Major International Information Flows Across the Safex Wheat Market

We study information flows across four wheat futures markets on four continents: Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange (ZCE), South African Futures Exchange (SAFEX), Euronext/Liffe and Kansas City Board of Trade (KCBT). Three approaches for studying information flows among non‐synchronous markets are applied: cointegration techniques, vector autoregressive analysis and multiple regression proposed. Although comparable underlying assets are traded in the four markets, our results indicate that no long‐run links exist among them. ZCE is by far the most endogenous market, and Euronext/Liffe is the most exogenous one. Finally, the model points to KCBT as the most influential and sensitive wheat market. Our findings indicate that the relative openness of the SAFEX wheat market supports information flows and linkages from KCBT and Euronext/Liffe. Therefore, our results suggest that more supportive policies to incentivise higher wheat production in South Africa are required to mitigate the impact of price shocks emanating from the global wheat markets.     

The growing importance of the former USSR countries in world agricultural markets

The major countries of the former Soviet Union—specifically Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan—are becoming increasingly important in world agricultural markets. The two main developments are that this region has become a large grain exporter, especially of wheat and barley, and Russia a big agricultural importer, especially of meat. These trends should continue for the next decade. However, policies to expand the livestock sector could mitigate these developments, as increased domestic meat production would reduce both meat imports and surplus feed grain for export. Also, further growth in the region's grain exports will require improvement in the infrastructure for storing and transporting grain.     

北京市农业植物新品种保护现状及对策

种子是农业的“芯片”和农业现代化的基础,新品种权是种业领域的核心知识产权。为明确北京市农业植物新品种保护现状,对北京农业植物新品种申请授权数量、主体、推广情况进行梳理,并从实施的政策角度进行经验总结。分析发现,北京市农业植物新品种保护存在花卉创新不足、新品种转化水平不高、维权难度大的问题。针对这些问题提出相应对策建议。     

Efficiency of research investments in the presence of international spillovers: wheat research in developing countries⋆

Expenditures on agricultural research in the public sector, including the International Agricultural Research Centers (IARCs) have stagnated and in some cases, declined sharply in recent years. This has focused attention on issues of efficiency of agricultural research systems, especially the number, size, scope, type, and locations of their programs. This paper examines the issue of research efficiency through a case study of wheat improvement research in developing countries. The basic premise of this study is that the optimal level of research investment should be determined in a global model that incorporates direct research spill‐ins. An analytical framework is developed to determine the threshold levels of crop production in a country (or a region within a country) needed to justify crop improvement research programs of different sizes in the presence of spill‐ins from abroad. Spill‐in coefficients are estimated from yield performance of varieties of different origins grown across a range of environments. The model is then applied to analyze the efficiency of current investments in 69 wheat improvement research programs in 35 developing countries. A major conclusion of the paper is that given the magnitude of potential spill‐ins from the international research system, many wheat research programs could significantly increase the efficiency of resource use by reducing the size of their wheat research programs and focusing on the screening of varieties developed elsewhere. ©2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.     

小麦胚芽的综合利用

本文对麦胚油、谷胱甘肽、天然维生素E、麦胚凝集素的提取和麦胚焙烤食品、蛋白饮料、豆制品等麦胚食品的开发利用进行较为全面的论述,并分析小麦胚芽资源开发利用存在的问题和应用前景。     

THE IMPACT OF GREEN REVOLUTION ON RICE PRODUCTION IN VIETNAM

The current paper reviewed the development of the Green Revolution in Vietnam, using long‐term regional yield and modern variety adoption statistics, as well as household data collected in 1996 and 2003. The present study indicates that the Green Revolution began in irrigated favorable areas and spread to the less favorable areas in Vietnam such as in other Asian countries. What is unique in Vietnam is that although the Green Revolution ended in the mid‐1980s in the Philippines and Indonesia, it has still been sustained as of 2003. Our analyses revealed that such growth had been supported by continuous improvements of modern varieties by regional research institutes. The varieties imported from China have contributed to the Green Revolution in northern Vietnam and those developed by the International Rice Research Institute in southern Vietnam. The national agricultural research systems have also played a critically important role in developing location‐specific and appropriate technologies.     

Labor Supply,Migration, and Long-Term Development

This article analyzes the impact of the supply of skilled and unskilled labor on the growth rate of open economies. Using an expansion-in-varieties framework, the model distinguishes between a long-term equilibrium and a medium-term adjustment path. It is demonstrated that the dynamic effects of labor supply are different in a model with expanding varieties in the consumption sector from those in a model with expanding varieties in the production sector. In addition, the outcome depends on the elasticities of substitution in production as well as the countries' production shares in world goods markets. It is shown that, in general, the supply of unskilled labor is likely to have an unfavorable effect on long-term development.     

Market integration and market efficiency: The case of 19th century Italy

This paper examines market integration in Italy in the 19th century, focusing on wheat. Wheat prices converged well before political Unification (1859-1861) but the process halted during the 1860s only to resume in the 1870s and 1880s. The first wave of integration was caused mainly by improvements in market efficiency while the second wave owed much to a reduction in transport costs.