Ethiopian Journal of Economics最新文献

{"title":"Effect of credit constraint on production Efficiency Of farm households in Southeastern Ethiopia.","authors":"H. K. Hussien, B. Öhlmér","doi":"10.4314/EJE.V15I1.39816","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/EJE.V15I1.39816","url":null,"abstract":"Credit constraint in agriculture affects not only the purchasing power of producers to procure farm inputs and to cover operating costs in the short run, but also their capacity to make farm-related investments as well as risk behavior in technology choice and adoption. These, in turn, influence technical efficiencies of the farmers. Although credit constraint problem has been recognized in economics literature, especially in those dealing with developing countries, little emphasis has been given to its effect on productive efficiency of farmers. In light of this, explicitly considering credit constraint, this paper estimated technical efficiency of credit-constrained (CCFHs) and unconstrained farm households (CUFHs) by employing a stochastic frontier technique on farm household survey data from Southeastern Ethiopia. The CCFHs had mean technical efficiency score of 12% less than that of the CUFHs. Given the largest proportion of CCFHs in Ethiopian farming population, this gap implies considerable potential loss in output due to inefficient production. Improving technical efficiency of all farm households in general but more of particularly the CCFHs is desirable. Additional sources of inefficiency differential between the two groups were also identified, and education level of household heads, land fragmentation and loan size significantly affected technical efficiencies of both groups. Besides, wealth and experience affected the CCFHs, and household size affected the CUFHs. In general, the results have important implications for credit, education and land policies in developing countries.","PeriodicalId":307872,"journal":{"name":"Ethiopian Journal of Economics","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117088422","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Commercialisation of smallholder agriculture in selected tef-growing areas of Ethiopia","authors":"S. Gebreselassié, K. Sharp","doi":"10.4314/EJE.V16I1.39824","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/EJE.V16I1.39824","url":null,"abstract":"The poverty-reduction strategy adopted by Ethiopia seeks to achieve growth through the commercialisation of smallholder agriculture. Commercialisation of agriculture is also a core research theme of the Future Agricultures Consortium. \u0000\u0000The empirical research reported in this paper focuses smallholders, that are farming households, who are established growers of highly marketable crops, in areas already well-linked to markets. Two commodities were selected for the study: coffee and tef. Both are important to the national economy, and both are grown and marketed by millions of smallholders. The two commodities have both similar and contrasting characteristics. Both are labour-intensive crops with seasonal labour-demand peaks, met partly by migrant workers. Both are produced primarily by smallholders (although there are also a few large enterprises growing coffee). Both commodities command export as well as domestic markets, although tef has been primarily a domestic product in the past while coffee is a major national export. Most obviously, tef is both a food and a cash crop, and is therefore fungible either for farm consumption or sale. Coffee, by contrast, is a non-food crop grown primarily for the market. The study on coffee is reported separately.\u0000\u0000The level of commercialisation in the study areas is far higher than the national average. The average farmer sold almost half (49.7%) of his or her crop production (in value terms). The degree of commercialisation, however, differs widely across sampled households, which implies a correspondingly wide variation in the potential and constraints for further commercialisation. Therefore, any agricultural commercialisation strategy should be customized for different groups of farmers. Despite the relatively high degree of market orientation in the study areas, the size of market (per seller) is very thin. The volume of trade is constrained by low per capita production. The size of farmland owned and cultivated is very important to farmers' participation in output markets. Similarly, both the total value of farm production and the proportion of land allocated to tef (the major cash crop) had a positive and significant impact on a household's degree of market participation, measured in terms of gross income from crop sales. On the other hand, the effect of household self-sufficiency in food (measured as the percentage of consumption that is self-produced) was negative. This implies that households who depend more on the market for their food access also participate more in output markets. In other words, their participation in food markets is high both as sellers and buyers.\u0000\u0000The findings of this study broadly support the PASDEP's dual strategy of increasing agricultural commercialisation while promoting non-farm economic growth. Higher levels of household commercialisation appear to be associated with better standards of welfare (including food consumption), confirming that smallholders can benefit dir","PeriodicalId":307872,"journal":{"name":"Ethiopian Journal of Economics","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125131559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Agricultural Commercialisation In Coffee Growing Areas Of Ethiopia","authors":"S. Gebreselassié, E. Ludi","doi":"10.4314/EJE.V16I1.39825","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/EJE.V16I1.39825","url":null,"abstract":"The coffee sub-sector is very important to the Ethiopian economy – in 2005, coffee export generated 41% of foreign exchange earnings – and provides income for approximately 8 million smallholder households. Policy attention to the sector was always considerable, and its importance has been renewed in the latest Poverty Reduction Strategy, the Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP). PASDEP puts forward a development strategy based on accelerated economic growth, part of which is hoped to be achieved via increased smallholder commercialisation and market integration. \u0000\u0000This paper addresses commercialisation in selected coffee growing areas in Ethiopia. The objectives of the study were (i) to assess the scale of commercialisation in coffee growing areas and to detect household and farm characteristics which might explain variation in the levels of coffee commercialisation among households; and (ii) to answer two separate questions: why some sampled households didn't take part in output markets (i.e. identify determinants of market entry) and why some households sold more products than others (i.e. determinants of market supply). Answering these questions will help to identify policy options promoting market participation and commercialisation of smallholder agriculture. \u0000\u0000Agricultural commercialisation was found to be comparatively high in the studied Weredas (Districts). On the average, farmers marketed 84% of their farm production. Overall, coffee contributed 70% to the total value of output sold. There is, however, a high inter-household differentiation: the 25% highly commercialised smallholders generated over 95% of their cash income from coffee sales, while the bottom 25% earned 63% of their cash income from selling food crops. Keeping other factors constant, the total volume of farm production explained about 72% of the variation in the degree of commercialisation among sampled farm households. Demographic and household factors, wealth and total farm size had no effect on the observed variation in the degree of coffee commercialisation among sampled households. A negative and significant association between the level of household coffee commercialisation and land productivity in non-coffee crops was found, indicating potential trade-offs between the production of coffee, the major cash crop, and other, mainly food crops. No evidence was found of increasing labour intensity as a result of increased coffee production. Similarly, the degree of coffee commercialisation was found to have a statistically insignificant effect on household-level food consumption. \u0000\u0000Overall, the findings demonstrate the integrated nature of the farming system in coffee growing areas. Despite an overall high level of coffee commercialisation, diversified farming is a strategy pursued by the majority of the surveyed households. The study findings, however, suggest that further specialisation in coffee could enhance overall agricultural co","PeriodicalId":307872,"journal":{"name":"Ethiopian Journal of Economics","volume":"126 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122488172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Consumption, Vulnerability And Shocks In Rural Ethiopia, 1999-2004","authors":"S. Dercon, J. Hoddinott, W. Tassew","doi":"10.4314/EJE.V15I1.39818","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/EJE.V15I1.39818","url":null,"abstract":"Improving our understanding of risk and vulnerability is an issue of increasing importance for Ethiopia as it is for much of Africa. A small, but growing, body of evidence, points to the role that risk, shocks and vulnerability in perpetuating poverty. Specifically, uninsured shocks – adverse events that are costly to individuals and households in terms of lost income, reduced consumption, or the sale of destruction of assets – are a cause of poverty, Further, the threat of such events may cause households and individuals to take actions that, while providing some additional protection against shocks, come at the cost of income gains. The paper examines who is vulnerable to different types of shocks in rural Ethiopia. Using the two most recent rounds of the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey, it will characterize the nature, frequency, and severity of climatic, economic, health and other shocks faced by rural Ethiopian households. It will assess the impact of these on levels and changes in measures of household well-being such as food consumption, total consumption, asset holdings and poverty status between 1999 and 2004. To do so, it will draw on conditional convergence models of growth, but applied here at a micro level. The modeling framework will take changes in these outcomes as a function of the lagged outcome and other covariates, a model of conditional convergence. In such models, endogeneity of these lagged outcomes is a real concern. Our data from earlier rounds of the ERHS as well as shocks information on the period prior to 1999 will provide us with instruments and we will test for the validity of these used standard techniques. Further, the paper will explore the differential effects of these initial conditions and shocks by sub-groups based on location, demographic, and wealth characteristics. Doing so will indicate whether the speed of convergence is effected by transitory shocks and will illustrate what types of households are most vulnerable to different types of shocks.","PeriodicalId":307872,"journal":{"name":"Ethiopian Journal of Economics","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130821059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Demand for improve solid waste services in Jimma Town, Ethiopia: Evidence from household survey Data","authors":"Abebaw Degent, Ayenew Maru","doi":"10.4314/EJE.V14I2.39815","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/EJE.V14I2.39815","url":null,"abstract":"The main purpose of this study has been to measure the influence of socioeconomic, demographic and location characteristics on households’ willingness to pay for improvement of solid waste services. The data for the study was obtained from a random sample of 200 households in Jimma town. Descriptive analysis of the data reveals that while some households are not willing to pay, others are interested to contribute either in labour, in cash or both for improvements in solid waste management services in Jimma town. Estimation results of a multinomial logit model indicate that these choices are influenced by a certain combination of family size, education and age of the household, years of schooling of children or family member, wealth, life-style and location of the dwelling unit. The study concludes with some policy implications for improved solid waste management services in Jimma town.","PeriodicalId":307872,"journal":{"name":"Ethiopian Journal of Economics","volume":"2 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114035179","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Simultaneous Random effect models of poverty and Childbearing in Ethiopia","authors":"A. Kedir, A. Aassve, Habtu Tadesse Woldegebriel","doi":"10.4314/EJE.V14I2.39809","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/EJE.V14I2.39809","url":null,"abstract":"The incidence and severity of poverty in urban and rural Ethiopia are similar – both extremely high. In contrast, urban and rural fertility rates differ substantially. Whereas the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in rural areas is as high as 5.5, it is as low as 1.9 in Addis Ababa. The declining fertility rate especially in the capital city is paradoxical to economic demographers. This paper analyses the complex relationship between childbearing and poverty in urban and rural Ethiopia. We model child bearing and poverty as joint random effect models, controlling for initial conditions. Using panel data for three (comparable) waves both for rural and urban Ethiopia, our analysis examines the inherent differences in the poverty and fertility relationship.","PeriodicalId":307872,"journal":{"name":"Ethiopian Journal of Economics","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114762285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Commercialisations in agriculture","authors":"J. Leavy, C. Poulton","doi":"10.4314/EJE.V16I1.39822","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/EJE.V16I1.39822","url":null,"abstract":"Policy discourses around agricultural commercialisations tend to separate producers into different types of farm (small farms, large farms) growing different types of crops (food crops, cash crops) with simple distinctions made between ‘subsistence' and ‘commercial' or ‘export' agriculture. Lack of clarity about what commercialisation actually means may give rise to misconceptions, evoking certain fears that can obstruct the passage of policy into practice.\u0000\u0000Writing on commercialisation highlights a number of aspects to what it means to be commercialised. However, the lynchpin of most, if not all, definitions of agricultural commercialisation is the degree of participation in the (output) market, with the focus very much on cash incomes. However, there are other dimensions to agricultural commercialization. First, there is the degree of participation in input markets. As farms become more commercial, they tend to rely less on own-produced inputs (e.g. manure, retained seed) and services from mixed farming systems (e.g. animal traction) and instead depend more on markets to supply their inputs (improved seed, inorganic fertiliser, crop protection chemicals) and services (mechanised equipment for ploughing, planting, weeding, harvesting etc – either hired/rented or purchased). Thus, on the input side we might define commercialisation as value of inputs acquired from market/ agricultural production value\u0000\u0000Some writing on commercialisation highlights the importance attached to the profit motive within the farm business as an indicator of commercialisation. Agricultural commercialization means more than the marketing of agricultural output, it means the product choice and input use decisions are based on the principles of profit maximisation. \u0000\u0000Looking beyond purely the agricultural activities of a household, some authors (e.g. von Braun and Kennedy (1994) propose household commercialization as a measure of integration into the cash economy, which they define as the proportion of total value of goods and services acquired through cash transactions or the share of gross income from all market sources.\u0000In recent time commercialization of smallholder agriculture has got increased attention by policy makers. However, more often than not large farm bias may develop in practice even though policy appears to be pro-smallholder on paper. Actions to encourage smallholder commercialisations could include more attention to food crops, pro-actively encouraging asset accumulation processes and making markets work for poor farmers in poor areas. However, to ensure that pro-smallholder policy documents lead to pro-smallholder policy on the ground, policy makers should create enabling environment for smallholders and strengthen the service delivery process. Yet, creating a good enabling environment and ensuring sufficient, timely and efficient service delivery is crucially dependent on policy processes. Ethiopian Journal of Economics Vol. 16 (1) 2007: pp. 3-42","PeriodicalId":307872,"journal":{"name":"Ethiopian Journal of Economics","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122406047","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Estimating Wealth effects without expenditure Data: Evidence From rural Ethiopia","authors":"M. Dekker","doi":"10.4314/EJE.V15I1.39817","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/EJE.V15I1.39817","url":null,"abstract":"In economic studies, household economic status is usually proxied by measures of consumption or income. In recent years, several studies have advanced an asset-based index as an alternative measure of wealth status. In most studies, the asset-based wealth index is constructed with a standard list of assets comprising household ownership of consumer durables, the characteristics of the household’s dwelling and sometimes household landownership. Although a standard list may be useful when comparing households across countries or urban and rural residents in one country, the assets included may not always be relevant for studies focussing on rural areas or a particular rural area only. This paper addresses the question what assets should be included in the wealth index to the best reflect long-term economic status in rural Ethiopia. We use data from the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey (ERHS) collected in 1994 and 1995 to construct several asset-based wealth indices. We find not all standard assets are relevant locally and signs and heights of factor loadings differ substantially between localities, supporting the case of specified (local) asset listings. The specified asset index performs best compared to other asset indices when considering the distribution of food security across wealth quintiles and is at least as good a predictor of food security as per capita consumption measure for the same households","PeriodicalId":307872,"journal":{"name":"Ethiopian Journal of Economics","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115817019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Micro Enterprises in Small Town, Amhara Region, Ethiopia: Nature and Performance","authors":"T. Gebre-Egziabher, M. Demeke","doi":"10.4314/EJE.V14I1.39813","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/EJE.V14I1.39813","url":null,"abstract":"It is generally believed that micro enterprises have a significant employment contribution and can operate successfully in places like small towns where large and medium enterprises cannot. This however depends on the nature and performance of micro enterprises. This paper studies micro enterprises in small towns with the view of identifying their nature and performance. The study is carried in six small towns of the Amhara region on randomly selected 332 micro-enterprises belonging to different economic activities. The finding revealed that the enterprises are generally characterized by low productivity and stagnation, low level of employment and capital, limited access to financial services, lack of partnership and networking, absence of technical and business skills. To this is added the limited purchasing power of the local people, limited export and poor business environment. A multivariate analysis revealed that the most critical variables affecting the performance of micro enterprises were capital, access to information, licensing and access to telephone services. In order to promote micro-enterprises in small towns, it is therefore essential to provide them with access to finance, improve information availability, improve local business environment and promote the formalization of businesses. Moreover businesses should be encouraged to form network and associations and tap export market. Local demand should also be enhanced through improved agricultural productivity in the hinterland and increased income of town dwellers. Ethiopian Journal of Economics Vol. 14 (1) 2005: pp. 79-111","PeriodicalId":307872,"journal":{"name":"Ethiopian Journal of Economics","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127349617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The impact of credit repayment schedule policy on competitiveness of grain production in Welmera District, Ethiopia","authors":"H. Mesfin","doi":"10.4314/EJE.V14I1.39812","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/EJE.V14I1.39812","url":null,"abstract":"In the last few years, agricultural polices were designed to benefit farmers. The agricultural extension program being implemented enabled smallholder farmers to use new agricultural technologies on time and hence increased productivity and output obtained per unit of land. However, credit repayment schedule policy put in place, forced farmers to repay input loans when price of output is very much low. The policy analysis matrix (PAM) was used for this study as a main methodology combined with a seasonal price Index. The study showed Welmera district having a comparative advantage for barley but not competitive while it has only a competitive advantage for tef and wheat. For two reasons farmers did not receive the actual price of grains that was equivalent with the true price. First, the system confirmed the presence of market failure in fertilizer market. Second, domestic cost of seed production was lower than the world price. The data also clearly pointed out how government policy negatively affected private profitability by undervaluing land. The seasonal analysis demonstrated price variability of grains exists in the study area. Moreover, the repayment period for input loan arranged when output prices are at their lowest levels. Therefore, the removal of credit repayment schedule policy would make grain production more competitive if farmers shift the sale of its produce to peak price periods. This call for review of the existing agricultural polices for the benefit of small scale farmers.","PeriodicalId":307872,"journal":{"name":"Ethiopian Journal of Economics","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122685557","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}