Recalibrating the reported returns to agricultural R&D: what if we all heeded Griliches?*

Zvi Griliches’ seminal analysis of hybrid corn spawned a large literature seeking to quantify and demonstrate the value of agricultural research and development (R&D) investments. The most important metric for quantifying the rate of return to R&D emerging from this literature is the internal rate of return (IRR), even though Griliches was sceptical of its usefulness as a metric in this context. An alternative metric, also reported by Griliches but not as commonly used in the subsequent returns‐to‐research literature, is the benefit–cost ratio (BCR). We assess how the implications of the returns to agricultural R&D literature may have differed if the BCR had become the standard rather than the IRR. We reveal that the IRR and BCR produce substantially different rankings of agricultural R&D projects, differences that persist even under various commodity and geographical aggregations of the BCR and IRR estimates. The median across 2,627 reported IRRs is 37.5 per cent per year. Using data gleaned from 492 research evaluation studies, we developed and deployed a methodology to impute 2,126 BCRs (median of 5.4) and modified internal rates of returns (MIRRs, median of 16.4 per cent per year) assuming a uniform 10 per cent per year discount rate and a 30 year research timeline.     

对发展黑龙江省低碳经济的几点思考

在经济社会发展日益受到能源和环境制约的背景下,低碳经济作为应对全球气候变化、保障能源安全的基本途径和战略选择,正在全球范围内得到广泛认同。对发展黑龙江省低碳经济从以下几个方面提出几点思考：黑龙江省发展低碳经济的现实意义;黑龙江省发展低碳经济的基础条件;黑龙江省开展低碳经济面临的问题以及黑龙江省发展低碳经济的应对策略。     

Nanotechnology for enhancing food security in India

A framework for assessment of the potential of nanotechnology for enhancing food security in India is developed. Agricultural productivity, soil health, water security, and food quality in storage and distribution are identified as the primary determinants of food security that can be impacted by developments in nanotechnology. The framework is developed in two stages: (i) mapping nanotechnology to agri-food thematic areas across the agricultural value chain and (ii) from the thematic areas to the food security determinants. Using published literature and patents data, a model to organize and map nanotechnology research to the agri-food thematic areas and food security determinants is developed through a specially designed database. The model allows identification and prioritization of potential areas for nanotechnology applications to enhance food security. Comparisons of this technology with green revolution technologies and agricultural biotechnology indicate a possibility of greater and faster impact on all components of the agri-value chain with concurrent social, ethical, legal and environmental implications. There is a need for investments in capacity building and development of an agri-nanotechnology infrastructure in India, and for ex ante assessment of its implications for society.     

PEOffice软件在井筒分析中的应用

本文应用PEOffice软件在油井生产管理中形成了一体化分析流程。结合工况诊断、参数优化设计等模块对文明寨油田油井进行井筒分析。通过PEOffice软件带动了油藏开发管理水平的提高。     

Exploring the Links Between Corruption and Growth

This paper models the transmission channels through which corruption indirectly affects growth. Results suggest that corruption hinders growth through its adverse effects on investment, human capital, and political instability, while fostering growth by reducing government consumption and, less robustly, increasing trade openness. Overall, a total negative effect of corruption on growth is estimated from these channels. These effects are found to be robust to modifications in model specification, sample coverage, and estimation techniques as well as tests for model exhaustiveness. The negative effect of corruption on growth is found to diminish in economies with low governance levels or a high degree of regulation. No one‐size‐fits‐all policy response appears supportable.     

Land Ownership as an Urban Employment Disincentive for Rural Migrants in China

When landowning rural migrants in urban areas in China become unemployed, they retain the option to return home to agricultural work. As a result, the opportunity cost of the loss of employment for these migrants declines. In addition, the potential wealth arising from compensation for expropriated rural land increases significantly with ongoing urbanization in China. This weakens the incentive for landowning rural migrants to work as hard in urban employment as they might otherwise. In this paper, we employ the Floating Population Dynamic Monitoring Survey for Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou in 2012, as surveyed by the Municipal Population and Family Planning Commission to assess the employment disincentives induced by rural land ownership. We find that compared with landless rural migrants, landowning rural migrants generally have less job stability and lower salaries.     

The role of physical distribution services as determinants of product returns in Internet retailing

Pressure continues to build on Internet retailers to squeeze out inefficiencies from their day-to-day operations. One major source of such inefficiencies is product returns. Indeed, product returns in Internet retailing have been shown to be, on average, as high as 22% of sales. Yet, most retailers accept them as a necessary cost of doing business. This is not surprising since many retailers do not have a clear understanding of the causes of product returns. While it is known that return policies of retailers, along with product attributes, are two important factors related to product return incidents, little is known about which aspects of the online retail transaction make such a purchase more return-prone. In the current study, we seek to address this issue. We use a large data set of customer purchases and returns to identify how process attributes in physical distribution service (PDS) influence product returns. The first attribute involves perceptions of scarcity conditions in inventory availability among consumers when retailers reveal to consumers information on inventory levels for the products that they intend to buy. Our results show that orders in which items are sold when these conditions are revealed to shoppers have a higher likelihood of being returned than orders in which these conditions are not revealed. While prior research has argued that inventory scarcity perceptions have an effect on purchases, our findings suggest that they are also related to the likelihood of these purchases being returned. The second attribute involves the reliability in the delivery of orders to consumers. We find that the likelihood of orders being returned depends on the consistency between retailer promises of timeliness in the delivery of orders and the actual delivery performance of the orders. Moreover, we find that the effect that consistency in the delivery has in the likelihood of returns, is stronger for orders that involve promises for expedited delivery than for orders with less expeditious promises. That is, although the occurrence of returns depends on the delays in the delivery of orders to consumers relative to the initial promises made by the retailers, this effect is more notable for orders that involve promises of fast delivery.     

论转轨时期我国政府的主导作用

因市场发育程度和历史传统的不同,各国政府对经济的干预方式也不同。市场经济越发达的国家,政府干预经济的方式越间接、越灵活,越强调市场机制的作用;市场经济越不完善的国家,政府干预经济的方式越直接。本文根据转型时期我国所面临的实际状况,提出政府在经济发展中应发挥主导作用。     

新农村建设背景下村级经济发展的调查与思考——基于成都市两个县的实证分析

新农村建设是以行政村为基本单位推进的,实施的是因村施治,整村推进,分层建设,逐次展开的基本战略。因此,村极经济是新农村建设最为重要的基础层次。但由于总体经济发展基础水平不同,中国农村村极经济地区差异明显。本文以四川成都市的两个近郊县为研究对象,对其农村村极经济进行一定深度的分析和研究。     

ON THE EQUIVALENCE OF WEIGHTED COUNTRY-PRODUCT-DUMMY (CPD) METHOD AND THE RAO-SYSTEM FOR MULTILATERAL PRICE COMPARISONS

The country-product-dummy (CPD) method, originally proposed in Summers (1973), has recently been revisited in its weighted formulation to handle a variety of data related situations (Rao and Timmer, 2000, 2003; Heravi et al. , 2001; Rao, 2001; Aten and Menezes, 2002; Heston and Aten, 2002; Deaton et al. , 2004). The CPD method is also increasingly being used in the context of hedonic modelling instead of its original purpose of filling holes in Summers (1973). However, the CPD method is seen, among practitioners, as a black box due to its regression formulation. The main objective of the paper is to establish equivalence of purchasing power parities and international prices derived from the application of the weighted-CPD method with those arising out of the Rao-system for multilateral comparisons. A major implication of this result is that the weighted-CPD method would then be a natural method of aggregation at all levels of aggregation within the context of international comparisons.