In this study, we consider the impacts of dramatic regulatory reform during the 1980s on the efficiency of farms in New Zealand, using unbalanced panel data. A translog distance function representing the multiple output and input technology and incorporating nonneutral regulatory impacts is used for the analysis. Determinants of technical inefficiency, including a regulatory variable, a time term, and a debt/equity ratio, are also incorporated in a one-step model estimated by maximum-likelihood, stochastic production frontier methods. We find evidence of regulatory-induced changes in output composition - toward beef and deer, and away from wool, and especially lamb - but little associated technical inefficiency. These patterns motivated investment in complementary capital, land, and beef/deer livestock inputs. Firms that were more flexible in their adaptation toward these new mixes adjusted to regulatory changes with less upheaval, so any existing inefficiency appears linked to debt/ equity levels. © 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Knowledge of the dynamic response of fishing effort to abundance is essential to a complete understanding of the cycles in catch in the northern California Dungeness crab fishery. In this fishery there is a lagged response of harvest rate to changes in abundance that is caused either by a time lag in fishermen entering and leaving the fishery following changes in abundance, a lag in market expansion and contraction following changes in abundance, or a combination of both. The time lag in this response appears to have decreased over the past 30 yr. This lagged response is a potential cause of the cycles. However, neither of the two potential cyclic mechanisms examined here, a predator–prey mechanism (with man as the predator) and a price-dependent escapement mechanism (with price dependent on past catch), is a cause of these cycles. Although time-varying effort does not cause the cycles, it does have a substantial effect on the resulting catch record and population dynamics. If there is a density-dependent recruitment mechanism in this population as proposed earlier, the presence of this lagged response would cause the period of observed cycles to be longer than would be expected on the basis of population dynamics alone. Hence, previous estimates of the expected period of cycles from various population mechanisms are low. Removal of this response is a potential means of stabilizing this fishery.Key words: effort, Dungeness crab, harvest rate, predator–prey, price, stability, age, cycles
Some of the impacts of energy cost increases and reduced supplies on the product mix of annual field crops and vegetables in California are analyzed. A quadratic programming model including risk is used to evaluate the effects of increased energy costs and reductions in fertilizer and in fuel supplies. The model includes a demand matrix of some nine field crops and twenty-eight seasonal vegetables. The study also considers the relative impact of energy changes on producer and consumer welfare. Results suggest continued viability of vegetable production but differential consumer and producer impacts associated with energy changes.The 1973 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil embargo brought into sharp focus the impact on agriculture of cost increases associated with energy (gasoline and diesel fuel) and energy-based inputs (nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides). State and intrastate allocation schemes were proposed. Although present supplies are not restricted, the future may see a repeat of the 1973 occurrence. An unstable energy input structure, resulting from a combination of institutional and market forces, is apt to have a significant influence on both producers and consumers. Producers are affected by changes in relative costs and prices and consumers by changes in product prices. Such energy cost increases have a differential effect on various crops depending, in part, on the importance of such inputs in production costs. The basic thrust of this paper is to quantify the impact of such energy cost increases and quantitative restrictions on the product mix of annual field crops and vegetables in California. The study also raises some Richard M. Adams is an assistant professor of agricultural economics at the University of Wyoming, methodological points of more general applicability.Three energy-related inputs that substantially affect the agricultural productivity of land and labor are nitrogenous fertilizers, pesticides, and fuel inputs. The 1972 estimated costs (preembargo) of energy inputs for field crops studied ranged from $12 to $46 per acre, whereas costs for vegetables ranged from $43 to $256 per acre (see table I). Any analysis of an increase in energy costs requires considerably more information. On the production side, data are required on total variable costs and the associated yield response functions to these inputs. Information on resource availability such as land and water are required. Further, information must be obtained as to the probable price response associated with energy cost increases and with changes in relative prices resulting from a changed product mix. On strictly qualitative grounds, it is difficult to argue the direction of change in production for these field crops and vegetables. Although vegetables have higher costs of energy-related inputs, these costs expressed in relation to total variable costs show as much variation within as between groups (see table I).In view of this apparent inability to discern qualitatively any probable impacts, the specifi...
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