Grant M. Scobie

The Impact of Technical Change on Income Distribution: The Case of Rice in Colombia

A national rice research program adapted and developed modern rice varieties for irrigated culture. Their rapid and widespread adoption led to substantial increases in production, and a concomitant fall in the price of rice. This paper examines the incidence of both the gross benefits and the costs of the research program, by income level. As rice is a principal foodstuff, the net benefits, both absolute and relative, accrued disproportionately to the poorest households.

A Differentiated Goods Model of the Effects of European Policies in International Poultry Markets

The Common Agricultural Policy increases European poultry production costs, prohibits imports, increases domestic prices, and subsidizes exports. This policy has displaced some U.S. exports. However, the net impact in the U.S. has been quite modest, even assuming poultry is homogeneous, independent of source country. Costs to U.S. producers are almost entirely offset by gains to U.S. consumers. Effects in the U.S. are even smaller when imperfect substitutability between poultry from different countries is accounted for. A retaliatory U.S. export subsidy would have more dramatic effects in U.S. markets.

Market Intervention Policies for Increasing the Consumption of Nutrients by Low Income Households

This study employs a market equilibrium displacement approach to examine the nutrient consumption effects of market intervention programs such as food subsidies, income transfers, and agricultural input subsidies. The results permit comparison of the direct treasury costs of achieving marginal increases in nutrient intake with alternative programs. When applied to a case study of the food markets and population of Cali, Colombia, it was found that a marginal increase in caloric intake among the poor could be achieved at lowest cost with a consumer subsidy of certain cereals, although black market activity might raise this cost to that of an income subsidy.

The Component Pricing of Milk Revisited

Various studies have addressed the impact of component pricing on milk marketing. All required an estimate of the implicit prices of components under an existing scheme. In this paper, we show why results differed between studies, and we present evidence that they drew inappropriate conclusions. A reformulation based on the relationship between fat and solids-not-fat percentages in milk leads to the conclusion that butterfat pricing schemes for milk may have underpriced fat relative to solids-not-fat rather than overpriced butterfat in U.S. produced milk.

The Contribution of International Agricultural Research to World Agriculture

The system of international agricultural research centers has played a facilitating role in promoting a diversity of biological and institutional innovations in the Third World. These include germplasm collections and enhancements, new varieties of crops, changed agricultural and farming systems practices, and improved policies and institutional arrangements affecting agricultural sectors and their research infrastructures. As these centers work in collaboration with national research systems, perhaps the most important induced effect has been in enhancing the human capital of people working in these systems in the developing countries.

Estimation of the elasticity of substitution in the presence of errors of measurement

Abstract Under certain circumstances an estimate of the elasticity of substitution for competitive exports in international trade may be bracketed when prices are not directly measured. Often only value and quantity data are available. In this case regressing value ratios on quantity ratios and vice versa will bracket the estimate as the asymptotic biases will have opposite signs. If values are divided by quantities to generate a price series, and then regressions are run, both estimates will be biased towards zero and not provide the bounds sought.