Search

Based on the Xingke Tiben, this paper assesses the long‐run economic development of China, by constructing a new estimate of male occupational structure during 1734–1898 by sector, sub‐sector pattern, and region. After assessing the source's biases, using this new empirical basis, this paper demonstrates that the national male occupational structure was nearly identical in 1761–70, 1821–30, and 1881–90, suggesting a long‐lasting structural stasis of the national economy, allowing for fluctuations between benchmark dates. Within agriculture, substantial regional differences in labour organisation are revealed. Three distinct models are found: the Northern Regions model features a high usage of wage labour, the Yangtze Valley model presents a high level of tenancy development, and the Southern Regions model displays the highest share of landowners. All three models saw increasing use of wage labour in 1761–1890 and shrinking landownership in 1821–90. At the regional level, the long‐run estimate for Lower Yangtze suggests that the region as a whole stagnated throughout the entire period, but the overall structural stasis hides dynamic, contrasting long‐run economic change between the region's core and peripheral areas. Comparative analysis with England further suggests that the timing of the Great Divergence between China and England took place before 1734, even in the context of the regional difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a list of books and papers about economics. The books and papers include "The Oxford Economic Atlas of the World"; "International Affairs," edited by Alfred De Grazia, "A Bibliography of Higher Education in Canada," by Robin S. Harris, "Latin America," published in "The International Advertiser," "Agriculture and Growth," published in "Latin American Business Highlights," "The Problems of Federalism," published in "Executive," and "How Will Nuclear Energy Grow," published in "Common Market."

Copyright of Review of Policy Research is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Commodity price shocks are an important type of external shock and are often cited as a problem for economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. We choose nine Sub-Saharan African countries that are heavily dependent on a single agricultural commodity for a significant portion of their income. This paper quantifies the impact of agricultural commodity price shocks using a structural non-linear dynamic model. The novel aspect of this study is that we determine whether the response of per capita GDP for the selected Sub-Saharan African countries is different to unexpected increases in agricultural commodity prices as opposed to decreases in prices. We conclude that there is very little evidence that an unanticipated price increase (decrease) will lead to a significantly different response in per capita incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the role of structural transformation in view of the remarkable growth performance of Sub‐Saharan African countries since the late 1990s. Our analysis covers 41 African countries over the period 1980 to 2014 and accounts for structural transformation by employing the analytical frameworks of (1) growth decomposition and (2) growth regression. Even though the low‐productive agricultural sector continues to employ most of the African workforce, our results reveal that structural transformation has taken place and that it has contributed significantly to African growth in the period 1980‐2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the innovation and development literature, natural resources ( NR) are generally viewed as a curse for developing nations and NR-based industries as having little potential to innovate and drive long-term growth. This has led policy and development experts to opt for strategies to induce a shift in the pattern of specialization towards other sectors. This paper proposes a different approach. By exploring recent evidence from the Argentinean agricultural sector and the mining industry in Chile, it points to the window of opportunity that NR industries offer as a platform to develop knowledge intensive industries with which to support economic development in resource-endowed countries. The lessons drawn from these findings suggest that development strategies can also promote more innovative knowledge intensive NR-based industries rather than moving away from them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on papers examining the role of entrepreneurship, technological innovation and continual adaptation for successful agricultural producers and agribusiness firms. One of the papers argues that while entrepreneurship may be, in part, genetically determined, it can be improved and encouraged through targeted education. The researchers suggest that enhancing entrepreneurship is particularly important in agriculture, and thus should be a priority in developing education programs at land-grant universities. Another paper discusses the role of universities to play in transferring technology to the private sector, but the processes and procedures for doing so are still quite immature. In one of the papers, researches are suggesting that internal analytical capabilities that drive a firm's on-going adjustments to new market/consumer realities are central to long-term success. These papers offer a starting point for continued discussions on how land-grant universities can adapt teaching, research, and outreach/technology transfer programs to better respond to the needs of entrepreneurs and, in turn, promote economic development.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The link between foreign aid and economic growth has been a controversial issue with no strong consensus so far. This paper argues that a possible reason why some studies may conclude that aid is ineffective in promoting economic growth might be that not all aid is given for development purposes (i.e. aid given for strategic considerations, humanitarian reasons or emergency relief). This study classifies foreign aid into four subcategories: agricultural aid, social infrastructure aid, investment aid, and non-investment aid. Using the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation technique on a Barro type growth regression with panel data from the aid recipient economies, this paper finds that when aid is directed to the agricultural sector of the developing countries, it is positively and significantly related to growth and can affect economic growth in the short run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we develop an empirical model to decompose the evolution of the agricultural share of GDP into three components: price changes, factor endowment changes and technological change. Our results suggest that relative prices have a positive but small influence on the share of agriculture in GDP in both the long-run and the short-run. An increase in capital per unit of labor, on the other hand, is associated with a smaller agricultural share. Technical change has been biased in favor of the agricultural sector but this effect has been swamped by the magnitude of the input effects, in particular, the changes in the capital-labor ratio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under global conditions that threaten the viability of rural economies and the farm sector, Italian legislation supports both through agritourism, a form of rural tourism conceived to diversify and complement the economic activities of individual farms. In theory, agritourism is a sustainable strategy: in its stated objectives, it promotes the conservation of a broadly conceived rural environment through its socioeconomic development. Building upon recent calls for assessments of sustainability that are relative to local environments, this paper analyses the relationship between the assumptions of a political scheme that attempts to sustain the rural environment and the perceptions and practices of those who live in that environment. Data collected in two different sites of southern Tuscany through participant observation and in-depth interviews show that different structural conditions and differing cultural values make agritourism responsive to the wants and needs of just one segment of the local farming population. In advocating rural development strategies that take into account pre-existing socioeconomic inequalities and varieties in farmers' environmental worldviews, this case study challenges the efficacy of global paradigms and emphasizes the role of empirical research in devising sustainable policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article presents comments of authors on the article "Commercialization and Commiditization: A Dialogue Between Perspective," by Peter Vandergeest. Peter Vandergeest extends his critique to document in more detail the similarities, differences and analytical shortcomings of the 1960s commercialization literature and the recent commoditization perspective on agrarian development. He aims not only to expose the inadequacies of these two contrasting theoretical approaches, but also to stimulate a dialogue between them so that researchers might move beyond the current impasse in neo-Marxist development sociology. Vandergeest's paper is one of the first systematic analytical comparisons of these two bodies of literature and offers fresh insight into both old and new theoretical and practical problems. One way in which one can take up these cultural dimensions is through the study of agricultural knowledge systems. This work should draw upon the sociology of knowledge and cognitive anthropology to analyze how farmers or other actors generate, reproduce and transmit knowledge that is relevant to agricultural practice.

Copyright of Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article, we discuss some key aspects of biofuel production in developing countries, and where constraints and tradeoffs are likely to occur. We use the example of two countries, Senegal and India, to highlight some of the issues of cost competitiveness, problems with ensuring stable supply of feedstock as well as critical missing links in the biofuels value chain that pose problems to scaling up national programs in these countries. We discuss the particularly problematic nature of jatropha, as a biodiesel feedstock, and underline some helpful guiding principles that can help country-level policy. We point to an underlying 'duality' between a well-functioning food system and favorable conditions for agribusiness enterprises, such as biofuels, and the relevance it has to achieving food security goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa is urbanizing rapidly. Yet most dual economy models focus on the sectoral rather than spatial dimensions of development. This article adopts a 'dual-dual' approach to measuring rural/urban and farm/nonfarm linkages. We develop an economy-wide model of Ethiopia that distinguishes between cities, towns, and rural areas. The model captures detailed sectoral and regional linkages, internal migration flows, and externalities from urban agglomeration. We find larger linkages between agricultural production and small towns and show that redirecting urban growth toward towns rather than cities leads to broader-based economic growth and poverty reduction. In contrast, industry and services, particularly within cities, are far less effective in reaching rural areas and the poor. Africa's current urbanization pattern-toward major cities rather than towns-will weaken national growth-poverty linkages. Urbanization that takes advantage of the synergistic relationship between agriculture and small towns has the potential to result in a more inclusive growth trajectory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides an outlook for the economic condition of Rwanda. It expects that the economy of the country will grow by 7% to 8%, up from 5.5% in 2009. According to Minister of Finance and Economic Planning John Rwangombwa, the agricultural sector was the key factor of economic growth, having registered a 10.4% growth in 2009. Moreover, financial experts from the agency anticipate that private sector will increase by at least 20%, therefore, boosting the economic activity.

Conventional wisdom tells us that with no market failure and local nonsatiation of preferences, the core is at least as large as the collection of competitive equilibrium allocations. We confirm this for a standard model featuring private ownership of land. Next we consider the public land ownership version of the model. If the role of land ownership and rent distribution is assumed by a government that ploughs back rent (at least in excess of its agricultural value) to its citizens, the equilibrium allocation remains efficient, but no longer need be in the core. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study focuses on the flow of fiscal and financial resources in China's rural economy during the first two decades of reform. Specifically, we seek to quantify the nature and direction of the capital flows between agriculture and the non-agricultural sectors and between the rural and non-rural sectors. We track identify the flows of three main sources of capital: fiscal flows, financial shifts through the formal banking system, and the implicit taxes that are moving through the grain system as a result of payment of in-kind (e.g., delivery quotas by farmers). Through this analysis, we provide policy makers with a set of measures showing that although in recent years the agriculture-to-industry and rural-to-urban flows have appeared to reverse themselves, as late as 2000 it does not appear as if the government is not directing enough resources into the rural economy. Greater flows, however, are needed if rural China is to modernize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing body of literature about the impacts of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton in developing countries. While many studies show remarkable benefits for farmers, there are also reports that question these results. Most previous studies consider impacts in deterministic terms, neglecting existing variability. Here we explain the main factors influencing the agronomic and economic outcomes. Apart from differences in pest pressure and patterns of pesticide use, germplasm effects can play an important role. Theoretical arguments are supported by empirical evidence from India. Better understanding of impact variability can help explain some of the paradoxes in the recent controversy over genetically modified crops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the contribution of agricultural exports to economic growth in less developed countries (LDCs). A sources-of-growth equation is developed from a dual economy model where agricultural and nonagricultural sectors are both divided into export and nonexport subsectors. This is then estimated using panel data for 62 LDCs for 1974–1995. Results provide evidence that there are significant structural differences in economic growth between low, lower-middle, and upper-income LDCs. Investment in the agricultural export subsector has a statistically identical impact on economic growth as investment in the nonagricultural export subsector. The marginal productivities in nonexport subsectors are over 30% lower than those in respective export subsectors. From a policy perspective, the results suggest that export-promotion policies should be balanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Stagnation and a failure to break out of a subsistence-oriented type of production continue to characterize the agricultural sector in Western Samoa. The lack of dynamism in agriculture has variously been ascribed to subsistence affluence and limited wants, the inhibiting impact of fa'asamoa - the Samoan way of life - and, more recently, to the effects of migration, remittances, aid and bureaucracy on economic development. This article suggests that the explanatory power of these factors by themselves is unsatisfactory. Instead, it argues that an absence of secure market outlets offering predictable and sufficiently attractive prices to farmers and the lack of rural-urban links in general are at the heart of the problem. The economy seems to be caught in a vicious circle where farmers fail to commit themselves to production for the market because of a lack of secure outlets, while adequate downstream distribution and processing channels do not develop for lack of secure supplies. The interchangeable nature of commercial and subsistence production in agriculture, widespread access to overseas remittances, and the smallness of the domestic economy serve to perpetuate the deadlock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the development of the policy analysis related to food and agricultural industry in the U.S. It is stated that policy analysis and science are in a symbiotic relationship as economics and politics attempt to define questions for study and for alternative solutions. It implies the relevance of educational institutions in producing the analysts of tomorrow and officials who attempt to demonstrate to their fellow citizens that government can be a competent, creative and even exciting place to work.

The article explores the role of the economist in the process of establishing public policy that regulates the food and agricultural industry in the U.S. According to Jim Shaffer, the economic regulation results from the attempt of citizens to articulate preferences about the physical and social environment they share. It is stated that economists must look for specific issues that will lead to useful and effective regulation policy research and education through identifying the production and marketing processes. The economists are advised to be active in developing and refining the public policy of regulation that needs careful empirical analysis of defined issues.

Examines the impact of adjustment measures on agrarian economies. Change in the role of agriculture in economic development; Assessment on the impact of technological innovation on employment and globalization.

The article focuses on the initiative of the World Bank in providing assistance to agricultural activities and rural development projects. The bank has adjusted their scale and direction to fund investments in the rural sector, which contributes about 5% of the annual investment by public sector in agriculture. The revised banking policy involved programs targeted towards farmers with small income. Although its lending strategy conforms to development projects, it is still faced with economic, social, sociological, institutional and technological difficulties.