Farmer organization, collective action and market access in Meso-America:

"The global agricultural economy is changing. Commodity prices are declining, and producers increasingly supply complex value chains. There is growing interest in how farmers can benefit from emerging market opportunities. Farmers are encouraged to produce high value crops and engage in value-adding activities such as agro-processing. Farmer organization and collective action are often seen as key factors in enhancing farmers' access to markets. Often too little attention is directed at a) the most appropriate types of organization, b) whether the public and/or private sector is best placed to support their formation, and c) the conditions necessary for ensuring their economic viability. This paper reports on research in Mexico and Central America that explored these issues for commodity maize and high value vegetables respectively. The benefits of farmer organization are more evident in the vegetable sector characterized by high transaction costs associated with market access. The research suggests that farmer organizations established by and directly linked to supermarkets may be more economically sustainable as opposed to organizations supported by non-governmental organizations. However, the most representative vegetable producer organizations in both Honduras and El Salvador include fewer than 5 percent of total horticultural producers. This is due to producer organizations' limited business skills and non-replicable organizational models for linking producers to markets. There is less incentive for maize farmers to organize themselves to access output markets as the transaction costs associated with market access are relatively low: there are so many buyers and sellers that farmer organizations would have little impact on, for example, prices. The benefits of farmer organization are clearer when it comes to accessing credit, seed, and fertilizer. Farmer organization is a critical factor in making markets work for the poor particularly in high value products, but the role and timing of the substantial public and private investment needed to establish and maintain these organizations is poorly understood." authors' abstractSmall-scale farmers, maize, High value agricultural products, Pro-poor growth, business development services, value chains, Collective action, small farms, Markets,

The Influence of Product Markets on Industrial Relations

Product markets are the foundation on which industrial relations institutions are built. Trade union strength is partly dependent upon the state of the labour market, but it is imperfections in the product market that are the precondition of their winning benefits for their members. Sectoral agreements consequently formed the basis for collective bargaining in most industrialised countries. But international competition has destroyed this for much of the private sector. Quasi-markets have undermined it for much of the public sector. The paper assesses the empirical economic literature on the impact of product markets. It considers enthnographic insights into how competitive pressures feed through to managerial behaviour. It concludes with alternative strategies – co-operative bargaining, legislative intervention, and consumer campaigns – that seek to defend labour standards from competitive erosion

Individual Enforcement Rights in International Sovereign Bonds

Sovereign bonds are notoriously hard to enforce. What little rights bondholders have can be vested either collectively or individually. It seems that investors, particularly in the US market, traditionally had a preference for the latter, which hindered financial market reform projects, such as the universal adoption of collective action clauses in 2003. This paper uses a range of theoretical approaches to discuss whether it is indeed in the bondholder’s collective interest to be allowed to individually sue and attach the debtor country’s assets following a default. Furthermore, it examines the landmark case of Elliott Associates v. Peru to attempt a quantitative assessment of just how much sovereign bondholders actually value individual enforcement rights. I find that even the single most important event to reinforce creditor rights in recent years had no noticeable impact on bond prices

Benefits of responsible fishing: the impact of an innovative trial of voluntary restraint

Early in 2002, members of two Producer Organisations (POs), the North Sea Fishermen’s Organisation in Britain, and the Dutch Cooperative Producentenorganisatie Oost Nederland, realised that their quotas of plaice and sole were insufficient to last until the end of the quota period. Vessels have in the order of 70-80% of their needs for sole but only 50-60% plaice. In response they voluntarily tied up their vessels periodically early in the year. This was repeated in 2004 and 2005. The objective of this study, which was part-funded by the European Commission Directorate- General for Fisheries and undertaken by the two POs and a firm of economists, was to identify whether the expected improved price stability for plaice and sole on the Urk auction market where most of the fish is sold, was achieved, and to estimate the amount of the improvement in revenues and cost-savings for the fleet. Inverse demand functions were calculated for lemon sole, dover sole, and plaice and the results suggest that revenue is maximised by spreading supplies evenly across any given time period. This was confirmed by simulations of the estimated model which were run to predict what would have been the revenue in the period that the tie up scheme was in force against an alternative scenario of the scheme not being in force. The aggregate gains in earnings are calculated to have been up to 18%. From a sample of vessels' costs and earnings accounts statistical evidence emerged that the profitability was higher in the years when the tie-up scheme was in place, though no significant change in revenue and crew share was found. While individually the evidence of the econometrics and statistical tests is not conclusive (and that of the statistical tests need not be attributable to the tie-up scheme), combined, the two pieces of evidence do suggest that the tie-up scheme did result in the intended higher revenues and profits, and a more stable market

Making market information services work better for the poor in Uganda:

"There is growing pressure for farmers in countries such as Uganda to accelerate their efforts to commercialize production in the face of increasing market competition from neighboring countries and across the world. To assist farmers, a new generation of low cost market information services is being developed that takes advantage of information and communication technologies such as FM radios, mobile phones, and internet-based communications systems, to enable farmers to monitor and adjust to dynamic market conditions in local, national, and export markets. Although there is much interest in market information from farmers, other market chain actors, and service providers, there is skepticism from funding agencies to support such services over the long term, due to past failures. This study therefore aims to evaluate how farmers access and use market information to improve their market decision making. It also evaluates whether there are any advantages of collective action in using market information to improve marketing decisions. This is considered an important point of analysis as virtually all extension plans in Uganda currently use farmer groups as key element of their learning and intervention strategies. Survey results found that all farmers interviewed were able to access market information through radio and mobile phones. In Uganda, up to 94 percent of farmers interviewed owned a radio and 25 percent of farmers owned mobile phones. Up to 52 percent of farmers indicated that receiving Market Information Services (MIS) had a positive impact on their business, and 39 percent stated that it had a lot of impact in terms of decision making and stabilizing incomes." authors' abstractMarket Information Services, Group Marketing, Collective action, FM Radio, Mobile Phone, SMS, income,

Institutions, sustainable land use and consumer welfare: the case of forest and grazing lands in northern Ethiopia

Land is an essential factor of production. Institutions that govern its efficient use determine the sustainability of this essential resource. In Ethiopia all land is publicly owned. Such an institutional setting is said to have resulted in the major degradation of Ethiopia's land resources and dissipation of the resource rent. An alternative to this is assigning a private property institution. In this paper, we examine the consumer welfare effects of a change in the institutional setting on communal forest and grazing lands, using a cross-section data set of 200 households in Northern Ethiopia. Findings suggest that changing the current institutional setting could indeed be welfare reducin