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on Agricultural Economics |
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Issue of 2007‒01‒28
six papers chosen by |
| By: | Angelsen, Arild |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a framework for analyzing tropical deforestation and reforestation using the von Thunen model as its starting point: land is allocated to the use which yields the highest rent, and the rents of various land uses are determined by location. Forest cover change therefore becomes a question of changes in rent of forest versus non-forest use. While this is a simple and powerful starting point, more intriguing issues arise when this is applied to analyze real cases. An initial shift in the rent of one particular land use generates feedbacks which affect the rent of all land uses. For example, a new technology in extensive agriculture should make this land use more profitable and lead to more forest clearing, but general equilibrium effects (changes in prices and local wages) can modify or even reverse this conclusion. Another issue is how a policy change or a shift in broader market, technological, and institutional forces will affect various land use rents. The paper deals with three such areas: technological progress in agriculture, land tenure regimes, and community forest management. The second part of the paper links the von Thunen framework to the forest transition theory. The forest transition theory describes a sequence over time where a forested region goes through a period of deforestation before the forest cover eventually stabilizes and starts to increase. This sequence can be seen as a systematic pattern of change in the agricultural and forest land rents over time. Increasing agricultural rent leads to high rates of deforestation. The slow-down of deforestation and eventual reforestation is due to lower agricultural rents (the economic development path) and higher forest rent (the forest scarcity path). Various forces leading to these changes are discussed and supported by empirical evidence from different tropical regions. |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics & Policies,Forestry,Common Property Resource Development,Economic Theory & Research,Markets and Market Access |
| Date: | 2007–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4117&r=agr |
| By: | Mora-Alfaro, Jorge; Román-Vega, Isabel |
| Abstract: | The rural areas of Costa Rica suffered significant transformations as a consequence of two phenomenon: In one hand, the long tendency to economical, political and cultural global integration living by the most diverse nations in the contemporary time. In the other hand, the reorientation of the growth economy model and the institutional reform introduced since the 80 decade in this country. In this document are presented the main discoveries obtained with the evaluating study about the impact of these economic and political changes in Tortuguero Conservation Area (ACTo), focused in the rural organizations development. The main tendencies follow up by the productive, environmental, institutional and social processes, occurred in this rural territory, allow to perceive the context conditions in which the local rural organizations development happened and the opportunities and challenges that they confront in the present time. |
| Keywords: | Rural development; territorial approach; sustainability; agriculture and environment; conservation areas; institutional change |
| JEL: | Q52 Q58 Q56 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:1521&r=agr |
| By: | Christopher L. Gilbert |
| Abstract: | Value chain analysis extends traditional supply chain analysis by locating values to each stage of the chain. This can result in a “cake division” fallacy in which value at one stage is seen as being at the expense of value at another. Over the past three decades, the coffee and cocoa industries have witnessed dramatic falls in the producer (i.e. farmer) share in rental price. Both industries are highly concentrated at the processing stage. Nevertheless, developments in the producer and retail markets are largely unconnected and there is no evidence the falls in the producer share are the result of exercise of monopoly-monopsony power. The explanation of declining producer shares is more straightforward – processing, marketing and distribution costs, incurred in consuming countries have tended to increase over time while production costs at the origin have declined. |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:trn:utwpde:0605&r=agr |
| By: | Bruce A. Babcock (Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD); Midwest Agribusiness Trade Research and Information Center (MATRIC)) |
| Abstract: | Presented at the Iowa Pork Congress, Des Moines, Iowa, January 25 |
| Date: | 2007–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ias:cpaper:07-tr48&r=agr |
| By: | Schroeter, John R. |
| Abstract: | Several empirical analyses of data from fed cattle markets have found a negative correlation between a region's weekly delivery volume of captive supply cattle and contemporaneous price in the local cash market. This negative correlation has been cited as evidence of a causal relationship between the two variables; a relationship in which buyers (beef packing plants) use captive supply procurement as an instrument to depress prices paid to cash market sellers (feeders). This paper investigates circumstances under which this empirical regularity might emerge as a benign artifact of buyer and seller behavior in a fed cattle market in which both sides are price takers. One feature of these markets is that sellers of both marketing agreement (the predominant captive supply procurement method) cattle and spot market cattle have some flexibility in scheduling delivery in order to take advantage of expected price changes. The effect that this type of inter-temporal arbitrage has on the dynamics of price and captive supply is investigated using simulation methods applied to a rational expectations model of delivery timing incentives. |
| Keywords: | cattle market, captive supply, extended path algorithm |
| JEL: | D4 Q1 |
| Date: | 2007–01–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:12710&r=agr |
| By: | Neeraj Kaushal |
| Abstract: | I use changes in immigrant eligibility for food stamps under the 1996 federal law and heterogeneous state responses to set up a natural experiment research design to study the effect of food stamps on Body Mass Index (BMI) of adults in immigrant families. I find that in the post-1996 period food stamps use by foreign-born unmarried mothers with a high school or lower education was 10 percentage points higher in states with substitute programs than in states that implemented the federal ban. However, this increase in FSP participation was not associated with any statistically significant difference in BMI. I find that FSP participation was associated a statistically insignificant 0.3 percent increase in BMI among low-educated unmarried mothers. |
| JEL: | H0 I0 I3 I31 |
| Date: | 2007–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12849&r=agr |