Land Use, Production Growth, and the Institutional Environment of Smallholders: Evidence from Burkinabe Cotton Farmers

The cotton boom in Burkina Faso consisted of a growth in cotton land shares together with an overall increase in total cultivated land. This paper examines the impact of institutional changes in the cotton sector on the evolution of smallholders’ land-use decisions. The empirical analysis is supported by a structural model that takes into account the specific institutional features of the Burkinabè cotton sector and builds upon household level data collected in rural Burkina Faso. We attribute most of the change in land use to the newly established institutional arrangements between producers and stakeholders, mechanization, and slackening of the food security constraint.Burkina Faso, Cotton, Land Use, Commodity Reform, Institutional Arrangements, Farm Management, Financial Economics, N57, 013, O33, Q15, Q18,

Commodity Reform and Extensive Production Growth: Evidence from Burkinabè Cotton Farmers

Over the 1996-2006 period, Burkina Faso has experienced a reform of its cotton sector, and has become the largest African cotton producer and exporter. The cotton “boom” consisted of a rapid expansion of cotton areas through the growth of land shares allocated to cotton (and new producers), together with an overall increase in total cultivated land. In this paper, we present an empirical framework to determine the contribution of total farmland changes in the increase of land dedicated to cotton, where both processes are represented by ordered endogenous variables. The empirical framework is supported by a conceptual model which takes into account the specific institutional features of the Burkina Faso rural cotton economy and builds upon data collected in rural Burkina Faso in March 2006. From measurable indicators of farmer behavior and variables that measure farmer statements for the reasons of this behavior, we are able to identify both direct and indirect effects of the cotton reform on the extensive growth of cotton seed production. They are namely mechanization and technical assistance, labor intensification, enhanced managerial abilities (learning by doing and better environment for farmers), production incentives arising from the new local organizations of producers, guarantees and confidence stemming from the sector and an easier access to agricultural inputs. They all can be attributed to better institutional arrangements between producers and stakeholders which have been established during the reform

Commodity Reform and Extensive Production Growth: Evidence from Burkinabè Cotton Farmers

Over the 1996-2006 period, Burkina Faso has experienced a reform of its cotton sector, and has become the largest African cotton producer and exporter. The cotton “boom” consisted of a rapid expansion of cotton areas through the growth of land shares allocated to cotton (and new producers), together with an overall increase in total cultivated land. In this paper, we present an empirical framework to determine the contribution of total farmland changes in the increase of land dedicated to cotton, where both processes are represented by ordered endogenous variables. The empirical framework is supported by a conceptual model which takes into account the specific institutional features of the Burkina Faso rural cotton economy and builds upon data collected in rural Burkina Faso in March 2006. From measurable indicators of farmer behavior and variables that measure farmer statements for the reasons of this behavior, we are able to identify both direct and indirect effects of the cotton reform on the extensive growth of cotton seed production. They are namely mechanization and technical assistance, labor intensification, enhanced managerial abilities (learning by doing and better environment for farmers), production incentives arising from the new local organizations of producers, guarantees and confidence stemming from the sector and an easier access to agricultural inputs. They all can be attributed to better institutional arrangements between producers and stakeholders which have been established during the reform

Reassessing Political Explanations for Murders of Police

Author's manuscript made available in accordance with the publisher's policy.The article discusses how Jacobs and Carmichael, drawing on the racial threat thesis, argue that the overrepresentation of Blacks among felons who murder police is in part explained by Blacks' conscious or unconscious responses to political subordination by the State. In testing this argument, Jacobs and Carmichael find that their key theoretical variable—the presence of a Black mayor—is inversely related to police homicides and injurious assaults across many model specifications. This article describes a limited reanalysis of Jacobs and Carmichael's homicide data and additional analyses with a larger sample of cities. The findings suggest that the significance of the Black mayor variable may have been an artifact of model specification. Instead, there is evidence that Black city council representation may be associated with reduced homicides of police by Blacks. Further research is needed, however, because of the limited explanatory power of the key factors highlighted in past research

Unified description of BaBar and Belle data on the bottomonia decays Upsilon(mS) -> Upsilon(nS) pi+ pi-

We present a unified analysis of the decays of bottomonia Upsilon(mS) -> Upsilon(nS) pi pi (m>n, m=2,3,4,5, n=1,2,3), charmonia J/psi -> phi (pi pi, K antiK), psi(2S) -> J/psi pi pi and the isoscalar S-wave processes pi pi -> pi pi, K antiK, eta eta. In this analysis we extend our recent study of low-lying (m=2,3) radial excitations of bottomonia to modes involving higher (m=4,5) excited states. Similarly as for the data on lower radial excitations, we confirm that the data for higher radially excited states from the BaBar and Belle collaborations can be described under conditions that the final bottomonium is a spectator and the multichannel pi pi scattering is considered in a model-independent approach based on analyticity, unitarity and the uniformization procedure. Indeed we show that the dipion mass distributions in the two-pion transitions of both charmonia and bottomonia states are explained by a unified mechanism based on the contribution of the pi pi and K antiK coupled channels including their interference (final-state interactions). Therefore, our main result is that the lower and higher radially excited states of charmonia and bottomonia have no specific features in mutual comparison and can be understood in a unified picture, e.g. proposed by our approach.Comment: 8 page

Further Tests of the Influence of Black Mayors on Murders of Police: A Response to Jacobs

Author's manuscript made available in accordance with the publisher's policy.In response to our reanalysis and extension of Jacobs and Carmichael (2002) in which we found no evidence of a Black mayor effect, Jacobs (this issue) critiques our article on theoretical and methodological grounds. Theoretically, Jacobs argues that we did not provide sufficient justification for the inclusion of the percentage of the city council that was Black. Methodological criticisms include failure to include a nonlinear specification of percent divorced, improper temporal ordering, and the inclusion of only a single regional dummy variable. In our rejoinder we clarify the theoretical importance of the percentage of the city council that was Black and we address each of Jacobs’ methodological concerns. In additional analyses, we again find that the effect of the Black mayor variable is not robust to model specification or data employed, which was the point of our original article