Wages and employment in non-farm agricultural activities: a livelihood strategy in Nicaragua.

This article analyzes the indices for nonfarm agricultural activities, which combine agricultural activities with both employment and wages. They were made with panel data of the Living Measurement Standard Survey (1993, 1998, 2001 and 2005) and they were processed with econometric model as a parametric technique (Binary dependent variable model). The trend indices explain the varied combination of nonfarm and farming agricultural activities. In summary, when the economic public policy makers promote preventative measures in the labour market, we see that indices for nonfarm agricultural activities grow. In fact, small farmers use first, second and third nonfarm employment as livelihood strategies for clashing the public policy restrictive.RMEA, RMNFA, RSEA, RSENFA, RTEA, RTNFA, RMWAI, RMWNFAI, RSWAI, RSWNFAI, RTWAI, RTWNFAI, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Labor and Human Capital, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Comparisons of LSMS-ISA data collection and dissemination efforts in Central America

This paper was presented in The Third Wye Global Conference. The Wye City Group on Rural Statistics and Agricultural Household Income is hosting its third global conference on agricultural and rural household statistics. The conference will be hosted by the Economic Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture and is cosponsored by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations and the World Bank. Conference objectives Support the U.N. • Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics by highlighting international needs and opportunities to improve statistics on rural and farm households, and strengthen the process of collecting and disseminating statistics on rural and farm households in OECD and developing countries; and • Review and discuss revisions to the Wye Group Handbook on Rural Households’ Livelihood and Well-Being, and preparation of a Supplement to the Handbook on issues related to agricultural and rural statistics in developing countries.Panel Data, LSMS-ISA, MECOVI., Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, C83, P52, E61.,

Technical efficiency of Organic Fertilizer in small farms of Nicaragua: 1998-2005

This article applies frontier production function analysis to small farms in Nicaragua during 1998-2005 (Battese and Coelli, 1988). The objective of this study is to estimate an average function that will provide a picture of the shape of the organic fertilizer technology of an average firm (in our case, agricultural production units). Furthermore I present a best-practice of organic fertilizer against which the efficiency of the firms within the primary sector can be measured (Coelli, T: 1995). The results show an average of technical efficiency acceptable which the makers of public policy in Nicaragua must considerer for the future. It is imperative if we consider an economy activity indexes that have increased during this period.Technical Efficiency, LSMS, Organic Fertilizer, Small Farm, Panel Data, Agribusiness, Production Economics, Productivity Analysis,

Locally linear approximation for Kernel methods : the Railway Kernel

In this paper we present a new kernel, the Railway Kernel, that works properly for general (nonlinear) classification problems, with the interesting property that acts locally as a linear kernel. In this way, we avoid potential problems due to the use of a general purpose kernel, like the RBF kernel, as the high dimension of the induced feature space. As a consequence, following our methodology the number of support vectors is much lower and, therefore, the generalization capability of the proposed kernel is higher than the obtained using RBF kernels. Experimental work is shown to support the theoretical issues.Support vector machines, Kernel Methods, Classification problems

The Impact of the financial and Economic Crisis on Central America: An Expenditure GDP approach

The 2009 conferences will provide many opportunities for the presentation of important new research and for productive, structured dialogue on the major challenges facing the global response to the financial crisis. Conference organisers are developing a wide variety of session types that meet the needs of various participants and support collective efforts to communities worldwide. Central to many of these sessions will be the transfer of knowledge and sharing of best practices.Expenditure GDP approach, Financial Crisis, Economic impact, Regression Analysis, Public Economics, E23, E61, F43, H50,