Liberalization and globalization:Trojan horse for the cotton traders' domination in francophone Africa

The Francophone African Countries (FACs) exclusively fight for the abolition of subsidies applied by a few big cotton producing countries. Although legitimate, it is doubtful that the outcome could be so much satisfactory because subsidizing countries have room in re-arranging measures of their support policies. The FACs are missing the effect of market structure on price formation. Market power of trading Multinational Companies (MNCs) is getting stronger and stronger. It concerns cotton too and there are signs that an international price index serves as an expression of this power. The FACs were protected from MNCs in the cotton trade. Within less than one decade, and thanks to the implementation of the liberalization process, these companies have become totally dominant. Liberalization then served as Trojan Horse for the MNCs penetration.Negative price impact resulted. Unilateral and unfair change of cotton transaction rules took place. Historical private regulation systems are being pushed down to the sole benefit of traders and at the expense of cotton producers.It is worth noting the paradox of exacerbated concentration of the commodity trade at the international level while developing countries were forced to go into a fragmentation movement by abolishing marketing boards or public monopoly companies which provided some price protection to farmers. This fragmentation movement made easier the domination of trading MNCs in developing countries through power in price formation and adjustment of transaction rules

The Real K-Theory of Compact Lie Groups

Let $G$ be a compact, connected, and simply-connected Lie group, equipped with a Lie group involution $\sigma_G$ and viewed as a $G$-space with the conjugation action. In this paper, we present a description of the ring structure of the (equivariant) $KR$-theory of $(G, \sigma_G)$ by drawing on previous results on the module structure of the $KR$-theory and the ring structure of the equivariant $K$-theory

Adams operations on classical compact Lie groups

Let $G$ be $U(n)$, $SU(n)$, $Sp(n)$ or $Spin(n)$. In this short note we give explicit general formulas for Adams operations on $K^*(G)$, and eigenvectors of Adams operations on $K^*(U(n))$.Comment: To appear in Proc. Amer. Math. So

Manin's conjecture on a nonsingular quartic del Pezzo surface

Given a nonsingular quartic del Pezzo surface, a conjecture of Manin predicts the density of rational points on the open subset of the surface formed by deleting the lines. We prove that this prediction is of the correct order of magnitude for a particular surface.Comment: 29 page

KRKR-theory of compact Lie groups with group anti-involutions

Let $G$ be a compact, connected, and simply-connected Lie group, equipped with an anti-involution $a_G$ which is the composition of a Lie group involutive automorphism $\sigma_G$ and the group inversion. We view $(G, a_G)$ as a Real $(G, \sigma_G)$-space via the conjugation action. In this note, we exploit the notion of Real equivariant formality discussed in \cite{Fo} to compute the ring structure of the equivariant $KR$-theory of $G$. In particular, we show that when $G$ does not have Real representations of complex type, the equivariant $KR$-theory is the ring of Grothendieck differentials of the coefficient ring of equivariant $KR$-theory over the coefficient ring of ordinary $KR$-theory, thereby generalizing a result of Brylinski-Zhang's (\cite{BZ}) for the complex $K$-theory case.Comment: 11 pages. Accepted by Topology and its Application

Liberalization and globalization: Trojan Horse for the cotton traders' domination in Francophone Africa

The Francophone African Countries (FACs) exclusively fight for the abolition of subsidies applied by a few big cotton producing countries. Although legitimate, it is doubtful that the outcome could be so much satisfactory because subsidizing countries have room in re-arranging measures of their support policies. The FACs are missing the effect of market structure on price formation. Market power of trading Multinational Companies (MNCs) is getting stronger and stronger. It concerns cotton too and there are signs that an international price index serves as an expression of this power. The FACs were protected from MNCs in the cotton trade. Within less than one decade, and thanks to the implementation of the liberalization process, these companies have become totally dominant. Liberalization then served as Trojan Horse for the MNCs penetration.Negative price impact resulted. Unilateral and unfair change of cotton transaction rules took place. Historical private regulation systems are being pushed down to the sole benefit of traders and at the expense of cotton producers.It is worth noting the paradox of exacerbated concentration of the commodity trade at the international level while developing countries were forced to go into a fragmentation movement by abolishing marketing boards or public monopoly companies which provided some price protection to farmers. This fragmentation movement made easier the domination of trading MNCs in developing countries through power in price formation and adjustment of transaction rules.Cotton trade; Africa; Multinational companies; transaction rules; price capture

Learning from the economics of networks to enhance poverty alleviation in African cotton zones

Cotton sectors in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) were run by monopolistic para-statal organisms for a long time. They embarked upon a restructuring/liberalisation process as of the mid-1980s but the outcomes were mitigated at best. As these sectors resemble service distribution networks (telecommunication, power, etc.) in terms of historical monopolies and deregulation, cotton development in SSA could be reviewed and their current restructuring appraised according to economics of networks models.This paper stresses that cotton sectors in SSA could be considered as service networks. They have a 3-layer morphology and comply with the five recognition criteria as suggested by Curien (2000). Stylised facts regarding network dynamics closely fit former cotton sector development patterns in most SSA countries. Cotton development did not occur without the related networks reaching a critical size that public intervention helped to attain through a time-demanding process.In areas where cotton production is not very developed, it would not be worthwhile to attempt to restructure existing cotton networks as they are of insufficient size. Where cotton production is well developed, such deregulation could be considered but not through a vertical disintegration procedure. Splitting an existing nationwide monopoly into a limited number of local monopolies is a way of preserving vertical integration and of facilitating geographical regulation which should be more efficient and comprehensive than regulating only through purchase price fixing.economics of networks; cotton; deregulation; Mali; privatization; liberalization

Cotton policy in SSA: a matter of institutional arrangements related to farmers' constraints

Cotton production in the Francophone African Countries (FACs) derives exclusively from smallholders whose holding size is less than 5 ha on average. From the 1990s, the FACs are globally ranking third to second in exporting cotton to the world market. Such an achievement could be regarded as the result of an institutional construction which took place for four decades in dealing with the smallholders' constraints and concerns. Since the mid-1990s, the FACs are engaged into processes of privatization/liberalization, at distinct modalities, within the implementation of globalization-oriented policies. Drastic changes are now observed in pricing mechanisms, provision of inputs and credit to farmers...etc. These changes imply modifications in the responsibilities sharing between stakeholders, with modalities which are implying sometimes disharmony and uncertainty within the sector. This is an illustration of the construction-feature of new institutional arrangements which can hardly be automatically acceptable to all. The paper provides an analysis of the institutional construction in dealing with few major constraints or concerns faced by the smallholders in the FACs.Globalization; institutional arrangement; liberalization; cotton; history