T. Gordon MacAulay

The Economics of Land Fragmentation in the North of Vietnam

Land fragmentation, where a single farm has a number of parcels of land, is a common feature of agriculture in many countries, especially in developing countries. In Vietnam, land fragmentation is common, especially in the north. For the whole country, there are about 75 million parcels of land, an average of seven to eight plots per farm household. Such fragmentation can be seen to have negative and positive benefits for farm households and the community generally. Comparative statics analysis and analysis of survey data have led to the conclusion that small-sized farms are likely to be more fragmented, and that fragmentation had a negative impact on crop productivity and increased family labour use and other money expenses. Policies which allow the appropriate opportunity cost of labour to be reflected at the farm level may provide appropriate incentives to trigger farm size change and land consolidation. Policies which tip the benefits in favour of fewer and larger plots, such as strong and effective research and development, an active extension system and strong administrative management, may also lead to land consolidation.

Technical Efficiency in Input-Controlled Fisheries: The NSW Ocean Prawn Trawl Fishery

Input controls in fisheries have been criticised for negatively affecting the efficiency of fishers through incentives to substitute inputs. A stochastic frontier analysis will be used to investigate the influence that input controls have had on the technical efficiency of fishers who operate in the NSW Ocean Prawn Trawl Fishery. The relationship between technical efficiency and controlled and uncontrolled inputs will be examined. In addition, changes in total factor productivity will be analysed to examine whether fishers have been able to partly offset managerial controls through gains in factor productivity. Using the stochastic frontier, economies of scale will be examined to obtain implications for future policy decisions. The study showed input controls have had a negative effect on the technical efficiency of fishers; however, controls do not appear to have had a lasting effect on productivity.

Protected Areas in Fisheries: A Two-Patch, Two-Species Model

The use of marine protected areas as a fishery management tool has been suggested as a hedge against management failures and variation in harvests. A stochastic bioeconomic model of a hypothetical predator–prey fishery is used to test the performance of protected areas in a fishery with heterogenous environments. Protected areas are analysed under density-dependent and sink-source dispersal relationships between the subpopulations that occur within the fishery. Differing management structures governing resource extraction are analysed. The focus of the study is placed on the biological and management characteristics that yield benefits to both fishers and society. It is shown that the establishment of a protected area improves fishery rent and lowers harvest variation. This result is sensitive to both current management controls and the correlation between species and patches.

Farmer responses to changing risk aversion, enterprise variability and resource endowments

The focus of this article is on assessing how risk aversion, enterprise variability and resource endowments affect farm land-use decisions and economic returns. A theoretical model of a two-enterprise, two-constraint farm is developed, and then, an empirical illustration for an Australian farm is provided. The methodology used builds on previous expected mean-variance (EV) models by incorporating land and budget constraints. The Kuhn–Tucker conditions of the EV model are examined to highlight that changes in resource endowments have larger effects on economic returns, than do changes in risk aversion or enterprise gross margin variability. It was also found that combinations of enterprise mixes that do not use all available resources can produce higher economic returns, relative to some enterprise mixes that use all available resources.

Bioeconomic Analysis of Protected Area Use in Fisheries Management

Protected areas in fishery management have been suggested to hedge management failures and variation in harvests. In this paper, a stochastic bioeconomic model of a two-species fishery in the Manning Bioregion is used to test the performance of protected areas as a management tool in a fishery. The establishment of a protected area is analysed under the assumption of heterogenous environments that are linked via density-dependent or sink-source stock dispersal relationships. The sensitivity of the results to different degrees of management is also explored. The model is applied to the Ocean Prawn Trawl, and Ocean Trap and Line fisheries within Manning Bioregion in New South Wales, Australia. The focus of the study is placed on the biological and institutional characteristics that yield benefits to the fishery. It was found that protected area use in the Manning Bioregion is likely to have differing effects on the two fisheries examined, benefiting Ocean Trap and Line fishers but adversely affecting Ocean Prawn Trawl fishers. Overall, it is unlikely that protected area use will lead to an increase resource rent in the fishery.

Untangling the Benefits of Protected Areas in Fisheries

Studies of marine protected areas as a tool for fisheries management have shown that protected areas have the potential to improve the level of resource rent generated in the fishery. The benefits to the fishery from protected areas have been shown to increase with sub-optimal management. However, some benefit that is derived from protected area creation in these circumstances is attributed to changes in effort levels. Both unique benefits, such as the hedge benefits of protected area creation, and non-unique benefits, such as shifts in effort levels towards optimal levels, are explored. Examples are taken from analysis of protected area creation in a predator-prey meta-population fishery under several different scenarios. It is suggested that much of the gain from protected area creation under sub-optimal management can be attributed to non-unique benefits, with the policy implications of this analysis also explored.

Tariffs and steel: US safeguard actions

A multiproduct spatial equilibrium model of world steel trade is presented in this paper. The model is used to analyse the impacts of the safeguard trade barriers brought about by the USA in order to protect their domestic industry from the so-called unfair competition. Emphasis is placed on the likely effect on the Australian industry and possible policy responses available to the industry. A case study is made of Australias three largest export products; namely, slab, hot-rolled and cold-rolled steel, which share some substitutability in supply and demand because of the nature of the industry. As a result of the safeguard barriers to steel trade, world steel prices fell and trade shifted away from the USA to other importing regions.