FARM SIZE AND THE DETERMINANTS OF PRODUCTIVE EFFICIENCY IN THE BRAZILIAN CENTER-WEST

This paper explores the determinants of technical efficiency, and the relationship between farm size and efficiency, in the Center-West of Brazil. This is the region where agricultural production and total factor productivity have grown the fastest since 1970. It is also a region characterized by unusually large farms. Technical efficiency is studied with Data Envelopment Analysis and county level data disaggregated by farm size and type of land tenure. The efficiency measure is regressed on a set of explanatory variables which includes farm size, type of land tenure, composition of output, access to institutions, and indicators of technology and input usage. The relationship between farm size and efficiency is found to be non-linear, with productivity first falling and then rising with size. Access to institutions, credit, and modern inputs are found to be important determinants of the differences in efficiency across farms. Improved access could strengthen the efficiency advantage of small and medium farms.Industrial Organization, Productivity Analysis,

Locational Determinants of Rural Non-agricultural Employment: Evidence From Brazil

By paying particular attention to the local economic context, this paper analyzes the determinants of non-agricultural employment and earnings in non-agricultural jobs. The empirical analysis is based on the Brazilian Demographic Census, allowing for disaggregated controls for the local economy. Education stands out as one of the key determinants of employment outcome and earnings potential. Failure to control for locational effects, however, can lead to biased estimation of the importance of individual and household-specific characteristics. The empirical results show that local market size and distance to population centers have a significant impact on non-agricultural employment prospects and earnings.Rural non-agricultural employment, economic geography, Latin America, Brazil

Limited duration of vaccine poliovirus and other enterovirus excretion among human immunodeficiency virus infected children in Kenya

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Immunodeficient persons with persistent vaccine-related poliovirus infection may serve as a potential reservoir for reintroduction of polioviruses after wild poliovirus eradication, posing a risk of their further circulation in inadequately immunized populations.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>To estimate the potential for vaccine-related poliovirus persistence among HIV-infected persons, we studied poliovirus excretion following vaccination among children at an orphanage in Kenya. For 12 months after national immunization days, we collected serial stool specimens from orphanage residents aged <5 years at enrollment and recorded their HIV status and demographic, clinical, immunological, and immunization data. To detect and characterize isolated polioviruses and non-polio enteroviruses (NPEV), we used viral culture, typing and intratypic differentiation of isolates by PCR, ELISA, and nucleic acid sequencing. Long-term persistence was defined as shedding for ≥ 6 months.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Twenty-four children (15 HIV-infected, 9 HIV-uninfected) were enrolled, and 255 specimens (170 from HIV-infected, 85 from HIV-uninfected) were collected. All HIV-infected children had mildly or moderately symptomatic HIV-disease and moderate-to-severe immunosuppression. Fifteen participants shed vaccine-related polioviruses, and 22 shed NPEV at some point during the study period. Of 46 poliovirus-positive specimens, 31 were from HIV-infected, and 15 from HIV-uninfected children. No participant shed polioviruses for ≥ 6 months. Genomic sequencing of poliovirus isolates did not reveal any genetic evidence of long-term shedding. There was no long-term shedding of NPEV.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results indicate that mildly to moderately symptomatic HIV-infected children retain the ability to clear enteroviruses, including vaccine-related poliovirus. Larger studies are needed to confirm and generalize these findings.</p

The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) High-Energy X-Ray Mission

The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) mission, launched on 2012 June 13, is the first focusing high-energy X-ray telescope in orbit. NuSTAR operates in the band from 3 to 79 keV, extending the sensitivity of focusing far beyond the ~10 keV high-energy cutoff achieved by all previous X-ray satellites. The inherently low background associated with concentrating the X-ray light enables NuSTAR to probe the hard X-ray sky with a more than 100-fold improvement in sensitivity over the collimated or coded mask instruments that have operated in this bandpass. Using its unprecedented combination of sensitivity and spatial and spectral resolution, NuSTAR will pursue five primary scientific objectives: (1) probe obscured active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity out to the peak epoch of galaxy assembly in the universe (at z lsim 2) by surveying selected regions of the sky; (2) study the population of hard X-ray-emitting compact objects in the Galaxy by mapping the central regions of the Milky Way; (3) study the non-thermal radiation in young supernova remnants, both the hard X-ray continuum and the emission from the radioactive element 44Ti; (4) observe blazars contemporaneously with ground-based radio, optical, and TeV telescopes, as well as with Fermi and Swift, to constrain the structure of AGN jets; and (5) observe line and continuum emission from core-collapse supernovae in the Local Group, and from nearby Type Ia events, to constrain explosion models. During its baseline two-year mission, NuSTAR will also undertake a broad program of targeted observations. The observatory consists of two co-aligned grazing-incidence X-ray telescopes pointed at celestial targets by a three-axis stabilized spacecraft. Deployed into a 600 km, near-circular, 6° inclination orbit, the observatory has now completed commissioning, and is performing consistent with pre-launch expectations. NuSTAR is now executing its primary science mission, and with an expected orbit lifetime of 10 yr, we anticipate proposing a guest investigator program, to begin in late 2014.Astronom

FARM SIZE AND THE DETERMINANTS OF PRODUCTIVE EFFICIENCY IN THE BRAZILIAN CENTER-WEST

This paper explores the determinants of technical efficiency, and the relationship between farm size and efficiency, in the Center-West of Brazil. This is the region where agricultural production and total factor productivity have grown the fastest since 1970. It is also a region characterized by unusually large farms. Technical efficiency is studied with Data Envelopment Analysis and county level data disaggregated by farm size and type of land tenure. The efficiency measure is regressed on a set of explanatory variables which includes farm size, type of land tenure, composition of output, access to institutions, and indicators of technology and input usage. The relationship between farm size and efficiency is found to be non-linear, with productivity first falling and then rising with size. Access to institutions, credit, and modern inputs are found to be important determinants of the differences in efficiency across farms. Improved access could strengthen the efficiency advantage of small and medium farms

How Important is Economic Geography for Rural Non-Agricultural Employment? Lessons from Brazil

By paying particular attention to the local economic context, this paper analyzes rural non-agricultural employment and earnings in non-agricultural jobs. The empirical analysis is based on the Brazilian Demographic Census, allowing for disaggregated controls for the local economy. Education stands out as one of the key factor for shaping employment outcome and earnings potential. Failure to control for locational effects can lead to biased estimation of the importance of individual and household-specific characteristics. The empirical results show that local market size and distance to population centers have a significant impact on both non-agricultural employment prospects and earnings. The impact, however, is quantitatively larger for employment

Climate Change, Drought, and Agricultural Production in Brazil

OVERVIEW. Climate change is a major challenge facing humanity, and understanding its myriad effects is important for learning how to lessen its negative consequences. Climate change is expected to alter the frequency and magnitude of natural disasters. This paper is drawn from a larger research project that studies how climate change has affected one type of natural disaster, drought, and how this has impacted agricultural production, productivity and poverty in Brazil. The research project studies: 1) whether climate change is altering the frequency, duration, and severity of droughts over more than a century, 2) how droughts have affected agricultural production in the past 50 years, 3) whether droughts affect total factor productivity (TFP) in agriculture, 4) how different dimensions of drought cause poverty, and 5) to what extent droughts affect poverty through the causal channel of TFP in agriculture. This current paper draws from the first two topics. 1. MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS OF DROUGHT. The first part of the paper constructs a host of short- and long-run measures of drought that all incorporate potential evapotranspiration. Some prominent studies have analyzed the frequency, duration, and severity of drought using indicators that depend mainly on the rainfall regime or vegetation index. However, despite the increase in temperature in recent decades, changes in rainfall have not exhibited a clear trend, while evapotranspiration shows the same rising trend as temperature. Drought impacts are likely underestimated without considering all factors that are influenced by global warming. This section of the paper studies whether drought has increased in Brazil in several dimensions, checking the robustness to alternative measures. Our preferred measure is a Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) that is constructed to measure short-run droughts (between 3 and 12 months), and the frequency, duration, severity and extension of longer-run droughts (measured in 5- or 10-year windows). The data on temperature, precipitation, and potential evapotranspiration used to construct the drought indicators from 1901 to 2020 are drawn from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (CRU-UEA). They provide monthly information at a 0.5 grid level, representing approximately 55 km2. Among the many interesting descriptive findings are: a) the severity of drought increased in level and variability in the second half of the 20th century, and the level more than doubled in the most recent decade; b) drought severity has increased much more in the North and Center-West Regions of the country; c) the duration, but not frequency, of drought has followed the same pattern as the severity; and d) a decomposition of the increase in drought severity reveals that it has largely been caused by rising evapotranspiration, not by changes in precipitation. 2. IMPACTS OF DROUGHT ON AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION. The second part of the paper estimates the effects of drought on Brazilian agricultural production between 1974 and 2020. This section aims to understand how different types of drought measures based on the SPEI—such as long-run drought severity or duration, annual drought, and quarterly drought—differentially impact agricultural production and productivity. Because drought is a rare event, we calculate the distribution of impacts across municipalities. The data used to measure agricultural production—calculated with a Fischer quantity index—are drawn from the survey Municipal Agricultural Production (PAM) from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The data cover the 69 principal crops in Brazil—33 annual and 36 perennial—by year and municipality from 1974 to 2020. The data used to construct the drought measures were described above. We explore a variety of models to control for time-invariant and time-varying local unobservables, as well as the lagged effects of drought. After testing, we settle on a model with municipal fixed effects and state level quadratic trends. Under the assumption that droughts are exogenous to agricultural producers at the municipal level, and that unobservables are adequately controlled for, we estimate the causal impacts of drought on municipal level agricultural production. We use the estimated coefficients to calculate the distribution of drought impacts across municipalities and years. We also explore heterogeneity in the distribution of impacts by crop type, biome and sub-period, as well as decompose the impact on production into productivity and area effects. Among the many interesting results, we highlight: a) droughts that take place in the first two quarters of the year have much stronger negative effects than droughts that happen later in the year; b) as expected, droughts impact annual crops much more than perennial crops; c) across biomes, and relevant to poverty, droughts that happen in the Caatinga (semi-arid Northeast) have much more severe effects in percentage terms than in the Mata Altantica (2nd) or Cerrado (3rd); d) a drought at about the 50th percentile of impacts in the Caatinga biome has about the same impact (-20%) on production as a drought in the 1st percentile of impacts in the Cerrado biome; e) in terms of the volume of output, droughts have the largest effect in the Cerrado; and f) the impact of droughts has been increasing over time. 3. SIMULATED IMPACTS OF DROUGHT FROM 2021 to 2100 . The third part of the paper, which is in progress, conducts simulation exercises. We rely on climatological models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project version 6 (CMIP6) for alternative scenarios of what might happen to precipitation and evapotranspiration, and thus our SPEI drought measures, to simulate the impacts of drought on agricultural production in Brazil throughout the 21st century. 4. CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS In progress

Brazilian agriculture in the 1990s: Impact of the policy reforms

This paper describes the changes in economic policies and in macroeconomic conditions in the 1990s and analyses their impact on the agricultural sector in Brazil. We emphasize four aspects of the reform period that were either unexpected or not given sufficient attention by authors writing in the period prior to the reforms. The first issue relates to the importance that events outside of the agricultural sector, specially the stabilization problems, have not only for the performance of the sector but also for the timing and sequence of policy reform. A second issue that we emphasize is that policy reform involved far more than trade liberalization. Deregulation and the reform of rural credit and support price policy have been central as well. A third issue that was not given sufficient attention by the pre-reform analyses that focused on agricultural prices is the impact of policy reform on input markets and productivity. We identify changes in input markets as one of the key components of the adjustment process. A fourth and final issue that we address is that policy reform had a highly differentiated impact on the sector. Reform was neither uniformly beneficial, nor entirely prejudicial. Thus, our analysis seeks to distinguish between different groups of products, such as importables and exportables, geographic regions, farm sizes, and sub-periods. The paper emphasizes also that, since not all reforms were introduced simultaneously, the 1990s should be treated as a decade of transition in which the old model was replaced, but not all of the features of the new model were firmly established