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on Agricultural Economics |
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Issue of 2005‒09‒17
four papers chosen by |
| By: | Gregory K. Dow (Simon Fraser University); Nancy Olewiler (Simon Fraser University); Clyde G. Reed (Simon Fraser University) |
| Abstract: | Until about 13,000 years ago all humans obtained their food through hunting and gathering, but thereafter people in some parts of the world began a transition to agriculture. Recent data strongly implicate climate change as the driving force behind the agricultural transition in southwest Asia. We propose a model of this process in which population and technology respond endogenously to climate. The key idea is that after a lengthy period of favorable environmental conditions during which regional population grew significantly, an abrupt climate reversal forced people to take refuge at a few ecologically favored sites. The resulting spike in local population density reduced the marginal product of labor in foraging and made agriculture attractive. Once agriculture was initiated, rapid technological progress through artificial selection on plant characteristics led to domesticated varieties. Farming became a permanent part of the regional economy when this productivity growth was combined with climate recovery |
| Keywords: | origins of agriculture, foraging, hunting and gathering, climate change, population density, technical change, domestication, archaeology, anthropology, economic prehistory |
| JEL: | N |
| Date: | 2005–09–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwpeh:0509003&r=agr |
| By: | GAUDET, Gérard; LOHOUES, Hervé |
| Abstract: | We derive conditions that must be satisfied by the primitives of the problem in order for an equilibrium in linear Markov strategies to exist in some common property natural resource differential games. These conditions impose restrictions on the admissible form of the natural growth function, given a benefit function, or on the admissible form of the benefit function, given a natural growth function. |
| Keywords: | common orty, natural resources, differential games, linear Markov strategies |
| JEL: | C73 D90 Q20 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mtl:montde:2005-15&r=agr |
| By: | Deodhar Satish Y |
| Abstract: | Apples have been grown in India for a century. At present apple production exceeds 1.4 million tonnes a year. Still, there are wide variations in the apple prices across the country. We test the price data for market integration using cointegration and error correction methodology. Delhi, the major wholesale market for apples, does not seem to influence other markets. Mumbai market does influence Bangalore market, although with about a two week lag. Absence of integration can be attributed to traders from southern region bypassing the Delhi wholesale market, cascading effect of trader margins at various distribution points, absence of competition to agricultural produce marketing committee markets, and, inadequacy of road and cool chain infrastructure. |
| Date: | 2005–08–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iim:iimawp:2005-08-03&r=agr |
| By: | Basab Dasgupta (University of Connecticut) |
| Abstract: | One way to measure the lower steady state equilibrium outcome in human capital development is the incidence of child labor in most of the developing countries. With the help of Indian household level data in an overlapping generation framework, we show that production loans under credit rationing are not optimally extended towards firms because of issues with adverse selection. More stringent rationing in the credit market creates a distortion in the labor market by increasing adult wage rate and the demand for child labor. Lower availability of funds under stringent rationing coupled with increased demand for loans induces the high risk firms to replace adult labor by child labor. A switch of regime from credit rationing to revelation regime can clear such imperfections in the labor market. The equilibrium higher wage rate elevates the household consumption to a significantly higher level than the subsistence under credit rationing and therefore higher level of human capital development is assured leading to no supply of child labor. |
| Keywords: | Credit Rationing, Informal Credit, Child Labor, Self Revelation Mechanism |
| JEL: | O16 O17 |
| Date: | 2005–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uct:uconnp:2005-37&r=agr |