Journal of Agricultural Economics and Development
Year:2014 | Volume:22 | Issue:85|Papers Count:12

Agricultural development, as one of the main axis in every country’s development, has a special role, and agro-based industry can be regarded as necessary and motivating precondition for development in this sector. This study investigates the position of agro-based industries in Kermanshah province by using the input-output table of the province for 2001, which is estimated by the most recent Location Quotient (AFLQij) method. In addition, it identifies and measures linkages among various economic sectors of the province by modern methods of linkage calculation in Hypothetical Extraction Method (within spatial linkages pattern). The findings show the desired position of agro-based industries in the economy of the province so that the sector stands in the first place, among others, in terms of the total backward and forward linkages as well as the third place in average when these linkages are decomposed into their external and internal ones.

This study investigates impact of changes in final demand components on water use in various economic sectors in general and Agriculture in particular as well as their relationship. For this purpose, the input-output analysis table for different sectors of the economy in the Khorasan Razavi province is used, and the table is updated in RAS methodology. The study results show that any increase in the components of final demand would cause the increase in water consumption in different sectors, among which the share of agricultural sector would be considerable; in addition, any increase in exports and private consumptions of water would increase its consumption, so that a twenty percent increase in the exports and the same in the private consumption of water would increase its consumption by 860,342 and 712,746 thousand cubic meters, respectively; however, the same amount of increase in government water consumption and investment would increase its consumption by less than thirty thousand cubic meters. In this regard, the share of agriculture in water consumption per increase in private demand and the same in exports is high in the total consumption (95.74 and 98.05 percent, respectively), while its shares in increasing the water consumption per the increase in government demand and investment are 69.34 and 83.41 percent, respectively. The results of water demand elasticity with respect to changes in final demand components indicate a low elasticity (less than one) in all of the components.

Dichotomous choice contingent valuation method is used to estimate non-market values. This method has some disadvantages, including whether the statistical method used to estimate the willingness to pay is the correct choice or not. This study, for the first time in the country, makes use of a nonparametric method to estimate the willingness to pay for the protection of Chandelier Lily flower in Gilan province and compare the results with those of the parametric method. To compare these methods, distributive parameters of willingness to pay (including mean, standard deviation, t-statistics and confidence interval) are calculated and compared. The study results show that the mean amounts of willingness to pay estimated in the parametric and nonparametric methods are 6540.33 and 8131.79 Rials and their t-statistics are 10.71 and 14.41, respectively. Also, the t-statistics is calculated 1.91 for the equality of two means, showing that the obtained amounts of mean willingness to pay using these methods are not significantly different at 5%. This indicates that the chosen distribution form for estimating the amounts of willingness to pay is correct for parametric method. Finally, it is suggested that policy and decision makers in the context of natural and environmental resources be very careful when using the calculated willingness to pay, awaring of the method used for calculation and the assumptions considered.

This study aims mainly at investigating technological change and its principal components as well as analyzing scale economies of irrigated wheat production in Khorasan Razavi province. For these purposes, translog cost function and equations of the cost share within equation system, estimated by (Seemingly Unrelated Regression Equation) SURE, are used. The required data and statistics are related to the period of 1993-2010. The study results show that totally, the technological changes result in a reduced costs of production; in this regard, the technological change resulting from scale augmentation is the main component affecting its process. In addition, the results indicate that increasing returns to scale dominate for the irrigated wheat production in Khorasan Razavi province. Therefore, the policies increasing the production scale in farm are emphasized in the province.

Economic tendency of human always has been focused on getting maximum results with minimal facilities and factors; this can be called a tendency to achieve higher efficiency and productivity. This study aims at ranking farm units in Sistan region using integrated data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach and analytic hierarchy process AHP. Its data including fifteen farm units were gathered during the crop year of 2010-11. For the purpose of ranking these units, first, paired efficiency of each unit is calculated and then a matrix of the analytic hierarchy process is formed of paired comparisons for each efficiency value of the units and finally, the farm units are ranked. The study results of ranking in terms of efficiency show that the farms 1, 13 and 15 with technical efficiency value of 1 are placed in the highest rank and the farm 14 with the value of 0.213 is placed in the lowest rank. Furthermore, the results of ranking based on AHP suggest that the farm 1 with a weight of 0.09 is placed in the first rank and the farm 12 with a weight of 0.046 is placed in the last rank among farms in terms of efficiency. As shown by the findings, the farm units could not be appropriately ranked in the DEA method identifying only the ranks of efficient and inefficient groups. Therefore, a complete ranking requires a measurement of the relative productivity and the comparison of units in terms of some applied aspects such as AHP, controlling the inputs and outputs again to ensure their accuracy.

Iran is known as one of the most important date producing and exporting countries. Given the importance of Iran’s date export and its share of about 14 percent in agricultural exports of the country, this study investigates the comparative advantage of Iran’s date export against its large global rivals as well as the long term relation between export advantages of the country and the amounts of production in this country and its competing countries, drawing on Johansen test and Vector Error Correction Estimated (VECM) for the 1996-2008 period. The study result show that shock effects on export comparative advantage is adjusted in almost 1.5 periods, which is shorter than the time periods required for the other countries. As shown by the results, although the Iran’s export advantage has increased following an increase in the country’s domestic production in the long run, it was Tunisia which has the highest amount of comparative advantage and also the highest relation between production and export comparative advantage. While Iran has the fifth rated. Iraq, Algeria and United States are the other competitors that have achieved further adjustment between the date production and export comparative advantage, compared with that of Iran. Therefore, given the increase in production can be created in a better long-term export advantage in global markets, attention should be given to the more adaption of Iran’s date domestic production and export advantage against big competitors and specifically Tunisia.

This study aims at identifying the factors that influence protection of agricultural sector in Iran. It investigates the relation between nominal protection of producers and the independent variables including incomes from crude oil and oil product exports, capital to labor ratio in agricultural sector, comparative advantage and terms of trade during 1983-2009 with the application of Johansen methodology. The results show that the protection of agricultural sector mainly depends on the incomes from crude oil and oil product exports and the capital to labor ratio while other indexes such as comparative advantage and/or terms of trade have no significant effect in this respect. Therefore, by defining certain performance indexes for supporting policies of agriculture sector and directing the protections on the basis of these performance indexes, it would be feasible to achieve a higher return of protections as well as to spend the resources dedicated to the sector in an efficiently purposive manner.

This study aims at analyzing the price transmission between domestic and export markets of selected agricultural crops including raisin, saffron and pistachio as well as measuring the welfare impacts of asymmetric price transmission. For this purpose, a time series of 1970-2009 period was applied. Examination of causality between domestic and world prices showed a long run causality from export price to domestic one for rasin and pistachio, while saffron domestic price was found as a source of price change in its export market. In addition, price transmission analyses for raisin and saffron showed a symmetric price transmission in long run but an asymmetric one in short run, while these were found quite conversed for pistachio. Welfare analysis also showed that price increase led to higher welfare for domestic consumers, producers and exporters of the selected crops as a whole, and decrease in crop prices resulted in a decreased welfare. However, in terms of absolute values, the welfare changes caused by the decreased prices exceed those resulting from the increased prices.

The importance of predicting the economic variables for policy makers and program planners is no secret to anyone. Therefore, over recent decades, several competing models have been developed. In this study, the amount of corn import to Iran is predicted for the period 2010-2014 by using econometric techniques and artificial neural networks methods. The results show that the feed forward neural network with fewer errors and better performance compared with econometric techniques ARIMA and exponential smoothing to predict the amount of corn imports. The study results also show that the amount of corn imports would grow in 2011 by 8 percent less than that of the previous year. Also the highest reduction in corn imports compared with that of the previous year by the amount of 11 percent decrease is related to the year 2012. So, it is necessary to increase domestic production to meet domestic needs.

This study aims at investigating the effects of financial market development on agricultural growth over the period 1967-2007, using Beck and Levine model (2003) and ARDL technique. In addition, two variables are used to measure the development of financial market: the credit paid to agricultural sector (as an index of money market) and the volume of commodity exchange in burse market (as an index of capital market). The study results indicate that short-run and long-run effects of all variables in the model are the same. Capital market has a negative effect on the agricultural growth while this effect of money market is positive. Also, the coefficient of the estimated correction error has the expected sing and its value show that adjustment progress of entered shocks has high speed. Therefore, it is necessary that increasing agricultural growth with suitable doing in money and capital market for example create Competitive in banking system, optimal allocation of finance Resources in Sectors of Agriculture, Spread of agricultural commodity burses in Talented provinces and increasing of liquidity in stock market.