فصلنامه اقتصاد کشاورزی و توسعه
پیاپی 99 (پاییز 1396)

The agriculture is one of the most strategic sectors of Iran economy and it is important for several aspects. The growth of this sector is counted as the primary and basic aims of politicians. The current study, investigates inflationary tax impacts on growth of Iran agriculture sector. The Solo growth model was used, in which growth is a function of labor, capital stock and inflationary taxes. In order to estimate the short run and long run relations ARDL model was used. The results showed that there is a direct relation between capital stock with growth of agriculture sector in the short run and long run. In addition, the effect of labor force and inflationary tax on the growth of agriculture sector is negative in short and long run.

Sufficient use of resources in production is not only an objective but also is a vital issue. Considering diversification in agricultural activities can improve total factor productivity, therefore in this study effective factors on total factor productivity of agricultural sector with a special emphasis on weight and direction of activity diversification is investigated. For this purpose, Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model was used to examine the factors affecting on total factor productivity. The long-term results show that there is a significant and positive relationship between the level of diversity of agricultural activities and total factor productivity. In other word, by one percent increase in agricultural diversity index, total factor productivity increase about 15.67 percent. Error correction term coefficient is – 0.61 which show that 61% of total factor productivity deviation can be adjusted in each period. So, government can apply a comprehensive plan to identify potentials of different regions. Moreover, to encourage diversification in agriculture, different policies such as extension recommendations, creation of cultivation facilities of potential products and an integrated support can be applied.

Complex management of water resources requires the application of a different perspective technical, economic, environmental and social that it requires considering the needs of all beneficiaries. The main objective of this study is to introduce hydro-economic model and modeling it in one of the country's catchment for analyzing water resources management policies. For this purpose, climatic and meteorological data and also interviews and questionnaires completed by farmer's Neyshabur catchment were used. Hydro-economic modeling composed of two main parts: hydrologic and economic. WEAP model was used in hydrological sector and regional (spatial) positive programming was used in economical sector. Strategies used in this study consists of three main scenarios were considered reducing the availability of water resources in agriculture that their impact on cropping pattern and then change the crop pattern on water resources were examined. The results of economic sector in hydro-economic model showed that most affected by the implementation of various policy scenarios is related to the first region, so that the cultivation levels was decreased about 13.4 percent in first scenario, 20.59 percent in second scenario and 29.11 percent in third scenario. In hydrologic sector of hydro-economic model, changes in cropping pattern on consumption of water resources based on different scenarios were simulated using WEAP model. The results showed that the greatest impact on reducing water consumption was related to the third scenario that the main reason for the change is reducing the area under cultivation of various crops. Also implementation of various scenarios on water allocation between the main applicants influenced water and causing the unmet supply reduced in three sectors of agriculture, industry and drinking in the years 2013-2035.

Sericulture is a lateral work with rural basics which has a short growth period, high incomes and requires a small investment. This activity has frequent potentials to development because of appropriate natural conditions of Mazandaran province. Given the land and available technologies restrictions in order to production increase, one of the best ways to improve manufacturing is efficiency level promotion of sericulture units. The present study follows the sericulture grower efficiency status to suggest proper solutions in order to improve profession development. Statistical population of the study was 1150 sericulturist that sample volume was 240 sericulturist using Cochran formula. Sampling was performed as multistage cluster and samples were selected from each cluster as simple randomised. The main tool for research was questionnaire. Data analysis were conducted by DEA method. The results of study showed that technical, allocative and economic efficiency means with assuming constant to scale is 0.727, 0.514 and 0.351 respectively.

This study aimed to investigate factors affecting on agricultural developmental (sub-sector of agronomy) in Malekan County. For this purpose, a questionnaire was completed from 350 heads of household selected based on a cluster random sampling procedure. Stepwise regression and path analysis were used for analysis of data. The result showed that “the proximity of village to the main road”, “the number of cultivated crops”, “area of dry land”, “area of irrigated land”, “area of gardens”, “area of insured land”, “ecological sustainability level”, as well as “social participation level” have direct and indirect effects on agricultural developmental. According to the results, dry and irrigated land consolidation, promoting ecological sustainability through scientific planning, encouragement the farmers to insure arable lands, and increasing the farmers’ participation in social activities were suggested.

The aim of this study is identification of effective qualitative factors on the price of edible mushrooms using Logit model. Therefore, data were gathered by interview and questionnaire completion from 148 households of district six of Tehran municipality. The results showed that some variables including whiteness of mushrooms, package, stem size, and mushroom type are positively influencing the mushroom price, while thickness and rot of mushroom are negatively and significantly influencing the price of mushroom. According to the results, making manufacturing units near consumption market, using proper marketing instruments, including packaging and tendency to produce button mushroom were recommended to the practitioners of this field.

Given that most government policies through mechanisms relative price change is done, it is necessary the effects of price changes on economic welfare is measured. This paper investigates the welfare effects caused by price changes of protein food stuffs in urban households. For this purpose, using urban household information, almost ideal demand system was estimated. The findings of expenditure elasticity of urban households show that meat, poultry, fish and shrimp and its products, and milk and its products are not elastic. The results of compensated own-price elasticity showed that the sensitivity of urban households to price change of meat and fish and shrimp is low compare to other protein food stuffs. If the price of protein food stuffs is doubled, the welfare of urban households is decreasing about 48 percent.

The purpose of this study is identification of the effective factors affecting on pricing strategie's selection in food producing companies using structural equation modeling (SEM). Data were gathered by interview and questionnaire completion from 127 food industry's experts and specialists. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) is used for factor analyzing of latent variables. According to the result of EFA, four factors of customer, competitors, market characteristics and government policies explain more than 67 percent of the cumulative variance of the select of pricing strategy. As a result, exploratory factor analysis could prove theoretical framework in this study. The result of path analysis show that customer and bazaar characteristics are the main factors affecting on select of pricing strategy in food industry.

With the increasing contribution of aquaculture to seafood supply, the interactions between fisheries and aquaculture are expected to become even more important. So this paper has investigated seasonality price integration for farmed and wild fishes in Fars province. The analysis draws on monthly price data from March 2007 to March 2013 for four species of fish, including Shir, Ghobad, Sangsar and Ghezelalla and applies seasonal unit root and integration approaches. The results show that almost seasonal unit roots have bilateral causality and farmed and wild fishes markets are integrated. Therefor policy making in each market will effect on price behavior in the other markets.

One of the most important problems in econometric methods, in order to estimate the considered parameters, is called the ill-posed problem. This problem occurs due to the lack of sufficient data which causes very low or, in some cases, negative degree of freedom. The ill-posed problems restrict researchers in agricultural economics studies especially in developing countries such as Iran. This problem is more evident in regional or provincial cases. With this approach and in order to create a favorable environment for economic researches in the agriculture sector, this paper applied the General Maximum Entropy (GME) approach to calculate the supply and demand elasticities of provincial wheat markets in the case of insufficient data. Results indicated that under such circumstances, the GME estimations are more efficient than the ordinary least squares (OLS) ones; but in the case of sufficient data, the classical estimation methods would be preferable.