Browse by: "PRE-2007"

Between 1955 and 1985 world maize production almost doubled. With little new land available, future growth in world production must come from higher yields and, hence, from new technologies. This paper describes some of the emerging maize biotechnologies, outlines progress made in R & D and discusses their possible impact on maize production.

At present, the new biotechnologies are directed more towards quality enhancement (modification of starch, protein or oil content) and towards endowing plants with particular properties (herbicide tolerance, resistance to pests or adverse weather conditions) than towards increasing yields per se. They offer hope for reduced environmental stress through reduced levels of application of agricultural chemicals. Like earlier technologies, however, most new biotechnologies will be incorporated in seeds and will therefore complement and continue to depend on, traditional plant breeding.

A new maize research and technology development system is ...

This paper examines the role of structural indicators in the process of multilateral surveillance of structural policies. An analytical framework is suggested that is based on welfare economics and which focuses on efficiency considerations. Potential indicators are examined for six areas -- taxation, trade, industry, agriculture, labour markets and financial markets. These case studies allow a series of lessons to be drawn concerning the use of structural indicators ...

This paper surveys Japanese saving behaviour, whose rate is one of the highest among OECD countries. Macroeconomic factors such as rates of economic growth and inflation may have been important in explaining the high saving rate in the past and the more recent downward trend. Even though growth is now rather lower than in the past, there remain important structural factors which explain the high rate of saving. The most important of these relates to demographic factors. Government policies and cultural and institutional factors seem to have played a relatively less important role. In the coming years, rapid ageing of the population is likely to have an important effect on the rate of saving. The Japanese saving rate is expected to show a substantial decline beyond the year 2000 according to life-cycle model simulations. The implications of this for domestic investment and international saving/investment balances may be important ...

This paper responds to the need to examine with empirical data the way in which women and children have been affected by recession and structural adjustment. A careful analysis of the impact on women (as compared to men) in developing countries has not been undertaken before with this kind of data. To facilitate our understanding of the Ivorian household survey data, we also used existing sociological and anthropological studies. These studies formed the basis of our interpretation of socio-cultural structures, economic exchanges between men and women within the household, the sexual division of labour for certain tasks and types of employment (and on different crops: export/food production for the rural areas) and the way in which different sources of income are allocated to given expenditures and by whom. The essential point is that adjustment and other programmes can provide realistic opportunities and incentives for productive activities for men and women which are based on ...

Subsidisation of industrial activities distorts the allocation of scarce resources, is a burden on government finances and generates friction in international trade. This paper draws on a wide range of data sources to examine industrial subsidisation in OECD countries. The sectoral distribution of subsidies and the relative importance of the different instruments of subsidisation are highlighted. The final section of the paper evaluates, to the extent possible, the economic effects of subsidy policy ...

The variety of channels through which devaluation of the exchange rate impacts on real tax receipts, calls for empirical clarification. This paper should be seen as a first attempt towards empirical evidence. It establishes the causal relationships between the real exchange rate and real tax receipts. A causality test rejects the hypothesis of unidirectional causality running from taxes to the exchange rate. The causal inferences from the Sims test allow to use the real exchange rate as an exogenous determinant in a simple simultaneous equation model. The model endogenises tax yields and tax bases to allow for a test of the significance and relevance of the exchange rate to explain variations in real tax receipts. An important insight results from the distinction of the direct (price) effect and indirect (output) effect of changes in the real exchange rate on tax receipts. A double-logarithmic version of the model with (seasonally adjusted) quarterly data is estimated for Korea and ...

This paper measures the net dollar position of the non-U.S. private sector and a few other international positions -- notably the net foreign-currency position of the U.S. private sector. These currency positions provide the basis for a discussion of portfolio effects which are especially relevant for questions related to the future financing of U.S. current-account deficits. A special feature of this exercise is the explicit identification of the non-U.S. public sector as a potential source of dollar assets for the non-U.S. private sector ...

This paper is a state-of-the-art report on the scope and efficacy of macroeconomic policies, both demand-management and supply-side, in relation to the level and composition of aggregate domestic savings (household, corporate, and government) performance in developing countries. Its central focus is on the extent to which macroeconomic policies help or hinder the optimal mobilisation and allocation of voluntary and contractual savings. It analyses: the impact of fiscal policies (fiscal balance, taxation, tax incentives); fiscal reforms and savings; and the interaction between Government and private savings; the financial repression and inflationary finance as contributory factors to low domestic savings; implications of financial liberalisation for savings and investment; the linkages between formal and informal finance; the regulatory, prudential, and developmental role of central banks; exchange rate and external finance policies and their bearing on capital flight and inflows of ...

This paper presents an application to Ecuador of a computable general equilibrium model with a financial component, following the lead of F. Bourguignon, W. Branson and J. de Melo. Their macro-micro model was introduced in Technical Paper No.1 "Macroeconomic Adjustment and Income Distribution. A Macro-micro Simulation Model".

The authors first review the crisis of the Ecuadorian economy, the stabilization programmes that were implemented by governments and the economic effects of these programmes. Then the model and the corresponding data base are presented and used to perform three dynamic simulations. In the first case, there is no adjustment; in the second simulation, all public expenditures are reduced by the same percentage; and in the third simulation, the annual growth in money supply is reduced. For each simulation, the authors display the effects on growth, imbalances and income distribution. Finally a sensitivity analysis has been undertaken in order to assess the impact ...

Industrial subsidies should ideally be measured in ways that permit comparisons across subsidy instruments and countries, and that facilitate subsequent economic analysis of the effects of subsidisation. This paper deals with a number of conceptual issues that arise from these requirements. It first covers some definitional issues, concluding that subsidies should be measured broadly to include a wide range of instruments and both direct and indirect subsidy schemes. The paper then discusses measurement concepts for a range of instruments available to governments ...

During the past decade, the formulation of fiscal policy has been increasingly founded on medium-term considerations associated with public debt and economic efficiency. In this regard, this paper, and the ones by Olivier Blanchard and Edward Gramlich in the same Working Paper Series, considers the implications of this development for the overall appraisal of fiscal policy in OECD countries. The paper begins with a review of the existing measure of discretionary change in budget positions and proposes refinements to it. The paper then introduces and illustrates several new indicators designed to help assess the sustainability of policies in the short- and medium-run and their first-round impacts on aggregate demand ...

This study examines the role of public investment in determining the pattern of agricultural development in Pakistan. The focus is on investment in irrigation, which is seen to be the key to providing food self-sufficiency and allowing Pakistan to sustain a flows of net agricultural exports. Together with the physical and institutional infrastructure supporting agriculture, these investments set the stage and the pattern for the country's economic development.

Agricultural development in Pakistan has in the past century and a half been driven mainly by horizontal expansion: increasing the area under the plough by increasing water control. Since the late 1960s, intensification has increased, though this has remained limited to individual crops and has not evolved into a broad strategy. Because of the environmental and other limits to further expansion of controlled water flows, the future calls for a strategy of more efficient use of available land and water, and a more ...

There are four sets of questions that fiscal indicators can help answer: (1) Of the changes in the fiscal position, what part is due to changes in the economic environment and what part is due to policy? (2) Can the current course of fiscal policy be sustained, or will the government have to adjust taxes or spending? (3) What is the effect of fiscal policy on activity, through its effects on relative prices, be it the price of labour or the price of capital? (4) What is the macroeconomic impact of fiscal policy, through deficit and debt finance?

This paper is one of three in this Working Paper Series, along with those by Chouraqui et al. and Gramlich, in which the assessment of fiscal policy is reconsidered. It argues that no single indicator can give even rough answers to all those questions. It then develops four (sets of) indicators, aimed at answering each of the questions ...

The paper examines evidence concerning the impact of financial liberalisation and innovation on monetary policy. The indicator value of monetary aggregates and the role of liquidity constraints in the transmission mechanism affecting aggregate demand are examined. Countries where financial liberalisation has led to problems with the role of monetary aggregates in general also display evidence of a reduced role for liquidity constraints in aggregate demand behaviour. The ability of the authorities to influence market-determined interest rates, a key aspect of monetary transmission in markets where liquidity constraints are not binding, is also examined ...

Maize has been a staple food in Mexico since pre-Hispanic times and is still an important source of calories and protein in daily consumption, especially for poor families. The pattern of consumption is nevertheless changing; with the share of food consumption declining and feed utilisation expanding. The agro-climatic conditions of production are highly diverse, with wide ranges in yields and rainfed areas accounting for the major share of total maize area and of total production. Mexico has become an important importer of both maize grain and seed. Reduction of these high levels of grain imports and growth in domestic production are priority policy objectives.

Improved seeds are sown in only one-fifth of the total area cultivated, but half the irrigated area. Despite the wide genetic variability of maize in Mexico only five improved varieties accounted for almost half the improved seed used during the spring/summer growing season. There is a pressing need in Mexico for a wider ...

With annual production averaging over 20 million metric tons, Brazil is the second largest developing country producer of maize (after China) and the third largest in the world. This report analyses development and dissemination of maize research and technology in Brazil from a socio-economic and politico-institutional perspective. It concentrates therefore on agents and factors which influence development of research and its productive application.

The report is in two parts. First it describes the role of maize in the Brazilian economy - the main characteristics of its production, marketing and consumption, together with relevant sectoral policies and regulation of seed production. Then it analyses the development of maize research and technology in Brazil, identifying the main agents involved and possible future developments in the light of the introduction of biotechnologies.

As an Appendix, the authors review development of biotechnologies in Brazil.

Many people have ...

This paper investigates the application of the principle of comparative advantage to policy analysis and policy formulation. It is concerned with both the theory and the measurement of comparative advantage. Despite its central role in economics, the theory is found to be at an impasse, with its usefulness confined mainly to the illustration of economic principles which in practice are not borne out by the evidence.

The considerable methodological problems associated with the measurement of comparative advantage are highlighted in the paper. Attempts to derive indicators of comparative advantage, such as those associated with "revealed comparative advantage", "direct resource cost", "production cost" and "trade liberalisation" studies are reviewed. These methods are enlightening, but are unable to provide general perspectives which allow an analysis of dynamic comparative advantage. Comparative advantage, despite its centrality to economics, remains remote from policy ...

The size, structure and growth of health and pension programmes have, in recent years, been matters of concern to all OECD governments and societies. At issue are not only currently important social and economic questions, but also future difficulties which are likely to arise with the ageing of OECD population structures.

Japan has the fastest ageing population structure in the OECD. In 1960 the proportion of the population aged 65 and over in Japan was 5 per cent. In 1985 this proportion was 10 per cent, and in 2000 it is projected to be 15 per cent. The resulting pressures on social programmes are well understood in Japan, and the way in which the Japanese government and people are approaching this issue is of interest to other countries which must soon face similar problems.