Jean-Jacques Dethier

This study examines twenty-five years of pricing policies in agriculture, covering the period 1960-85. During this period, the price regime has discriminated strongly against agriculture. The study focuses on the objectives and implications of government intervention on five major crops, cotton, rice, wheat, maize, and sugarcane. It examines the economic history of price intervention, both at the sectoral and at the economy-wide level. After an introductory essay outlining political, macroeconomic, and sectoral developments, the objectives and instruments of agricultural policy are examined, and the incidence of intervention on relative prices and values added are studied. The effects of price intervention on agricultural output, rural and urban incomes, consumption, foreign exchange earnings, the government budget, and on resource flows in and out of agriculture are also examined. The study analyzes the determinants of agricultural pricing policies, including the influence of world prices and the relationship between government intervention and price variability. In the conclusions, a political-economic interpretation of twenty-five years of price interventions is given, and recent reform attempts are examined. Finally, background material such as time series data, calculations, and more detailed descriptions of economic policies and institutions are given in the appendices.

Trade, Exchange Rate, and Agricultural Pricing Policies in Egypt

Nicholas Stern

F. Halsey Rogers

Despite significant gains in promoting economic growth and living conditions (or "human progress") globally over the last twenty-five years, much of the developing world remains plagued by poverty and its attendant problems, including high rates of child mortality, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and war. In Growth and Empowerment, Nicholas Stern, Jean-Jacques Dethier, and F. Halsey Rogers propose a new strategy for development. Drawing on many years of work in development economics—in academia, in the field, and at international institutions such as the World Bank—the authors base their strategy on two interrelated approaches: building a climate that encourages investment and growth and at the same time empowering poor people to participate in that growth. This plan differs from other models for development, including the dogmatic approach of market fundamentalism popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Stern, Dethier, and Rogers see economic development as a dynamic process of continuous change in which entrepreneurship, innovation, flexibility, and mobility are crucial components and the idea of empowerment, as both a goal and a driver of development, is central. The book points to the unique opportunity today—after 50 years of successes and failures, and with a growing body of analytical work to draw on—to pursue new development strategies in both research and action.

Jean-Jacques Dethier

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