次优状态下大小兴安岭生态功能区政策工具选择依据研究

大小兴安岭生态功能区成立和发展过程中,选取有效的政策工具,实现生态保护和经济发展并行是一个具有重要理论和现实意义的研究课题。通过比较静态分析方法对适合生态区使用的生态税、天然林产品税以及天然林砍伐配额等政策工具进行成本分析和比较,在成本收益最大化理论的前提下,结合次优状态下两个社会福利影响分析,指出不同情况下如何选择成本最小,收益最大的政策工具,为生态区政策工具选择提供参考。     

中国房地产商业模式研究

本文总结了中国房地产发展的两个阶段及其相对应的商业模式,提出了基于Osterwalder教授提出的商业模式九要素本土化的"房地产商业模式研究体系",并针对目前市场上存在的六种典型的房地产商业模式,以六个典型企业为分析对象做了案例分析及对比研究,最后预测了国内第三代房地产商业模式及房地产市场未来发展的三大趋势。     

规模、路径与动因:发展中国家企业的FDI行为探析

发展中国家的企业不仅关心如何通过FDI将利润最大化,也关心提高一般性经营资源的收益。本文应用二阶段理论,综合考虑两个市场、两个阶段和两种状态等因素,对优势企业和弱势企业的决策背景进行了比较,分析了制度学习效应、资源转移效应和国内市场竞争效应等发展中国家企业FDI动因,建立了弱势企业FDI规模的决策模型,该模型也可以用于发展中国家企业FDI行为的路径选择。     

Accounting for the Gender Technology Gap Amongst Smallholder Rice Farmers in Northern Ghana

Narrowing the gender technology gap in agricultural production has become a critical policy issue in sub‐Saharan Africa. A better understanding of the gender technology gap is essential for policy formulation and programme planning to ensure equity in resource allocation, and household‐level food security in low and middle income countries, such as Ghana. We employ a metafrontier approach to analyse the differences in the efficiency of male and female farmers, recognising the endogeneity of some of the variables in the inefficiency effects model, in particular the credit constraints of the rice farmers under study. Our findings show that while the rice farms themselves are very similar, average yields for male managed farms tend to be significantly higher than female managed farms reflecting higher seeding and fertiliser application rates on male managed farms. However, there is no significant difference between the genders in either land used for rice or total output per farm household. We find some evidence that relative to the metafrontier, male managed farms are less efficient than female managed farms. The results further show gender technology gap amongst the smallholder rice farmers with females’ technology gap ratio being significantly greater than that of males, with females operating on a production frontier closer to the metafrontier. Policies that provide females more access to productive resources and other agricultural services could assist in the generation of relatively higher output.     

Is fertiliser use inconsistent with expected profit maximization in sub‐Saharan Africa? “Evidence from Nigeria”

This article revisits a conventional wisdom that inorganic fertiliser use across sub‐Saharan Africa is too low. This expectation that more farmers should be using inorganic fertiliser, and at higher rates, implies it is profitable to use rates higher than observed if farmers are rational expected profit maximisers. We obtain consistent estimates of the effects of applied nitrogen on rice production. We find the yield response to applied nitrogen to be low in the main rice growing farming system. Farmer behaviour is not inconsistent with expected profitability which is limited by a low yield response to applied fertiliser, high transportation costs, and low selling prices for rice in rural areas. In particular, we do not find any farmers for whom applied nitrogen is profitable that are not using fertiliser in the study sample for each of our survey years (2010 and 2012).     

Is Oil Palm Expansion a Challenge to Agroecology? Smallholders Practising Industrial Farming in Mexico

Agroecology has become a powerful alternative paradigm for rural development. In contrast to conventional approaches, this paradigm shifts the emphasis from technology and markets to local knowledge, social justice and food sovereignty, to overcome rural poverty and environmental degradation. However, the spread of this approach faces several obstacles. This paper deals with one of these obstacles: the ‘preference’ of smallholders for industrial farming. We specifically analyse the widespread uptake up of oil palm by smallholders in Chiapas. Contrary to agro‐ecological assumptions, oil palm proved favourable to smallholders in Chiapas because of historical and contemporary state–peasant relations and the advantageous economic circumstances within the oil palm sector. Based on this research, we identify four challenges for agroecology: (i) the existence of contradictory interests within the peasantry as a result of social differentiation; (ii) the role of the state in making conventional development models relatively favourable to smallholders; (iii) the prevalence of modernization ideologies in many rural areas; and (iv) the need for this paradigm to acknowledge smallholders' agency also when engaged in industrial farming. These challenges need to be tackled for agroecology to offer viable alternatives in a context of agro‐industrialization.     

The impact of conservation tillage on maize yield and input demand: the case of smallholder farmers in north‐west Ethiopia

This study analyses the economics of conservation tillage (CT) with respect to its effect on maize yield and chemical fertiliser, herbicide, and female and male labour demand. We estimate production and input demand functions using seemingly unrelated regressions on plot‐level cross‐sectional farm household data collected in the north‐west of Ethiopia. A two‐step control function is applied to address potential endogeneity bias due to the inclusion of the CT adoption decision as an explanatory variable. Our results show that CT increases maize yield and chemical fertiliser demand. Additionally, the results show that the adoption of CT reduces female and male labour required for crop production. However, this is achieved through the increased use of herbicides, which might have an undesirable health and environmental effects.     

Earnings Management through Specific Accruals and Discretionary Expenses: Evidence from U.S. Agribusiness Firms

This study examines both accruals based earnings management (AEM) and real earnings management (REM) in U.S. agribusinesses. In particular, the focus is on agribusinesses that report low earnings quality, defined as firms with extreme level of accruals compared to their peers. The cross‐sectional modified Jones model (Jones 1991; Dechow et al 1995) is used to test for AEM. To capture REM practices, we implement the discretionary expenses model by Roychowdhury (2006). We find evidence of AEM and find no evidence of REM in agribusinesses. In addition, our results show that managers might be managing earnings through specific accruals doubtful accounts receivable provisions and special items.     

Pricing a rural development program: uncertainty,indifference, and protest behaviors

This article presents an econometric approach to modeling uncertainty, unwillingness to pay, and protest behavior in contingent valuation studies. For that purpose, a mixture model with sample selection is developed for a multiple‐bounded uncertainty elicitation format. The proposed theoretical framework is applied to evaluate the social welfare impact of implementing a sustainable rural development program. Results show that a “naive” analytical approach that excludes protesters from the analysis would result in significantly higher willingness to pay estimates for those individuals who favor the implementation of the program and agree to reveal their true reservation prices.