AJAE Appendix: Agro-Manufactured Export Prices, Wages and Unemployment

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Farm productivity and marketstructure : evidence from cotton reforms in Zambia

This paper investigates the impacts of cotton marketing reforms on farm productivity, a key element for poverty alleviation, in rural Zambia. The reforms comprised the elimination of the Zambian cotton marketing board that was in place since 1977. Following liberalization, the sector adopted an outgrower scheme, whereby firms provided extension services to farmers and sold inputs on loans that were repaid at the time of harvest. There are two distinctive phases of the reforms: a failure of the outgrower scheme, and a subsequent period of success of the scheme. The authors'findings indicate that the reforms led to interesting dynamics in cotton farming. During the phase of failure, farmers were pushed back into subsistence and productivity in cotton declined. With the improvement of the outgrower scheme of later years, farmers devoted larger shares of land to cash crops, and farm productivity significantly increased.Crops&Crop Management Systems,Economic Theory&Research,Livestock&Animal Husbandry,Rural Poverty Reduction,Rural Development Knowledge&Information Systems

Trends in tariff reforms and trends in wage inequality

The authors provide new evidence on the impacts of trade reforms on wages and wage inequality in developing countries. While most of the current literature on the topic achieves identification by comparing outcomes before and after one episode of trade liberalization across industries, they propose a stronger identifying strategy. The authors explore the recent historical record of policy changes adopted by Argentina: from significant protection in the early 1970s, to the first episode of liberalization during the late 1970s, back to a slowdown of reforms during the 1980s, to the second episode of liberalization in the 1990s. These swings in trade policy comprise broken trends in trade reforms that they can compare with observed trends in wages and wage inequality. After setting up unusual historical data sets of trends in tariffs, trends in wages, and trends in wage inequality, the evidence supports two well-known hypotheses: trade liberalization, other things being equal, (1) has reduced wages, and (2) has increased wage inequality.Free Trade,Economic Theory&Research,Trade Policy,Export Competitiveness,Labor Markets

Smart Sensor System Application: An Integrated Compass

A fully integrable electronic compass has been designed based on the pulse position method, using micro-machined fluxgate magnetic sensors. The compass has been designed to have an accuracy of one degree. The analogue and digital circuitry in the system fit on a single Sea-of-Gates array of 200 k transistors. Together with the sensors it will be combined on a single MC

On the Melting of Bosonic Stripes

We use quantum Monte Carlo simulations to determine the finite temperature phase diagram and to investigate the thermal and quantum melting of stripe phases in a two-dimensional hard-core boson model. At half filling and low temperatures the stripes melt at a first order transition. In the doped system, the melting transitions of the smectic phase at high temperatures and the superfluid smectic (supersolid) phase at low temperatures are either very weakly first order, or of second order with no clear indications for an intermediate nematic phase.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Trade reforms, market access, and poverty in Argentina

Much of the literature that studies the relationship between trade and poverty in developing countries focuses on the effects of national trade reforms, such as own tariff reductions. In contrast, the World Trade Organization negotiations at the Doha Round were more concerned with the poverty effects on low-income countries, and of foreign reforms, such as the elimination of agricultural subsidies in industrial economies. The author empirically compares the relative poverty impacts of national and foreign trade reforms in Argentina. The author investigates national trade reforms, including tariff cuts on consumption goods and capital goods in Argentina. Foreign trade reforms include the elimination, in industrial countries, of agricultural subsidies and trade barriers on agricultural manufactures and industrial manufactures. Thesepolicies enhance the market access of Argentine exports. Overall, a combination of own reforms and enhanced market access would cause poverty to decline by between 1.7 and 4.6 percentage points. This evidence suggests that trade policies can be important poverty-reducing instruments in Argentina.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Labor Policies,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Health Economics&Finance,Markets and Market Access