MEASURING PROTECTION IN AGRICULTURE: THE PRODUCER SUBSIDY EQUIVALENT REVISITED

In the 1980s, the Producer Subsidy Equivalent (PSE) became the dominant measure of protection in applied studies of international agricultural trade. This paper analyzes potential biases in the ratio form of the PSE introduced by using actual domestic prices rather than social opportunity costs in the denominator. It is shown that doing so introduces a consistent under-estimation of the effects of trade restrictions and other price-support policies, relative to deficiency payments and other income-support policies. It is found that under plausible conditions this bias leads the PSE to rank protection levels across countries or crops incorrectly. In a sample of 250 activities across 33 countries, such errors were found to occur in 5% of crop comparisons and 8% of country comparisons, including a number of politically sensitive cases. An improved formula would therefore provide significantly more accurate results than the conventional PSE, with no additional data or more restrictive assumptions.Agricultural and Food Policy, International Relations/Trade,

Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Senegal

Distorted incentives, agricultural and trade policy reforms, national agricultural development, Agricultural and Food Policy, International Relations/Trade, F13, F14, Q17, Q18,

THE VALUE OF QUALITY CERTIFICATION FOR INFANT FOODS: RESULTS FROM A MARKET EXPERIMENT IN MALI

This paper uses an experimental-economics technique to measure the potential impact of introducing quality certification to the market for infant foods in Mali, where malnutrition is widespread. We find that certification could substantially lower food costs, generating net economic benefits on the order of US$20 per infant, per year.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Cameroon

Distorted incentives, agricultural and trade policy reforms, national agricultural development, Agricultural and Food Policy, International Relations/Trade, F13, F14, Q17, Q18,

Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Sub-Saharan and North Africa

Distorted incentives, agricultural and trade policy reforms, national agricultural development, Agricultural and Food Policy, International Relations/Trade, F13, F14, Q17, Q18,

Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Africa

Distorted incentives, agricultural and trade policy reforms, national agricultural development, Agricultural and Food Policy, International Relations/Trade, F13, F14, Q17, Q18,

Accelerating innovation with prize rewards: History and typology of technology prizes and a new contest design for innovation in African agriculture

"This paper describes how governments and philanthropic donors could drive innovation through a new kind of technology contest. We begin by reviewing the history of technology prizes, which operate alongside private intellectual property rights and public R&D to accelerate and guide productivity growth towards otherwise-neglected social goals. Proportional “prize rewards” would modify the traditional winner-take-all approach, by dividing available funds among multiple winners in proportion to measured achievement. This approach would provide a royalty-like payment for incremental success. The paper provides concludes with a specific example for how such prizes could be implemented to reward and help scale up successful innovations in African agriculture, through payments to innovators in proportion to the value created by their technologies after adoption. " from authors' abstractProductivity growth, Technology adoption, intellectual property, Agricultural R&D, Innovation,

INVESTING IN SOILS: FIELD BUNDS AND MICROCATCHMENTS IN BURKINA FASO

This research uses field-level data from Burkina Faso to ask what determines farmers' investment in two well-known soil and water conservation techniques: field bunds (barriers to soil and water runoff), and microcatchments (small holes in which seeds and fertilizers are placed). Survey data for 1993 and 1994 are used to estimate Tobit functions, compute elasticities of adoption and intensity of use, perform robustness tests and estimate alternative models. Controlling for land and labor abundance and other factors we find that those who have more ownership rights over farmland, and who do more controlled feeding of livestock, tend to invest more in both technologies. The result suggests that responding to land scarcity with clearer property rights over cropland and pasture could help promote investment in soil conservation, and raise the productivity of factors applied to land.Land Economics/Use,

PROPERTY RIGHTS, PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY AND DEFORESTATION: COCOA IN WEST AFRICA

In this paper, we use a vintage-capital model with risk of eviction to assess cocoa farmers' response to changes in their tenure security and to the introduction of a new, faster-maturing cocoa variety. The model is calibrated with data from Cameroon in calendar year 2000, and then used to simulate the effects of institutional and technical change on farmer welfare and deforestation rates. Our findings can be summarized in three points. First, improved tenure security over cocoa fields increases farmers' consumption and welfare, but at the expense of more deforestation. Second, the introduction of new cocoa varieties with faster maturity and higher input response also unambiguously raises farmers' consumption and welfare. Doing so increases deforestation under insecure land tenure, but slows down deforestation under secure land tenure. Third, when introducing the two innovations together (more security and also new varieties), there is both an increase in welfare and a decline in deforestation. In sum, the availability of new cocoa cultivars calls for stronger tenure security, to accelerate investment and reduce deforestation.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

CLIMATE AND SCALE IN ECONOMIC GROWTH

This paper introduces new data on climatic conditions to empirical tests of growth theories. We find that, since 1960, temperate countries have converged towards high levels of income while tropical nations have converged towards various income levels associated with economic scale and the extent of the market. These results hold for a wide range of tests. A plausible explanation is that temperate regions' growth was assisted by their climate, perhaps historically for their transition out of agriculture into sectors whose productivity converges across countries, while tropical countries' growth is relatively more dependent on gains from specialization and trade.International Development,