Всего публикаций в данном разделе: 12
Книги
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Опубликовано на портале: 25-11-2003
Duncan Boughton, David L. Tschirley, Higino Marrule, Ballard Zulu
2003
Cotton is one of the most important smallholder cash crops in Sub-Saharan Africa
(SSA). How to ensure
input supply, credit recovery and competition is a subject of intense policy debate.
This paper examines the
performance of cotton sector development policies in Mozambique and Zambia.
Both countries face the
challenge of organizing input supply to farmers in the absence of rural
credit markets, and competing in
international markets distorted by production subsidies in developed countries.
Both countries privatized
cotton ginning in the 1990s. Emerging from civil war, Mozambique established geographical
monopolies to
interlink input and output markets and facilitate credit recovery. In
Zambia, the government completely
liberalized the cotton sector, forcing the private sector to deal with
the problem of input distribution and
credit recovery by itself. Despite being landlocked, Zambia.s cotton sector has
achieved better performance
in terms of both value of cotton output per hectare and smallholder share
of world market prices. An
analysis of the institutional and technical factors behind the two countries. performance
provides insights to
guide the design of public/private partnerships relevant to many SSA countries.


Опубликовано на портале: 29-11-2003
Karsten Kyed, Niels Kaergard, Henrik Zobbe
2002
The multifunctional character of agriculture is used as a main argument for agricultural
support. This argument is theoretical analyzed in a model with decreasing marginal
utility
and it is shown that such a support must depend on the size of the agricultural sector.
Consequently the argument is not valid for a common policy for very different countries
as the EU-countries.


Опубликовано на портале: 31-12-2003
Laure Latruffe, Kelvin Balcombe, Katarzyna Zawalinska, Sophia Moissey Davidova
Durban, 2003
The technical and scale efficiency of Polish farms is analysed, using Data Envelopment
Analysis. Efficiency
differences are measured according to farm specialisation, in crop or livestock,
at two points in time during
transition, 1996 and 2000. The statistical variability of efficiency estimates is
investigated. The efficiency
results are reviewed in the light of confidence intervals provided by bootstrapping
and of a summary measure
introduced in this study ‘the coefficient of separation’. The inference
analysis suggests that farms might be
less efficient than revealed by the point estimates alone, and that they might not
be clearly different from
each other.


Опубликовано на портале: 12-12-2003
Ran Tao, Mingxing Liu, Qi Zhang
Durban, 2003
This paper places the problem of Chinese rural taxation in the context of government
regulation and tries to
present an integrated theoretical framework of rural development in China
in the past two decades. Our
theoretical framework can reconcile the stylized facts that the average level of
rural taxation relative to rural
net income after the 1990s did not increase very fast, but rural taxation became
a very serious problem in this
period. We found that this is in large part due to the increase of rural income disparity
after 1990s and the
uneven tax and fee distribution among different income groups. We argue that differentiated
enforcement of
the government regulations such as grain procurement and birth control play an important
role in the rural
taxation problem, and more generally, the problem of expanding local government
size and rising rural
income disparity. The empirical findings do support our hypothesis.


Опубликовано на портале: 29-11-2003
Romuald I. Zalewski, Eulalia Skawicska
2002
A questionnaire method has been used to collect the empirical data on the
food processing enterprises. Data were collected for 36 out of 68 enterprises having
ISO
9001 / 2 (April 2000). Value chain as a modeling power of competitive advantage,
determinants of quality management system efficiency, participation of knowledge
and
skills in formation of firm competence were discussed.


Опубликовано на портале: 04-01-2004
Jurgen Zeddies
Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000, 471-493 с.
This paper analyzes the situation of large scale farms, mostly former kolkhozes and
sovkhozes, in the Russian transition period. A continuing, significant decline in
land use, employment, production, productivity, liquidity and financial results since
privatization in 1992 and after the considerable changes in economic and legal sphere
in 1995-96 is documented.
The development of factor endowment, crop and livestock production, marketing and management failures rising from necessary adjustment to the changing economic environment and organization problems are elaborated. Finally the paper gives some policy recommendations for improving the economic setting in which Russia’s large scale farms have to operate.
The development of factor endowment, crop and livestock production, marketing and management failures rising from necessary adjustment to the changing economic environment and organization problems are elaborated. Finally the paper gives some policy recommendations for improving the economic setting in which Russia’s large scale farms have to operate.


Опубликовано на портале: 31-12-2003
Manfred Zeller, Manohar Sharma, Carla Henry, Cecile Lapenu
Zaragoza, 2003
Many development projects seek to reach the poorest in the provision of
agricultural inputs, extension,
credit, education, and many other services. However, low-cost and reliable methods
for assessing whether a
project reaches the poor are lacking at present.
In this paper, we present an operational method that was designed during a two-year research project from 1999-2001 with the support of an international donor- coordination office. The objective of the research was to develop and test a new method that could be later used by development practitioners to assess the poverty level of beneficiaries of development projects that target the poor in relation to the general population in the intervention area. The method constructs a poverty index using principle component analysis, and is based on a range of indicators that describes different dimensions of poverty and for which credible information can be quickly and inexpensively obtained. To ensure the method’s usefulness to a wide number of countries and projects, the method was tested in collaboration in rural and urban areas in four countries: Nicaragua (urban and rural), Kenya (urban and rural), Madagascar (rural), and India (rural). We present results from these studies. We conclude that the method has a promising potential for monitoring and evaluation purposes of development organizations. Since 2001, the method has been used in over 20 project assessments.
In this paper, we present an operational method that was designed during a two-year research project from 1999-2001 with the support of an international donor- coordination office. The objective of the research was to develop and test a new method that could be later used by development practitioners to assess the poverty level of beneficiaries of development projects that target the poor in relation to the general population in the intervention area. The method constructs a poverty index using principle component analysis, and is based on a range of indicators that describes different dimensions of poverty and for which credible information can be quickly and inexpensively obtained. To ensure the method’s usefulness to a wide number of countries and projects, the method was tested in collaboration in rural and urban areas in four countries: Nicaragua (urban and rural), Kenya (urban and rural), Madagascar (rural), and India (rural). We present results from these studies. We conclude that the method has a promising potential for monitoring and evaluation purposes of development organizations. Since 2001, the method has been used in over 20 project assessments.


Опубликовано на портале: 30-11-2003
Annalisa Zezza
2002
The paper analyzes the changes that have taken place in the nature of agriculture
information and their consequences on the public role of related public services
with
specific regard to process undergoing in the European Union. Increased interest in
food
quality and food safety issues in a global consumer driven society, together with
major
attention to environmental and ethical issues related to food production, enlarge
both the
object of agricultural information and the audience of stakeholders in the food chain
and
in the general public. Information policy with regard to a multifunctional approach
to
agriculture, can be finalized to correct three main sources of market failures as
access to
information, quality and adverse selection and externalities and provision of public
goods. The privatization of agricultural research and extension, although useful
from the
point of view of economic efficiency, poses a number of threats to the development
of
knowledge for sustainable agriculture. If the public sector decides to move away
from
the delivering of services, public action can still be relevant in orienting, targeting,
regulating and funding in win-win solutions where the advantages of public extension,
as open access and evaluation of social priorities, join efficiency and market orientation
of the private sector.


Опубликовано на портале: 12-12-2003
Linxiu Zhang, Alan de Brauw, Scott Rozelle
Durban, 2003
The major objective of this paper is to discuss the development of rural labor markets
in China during the
past two decades and understand how it has affected women. Using household survey
data that we collected
in 2001, we examine the role of women in labor markets by examining employment and
migration trends
and changes in wages. According to the data of our nearly national representative
sample, we find that there
has been a sharp overall increase in off-farm participation, most of the increase
has been driven by young
migrants, and women, especially those in the youngest cohorts, have participated
at rates equaling or
surpassing those of their male counterparts. We also find that the wages of women
have not been adversely
affected by the emergence of liberalized labor markets and that when women, mostly
middle-aged and older
ones, are left in charge of farm work, the productivity of crop production does not
fall.


Опубликовано на портале: 31-12-2003
Jing Zhu
Durban, 2003
China’s accession to the WTO poses great challenges to the Chinese
agricultural sector, especially to the
grain producers. Compared with major grain exporters in the world, most grain crops
in China are high in
production cost and weak in market competitiveness. This can be partly attributed
to the fact that Chinese
farmers are facing with poorer agricultural production infrastructures and
inadequate public investment in
agricultural research and extension, which leads to the lower efficiency
in private inputs and thus higher
private cost per unit of product. After China joining the WTO, protective
and administrative measures
conflicted with the URAA cannot be utilized as before. Alternative measures should
be explored to provide
help to farmers to improve competitiveness of their product. Public investment in
agricultural research and
other production infrastructures should be considered with high priority
as one of the policy alternatives.
This paper examines the effects of public investment in agricultural research on the reduction of production cost of major grain crops in China by using crop-specific data for the past 20 year. It is concluded that, increasing public investment in agricultural research, which is well within the ‘green box’ policy framework and allowed by the WTO rules, is a plausible and effective measure to reduce grain producer’s private input and to enhance the competitiveness of grain products. It is also of great significance to sustained food security in China.
This paper examines the effects of public investment in agricultural research on the reduction of production cost of major grain crops in China by using crop-specific data for the past 20 year. It is concluded that, increasing public investment in agricultural research, which is well within the ‘green box’ policy framework and allowed by the WTO rules, is a plausible and effective measure to reduce grain producer’s private input and to enhance the competitiveness of grain products. It is also of great significance to sustained food security in China.


Опубликовано на портале: 30-11-2003
Henrik Zobbe
2002
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was founded in the 1950s with price support
as the main policy instrument. Despite massive criticism from both within and outside
the EU, price support remains the backbone of the CAP. This paper argues that the
choice of price support was logical viewed in both historical and economical perspectives,
and gives three reasons for this. First, even though talks on agricultural integration
began immediately after the war, the CAP was a result of general economic integration
in Europe rather than the reason for it. Second, the structure of the CAP was determined
by the agricultural policies of the six founding countries. The third and last reason
is related to the economic characteristics of running a price support system. The
six countries together were net importers of agricultural products and could thereby
benefit from import levies. Price support is paid for by the consumers, and European
consumers had been paying high prices for food for a long time. This, together with
a high level of economic growth in Europe in the 1960s, made it easier for the governments
to choose this policy rather than a policy based on direct payments financed by taxpayers
that would have put pressure on the national fiscal budgets of the six countries.


Опубликовано на портале: 29-11-2003
Sergiy Zorya, Stephan Cramon-Taubadel
2002
Competitiveness has been a subject of considerable attention in agricultural economics.
In this
paper we study the development of the international competitiveness of Ukrainian
crop
production between 1996 and 2001 using the concepts of Domestic Resource Cost and
Private
Cost Ratio. We distinguish between ‘average’ and ‘best’ farms
to get a comprehensive picture
of farm competitiveness in Ukraine.
Our main conclusion is that agriculture responds quickly to incentives, and there
are
indications that Ukrainian agriculture has entered a phase of dynamic development.
A
shortage of human capital and physical bottlenecks in grain and oilseeds marketing
could limit
this development in coming years; if policy makers respond to these risks Ukraine
could easily
be a global player by the end of the current decade.

