摘要:

The relative importance of farmland and of agriculture in a developed economy decreases over time, largely due to the landsaving bias in technological change. In spite of this decrease, or perhaps because of it, agricultural policies have sought to transfer income to farmers from consumers and taxpayers. Since World War II, a primary instrument which the US has employed in pursuing this transfer has been a system of acreage controls that restricts the input of land as a factor in field crop production. This programme has resulted in the transfer of benefits to land owners through capitalisation into land values. Evidence from a translog cost function and share equations of the US agricultural sector suggests that government intervention has moderated the decrease in the share of land in the value of agricultural production. At the same time, land‐saving bias in technological change has been reinforced by the induced scarcity of land, thereby acting to reduce the land shar

ISSN:0021-857X    

DOI:10.1111/j.1477-9552.1990.tb00614.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1990

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This paper examines the relationship between herd size and unit costs of production in the England and Wales dairy sector. Following the two‐stage estimation procedure of Dawson&Hubbard (1987), longrun average cost (LAC) functions are estimated from cross‐section data for five separate years between 1976/7 and 1986/7. Results show that the LAC curves are U‐shaped but highly skewed, implying that considerable economies of size are present at low output levels but diseconomies at larger levels are much less marked. Over time, technological change in particular has been shifting the LAC curves downward and to the right and away from the sector's long‐run equilibrium. The differential shift of cost curves, depending on the size of production, implies that technological change has been biased in favour of large

ISSN:0021-857X    

DOI:10.1111/j.1477-9552.1990.tb00615.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1990

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Wheat yield variability is analysed in light of recent concern that rapid technological change has caused increased instability in world cereal production. The coefficient of variation of wheat yields is estimated for 57 countries from detrended data for various periods between 1951 and 1986. The coefficient of variation in wheat yields is shown to be determined by country size, moisture regime and temperature. Technological variables, such as level of adoption of high‐yielding varieties and fertiliser dose, had no effect on differences in yield variability across countries. Analysis of yield variability for the same set of countries for three periods from 1951 to 1986 shows a general decline in yield variability since 1975 in developing countries. Analysis of wheat yield variability in India at the state and district levels confirms the analysis of country level data. The coefficient of variability of wheat yields in India in the period 1976‐85 has fallen to less than half the level in the 1950s and this decline is statistically signific

ISSN:0021-857X    

DOI:10.1111/j.1477-9552.1990.tb00616.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1990

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

A primal production analysis is conducted of 182 farm households producing multiple outputs in the Sri Lankan dry zone. The approach involves systems estimation of the production functions with first‐order equations for variable inputs and permits recovery of the production technology for each crop. Land and family labour are regarded as constraining inputs. Shadow prices are computed for the constraining inputs and yield important implications for increasing household profits. Evidence of global homotheticity in a subset of three inputs is found for three of the crops. Weak separability is rejected in all tested subsets except for fertiliser and chemicals used in the production of vegetables. Input demand elasticities are computed for allocations satisfying necessary and sufficient conditions for profit maximisation. Highly elastic conditional input demands and output supplies are implie

ISSN:0021-857X    

DOI:10.1111/j.1477-9552.1990.tb00617.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1990

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

In both the UK and the EC, the 1980s have seen rural issues assuming a higher position in the policy‐makers' agenda but in order to formulate and implement rural policy measures, governments and their agencies first need information. This article examines some of the main sources of data on rural employment in England and reviews the extent to which they lend themselves to the analysis of rural issues. The definition of rurality adopted is clearly critical though different definitions may be needed for different purposes. A definition developed by Denham and Craig is discussed and its use in a project designed to assess the uptake of training in rural areas describe

ISSN:0021-857X    

DOI:10.1111/j.1477-9552.1990.tb00618.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1990

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Agricultural production efficiency in four irrigated cropping regions of the Punjab province of Pakistan was compared on the basis of a probabilistic frontier production function estimated from whole‐farm survey data for the year 1984‐85. It is found that the gross income of farmers can be increased by 13% at the current levels of resource use if the production gap between ‘best practice’ and ‘average’ farmers is suitably narrowed in all cropping regions. This will increase profits by up to 40%. No significant difference in technical efficiency was found across the regions. Economic efficiency was similar across all cropping regions except in the cotton region, which had significantly lower economic efficiency due to higher allocative inefficiency, which in turn was attributable to the more dynamic production technologies being adopted in

ISSN:0021-857X    

DOI:10.1111/j.1477-9552.1990.tb00619.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1990

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This paper develops a dynamic model of a dairy cow population and of milk supply response. When applied to the US Lake States, the model provides evidence against the Nerlovian model. It suggests that the pattern of dynamic effects of prices on cow numbers varies for different prices. The estimated dynamic supply elasticities provide some useful information on the nature of dairy production adjustments. For example, the response of milk supply to market prices is found to be very inelastic in the short run. It takes at least 7 years of sustained change to obtain an elastic response to milk price. Also, feed price and slaughter cow price are found to have smaller effects on dairy supply than milk price, but larger effects than risk, hay price or capital cost.

ISSN:0021-857X    

DOI:10.1111/j.1477-9552.1990.tb00620.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1990

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Given the importance of Chinese foodgrain production both in China and in the world food market, it is useful to explore the sources of the increased variabilities of China's foodgrain production (Stone and Zhong, 1989). A production function with composite error structure and a heteroscedastic disturbance is applied to cross‐section and time‐series data from China. The function provides information on the contributions of inputs to production variance and therefore on risk. It is found that production variance is positively related to sown area, chemical fertiliser and irrigation, and is negatively related to electricity use. However, most of the estimates determining the marginal risk effects lack statistical significance. This suggests that the measured controllable factors do not contribute very significantly to Chinese foodgrain production variabil

ISSN:0021-857X    

DOI:10.1111/j.1477-9552.1990.tb00621.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1990

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Important political and institutional relationships exist between most grain‐trading partners. In many cases the purpose of these relationships is to enhance importer loyalty to a particular exporter. This paper tests for loyalty in the world wheat market. Loyalty is measured by repeat purchases. An application of the Markov model is used to analyse loyalty and to explain international trade flows in wheat. Results show that in general the United States has relatively strong import loyalty compared to the other exporters such as Canada and the European Communit

ISSN:0021-857X    

DOI:10.1111/j.1477-9552.1990.tb00622.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1990

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

In this paper, a model is presented of the product diversification problem which features both producer risk aversion and product complementarity as determinants of product diversification. Although both risk aversion and product complementarity are, in the absence of the other, incentives to diversity production, when the two are present their joint influence may create a disincentive to diversification. In particular, an increase in the value of product complementarity may result in reduced product diversification for a risk‐averse produce

ISSN:0021-857X    

DOI:10.1111/j.1477-9552.1990.tb00623.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1990

数据来源: WILEY