Institution: International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
E-mail: s.ehui@cgiar.org
Biosummary:
Dr. Ehui is an Agricultural Economist and Coordinator of the Livestock Policy Analysis Project at the International Livestock Research Institute. He provides scientific and administrative leadership to overall ILRI’s policy research program. Prior to joining ILRI he was a Rockefeller Foundation Research fellow at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria where he contributed substantially to research on modeling and understanding of the processes associated with sustainability and environmental degradation of farming systems in the tropics. He has conducted several studies on livestock and resource management policy and has authored or co-authored over 40 publications.
Title: "Multimarket effects of livestock research in South and Southeast Asia: Implications for poverty alleviation. Co-author: Marinos Tsigas.
Theme: 4D
Relatively few studies have examined the impact of agricultural research in an international context including the effects of technological spillovers and domestic and international policies on growth and poverty alleviation. Technological change affects economic conditions in the region where the innovation occurs, but it also affects economic conditions in related products and inputs markets, domestically and in other regions. At the same time, technologies originally developed in one country are frequently adopted in others with significant implications. Thus technological change can have serious implications for poverty alleviation.
This paper uses a multi-region, applied general equilibrium (AGE) approach to assess the impact of livestock research on growth and poverty in South and Southeast Asia. The livestock sector plays a vital role in the economies of many developing nations including Asia. It provides food, income, employment and valuable foreign exchange thus contributing significantly to poverty alleviation. This approach differs from most studies that evaluate impacts of technological change. Those studies often make two limiting assumptions. First, prices and production of all other commodities are often assumed fixed. Second, most studies assume that research results from one region do not affect productivity in others. In contrast, the AGE framework allows for endogenous determination t of regional prices and quantities in response to technical change. The AGE approach is the most general framework for analysis of productivity change. Research induced technical change in agriculture can have economy-wide implications for employment and returns to factors of production (e.g. skilled and unskilled labor) as well as production and consumption of non-agricultural goods. Through output markets adjustments, technical change in agriculture affects the relative prices of agricultural and non-agricultural products not directly affected by the new technology. These indirectly induced changes in product markets lead to further changes in factor markets. A multi-region, AGE model is an internally consistent framework to avoid pitfalls of under-or over counting of welfare effects. The model used in this paper is the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) which is an applied general equilibrium (AGE) (Hertel, 1997). GTAP consists of a global database and an economic model for performing simulations. The database represents economic conditions in 1995.
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