Structural changes in U.S. agriculture: Implications for African American farmers

Structural changes in U.S. agriculture, influenced by technological and institutional forces, have altered the economic and social characteristics of rural America, especially that segment of rural America populated by farmers and their families. Changes in the structure of agriculture have greater implications for small scale farmers, many of whom are African American, in that strategic options for their farm-firms are constrained to: increasing their farm size, exiting farming, and obtaining off-farm employment to survive. This article presents a rationale for public support of limited resource farmers, identifies structural trends in U.S. agriculture and their impacts on African American farmers, discusses economic problems unique to these farmers, and recommends needs for specific public policies and development programs.     

Savings,pension rights and taxation

Summary The voluntary saving rate has declined in The Netherlands over the last thirty years. In this paper the increasing share of transfer income in total income, with a high propensity to consume, and the increase in collective pension schemes are simultaneously used to explain this development. Furthermore, the influence of taxes is modelled. The planning horizon of the representative consumer is treated as a parameter to be estimated. The planning horizon obtained (about 4.5 years) appears to be short compared to expected residual lifetime, implying rather small interest elasticities. The estimation results indicate that, in case the obligatory pension schemes are diminished, the representative consumer offsets the loss in pension benefits for 75 per cent by voluntary, additional accumulation of nonhuman wealth in the long run. The working of the model is illustrated by simulation experiments.I wish to thank two anonymous referees, Prof. J. Pen, G.M.M. Gelauff, J.J. Graafland, W. Vossers and other colleagues of the CPB for their helpful comments.     

Time series approaches to Italian regional convergence

This article investigates the evolution of the gap between Italian regions and Italy as a whole during the period of 1980 to 2007. We tested for the presence of the stochastic and β-convergence hypotheses using different time series approaches. The former was studied, first, for the entire sample period and then, with an exogenous instantaneous break in the series. The presence of β-convergence, instead, was estimated considering a known and an unknown trend break date model. Our results show that most of the regions do not converge in an ‘actual’ way, since they do not present a stochastic and β-convergence simultaneously.     

FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT: THE KNOWLEDGE‐CAPITAL MODEL AND A SMALL COUNTRY CASE

This research looks at how foreign direct investment (FDI) in a small open economy compares with that of larger countries. I apply several specifications of the knowledge‐capital model to unique FDI data from the isolated country of Iceland, allowing for comparison with previous analysis of larger and similarly open economies. Using this together with other techniques, I seek to explain investment determinants by geography, economic size and skilled labor availability. The results of these analysis show that popular specifications do not accurately predict the effects for a small country case.     

Using dead reckoning in economic projections

Economics is an inexact science, measurement of basic data is at best approximate, and most interesting relationships change relatively rapidly in developing countries. Key variables determining economic prospects are often impossible to include into models. Models and their mathematical algorithms however are deceptively precise, which often complicates the process of constructing and using economic projection models in developing countries.This paper will examine those macro models intended for operational policy purposes and how they are used. These models try to be analytically good and have sufficient plausibility to influence policy. Thus, a great deal of judgment is required in constructing, using, and interpreting projection models in developing countries: the “dead reckoning” element.     

First-price auctions with resale: the case of many bidders

We study first-price auctions with resale when there are many bidders and derive existence and characterization results under the assumption that the winner of the initial auction runs a second-price auction with an optimal reserve price. The fact that symmetrization fails when there are more than two bidders has been observed before, but we also provide the direction: weaker bidders are less likely to win than stronger ones. For a special class of distributions and three bidders, we prove that the bid distributions are more symmetric with resale than without. Numerical simulations suggest that the more bidders there are, the more similar the allocation is to the case without resale, and thus, the more asymmetric the bid distributions are between strong and weak bidders. We also show in an example that the revenue advantage of first-price auctions over second-price auctions is positive, but decreasing in the number of bidders.     

Mapping global sustainability report scoring: a detailed analysis of Europe and Asia

This study maps the General Reporting Initiative (GRI) relations for a set of global enterprises. Enterprise interrelationships are built using the Mutual Information (MI) of the data reported by enterprises. From the MI topology, we describe interrelationships among the enterprises using chord diagrams to represent the inter- and intra-connectivity between geographical regions and economic sectors globally, by continent and country. Detailed maps are presented for European and Asian regions/sectors, including the relationship between Europe and Asia’s top reporting countries. Our findings reinforce previous research regarding the role of Europe as a driver of sustainability and its influence worldwide. We also determined that Spain is a major player in Europe and that Northern Europe does not have the assumed leading role mentioned in related studies. Eastern Asia is, by far, the leader of the region, and the GRI maps demonstrate the preponderant role of China in the region and the minimal role of India. MI topology maps outline the behavior of the economic sectors, for all the studied regions. Furthermore, a measure that relates the inter- to intra-connections is presented to describe the internal an external relationships among regions/sectors.     

Belonging,believing, bonding,and behaving: the relationship between religion and business ownership at the country level

This cross-country study adopts a competing theories approach in which both a value perspective and a social capital perspective are used to understand the relation between religion and a country’s business ownership rate. We distinguish among four dimensions of religion: belonging to a religious denomination, believing certain religious propositions, bonding to religious practices, and behaving in a religious manner. An empirical analysis of data from 30 OECD countries with multiple data points per country covering the period 1984–2010 suggests a positive relationship between religion and business ownership based on those dimensions that reflect the internal aspects of religiosity (i.e., believing and behaving). We do not observe a significant association for those dimensions that reflect more external aspects of religion (i.e., belonging and bonding). These results suggest that the social capital perspective prevails the value perspective, at least when internal aspects of religiosity are concerned. More generally, our study demonstrates the importance of distinguishing between different dimensions of religion when investigating the link between religion and entrepreneurship.