arab military alliance as experienced in the 1970s.     

An analysis of multiple structural breaks in US relative farm prices

The movement of farm prices relative to other commodity prices is analysed for the period 1913:01 to 2003:12, investigating the number and time of structural breaks and discussing likely causes of structural breaks in the relative farm prices. Bai and Perron's (1998, 2003) multiple structural change test with a dynamic programming algorithm is used. This test makes it possible to have an efficient computation of the estimates of the break points as global minimizers of the sum of squared residuals. We find six structural breaks when we consider only the mean process and two breaks when we consider the mean and autoregressive processes. Possible causes for these breaks are discussed.     

Individual response to a retirement saving program: results from U.S. panel data

Heterogeneity in individual saving behaviour presents the major difficulty in determining the saving effect of special retirement saving programs. We address that issue in this paper by “using individuals as their own controls”. The paper considers changes in other saving when individuals made contributions to Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) near the outset of that program. The analysis is based on the 1984 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). For the most part, we find that when individuals who were not contributing to an IRA began to contribute there was little change in other saving.     

试论社会监督与农产品质量安全

农产品市场失灵出现质量安全问题,社会监督是解决问题的重要机制。社会监督在效能上不具有政府管制和行业自律的强制性,但其评判、抑制、转化功能却具有强大的威慑力。在社会监督中,消费者监督是一支不容忽视的市场力量,由消费者实施的监督更具有直接的动力。相对于法律处罚和行政监管,媒体监督具有较低的社会成本,在打击低劣质产品方面比工商、司法等职能部门监督甚至更为有效,从长远来看,媒体对农产品质量安全的监督有利于农产品市场的健康发展。     

Tax efficiency in selected Indian states

This paper attempts to measure pure tax efficiency of fifteen major Indian states (Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Haryana, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamilnadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal) for the period 1980–81 to 1992–93 in a manner that allows this efficiency to vary both across time as well as across states. It is discovered that there is a moral hazard problem in the design of central grants in that higher grants by the central government to the state governments reduce efficiency of tax collection by these states. The less poor states are more efficient in tax collection. The rankings of states by tax efficiency for the various years do not converge. An index of aggregate tax efficiency is calculated and it appears that this index has been stagnating. It is argued that the weight placed on tax effort in the formula determining central grants to state governments should be increased to improve tax efficiency of state governments. First version received: November 1997/final version received: November 1998     

Thinking about developmental states in Africa

During much of the 1980s and 90s, a literature emerged suggestingthat ‘developmental states’ were impossible in Africa.The arguments given ranged from cultural ones about the pervasivenature of clientalism to structural ones on the dependence ofAfrican economies or the atypical levels of rent seeking inAfrican economies. This paper argues that Africa has had statesthat were ‘developmental’ in both their aspirationsand economic performance. It further argues that these experiencesneed to be examined critically for useful lessons, an exercisethat has been hindered by an excessive levelling of the Africanpolitical and economic landscapes.     

马克思的供求理论与新古典供求理论之比较

马克思经济学由于其研究目的所限,没有系统的供求理论体系,因而其供求理论没得到很好的研究。其实,马克思在许多地方对供给和需求进行了论述,并认为供给和需求范畴在经济学中是重要的。在发展马克思经济学时,应该建立马克思主义系统的供求理论体系。马克思对供求的论述与西方经济学供求理论存在本质上的分歧,但新古典经济学供求理论的数量分析方法和工具可以为马克思主义经济学发展的借鉴。     

论中国农产品出口的区域结构与对策

20世纪90年代以来,中国农产品出口贸易增长趋缓。本文在对中国农产品区域贸易统计数据以及相关政策背景实证分析的基础上,从贸易集中度的角度辨识中国农产品贸易发展的出口区域结构与政策含义。     

风电场运行经济性综合评价方法

由于风力发电行业本身的特点和风电场运行管理的特殊性，任何单一的评价指标都难以对风电场运行经济性进行全面、完整、综合、客观的反映。本文采用层次分析法提出了风电场运行经济性综合评价方法。运用这种方法可以对风电场的发电情况、无功耗用情况、运行费用及人员效率情况等几个风电场运行经济性评价应考查的主要方面进行综合评价。     

中国主要海洋产业预测研究

海洋经济日益成为国民经济新的增长极,加强对海洋经济的预测对于促进海洋经济的发展,编制海洋经济计划和制定海洋政策措施有着重要的理论和实践意义。运用灰色理论,利用历史数据,构建海洋经济预测模型,并对中国六大主要海洋产业2007-2015年的产值发展趋势进行了预测。     

The myth of large farm superiority: Lessons from agricultural transition in poland

In Poland, larger farms are often actively promoted over small farms. This policy is based on the perception that there are economies of scale that favor large farms; however, this is contrary to international evidence, which generally indicates that larger farms are less efficient and use less labor than smallscale family farms.

Using both total factor productivity measures and data envelopment analysis, empirical findings from Poland suggest that larger farms are no more efficient than smaller farms, and smaller farms are relatively more labor-intensive. These results have important policy implications for farm restructuring in Poland and other transition economies.     

Measuring the effects of preservation on farm profits in a continuous treatment setting

Despite billions of dollars of public appropriations to state purchase of development rights (PDR) programmes, there has been limited evaluation of the effects of these investments on the economic performance of preserved farms. This article estimates dose-response functions to evaluate the effects of enrolment in New Jersey’s PDR programme on farm profitability. The generalized propensity score method in a continuous treatment setting is used to address selection bias arising from voluntary programme participation. Treatment effects are measured across treatment levels to determine whether farm profitability is affected differently across levels of programme participation. Our findings reveal that, relative to unpreserved farms, profit per acre tends to increase along lower treatment levels. The profit per acre of preserved farms in the 1–40% treatment range is, on average, $407 higher than that of unpreserved farms in the full sample. Positive profit differentials averaging between $317 and $472 per acre are also observed in the 1–20%, 1–40% and 1–60% treatment quintiles in the farming occupation sample. We do not observe statistically significant profitability differentials when treatment effects are averaged across all positive treatment values.     

Estimating labor supply and production decisions of self-employed farm producers

This paper proposes a model oriented towards integrating farm households' production and consumption decisions into a unified theoretical and econometric framework. It is argued that, in contrast with other forms of economic organization, farm households' utility and profit maximization decisions are not likely to be independent.Econometric estimation of a farm-household model using Canadian data suggests that utility and profit maximizing decisions are not indeed independent and, moreover, that there are significant gains in explanatory power and efficiency by estimating the consumption and production equations jointly.     

Elimination of arbitrage states in asymmetric information models

In a financial economy with asymmetric information and incomplete markets, we study how agents, having no model of how equilibrium prices are determined, may still refine their information by eliminating sequentially “arbitrage state(s)”, namely, the state(s) which would grant the agent an arbitrage, if realizable.