With digital equipment becoming increasingly networked, either on wired or wireless networks, for personal and professional use alike, distributed software systems have become a crucial element in information and communications technologies. The study of these systems forms the core of the ARLES' work, which is specifically concerned with defining new system software architectures, based on the use of emerging networking technologies. In this context, we concentrate on the study of distributed systems which bring to life the vision of ubiquitous computing systems, also known as ambient intelligence.

반도체 공정 overview

This paper uses U.S. patent data from 1970 to 1994 to study the impact of energy prices on energy-efficient innovations. Theories of technological change have focused both on demand-side factors, which spur innovative activity by increasing the value of new innovations, and supply-side factors, such as scientific advancements that make new innovations possible. Data on demand-side factors are easily obtained, but data on supply-side factors that influence innovation are not readily available. This paper uses patent citations as a measure of the usefulness of the existing base of scientific knowledge. Citations to previous patents are used to construct productivity estimates, which measure the usefulness of the existing stock of knowledge to inventors in a given energy field for any given year. These estimates are then combined with data on demand-side factors to estimate a model of induced innovation in energy technologies. The results indicate that both energy prices and the supply of knowledge have strongly significant positive effects on innovation. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implication of this work for environmental policy.

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Induced Innovation and Energy Prices

I use U.S. patent data from 1970 to 1994 to estimate the effect of energy prices on energy-efficient innovations. Using patent citations to construct a measure of the usefulness of the existing base of scientific knowledge, I consider the effect of both demand-side factors, which spur innovative activity by increasing the value of new innovations, and supply-side factors, such as scientific advancements that make new innovations possible. I find that both energy prices and the quality of existing knowledge have strongly significant positive effects on innovation. Furthermore, I show that omitting the quality of knowledge adversely affects the estimation results.

Conceptualizing Chronic Poverty

Most work on the relationship between farm size and productivity strongly suggests that farms that rely mostly on family labor are more productive than large farms operated primarily by hired labor. This study began as an inquiry into how rental and sales markets for agricultural land in the developing world affect efficiency and equity. What emerged was the clear sense that great variations in land relations around the world and over time cannot be understood in the common paradigm of property rights and competitive markets. Under that paradigm, land scarcity leads to better definition of rights, which are then traded in sales and rental markets accessible equally to all players. The outcome should be the allocation of land to the most efficient uses and users, yet this rarely happens. Instead, land rights and ownership tend to grow out of power relationships. Landowning groups have used coercion and distortions in land, labor, credit, and commodity markets to extract economic rents from the land, from peasants and workers, and most recently from urban consumer groups or taxpayers. Such rent-seeking activities reduce the efficiency of resource use, retard growth, and increase the poverty of the rural population. The authors examine how these power relations emerged and what legal means enabled relatively few landowners to accumulate and hold on to large landholdings. The authors discuss the successes and failures of reform in market and socialist economies, and the perversions of reforms in both systems, manifested in large commercial farms and collectives. They survey the history of land relations and the legacies that history leaves. They discuss the three analytical controversies surrounding economies of scale, and the efficiency of the land sales and land rental market. They discuss the main policy issues and implications of various distortions and successful and unsuccessful reforms in the developing world, including land registration and titling, land taxation, regulations restricting land sales and rentals, fragmentation and consolidation of land, redistributive land reform, and decollectivization. In an epilogue on methodology, the authors examine how various strands of economic theory have contributed, or failed to contribute, to the explanation of variations in policies, distortions, and land relations over space and time.

Power, distortions, revolt, and reform in agricultural land relations

Chronic Poverty in South Africa: Incidence, Causes and Policies

A nonparametric analysis of technical, allocative, scale, and scope efficiency of agricultural production is presented based on a sample of Wisconsin farmers The results indicate the existence of important economies of scale on very small farms, and of some diseconomies of scale for the larger farms Also, it is found that most farms exhibit substantial economies of scope, but that such economies tend to decline sharply with the size of the enterprises Finally, the empirical evidence suggests significant linkages between the financial structure of the farms and their economic efficiency

An analysis of economic efficiency in agriculture: a nonparametric approach

At first glance South Africa's black farming sector appears to contribute rather minimally to overall agricultural output in South Africa. However, despite the complexity involved in this sector and the often marginal conditions in which agriculture is practised it appears to be important to a large number of black households. Furthermore, the significance they attach to subsistence agriculture as means of supplementing household food supplies seems to heavily outweigh other reasons for engaging in agriculture. Some South African researchers have indicated the contribution subsistence production makes to household food security, despite the prevalent complexities and the low input nature of this production. Statistics South Africa's Labour Force Survey data from 2001 to 2007 and a case study of subsistence farming in Limpopo Province are used to support the argument that, despite the complexity of this sector, the more than 4 million subsistence farmers, need and merit greater support. Such suppo...

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Should subsistence agriculture be supported as a strategy to address rural food insecurity

The South African Government aims to expand the smallholder sector as part of its broader job creation strategy. However, research shows that government attempts to support smallholder farmers have generally been costly and ineffective. Using secondary data and case study evidence, this study investigated the problems of supporting this sector. One finding is that while budgetary allocations to the sector have increased impressively over the last decade and a half, the distribution and use of these resources are such that few farmers benefit and the overall impact is small. A strategic choice has to be made between two strategies: supporting a few selected farmers to become large-scale commercial farmers (‘accumulation for the few’), or supporting a large number and helping them to increase and diversify their produce so as to become sustainable commercial smallholders (‘accumulation from below’). Past experience and a new national initiative favour the latter, using geographically targeted generic support services.

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Support for smallholder farmers in South Africa: Challenges of scale and strategy

The purpose of this study is fourfold: first, to summarise the current state of knowledge about chronic poverty in South Africa; second, to describe the range of existing governmental and civil society initiatives which address chronic poverty; third, to identify challenges to addressing chronic poverty in South Africa; and fourth, to identify themes for further research. The introduction to the paper is followed by a brief survey of the historical background, current economic context and poverty profile of South Africa. The paper then presents a quantitative and qualitative picture of South Africa's chronically poor. To date, there has been only one data set collected in South Africa allowing an inter-temporal comparison among the same households. This is the KwaZulu-Natal Income Dynamics Study (KIDS), covering one of the provinces rather than the whole country. Because this data set and the analyses based upon it are unique, we discuss them at length. The KIDS data suggest that at least half of households that are poor are chronically poor; that 'ultra-poverty' is not synonymous with chronic poverty; and the there is a large degree of employment volatility experienced by households. The KIDS-based studies as well as other poverty analyses allow identification of groups especially likely to be chronically poor. These include rural households, women-headed households, households effectively headed by elderly people, and former (retrenched) farm workers. Over the next 10 years, however, AIDS orphans and households directly affected by AIDS, will likely figure as the most prominent category of people mired in chronic poverty. The paper goes on to survey the variety of anti-poverty measures of government and civil society. Measured by expenditure, the government's social security system is by far the largest anti-poverty instrument in the country, and probably one of the more functional. The paper suggests that a number of challenges face government and civil society to address poverty in general and chronic poverty in particular. Among these are: first, the absence of a coherent anti-poverty strategy, and particularly one that takes into account the distinction between chronic poverty and transitory poverty; second, the bleak prospects for growth in formal sector employment over the medium terms, together with general uncertainty about how to improve support to the SMME sector; and third, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the effects of which will likely be far more apparent in the next 15 years than to date. The paper concludes with suggested priority areas for further research.

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Michael Aliber

Papers

Chronic Poverty in South Africa: Incidence, Causes and Policies

An analysis of economic efficiency in agriculture: a nonparametric approach

Should subsistence agriculture be supported as a strategy to address rural food insecurity

Support for smallholder farmers in South Africa: Challenges of scale and strategy

Study of the Incidence and Nature of Chronic Poverty and Development Policy in South Africa: An Overview