425 research outputs found
AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVE ENTERPRISE IN THE TRANSITION FROM SOCIALIST COLLECTIVE FARMING
No full textCooperative enterprise has appeal as a means of filling gaps in the economic institutions of the rural sectors of the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. But in addition to problems that have faced cooperatives in the West because of their inherent characteristics, the Soviet-era legacy created cultural burdens that cooperatives will have to overcome. A review of countries’ experiences since 1989 indicates some commonalities in attempts to create “new cooperatives,” but also instructive differences across countries. The evidence so far is unfavorable for cooperatives in agricultural production. In marketing and input supply the current situation is more promising. In both production and marketing, the economic institutions remain in flux. Unique approaches involving cooperatives may take permanent root, but their long-term prospects are in doubt.Agribusiness,
TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY IN RUSSIAN AGRICULTURE
No full textFor decades, Russian agriculture had had little technological progress and virtually no foreign investment, which resulted in a stable production possibilities frontier and made the sector ideally suited to production function analysis. The production function estimations reported in Chapters 10-13 add to a series of previous studies of the input/output relationship in Russian agriculture (e.g., Clayton, 1980, 1984; Gray, 1981; Johnson and Brooks, 1983), which generally followed the same methodology. In the late 1970s and the 1980s, however, the average response production functions gave way in the economics literature to more sophisticated production analysis techniques that measured not only productivity but technical efficiency as well (Aigner, et al., 1977; Bauer, 1990). Some of the major methodological advances in applying technical efficiency analysis to individual firms were made by a joint Russian-American team in Moscow in the early 1980s (Jondrow, et al., 1982; Danlin et al., 1985), but lack of data for many sectors of the Russian economy precluded the application of this technique until the end of the decade. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the initial optimistic expectation was that many sectors of the new Russian economy could rapidly achieve both higher productivity and higher technical efficiency once market forces prevailed. Our research attempts to understand why this has not happened in Russian agriculture in terms of technical efficiency.Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,
IRRIGATION PRODUCTION FUNCTIONS WITH WATER-CAPITAL SUBSTITUTION
No full textThe dynamics of biomass growth implies that the yield of irrigated crops depends, in addition to the total amount of water applied, on irrigation scheduling during the growing period. Advanced irrigation technologies relax constraints on irrigation rates and timing, allowing to better adjust irrigation scheduling to the varying needs of the plants along the growing period. Irrigation production functions, then, should include capital (or expenditures on irrigation equipment) in addition to aggregate water. We derive such functions and study their water-capital substitution properties. Implications for water demand and adoption of irrigation technologies are investigated. An empirical application confirms these properties.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
DUALITY OF FARM STRUCTURE IN TRANSITION AGRICULTURE: THE CASE OF MOLDOVA
No full textThe duality of farm structure in Moldova is manifested by the existence of a relatively small number of large corporate farms at one extreme and a very large number of small and very small family farms at the other. “Medium-sized” family farms, the backbone of any market agriculture, virtually do not exist in Moldova. Moldovan agriculture is characterized by a much greater concentration of land in large farms than agriculture in market economies. The small individual farms on the whole are more productive and more efficient than the large corporate farms. They produce higher incomes for rural families than corporate farms. The main conclusion of the paper is that land should be allowed to flow from large corporate farms to small family farms through the medium of land markets until an equilibrium is established between the two farm sectors at a new level closer to that observed in market economies.farm structure, efficiency, productivity, land fragmentation, land concentration, farm size, Moldova, Farm Management, Productivity Analysis,
WELFARE MEASUREMENT UNDER THREATS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHES
No full textWelfare measures under threats of environmental catastrophes are studied using the "parable" apparatus of Weitzman and Lofgren [22]. The occurrence probability of the catastrophic event is driven (at least partly) by anthropogenic activities such as natural resource exploitation. Without external effects, the green NNP is a genuine welfare measure vis-à-vis a particular parable economy. Often, however, the occurrence hazard constitutes a public bad, treated as an externality by agents who ignore their own contribution to its accumulation. In such cases the green NNP, although accounting for the event hazard rate per se, fails to properly internalize future effects on the hazard rate of current economic activities and as a result overestimates welfare. The bias term associated with the green NNP is derived and expressed in a simply and interpretable form.green NNP, environmental catastrophes, hazard rate, uncertainty, Environmental Economics and Policy,
LAND REFORM AND DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURAL LAND MARKETS IN RUSSIA
No full textRussia has experienced dramatic changes in land ownership and land tenure since the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991: agricultural land has been largely privatized, individual landowners now have legal rights to most agricultural land in the country, and previous prohibitions on buying and selling of land have been removed by recent laws. The necessary preconditions for the development of agricultural land markets have been met and we are beginning to witness transactions that involve individual landowners, and not only the state. However, further development of the embryonic land market is severely circumscribed by the inadequacy of the administrative and technical infrastructure. In this paper we discuss the dynamically evolving legal framework for land reform, consider the impacts of land reform on privatization and ownership structure of agricultural land, and analyze the development of land market transactions. The analysis is based on official statistical sources and the results of a questionnaire-based survey conducted by the authors in 2003 in three regions. The paper concludes with a review of the existing constraints on land transactions and some policy recommendations.International Development, Land Economics/Use,
TURKMENISTAN'S NEW PRIVATE FARMERS: THE EFFECT OF HUMAN CAPITAL ON PERFORMANCE
No full textAlmost all former socialist countries are introducing private farming as part of land reform. In countries where such farming existed one or two generations ago, land might be restituted to former owners. In Turkmenistan, where there had been little private agriculture and no small landowners, land was distributed to new beneficiaries. This paper shows that the previous position of the new farm “owners” strongly affected what resources they had (land, capital, water) and how effectively they used them. The study is based on a survey conducted in 2000 on a sample of 143 farmers from Turkmenistan’s all five administrative regions. The farmers were divided for analysis into five categories, according to previous positions (managers, middle-level specialists, skilled and unskilled workers, and administrative staff). On the average, all categories of farmers turned a profit. However, the most successful were the middle-level specialists (agronomists, engineers). They had the largest plots, the best land, and the best-equipped farms. Like the managers and the administrative staff, they had savings, some of which they used as startup capital. They diversified their production more than others, and were better able to obtain credit. Former unskilled workers were the least successful, lacking capital, and unable to afford risks, thus growing only wheat and cotton at the expense of other crops and of livestock. Earlier studies have shown that former position affected the share of resources received by individuals in the ex Soviet Union. In addition to confirming the finding, we have shown that former position also affected the use of those resources, and the economic performance of the users. Unfortunately, the sample size was small, and our conclusions remain thus tentative.Farm Management,
DOES LAND REFORM IN TRANSITION COUNTRIES INCREASE CHILD LABOR? EVIDENCE FROM THE REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA
No full textThis paper investigates the issue of child labor in the context of land reforms in transition economies, using farm household data from the Republic of Georgia. The results show that an increase in landholdings as an outcome of the land reform can, in the presence of market imperfections, lead to an increase in child labor. This is because the increased demand for labor on the family farm is stronger than the wealth effect generated by the land reform. However, this result is not uniform across farm families. First, it is only relevant for boys, because girls tend to assist in household activities rather than in farm work. Second, larger households are able to meet the increased demand for farm labor without the need for additional child labor. To the extent that smaller households tend to be poorer, it is mostly the poor households that sacrifice the future wellbeing of their male children in order to satisfy current needs. In this sense, the land reform may lead to a higher rural inequality in the long run. The policy implications are that land reforms in transition countries should include, as an integral ingredient, the development of rural land, labor and credit markets, in order to avoid the repercussions associated with increased child labor.Labor and Human Capital, Land Economics/Use,
RESOURCE EXPLOITATION, BIODIVERSITY LOSS AND ECOLOGICAL EVENTS
No full textWe study the management of a natural resource that supports ecosystems as well as human needs. The reduction in the resource base introduces a threat of occurrence of catastrophic ecological events, such as the sudden collapse of the national habitat that lead to severe loss of biodiversity. The event occurrence conditions involve uncertainty of various types, and the distinction among these types affects the optimal exploitation policies. When uncertainty is due to our ignorance of some aspects of the underlying ecology, the isolated equilibrium states characterizing optimal exploitation for many renewable resource problems become equilibrium intervals. Events triggered by genuinely stochastic environmental conditions maintain the structure of isolated equilibria, but the presence of event uncertainty shifts these equilibrium states relative to their position when occurrence conditions are known with certainty.ecosystem, resource management, event uncertainty, biodiversity, extinction, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
LAND CONSOLIDATION AS A FACTOR FOR SUCCESSFUL DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE IN MOLDOVA
No full textSince 1991, Moldova has carried out a wide range of radical reforms affecting its social and economic system. The land reform, which was practically completed in 2000, created over 1 million landowners among the rural population. Many of them entrusted their land to managers of newly created corporate farms. Others used their privately owned land to establish independent family farms. The creation of independent family farms (so-called "peasant farms") was one of the primary goals of the land reform. More than 280,000 peasant farms have been created, averaging 1,86 hectares in size. The small size of the peasant farms, whose holdings are furthermore split into 3-4 parcels, raises considerable concerns about their long-term viability and has led to an intense public debate regarding the impacts of fragmentation. In this paper, we use the data from several recent surveys in Moldova to support the case for land consolidation. We show that, in the individual sector, larger farms produce higher family incomes and thus farm augmentation makes a positive contribution to the well-being of the rural population. We also show that, for farms of a given size, productivity increases as the number of parcels decreases. After demonstrating the economic advantages of consolidation, we proceed to discuss the actual use of various market mechanisms for land consolidation, including leasing as well as buying and selling of land. We then show that, in our surveys, farms with leased land are in fact larger than farms that rely on owned land only. This completes the logical circle of our argument: land consolidation leads to better economic performance, while land leasing is actually used as a market mechanism for consolidation, which benefits both lessees (through increased farm incomes) and lessors (through income from lease payments for their land).land consolidation, land lease, land market, Moldova, Land Economics/Use,
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