1,721,127 research outputs found
Empowering Rural People for Their Own Development
Get PDFThis Elmhirst lecture first discusses the features of the institutional environment which allow rural people in low income countries to design, plan and implement their own rural development. These are divided into two broad groups: the institutional environment for rural development (environment for the private sector, communities and civil society, local government, and sector institutions) and the many factors governing profitability of investment in agriculture. While in many poor countries the institutional environment has improved over the last 20 years, the most poorly performing countries still have by far the poorest environment for local government in the world. Within an empowering institutional environment, the rate of agricultural and rural development is determined by investments of many different types that in turn depend primarily on the profitability of agriculture. The paper discusses the large number of factors which determine profitability. Few of these are under the direct control of farmers or agricultural sector institutions, but depend on governance and investments in other sectors such as trade and transport. In many of the poorest countries there has been considerable improvement in macroeconomic management and sector policies over the past 20 years, but progress in international and intra-regional trade policies, in agricultural trade policies, in transport infrastructure, and in agricultural research and extension have been limited.Community/Rural/Urban Development,
Explaining agricultural and agrarian policies in developing countries
Get PDFPolitical outcomes - such as agricultural taxation, subsidization, and the provision of public goods - result from political bargaining among interest groups. Such bargaining is likely to be efficiency-enhancing and growth-enhancing when equally powerful interest groups - aware of the economywide budget constraint and know the economic implications of different policy options - participate, and when impartial institutions are available to enforce decisions. The greater the deviation from these conditions, the greater the potential for efficiency-reducing outcomes, the costs of which will generally fall disproportionately on politically underrepresented or powerless groups. Material conditions of agriculture production - such as spatial dispersion, seasonal work cycles, covariance of risk, and the associated market imperfections - exacerbate the difficulties faced by small producers to engage in collective action. So, despite being generally the economically most efficient form of production, family farmers'ability to counteract the political influence of rural elites and urban dwellers is extremely limited. Lack of independent institutions and clearly defined property rights - and the presence of organizational residues - not only reduce peasants'bargaining power but may also make it more profitable for powerful groups to prefer rent seeking to productive activities. How can these undesirable outcomes be avoided, and how can sustainable policy changes be initiated? Experience indicates that fiscal crises of the state, often triggered or aggravated by an external shock, can cause lasting changes of policies and institutions. By forcing the state to devolve some of its power in exchange for financial assistance to meet its immediate needs, such a crisis can give rise to the emergence of independent legal, political, and economic institutions that are maintained even once the crisis has subsided, External actors that provide resources in terms of crisis and at the same time enhance the scope for politically least vocal parts of civil society to participate in political discourse can have a significant impact on changing policy. The paper discusses in detail the implications for research as well as for policy advice.Labor Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Health Economics&Finance
A MICROECONOMIC APPROACH TO INDUCED INNOVATION
Get PDFInvention possibilities are reformulated using research processes which have a cost and different implications for rates and biases of technical change. In the comparative static model a firm has the choice to build a plant of existing design or to improve it by research. The firm maximizes present value over the lifetime of the plant. Research costs and present value of capital and labor costs influence research mix and rate and bias to technical change. Controversies in the literature of induced innovation are discussed in terms of the model. A rise in labor costs does not necessarily lead to a more labor saving bias.Institutional and Behavioral Economics,
Characteristics and performance of settlement programs : a review
Get PDFThe studies and cases reviewed by the authors suggest that settlement programs are too often designed on the assumption that all settlers will or can succeed. This had led to too much centralized administration and rigid designs, rather than reliance on decentralized approaches, flexibility in implementation, support for spontaneous settlement, and reliance on the settler's own investment capacity. Collective forms of crop production have not worked. Cropland is best allocated to individual families whose land rights must be clearly defined as ownership or long-term leases. Farm sizes must be flexibly adjusted to skills, the availability of family labor, and the families'capital ownership. Settlers should therefore be allowed to sell or rent the land to other beneficiaries. If poor settlers are to benefit or succeed, settlement cannot be based on credit finance but must include grants. Paternalistic constraints on the choice of crops or technologies, marketing, or participation in the labor force have usually not been enforceable or have had negative effects.Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Urban Housing,Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Housing&Human Habitats
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Ex-ante and ex-post adjustment mechanisms to seasonality among the smallholder farmers in Mwanachingwala, Zambia
Get PDFDissertation (MSc Agric)--University of Pretoria, 2013.In rain-fed farming systems, a poor harvest can have broad and overwhelming effects on affected households. Smallholder farmers have to ensure that they have adequate food from one harvest to the other and enough inputs for the next farming season. Households consume more just after the harvest and the consumption levels decline as they move away from the harvest season.
The study identified the ex-ante and ex-post adjustment mechanisms to seasonal food and input requirements. Special consideration was given to determine whether the probability of using a given adjustment mechanism to seasonality is the same in good, normal, poor and very poor years and whether household wealth has an influence on the use of adjustment mechanisms. Attention was also given to determining whether agricultural production and household wealth are reflected in observed seasonality in consumption.
The study used cross-sectional data from 225 randomly selected households. The study relied on non-parametric methods of data analysis because the required dependent variables could not meet the parametric assumptions.
The analysis showed that the probabilities of using some ex-ante and ex-post adjustment mechanisms for both food and input requirements by the non-poor households are not the same in good, normal, poor and very poor years. However, the poor households’ probability of using any of the identified ex-post adjustment mechanisms to seasonal input requirements is the same in all the years.
The study established that household wealth affects the use of ex-ante and ex-post adjustment mechanisms to seasonal input requirements and ex-post adjustment mechanisms to seasonal food requirements after good, normal, poor and very poor harvests. The study further revealed that agricultural production is reflected in household seasonal consumption. However, the study failed to find a relationship between consumption and agricultural production in the post-harvest season after good and normal harvests. The study also showed that household wealth is reflected in food consumption in all the seasons of normal, poor and very poor years. However, no relationship was found between food consumption and household wealth in the post-harvest and rainy seasons after good harvests.
The study further revealed that there is always a seasonal fall in consumption levels among households of all wealth strata despite the use of adjustment mechanisms. The situation worsens as we move from the good years towards the very poor years.
The study suggests that the use of one size fits all type of interventions to minimise the seasonality problem cannot adequately achieve the required results for all households. It is important to know the way households from each wealth stratum respond to the seasonality problem and why they respond in such a way. Programmes that encourage strategic planning, agricultural production and wealth creation are necessary to reduce the seasonality problem. Furthermore, mechanisms which ensure that the benefits from government interventions reach the poor households are necessary.gm2014Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Developmentunrestricte
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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