SABIIA - Sistema Aberto e Integrado de Informação em Agricultura (Sabiia)

Zhang, Xiaobo; Tan, Kong-Yam.

A key objective of China's reform program was to reduce distortions in the economic system and enhance growth. However, when implemented in incremental and partial ways, local governments or individuals have chance to capture rents inherent in the reform process. Young (2000) warned that the rent-seeking behavior might lead to increasing market fragmentation. Empirical studies have since shown that this did not happen in the product markets. In this paper we argue that as rents from the product markets were squeezed out during the reform process, rent-seeking behavior shifted to the factor markets, especially the capital and land markets. The reform process now needs to be deepened to ensure that the factor markets also become more integrated and efficient.

Anatomy of Stigmatized Behavior: Peer Influence and Relative Concern

Palavras-chave: Reform; China; Rent Seeking; Factor and Product Market; Transition; International Development; D33; D61; D63; O11; O53; P23.

Ano: 2004

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/60183

Chen, Xi.

This paper is based on an ongoing joint work with David Sahn and Xiaobo Zhang.

Gauging the potential for social unrest

Palavras-chave: Social Stigma; Peer Influences; Relative Concern; Blood Donation; China; Agricultural and Food Policy; Community/Rural/Urban Development; Consumer/Household Economics; Food Security and Poverty; Health Economics and Policy; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; International Development; Labor and Human Capital; Research Methods/ Statistical Methods; Risk and Uncertainty; JEL: I32; J22; D13; D63.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/103644

Stark, Oded; Hyll, Walter; Behrens, Doris A..

It stands to reason that social unrest does not erupt out of the blue. Although there are a great many reasons why social dismay might descend into social disorder, only few yardsticks or indices can plausibly be used to gauge the potential for social unrest (PSU). If policy makers want to undertake public action to prevent social dismay escalating into social disruption, they obviously need to draw on practical sensors. This paper assesses critically the adequacy of two such measures, the polarization (P) index, and the total relative deprivation (TRD) index. The paper proposes a tentative guide to selecting between these two measures. A review of three stylized scenarios suggests that, where income redistributions reduce the number of distinct income...

The Role of Non-Farm Incomes in Reducing Rural Poverty and Inequality in China

Palavras-chave: Social dismay; The potential for social unrest; Polarization; Total relative deprivation; Policy choice; Public Economics; D31; D63.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/53721

de Janvry, Alain; Sadoulet, Elisabeth; Zhu, Nong.

China's record in reducing rural poverty has been nothing short of spectacular and should be a source of lessons for other countries. Rural poverty reduction is generally sought in the role of agriculture in contributing to farm incomes. However, non-farm employment in rural areas can also be a major contributor. Using detailed household survey data from Hubei province, we simulate the counterfactual of what rural households' incomes, poverty, and inequality would be in the absence of access to non-farm sources of income. Results show that, without non-farm employment, rural poverty would be much higher and deeper, and that income inequality would be higher as well. We find that education, proximity to town, neighborhood effects, and village effects are...

How to Measure Carbon Equity: Carbon Gini Index Based on Historical Cumulative Emission Per Capita

Palavras-chave: Non-farm income; Inequality; Poverty; China; Consumer/Household Economics; Food Security and Poverty; D63; O15; Q12.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/25043

Fei, Teng; Jiankun, He; Xunzhang, Pan; Chi, Zhang.

This paper uses Lorenz Curve and Gini Index with adjustment to per capita historical cumulative emission and constructs Carbon Gini Index to measure inequality in climate change area. The analysis using Carbon Gini Index shows that 70% of carbon space in the atmosphere has been used for unequal distribution, which is almost the same as that of income in the country with the biggest gap between rich and poor in the world. The carbon equity should be an urgency and priority in the climate agenda. Carbon Gini Index established in this paper can be used to measure inequality in the distribution of carbon space and provide a quantified indicator for measurement of carbon equity among different proposals.

FIFTY YEARS OF REGIONAL INEQUALITY IN CHINA: A JOURNEY THROUGH REVOLUTION, REFORM AND OPENNESS

Palavras-chave: Climate Change; Carbon Equity; Long-term Mitigation Goal; Cumulative Emission Per Capita; Carbon Gini Index; Environmental Economics and Policy; Q45; Q56; D63.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/102568

Kanbur, Ravi; Zhang, Xiaobo.

This paper constructs and analyses a long run time series for regional inequality in China from the Communist Revolution to the present. There have been three peaks of inequality in the last fifty years, coinciding with the Great Famine of the late 1950s, the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and 1970s, and finally the period of openness and global integration in the late 1990s. Econometric analysis establishes that regional inequality is explained in the different phases by three key variables--the ratio of heavy industry to gross output value, the degree of centralization, and the degree of openness.

Measuring Social Welfare: A Dog's Hind Leg Possibility Postulate

Palavras-chave: Inequality; Polarisation; Decentralization; Industrialization; Openness; Globalization; Chinese economy; Political Economy; D63; 018; P27.

Ano: 2001

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/7236

Hertzler, Greg.

Our current methods of analysing policies and the distributions of wealth insure that society is on an efficient frontier. This is not the same as a social optimum. To choose the optimal point on the frontier we need a social welfare function. Following the ordinal revolution in demand theory, a large body of research concluded that social welfare functions don't exist. The intensity of people's preferences cannot be observed and hence interpersonal comparisons are essentially impossible. This paper argues that the intensity of people's preferences can be observed and could be incorporated into a social welfare function.

Unpacking the Meaning of “Market Access”

Palavras-chave: Social welfare; Welfare analysis; Demand systems; Duality; Dynamic optimisation; Consumer/Household Economics; D60; D63.

Ano: 2007

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10386

Chamberlin, Jordan; Jayne, Thomas S..

Improving farmers’ access to markets is widely recognized as a major development challenge. A review of the literature suggests that indicators of market access may bear little relationship to the specific processes of interest and hence provide misguided evidence of the impacts of improved market access. This paper attempts to “unpack” the dimensions of market access and, in the process, uses farm survey data from Kenya to investigate changes in multiple indicators during the post-liberalization period. Findings show that market access conditions experienced by rural Kenyans exhibit considerable variation across time, space, and indicator type. We suggest ways in which structured hypothesizing and sensitivity analysis may strengthen empirical treatments...

Dimensions of Wealth Dispersion Among Farm Operator Households: An Assessment of the Impact of Farm Subsidies

Palavras-chave: Market access; Remoteness; Smallholders; Africa; Kenya; Agricultural and Food Policy; Community/Rural/Urban Development; International Development; Marketing; Research Methods/ Statistical Methods; C81; D01; D63; D83; H41; H54; R58; L99.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/110014

El-Osta, Hisham S.; Mishra, Ashok K..

This paper uses microlevel data from the Agricultural Resource Management Survey to examine the changes in the distributions of household wealth and to assess the role farm subsidies play, among other factors, in affecting these distributions. The empirical analysis relies on the concept of the adjusted Gini coefficient and on fixed-effect regression procedures. Coefficients from fixed-effect estimation indicate a negative correlation between government payments and wealth dispersion, with the effect shifting toward more of a positive relation when government payments were allowed to interact with regional dummies.

Tipo: Journal Article

Palavras-chave: Adjusted Gini coefficient; Agricultural Resource Management Survey; Fixed-effects regression; Government subsidies; Life cycle; Wealth dispersion; Environmental Economics and Policy; Farm Management; Livestock Production/Industries; Production Economics; C33; D31; D63; O18; Q15.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/43733

Climate Policy When the Distant Future Matters: Catastrophic Events with Hyperbolic Discounting

Karp, Larry S.; Tsur, Yacov.

Low probability catastrophic climate change can have a significant influence on policy under hyperbolic discounting. We compare the set of Markov Perfect Equilibria (MPE) to the optimal policy under time-consistent commitment. For some initial levels of risk there are multiple MPE; these may involve either excessive or insufficient stabilization effort. These results imply that even if the free-rider problem amongst contemporaneous decision-makers were solved, there may remain a coordination problem amongst successive generations of decision-makers. A numerical example shows that under plausible conditions society should respond vigorously to the threat of climate change.

Equity judgments and context dependence: Knowledge, efficiency and incentives

Palavras-chave: Abrupt climate change; Event uncertainty; Catastrophic risk; Hyperbolic discounting; Markov Perfect Equilibria; Environmental Economics and Policy; Risk and Uncertainty; C61; C73; D63; D99; Q54.

Ano: 2007

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/7186

Schilizzi, Steven.

Distributional equity concerns are often at least as important as economic efficiency and ecological sustainability in environmental and natural resource management policies. Until recently, however, economists have shied away from tackling equity issues, primarily because equity appeared as a slippery concept, varying across people and circumstances. This study takes this context-dependence of equity judgments as a starting point and shows that such dependence, far from being random, is systematic. A series of controlled laboratory treatments with University students were designed to investigate the role on distributional equity judgments of such context factors as knowledge of one’s position in society, how the existence of equity-efficiency tradeoffs...

The merger of populations, the incidence of marriages, and aggregate unhappiness

Palavras-chave: Equity; Fairness; Resource allocation; Environmental policy; Experimental economics; Welfare economics; Public choice; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; Public Economics; C92; D03; D63; H23; Q56; Q58.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/100887

Stark, Oded; Rendl, Franz; Jakubek, Marcin.

Let a society’s unhappiness be measured by the aggregate of the levels of relative deprivation of its members. When two societies of equal size, F and M, merge, unhappiness in the merged society is shown to be higher than the sum of the levels of unhappiness in the constituent societies when apart; merger alone increases unhappiness. But when societies F and M merge and marriages are formed such that the number of households in the merged society is equal to the number of individuals in one of the constituent societies, unhappiness in the merged society is shown to be lower than the aggregate unhappiness in the two constituent societies when apart. This result obtains regardless of which individuals from one society form households with which individuals...

Motives for Household Private Transfers in Burkina Faso

Palavras-chave: Merger of populations; Integration of societies; Unhappiness; Marriages; Relative deprivation; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; D0; D10; D31; D63.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/109968

Kazianga, Harounan.

Resource transfers among households have received considerable interest among economists in recent years. Two of the main reasons for the surge of interest in household transfers are the information on human nature conveyed by transfer behavior and the implication on income redistribution policy that private transfer might have. Empirical studies, however, provide mixed results on transfer behavior. This is because previous inquiries were confronted with several estimation issues and have focused on data from developed countries where private transfers are already small. This paper contributes to the literature on transfer behavior by using a multifaceted econometric approach to examine the motives of household transfers in Burkina, a low-income country...

Relative Income, Network Interactions and Social Stigma

Palavras-chave: Private transfers; Altruism; Exchanges; Risk sharing; Consumer/Household Economics; D63; D64; I15; I30.

Ano: 2004

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/28463

Chen, Xi; Zhang, Xiaobo.

Blood donation with compensation is considered as a social stigma. However, more people in the reference group donate blood often leads to less moral concern and more followers. Therefore, the behavior is likely to be influenced through one’s interactions with neighbors, friends and relatives. Meanwhile, relative income may affect the motives for blood donation through increasing mistrust and stress. The motives might be stronger for households of lower social rankings. Utilizing three-wave census-type panel data in 18 villages in rural western China, two identification strategies, instrumental variable and network-based identification, are implemented to estimate the effect of social interactions. Both community-specific and household-specific relative...

Classical Horizontal Inequities in the Provision of Agricultural Income Support

Palavras-chave: Blood Donation; Social Interactions; Inequality; Relative Income; China; Agricultural and Food Policy; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; Political Economy; JEL: I32; J22; D13; D63.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/90796

Allanson, Paul.

This paper explores the redistributive effect of classical horizontal inequities induced by agricultural support policy. Within farm type horizontal inequity (HI) is associated with differences in the level of support received by farms of a given type and level of pre-support income, whereas between farm type HI arises from systematic differences in support levels between commodity regimes. The overall redistributive effect of HI in Scottish agriculture is shown to be substantial, though systematic discrimination between farm types proves not to be the major cause. The imperfect targeting of support revealed by the empirical findings has implications for the design of policy.

A SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF QUALITY OF LIFE INDICES ACROSS COUNTRIES

Palavras-chave: Farm income support; Horizontal inequity; Agricultural and Food Policy; D63; I38; Q18.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/24769

Rahman, Tauhidur; Mittelhammer, Ronald C.; Wandschneider, Philip R..

This paper attempts to provide a comprehensive analysis of interrelationships among the determinants of the Quality of Life (QOL). We show that various measures of well-being are highly sensitive to domains of QOL that are considered in the construction of comparative indices, and how measurable inputs into the well-being indicators are aggregated and weighted to arrive at composite measures of QOL. We present a picture of conditions among the 43 countries of the world with respect to such interrelated domains of QOL as the relationship with family and friends, emotional well-being, health, work and productivity, material well-being, feeling part of one's community, personal safety, and the quality of environment. On the basis of Borda Rule and the...

Reallocating Water: An Application of Sequential Sharing Rules to Cyprus

Palavras-chave: Quality of life; Domains; Borda rule; Principal components; And rankings; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; I31; D60; D63.

Ano: 2003

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/22045

Ansink, Erik; Marchiori, Carmen.

We present an axiomatic approach to the reallocation of water rights among economic sectors. Reallocation may be appropriate when the current schedule of water allocation is considered unfair. Our proposed approach is based on the combination of initial water rights, sectors' claims to water, and an exogenous ordering of these sectors. We apply sharing rules, based on bankruptcy rules, to reallocate water, which complements other approaches to the reallocation of water rights, including those based on water markets. Our approach is illustrated using an application to water reallocation in Cyprus, where reallocation of water rights has been recognised as an essential step towards good water governance and one of the main challenges for current water policies.

Globalisation and Governance: Contradictions of Neo-Liberal Migration Management

Palavras-chave: Water Reallocation; Sequential Sharing Rule; Water Scarcity; Axiomatic Approach; Cyprus; Environmental Economics and Policy; D63; D71; Q25.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/56222

Overbeek, Henk.

Neo-liberal globalisation has primarily entailed the liberalisation of trade and capital flows, but largely ignored the issue of labour mobility. Most literature on the political economy of globalisation likewise ignores global labour mobility. This paper first asks how globalisation affects human mobility. The conclusion is that globalisation integrates the world population into the global labour market in three principal ways: through accelerated commodification of labour power, through the integration via transnational production of national and regional labour markets, and by various (sometimes new) forms of international labour mobility. Regulation of the global economy is increasingly informalised and privatised, argues the paper. This trend is also...

Integration, social distress, and policy formation

Palavras-chave: Globalisation; Global Governance; Migration; International Migration Policy; Multilateralism; Neoliberalism; International Relations/Trade; Political Economy; D30; D63; P5.

Ano: 2002

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/26363

Livestock Husbandry between Ethics and Economics: Finding a Feasible Way Out by Target Costing?

Stark, Oded.

I study the integration of regions in the form of a merger of populations, which I interpret as a revision of people’s social space and their comparison set; I illustrate the way in which a merger can aggravate social distress; and I consider policy responses. Specifically, I view the merger of populations as a merger of income vectors; I measure social distress by aggregate relative deprivation; I demonstrate that a merger increases aggregate relative deprivation; and I show that a social planner is able to reverse this increase by means of least-cost, post-merger increases in individual incomes, but is unable to counter it by relying exclusively on a self-contained income redistribution that retains individual levels of wellbeing at their pre-merger...

Tipo: Working Paper

Palavras-chave: Integration of regions; Merger of populations; Revision of social space; Aggregate relative deprivation; Social distress; Policy responses; Community/Rural/Urban Development; International Relations/Trade; D04; D63; F55; H53; P51.

Ano: 2012

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/120179

Theuvsen, Ludwig; Essmann, Sandra; Brand-Sassen, Henning.

Livestock husbandry is a major line of conflict in many industrialized countries. Farmers are caught in a dilemma between ethical considerations imposed by, for instance, nongovernmental organizations and the wider public on the one hand and competitive and economic pressures on the other. In this paper we use a target-costing approach to determine whether it is possible to implement more animal-friendly husbandry conditions for turkey fattening in Germany without sacrificing competitiveness. Empirical results show that, at first glance, the willingness on the part of consumers to pay for more animal welfare exceeds the costs to farmers of more animal-friendly husbandry systems. A critical discussion reveals that this result may be flawed by methodological...