International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Discussion Paper Series最新文献

{"title":"Public Expenditures, Private Incentives, and Technology Adoption: The Economics of Hybrid Rice in South Asia","authors":"D. Spielman, D. Kolady, Patrick S. Ward, H. Rashid, K. Gulati","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2197486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2197486","url":null,"abstract":"The rapid expansion of hybrid rice cultivation in China has contributed significantly to improving food security in the country since the 1980s. However, few other Asian countries have seen similar expansions in hybrid rice cultivation or the associated yield and output gains. This paper examines the technical challenges, market opportunities, and policy constraints related to hybrid rice in South Asia, with specific emphasis on India and Bangladesh. The paper sets the discussion within a novel analytical approach to agricultural science, technology, and innovation that focuses on improving the efficiency with which new technologies are transformed into economically relevant products and services.","PeriodicalId":389672,"journal":{"name":"International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Discussion Paper Series","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129750715","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":"Did Using Input Vouchers Improve the Distribution of Subsidized Fertilizer in Nigeria? The Case of Kano and Taraba States","authors":"L. Liverpool‐Tasie","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2197524","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2197524","url":null,"abstract":"Though input vouchers are increasingly being used as a mechanism to target subsidies in developing countries, limited empirical evidence of their performance relative to other distribution mechanisms exist. Consequently this study contributes to this scarce literature by comparing an input voucher program piloted in Nigeria in 2009 to the previous government led distribution mechanism. Input purchase experiences are compared when subsidized fertilizer was distributed through a voucher program or by the government. Using propensity score matching techniques, the study finds that voucher program participants received more bags of subsidized fertilizer than nonparticipants and paid a price significantly lower than the market price. However, they received their fertilizer later than nonparticipants and where significant had more underweight bags than nonparticipants. Given the costs associated with voucher programs, this study demonstrates when the distribution of subsidized fertilizer via vouchers improved farmers’ timely access to good and more affordable fertilizer.","PeriodicalId":389672,"journal":{"name":"International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Discussion Paper Series","volume":"539 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123066548","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":"Heterogeneous Pro-Poor Targeting in India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme","authors":"Yanyan Liu, C. Barrett","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2198460","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2198460","url":null,"abstract":"India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is the largest public works employment project in the world. Its most direct poverty reduction pathway is through boosting employment and income for the poor. How effectively this direct transfer mechanism reduces poverty turns fundamentally on the degree to which MGNREGS targets its resources toward otherwise-poor households. To explore this question, we use the 2009/10 National Sample Survey data to describe patterns of seeking, rationing, and participation in MGNREGS. At the national level, we find that the self-targeting design of MGNREGS leads to greater rates of self-selection into the program by poorer and scheduled tribe or scheduled caste households. However, the administrative rationing of MGNREGS jobs is not pro-poor but, rather, exhibits a sort of middle-class bias. At the state level, roughly half of 27 states exhibit rationing and participation profiles that signal effective pro-poor targeting. The other half of India’s states struggle to avoid high rates and regressive patterns of administrative rationing of MGNREGS jobs to which the poor have a legal right. Our results suggest that MGNREGS can be effectively deployed to attract, employ and improve the well-being of poor rural households but there remains room for improvement and perhaps much to be learned from in-depth comparative analysis of MGNREGS program implementation across states.","PeriodicalId":389672,"journal":{"name":"International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Discussion Paper Series","volume":"200 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114657021","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":"Stress Testing in the Aftermath of the Financial Crisis","authors":"Adil Msatfa","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1979398","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1979398","url":null,"abstract":"Recent turmoil in the capital markets has showed again the vulnerability of the international financial system and highlighted the need for efficient stress testing of financial institutions trading and lending books. In fact, the severity of current European sovereign bonds crisis is primarily attributable to its unexpected nature and a more rigorous application of stress testing could have probably contributed to reduce the repercussions of this crisis. Under these circumstances, stress testing has become a primary concern for international policy makers and regulators who are continuously working on solution to address the vulnerabilities identified. In such a context, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is also attempting to reinforce principles for sound stress testing in risk governance practices, and an important part of the Supervisory Review Process and the Pillar 2 requirements are related to this subject matter.","PeriodicalId":389672,"journal":{"name":"International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Discussion Paper Series","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115363401","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":"Collective Action and Vulnerability: Burial Societies in Rural Ethiopia","authors":"S. Dercon, J. Hoddinott, P. Krishnan, T. Woldehanna","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1260274","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1260274","url":null,"abstract":"\"Collective action can help individuals, groups, and communities achieve common goals, thus contributing to poverty reduction. Drawing on longitudinal household and qualitative community data, the authors examine the impact of shocks on household living standards, study the correlates of participation in groups and formal and informal networks, and discuss the relationship of networks with access to other forms of capital. In this context, they assess how one form of collective action, iddir, or burial societies, help households attenuate the impact of illness. They find that iddir effectively deal with problems of asymmetric information by restricting membership geographically, imposing a membership fee, and conducting checks on how the funds were spent. The study also finds that while iddir help poor households cope with individual health shocks, but shows that the better-off households belong to more groups and have larger networks. In addition, where households have limited ability to develop spatial networks, collective action has limited ability to respond to covariate shocks. Therefore, realism is needed in terms of the ability of collective action to respond to shocks, and direct public action is more appropriate to deal with common shocks.\" authors' abstract","PeriodicalId":389672,"journal":{"name":"International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Discussion Paper Series","volume":"63 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124752637","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":"Improving Nutrition as a Development Priority: Addressing Undernutrition in National Policy Processes in Sub-Saharan Africa","authors":"T. Benson","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1275460","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1275460","url":null,"abstract":"\"Undernutrition remains a major source of human suffering and an obstacle to national economic and human development in many African countries. This report investigates undernutrition's persistence, drawing on case studies of the public response to the problem in Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Uganda. Analyzing each nation's policymaking structures, political actors, understanding of undernutrition, and the timing of public responses, the author explains why none of these four nations has mounted an effective campaign to eliminate undernutrition. The author identifes several different causes of this shortcoming, with one underlying flaw in the various public responses standing out: a fundamental failure on the part of political leaders to see undernutrition as a grave problem that undermines development efforts in their nations. The author concludes that an effective response to undernutrition in these countries requires the formation of national advocacy coalitions that can raise public awareness of the problem, highlight policymakers' duty to ensure the nutrition of their citizens, and link proper nutrition to general national development. This report should serve as a resource for advocates, researchers, and others concerned with undernutrition in Africa.\" from Authors' Summary","PeriodicalId":389672,"journal":{"name":"International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Discussion Paper Series","volume":"94 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126080394","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 Cognitive Link between Geography and Development: Iodine Deficiency and Schooling Attainment in Tanzania","authors":"Erica M. Field, Omar Robles, M. Torero","doi":"10.3386/W13838","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/W13838","url":null,"abstract":"An estimated 20 million children born each year are at risk of brain damage from in utero iodine deficiency, the only micronutrient deficiency known to have significant, non-reversible effects on cognitive development. Cognitive damage from iodine deficiency disorders (IDD) has potentially important implications for economic growth through its effect on human capital attainment. To gauge the magnitude of this influence, we evaluate the impact of reductions in fetal IDD on child schooling attainment that resulted from an intensive distribution of iodized oil capsules (IOC) in Tanzania. We look for evidence of improvements in cognitive ability attributable to the intervention by assessing whether children who benefited from IOC in utero exhibit higher rates of grade progression at ages 10 to 14 relative to siblings and older and younger children in the district who did not. Our findings suggest that reducing fetal IDD has significant benefits for child cognition: Protection from IDD in utero is associated with 0.36 years of additional schooling. Furthermore, the effect appears to be substantially larger for girls, consistent with new evidence from laboratory studies indicating greater cognitive sensitivity of the female fetus to maternal thyroid deprivation. There is no indication that IOC improved rates of illness or school absence due to illness, suggesting that IOC improves schooling through its effect on cognition rather than its effect on health. However, there is weak evidence that the program also reduced child but not fetal or infant mortality, which may bias downward the estimated effect on education. Cross-country regression estimates corroborate the results from Tanzania, indicating a strong negative influence of total goiter rate and strong positive influence of salt iodization on female school participation. Together, these findings provide micro-level evidence of the direct influence of ecological conditions on economic development and suggest a potentially important role of variation in rates of learning disability in explaining cross-country growth patterns and gender differences in schooling attainment.","PeriodicalId":389672,"journal":{"name":"International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Discussion Paper Series","volume":"190 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123401569","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":"An Analysis of Trade Related International Regulations of Genetically Modified Food and Their Effects on Developing Countries","authors":"G. Gruère","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.885343","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.885343","url":null,"abstract":"\"This paper reviews current trade–related regulations of genetically modified (GM) food and discusses their effects on developing countries. There is a large heterogeneity in current import approval and marketing policies of GM food worldwide. At the international level, the harmonization efforts are led by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and the World Trade Organization. While internationally harmonized guidelines for safety approval have been finalized, we show that there is no clear consensus on labeling regulations for GM food, and there is an increasing risk of conflicts among international agreements. We analyze the GM food regulations of two large rich importers, Japan and the European Union (EU) and discuss their differences and their potential impact on international trade. We also show that the effects of international and domestic trade related regulations critically depend on the type of traded products and their intended use: food and unprocessed products are subject to more stringent regulations than animal feed and processed products. Finally, we identify the main spillover effects of national and international regulations on developing countries' policy making, and suggest four policy arrangements on GM food to enable developing countries to satisfy production, consumption, international trade, and risk management objectives simultaneously while complying with their international obligations.","PeriodicalId":389672,"journal":{"name":"International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Discussion Paper Series","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132456204","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":"Food Aid and Dependency: Implications for Emergency Food Security Assessments","authors":"Erin C. Lentz, C. Barrett, J. Hoddinott","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1142287","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1142287","url":null,"abstract":"Discussions on food aid and dependency often draw on what appears to be a broad body of evidence, but closer inspection reveals that much of this does not in fact demonstrate a causal link between the two. This desk review has three objectives: (i) to identify the pathways through which negative dependency might arise; (ii) to outline how the targeting and management of food aid might affect the likelihood of negative dependency as a result of emergency operations or follow-on protracted relief and recovery operations; and (iii) to suggest indicators that assessment teams might employ in context-sensitive evaluations to reduce the risk of fostering negative dependency through food aid.","PeriodicalId":389672,"journal":{"name":"International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Discussion Paper Series","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117182487","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":"Partners or Predators? The Impact of Regional Trade Liberalization on Indonesia","authors":"S. Robinson, Jeffrey D. Lewis","doi":"10.1596/1813-9450-1626","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-1626","url":null,"abstract":"The authors empirically assess regional integration and liberalization scenarios impact on Indonesia and other Pacific Rim economies, including the complete Uruguay Round, further global liberalization and the creation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) or Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) free trade areas. They consider how major international exchange rate realignments affect the world trade pattern, and Indonesia in particular. The analysis uses a multi-country, computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to quantify the trade liberalization impact on countries, sectors, and factors. The extended APEC-CGE model consists of nine linked country models: Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore (together), the Philippines, Thailand, China (including Hong Kong), Korea and Taiwan, Japan, the United States and the European Union. Each country model is linked through explicit bilateral trade flows modeling for each traded sector. The empirical results lead to several conclusions: a) eliminating tariff and non tariff barriers in industrial countries (especially the Multifibre Agreement) gives Asian developing countries the opportunity to expand exports and achieve productivity gains; b) creation of an APEC free trade area gives participants significant benefits, with little effect on nonmembers while creation of an ASEAN free trade area gives its members little benefit, thus ASEAN countries should work toward more liberalization under GATT or hasten the APEC free trade area creation; c) all economies gain the most from further multilateral liberalization; and d) major exchange rate realignments significantly affect bilateral trade balances and world trade volume and direction. However, they have less effect than trade liberalization on the internal production and trade structure. Sectoral protection and subsidy rates vary greatly and their elimination yields significant efficiency gains. Changes in exchange rates have less effect.","PeriodicalId":389672,"journal":{"name":"International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Discussion Paper Series","volume":"275 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1996-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121444174","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}