AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SELECTED PRODUCTIVITY LITERATURE

"This paper annotates and cites literature that is relevant to...agricultural productivity analysis...[includes] agricultural productivity studies for all countries dating back to World War II."Productivity Analysis,

MODELING THE EU'S EVERYTHING BUT ARMS INITIATIVE FOR THE LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

This study attempts to answer two key questions: what will be the likely impact of the EU's Everything But Arms (EBA) proposal, and, what would be the impact if the United States also were to implement a similar proposal? Using the GTAP model, the preliminary results in this paper show if only the EU's EBA proposal were implemented, then welfare in the least developed countries (LDCs) would increase by $2.5 billion (0.53 percent of their GDP), exports would grow by 3 percent, and GDP would grow by 2.3 percent. If the United States and the EU both implemented similar programs, then LDC welfare would increase by$3.1 billion (0.66 percent of GDP), exports would increase by 3.7 percent and total GDP growth by 2.9 percent. Another version of this scenario assumes that LDCs lack the supply capacity to exploit the new trade opportunities. In this case, LDC welfare increases by $0.9 billion (0.2 percent of GDP), exports grow by 4.1 percent, and GDP grows at 2.3 percent. The impact of this last scenario still may be overstated, given that trade preferences are not fully accounted for in the GTAP tariff database. Overall, the results suggest that improving market access for the LDCs could help raise per capita incomes above trend projections, but the gains are modest.Political Economy,

FOOD INSECURITY IN THE LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES AND THE INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE

Despite adequate food supplies at the global level, many low-income countries experience food insecurity. Given that food deficits are projected to get even bigger in the future, the problem probably will only get worse. Added to the concern is the likelihood that global trade liberalization will increase prices and price volatility of major imported staple food commodities. Presently, the international safety nets that do exist are inadequate in stabilizing food supplies for the more vulnerable countries. Food aid has been the primary safety net, but is not sufficient to meet estimated needs around the world. The few alternatives to food aid that have been implemented so far have been either underutilized or ineffective. New safety net proposals could help stabilize grain import prices or manage import costs. This paper shows that 3 selected proposals (grain options, a revolving import compensation fund, and import insurance) would be much less costly than international food aid. The 3 programs would have cost about $300-$600 million per year, compared with the recent cost of food aid from all donors estimated at $2.9 billion. Each of the programs would be effective in stabilizing consumption variability. Improving the international safety net programs may help temper food security concerns and improve support in low-income countries for trade liberalization.Food Security and Poverty,

AN EXAMINATION OF ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY OF RUSSIAN CROP OUTPUT IN THE REFORM PERIOD

This paper examines economic efficiency of Russian corporate farms for 1995-98. Economic efficiency declined over the period, due to declines in both technical and allocative inefficiency. According to the average technical efficiency scores, Russian agricultural production could improve from 17 to 43 percent according to DEA and SFA analysis, respectively. The efficiency scores show that Russian agriculture presently uses relatively too much fertilizer and fuel and too little land and labor. Russian agriculture inherited machinery-intensive technology from the Soviet era, which may be inappropriate given the relative abundance of labor in the post-reform environment. Investment constraints have prevented the replacement of old machinery-intensive technology with labor intensive technology.Crop Production/Industries, Productivity Analysis,

A COMPARISON OF MULTIFACTOR PRODUCTIVITY CALCULATIONS OF THE U.S. AGRICULTURAL SECTOR

Productivity Analysis,

AN OVERVIEW OF FACTORS AFFECTING THE SIZE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT

This paper reviews many factors affecting the size of local government. These factors include: current demographic trends and changes in alternative service delivery arrangements, theoretical schools of thought, evidence on economies of size, whether current local governments are managed efficiently, and legal and political factors.Public Economics,

A quantum geometric model of similarity

No other study has had as great an impact on the development of the similarity literature as that of Tversky (1977), which provided compelling demonstrations against all the fundamental assumptions of the popular, and extensively employed, geometric similarity models. Notably, similarity judgments were shown to violate symmetry and the triangle inequality, and also be subject to context effects, so that the same pair of items would be rated differently, depending on the presence of other items. Quantum theory provides a generalized geometric approach to similarity and can address several of Tversky’s (1997) main findings. Similarity is modeled as quantum probability, so that asymmetries emerge as order effects, and the triangle equality violations and the diagnosticity effect can be related to the context-dependent properties of quantum probability. We so demonstrate the promise of the quantum approach for similarity and discuss the implications for representation theory in general