Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Edwards, Geoff W.

English

Research Papers in Economics

Editor's Introduction
Geo¡ Edwards
Why have a millennium issue? One answer is that the start of a millennium
is a good time for stocktaking. What better time for re£ecting on
achievements? And for looking to the future, thinking about how it will be
di¡erent from the past, and about how we can better respond to the
challenges it will bring?
Most learned journals I have looked at seem not to have found this
argument, or others, convincing: they have not produced a millennium issue,
nor indicated an intention to do so. (The reality that in editors' o¤ces, as
elsewhere, there are di¡erent views on when the new millennium arrives does
pose some di¤culties of veri¢cation.) Perhaps the rarity of millennium issues
is because the costs have been judged excessive in relation to the bene¢ts.
The American Agricultural Economics Association, to which the
Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society sometimes looks
for a lead, is not producing a millennium issue of its front-rank journal. The
American Association did, however, publish in October 1993 an issue to
mark the 75th anniversary of the ¢rst issue of the Journal of Farm
Economics, forerunner to the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.
The issue contained papers that looked at what agricultural economists did
and how they did it: `authors were asked to examine contemporary issues in
research methodology and economic inference, and to provide perspectives
on the agricultural and resource research agenda and the future of
agricultural research institutions' (Buccola and Adams 1993, p. i). Papers in
that issue by Leontief, Tomek, Randall, Pasour, Castle, Just and Rausser
and others remain of interest to Australian agricultural and resource
economists.
The Journal of Economic Perspectives did produce a millennium issue. In
the Winter 2000 issue Australian agricultural economists will ¢nd re£ective
backward- and forward-looking papers that have much to o¡er them. These
papers include `Environmental problems and policy: 2000^2050' by Paul
Portney, and `From homo economicus to homo sapiens' by Richard Thaler.
One of the predictions in the latter paper is that economists will in future
spend more time studying emotions.
Turning to the present collection, a word ¢rst on how the issue was
compiled. The idea of a millennium issue was suggested by several people,
# Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Inc. and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001,
108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK or 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
The Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 45:1, pp. 1^4and supported by the Council of the Society. A general invitation was
extended through issues of the Society's newsletter, News & Views, to submit
papers that looked back and/or forward, and were re£ective in nature.
The papers by David Godden, John Quiggin, and John Freebairn and
Julian Alston appeared in response to this invitation. The papers by Bob
Richardson and by Fay Rola-Rubzen, Brian Hardaker and John Dillon
resulted from speci¢c invitations to submit papers on the topics concerned.
All papers were reviewed. Appreciation is expressed to those other people
who submitted papers that were not accepted.
The issue commences with David Godden's examination of changes in
the Australian agricultural economics profession in the last quarter-century.
In undertaking this examination, Godden uses the microeconomic frame-
work that is central to the thinking processes of agricultural and resource
economists. This framework is applied across a broad domain, with con-
sideration being given not only to the roles of the changing economic and
political setting, institutions, and the labour market for Australian agri-
cultural economists, but also to the written output of the profession and its
`philosophical' underpinnings. Looking ahead, Godden suggests that changes
in the supply of agricultural economics graduates resulting from develop-
ments in tertiary education, including global competition in distance
education, may have a greater e¡ect on the profession than changes in the
demand for graduates.
Fay Rola-Rubzen, Brian Hardaker and John Dillon address what many
see as the world's top priority: reducing poverty. Drawing on their sub-
stantial experience in development activities and accessing a large literature,
these authors argue that agriculture-led economic growth is the most
e¡ective way to reduce poverty in most developing countries, and that too
little emphasis is being placed on that growth strategy. Rola-Rubzen,
Hardaker and Dillon consider several reasons why broad-based agricultural
development is not more in evidence: urban bias; ine¡ective aid; bad
governance; and fads and fancies in the development community. The
authors see agricultural economists as partly responsible for the sub-optimal
use of agriculture-¢rst strategies, and hence for the excessive number of
people su¡ering from poverty. The challenges for agricultural economists
working in development include making better use of their comparative
advantage in working with natural scientists and farmers, achieving a better
balance between making markets freer and correcting market failures, and
communicating more e¡ectively what they know.
The future productivity of the Murray^Darling Basin is of great concern
to Australians. In `Environmental economics and the Murray^Darling river
system' John Quiggin provides an overview of past regulation of the river
system and of the environmental problems experienced in the Basin. The
2 G. Edwards
# Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Inc. and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001main focus of his article is on the usefulness of three analytical frameworks
for thinking about the resource and environmental problems of the Basin.
These frameworks are developed on the concepts of externality, sustain-
ability and property rights, respectively. Quiggin suggests that an eclectic
approach, drawing on all three perspectives, is most helpful for under-
standing the complex problems of the Murray^Darling Basin. A conclusion
is that further developments in resource pricing, regulation and property
rights (private and common) will be needed to deal with the growth in
competing demands for land and water.
The place of the wool industry in Australia's history, economy and culture
would make it an appropriate subject for the millennium issue, even if the
industry could not lay claim to the biggest rural policy disaster in the
country's history in the collapse of the reserve price scheme. Bob Richardson
has written an insider's story of the political economy of wool marketing in
the last half-century. He argues that politics took over from soundly-based
economic policy advice over that period, at a high price to woolgrowers.
Decisions on wool research, promotion and market intervention intended to
stabilise prices all su¡ered as a result. Richardson explains the background
to the introduction of a conservative price support scheme for the wool
industry in the early 1970s, the evolution of this into a high-risk reserve price
scheme in the late 1980s, and the travails of disposing of the wool stockpile
in the 1990s. He considers that agricultural economists were less useful than
they might have been in providing relevant and timely analysis for important
decisions on wool policy.
The ¢nal article is perhaps less di¡erent in style from the run of articles
published in AJARE than are the earlier ones. This article is on generic
advertising, the authors being John Freebairn and Julian Alston. Their
interest is in advertising for the bene¢t of producers in the competitive
industries that characterise much of world agriculture, rather than in
advertising as an aid to pro¢t by ¢rms with market power. Freebairn and
Alston derive rules for maximising aggregate producer gains from advertising.
They do this for alternative methods of funding the advertising ö lump-
sum, per unit and ad valorem levies, and per unit levy with matching
government subsidy. The producer surplus-maximising level of advertising
depends on how the advertising is funded. The authors synthesise a substantial
body of literature, and extend the analysis into the areas of international
trade, market distortions and multi-commodity interactions. An important
policy implication is that generic advertising cannot be pro¢table for a small
trading country in the absence of government intervention in the market.
Some of the articles are likely to prove controversial. Submissions from
readers who have di¡erent perspectives on the topics addressed will be
welcomed.
Editor's introduction 3
# Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Inc. and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001Book reviews have always been an important, and the most widely read,
component of AJARE. It is appropriate that the millennium issue includes
its share.
Hopefully members of AARES and non-member readers of the Journal
will view this millennium issue as a worthwhile initiative. If they do, I will
judge the costs reasonable in relation to the bene¢ts.
Reference
Buccola, S. and Adams, R. 1993, `Preface to the 75th anniversary issue', American Journal
of Agricultural Economics, vol. 75, p. i.
4 G. Edwards
# Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Inc. and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001

Editor's Introduction

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Research Papers in Economics