SOME GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR EMPIRICAL PRODUCTION RESEARCH IN AGRICULTURE

Constraints on production economic research are examined in three dimensions: problem focus, methodology, and data availability. Data availability has played a large role in the choice of problem focus and explains some misdirected focus. A proposal is made to address the data availability constraint. The greatest self-imposed constraints are methodological. Production economics has focused on flexible representations of technology at the expense of specificity in preferences. Yet some of the major problems faced by decision makers relate to long-term problems, e.g., the commodity boom and ensuring debt crisis of the 1970s and 1980s where standard short-term profit maximization models are unlikely to capture the essence of decision maker concerns.Production Economics,

Path dependence, its critics and the quest for ‘historical economics’

The concept of path dependence refers to a property of contingent, non- reversible dynamical processes, including a wide array of biological and social processes that can properly be described as 'evolutionary.' To dispell existing confusions in the literature, and clarify the meaning and significance of path dependence for economists, the paper formulates definitions that relate the phenomenon to the property of non-ergodicity in stochastic processes; it examines the nature of the relationship between between path dependence and 'market failure,' and discusses the meaning of 'lock-in.' Unlike tests for the presence of non-ergodicity, assessments of the economic significance of path dependence are shown to involve difficult issues of counterfactual specification, and the welfare evaluation of alternative dynamic paths rather than terminal states. The policy implications of the existence of path dependence are shown to be more subtle and, as a rule, quite different from those which have been presumed by critics of the concept. A concluding section applies the notion of 'lock-in' reflexively to the evolution of economic analysis, suggesting that resistence to historical economics is a manifestation of 'sunk cost hysteresis' in the sphere of human cognitive development.path dependence, non-ergodicity, irreversibility, lock-in, counterfactual analysis

The role of trust in financial sector development

In any economic environment where decisions are decentralized, agents consider the risk that others might unfairly exploit informational asymmetries to their own disadvantage. Incomplete results, especially, lies at the heart of financial transactions in which agents trade real claims for promises of future real claims. Agents thus need to invest considerable resources to assess the trustworthiness of others with whom they know they can interact only under conditions of limited and asymmetrically distributed information. Thinking of finance as the complex of institutions and instruments needed to reduce the cost of trading promises among anonymous individuals who do not fully trust each other, the author analyzes how incomplete trust shapes the transaction costs in trading assets, and how it affects resource allocation and pricing decisions from rational, forward-looking agents. His analysis leads to core propositions about the role of finance and financial efficiency in economic development. He recommends areas of financial sector reform in emerging economies aimed at improving the financial system's efficiency in dealing with incomplete trust. Among other things, the public sector can improve trust in finance by improving financial infrastructure, including legal systems, financial regulation, and security in payment and trading systems. But fundamental improvements in financial efficiency may best be gained by eliciting good conduct through market forces.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Decentralization,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Banks&Banking Reform,Insurance&Risk Mitigation

The flexible accelerator mechanism in a financial adjustment cost model

Production Function;econometrics

A generalized inefficiency model with input and output dependence

In this paper we propose a general inefficiency model, in the sense that technical inefficiency is, simultaneously, a function of all inputs, outputs, and contextual variables. We recognize that change in inefficiency is endogenous or rational, and we propose an adjustment costs model with firm-specific but unknown adjustment cost parameters. When inefficiency depends on inputs and outputs, the firm's optimization problem changes as the first order conditions must take into account the dependence of inefficiency on the endogenous variables of the problem. The new formulation introduces statistical challenges which are successfully resolved. The model is estimated using Maximum Simulated Likelihood and an empirical application to U.S. banking is provided

Developing countries versus multinationals in a globalising world : the dangers of falling behind

Abstract not availableinternational economics and trade ;

The economics of greenhouse gas accumulation: A simulation approach

This article investigates efficient policies against global warming in the case of multiple greenhouse gases. In a dynamic optimization model conditions for an efficient combination of greenhouse gases are derived. The model is empirically specified and adapted to a simulation approach. By various simulation runs, the economics of greenhouse gas accumulation are illuminated; and in particular, it is shown that a CO2-policy alone would most likely lead to an allocation far from efficiency. These results indicate, that policy measures against global warming should allow for substituting between different greenhouse gases. Such a policy would mainly affect the agricultural sector because livestock and intensive farming techniques contribute significantly to the emission of greenhouse gases.

Population growth and natural resource scarcity: long-run development under seemingly unfavourable conditions

The paper develops a model with non-exponential population growth, nonrenewable natural resources, and endogenous knowledge creation to analyse substitution between primary inputs and an essential use of resources in the innovation sectors, which is generally considered as most unfavourable for growth. We show that population growth and poor input substitution are not detrimental but even needed to obtain sustainable consumption. A permanent increase in living standards can be achieved under free market conditions. With a backstop technology, the system converges to a balanced growth path with classical properties.Population growth, non-renewable resources, poor input substitution, technical change, sustainability