Agricultural Price Policy for Growth (The Distinguishedl Lecture)

1994 ◽  
Vol 33 (4I) ◽  
pp. 497-532
Author(s):  
John W. Mellor

Superb agricultural resources, substantial investment, and relatively liberal macroeconomic policies have provided Pakistan with a high agricultural growth rate and strong multipliers of that agricultural growth to other sectors of the economy. Those growth rates and the consequent multipliers could have been much greater. More troubling, there are unsustainable elements to the past growth rates that are already showing themselves. Thus, without attention to key policy issues, Pakistan's agricultural and overall growth rates are bound to decline significantly. Indeed, that decline is already underway. Correct pricing, investment, and institutional development policies can reverse that decline and accelerate growth rates well beyond those of the past. Agricultural price policy is of central importance in its own right and plays an important indirect role in each of the other key policy areas. Thus, this paper, while concerned with agricultural growth and its multipliers, wraps the discussion around price policy issues.

1996 ◽  
Vol 35 (4I) ◽  
pp. 399-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Mellor

The right to the flow of income from water is vigorously pursued, protected, and fought over in any arid part of the world. Pakistan is of course no exception. Reform of irrigation institutions necessarily changes the rights to water, whether it be those of farmers, government, or government functionaries. Those perceived rights may be explicit and broadly accepted, or simply takings that are not even considered legitimate. Nevertheless they will be fought over. Pakistan has a long history of proposals for irrigation reform, little or none being implemented, except as isolated pilot projects. Thus, to propose major changes in irrigation institutions must be clearly shown to have major benefits to justify the hard battles that must be fought and the goodwill of those who might win those battles for reform. Proponents of irrigation institution reform have always argued the necessity of the reforms and the large gains to be achieved. Perhaps, however, those arguments have not been convincing. This paper will briefly outline the failed attempts at irrigation reform to provide an element of reality to the discussion. It will then proceed to make the case of the urgency of reform in a somewhat different manner to the past. Finally, current major reform proposals will be presented. This paper approaches justification of irrigation reform by focusing on the agricultural growth rate. It does so because that is the critical variable influencing poverty rates and is a significant determinant of over-all economic growth rates. The paper decomposes growth rates and suggests a residual effect of deterioration of the irrigation system that is large and calls for policy and institutional reform. The data are notional, suggesting the usefulness of the approach and paves the way for more detailed empirical analysis and enquiry for the future.


2003 ◽  
Vol 108 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Wilding

Over the past year media ownership and control have been at the forefront of media policy debates in the United States and the United Kingdom. In Australia, the Media Ownership Bill was debated — and defeated in the Senate — in the last week of June. The Bill seeks to remove many of the regulations on ownership and control in the Australian media. It is expected to return to the Senate later this year and has been lipped as one of the handful of triggers for a double dissolution. In this article Derek Wilding provides an outline of the Bill following a number of recent amendments, as well as the key policy issues and points of contention in this long-running debate on diversity, convergence and media influence.


The transformation of women’s lives in the past century is among the most significant and far-reaching social and economic phenomena, affecting not only women, but also their partners and children. This Handbook provides the first comprehensive collection of essays that addresses these issues, using the powerful framework of economics. The essays are divided into three broad sections—marriage and fertility; the labor market; and special topics and policy issues. Separate and special attention is given to developed and developing economies, because the constraints women face and the key policy issues vary by level of development. While the primary focus is economics, where appropriate, the essays incorporate the newest interdisciplinary research about gender from biology and other disciplines. These essays will be of value to a wide range of readers, from specialists to students, and also to scholars in other disciplines seeking an overview of the most current research approaches and findings in economics.


1988 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-335
Author(s):  
Khwaja Sarmad

This book is a comprehensive analysis of farmers' movements in India with a focus on the movements in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Punjab and Karnatka. It examines the economic, social and political aspects of the farmers' struggle for a better deal within regional and national perspectives and evaluates the potential impact of these struggles on economic development in general, and on rural development, in particular. In a most competent way the author has presented the current state of the debate on the subject. He deals exhaustively with the subject of agricultural price policy and argues against the proposition that favourable price-setting for farm products is adequate to alleviate rural poverty. A better way to tackle this problem is to improve the per capita output in the rural sector, since the root cause of the problem is not unfavourable terms of trade but the increasing proportion of land holdings, which are economically not viable. Agricultural price policy is analyzed within the context of class relations, which enables to establish a link between the economic and political demands of the farmers. This analysis leads the author to conclude, that in contrast with the peasants' movements in India, which helped to break up the feudal agrarian set-up, the recent farmers' movements, with a few exceptions, have little revolutionary content. Their leadership has been appropriated by the rich landowners, who have transformed the movements into a lobby for advancing their own interests, within the existing power structure, to the neglect of the poorer peasantry.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Mathew Alexander ◽  
Lynn Unruh ◽  
Andriy Koval ◽  
William Belanger

Abstract As of November 2020, the United States leads the world in confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases and deaths. Over the past 10 months, the United States has experienced three peaks in new cases, with the most recent spike in November setting new records. Inaction and the lack of a scientifically informed, unified response have contributed to the sustained spread of COVID-19 in the United States. This paper describes major events and findings from the domestic response to COVID-19 from January to November 2020, including on preventing transmission, COVID-19 testing and contact tracing, ensuring sufficient physical infrastructure and healthcare workforce, paying for services, and governance. We further reflect on the public health response to-date and analyse the link between key policy decisions (e.g. closing, reopening) and COVID-19 cases in three states that are representative of the broader regions that have experienced spikes in cases. Finally, as we approach the winter months and undergo a change in national leadership, we highlight some considerations for the ongoing COVID-19 response and the broader United States healthcare system. These findings describe why the United States has failed to contain COVID-19 effectively to-date and can serve as a reference in the continued response to COVID-19 and future pandemics.


2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-92
Author(s):  
Robert M. Stern

This paper considers the key policy issues related to liberalisation of trade in financial services that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should be concerned with, and the role the IMF has played in advising on policies related to trade in financial services in its bilateral and multilateral surveillance and in conditionality attached to lending programmes. The IMF staff were generally aware of the literature and country experiences showing the benefits of financial liberalisation. But Fund advice in support of liberalisation can be best interpreted to be in support of country unilateral policy actions and the dynamics of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) accession process.


2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anatole Romaniuc

This paper endeavours to capture the broad configuration of demographic evolution of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada from the early contacts with Europeans to the present. The main stages thereof are identified and the underlying factors explored, against the historical background of Aboriginal and European civilisations' encounter. While taking stock of the past, the paper takes a glimpse into the future. It concludes with a review of demographically-driven policy issues that the First Nations are likely to confront as they step into the 21s Century.


2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-332
Author(s):  
Ingo Heidbrink

The articles in this Forum are revised versions of papers presented in a roundtable session of the XXII International Congress of Historical Sciences, which was held in Jinan, China, during August 2015. In line with the roundtable format deployed by the congress, a broad proposition was introduced in the opening paper, followed by four responses delivered by experts in the field and a plenary discussion of the issues raised by the speakers. In this session, the proponent, Ingo Heidbrink, discussed the development of maritime history as a historical sub-discipline in relation to the emergence of world (and global) history. Particular attention was afforded to the comparative growth rates of these cognate sub-disciplines, and to the reasons why maritime history has expanded relatively slowly, leading to the emergence of a ‘blue hole’ in our knowledge and understanding of the past. The four respondents then addressed the issues raised by Heidbrink from their own disciplinary and regional perspectives. As Heidbrink’s ‘Concluding Remarks’ indicate, all participants agreed that, in itself, the allocation of a session to this subject on the core programme of the congress was a significant recognition that maritime history is a historical sub-discipline that is of relevance to the wider global community of historians, and not just those who are interested in the interaction of humans and the oceans.


2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 259 ◽  
Author(s):  
S.K. Srivastava ◽  
R.C. Srivastava ◽  
R.R. Sethi ◽  
A. Kumar ◽  
A.K. Nayak

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