Privatization of Agribusiness Input Markets

1999 ◽  
pp. 67-75
Author(s):  
Balu L. Bumb
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Jamal Othman ◽  
Yaghoob Jafari

Malaysia is contemplating removal of most of her subsidy support measures including subsidies on cooking oil which is largely palm oil based. This paper aims to examine the effects of cooking oil subsidy removals on the competitiveness of the oil palm subsector and related markets. This is done by developing and applying a comparative static, multi-commodity, partial equilibrium model with multi-stages of production function for the Malaysian perennial crops subsector which explicitly links different stages of production, primary and intermediate input markets, trade, and policy linkages. Results partly suggest that export of cooking oil will increase by 0.2 per cent due to a 10 per cent cooking oil subsidy reduction, while domestic output of cooking oil may eventually see a net decline of 1.97 per cent. The results clearly point out that the effect of reducing cooking oil subsidies is relatively small at the upstream levels and therefore it only induces minute effects on factor markets. Consequently, the market for other agricultural crops is projected to change very marginally.   Keywords: Multicomodity, comparative statics, partial equilibrium model, output supply-factor markets linkages, effects of cooking oil subsidy removals.


2006 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-114
Author(s):  
Ashok Deo Bardhan

This article analyzes the challenges brought about by the globalization of innovative activity to the science and practice of management. The task of matching organization structure and management practices to the needs of R&D offshoring is analyzed through a set of dichotomous pairs of concepts: (1) Drastic vs. Gradual and Systemic vs. Autonomous Innovation, (2) High vs. Low Skill Specificity, (3) Input Markets vs. Output Markets, (4) Intra-Firm vs. Arms Length Offshoring. In the trade-off between markets and hierarchies, the firms often come down on the side of the latter when it comes to the setting up of R&D facilities abroad. Organizational directives and internalization, i.e., intra-firm offshoring can trump market incentives and foreign outsourcing, when it comes to the uncertain returns from innovative activity, particularly in the case of drastic innovations and high skill specificity. Globalization has led to dispersed markets and firms have responded with dispersed locations of core assets, creating competence clusters all over the world, and the innovative firm of the future will restructure each individual cell, the basic building block of the firm consisting of an occupation devoted to a product, and redeploy and relocate them globally, where it is most advantageous.


2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 355
Author(s):  
Randall E. Waldron ◽  
Michael A. Allgrunn

In an earlier article, we reported the results of a classroom experiment simulating price competition in an oligopoly with differentiated goods. That study raised some questions that we were unable to address at that time. For this current study, we have adapted the experiment to further explore the effects of scarcity in the input markets, and to study the effects of price controls in these markets. We find that scarcity in an input market has the expected directional effect on prices in both input and output markets, but not necessarily the magnitude expected; we further find that price controls have only some of the effects expected. In the current experiment, we increased the number of rounds of the game to allow more opportunity for convergence to a stable outcome, and to allow for three distinct phases of the game: initial rounds in which inputs were abundantly available, subsequent rounds in which one inputs supply was dramatically reduced, and final rounds in which a price floor was established on the one input which remained abundant. As expected, firms played Nash/Bertrand strategies in the early rounds. However, the shock caused by reducing the availability of capital took many rounds for full adjustment, with both output prices and the equilibrium rental rate of capital rising consistently and gradually toward their projected equilibria over ten rounds, although even then capital prices did not rise enough to absorb all firm profits. Surprisingly, establishing a minimum wage did not have the anticipated effect of balancing payments between labor and capital; instead, the minimum wage completely disrupted the trend of an increasing rental price of capital and reduced it to zero, while creating volatility in profits without consistently eliminating them. Overall, we find that most of our anticipated results ultimately obtain, but adjustments to variations in market conditions are neither immediate nor perfectly consistent with the predictions of theory.


Author(s):  
Stephen Lwasa ◽  
Narathius Asingwire ◽  
Julius Juma Okello ◽  
Joseph Kiwanuka

As the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) is embraced in Uganda, determinants of awareness of ICT based projects remain unknown. The intensity of use of mobile phones among smallholder farmers in the areas where such projects operate is unclear. To address this knowledge gap, 346 smallholder farmers in two ICT project sites in Mayuge and Apac districts were subjected to econometric analysis using bi-variate logistic and zero-inflated negative binomial regression models to ascertain determinants of projects’ awareness and intensity of use of mobile phones. The authors find that education, distance to input markets, and membership in a group positively influence awareness. The decision to use a mobile phone for agricultural purposes is affected by distance to electricity and land cultivated and negatively influenced by being a member of any farmer group. Lastly, intensity of mobile phone use is affected by age, farming as the major occupation, and distance to an internet facility, being a member of a project, having participated in an agricultural project before, value of assets, size of land cultivated, possession of a mobile phone, and proximity to agricultural offices. The paper discusses policy implications of these findings.


1972 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-156
Author(s):  
David H. Harrington

Regional supply-adjustment studies are either underway or completed for milk, feed grain-livestock, wheat, rice, cotton, and beef. Other related studies take subsectors as units of analysis for studying markets for such inputs as labor and fertilizer, or for studying regional comparative advantage.This paper reviews the specification of supply and demand for both kinds of studies and develops the concept of effective subsectoral demands and supplies from the standard Walrasian adjustment behavioral assumptions. These concepts are applied to both the input markets and the product markets. Two commonly used specifications of subsectoral functions: (1) the method of equal elasticity as the aggregate, and (2) the method of equal slope as the aggregate, are found to be incorrect specifications of subsectoral functions in perfectly competitive adjustment studies, except in very restrictive circumstances. The theoretically consistent specifications are developed and shown to be operationally useable for future studies.


2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 431-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Orrillo ◽  
Paulo R. A. Loureiro

Assume a labor supply consisting of two types of workers, 1 and 2. Both workers are equally productive and exhibit supply functions with the same elasticity. We consider a firm (entrepreneur or shareholders) that is competitive in the output market and monopsonistic in input markets. The firm uses the services of a manager who has a high human capital and whose wage is given by the market. It is supposed that the manager does not like to work with one type of worker, say type 1. If we allow the manager's effort to be an additional input without any extra (in addition to his salary) cost for the firm, then the firm's pricing decision will be different for both workers. That is, there will be a wage differential and therefore endogenous economic discrimination2 in the labor markets.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document