Measuring agricultural knowledge and adoption

Understanding the tradeoffs in improving the precision of agricultural measures through survey design is crucial. Yet, standard indicators used to determine program effectiveness may be flawed, and at a differential rate for men and women. We use a household survey from Mozambique to estimate the measurement error from male and female self‐reports of their adoption and knowledge of three practices: intercropping, mulching, and strip tillage. Despite clear differences in human and physical capital, there are no obvious differences in the knowledge, adoption, and error in self‐reporting between men and women. Having received training unanimously lowers knowledge misreports and increases adoption misreports. Other determinants of reporting error differ by gender. Misreporting is positively associated with a greater number of plots for men. Recall decay on measures of knowledge appears prominent among men but not women. Findings from regression and cost‐effectiveness analyses always favor the collection of objective measures of knowledge. Given the lowest rate of accuracy for adoption was around 80%, costlier objective adoption measures are recommended for a subsample in regions with heterogeneous farm sizes.     

Do Vietnamese upland farmers benefit from high world market prices for maize?

For rural households in the north of Vietnam, maize cropping is the main source of income. In the face of the world market price increases of the recent past, we analyze the regional marketing chain of this commodity qualitatively and econometrically investigating to what extent smallholder farmers in developing countries are affected by international price movements. Vietnamese maize markets are found to be well integrated. Recent price hikes have fully transmitted along the regional supply chain so that farmers profited. Nevertheless, adverse factors such as increasing input prices have neutralized these benefits resulting in a decline in real income of smallholders.     

房地产市场异常现象的行为金融学研究

房地产市场在发展的过程中出现了一些异常现象,传统金融理论面对这些异常现象无法给出令人信服的解释,现以行为金融学的噪声交易理论、反馈机制、羊群效应,对上海房地产市场出现的异常现象进行解释,并在此基础上寻求相应的对策,以促进房地产市场健康发展。     

新疆农村金融发展与城乡收入差距关系的实证分析

基于新疆1978—2008年度数据,采用协整分析的方法对新疆农村金．融发展与城乡收入差距的关系进行实证分析,结果表明,农村金融发展与新疆城乡收入差距存在一种长期均衡关系。农村金融发展规模的扩大在一定程度上会拉大城乡收入差距,而农村金融发展效率的提高有助于缩小城乡收入差距。引导和支持非正规金融发展,引入竞争机制;加快建立农村金融保护性机制,建立农村资金回流机制;适度加大政策性金融支农力度,大力发展多种方式的农业保险是促进农村金融发展的有效途径。     

延迟容忍网络自适应差错控制方法

根据延迟容忍网络的时延较大、误码率较高等特点,在现有的传输控制层和MAC层差错控制 的基础上改进,结合IEEE 802.11 DCF机制的特点,提出一种基于MAC层丢包率的自适应差错 控 制方案。该方案能有效改善延迟容忍网络的传输时延,满足对时延要求比较敏感的业务的要 求 。     

NLOS环境下移动台位置与速率估计

NLOS (Non-line of Sight)误差是定位中的主要误差来源,直接影响了定位的精度 。在MIMO（Multiple Input Multiple Output）系统中,基于NLOS信道模型的定位方法成为 解决NLOS定位误差问题的利器。基于此提出一种新颖的几何方法,仅采用两条NLOS路径就可 计算MS(Mobile Station)的位置,并且只需要利用单个基站便可完成MS的定位,克服了基站 数目过少无法准确定位MS的缺陷。在此基础上,还给出了最小二乘与最大似然算法利用多条 NLOS路径来改善定位精度的方法,并利用它对NLOS环境下运动的MS进行定位跟踪。理论分析 和仿真结 果都证明该定位方法在NLOS环境中对MS定位的有效性与精确度。     

Fueling agricultural growth in India: Some reflections

Indian agriculture is experiencing under-performance despite increased attention given to it in the recent past. This paper analyzes the disparities in agricultural growth across Indian states and explores the determinants of agricultural growth, using Panel Corrected Standard Error approach. Analysis using beta convergence shows that the disparities across the state's agricultural growth are narrowing down for the period 1980–1981 to 2011–2012. However, to stimulate growth in the states where agriculture is lagging behind, a higher emphasis on increasing the area under irrigation, expenditure on agricultural research, area under fruits and vegetables, number of regulated markets, length of roads, cold storage facilities and institutional credit for investment purposes is needed. Private sector should be involved in public–private-partnership mode for improving the infrastructure in this sector.     

基于延伸责任的逆向供应链激励机制研究

逆向供应链作为生产者延伸责任制实施的载体,各企业间的组织协调性直接关系着生产商延伸责任制的实施效果。基于此,将逆向供应链抽象为一个制造商和一个回收商组成的价值链模型,应用委托代理理论,研究信息对称与不对称的情况下制造商和回收商之间的利益博弈,并分析不同因素对制造商和回收商期望收入的影响。     

World market integration for export and food crops in developing countries: a case study for Mali and Nicaragua

Using a generalized error correction model, this article measures and compares market integration for export cash crops versus imported food crops for Mali and Nicaragua, and computes transmission elasticities between changes in the goods’ border and domestic prices. Both Mali and Nicaragua obtain the bulk of their export revenue from a particular agricultural commodity—cotton for Mali and coffee for Nicaragua—and both import the same key staple food of rice. To reap the economic gains from this trade specialization, the two countries’ agriculture must be well‐integrated into world markets. The two countries present an important policy contrast that affects their degree of world market integration and price transmission. In Mali, a parastatal enterprise controls its cotton industry, while Nicaragua has less state direction over agriculture. Reflecting this difference, the results show that for both its main export and import commodity, Nicaragua is more integrated into world markets and has higher price transmission than Mali. The results for Nicaragua also show much higher integration and price transmission for its main agricultural export (coffee) than its major import (rice).     

Payments for agrobiodiversity conservation services: An overview of Latin American experiences,lessons learned and upscaling challenges

Many developing countries face a major challenge today: how to safeguard the biodiversity maintained in the fields of the rural poor - which constitute a national and global public good - whilst meeting those same people's development needs and rights? A solution to this dilemma has thus been sought in adapting the design and implementation of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) concepts to the conservation of agrobiodiversity.Here we review the application of nine such Payments for Agrobiodiversity Conservation (PACS) schemes that have been applied to date in four Latin American countries over the period 2010–2018. These covered 130 threatened varieties across a number of major food crops, and involved over 100 farming communities and 1,100 farmers (45 % of which were women). Conservation service offers were received through a competitive tender mechanism. Average bid offers revealed high heterogeneity, varying between US$675/ha. to ten times as much.In relation to issues identified as key to PES, such as spatial targeting, differentiated payments and conditionality, the underlying design of the PACS schemes may be considered solid. PACS-related prioritisation processes allow for the a priori identification of sites with high ecosystem service densities and high threat levels. The use of competitive tenders permits accounting for cost heterogeneity in the provision of conservation services and for payments to be differentiated. Conditionality is strong.In terms of implementation, a “back of the envelope” calculation based on the results of the competitive tenders suggests that conservation costs are modest. For a priority conservation portfolio of 100 varieties (which may be from different crops) each with a target area of five hectares, costs would amount to just under US$860,000 over twenty years or US$70,000 p.a. at a 5 % discount rate. The small-scale and one-off nature of the interventions realised to date, along with threatened crop variety seed availability constraints, have however meant that environmental effectiveness has been incomplete in the short-term (area cultivated with specific threatened varieties increased, but still below the “not at risk” threshold). The establishment of systematic monitoring systems is required to determine longer-term impacts and inform more regular PACS interventions within a dynamically evolving systems context.