During economic development, agriculture declines as a proportion of aggregate national output. A number of theoretical explanations for this phenomenon have been advanced in the economic literature, but their relative historical significance has not been clear. This paper develops an...

The relationship between the effects of food aid and those of the completion of the Uruguay Round of the GATT are studied in this paper, focusing upon the food aid recipient countries, and taking Bangladesh as an illustrative example. It is argued that, among other factors, the magnitudes of...

The distributional effects of trade policies involving food are always controversial, particularly in countries for which staple foods are net imports. Indonesia is the world’s largest importer of its staple food, rice, and this commodity simultaneously accounts, in its consumption, for a...

The World Bank's commodity price projections are widely used for various planning purposes. Two aspects of the Bank's projections of relative prices are studied in this paper. The first is whether the forecasts make efficient use of the information available at the time the forecast is made. The...

The relationship between the effects of food aid and those of the completion of the Uruguay Round of the GATT are studied in this paper. focussing upon the food aid recipient countries, and taking Bangladesh as an illustrative example. It is argued that, among other factors. the magnitudes of...

The relationship between poverty incidence and road development is analyzed in this paper, in the context of rural Laos. The results indicate that improving road access is an effective way of reducing rural poverty. Between 1997-98 and 2002-03, rural poverty incidence in Laos declined by almost...

Total factor productivity growth in the agricultural, industry and services sectors is studied in this paper for two countries: Thailand and Indonesia, over the period 1981 to 2002. A feature of the analysis is the decomposition of aggregate total factor productivity growth into two components:...

Growth of total factor productivity has contributed 41 per cent of output growth in Indonesian agriculture since 1975. This study examines the extent to which publicly funded agricultural research within Indonesia has contributed to this productivity growth, while allowing for other possible...