河西走廊凉州绿色农业示范区环境质量评价

该研究以绿色农业理念为基础,参照国家绿色食品和无公害食品产地环境质量标准,通过大范围调查取样、测试分析,对河西走廊凉州绿色农业示范区环境质量状况进行了评价,示范区土壤、灌溉水及大气环境质量总体状况良好,处于"清洁"水平,达到"安全"等级,符合目前国家所规定的绿色食品及无公害产品环境质量的要求。     

A critique of high-value supply chains as a means of modernising agriculture in China: The case of the beef industry

China has embarked on an agricultural modernisation program with far-reaching implications for rural development, food safety and trade. A major focus of China’s agricultural modernisation program has been to build high-value supply chains and large, modern agro-industrial enterprises. This paper provides a critique of these efforts in the case of the high-value beef supply chain. It finds that interventionist policies to fast-track the development of high-value supply chains have perverse outcomes and that a more incremental and facilitative approach to modernisation should be pursued based around the development of mid-value supply chains.     

A typology for defining agritourism

Agritourism has been studied in various ways and contexts. It can be argued, however, that studies have yet to provide a clear and basic understanding of the characteristics that underpin and define agritourism. This paper proposes an original typology for defining agritourism by identifying the key characteristics currently used to define agritourism in the literature and organising them into a transparent and structured framework. For the first time, the agritourism typology clarifies and classifies definitions of agritourism that currently exist in the literature. It therefore offers a comprehensive framework that can be used as a basis for more informed debate and discussion and for future empirical research.     

New perspectives on farm size and productivity

The farm size and productivity debate has been limited by the focus on land or labor productivity, generally showing respective productivity advantages to smaller or larger sized farms. Our purpose is to provide new perspectives on the debate by bringing together evidence from a set of novel case studies in both rich and poor countries. Common to them are the adoption of total factor productivity (TFP) as the comparative performance measure, and the reliance on panels of farm micro data. The present article presents a synthesis of findings from five case studies in (i) Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda; (ii) Bangladesh; (iii) Brazil; (iv) Australia; and (v) the United States. The preponderance of evidence from these studies suggests that there is no single economically optimal agrarian structure; rather, it appears to evolve with the stage of economic development. Certain farm sizes face relative productivity advantages, such as small farms in Africa. But with economic and market growth, that smallholder advantage will likely attenuate, moving toward constant and eventually increasing returns to size. Yet, importantly, small farms may be quite dynamic, and need not be a drag on agricultural growth until perhaps well into the development process.     

Women’s agricultural work and nutrition in South Asia: From pathways to a cross-disciplinary,grounded analytical framework

In this systematic review, we aim to examine the impact of women’s work in agriculture on maternal and child nutrition in South Asia. Building on previous reviews supported under the Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA) consortium, and recent published literature, we include findings from new LANSA research. While mapping literature onto the gender-nutrition pathways linking agriculture to nutrition (Kadiyala et al., 2014), we also point to conceptual and methodological directions for further exploration emerging from our work. Key amongst these are a focus on seasonality, poverty, and gender relations, moving beyond both an exclusive focus on women as a unified and homogenous group, and agriculture as an unchanging and common set of activities and production processes. Our analysis suggests the need for a more contextualised approach, and for a richer cross-disciplinary framework for effectively addressing the ways in which women’s work mediates agriculture’s role in improving child and maternal nutrition in South Asia.     

The geographic and sectoral patterns of large-scale farmland investments in sub-Saharan Africa

Following the food and energy price crises of the mid 2000s, sub-Saharan Africa has become one of the largest recipients for large-scale farmland investments. While much has been written on the phenomenon, scant reliable empirical evidence is available as to the precise geographic and sectoral patterns and underlying drivers. Employing strict data quality requirements, this paper addresses these knowledge gaps by analyzing 563 farmland projects that have been established between 2005 and 2013 in sub-Saharan Africa. Findings show that the investment intensity and associated risks are not geographically uniform. Moreover, the study highlights a number of popular misconceptions regarding investor origin and their sectoral interests and motives.     

Foreign exchange customers and dealers: Who’s driving whom?

This paper tests the theoretical assumption of the foreign exchange market microstructure that dealers and non-dealer customers interact over discrete trading rounds. An exhaustive frequency-domain analysis reveals that the interaction is limited and mainly due to the instability of financial markets. The principal finding is that the trading activity of dealers is able to predict the customer order flow at low frequencies with wavelengths longer than roughly a week. In all, the evidence shows that non-financial customers are not as passive as some other research has suggested.     

日本农产品贸易保护政策的调整及影响和启示

多哈回合农业谈判以来,日本对其农产品贸易保护政策进行了调整,将其政策重点放在了高筑技术性贸易壁垒和强调农业多功能性方面.这导致我国对日农产品出口成本增加、数量减少、贸易摩擦增多,但同时也有利于我国提高对“绿色”农产品的重视度、促进我国农产品检测标准和手段进一步完善等.我们农产品贸易保护的具体对策：要根据国情充分利用WTO规则;注重提高农产品的品质;打造中国品牌;缩小城乡差距;加快农业设施建设等重要启示.     

Exchange rates and order flow in the long run

Several recent papers have underlined the importance of microstructure effects in understanding exchange rate behavior by documenting stable long-run relationships between cumulated order flows and spot exchange rates. This stands in contrast to the widely-studied failure of exchange rates to conform to the long-run behavior implied by “conventional” macroeconomic models and is consistent with the prediction of micro-structure models. We re-examine the evidence for stable long-run relationships. We find that such evidence exists only for a small number of the major currencies we examine and that it is statistically fragile. We conclude that this implication of microstructure models does not fit the data as well as previous studies suggest.     

规范收入分配秩序 推进收入分配改革

改革开放三十多年来,中国居民收入大幅增长,但分配失衡的问题也日益凸显。收入分配秩序是否合理直接关系到收入分配的结果是否公平,关系到经济增长的好处能否有效地惠及各个阶层。因此,本文认为推进收入分配改革,首先应规范收入分配秩序。本文采用对比分析和实证分析的方法,总结出当前我国收入分配秩序中存在的主要问题:垄断行业工资过高、公务员工资制度不合理,灰色收入多,农民工工资低且拖欠现象严重,税收调节力度不够。最终提出了规范当前收入分配秩序的政策建议。