THE NORTHFIELD REPORT: STRUCTURAL POLICY AND AGRICULTURAL EFFICIENCY

A brief review of the Northfield Report on the Acquisition and Occupancy of Agricultural Land emphasises its general acceptance of the existing situation. An opportunity has been missed to develop more far reaching conclusions in respect of a policy area where scope for national initiative within the EEC remains. Although the Committee took an efficient agriculture as a principal objective its definition is not discussed and the only factual evidence quoted is the analysis by Britton and Hill based on the Farm Management Survey. The appropriateness of this is questioned and some alternatives are suggested. The Britton/Hill analysis does not give particular support for the Committee's advocacy of a family-based farm structure. The Committee sees value in a let sector but expects its decline to continue. Nationalisation of agricultural land as the most direct route back to tenancy is rejected. Yet there is a need for the continuity of ownership to avoid leakages through capital taxes and family transfers. Nationalisation may be infeasible and in its absence, an alternative would be to positively discourage continuing owner occupation and over time to develop an effective land tax to recover support costs.     

The analysis of seasonal economic models

Many important insights can be obtained about economic relationships and seasonality when an economic model contains an explicit specification of the mechanism generating seasonality in the endogenous variables. Unfortunately, determining the correct structure is difficult. The purpose of this paper is to outline a methodology for the analysis of seasonal economic models. In particular, several ways of incorporating seasonality into a structural model are considered and the implications for the behavior of the endogenous variables are derived. Finally, a rational expectations version of Cagan's money demand function is analyzed to demonstrate some of the important aspects of the techniques and seasonal economic models in general.     

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