Thèse--Université de Paris. / "Bibliographie": p. [771]-789.

Thèse--Université de Paris. / "Bibliographie": p. [771]-789.

My dissertation consists of three empirical essays where I analyze animal products consumption and marketing. First using cross-sectional household data, I investigate the importance of consumption from home produce (self-provisioning) and conclude that studying food consumption decisions in isolation from production is not warranted for Turkey. I develop a testing procedure incorporated into linear approximation of the almost ideal demand system (LA/AIDS) model to formally test the relevance of food self-provisioning. Studying consumption in isolation from production leads significant overestimation of rural households’ responsiveness to price and income signals especially for the dairy and egg products. Second I investigate the contribution of consumption from home produce to alleviate vulnerability to undernutrition in rural areas. I find that the level, depth and severity of food poverty to be least among rural households who engage in food self-provisioning and food self-provisioning reduce vulnerability to undernutrition. Moreover, food self-provisioning is concentrated in expensive calories from vegetables and dairy so self-provisioning rural households also have a more balanced diet. Finally I investigate whether milk processing firms abuse their oligopsony power to excessively profit themselves to the expense of milk farmers and final consumers. I look for evidence whether the speed of adjustment of processed milk price is same when farm-gate milk prices increase and decrease. I find no evidence that will point out any price gauging on the part of milk processors to benefit themselves. Actually I detect a long-term downward trend in processed milk prices coinciding with new major entries to milk processing industry.

This dissertation analyzes the environmental impact of state policies in Cuban agriculture, and compares state farms, family farms, and cooperative farms, with respect to their management of natural resources. Organizational forms of agricultural production are distinguished by the property rights and production technologies used by farming units. I examine the premise that family farmers have adequate incentives to engage in resource conservation measures. Conversely, I examine the premise that state property rights do not structure adequate incentives for resource conservation in state farms. Finally, I compare private farms and state farms with cooperatives, in terms of their resource management in practices. Because of the important role of central planning in natural-resource management under socialism, the dissertation also analyzes environmental policies and the evolution of the system of environmental protection in Cuba. I argue that while state ownership of natural resources and planning create the opportunity to incorporate environmental concerns into economic decision-making, environmental concerns are secondary to production goals. Moreover, the public does not have sufficient information, nor the mechanisms, for choosing higher levels of environmental quality. At the same time, enterprise managers do not have sufficient incentives to voluntarily comply with environmental regulations, and the environmental agency lacks the power to enforce them.

The first essay, "Federalism in Environmental Policy," explores the question of how Congress should decide on implementation of environmental statutes. This issue arises from the hypothesis that the historical pattern of U.S. federalism has led to ineffective implementation of environmental laws at the state level. We use a case-study approach to focus on the transboundary pollution problem of acid rain. Drawing from the basic philosophy of federalism, we analyze the strengths and weaknesses of four arguments for state policy responses to pollution problems, including: (1) severity, (2) wealth, (3) partisanship, and (4) organizational capacity. These arguments are evaluated using a geographic information system and then incorporated into an econometric model to identify the determinants of state decisions on transboundary air pollution. Based on the econometric results and the basic theory of federalism, we develop economic criteria to explore how congressional decisionmakers may more systematically choose state, regional, or national implementation of environmental laws based on instate and external benefits and costs of the individual statute. In the second essay, "Compliance and Enforcement Issues, A Case Study of Massachusetts' Environmental Results Program," we present a theoretical model of a firm's decision to comply with performance standards. The model is motivated by recent efforts in Massachusetts to adopt a more flexible environmental management strategy, the "Environmental Results Program" (ERP). This program has two main components: (1) development of performance standards, and (2) implementation of a self-certification program for environmental compliance. Because the standard pollution control model fails to capture the importance of monitoring, enforcement, and penalties, we modified it to incorporate a firm's private compliance decisions. The resulting marginal private benefit function represents the avoided costs of punishment based on a probability of being caught in non-compliance. Finally, the third essay, "The Penalty-Compliance Tradeoff in Enforcement by States," presents a game theoretic model of a firm's compliance with performance standards and self-certification. The model builds on standard enforcement theory and the case study of the ERP in an effort to evaluate the strategic interaction between control agencies and regulated facilities.

In the empirical literature on the revenue consequences of trade liberalization, most studies have focused on cross-country analysis. Because these studies are static in nature, they have not addressed the short-run and long-run dynamic public revenue and public investment consequences of economic reforms in developing countries. This dissertation contributes to the literature employing a dynamic time series analysis of the three East African countries-Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. The dissertation uses a co-integration and error-correction framework to distinguish between short-run and long-run relationships. The results indicate that trade reforms in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda had varying impacts on government revenue, tax performance and public investment spending in these three countries. It is demonstrated that trade reforms had adverse impact on government revenue in Uganda, but not in Tanzania and Kenya. The results also show that Tanzania has had the weakest overall tax revenue and public investment. Poor tax performance and erratic revenue generation have been problems in all three countries, contributing to adverse impacts on public investment spending.

The major aim of this dissertation is to analyze critically the issue of regional economic integration among developing countries in general, and among the members of the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), in particular. In undertaking this task the dissertation focuses on the effect of SADCC on the trade flows of the member countries. Using a gravity model the dissertation shows that (i) SADCC has had a negligible effect on inter-member trade, (ii) South Africa is a de facto member of SADCC, (iii) trade ties between SADCC members and their ex-colonial powers have diminished since the establishment of SADCC, and (iv) trade between SADCC and other groups of countries including the 'Like-Minded' group and the European Community have not improved following SADCC's creation, either. Explanations for SADCC's very limited impact, especially on intra-SADCC trade, including drought, war, economic mismanagement, the high degree of export concentration, fluctuating and often declining international commodity prices, and the rising prices of imported inputs. The dissertation also argues that the dependence on foreign finances of SADCC 'Programme of Action' poses serious obstacles to the organization's autonomy.

<p> This dissertation examines the conditions that facilitate or impede the transformation of land rights from common to individual property. It does so by focusing on cotton-growing areas of Tajikistan, which exhibit substantial variation in patterns of land tenure arrangement. Specifically, the project addresses the following questions: Why, despite efforts by state and international organizations to support land reform, some, but not other, farmworkers established individual tenure by withdrawing their land shares from collective peasant farms? Why do some cotton-growing areas have more agricultural land held in family farms, whereas other areas in collective peasant farms? Drawing on the distributional theory of property rights, I argue that to understand why land tenure reform has unfolded as it did in Tajikistan, one has to consider the effect of land reform strategy, land allocation formula, observable resources such as off-farm income, and reliability of access to water and its interaction with the level of labor supply. These factors affect the bargaining power of Soviet rural elites-turned-managers of collective peasant farms, who resist land subdivision, and Soviet farmworkers-turned-shareholders, who prefer land individualization, and as a consequence cause much of the variability one observes in patterns of land redistribution. Predicated on qualitative (interviews and participant observations), and quantitative (multilevel linear and logistic models) methods of analysis, the findings of this dissertation have implications for the literature on property rights, decentralization, and the postcommunist literature on land reform, and generate policy implications that might be relevant to government and international organizations involved in promoting land reform in Tajikistan and other developing countries.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

The revival of regional integration in the European Community (EC) in the early 1980s has brought about profound implications for the development of regional integration and its related theory. Firstly, European industry searching to promote its competitiveness highlighted the need for a "European-level" solution to European economic decline and contributions to the relaunching of European integration. Secondly, as a result of the renewed momentum for regional integration, external factors which were neglected by previous efforts in theory-exploration, have become more noticeable in the process of regional integration.The purpose of this thesis about external factors is to analyse to what extent the progress of regional integration is driven by the private sector. The relaunching of European integration which brought about the successful passage of the Single European Act has demonstrated the crucial contribution of the business community to accelerating the progress of integration.This thesis further offers an analysis of the proposition that the impact of external factors on industrial development is the key to understanding the process of creating the Chinese Economic Area (CEA). It explores the argument that instead of being motivated by political factors, the process of regional integration is primarily stimulated by industrial development in the private sector. It concludes by suggesting a new focus for the study of regional integration - the "external incentives-industrial development" approach, and comparative insights into the EC and the CEA.