Kuroda uses quantitative measures to investigate the rice production structure and effects of agricultural policies in Japan over the second half of the 20th century. Almost all policies have played negative roles in transferring paddy lands from small- to large-scale farms, which has slowed down to modernize the rice sector.
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The Japanese economy experienced rapid development during the mid-1950s through to the early ₆1970s, with a compound annual average growth rate of higher than ten per cent. Although the labor productivity of the agricultural sector increased fairly sharply, the non-agricultural sectors enjoyed much higher growth rates of labor productivity during the same period of time. This resulted in big income gaps between the agricultural and non-agricultural households. To reduce such income gaps between the two sectors, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF) enacted the Agricultural Basic Act in 1961 and started enforcing various policies for agriculture. These representative policy measures have been the output price-supports, in particular rice, the output-mix change, the set-asides, the input subsidies, and the research and extension (R & E) programs. In Volume 2 the (crops-livestock) multiple-product translog variable profit function is used to quantitatively investigate the impacts of the output price-supports, the set-asides, the input subsidies, and the R & E programs on the important economic indicators from 1965₆97. The most important finding based on such quantitative analyses is that the agricultural policy measures introduced by the MAFF played a vital role in restricting land transfers from small- to large-scale farms for more efficient and productive farming on larger-scale farms contrary to expectations.
A Philippine sample of agricultural households is studied by I subjective equilibrium model which also accounts for the household's demographic structure. The model becomes a potent tool for integrating the economic and demographic behaviour of the household, since issues such as the value of children can be approached in a reality maximization framework and furthermore, such values call be causally rellted to the variance in measured fertility among different households (or Socioeconomic groups). For example, the low marginal productivity contribution of children in tenant (and small farm-size) households, along with the low fertility control that prevails there, has been combined In conforming the inverse fertility-endowments hypothesis, which in this instance is based on labour market failure in periods of peak agricultural labour demand. On the consumption side, on the other hand, the demand for leisure and for other commodities is consistent with the higher valuation of children, and thus higher fertility, in tenant (and small farm-size) households, as compared to owner (and large farm-size) households. The policy implications of such findings from a household equilibrium model are rich.