Macroeconomic impacts of export commodity price subsidy in Papua New Guinea

A macroeconometric simulation study is undertaken to evaluate the impacts of a price subsidy for tree crops in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The price subsidy had favourable impacts on tree crop export income, aggregate demand, private consumption, and investment and employment. It increased imports, the budget deficit, and the demand for money and adversely affected the fiscal balance, inflation and interest rates, the BOP position and macroeconomic stability. The price subsidy contributed favourably to internal balance but adversely affected external balance. It worked against many of the policy objectives and made macroeconomic management difficult. With the introduction of the price subsidy, the government violated the commitments made under the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture and PNG’s Structural Adjustment Program.International Relations/Trade,

COMPETITIVENESS AND COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE OF TREE CROP SMALLHOLDINGS IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

The contribution by tree crop industries to economic development in Papua New Guinea (PNG) depends to a considerable extent on their economic efficiency in terms of competitiveness and comparative advantage of domestic production and export marketing. These advantages for the four major tree crop products - coffee, coconut, cocoa, and palm oil - are analysed in this study. The aim is to ascertain whether PNG is an efficient producer of these tree crop exports in terms of international competitiveness and comparative advantage, and whether these industries deserve continuing government support.comparative advantage, competitiveness, devaluation, traded goods, tree crops, Crop Production/Industries, International Relations/Trade,

Poetry of Roe 8

Poetry of Roe 8 The occasion for the writing of these poems was activism surrounding the controversial highway known as the Roe 8 extension in the areas of Cockburn and Fremantle in Western Australia. Planned in the 1950s, Roe 8 is contentious for a number of reasons, including extraordinary political deals over funding, undue process regarding environmental reporting, lack of a business case, inadequate noise and traffic modelling, erasure of Indigenous heritage sites, and clearing of the sensitive Beeliar wetlands and Coolbellup banksia woodlands which were designated a Threatened Ecological Community in 2016. During the summer of 2016/2017 contractors started to fence off and then bulldoze a footprint for the highway extension, resulting in in one of the largest protests ever seen in the state. Over the next 3 months alongside constant protest 40 hectares of bush was cleared and deposited back on the site in 3 metre-high piles which were left to rot as the windy summer topsoil blew across the suburb and into our houses. The project stopped the night before the Western Australian state election of March 11, 2017. One of the promises of the Opposition was to stop Roe 8, and their election was partly attributed to the high degree of animosity and grief engendered by Roe 8

Heterosis and Combining Ability Studies in Maize (Zea Mays L.).

A Diallel cross with 12 parents and resulting 66 F 1's were evaluated for heterosis and combining ability during 1987 and 1988. Differences among genotypes were significant for all characters. Genotype X Year interaction was significant for all traits except ear length. Average heterosis related to better parent was highest for plot yield, Kernel number per row, ear length and ear diameter. Heterosis was maximum in combinations involving parents of extreme grain type (dent X flint) and/or diverse geographical origin. Degree of heterosis was lowest in crosses of high yielding parents and vice-versa. SCA was relatively more important for all characters. Data on heterosis was in general agreement with variance component ratios of SCA and GCA and supported conclusions concerning the relative importance of SCA over GCA. Variance components for interactions involving SCA and years were consistently larger suggesting that SCA variance includes a considerable portion of genotype-environment interaction, apart from non-additive deviations. GCA effects were consistent from year to year while SCA effects were not. Graphical analysis on diallel data revealed that dominance and epistasis were important for most characters. A tendency of more number of dominant genes were associated with greater performance of characters (except plant and ear height) in the desirable direction. Most important yield components were ear diameter, ear length, number of kernels per row and lOOO-kernel weight. Yield components as well as maturity traits were positively interrelated among themselves, respectively. However, maturity characters were negatively correlated with most traits. Heritability estimates based on co-variance among relatives were generally in close agreement with estimates based on variance components confirming the results of combining ability analysis. Heterosis breeding, reciprocal recurrent selection or recurrent selection for SCA may be followed depending on the final objective

The Financial Crisis, Rethinking of the Global Financial Architecture, and the Trilemma

This paper extends our previous paper (Aizenman, Chinn, and Ito 2008) and explores some of the unexplored questions. First, we examine the channels through which the trilemma policy configurations affect output volatility. Secondly, we investigate how trilemma policy configurations affect the output performance of the economies under severe crisis situations. Thirdly, we look into how trilemma configurations have evolved in the aftermath of economic crises in the past. We find that trilemma policy configurations and external finances affect output volatility mainly through the investment channel. While a higher degree of exchange rate stability could stabilize the real exchange rate movement, it could also make investment volatile, though the volatility-enhancing effect of exchange rate stability on investment can be cancelled by holding higher levels of international reserves (IR). Greater financial openness helps reduce real exchange rate volatility. These results indicate that policymakers in a more open economy would prefer pursuing greater exchange rate stability and greater financial openness while holding a massive amount of IR. We also find that the crisis economies could end up with smaller output losses if they entered the crisis situation with more stable exchange rates or if they continue to hold a high level of IR and maintain greater exchange rate stability during the crisis period. Lastly, we find that developing countries are often found to have decreased the level of monetary independence and financial openness, but increased the level of exchange rate stability in the aftermath of a crisis, especially for the last two decades. This finding indicates how vulnerable developing countries, especially emerging market ones, are to volatile capital flows as a result of global financial liberalization.economic crisis, financial crisis, trilemma, financial openess, exchange rate stability