Is rice becoming an inferior good? Food demand in the Philippines

What are the prospects for demand for the main foodstuffs, particularly rice, in the Philippines? Countries which have traditionally consumed rice as the basic staple such as Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Taiwan are eating more wheat and wheat products. There is also a shift towards increased consumption of meats, dairy products, vegetable oils, and fruits and vegetables. A recent study found rice to be an inferior good in Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Nepal. In this paper, the demand for cereals in the Philippines is analyzed. Instead of assuming separability, an alternative specification of the linear Almost Ideal Demand System (LA/AIDS) which includes rice, wheat, maize, meat, fish, fruits and vegetables, other foods, and non-food commodities for the Philippines is estimated using time-series data from 1961 to 1988. The effects of urbanization and dynamic factors such as habit formation in consumption are also considered in the empirical analysis. Then using the estimated parameters, the demand and income elasticities are estimated over the sample period. The parameters are used to generate baseline projections of cereal demand to 2000. Some policy implications and concluding remarks are given in the final section.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Crops&Crop Management Systems,Food&Beverage Industry,Agricultural Research

Has agricultural trade liberalization improved welfare in the least-developed countries? Yes

The author evaluates the progress in agricultural liberalization -and the welfare effects for least-developed and net food-importing countries- as a result of agricultural price shocks resulting from the Uruguay Round. She findsthat: (1) The changes in welfare are significantly affected by the structure of trade and distortions in the domestic economy. (2) Although many economies are hurt by increases in world prices, losses in terms of trade are small relative to total GDP. Only in a few countries does the estimated welfare change constitute more than 1 percent of GDP. (3) In several countries, the distortion effects are significantly larger than the terms-of-trade effects. In some cases, the distortion effects work in opposition to the terms-of-trade effects and are large enough to reverse the sign of the net welfare change. In short, removing policy distortions could convert the small loss in terms of trade to potential gains. But many least-developed, net food-importing countries did not use the Round to support domestic efforts at trade reform. As most studies show, most gains from multilateral liberalization come from the countries'own liberalization efforts, so countries that failed to liberalize their trade policy lost the opportunity for gains.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Trade Policy,Transport and Trade Logistics,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Economic Theory&Research,Trade Policy,Access to Markets,Environmental Economics&Policies

Distortionary effects of state trading in agriculture : issues for the next round of negotiations

The Uruguay Round agreements on agriculture were intended to move member countries toward a fair and market-oriented agricultural trading system. By progressively reducing domestic government support and export subsidies, converting nontariff barriers to tariffs, and reducing barriers to market access, members were committed to reducing distortions in world agricultural trade and in preventing new distortions from arising. But state trading enterprises with monopoly power or exclusive rights in agricultural trade in major products are still prevalent in both industrial and developing countries. In many countries, the operations of these state trading agencies tend in practice to nullify the intended objectives of the concessions on market access reached in the Uruguay Round. And there are still significant price distortions in trade in products subject to state trading.Economic Theory&Research,Markets and Market Access,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Environmental Economics&Policies,Rules of Origin,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Access to Markets,Markets and Market Access

MEXAGMKTS : a model of crop and livestock markets in Mexico

The genesis of the model MEXAGMKTS was the perception that agricultural policies in Mexico (and many other countries) are often second-best responses to the negative side effects of broad macroeconomic and international trade policies. MEXAGMKTS was designed to allow analysis of the relationship between such agricultural policies and different macroeconomic and international trade regimes. MEXAGMKTS is part of a set of interlinked macroeconomic and sectoral models of Mexico and the United States (with enough specifications for the rest of the world to close the system). The authors discuss the historical context in which MEXAGMKTS was developed as well as its economic structure, estimates, and validation. They present a stand-alone, counterfactural application of a trade liberalization scenario for Mexico.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Agricultural Research,Access to Markets,Markets and Market Access

Abolishing green rates : the effects on cereals, sugar, and oilseeds in West Germany

In 1987 the European Community began the ambitious task of forging a single market for goods and services across the national borders of its member states by 1992. Substantive reform of the Community's Common Agricultural Policy - necessary for the full integration of existing markets - has not yet been accomplished and has proven difficult to achieve. Creating a truly"common"agricultural policy in the European Community requires, at a minimum, eliminating price differences resulting from country- and commodity-specific exchange rates, known as"green rates."The authors discuss the various policy instruments that complicate the effects of these policy-determined price differences on crop production and the demand for inputs. They present a model that estimates the cross-commodity biases created by multiple policy instruments and that quantifies the effects of removing green-rate differentials in what was West Germany. The effects of price changes on domestic production are statistically significant in the model, although quantitatively small. This result suggests that eliminating green rates would lead primarily to a decline in farm income and a devaluation of fixed agricultural assets - which complicates the difficult task of attaining reform.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Access to Markets,Markets and Market Access,Crops&Crop Management Systems

Power, Ideology, and Global Development: On the Origins, Evolution and Achievements of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

UNCTAD was created in 1964 as a forum for strategic thinking about international trade and development issues and for identifying mutually beneficial opportunities for policy coordination and international co-operation with the participation of both developing and industrialized countries. The history of UNCTAD, with its successes and failures, therefore, is closely intertwined with the history of ideas on trade and development and the interplay of political power and ideological manipulation in international trade and development policy making. This paper focuses on the intellectual traditions in economics which underpinned the formation of UNCTAD and examines the way such intellectual traditions have informed – both in method and substance – the subsequent thinking and research output by the institution and helped define its objectives. It compares UNCTAD’s methods and research output on a number of international development issues with the positions taken by other international institutions. These findings are used to reflect on the ideological element in development economics thinking

Agricultural trade liberalization in the Uruguay Round : one step forward, one step back?

After evaluating the Uruguay Round's impact on agriculture and border protection in the next decade, the author concludes that while there was significant reform of the rules - particularly the conversion of nontariff barriers into tariffs and the reduction and binding of all tariffs - in practice, trade will probably be liberalized less than expected. The objective of the Round was to reverse protectionism and remove trade distortions. This may not be achieved in practice, at least not until further reductions are carried out in future rounds of negotiations. The major exception to this conclusion is in high-income Asian countries, where protection for major commodities will be significantly reduced. The tariffication and binding of all tariffs on agricultural products represents a significant step forward. Liberalization is implicit because countries are prohhibited from arbitrarily raising tariffs to new higher levels. But many of the newly established tariffs are so high in many countries as to effectively prohibit trade. Patterns of liberalization vary considerably by commodity and by country. Generally, the extent of liberalization was diminished by binding tariffs to the base period of 1986-88, when border protection was at a high point. In most OECD countries, this was worsened by"dirty tariffication:"the new base tariffs offered even greater protection than the nontariff barriers they replaced. Even after the commitments to tariff reductions in the Round, the ad valorem measure of the final binding tariffs will remain higher than the average rate of protection in 1982-93. A number of developing countries in East Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East chose to lock in prior liberalization efforts on some products. But for most commodities, there will be little actual liberalization, since most developing countries chose to bind their tariffs at a maximum level. Even when countries reduced already-bound rates, bound tariffs remained significantly higher than current applied rates, giving countries the flexibility to raise tariffs later. The high level of bound tariffs may allow countries to apply variable tariffs below the bound level, thus failing to stabilize tariffs and improve market access. Moreover, the Round did not touch many of the worst distortions in developing countries, such as import subsidies, export taxes, state-trading monopolies, and domestic policies that implicitly tax agriculture.Trade Policy,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Export Competitiveness,Rules of Origin,Trade Policy,Rules of Origin,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research

An econometric model of U.S. livestock and poultry sector for policy analysis and long-run forecasting : testing of parameter stability and structural change

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Department of Agricultural Economics, 1987Includes bibliographical references (pages 329-333

Stuck at a Crossroad: A Microeconometric Analysis of Fertility and Married Female Labor Force Supply in the Philippines

This study investigated the link between fertility and married female labor supply of Filipino women using instrumental variable (IV) probit regression using microeconomic data from the National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) published in 2013 with 7,628 married women respondents. The first stage regression results showed that couple’s age has a direct relationship on fertility. On the other hand, variables such as secondary education of married female’s husband as compared to non-educated husband, household wealth of all classes relative to the poorest household, and age of female at first marriage has an inverse relationship with the number of children. Second-stage regression results showed that fertility increases the probability of a married female to look for employment. Married female’s age, higher educational attainment relative to non-educated married female, and household wealth as opposed to the household class with the least wealth have direct relationship with married female employment. Lastly, marginal effects showed that additional children will increase the likelihood of a married female to participate in the labor force by 3 percentage points. Increase in married female’s age also increases her probability of getting employed by 0.9 percent. The chances of having labor market activity is higher by 13 percentage points if a married female attains higher education as compared to a married female that has no formal education. If a married female belongs to a household belonging to the highest wealth quintile among all classes in terms of wealth, she has the greatest chance to be employed by 16 percentage points relative to a married female who is a member of a household belonging to the lowest wealth quintile