Who Benefits from Job Creation at County Level? An Analysis of Leakage and Spillover of New Employment Opportunities in Virginia

Using an econometric model system built on county level labor market data, this study allocates new employments in Virginia from 1990 to 2000 into various demographic segments: commuters, residents, and new immigrants. The study finds significant leakage of new employment opportunities in Virginia. 52% of new jobs created in the 1990s in a locality were taken by outside commuters. However, Virginia’s localities also benefit from spillover benefits from job creation elsewhere. Economists need to account for employment leakage and spillover to accurately evaluate the fiscal impacts of potential economic development projects

Urban-Rural Synergies: An Explorative Study at the NUTS3 Level

Regions are continually developing. Innovations in agricultural and industrial production affect urban and rural areas in different ways, and climate change and developments in transport and (tele)communication have strong effects on the interaction between them. Although urban and rural areas are often studied separately, systemic effects are clearly important when studying their interactions. This article aims to get a better understanding of the importance of urban-rural interaction between European regions. Therefore, a regional analysis using factor analysis and spatial correlation is used to show the presence and direction of urban-rural interactions. The results indicate that rural areas benefit from having more urban neighbors in terms of employment and employment growth as well as a stronger tourism sector. At the same time, urban areas with more rural neighbors experience a higher level of (relative) GDP growth. In addition, they are also related to higher levels of employment and population growth. Overall, the analysis shows that having more ‘opposite’ neighbors appears to be beneficial to both urban and rural regions. More research with more specific indicators, for example related to quality of life, as well as a more complete dataset, is necessary to confirm these conclusions

An Optimization Model for Technology Adoption of Marginalized Smallholders: Theoretical Support for Matching Technological and Institutional Innovations

The rural poor are often marginalized and restricted from access to markets, public services and information, mainly due to poor connections to transport and communication infrastructure. Despite these unfavorable conditions, agricultural technology investments are believed to unleash unused human and natural capital potentials and alleviate poverty by productivity growth in agriculture. Based on the concept of marginality we develop a theoretical model which shows that these expectations for productivity growth are conditional on human and natural capital stocks and transaction costs. Our model categorizes the rural farm households below the poverty line into four segments according to labor and land endowments. Policy recommendations for segment and location specific investments are provided. Theoretical findings indicate that adjusting rural infrastructure and institutions to reduce transaction costs is a more preferable investment strategy than adjusting agricultural technologies to marginalized production conditions

International agricultural research to reduce food risks: case studies on aflatoxins

Despite massive expansion of human and livestock populations, fuelled by agricultural innovations, nearly one billion people are hungry and 2 billion are sickened each year from the food they eat. Agricultural and food systems are intimately connected to health outcomes, but health policy and programs often stop at the clinic door. A consensus is growing that the disconnection between agriculture, health and nutrition is at least partly responsible for the disease burden associated with food and farming. Mycotoxins produced by fungi are one of the most serious food safety problems affecting staple crops (especially maize and groundnuts). Aflatoxins, the best studied of these mycotoxins, cause around 90,000 cases of liver cancer each year and are strongly associated with stunting and immune suppression in children. Mycotoxins also cause major economic disruptions through their impacts on trade and livestock production. In this paper we use the case of fungal toxins to explore how agricultural research can produce innovations, understand incentives and enable institutions to improve, simultaneously, food safety, food accessibility for poor consumers and access to markets for smallholder farmers, thus making the case for research investors to support research into agricultural approaches for enhancing food safety in value chains. We first discuss the evolution of food safety research within the CGIAR. Then we show how taking an epidemiological and economic perspective on aflatoxin research connects health and nutrition outcomes. Finally, we present three case studies illustrating the traditional strengths of CGIAR research: breeding better varieties and developing new technologies

Outcomes of Policy-Oriented Research in the CGIAR

Policy-oriented research—defined as research aimed at identifying new or improved policies, regulations, or institutions (or their management) that enhance economic, social, and environmental welfare (Raitzer and Ryan, 2008)—is an important and growing part of CGIAR portfolio. Its importance is reflected in CGIAR’s Strategy and Results Framework as a cross-cutting outcome on “improving the enabling environment” through better policies and institutions. To begin to document CGIAR’s contribution to this outcome, SPIA compiled data bases of 94 plausible policy outcomes of CGIAR research covering the period 2006-2014. Nearly all centers contributed outcomes, and they occurred at sub-national, national, regional and global scales. Outcomes range from the formulation of new policies to improving how existing policies are implemented. Overall, 57% of the outcomes reported focus on agricultural policies; 40% relate to NRM policies (including climate change); and the remainder comprise contributions to the implementation of social safety net policies. Over the same period, relatively few quantitative ex-post impact assessments of policy-oriented research (POR) were conducted. While this likely reflects a rational assessment of the relative costs and benefits by research managers who would undertake such studies, there are still reasons to conduct such studies. Hence, the outcomes database can help to identify and prioritize outcomes—and type of outcomes—for which quantitative assessments could be most useful. Access CGIAR policy outcomes database (https://cas.cgiar.org/sites/default/files/files/documents/impact%20assessment/CGIAR%20POR%20Outcomes%20Database.xlsx) This research was supported by ISPC-SPIA under the grant “Strengthening Impact Assessment in the CGIAR (SIAC) (https://cas.cgiar.org/spia/news/strengthening-impact-assessment-cgiar-siac-2013-2016).