How private enterprise organized agricultural markets in Kenya

Does liberalization of agricultural markets and an expanded role for the private sector result in a competitive market structure in Africa? The author empirically investigates the organization and development of a dynamic African export-oriented sector - Kenya's horticultural exports - in which the private sector has long had a dominant role. The author highlights the sector's impressive pattern of growth over the past two decades and examines the characteristics of participating private firms, the competitive pattern among those firms, and the institutional means by which they procure raw materials for processing and export. He finds that despite the Kenyan government's direct investments in processing and trading activities and its application of regulations and targeted support measures to strengthen the role of Kenyan Africans in the horticultural trade, most of this trade remains controlled by foreign-owned companies or members of Kenya's small minority Asian and European communities. This paper also examines the extent and forms of competition in this sub-sector and reviews the wide range of institutional arrangements adopted by private firms to coordinate their own processing and marketing activities with the farm-level production of horticultural commodities and raw materials.Markets and Market Access,Access to Markets,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies

Private trader response to market liberalization in Tanzania's cashew nut industry

Between World War II and the early 1970s, Tanzania developed one of the world's largest cashew nut industries. In 1973-74, marketed production reached 145,000 tons (about 30 percent of world production), with cashews providing an important source of income to some 250,000 farmers and being the country's fourth largest source of foreign exchange. This trade was originally developed and organized by private traders (of Indian and Arab origin), although in the 1960s a multitiered marketing system - involving local cooperative societies, regional cooperative unions, and a marketing board - was imposed, with private traders gradually removed from the market system. Despite a buoyant international market, Tanzania's cashew nut industry underwent a steady and massive decline through the 1970s and 1980s. The author examines the factors that contribute to this downward spin: Tanzania's village program, a decline in real producer prices, and inefficiencies in cooperative and marketing board crop collection and downstream activities. With the decline in production, living standards in the main cashew-growing regions worsened, and most of the large-scale, donor-funded, government-owned processing factories became"white elephants."With the industry on the brink of collapse, in 1991 the government announced the liberalization of the cashew nut market, permitting private firms to once again buy and sell the nuts. According to the author, the reform process has been characterized by confusion, uncertainty, and latent government controls and interventions, though the industry shows some signs of recovery. Based on a recent survey, the author examines the liberalization process - including its implementation at the national and local levels, the private sector response to renewed trading opportunities, and the resultant patterns of competition, price discovery, and marketing channel formation. The liberalization experience in Tanzania's cashew nut industry offers interesting insights for other sub-Saharan African countries where uncertainty remains about the appropriate roles (if any) for marketing boards in liberalized markets, about the ability of cooperatives to compete in such markets, and about the ability of indigenous firms to take advantage of new trading opportunities. In Tanzania, neither the cooperatives nor the marketing board have fared well in the liberalized market. Although a relatively large number of private traders have recently entered into cashew buying and selling, successful entry into export marketing has proven viable only for a small number of companies. Their characteristics: medium to large in scale, diversified across commodities, involved in trading and agroindustry, not indigenous, and with strong financial and trading links abroad.Food&Beverage Industry,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Crops&Crop Management Systems,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems

Two key issues concerning the supervision of bank safety and soundness

This commentary focuses on two specific issues. The first asks, What are the market failures that actually create the need for the public regulation of bank safety and soundness? The second issue concerns the safety and soundness issues created by the two mortgage government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose very large financial obligations pose a serious systemic risk threat to U.S. financial markets.Banks and banking ; Bank supervision ; Government-sponsored enterprises

Economic Implications of Extreme and Rare Events

.Endogenous Probabilities; Extreme Events; Financial Environment; Informational Costs; Regime Shifts

Standards and agro-food exports from developing countries: rebalancing the debate

The proliferation and increased stringency of food safety and agricultural health standards is a source of concern among many developing countries. These standards are perceived as a barrier to the continued success of their exports of high-value agro-food products (including fish, horticultural, and other products), either because these countries lack the technical and administrative capacities needed for compliance or because these standards can be applied in a discriminatory or protectionist manner. The authors draw on available literature and work in progress to examine the underlying evidence related to the changing standards environment and its impact on existing and potential developing country exporters of high-value agricultural and food products. The evidence the authors present, while only partial, suggests that the picture for developing countries as a whole is not necessarily problematic and certainly less pessimistic than the mainstream"standards-as-barriers"perspective. Indeed, rising standards serve to accentuate underlying supply chain strengths and weaknesses and thus impact differently on the competitive position of individual countries and distinct market participants. Some countries and industries are even using high quality and safety standards to successfully (re-)position themselves in competitive global markets. This emphasizes the importance of considering the effects of food safety and agricultural health measures within the context of wider capacity constraints and underlying supply chain trends and drivers. The key question for developing countries is how to exploit their strengths and overcome their weaknesses such that they are gainers rather than losers in the emerging commercial and regulatory context.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Public Health Promotion,Environmental Economics&Policies,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Labor Policies,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Livestock&Animal Husbandry,Food&Beverage Industry

interAdapt -- An Interactive Tool for Designing and Evaluating Randomized Trials with Adaptive Enrollment Criteria

The interAdapt R package is designed to be used by statisticians and clinical investigators to plan randomized trials. It can be used to determine if certain adaptive designs offer tangible benefits compared to standard designs, in the context of investigators' specific trial goals and constraints. Specifically, interAdapt compares the performance of trial designs with adaptive enrollment criteria versus standard (non-adaptive) group sequential trial designs. Performance is compared in terms of power, expected trial duration, and expected sample size. Users can either work directly in the R console, or with a user-friendly shiny application that requires no programming experience. Several added features are available when using the shiny application. For example, the application allows users to immediately download the results of the performance comparison as a csv-table, or as a printable, html-based report.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures (software screenshots); v2 includes command line function descriptio

A Strategic Perspective on the Impact of Food Safety Standards on Developing Countries

This paper explores the competing concepts of 'standards as barriers' and standards as catalysts' in the context of food safety standards in international trade in agricultural and food products. It is suggested that food safety standards can act as both a barrier to trade and the basis of competitive positioning for developing countries in international markets. This suggests that the application of a strategic framework to analyze and assess alternative responses to evolving food safety standards can throw some light on the circumstances under which standards act to prohibit trade or, alternatively, create competitive trade opportunities. The use of such a framework is illustrated through a brief case study of fish and fishery product exports from Kenya and India.Agriculture, Food, Trade, Food Safety, Standards, Technical barriers to Trade, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Q18, K32, F13,