Mitch Renkow

Commuting, Migration, and Rural-Urban Population Dynamics

Over the past 25 years social scientists attempting to explain the dramatic changes in the relative distribution of urban and rural population growth have gravitated toward two competing explanations. The regional restructuring hypothesis holds that changes in the spatial distribution of employment opportunities have been dominant whereas the deconcentration hypothesis attributes these changes to changes in residential preferences of workers and consumers. We develop an empirical test of these two explanations based on whether commuting and migration are positively or negatively related after controlling for other economic factors. Our econometric results support the deconcentration hypothesis.

Employment Growth, Worker Mobility, and Rural Economic Development

A county-level labor market model is estimated for North Carolina. The model accounts for inter-county commuting, migration, and within-county adjustments to labor demand shocks. Econometric results indicate that most employment growth (70–80%) during the 1980s was accommodated by changes in commuting flows. Evidence is also presented indicating that labor force growth—and, by extension, population growth and associated fiscal impacts—in rural counties is sensitive to employment growth in nearby urban counties. These results highlight two opposing forces related to spatial spillovers that are usually neglected in analyses of the economic and fiscal impacts of employment growth. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

Poverty, productivity and production environment:: a review of the evidence

Abstract This paper reviews the state of knowledge about the key issues needing to be understood to satisfactorily resolve a long-standing debate within the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) system. The debate revolves around the effects on various populations (particularly the poor) of different allocations of research effort between marginal and favoured production environments. This paper specifically focuses on what is known about the geographical distribution of the rural poor, across agro-ecological zones and over time. Variations in the income-generating activities—including non-agricultural activities—engaged in by the poor are examined and the ways in which specific technology packages affect the economic well-being of different types of households, both directly and indirectly.

Welfare effects of maize technologies in marginal and high potential regions of Kenya

This paper describes the findings of a study that used a multi-market model to assess the potential impact of improved maize technologies on the welfare of various types of rural and urban households in Kenya. The modelling results indicate that technologies developed for high potential regions are likely to have more profound aggregate impacts on maize production and lead to greater reductions in import demand (if prices are controlled) or maize prices (if maize prices are flexible). Technology adoption in high potential regions is likely to have substantially greater positive impacts on aggregate real incomes, but inferior income distributional outcomes compared to technology adoption in marginal regions.

Differential Technology Adoption and Income Distribution in Pakistan: Implications for Research Resource Allocation

A multi-market model of technological change in food production is used to simulate the long-run income distributional implications of differential diffusion of currently available wheat technologies in Pakistan. The results indicate that a research agenda emphasizing technologies suited to Pakistans favored production environments would enhance overall production without compromising inter-group equity. It is found that when commodity prices are market determined, net consuming households are the major beneficiaries of technological change. However, in the more common situation of government intervention in markets for staple foods, net producing households are the principal beneficiaries of technological change.

Technology, production environment, and household income: Assessing the regional impacts of technological change

This paper clarifies the factors determining the welfare effects of improved agricultural technologies when technology diffusion is unevenly distributed across production environments. Household-level income effects are shown to depend primarily on: (a) whether the economy is open or closed with respect to world markets; (b) whether households are net consumers or net producers of the commodity for which technological change occurs; (c) whether households are adopters or non-adopters of the new technology; (d) the degree to which labor is mobile across agricultural regions; and (e) government intervention in commodity andjor factor markets. A review of recent empirical work indicates considerable variation in the relative strength of these various factors across countries, and that assumptions regarding the mechanism by which commodity prices are determined - endogenously as in a closed economy, or exogenously as in an open economy - is especially critical.

Land prices, land rents, and technological change: Evidence from Pakistan

Abstract The intertemporal behavior of land prices and land rents in two production environments of Pakistan is investigated. Empirical analyses indicate that: (a) agricultural technology adoption has had a strong positive impact on real land rents over the past 30 years in both irrigated and rainfed areas; (b) capitalization of rents into land prices has accounted for approximately 70% of observed increases in land prices during this period; (c) expected capital gains have been an important additional factor driving up land prices; and (d) neither expected inflation nor inflows of remittance income from abroad have had a significant effect on land prices.

A Within-Farm Efficiency Comparison of Silvopasture Systems with Conventional Pasture and Forestry in Northeast Argentina

Agroforestry, which has multiple inputs and outputs, would benefit from scrutiny of economic efficiency because levels of adoption have not met expectations. Previous literature estimated the efficiency of agricultural systems using data envelopment analysis; however, the vast variability between farms makes comparing systems difficult. This study uses paired, within-farm comparisons of silvopasture, a combination of planted trees and pasture, to conventional cattle-ranching and plantation forestry, to evaluate the relative technical efficiency. Silvopasture proves to be more efficient than conventional cattle-ranching. Forestry demonstrated increasing returns to scale, cattle-raising demonstrated decreasing returns to scale for large-scale farmers, and silvopasture was intermediate. (JEL D24, O13)

The Impact of Broadband on U.S. Agriculture: An Evaluation of the USDA Broadband Loan Program

We evaluate the impact of USDA’s low-cost broadband loan programs on the U.S. agricultural sector. The broadband loan programs increase access to high-speed internet in recipient communities, which can raise farm sales by increasing both farm output and prices received by producers. Further, high-speed internet may drive down costs by providing information on cheaper inputs and better management practices, leading to an overall improvement in farm profits. Using data from the 1997, 2002, and 2007 U.S. Census of Agriculture, we employ a panel difference-in-differences estimator, as well as a difference-in-differences propensity score matching estimator, to show that the two USDA broadband loan programs have positive impacts on farm sales, expenditure, and profits. The positive effects for crops are larger than those for livestock and animal products.