A macroeconomic analysis of agricultural terms of trade in Turkey, 1952–90

A two‐sector model of terms of trade (TOT) determination is developed and tested using time‐series data for Turkey. Empirical results support the structuralist ‘flex‐price agriculture fix‐price industry’ models. TOT is found to be sensitive to changes in nominal demand and the exchange rate. Rising nominal demand turns the TOT in favour of the agricultural sector provided that there are no supply constraints in the industrial sector. If industrial supply is constrained by import bottlenecks, then aggregate demand expansion turns the TOT in favour of the industrial sector. Devaluation turns the TOT against the agricultural sector primarily via the cost‐push factors in the industrial sector.     

An econometric model of the monetary sector in Indonesia

The purpose of this article is to develop an econometric model of the Indonesian monetary sector over the period 1969–80. Before we constructed such a model, we tested the hypothesis that there is a causal relationship between money supply and the aggregate price index using quarterly data. The hypothesis of a causal relationship from prices to money was supported while the hypothesis of contemporaneous causality could not be easily dismissed.

In the model, both money supply and the aggregate price index were used as endogenous variables and they were decomposed into several disaggregates. The possibility of a structural break after the oil price shock (post‐1973) was examined using forecasting criteria. The predictive performance for 1969–73 is better than for 1974–80.     

Reinventing urban government in the Netherlands: an American perspective

National agricultural policies intended to stabilize farm price and income may have different impacts on different agricultural sector of a state or a region. A policy which influences a region's agriculture also may affect the general economy of that region, depending on the degree to which agriculture is linked to the general economy. This study evaluates the economywide impact of the Flexible Planting Program (FPP) -- a recent policy designed to encourage farmers to respond more to market than to the government incentives. The study employs an integrated modeling framework which links the national and state farm sectors to the region's non-farm sectors. Because of reductions in real U.S. market prices and, in turn, Tennessee market prices of some farm commodities under FPP, production of most agricultural outputs are expected to decline in Tennessee by 1995. Study results indicate that as a result of price reductions, the agricultural sector will lose about 15 percent of output, income, and employment. These losses cause significant negative impacts on the business-related service sector. The service sector suffers a loss of 31 million dollars in total output and 523 jobs. The total income lost by the service sector (18 million dollars) will be much higher than agriculture sector (11.99 million dollars). Thus, though the FPP may deliver its intended good at the national level, the policy has the potential to cause undesirable impacts on certain regions.     

Politicization of identity in a European borderland: Istria,Croatia, and authenticity, 1990–2003

In most studies of the Balkans and Eastern Europe, identity politics focuses on nationalism. Unfortunately, very few examine regional identities and how they too are politicized in similar ways for similar reasons. Istria provides a good example of how identity is politicized and how and why individuals adapt it to both internal and external influences. While in the past local and regional identities were politicized in response to colonization, more recently national divisions became more prominent. However, in the very recent past, Istrian identity again became politicized as many natives drew lines between themselves and what they saw as an external national influence emanating from Zagreb. In the 1990s, a renewed Croatian national movement competed with an Istrian regional movement. Istrian regionalists, seeking to justify taking and maintaining regional power and hoping to more quickly bring Croatia into the European Union, used this new political tactic against the nationalizing Croatian government. While both the nationalists and the regionalists claimed the other side's ideology was foreign to Istria, in actuality both have historical roots in the region. Though the competition was not as virulent as in past episodes of nationalist tension between Italians and Croats, it does fit a pattern of continuity in the region.     

A Social Discount Rate for Appraisal of Regional Investments: Evidence from Russia

This article provides estimates of a social discount rate (SDR) to inform government policy in Russia. We find that a SDR should be determined for the whole country as well as for particular regions. We apply the social rate of time preferences approach and estimate values for public sector projects at national and regional levels. All calculations are based on data from the Federal State Statistics Service of Russia. Findings help the decision-making process in the public sector of economics. Suggestions are useful for Russia as well as for post-Soviet countries and other developing economies with regional diversity.     

Empirical Investigation into Spatial Integration Without Direct Trade: Comparative Analysis Before and After the Establishment of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the spatial price cointegration of coffee markets in Ethiopia in the pre and post Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) era using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration framework. The study takes into consideration a market condition in which government policy restricts arbitrage coffee trade between coffee producing areas. Using coffee price data from 1998–2013 and applying a bounds test approach and Toda–Yamamoto Granger causality test, the study finds that the establishment of ECX has strengthened regional integration rather than a national harmony between producer markets. We also find evidence that, since the establishment of ECX, an opportunity was created for high quality coffee to dominate price formation while also allowing lower quality coffee producing areas to establish themselves. The study underlines the importance of market transparency and exchange of price information between producer markets.     

Farmland Rental Prices in GM Soybean Areas of Argentina: Do Contractual Arrangements Matter?

In this paper we study the determinants of the rental price of farmland in the Argentinian Pampas. In particular, we examine the price of lease contracts using a hedonic price model, while controlling for other potential sources of variation. Using firsthand data for 255 plots, our results indicate that both short-term contracts and contracts with sowing pools push rental prices upwards. We also find that soybean yields have a significant impact on land rental prices. These results suggest that if Argentina intends to protect the enormous natural advantage it has for agricultural production, it should consider strictly regulating land rental contracts.     

Reputation management by Chinese universities: Primary profile and comparative features

In this study, we analyse data from 176 Chinese universities to examine the use of reputation symbols on official websites. We find that Chinese universities prefer professional and performative symbols more than moral symbols. Reputation symbols are mainly observed in teaching, research, history and strategy categories, whereas their use in internal operations and the external environment is limited. A comparison with samples from the United States and Nordic countries indicates that their universities differ in the use of reputation symbols, with relatively high emphasis on professional and moral symbols, respectively. This difference can be attributed to divergent national cultures, higher education regimes and globalization. Here, we discuss the implications of our findings on reputation management by universities in a globalized world.     

Some management objectives of the peasant farmer: An analysis of risk aversion in the choice of cropping pattern,Surat district,India

The basis of peasant farmers’ decision‐making is a critical factor in the formation of agricultural policy in developing countries. If farmers operate efficiently, implying that profits are maximised, then incomes can only be increased by introducing improved methods of production; if farmers do not act efficiently, it may be desirable to reallocate resources within traditional agriculture. Similarly, predictions of farmers’ responses to price changes and thus the impact on aggregate production and employment¹ are based on assumptions regarding farmers’ management objectives.

The primary aim of this paper is to examine empirically the cropping patterns chosen by a group of peasant farmers in Surat District, India, using a simple model of risk aversion. The data show that the observed behaviour corresponds very closely to the hypothesis that farmers allocate land to different crops by striking some balance between the competing criteria of (a) increasing income and (b) decreasing risk measured by income variability. The actual definition of risk is, in this case, the mean absolute deviation of income around its mean level. Secondly, the contrasting importance of risk and credit between irrigated and unirrigated farms is illustrated, and finally, some policy implications are discussed briefly.     

Backward‐bending supply curves and behaviour of subsistence farmers

This paper formulates a model of the peasant economy to test the hypothesis that subsistence farmers are not responsive to economic opportunities and behave according to the notion of a backward‐bending supply curve. The productivity of farmers is analysed with respect to farm size, tenancy, off‐farm income, and other variables. The hypothesis is then tested using data from three paddy areas in Malaysia, each differing in the level of social and economic development. The results indicate that farmers in the more subsistence‐oriented area behave according to the backward‐bending supply curve hypothesis, while the more commercialised farmers do not.     

The role of agriculture in economic development: Visible and invisible surplus transfers

The financial surplus of agriculture has been central to theories of the role of agriculture in economic development. Morrisson and Thorbecke (MT) have used a constant‐price social accounting matrix (SAM) framework to measure rigorously the financial surplus of agriculture and decompose the mechanisms of surplus extraction. History and theory have, however, stressed the role of prices as an invisible transfer mechanism in addition to the visible transfers identified in the SAM framework. We extend the MT approach by defining and measuring the real surplus of agriculture and decomposing the mechanisms of surplus extraction between visible and invisible financial transfers. Using an archetype computable general equilibrium model for poor African nations, we trace the generation, transfer, and use of an agricultural surplus created by a productivity gain in agriculture. This shows that prices indeed play an overwhelmingly important role in transferring a surplus from agriculture to the benefit of the rest of the economy.     

Effort,Technology and the Efficiency of Agricultural Cooperatives

The inefficiency of cooperative agriculture relative to private farms is often attributed to difficulties in monitoring or poor incentives. We develop a model to show that, in technologies with numerous sequential steps, even small shortfalls in worker effort can result in large output declines. Using data on cooperative and private farms in El Salvador, we find greater shortfalls in efficiency between cooperatives and private farms, as well as among cooperatives, for coffee, a crop requiring numerous steps in its cultivation, than for maize and sugar, which require fewer steps. Thus the undersupply of effort in cooperatives may be less than differences in productivity suggest, and cooperative agriculture is most likely to be successful where production does not involve many sequential steps.     

台商在大陆并购投资及其影响因素

通过对2003年-2012年台商在大陆并购投资的861件案例进行分析，发现台商大陆投资地区和行业呈现明显的集聚性，上海、江苏、广东成为台商对大陆并购投资最密集的地区，投资行业以电脑、电子产品及光学制品、电子零器件为主。进一步刊用面板离散数据模型分析发现地区对外开放度、地区基础科研能力、基础通讯设施建设等对台商大陆并购投资有显著影响。     

Chinese agriculture: A quantitative look

Chinese agriculture has undoubtedly achieved a significant increase in gross agricultural output since the beginning of the new regime. However, for lack of sufficient information, it is difficult to make quantitative estimates of such an increase. Knowledge of the Chinese agriculture even before the Communist take‐over is far from complete. This is a further handicap in an assessment of the contribution of recent developmental efforts. There is some qualitative evidence in historical writings^l which suggests that the level of pre‐modem agricultural technology and practice in China was already very high² long before the present century but the quantitative information available from such historical studies is fragmentary, and often inconclusive. Even when reasonably reliable information seems to be available, its representativeness is open to question. The only reasonably representative account of the Chinese agriculture is available for the early 1930s in Buck's Land Utilization in China. Except for the first decade of the Communist rule in China, the quality of statistics deteriorated markedly. Any attempt, however painstaking, to estimate the rate of growth of the agricultural sector or of agriculture's contribution to the gross national product is bound to be nothing more than broad approximations. The aim of this paper, therefore, is not to add one more ‘guess estimate’ to many such estimates of dubious validity that are already floating around. The aim is mainly to point out the limitation of the data on which such estimates are based. It is not an attempt at denigrating the painstaking efforts of careful Sinologists to piece together fragmentary information from both academic and non‐academic (largely intelligence and diplomatic) sources, but to warn the users that an unqualified acceptance of their results³ (e.g. such as the rates of growth, etc.) in comparative studies may not have sufficient justification.     

National Subversion of Supranational Goals: ‘Pork-Barrel’ Politics and EU Regional Aid

The structural funds were designed to give the European Commission supranational control over where regional aid was spent. In this article, we argue that domestic ‘pork-barrel’ politics determine which regions are awarded regional aid in the new member states of Eastern Europe. Support for our argument comes from a dataset that includes 1,688 European Regional Development Fund grants to Latvia's 118 regions and 1,533 pre-accession Phare awards to Bulgaria's 264 municipalities. In both Bulgaria and Latvia, we find that regional aid projects went to wealthier not poorer localities, and to those that supported coalition parties in the previous election.     

Suicide in developing countries (3): prevention efforts

Until now, suicide prevention efforts have been limited in developing countries, although there are pockets of excellent achievement. Various universal, selective, and indicated interventions have been implemented, many of which target a different pattern of risk factors to those in developed countries. In the absence of sufficient mental health services, developing countries rely heavily on nongovernment organizations (NGOs) to provide crisis interventions for suicidal individuals, as well as proactive interventions aimed at raising community awareness and building resilience. Often these NGOs work within a social and public health framework, collaborating with others to provide nested suicide prevention programs that are responsive to local community needs. There is a clear need to develop appropriate, relevant and effective national suicide prevention plans in developing countries, since, to date, only Sri Lanka has done so. These plans should focus on a range of priority areas, specify the actions necessary to achieve positive change in these priority areas, consider the range of collaborators required to implement these actions, and structure their efforts at national, regional, and local levels. The plans should also promote the collection of accurate data on completed and attempted suicide, and should foster evaluation efforts.     

The Feminisation of Agriculture with Chinese Characteristics

The objectives of this article are to assess whether or not the feminisation of agriculture is occurring in China, and if so, to measure its impact on productivity. To meet these objectives, we rely on three data sets that allow us to explore who works on China's farms and the effects of the labour allocation decisions of rural households on productivity. We find that since the late 1990s, the role of women has increased in both the supply of farm labour and in the duties that they take on in the management of farms. While this expansion is important, we further demonstrate that when women do a majority of farm work or manage the farm, their farms are equally efficient as farms managed by men.     

The application of a reconnaissance strategy for identifying long-term problems for a Tanzanian farming systems project

Africa’s population is growing faster than its locally produced food supply. While some regions of the world wallow in production surpluses, neither the Green Revolution nor other production boosting strategies have sunk deep roots in Africa. As a result, there is an increasing food production shortfall and an ever larger dependence on outside food aid. In response, international development agencies are developing new strategies for tackling the seemingly intractable problems of African agriculture. One of these strategies is called the farming systems research and extension approach. This approach starts with the understanding that “African agriculture has probably been less affected by technology change in the past twenty years than agriculture on any other continent” (A.I.D., 1985). It continues by developing technical interventions which are advantageous within particular “recommendation domains” defined by both social and environmental conditions.     

Weather Shocks and Spatial Market Efficiency: Evidence from Mozambique

The aim of this paper is to study the association between weather shocks (droughts and floods) and agricultural market performance in Mozambique. To do so, we employ a dyadic regression analysis on monthly maize prices, transport costs, and spatial identification of markets as well as droughts and flooded areas. Our estimates show that, while a drought reduces price differences between markets, price dispersion increases during flood periods, an effect that is mainly driven by increases in transport costs. Finally, floods are found to affect price differences more if markets are closer to each other and if the road infrastructure quality is poor. An important implication of our results is that markets show some degree of efficiency during supply shock periods in Mozambique. However, spatial market integration continues to be insufficient, probably due to high transfer costs.