Reorientation from economic controls to a market-based approach led to significant changes in the economic policy of developing countries in the 1980s. Yet, with governments continuing to exercise economic management to accelerate growth beyond that achieved by market forces, techniques and models of development planning are still an integral feature of development policy management. Development Policy and Planning provides a non-technical explanation of the main techniques and models used for economic policy formulation. Each technique is illustrated in application through practical examples.
Nonformal general equilibrium, consistency approaches and frameworks. General, systems simulation approach. Linear programming models. Multi-level planning models. Operational usefluness of analysis and models to users.
During the 1990s, SSA countries initiated agricultural policy reforms to increase producer incentives and increase growth. Yet, agricultural growth rates after the reforms have been uneven. This has been attributed to lack of supporting infrastructure or the inability to respond to incentives by the smallholders. Based on ten studies, this volume provides a different framework to interpret the outcomes. First, it attributes the success of the reforms to the degree of consensus around the reform programs, which in turn, creates the institutions that can accommodate unexpected shocks. It differentiates between short run growth accelerations and sustained growth episodes. Second, it analyzes the impact of international prices which increased during the early 1990 and collapsed around 2000. Finally, it links the support institutions that evolved after the reforms back to the political economy of the stakeholders and their interests. Aksoy and Anil develop a political economy framework by bringing together the issues of consensus over the distribution of rents, role of unexpected changes, and the capabilities of institutions in handling these changes. Onal tests the of supply responses while Onal and Aksoy analyze international commodity prices and their transmission to the producers. Baffes analyzes impact of the adoption of cotton biotechnology in India and China, and the failure of SSA to also adopt. Baffes and Onal undertake a comparative study of coffee sectors in Uganda, and Vietnam which faced similar shocks. Five case studies cover cashew in Mozambique (Aksoy and Yagci), coffee and tea in Kenya (Mitchell), cashew in Tanzania (Mitchell and Baregu), tobacco in Tanzania (Mitchell and Baregu), and cotton in Zambia (Yagci and Aksoy). Results show that Agricultural policy reforms generated an immediate positive supply response. Real producer prices increased along with output. In unsuccessful cases where the short run supply response petered out, political and social consensus on the reforms was weak, and the ability to redistribute income after a negative shock was not built into the new arrangements. These products had been a major instrument for rent distribution before the reforms. The agencies could not be reformed to give greater non price support. In successful cases, there was greater consensus on the reforms program. The product was not a major rent distribution instrument and the producers were allied with the governments. Lower conflict also led to greater non price support. There was enough political and economic space for the parties to find solutions in case of shocks.
The book highlights proceedings from the Berlin 2008: Agriculture and Development conference held in preparation for the World Development Report 2008.
The International Food Policy Research Institute’s International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT) supports analysis of long-term challenges and opportunities for food, agriculture, and natural resources at global and regional scales. IMPACT is continually being updated and improved to better inform the choices that decisionmakers face today. This document describes a new country-level version of the model. IMPACT-SIMM (International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade–Standard IFPRI Multimarket Model) is a partial equilibrium, multi-market, simulation model of the production, supply, and demand of agricultural commodities within a country or group of countries. It simulates the operation of agricultural markets, solving for equilibrium prices within a country and, in multi-country mode, global markets. It is designed to be a “portable” and potentially open-source version of the IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute) IMPACT3 model documented in Robinson et al. (2015). IMPACT-SIMM shares model specification, equations, and computer code with IMPACT3, but is designed to be more flexible in application. It allows users to specify a standard multi-market model at any level of aggregation by commodities and countries by changing data inputs, without any change in model code. This model system supports longer-term scenario analysis to provide researchers and policymakers with a flexible tool to assess and compare the potential effects of changes in biophysical systems, socioeconomic trends, technologies, and policies at the level of individual countries or groups of countries.
Agricultural mechanization in Africa south of the Sahara — especially for small farms and businesses — requires a new paradigm to meet the needs of the continent’s evolving farming systems. Can Asia, with its recent success in adopting mechanization, offer a model for Africa? An Evolving Paradigm of Agricultural Mechanization Development analyzes the experiences of eight Asian and five African countries. The authors explore crucial government roles in boosting and supporting mechanization, from import policies to promotion policies to public good policies. Potential approaches presented to facilitating mechanization in Africa include prioritizing market-led hiring services, eliminating distortions, and developing appropriate technologies for the African context. The role of agricultural mechanization within overall agricultural and rural transformation strategies in Africa is also discussed. The book’s recommendations and insights should be useful to national policymakers and the development community, who can adapt this knowledge to local contexts and use it as a foundation for further research.
This book presents the basic model of an agricultural household that underlies most of the case studies undertaken so far. The model assumes that households are price-takers and is therefore recursive. The decisions modeled include those affecting production and the demand for inputs and those affecting consumption and the supply of labor. Comparative results on selected elasticities are presented for a number of economies. The empirical significance of the approach is demonstrated in a comparison of models that treat production and consumption decisions separately and those in which the decisionmaking process is recursive. The book summarizes the implications of agricultural pricing policy for the welfare of farm households, marketed surplus, the demand for nonagricultural goods and services, the rural labor market, budget revenues, and foreign exchange earnings. In addition, it is shown that the basic model can be extended in order to explore the effects of government policy on crop composition, nutritional status, health, saving, and investment and to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the effects on budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings. Methodological topics, primarily the data requirements of the basic model and its extensions, along with aggregation, market interaction, uncertainty, and market imperfections are discussed. The most important methodological issues - the question of the recursive property of these models - is also discussed.
Originally published in 1984 this book remains as relevant as when it was first published. At that time the oil crises of the 1970s and the growing international debt burden highlighted the extent to which events in primary commodity markets continue to influence the economies of developing and industrialized economies alike. Commodity modelling has become a valuable tool in efforts to predict and understand the behaviour of commodity markets and thereby reduce their fluctuations. This book provides an overview of the nature of the different types of commodity model as well as their diverse applications. In non-technical language the reader is introduced to the underlying modelling methodologies, including their advantages, limitations and commodity specific implications. The book will be of interest to commodity economists, traders and analysts, economic planners and those involved in agricultural, mineral and energy modelling.
