Food Aid and Food Security: A Cautionary Note

A simple model is presented to examine the effects of instability in global food aid supplies on foreign exchange expenditures and food availability in recipient countries. When global food prices rise, food aid recipients are doubly affected through decreased availability of food aid, and through higher costs of additional commercial imports needed to make up the shortfall. Empirical estimates of key parameters of the model suggest that countries with a high dependence on food aid may place their food security at risk.
Suit un modèle simple qui permet d'analyser les conséquences de l'instabilité des approvi-sionnements destinés à l'aide alimentaire sur les dépenses en devises étrangères et l'offre d'aliments dans les pays bénéficiaires. Lorsque le prix mondial des aliments augmente, les bénéficiaires de l'aide alimentaire subissent le contrecoup à la fois d'une aide alimentaire réduite et du coût plus éléve des produits importés pour répondre à la pénurie. Une estimation empirique des principaux parametrés du modele suggére que les pays qui dépendent fortement de l'aide alimentaire compromettent leur sécurité alimentaire.     

Industrial organization in a restructuring socialist economy: Evidence from Bulgaria

Using new data for all state and cooperatively-owned Bulgarian establishments and enterprises in 1988 and 1989 we portray key aspects of Bulgarian industrial organization. During 1988–89: state ownership became less dominant; there was an abrupt reversal in the twenty year trend towards bigger economic units; more than half of the largest firms were concentrated in certain sectors, notably engineering and construction; using official prices, only about 10% of enterprises made losses. These data and other new data for manufacturing products enable calculation of diverse measures of market structure as this may evolve under the policies introduced in 1991. Indices of market concentration typically show substantial concentration; usually about 50% of manufacturing output was produced in potentially competitive environments. While estimates of minimum efficient scale imply that MES does not constitute a significant barrier to entry for new competitors, the underdeveloped nature of the Bulgarian capital market probably greatly restricted entry.     

Wheat in the world food economy: Increasing role in developing countries

Wheat is the oldest and most important of the cereal grains in world food supply. In the last two decades the role of wheat in the world food economy has increased substantially, especially in the developing world. This article describes and analyses the role of wheat and highlights and interprets changes that have occurred in the last two decades of rapid change. The authors analyse, in turn, trends in production, consumption, trade and prices with special emphasis on the developing countries.¹ Finally, the authors speculate on how these trends are likely to be effected by future events.     

Ownership and Productive Efficiency: Evidence from Estonia

Privatization in Estonia has produced varied ownership configurations. This enables hypotheses on the productivity effects of different ownership forms to be tested. Findings are based on fixed-effects production function models and are estimated using a large, random sample of firms. Depending on the particular specification (and relative to state ownership), (i) private ownership is 13–22% more efficient; and (ii) all types of private ownership are more productive, though managerial ownership has the biggest effects (21–32%) and ownership by domestic outsiders has the smallest impact (0–15%). The joint hypothesis that privatization coefficients are equal is rejected. Findings are robust with respect to choice of technology and the use of instrumental variable estimates. These results provide only partial support for the standard theory of privatization, but stronger support for theorists who argue that some forms of insider ownership may constitute preferable forms of corporate governance in some circumstances.     

The marketing effectiveness of UK environmental charity websites compared to best practice

All nonprofit organisations need to give attention to their marketing strategies in order to maximise the funding and support they receive and the numbers using their services. The web offers a new communications medium with which to achieve this. This paper compares suggested best practice approaches to web marketing using the websites of UK environmental charities as a type of nonprofit organisation. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications