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Facing the Development Challenge in Mozambique
This study responds to some of Mozambique's basic development challenges and provides qualitative and quantitative insights for policymaking from an economywide perspective. The report highlights the importance of agricultural development showing agriculture's large sectoral multiplier effects and that applying scarce capital to agriculture is generally more effective than applying it to industry and services. A novel CGE model is developed and used in a series of analyses focused on the impact and design of economic policy. Issues addressed are aid dependency, biases in price incentives facing the agriculture sector, improvement in agricultural technology and marketing margins, risk-reducing behavior and gender roles in agricultural production, and food aid distribution. The study also provides a future perspective and analyzes the Mozambican economy using dynamic macroeconomic modeling techniques, demonstrating that sophisticated analytical tools can be of significant value, even in "data-poor" situations.
Human Rights in Changing Times
This book is an outcome of a two-day international conference convened to discuss the changing notion of human rights from different perspectives. While focusing on the increasing relevance of human rights in an era of globalization, the book analyses the various legal-political, socio-economic, gender, ecological and international dimensions of this issue. From the large number of papers presented at the conference, sixteen articles have been selected for this volume. These are presented in four parts: namely, politico-legal, socio-economic, ecological and gender, and the transnational. The introductory section presents the major issues and concerns highlighted by the editors and carries the keynote address by Professor Yogesh Atal. Written by both young and veteran social scientists, the book presents a unique combination of theoretical and practical studies of human rights in comparative perspectives. The book will attract readership from the academe, human rights activists, and the concerned citizenry, and will be useful to students of law, political science, public administration, and sociology.
The impact of conditional cash transfer programs on indigenous households in Latin America: Evidence from PROGRESA in Mexico
Conditional cash transfers(CCTs) are widely used antipoverty measuresin Latin America, and manysuch programs include indigenous beneficiaries.However, concerns have been raised that the indigenous poor,who have historically been marginalized,may not benefit from CCTsas much as the nonindigenouspopulation, owing to cultural as well as geographic factors. Even so, rigorous evidenceshowing this effect is limited. We assessedthis issue in the context of PROGRESA (Programa de Educación, Salud, y Alimenación), an integrated approach to poverty alleviation in Mexico, in which over one-thirdofbeneficiaries were indigenous at the program’s inceptionin 1998. A feature of the program’s initial ta...
Boserupian pressure and agricultural mechanization in modern Ghana
The adoption of machinery in agricultural production in Africa south of the Sahara has been far behind the level of mechanization found in Asia and Latin America. However, recent survey data have revealed high levels of machinery use in localized areas of cereal production in northern Ghana. A survey conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute, in partnership with the Savannah Agriculture Research Institute, found that in some areas more than 80 percent of farmers were using machinery for at least one operation. This paper considers the theoretical drivers of agricultural intensification, as outlined by Boserup, Pingali, and Binswanger, and the extent to which they are able to explain the spatial variation in machinery use found in northern Ghana. Population pressure, market access, and agroecological conditions are considered key drivers that cause farmers to find ways to increase productivity and adopt new technologies. Combining survey data with geospatial datasets, the empirical analysis finds that population growth and travel time to the local urban center explain a significant and large proportion of the variation in machinery use by farmers.
Evaluating Targeted Cash Transfer Programs
This report focuses on the indirect and direct effects of transfer programs. In particular, it shows how modelling results can be combined with information from standard household surveys to provide an integrated analysis of the direct distributional impact of such programs and the indirect distributional and efficiency impacts arising from domestic financing mechanisms. This approach reflects the view that any credible poverty alleviation strategy must have a credible financing strategy underlying it, and this need for domestic financing can have important consequences for both the level and the distribution of household incomes. To illustrate the approach, the report focuses on the recent introduction in Mexico of an innovative poverty alleviation transfer program called PROGRESA, which has been used as a prototype for similar programs that have recently been implemented in other developing countries.
Introduction to Computable General Equilibrium Models
This book provides an accessible, undergraduate-level introduction to computable general equilibrium (CGE) models, a class of model that has come to play an important role in government policy decisions. The book uses a graphical approach to explain the economic theory that underlies a CGE model, and provides results from simple, small-scale CGE models to illustrate the links between theory and model outcomes. The book includes eleven guided, hands-on exercises that introduce modeling techniques that are applied to real-world economic problems. Students will learn how to integrate their separate fields of economic study into a comprehensive, general equilibrium perspective as they develop their skills as producers or consumers of CGE-based analysis.
Impact evaluation of research by the International Food Policy Research Institute on agricultural trade liberalization, developing countries, and WTO's Doha negotiations
"This report assesses the impact of IFPRI's work on the agriculture negotiations in the WTO's Doha Round. It is set against the context of IFPRI's mission which emphasizes food security and the interests of poor people in low-income countries and underlines the importance of active engagement in policy communications to link research work to policy action. The report also traces briefly the evolution of IFPRI's work on international agricultural trade more generally, noting its broad disposition to market-oriented policy prescriptions while illuminating the very different impacts of agricultural trade liberalization on individual developing countries through detailed research at the national and household level." -- from Author's Abstract
Pakistan’s fertilizer sector
The fertilizer industry in Pakistan, with US$3.74 billion per year in sales, now stands at a crossroads where, after an initial substantial contribution in boosting crop productivity, its future potential is being challenged. Fertilizer-responsive crop varieties, supplementary irrigation water, and a favorable policy environment in Pakistan have induced fast growth in fertilizer demand. On the supply side, the availability of gas at low prices along with a favorable investment environment resulted in the buildup of excessive manufacturing capacity. But recently, a shortage of gas and monopolistic behavior has led to underutilization and greater imports. Restrictive laws put fertilizer proces...
A Standard Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Model in GAMS
The purpose of this manual is to contribute to and facilitate the use of computable general equilibrium (CGE) models in the analysis of issues related to food policy in developing countries. The volume includes a detailed presentation of a static “standard” CGE model and its required database and incorporates features of particular importance in developing countries. The manual discusses the implementation of the model in GAMS and is accompanied by a CD-ROM that includes the GAMS software (free demo system), the GAMS input files for the model, sample databases, simulations, solution reports, and a social accounting matrix (SAM) aggregation program. Although the volume provides a standardized framework for analysis, the analyst is not forced to make “one-size-fits-all” assumptions. The GAMS code is written to give the analyst considerable flexibility in model specification.
