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Transportation, State Marketing, and the Taxation of the Agricultural Hinterland

Journal of Political Economy 1989 97(5), 1113-1137
In raising revenues, governments of poor countries affect farm gate prices for export crops. Because agriculture is dispersed, interventions have spatial effects, leading to an integrated analysis of taxation, marketing, and transportation. Policies to be used singly or together include land, export, and transportation taxes/subsidies and variants of state marketing, in which only government procures crops. An export tax and a transport subsidy may be optimal. With state marketing, important aspects of buying depots are numbers, locations, spatial pattern of prices paid, and movement of output toward or away from the ultimate market. These policies also affect transport investment strategies.

Savings and Nutrition at Low Incomes

Journal of Political Economy 1983 91(5), 841-855
While many development theorists assume saving propensities vary among different groups, there has been limited theoretical justification for this view. This paper analyzes two complementary theories stressing the effect on saving of physiological consequences of poor nutrition at low incomes. One influence is on the probability of survival; another is on workers' productivity. Either effect means that the average propensity to save can rise with income. Issues considered include annuities, exogenous changes in survival and efficiency, implications for the efficiency wage theory of unemployment, and distinctions between wage and nonwage income. Implications of nutritional effects for econometric specification of saving functions are stressed.

A Review of Michael Tomz's Reputation and International Cooperation: Sovereign Debt across Three Centuries

Journal of Economic Literature 2009 47(2), 475-481
Repudiation and expropriation pose obstacles to the international mobility of capital and thereby to efficient international allocation of resources. Tomz discusses the determinants of lending in the face of the threat of repudiation. Using history, he argues that debtor countries have sought a reputation for compliance with loan agreements to access future loans and that military or trade sanctions have been unimportant in sustaining lending. He discusses when and why banks have been more active as lenders relative to bondholders. This article situates Tomz's concerns in the broad themes of thought on obstacles to capital mobility and evaluates his arguments.

Agro-Industrial Processing and Agricultural Pricing Under Uncertainty

Review of Economic Studies 1986 53(1), 153
Processing domestically available materials for export has intuitive appeal, e.g. if transport costs are reduced. Uncertainty in the supply of the raw material can be a crucial factor. The theoretical model of this paper shows how to choose the optimal processing capacity and, relatedly, the optimal price to pay producers of the input. Issues include: decision makers' preferences; sources and nature of uncertainty; availability of inputs to produce the raw material; and technology and costs of processing. Econometric estimates of the climate-yield relation are used to simulate these decisions for the case of Senegalese groundnut processing.

Transportation, State Marketing, and the Taxation of the Agricultural Hinterland

Journal of Political Economy 1989 97(5), 1113-1137
In raising revenues, governments of poor countries affect farm gate prices for export crops. Because agriculture is dispersed, interventions have spatial effects, leading to an integrated analysis of taxation, marketing, and transportation. Policies to be used singly or together include land, export, and transportation taxes/subsidies and variants of state marketing, in which only government procures crops. An export tax and a transport subsidy may be optimal. With state marketing, important aspects of buying depots are numbers, locations, spatial pattern of prices paid, and movement of output toward or away from the ultimate market. These policies also affect transport investment strategies.

Savings and Nutrition at Low Incomes

Journal of Political Economy 1983 91(5), 841-855
While many development theorists assume saving propensities vary among different groups, there has been limited theoretical justification for this view. This paper analyzes two complementary theories stressing the effect on saving of physiological consequences of poor nutrition at low incomes. One influence is on the probability of survival; another is on workers' productivity. Either effect means that the average propensity to save can rise with income. Issues considered include annuities, exogenous changes in survival and efficiency, implications for the efficiency wage theory of unemployment, and distinctions between wage and nonwage income. Implications of nutritional effects for econometric specification of saving functions are stressed.