TESTING OLIGOPOLISTIC AND OLIGOPSONISTIC BEHAVIOUR: AN APPLICATION TO THE US MEAT-PACKING INDUSTRY

This paper extends the conjectural approach in industrial organisation to the analysis of imperfections in output and factor markets. Starting from the specification of a production function, the econometric analysis is based on the formulation and estimation of a simultaneous-equation model consisting of a production function, first-order conditions associated with factor employment, and two conjectural elasticities to parameterise the industry's oligopoly and oligopsony equilibria. As an example, we provide an application to the US meat-packing industry. Our results suggest that the industry exercises market power in both the output (meat) market and the factor (live animal) market.     

Changes needed in agricultural policy for female-headed farm families in tropical Africa

The decline in per-capita agricultural production has been reversed somewhat in tropical Africa by the structural adjustment programs which have increased producer prices, liberalized marketing and devalued currencies. But the 30% of smallholder farm households which are female-headed will not be assited much due to their special constraints of shortages of labor and credit, lack of extension visits and appropriate labor-saving technologies. For these households, the authors argue, improved extension services, credit for agricultural inputs, small ruminant animals and poultry, labor-saving devices and craft inputs will be necessary to increase their incomes and levels of living.     

Development strategy for rural areas

In September 1973, the President of the World Bank, Robert S. McNamara, made a challenging address to the Governors of the Central Banks of the member states of the international Monetary Fund. The main subject in his speech was the problem of poverty particularly in rural areas of developing countries, and the design for a strategy for its abolition.     

Book Reviews

W.T. Woo, B. Glassburner and Anwar Nasution, Macroeconomic Policies, Crises, and Long-term Growth in Indonesia, 1965–90, Comparative Economic Studies, The World Bank, Washington DC, 1994, pp. xiii + 216. Paper: $13.95.

Hal Hill (ed.), Indonesia's New Order; The Dynamics of Socio-Economic Transformation, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1994, pp. xxxv + 364. Paper: A$29.95.

J. Thomas Lindblad (ed.), New Challenges in the Modern Economic History of Indonesia: Proceedings of the First Conference on Indonesia 's Modern Economic History, Jakarta, October 1–4, 1991, Programme of Indonesian Studies, Leiden University, Leiden, 1993, pp. viii + 306.

Thee Kian Wie, Explorations in Indonesia's Economic History, Lembaga Penerbit Fakultas Ekonomi Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta, 1994, pp. xv + 187.

Nancy Lee Peluso, Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1992, pp. xv + 321.

Effendi Pasandaran, Agus Pakpahan, Edwin B. Oyer and Norman Uphoff (eds), Poverty Alleviation with Sustainable Agricultural and Rural Development in Indonesia, Published jointly by the Center for Agro-Socioeconomic Research (CASER) (Bogor), and the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development (CIIFAD) (Ithaca), Bogor 1992, pp. vi + 233.

Eric Thorbecke and Theodore van der Pluijm, Rural Indonesia: Socio-Economic Development in a Changing Environment, IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development) Studies in Rural Development no. 3, New York University Press, New York, 1993, pp. xxix + 360.

Niels Mulder, Inside Southeast Asia: Thai, Javanese and Filipino Interpretations of Everyday Life, Duang Kamol, Bangkok, 1992, pp. xiii + 178.

M.C. Ricklefs, War, Culture and Economy in Java, 1677–1726: Asian and European Imperialism in the Early Kartasura Period, ASAA Southeast Asia Publications Series no. 24, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1993, pp. xi + 425. A$29.95.

Ken Young, Islamic Peasants and the State: The 1908 Anti-Tax Rebellion in West Sumatra, Yale Southeast Asia Studies Monograph 40, Yale Center for International and Area Studies, New Haven, pp. xviii + 361.

Saya Shiraishi and Takashi Shiraishi (eds), The Japanese in Colonial Southeast Asia, Translation Series, Translation of Contemporary Japanese Scholarship on Southeast Asia, vol. 3, Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, Ithaca, 1993, pp. 172.     

Development and the mystification of ‘cultural factors’: One destiny: Our common future in Africa,by A S van Niekerk

In One destiny: Our common future in Africa the author relates, in popular fashion, a series of incidents which convinced him that the basic difference between black and white in South Africa is cultural deep‐seated and the cause of underdevelopment and conflict He develops a circular argument in which world‐view is taken as the root of perceptions, values and activities. The effects of experience and economic and political factors are given secondary importance. This argument cannot accommodate social change and differentiation, and the author tends to concentrate on perceptions and events which he finds morally unacceptable. He gives an unbalanced assessment and an ethnocentric interpretation of African life. Possible reasons for this type of argument are explored and an alternative which takes its departure from the interaction between experience and perception is offered