Agricultural policies and development: A socioeconomic investigation applied to Sri Lanka

This paper explores the interrelationship between agricultural policies and development by means of a dynamically recursive, computable general equilibrium model applied to Sri Lanka. The agricultural policies investigated include elimination of the food subsidy, land reform, and technical change in agriculture. The goals considered are the levels and growth rates of GNP and employment, the distribution of income, and the real income level of the lowest income group. The study provides a quantitative assessment of the association between policies and goals and identifies the key economic mechanisms in this association.     

新中国初期北京市农业政策述评

新中国成立后,北京市对农业政策进行了多项改革。土地政策方面考虑首都土地的长远发展,没收地主、富农土地收归国有,并在一定程度上保护了富农的利益;建立了互助组,出现了土地不分红的高级社;在爱国增产、生产救灾以及农业税收、农业贸易等方面均制定了卓有成效的政策。在各项政策的支持下,北京市的农业生产逐渐恢复。     

An econometric model of the agricultural sector of the Indian economy

The interrelationships between production, consumption, and stocks are studied in an interdependent framework for two groups of agricultural commodities, namely foodgrains and nonfoodgrains, with a view to obtain policy guidelines for agricultural growth. The model is formulated with aggregate information over the period 1951–1975 and both static and dynamic simulation along with multiplier analysis are carried out to assess the performance of the model. The study reveals that if there had been no PL 480 aid from the U.S. imports, foodgrain prices would have been higher than observed prices. Ex-ante forecasts to 1985 suggest some need for adequate planning with regard to stockbuilding.     

Political economy and the adoption of everyday environmental policies in the American states, 1997: an exploratory analysis

The political economy model has been widely and effectively used to explain and predict adoption rates of highly salient and/or controversial policies in the American states. However, use of this model to predict policy adoption in noncontroversial domains has been limited. This article tests the extent to which the model is successful in explaining the adoption of less-salient, everyday policies intended to improve environmental quality among the American states. The addition of conditional terms related to the model's political and bureaucratic components resulted in explaining 57% of the variance in commitment to everyday environmentalism among the American states. In sum, the number of everyday environmental policies adopted by state governments is a function of economic considerations, legislative accountability and professionalism, bureaucratic commitment, political culture and previous levels of policy adoption. Alternately—and unlike more controversial environmental policy domains—partisanship, ideology, party control of government and interest group forces do not have an impact on adoption of everyday environmental policies.     

绿色壁垒对我国农产品贸易的影响及其对策

随着世界经济一体化进程的深入 ,国际贸易壁垒发生了结构性变化 ,绿色壁垒具有较大的灵活性、较高的隐蔽性和保护的有效性 ,正日益成为制约我国农产品出口发展的主要障碍。我们应认真研究基于绿色壁垒的市场准入制度 ,积极推行农业标准化工作 ,完善我国农产品质量标准体系 ,加快绿色农产品技术创新 ,创造绿色农产品发展的良好环境 ,建立农产品外贸应急体系 ,为绿色农产品生产经营提供资金、政策等全方位的支持 ,保护我国农业及食品行业整体利益和企业的合法权益。     

Better job prospects or an imperative to ‘just work’? A cross-national study on social investment and women's employment

Social investment policies advocate for more and better jobs by supporting families' work-life balance and investing in human capital. But do they really help to boost employment prospects for women? Earlier literature suggests a positive relationship, but not enough attention has been paid to the type of employment, or to who the actual beneficiaries of these measures are. This article combines ISSP survey data with OECD and national data in a multilevel analysis to determine whether social investment policies benefit female employment, improve job prospects, and apply to all women irrespective of their educational level. We find that training and childcare policies are associated with higher employment levels, however, the claim that social investment increases chances for better job prospects finds little empirical support. These findings suggest that active labour market and childcare policies are associated with more women's employment, but they might still be following a push to ‘just work’.     

From oil shortage to oil glut: Simulation of growth prospects in the Nigerian economy

During the 1970s, the economy of Nigeria provided one of the most interesting cases of development financed through oil revenue. Between 1970 and 1980, the country's GNP grew at an outstanding rate—after the transition from oil shortage to oil glut, the economy of Nigeria ran into dramatic financial difficulties, which are now placing major constraints to its development. To investigate the transition from an oil-based economy to a stage characterized by greater diversification of exports and more balanced sectoral growth, a model has been built by the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. The model was developed in association with Project LINK staffing for the future inclusion in the Project. According to the finding presented in the study, the annual growth rate of GDP of Nigeria between 1980 and 1988 will be around 2.5 percent. To compensate the drop of the foreign exchange earnings caused by the contraction of oil prices and demand, a vigorous export drive of agricultural products is simulated.     

Savings and economic growth in South Africa: A multivariate causality test

This study takes a fresh look at the direction of causality between savings and economic growth in South Africa during the period 1950–2005. The study was motivated by the low and declining savings rate currently prevailing in South Africa, on the one hand, and the dwindling level of economic growth experienced in the country during the 1990s, on the other. Given the weakness associated with the bivariate causality framework, the current study incorporates foreign capital inflow as an intermittent variable in the bivariate model between savings and economic growth—thereby creating a simple trivariate causality framework. Using the cointegration-based error–correction mechanism, the study finds a bi-directional causality between savings and economic growth to prevail in the short run and a distinct unidirectional causal flow from economic growth to savings to dominate in the long run. On balance, the study finds growth-led savings to predominate in South Africa. The results also show that foreign capital inflow and savings Granger-cause each other, while economic growth Granger causes foreign capital inflow. The study, therefore, recommends that in the short run, South African policies should be geared towards achieving both higher savings and economic growth in order to boost investors’ confidence and to attract foreign capital inflow. However, in the long run, the country should shift its focus towards achieving higher economic growth, in order to boost the domestic savings and to sustain a steady flow of foreign capital investment.     

School-level policies and the efficiency and equity trade-off in education

This paper identifies the relationship between pupils’ Family Background, their mathematics scores, and school-level policies, using the 2012 Programme of International Student Assessment for Italy and multilevel modelling. School-level policies have played a leading role in recent school reforms in many countries, but there is no straightforward empirical evidence for how they affect pupils’ outcomes and the equality of educational outcomes. Our findings show that that only some school policies intensify the Family Background Effect – (educational equity) and affect student outcomes (educational efficiency) simultaneously. We find that competitive schools are able to screen students by selecting higher socio-economic status parents, which mainly harms equity without having much effect on efficiency. There are some policies which allow some trade-off between aforementioned objectives, mainly policies related to management schools.     

Nondestructive creation: Entrepreneurship and management research in the study of growth

Economists’ focus on institutions in explaining economic growth, while important, can obscure the significant role played by individual entrepreneurs and the process of entrepreneurship. The prevailing view of entrepreneurship in economics (which continues to shape prevailing public policies) centers on Schumpeter's famous concept of “creative destruction.” In the context of sustained high levels of economic growth, as in the recent American experience, I focus on a different feature of entrepreneurship—“nondestructive creation,” in which the uncoordinated contest of ideas and search for new applications of existing ideas generate growth. And this nondestructive creation should be analyzed and can be fostered.     

Aspects of a new world development strategy II: Factors affecting the long-term prospects of developing nations

This paper explores some quantitative dimensions of the interdependence of rich and poor regions in the context of the United Nations World Model. It extends the original work on that model in three ways: (1) by updating some of the key parameters and exogenous variables in the light of recent data; (2) by developing a “control” solution to be used as a point of reference in policy simulations; and (3) by exploring the sensitivities of each of two groups of regions— developed and developing—to changes in one another's growth rates. Goals of closing the income gap between developed and developing regions and of increasing income levels in the latter are discussed.     

我国商品住宅价格调控政策效果研究

1998年以来,我国房地产行业发展迅速,并逐步成为国民经济的支柱产业,极大地推动了我国的经济增长。但房价的过快增长也增加了人们的生活压力,并对经济运行造成不利影响。为了抑制房价的过快增长,国家推出了一系列的调控政策,包括金融政策、土地政策和税收政策。2010年政府推出了限购政策,通过抑制需求来控制房价。研究表明:1998至2002年的调控政策取得了较好的效果;2003至2008年调控效果不佳;2008年底至2009年政府并没有对房价进行有力调控;2009年末至2012年初,限购令的效果非常明显。     

Agricultural policies and migration in a U.S.-Mexico free trade area: A computable general equilibrium analysis

A United States-Mexico agreement to form a free trade area (FTA) is analyzed using an 11-sector, three-country, computable general equilibrium model that explicity models farm programs and labor migration. The model incorporates both rural-urban migration within Mexico and international migration between Mexico and the United States. In the model, sectoral import demands are specified with a flexible functional form, an empirical improvement over earlier specifications, which use a constant elasticity of substitution function. Using the model, we identify trade-offs among bilateral trade growth, labor migration, and agricultural program expenditures under alternative FTA scenarios. Trade liberalization in agriculture greatly increases rural- urban migration within Mexico and migration from Mexico to the United States. Migration is reduced if Mexico grows relative to the United States and also if Mexico retains farm support programs. However, the more support that is provided to the Mexican agricultural sector, the smaller is bilateral trade growth. The results indicate a policy trade-off between rapidly achieving gains from trade liberalization and providing a transition period long enough to assimilate displaced labor in Mexico without undue strain.     

Public policies promoting the informal sector: Effects on incomes,employment and growth in Burkina Faso

Since the 1990s, Burkina Faso has intensified the implementation of supporting policies to enhance the access to capital and liquidity in the informal sector. This paper analyzes the effects of these public policies on incomes, employment and economic growth by taking into account the interactions between the informal sector, the formal sector and the agricultural sector. For that purpose, policy shocks are simulated through the Partnership for Economic Policy Network's static computable general equilibrium (CGE) model which is adapted to the structure of a 2008-based social accounting matrix developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute. Our results highlight mixed effects including a paradoxical contraction of the informal sector, the formal sector and economic growth as well as an improvement of the informal households and the farmers’ incomes.     

Population pressure and agricultural productivity in Bangladesh

The relationship between population pressure or density and agricultural productivity is examined by analyzing the changes in the land-man ratio and the changes in the level of land yield in the 17 districts of Bangladesh from 1961-64 and 1974-77. The earlier years were pre-Green Revolution, whereas in the later years new technology had been introduced in some parts of the country. Net sown area, value of total agricultural output, and number of male agricultural workers were the main variables. For the country as a whole, agricultural output grew by 1.2%/year during 1961-64 to 1974-77, while the number of male agricultural workers grew at 1.5%/year. The major source of agricultural growth during the 1960s was found to be increased land-yield associated with a higher ratio of labor to land. The findings imply that a more intensified pattern of land use, resulting in both higher yield and higher labor input/unit of land, is the main source of growth of output and employment in agriculture. There is very little scope for extending the arable area in Bangladesh; increased production must come from multiple cropping, especially through expansion of irrigation and drainage, and from increases in per acre yields, principly through adoption of high yield variants, which explained 87% of the variation in output per acre during the 1970s. Regional variation in output was also associated with variation in cropping intensity and proportion of land given to high yield variants. There is considerable room for modernizing agricultural technology in Bangladesh: in 1975-76 less than 9% of total crop land was irrigated and only 12% of total acreage was under high yield variants. The adoption of new food-grain technology and increased use of high yield variants in Bangladesh's predominantly subsistence-based agriculture would require far-reaching institutional and organizational changes and more capital. Without effective population control, expansion of area under high yield variants would not improve the employment situation in the foreseeable future.     

城镇化背景下的家庭农业与乡土社会——对内蒙赤峰市农业经营形式的案例研究

本文要讨论的问题是,在农业青壮年劳动力大量外出,只有老人和妇女留守农村的情况下,中国农业将如何转型,农业生产的规模化服务将如何实现?农业生产技术的改进与生产要素的市场化无疑会促进农业生产服务的规模化,而规模化服务并不以土地的集中和小农经济的消亡为前提。乡土社会网络降低了农业规模化服务过程中的组织成本,在农村乡土社会面貌不变的情况下实现了农业生产服务的规模化,从而建立了一种“新型农业经营体系”。     

Poverty,Government Policy and Public Opinion in Britain and Israel: A Comparative Analysis

What are the effects of public opinion on social welfare policies? To what extent is increased financial strain associated with stronger support for anti‐poverty policies? This article tests welfare state theory by comparing poverty, government policy and public opinion on poverty in the UK and Israel, based on rich and detailed comparable survey data on the conditions of the poor in both countries. The results show that, despite similar levels of income poverty and inequality, the poor have a considerably lower standard of living in Israel than the UK. There is considerably greater public support for the poor in Israel but limited government action to end poverty, whereas in the UK there is more limited public support for the poor but significant government action on poverty and exclusion. In both countries there appears to be only a limited connection between social solidarity with the poor and the political elite's rhetoric and action.     

Common ratio using delay

We present an experiment in which we add a common delay in a choice between two risky prospects. The results show that delay produces the same change in preferences as in the well-documented common ratio effect in risky lotteries. The added common delay acts as if the probabilities were divided by some common ratio. Moreover, we show that there is a strong magnitude effect, in the sense that the effect of delay depends on the magnitude of the outcome. The results are consistent with the recently introduced probability time trade-off (PTT) model by Baucells and Heukamp. We present a parameterization of the model based on the experimental results, showing that the value function exhibits increasing relative risk aversion, the weighting function is s-shaped, and the intrinsic discount rate is decreasing.     

New Labour, Work and the Family

New Labour has put support for the family at the core of its notion of the “strong community”. Across a range of policy areas the Labour government can be seen to be developing a direct and explicit family policy. But what kind of community is the government trying to shape by these policies? On the one hand, Labour appears to support the family as the basis of a more moral, dutiful and cohesive community. On the other hand, the government has given weight to policies that support social inclusion in the community through paid work. This paper examines whether there is a tension in Labour’s social policies between its emphasis on the importance of stable family life and the primacy given to paid work. Are critics like Ruth Levitas right when they argue that the government’s emphasis on paid work devalues, and is unsupportive of, unpaid work, especially caring for children and other family members? Alternatively, can this combination of communitarianisms—community as “stable family” and community as “paid work”—be seen to be marking out some “third way” on the family? We shall show that different aspects of the government’s family policies reflect different perspectives and policy agendas within New Labour and third‐way thinking more broadly. And while recognizing the tensions between work and the family, we shall suggest that they are often overstated and fail to give sufficient weight to the complementary aspects of Labour’s welfare reforms.     

How to Measure Social Progress?

A good society is the goal for social policy. Recent years have seen a growing awareness that gross domestic product (GDP) alone does not measure this. Happiness and well‐being have increasingly been seen as elements that should influence welfare policies. This review article provides an overview of many of the ways to measure well‐being and happiness. It attempts to cover three distinct, but interrelated subjects. First, why and what can be used to complement GDP as measures for societal development. Second, is there a relation between well‐being, happiness and central social policy areas? Third, whether knowledge on what makes people happy could inform policymakers in their decisions. The article discusses the many new attempts to measure societal development, and the fact that there are so many that decision makers and citizens are drowning by numbers and thereby not able to grasp whether or not there is social progress. Lastly, by using the classical depiction of welfare states, the article analyses whether the indexes are in line herewith, and that, therefore, they might be used as an instrument for steering societies in the direction of a good society.