U.S. farm dynamics and the distribution of U.S. agricultural subsidies

The persistent instability of the agricultural sector is the fundamental premise of most agricultural policy. Yet no research has ever quantified the aggregate dynamics of individual farms in the US. This article is the first to combine the US Census of Agriculture with the Agricultural Resource Management Survey to observe the dynamics of nearly 1.5 million farms. The data reveal substantial variation in farm size expansion and contraction. Most of this variation is unobservable in the sector totals reported by the US Department of Agriculture each year. The distribution of agricultural subsidies suggests that subsidies become more important as farms get smaller and may play a role in slowing farm size contraction.     

Urban Land: Price Indices,Performance, and Leading Indicators

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics - This study had two objectives: first, to evaluate the historical performance of urban land prices across 20 prominent U.S. metro markets; and...     

New development: Parliamentary ‘watchdogs’ taking a higher profile on government programme performance and accountability?

The ‘Holy Grail’ of decades of public sector reform has been the public availability of readily-understandable, reliable and meaningful performance information about government activities and programmes. Maps have been drawn; processes have been developed; some actual progress has been made in a number of countries; but the end is not in sight. Put simply, particularly in Westminster government-type systems, it remains the case, at least in broad terms, that the government is responsible for policy; the public service for administration and service delivery; and the parliament for oversight and review. In reality, the situation has become more complicated with the growth of the ‘information economy’, internationalization, the greater involvement of the private sector in government activities generally and changing public views and expectations of government, not least in respect of trust and confidence in politicians and public institutions. At the very least, it is still a situation of ‘work-in-progress’ trying to catch up with the changing national and international environment.     

Can Cultural Competency Speak to the Race Disparities in Methadone Dosage Levels?

Although national methadone treatment trends have improved substantially from 1988 to 2001, current research has found that African Americans still receive lower dosages of methadone treatment than their white and Hispanic counterparts, which has significant public health concerns. We sought to empirically examine whether the degree of cultural competency within an outpatient substance abuse treatment (OSAT) organization has influence on the methadone dosage levels received by African Americans in 1995 and in 2005. The 1995 and 2005 National Drug Abuse Treatment System Survey (NDATSS) provided a nationally-representative, stratified sample of 618 and 566 OSAT organizations, respectively, of which 121 and 140 affiliated methadone maintenance treatment programs, respectively, were analyzed. The organizations’ director and clinical supervisor were surveyed. Fixed-effects linear regression models were fitted with measures of cultural competency, client, and organizational characteristics to assess methadone dosage levels. Culturally-competent units have smaller numbers of methadone clients, greater percentages of clients who receive methadone dosages of less than 40 mg/d, smaller percentages of clients who receive methadone dosages of 80 mg/d or more, and provide a larger number of therapeutic and ancillary services during treatment than non-culturally-competent units. OSAT units with more African Americans are significantly more likely to have clients who receive dosages of less than 40 mg/d and are significantly less likely to have clients who receive dosages of 80 mg/d or more. There is no racial difference among culturally-competent unit clients who receive dosages of less than 40 mg/d, between 40 and 59 mg/d, between 60 and 79 mg/d, and 80 mg/d or more. However, among non-culturally-competent units, a racial difference exists among African Americans and other clients who receive these various dosage levels. Research indicating that African Americans receive lower dosages of methadone than their White and Hispanic counterparts may now be explained by whether these clients receive treatment in culturally competent organizations, rather than solely by arguments related to organizational differences in resources, experience and training of staff, staff bias and/or racism. Culturally competent organizations may seek a method of treatment that dissuades “replacing one drug for another,” while simultaneously treating the root cause of the addiction through the provision of comprehensive therapeutic and ancillary support services. Further research is needed to determine if cultural competency results in better substance abuse treatment outcomes for African Americans.     

Empirical forecasting of slow-onset disasters for improved emergency response: An application to Kenya’s arid north

Mitigating the negative welfare consequences of crises such as droughts, floods, and disease outbreaks, is a major challenge in many areas of the world, especially in highly vulnerable areas insufficiently equipped to prevent food and livelihood security crisis in the face of adverse shocks. Given the finite resources allocated for emergency response, and the expected increase in incidences of humanitarian catastrophe due to changing climate patterns, there is a need for rigorous and efficient methods of early warning and emergency needs assessment. In this paper we develop an empirical model, based on a relatively parsimonious set of regularly measured variables from communities in Kenya’s arid north, that generates remarkably accurate forecasts of the likelihood of famine with at least 3 months lead time. Such a forecasting model is a potentially valuable tool for enhancing early warning capacity.     

Big‐Box Stores and Urban Land Prices: Friend or Foe?

This study examined the effect of a new Walmart store on nearby U.S. urban land prices and found that, within one quarter mile of a new Walmart store locale, land prices increased by almost 39% over the four‐year development time period. Supercenters and commercial land sales were instrumental in driving the positive price effects. Robustness tests found a positive land price effect with other big‐box stores, suggesting that the land price effect was not limited to Walmart stores, but in fact, was a big‐box store effect.     

An Empirical Study of Sample-Selection Bias in Indices of Commercial Real Estate

Real estate price indices based solely on samples of sold properties may not accurately represent the population of properties due to potential sample-selection bias. This study addresses this potential for sample-selection bias in the construction of commercial price indices within the context of the Phoenix area office market. The empirical analysis confirms the presence of sample-selection bias in the estimation of the total price equation. However, within this sample, the price indices generated after correcting for sample-selection bias do not appear significantly different from those that do not consider selectivity bias.     

Human health and pesticide use in Sub‐Saharan Africa

While pesticides–such as insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides–are often promoted as inputs that increase agricultural productivity by limiting a range of pre‐harvest losses, their use may have negative human health and labor productivity implications. We explore the relationship between pesticide use and the value of crop output at the plot level and a range of human health outcomes at the household level using large‐scale, nationally representative panel survey data from four Sub‐Saharan African countries where more than 10% of main season cultivators use pesticides. We find that pesticide use is strongly correlated with increased value of harvest, but is also correlated with higher costs associated with human illness, including increased health expenditures and time lost from work due to sickness in the recent past. We take these results as suggestive that the findings of more targeted studies are indeed generalizable beyond their original, purposively chosen samples.     

National Transaction-based Land Price Indices

Using data on a large sample of land transactions, this paper develops quarterly national land price indices for residential, commercial, and industrial land use categories over the 20?years period from 1991 to 2009. We find significant differences in variability across land uses, with residential exhibiting the most volatility. Our particular interest in this paper is to compare intertemporal land prices with other prominant real estate indices. In all cases, the transaction-based land price indices leads the other indices.