Are Agricultural and Developable Land Prices Governed by the Same Spatial Rules? The Case of Belgium

In this paper, we test whether farmland and developable land prices are governed by the same determinants (mainly urbanization). We estimate here quasi‐identical econometric equations for both agricultural and developable land markets, instead of the conventional approach of adding variables that capture the urban influence. Using data aggregated at the level of the 589 municipalities of a highly urbanized country (Belgium), we found that the same determinants enter these equations, with slight differences in parameter values: land prices decrease with distance to central business district (developable land: –2.7% per km; farmland: –2.5% per km), and increase with the population of the commune as well as with its demographic growth and with the average income of its inhabitants.     

Does ‘Protection for Sale’ Apply to the US Food Industries?

This paper tests the Protection for Sale model in terms of the structure of protection and how realistic the estimated domestic welfare weight is relative to campaign contributions. Using data from US food manufacturing, empirical results support the key predictions for the structure of protection when either all food manufacturing industries or most of the general population is assumed to be politically organised. The domestic welfare weight is estimated as low as 0.837, the lowest econometric estimate to date, underlining that protection is for sale and that, with a qualified ‘yes’, the model fits the data for these industries.     

Disaggregating the Demand for Pesticides: Does it Matter?

This paper analyzes the demand of French farmers for pesticides by disaggregating among the three main categories of pesticides. We estimate the demand elasticities of herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides with respect to pesticide expenditure, and also consider crop differentiation. We retain a Linear Approximated Almost Ideal Demand System specification. A Full‐Information Maximum Likelihood estimation procedure is used to deal with corner solution problems and censored data. The estimation is based on two cross‐sections covering pesticide use of three major crops cultivated in France in 2001 and 2006. Our results show that farmers' response to price variation is very low, especially for 2001. Furthermore, elasticities of pesticide expenditure are significantly different across categories: the highest levels are obtained for fungicides and the lowest ones for insecticides. Finally, we find higher own‐price elasticities for herbicides and fungicides than for insecticides, which are less frequently used.     

Does the Decoupling Reform Affect Agricultural Employment in Sweden? Evidence from an Exogenous Change

This study uses aggregated municipality data, for the years 2001–2009, to explore whether direct payments to farmers affect agricultural employment in Swedish municipalities. The decoupling reform in 2005 included a new grassland support payment accompanied by management obligations that had unexpectedly high redistributive consequences as it greatly increased common agricultural policy payments to municipalities with large areas of grassland. In some municipalities, total payments more than doubled. Thus, since the reform seems exogenous to the behaviour of farmers and the regional economy, the reform can be used to identify a subsidy effect. We find that a permanent increase in agricultural employment can be attributed to the new grassland support. Our results indicate that the grassland support generates an additional job at a cost of SEK 250,000, relative to the average agricultural wage of SEK 333,000. However, the subsidy effect is largely keeping jobs in agriculture, i.e. the grassland support may be slowing down the process of structural change in grassland regions.     

How Do Health and Social Insurance Programmes Affect the Land and Labour Allocations of Farm Households? Evidence from Taiwan

To protect farmers from health care costs and risks to livelihood, most countries have developed special health and social insurance programmes specifically for farmers. While numerous studies have examined the determinants of participation in these programmes, little is known about how they influence famers' land and labour allocations. Without government‐sponsored health and social insurance, farmers may seek off‐farm employment in order to obtain similar benefits. Conditioning eligibility for social insurance on minimum land holdings and on‐farm work days can lead to delayed retirement and other forms of job lock. We investigate these issues using a unique dataset of 703,287 farms in Taiwan. After controlling for non‐random participation in Taiwan's social insurance programme, we find that the programme increases (decreases) on (off) farm labour supply, and decreases the amount of set‐aside land. This suggests that payments from social insurance substitute for those issued through land set‐aside programmes to some extent, and that failing to account for this substitution increases the cost of achieving both programmes' objectives.     

Does willingness to pay increase with the number and strictness of sustainability labels?

Labels signaling sustainable product attributes are gaining importance, although uncertainty concerning the environmental, micro‐ and macroeconomic benefits of such labels persist. One of the questions still incompletely answered is whether Willingness To Pay (WTP) varies with a gradually increasing number of labels on a food product. In order to answer this question, we conducted a laboratory experiment with 191 student respondents, testing consumer valuations of different labeling strategies. Using the Becker‐DeGroot‐Marschak mechanism, WTP for 15 food products was measured. The products were endowed with up to six different sustainability labels, such that each grocery item was available in eight product versions. For perishable, nonperishable, and plant‐based products, the results indicate that participants are prone to allocating WTP‐premiums to labeled products, more than to unlabeled products. For animal products, however, labels do not influence WTP significantly. Furthermore, the premiums do not vary with an increasing number of labels, irrespective of whether the labels signal substitute or complementary sustainability information. The results are not entirely in line with normative notions of magnitude variation, but rather with the behavioral economic concept of embedding effects.     

Does acquisition of a cooperative generate profits for the buyer? The Dairyworld case

This article examines the takeover of a cooperative (Dairyworld) by an investor‐owned firm (Saputo) that was not previously present in the industry, determines if this takeover generates greater returns for the investor‐owned firms (IOF), and on the basis of this evidence makes some inferences about the behavior and performance of cooperatives and IOFs. The empirical evidence strongly supports the conclusion that Saputo's stock price rose with its takeover announcement. This outcome is consistent with a number of explanations, including that Saputo was unaffected by hubris, a factor often suggested as the reason that many firms overbid when they undertake acquisitions. Dairyworld's poor liquidity and capital shortage problems, as well as a limited number of suitors, may have weakened its bargaining position in its dealings with Saputo. The observed increase in Saputo's stock price is also consistent with the possibility that, by taking over a cooperative, Saputo was able to decrease competition and thus increase its profits. A fruitful area for future research would be a rigorous theoretical and empirical determination of the impact that these various factors have on acquisition profitability. Such analysis is required before inferences about the behavior and performance of cooperatives and IOFs can be fully answered.     

Does participation in the sloping land conversion program reduce the sensitivity of Chinese farmers to climate change?

Over the last two decades, extensive literature has examined the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of China's Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP), a program that was launched in late 1990s to mitigate the environmental effects of agricultural production and reduce rural poverty. However, little empirical evidence exists with regard to the impact of SLCP on rural households' sensitivity to nature-induced changes and environmental challenges. In this study, household-level data covering the period 1995–2010 from five Chinese provinces were used to examine the effect of SLCP on farmers' sensitivity to climate change. The empirical results show that participation in SLCP significantly reduced farmers' sensitivity to climate change by reducing their dependency on land and natural resources for income, and by diversifying their livelihood options. Spatially, the results reveal that the effect of SLCP on farmers' sensitivity vary across regions. Specifically, SLCP was found to have a ‘rate effect’ on farmers in the Northern regions and a ‘level effect’ on farmers in the Southern regions. Likewise, we found that the effect of SLCP differs considerably across income groups, with the effect on low- and middle-income groups being most significant. The results indicate that subsidy is the main pathway through which SLCP reduces farmers' sensitivity to climate change. In contrast, we found inclusive evidence about the indirect effect of SLCP farmers' sensitivity through the promotion of non-agricultural employment. These results carry major implications with regard to the effectiveness of ecological conservation programs and their mitigation potential through building farmers' resilience in China and ecologically fragile environments.     

Does food market modernisation lead to improved dietary diversity and diet quality for urban Vietnamese households?

This study investigates the possible mechanisms through which modern food markets may affect Vietnamese households’ dietary diversity and diet quality using data from a survey of 1,700 urban households with seven‐day food recall. We calculate Household Dietary Diversity Scores to measure dietary diversity, and use consumption frequencies of micronutrients (vitamin A and heme iron) and a macronutrient (protein) to create a household measure of diet quality. We estimate a Poisson regression model using a two‐step control function approach to address the potential endogeneity of our key explanatory variable, modern market food expenditure shares. Higher modern market food expenditure share is positively and significantly associated with consumption frequency of heme iron, but there are no significant associations with consumption of vitamin A and protein. We further explore indirect linkages between food expenditure shares and dietary diversity, which in turn, may be linked to household diet quality. Results from a system of equations show that the food expenditure share variable has no significant relationship with dietary diversity, but dietary diversity is positively and significantly associated with diet quality. Our results indicate that alone, policies which encourage ‘food market modernisation’ are not enough to improve diet quality in urban Vietnam.     

Does female human capital formation matter for the income effect of remittances? Evidence from developing countries

The existing literature has focussed extensively on the development outcomes resulting from international migrant remittances. Yet, the human capital channel promoting remittance effectiveness has received little attention. Given the multilateral policy drive to promote female literacy in recent decades, it is relevant to examine whether female human capital formation improves the effectiveness of remittances in terms of its impact on per capita income. Using a panel of 103 developing economies over the period 1970–2012, this paper attempts to answer this question empirically. The paper finds that female human capital affects the remittance-growth relationship differently according to whether it is the primary, secondary or tertiary level of human capital. Our estimates of the marginal impacts of remittances show that while higher levels of skilled human capital (secondary and tertiary enrolments) enhance the marginal impact of remittances on per capita income, low-skilled human capital (primary enrolments) fails to do so. Our conclusion stresses the need to encourage female human capital beyond the promotion of literacy rates in developing countries.     

Foreign Aid and the Quest for Poverty Reduction: Is Aid to Agriculture Effective?

Development statistics estimate that three quarters of the poor live in rural areas and most of them depend on agriculture and related activities for their livelihood. Consequently, research focusing on economic growth and poverty reduction has found that sustainable rapid transition out of poverty requires a special emphasis on the agricultural sector. This study contributes to the debate on aid effectiveness by disaggregating total aid into subcategories and specifically investigating the relationship between aid given to the agricultural sector and poverty reduction. If agricultural development is more effective in reducing poverty than some other types of development, then foreign aid directed towards agriculture may be more efficient in increasing the well‐being of the poor than aid directed to some other sectors or uses. Our analysis uses panel data for developing aid recipient countries to empirically test this relationship. We find a significant relationship between agricultural aid and poverty reduction in our estimates.     

Why have land use change models for the Amazon failed to capture the amount of deforestation over the last decade?

Land cover change in the Neotropics represents one of the major drivers of global environmental change. Several models have been proposed to explore future trajectories of land use and cover change, particularly in the Amazon. Despite the remarkable development of these tools, model results are still surrounded by uncertainties. None of the model projections available in the literature plausibly captured the overall trajectory of land use and cover change that has been observed in the Amazon over the last decade. In this context, this study aims to review and analyze the general structure of the land use models that have most recently been used to explore land use change in the Amazon, seeking to investigate methodological factors that could explain the divergence between the observed and projected rates, paying special attention to the land demand calculations. Based on this review, the primary limitations inherent to this type of model and the extent to which these limitations can affect the consistency of the projections will also be analyzed. Finally, we discuss potential drivers that could have influenced the recent dynamic of the land use system in the Amazon and produced the unforeseen land cover change trajectory observed in this period. In a complementary way, the primary challenges of the new generation of land use models for the Amazon are synthesized.     

Levelling the playing field for European Union agriculture: Does the Common Agricultural Policy impact homogeneously on farm productivity and efficiency?

Originally conceived as a post-war policy vehicle for ensuring agricultural self-sufficiency, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has evolved into a multifunctional instrument designed to satisfy a diverse portfolio of European Union (EU) policy objectives including nature protection. Notwithstanding, whilst the CAP has become more environmental and socially responsible, it is still expected to deliver an efficient farm production system capable of competing on world markets. The current paper combines a farm business panel dataset for 98 EU territories with a Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) approach, to assess the impact of four contemporary broad categories of CAP subsidy programs on efficiency and environmental sustainability. In accordance with the literature, this study more correctly defines inputs as “facilitating”, whilst following recent methodological developments, crop-subsidies are treated as an endogenous strategic variable in the production function. Comparing between two discrete time periods, further tests are conducted to examine the hypothesis of technical efficiency convergence across european territories. The results suggest that first pillar crop subsidies and pillar two environmental programs generate a disincentive effect on productivity, whilst in general, the CAP promotes technical efficiency convergence within Europe.     

Does the new nutrition facts panel help compensate for low numeracy skills? An eye‐tracking analysis

Consumers often neglect nutrition information when food shopping, and even those attending to the information can have comprehension difficulties correlated with numeracy skills. Recently, the Food and Drug Administration redesigned the Nutrition Facts Panel (NFP) to enable consumers to use the information more easily. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether consumers will pay more attention to the improved NFP compared to the original NFP, and how their numeracy skills affect the attention. We study the effect of NFP modifications on attention while controlling for the individual's numeracy skills. Data stem from a laboratory experiment using eye‐tracking. The experiment has two treatments measuring attention towards the original and modified NFP for a basket of groceries. Participants’ numeracy skills are measured using the Subjective Numeracy Scale. We test whether the new NFP can compensate for low numeracy skills. Results show that the original NFP receives more attention when numeracy skills are higher. However, the modifications to the NFP can help compensate for this numeracy effect.     

Perceived importance of ecosystem services in the Białowieża Forest for local communities – Does proximity matter?

Effective protection of biodiversity in areas of high conservation value requires trade-offs between local use of natural resources and conservation restrictions. The compromise is often difficult to reach, which causes conflicts over the management priorities of existing and potential protected areas. Ecosystem services (ES) perspective offers a promising avenue for diagnosing and reconciling contrasting interests concerning the use of benefits from ecosystems. We examined how the spatial proximity to the Białowieża Forest (BF), a European biodiversity hotspot, affects the perceived use of ES by local communities. We performed a survey among 719 respondents from 35 villages situated within BF and in its vicinity. We found that both the declared use of ES and the perceived influence of ES on household’s economy was declining with the distance from BF with particularly high differences between areas not further than 3 km from BF and areas located 3-15 km from BF. Different zones varied in terms of benefits from tourism and costs connected with a potential limited access to ES due to conservation. Broadening the perspective, we argue that the trade-offs linked to ES may vary depending on the location in relation to the protected area and that local communities should not be treated as a homogenous group when considering benefits from the forest. Awareness of common patterns of ES use over space and local specificity may enhance effective management of even highly contested conservation areas.     

How to overcome the implementation gap in ecosystem services? A user-friendly and inclusive tool for improved urban management

One of the main issues with the concept of ecosystem services is its absence on the ground in concrete operational decision-making contexts; that is, an implementation gap. In this study, we investigated if this gap could be overcome through the use of open-source data and free tools, and the adoption of a short-term participatory process. We tested these methods in the context of a project in the urban metropolitan area of Bordeaux (Communauté urbaine de Bordeaux: CUB) in France. The ecosystem services were defined using a participatory approach involving local stakeholders, and then selected scenarios were simulated to test the impact of various development or conservation plans. The study addressed three main questions: (1) Is it possible to adopt a simple methodological approach that overcomes the implementation gap through the development of a user-friendly and inclusive method? (2) What is the added value of a participatory approach? (3) With regards to four scenarios in this territory, what are the ES trends in the selected biophysical and monetary indicators, and will knowledge of these trends help planners to shape a sustainable trajectory for the territory?     

Evaluating willingness to pay for the temporal distribution of different air quality improvements: Is China's clean air target adequate to ensure welfare maximization?

Stated preference analyses seeking to determine the public's value for air quality improvements often estimate willingness to pay (WTP) for days at a specified minimum quality threshold (e.g., days with clean air), but do not consider the temporal distribution of pollution levels below this threshold. This paper develops a choice experiment designed to evaluate WTP for a more complete distribution of air quality improvements, including the number of days per year at multiple air quality levels. The model is applied to a case study of air quality improvement in the core districts of Xi'an City, China. Results from a linearly constrained mixed logit model demonstrate that average household WTP for improving a lightly polluted, moderately polluted, heavily polluted, or severely polluted day to a clean air day is 7.42, 8.90, 13.06, and 24.28 RMB per year, respectively. These results show that WTP depends not only on the total number of clean air days, but on the total distribution of pollution levels across all days of the year. Results are directly relevant to the development of clean air policies in China, for which benefit estimates are currently unavailable.