RELEVANCE OF DUALITY THEORY TO THE PRACTICING AGRICULTURAL ECONOMIST: DISCUSSION

Structural Adjustment and Economic Efficiency of Rice Farmers in Northern Ghana

Efficiency among farmers of less developed countries has been the focus of numerous studies since T. W. Schultz hypothesized that farmers in developing agricultures are "poor but efficient."'1 A growing body of literature supports Schultz's argument that farmers in developing agricultures have low incomes, not because they use their resources inefficiently, but because they lack the technology and resources they need to realize higher productivity and, thus, higher incomes. A high priority in agricultural development assistance since the 1960s has been the generation of technology that would enable farmers to increase their productivity. Much research has been devoted to the causes of low agricultural productivity and the longer-term productivity gains that may be forthcoming from modern technology, but less attention has been devoted to the process of technology adoption by low-income farmers. As noted in the recent survey of adoption of agricultural innovations by G. Feder, R. E. Just, and D. Zilberman, there have been efforts to model adoption in the context of risk, but there is a dearth of empirical evidence on the ways that farmers respond over time as a new production technology is introduced in a risky environment.2 In this article we address the empirical analysis of technical efficiency as farmers adopt new production technology, taking into account production risk and learning. We utilize recently developed efficiency criteria applicable when production is risky and implement these criteria using an approximation to a representative farmer's decision model.3 Pooled time series and cross-sectional data collected by the International Rice Research Institute are used to investigate the

When China's leaders launched rural reforms in the late 1970s, they acknowledged the nation's need to modify its commitment to egalitarianism.1 Slogans such as Tt is glorious to be rich!' and 'Some areas will lead; others will follow!' signalled this fundamental shift in ideology. Leaders backed up these exhortations with a series of concrete policy actions ? establishing the Special Economic Zones and implementing the East Coast-first policy, introducing financial reforms, and initiating the rural industrialization movement. In China's version of the 'trickle down' theory, certain core areas were to take the lead in the modernization process and provide models for other areas to later emulate. Adopting strategies that had been employed

The first key objective of this thesis is to estimate a set of econometric models of Australian broadacre agricultural production by applying the duality theory in production economics. Models of Australian broadacre agriculture are estimated using alternative formulations of econometric modelling of producer decision-making, in which cost minimisation, revenue maximisation and profit maximisation are assumed. A unique, large quasi-micro pooled cross-sectional farm dataset drawn from the Australian Agricultural and Grazing Industries Survey over a sixteen year period, from 1990 to 2005, is used for model estimation. Key policy-relevant outcomes of this investigation are estimates of price elasticities and elasticities of transformation and substitution between broadacre inputs and outputs in Australia. Multi-product dual cost, revenue and profit functions are specified for Australian broadacre agriculture. The multi-product functions are specified to accommodate the prevalent multi-enterprise operation on Australian broadacre farms. The restricted versions of the dual functions are chosen to account for quasi-fixity and the lumpiness of some capital used in broadacre production. The translog and normalised quadratic, the two most popular flexible functional forms in empirical duality applications, are used to specify the dual functions. In addition, impacts of climatic conditions, production focuses, production scales and rainfall on production are also allowed for in the estimated models. Systems of demand and/or supply equations are derived from the specified dual cost, revenue and profit functions and estimated using the quasi-micro dataset available. The estimated systems obtained have reasonable statistical goodness-of-fit with high percentage of statistically significant system coefficients. Price variables are also found to significantly influence input demand and output supply. Importantly, using the normalised quadratic form, the estimated system of input demand derived from the cost function and the estimated system of output supply derived from revenue functions satisfy the theoretical curvature conditions implied by rational economic behaviour. The estimated supply and demand system derived from the profit function violates the curvature condition but the violation is not severe. Input demand and output supply in broadacre farming are found to be fairly inelastic with respect to price changes in the short run. However, demand for fertilisers and crop and pasture chemicals are found to be sensitive to changes in their own prices and in general production costs. The second key objective of this thesis is to investigate three significant issues concerning the application of the duality theory in empirical agricultural production research using data from Australian broadacre agriculture. First, the results obtained from the dual cost, revenue and profit functions are contrasted according to goodness-of-fit, the satisfaction of theoretical regularity conditions and the sensibility of the generated elasticity estimates. The estimation result obtained under the cost minimisation assumption conforms more to economic theory than results obtained under revenue maximisation or profit maximisation. Second, the estimation results are more in line with expectations based on prior economic reasoning when the normalised quadratic functional form is used than when the translog is used. Third, results using data of Australian broadacre farming at two aggregate levels indicate that data aggregation across firms can have a significant impact on research findings, depending on the assumption made regarding the economic behaviour of producers

In seeking to explain why poor countries tend to choose policies that tax agriculture relative to manufacturing while rich countries do the opposite, archetypical parameters for a poor agrarian economy and a rich industrial one are inserted in a computable general equilibrium model to simulate the medium-term effects on income distribution of policies that distort the relative prices of tradables. The model includes a non-tradables sector and intermediate inputs, realistic features that ensure even greater skewness in the distributional effects of protection than simpler models suggest. The magnitude of the results helps explain the tendency for countries to change gradually from taxing to subsidizing agriculture relative to manufacturing as their economies develop. The paper draws out the implications of the analysis for agricultural and trade policy reform in the 1990s.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

As one of the last agricultural frontiers of the humid tropics, Amazonia is the largest area of the world currently undergoing frontier settlement. Although the earliest intrusions of foreign populations into Amazonia date from pre-Hispanic times, the large-scale entrance of peasant colonists into the vast region is a recent phenomenon. Much of this movement represents the spontaneous migration of peoples, but governments in the region have also become increasingly interested in opening up and integrating Amazonia to national and international economies. These actions are frequently seen as potential solutions to a number of national problems, including the need to increase agricultural production, correct spatial imbalances in the distribution of population, exploit frontier lands for reasons of national security, and defuse potentially serious political problems resulting from the existing agrarian structure, landlessness, and unemployment. The upper basin of the Amazon in Ecuador, bordering on the eastern slopes of the Andes, is one such area of frontier settlement. Recent decades have witnessed the rapid conversion of these Amazonian forests to agricultural uses through a series of schemes bearing such labels as land development and colonization. Most forest intervention in the region has come at the hands of colonist farmers attempting to establish land claims along transport routes originally constructed to aid in petroleum exploration and exploitation. These are farmers who formerly have made a living in long-established farmlands and who, for various reasons (population pressures, pervasive poverty, maldistribution of farmland, lack of inputs for intensive cultivation, lack of nonagrarian livelihood opportunities, and generally inadequate rural development) have been increasingly squeezed out of their homelands. A marginal person by virtue of his low socioeconomic and political status, the farmer often perceives

Consumers' Evaluation of Allocation Policies for Scarce Health Care Services: Vested Interest Activation Trumps Spatial and Temporal Distance

The allocation of scarce health care service resources often requires trade-offs between individual and collective outcomes (e.g., when some individuals benefit more strongly from a given policy than others). Based on construal level theory, one would expect that consumers cognitively represent the individual and collective outcomes of an allocation policy at different levels of abstraction and that they evaluate allocation policies more positively when there is congruency between the cognitive representation of the policy’s focal outcome and the spatial and temporal distance inherently present in the policy’s decision context (e.g., allocation decisions on a future policy). However, we hypothesize that this congruency effect can be overruled by a high vested interest mindset that is activated by an individual’s recent personal experience with a health care service provider. Since a high vested interest mindset increases the relevance of the allocation policy implementation for the individual because s/he perceives strong personal consequences, we propose that for consumers with recent experience the evaluation of an allocation policy that focuses on individual outcomes is higher than that of a policy that focuses on collective outcomes irrespective of the spatial and temporal distance in the decision context. Results of a hypothetical experiment among a representative sample of the general population confirm the congruency effects in the new domain of health care service allocation policies, and provide support for the proposed overruling effect of the activation of a high vested interest mindset by recent personal experience on spatial and temporal distance.

Shenggen FanInternational Food Policy Research Institute and Institute of AgriculturalEconomics of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural SciencesLinxiu ZhangCenter for Chinese Agricultural Policy of the Chinese Academy of SciencesXiaobo ZhangInternational Food Policy Research InstituteI. IntroductionChina is one of the few countries in the developing world that has madeprogress in reducing its total number of poor over the past 25 years.

A growing body of literature on "threshold" adoption models argues that adoption and diffusion patterns of a new technology are the result of explicit maximizing behavior of a heterogeneous population. Unlike the views of "epidemic" models of Z. Griliches and E. Mansfield, where diffusion is considered as a process of imitation and its speed is affected by profitability and other economic considerations alone,1 the threshold approach requires identification of the various dimensions of heterogeneity in the population that are relevant for the adoption of specific technology and incorporates them in the analytical study.2 M. Caswell and D. Zilberman have identified land quality and well depth as important factors in the choice of irrigation technology.3 Therefore, economic analyses of adoption and diffusion of irrigation technology choices should explicitly incorporate physical (engineering and agronomic) and irrigation-specific features of the new technology, such as irrigation efficiency and capital and equipment costs, as well as locational characteristics such as land quality, water quality, and so on, in addition to economic factors. It is important for farmers, manufacturers of irrigation equipment, and policymakers to understand the conditions under which a specific technology, such as drip, is .desirable and is likely to be adopted, as well as the forces that affect the diffusion. Understanding the adoption patterns of drip irrigation technology is required for the formulation of water, energy, and land management policies. Furthermore, it is not sufficient to know whether drip irrigation is likely to be adopted in a particular field; it is equally important to determine to what extent it will be used.

The agricultural sector consumes energy in various forms while simultaneously generating agricultural waste and wastewater, and remaining a major contributor to carbon emissions. In line with the 3R principles—Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle—circular economy (CE) in agriculture has emerged as a key pathway toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study investigates the recent developments, applications, and challenges associated with CE in agriculture through a systematic literature review (SLR). A total of 74 high‐impact articles were selected from 388 screened publications based on relevance, citation impact, and journal quality. Descriptive and content analyses were applied to identify key research themes—namely anaerobic digestion, biomass, and sustainability—along with regional disparities, application areas, and methodological approaches. The findings reveal a wide range of technical innovations across agricultural sectors, complemented by managerial and economic solutions. In addition, the review outlines major challenges and research gaps in the field. The study offers a comprehensive synthesis of CE practices in agriculture and provides a valuable reference for future research and implementation.

China's rural economic reforms radically altered land tenure in rural China. With the granting of land use rights and residual income rights to farming households between 1979 and 1983, agriculture shifted from a collective-based to a familybased system. Land was not privatized, however. Ownership remained "collective", with local officials, typically at the village level, exercising a major influence over the allocation of land and the way households could use land. The initial land allocations to families were typically based on household size, household labour supply, or both. The central government's policy was that these allocations were supposed to be for 15 years. In some villages, land use contracts have been respected; in other villages, however, local leaders have periodically redistributed land among households and have intervened throughout the reform period to determine how farmers are able to use the land. The initial reforms triggered an unprecedented acceleration of agricultural growth in China. From 1979 to 1984, the gross value of agricultural output increased in real terms at an annual rate of 7.6 per cent, and grain production rose by 4.9 per cent annually.' Empirical studies attribute a significant part of this increase to enhanced incentives, as farmers were able to keep the output and

E CONOMISTS have expended enormous effort examining the rationale for various contractual arrangements in agriculture, particularly sharecropping. While economists have made considerable theoretical efforts to understand agricultural contracts, few empirical studies have been undertaken. The dearth of empirical analyses of agricultural contracts is particularly striking for modern Western agriculture.' This is an important omission, not only because the existing empirical work tends to focus on the question of efficiency, but also because the theoretical models tend to examine contracts that bear little resemblance to those found in the United States today.

Karen MacoursUniversity of California, Berkeley, and Katholieke Universiteit LeuvenJohan F. M. SwinnenEuropean Commission and Katholieke Universiteit LeuvenI. IntroductionEconomic reforms have induced important output and productivity changesin the agricultural sectors of transition countries (TCs). There are, however,large differences between the countries in terms of the direction and themagnitude of these changes. For example, agricultural output increased con-siderably in the East Asian TCs, while there was a large output fall in theCentral and East European countries (CEECs) and the former Soviet Union(FSU) during transition (fig. 1).

Influenza is a contagious virus affecting both one's health and economic productivity. This study evaluates uses a survey of 2168 individuals across the U.S. Ordered logit regressions are used to model risk perception and generalized ordered logit regressions are used to model risk mitigation travel-related decisions. Models are estimated for three influenza outbreak scenarios, specifically an individual's travel-related: 1) risk perceptions, 2) risk mitigation decisions when infected and the individual wants to prevent spreading it, and may want treatment, and 3) risk mitigation decisions when not infected and the individual wants to reduce exposure. Risk perception results show that a recent personal experience with influenza-like symptoms and being female significantly increased risk perception at mandatory and medical trip locations. Risk mitigation model results show that males are less likely to alter their travel patterns in response to the possible spreading of the virus or increasing exposure. Knowing the difference between influenza and the stomach flu is more influential in reducing travel than a recent influenza experience in one's household. Individuals proactive with their health (i.e., receive the vaccine, have health insurance) are also proactive in seeking medical attention and reducing influenza spread. Lastly, aligned with the Protection Motivation Theory, individuals reduce travel to locations in which they perceived medium or high risk. However, increased risk perceived at one's work location did not significantly reduce travel. The findings provide insight into the risk perception and mitigation behavior of the American public during the COVID-19 pandemic and after restrictions are lifted.