Policy options and their potential effects on Moroccan small farmers and the poor facing increased world food prices: A general equilibrium model analysis

"This study evaluates the potential impact of the recent rise in world food prices on the Moroccan economy and possible policy options to respond to it. The study focuses mainly on the poverty effects of such an external shock and the possible policy responses to it. A new social accounting matrix (SAM) and a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model have been developed for this study based on micro-level data in combination with sectoral and economywide data. The CGE model simulations show that while increased world food prices hurt poor consumers, the general equilibrium effect of welfare loss is modest. Agricultural producers gain, and benefits to small farmers are especially large. The simulation of import subsidies shows that while such policy options can temporarily stabilize domestic prices, the benefits to consumers are at the expense of producers. However, the model results indicate that there are win-win options for Morocco if policies are based on a longer-term objective. Direct transfers to poor consumers, combined with increased public investment in agriculture to improve agricultural productivity, is a win-win strategy that the government should consider. Low productivity in staple crop production is the dominant reason for poverty among Moroccan farmers. Improving this productivity can also benefit poor consumers by lowering domestic food prices." from authors' abstractFood prices, Agricultural policy, Social accounting matrix, Computable general equilibrium (CGE), Small farmers,

Agricultural growth and investment options for poverty reduction in Rwanda:

"An economywide, multimarket (EMM) model was developed for Rwanda to analyze the linkages and trade-offs between growth and poverty reduction goals at both macro- and micro-economic levels. The model includes 30 agricultural commodities or commodity groups from eight broad agricultural subsectors, along with two aggregated nonagricultural sectors. The analysis compares the economic, income, and poverty effects of a variety of growth scenarios based on existing national subsector growth targets. The analysis shows 6 percent of CAADP's agricultural GDP growth target is achievable if growth reaches its target at the agricultural subsectoral level. But it is not enough for the country to achieve the MDG One, although the national poverty rate in 2015 will be 17 percent lower than that in 2005. Moreover, the household groups with the smallest landholding size, female-headed, or with few opportunities to participate cash crop production seem to benefit less from such growth. The study also examines the different growth-poverty linkages at agricultural subsector level, and shows that growth driven by productivity increases in staple crops and livestock production can reduce the poverty more than in the case where growth is driven by export crops or by the nonagricultural sector. The analysis also shows that to achieve growth required by CAADP and MDG One, the country needs to substantially beef up its public investment in agriculture. The share of agricultural spending in total government spending is required to increase from the current level of 5 percent to 10-35 percent in 2015." Authors' AbstractAgricultural growth, Poverty reduction, Growth dynamics, Public investment,

Accelerating growth and structural transformation: Ghana's options for reaching middle-income country status

"Ghana is an emerging success story in Africa and in a couple of years will become the first African country to achieve the first Millennium Development Goal of halving its national poverty rate. The government of Ghana has therefore extended its development vision and recently declared the goal of reaching middle-income-country (MIC) status by 2015. To analyze possible pathways and implications of achieving MIC status, this paper examines other countries' experiences on their way to becoming MICs and emphasizes the important role of growth acceleration, export diversification, and economic structural change in the transformation process. The paper further analyzes Ghana's growth options and their structural implications using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model recently developed for Ghana. The results of the model simulation suggest that Ghana's annual GDP growth rate must accelerate from the recent 5.5 percent to 7.6 percent to achieve MIC status by 2015. Unlike in other countries, agriculture in Ghana is likely to remain the mainstay of growth and export earnings, while the role of manufacturing growth in achieving MIC status may be constrained by the manufacturing sector's dependency on agricultural inputs and small size. Services may not become the prime mover of accelerated growth, but improved efficiency in trade, transport, and business services will be a key for growth acceleration in other sectors." from Author's AbstractGrowth and development, Middle income country, Applied general equilibrium modeling,

XOR multiplexing technique for nanocomputers

In emerging nanotechnologies, due to the manufacturing process, a significant percentage of components may be faulty. In order to make systems based on unreliable nano-scale components reliable, it is necessary to design fault-tolerant architectures. This paper presents a novel fault-tolerant technique for nanocomputers, namely the XOR multiplexing technique. This hardware redundancy technique is based on a numerous duplication of faulty components. We analyze the error distributions of the XOR multiplexing unit and the error distributions of multiple stages of the XOR multiplexing system, then compare them to the NAND multiplexing unit and the NAND multiplexing multiple stages system, respectively. The simulation results show that XOR multiplexing is more reliable than NAND multiplexing. Bifurcation theory is used to analyze the fault-tolerant ability of the system and the results show that XOR multiplexing technique has a high fault-tolerant ability. Similarly to the NAND multiplexing technique, this fault-tolerant technique is a potentially effective fault tolerant technique for future nanoelectronics

Hamiltonian knot projections and lengths of thick knots

AbstractFor a knot or link K, L(K) denotes the rope length of K and Cr(K) denotes the crossing number of K. An important problem in geometric knot theory concerns the bound on L(K) in terms of Cr(K). It is well known that there exist positive constants c1, c2 such that for any knot or link K, c1·(Cr(K))3/4⩽L(K)⩽c2·(Cr(K))2. In this paper, we prove that there exists a constant c>0 such that for any knot or link K, L(K)⩽c·(Cr(K))3/2. This is done through the study of regular projections of knots and links as 4-regular plane graphs. We show that for any knot or link K there exists a knot or link K′ and a regular projection G of K′ such that K′ is of the same knot type as that of K, G has at most 4·Cr(K) crossings, and G is a Hamiltonian graph. We then use this result to develop an embedding algorithm. Using this algorithm, we are able to embed any knot or link K into the simple cubic lattice such that the length of the embedded knot is of order at most O((Cr(K))3/2). This result in turn establishes the above mentioned upper bound on L(K) for smooth knots and links. Moreover, for many knots and links with special Hamiltonian projections, our embedding algorithm ensures that the bound on L(K) can be of order O(Cr(K)). The study of Hamilton cycles in a regular knot projection plays a very important role and many questions can be raised in this direction

Structured condition number for multiple right-hand side linear systems with parameterized quasiseparable coefficient matrix

In this paper, we consider the structured perturbation analysis for multiple right-hand side linear systems with parameterized coefficient matrix. Especially, we present the explicit expressions for structured condition numbers for multiple right-hand sides linear systems with {1;1}-quasiseparable coefficient matrix in the quasiseparable and the Givens-vector representations. In addition, the comparisons of these two condition numbers between themselves, and with respect to unstructured condition number are investigated. Moreover, the effective structured condition number for multiple right-hand sides linear systems with {1;1}-quasiseparable coefficient matrix is proposed. The relationships between the effective structured condition number and structured condition numbers with respect to the quasiseparable and the Givens-vector representations are also studied. Numerical experiments show that there are situations in which the effective structured condition number can be much smaller than the unstructured ones