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Maurice Landes

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Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

Ramon Alberto dos Santos

Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo

Nebraska Wesleyan University

Carmen Gonzalez

Loyola University Chicago

Jean-Frederic Morin

Université Laval

Michael Magcamit

The University of Manchester

Antoni Llibrer Escrig

Universitat de València

Pedro Caldentey del Pozo

Loyola Andalucía University

Carlos Crespo Amat

Universitat de Lleida

David Igual Luis

University of Castilla-La Mancha

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Papers by Maurice Landes

Indian Wheat and Rice Sector Policies and the Implications of Reform

by Maurice Landes, Shikha Jha, and P. Srinivasan

During 1998-2002, India experienced record public surpluses of wheat and rice, sharply higher gov... more During 1998-2002, India experienced record public surpluses of wheat and rice, sharply higher government grain subsidy outlays, and declining per capita consumption of wheat and rice. By 2006, despite continued high subsidies and sluggish domestic consumption, India developed a large wheat deficit because of reduced price incentives, weak yield growth, and rising subsidized consumption. The pronounced market cycles and declining per capita consumption for India's major food staples are creating pressure for Indian policymakers to adjust longstanding policies. While there has been no political consensus on more fundamental reform, recent policy changes have moved toward better targeting of food subsidies to low-income consumers, decentralization of government operations, and slowed growth in producer price subsidies. Decentralization is likely to reduce government costs with little impact on producers, consumers, or trade. Lower price supports would aid consumers at the cost of producers, and sharply lower government costs. Adoption of a U.S.-style deficiency payment program could maintain producer support with less market distortion and lower cost, but would require devising a viable system to make and monitor farmer payments.

Lamp and desk pad

Studying shallow seafloor structure based on correlations of continuous seismic records

SEG Technical Program Expanded Abstracts 2009, 2009

ABSTRACT

Studying the origin of deep ocean microseisms using teleseismic body waves

Recent studies of oceanic microseisms concentrated on fundamental-mode surface waves. One of the ... more Recent studies of oceanic microseisms concentrated on fundamental-mode surface waves. One of the reasons for this is that extraction of fundamental-mode Rayleigh and Love wave Green functions from station-station correlations of ambient seismic noise has recently been demonstrated to be a very powerful tool for imaging of the Earth's crust and uppermost mantle. Extracting body wave Green functions from noise cross-correlations remains however problematic. In this study we concentrate on energetic arrivals in the microseismic frequency band that appear at near zero times in noise cross-correlations. We demonstrate their clearly seasonal behavior. For stations located in the Northern hemisphere, relative amplitudes of these arrivals are significantly stronger during the summer. Polarization analysis of cross-correlations of continuous records by stations of the Eastern Turkey Seismic Experiment (ETSE) helps us to identify this near-zero time signal as upcoming P waves. We determine the origin of these signals by simultaneously analyzing records at stations of seismic arrays located in Turkey, Yellowstone, and Kyrgyzstan. We define apparent slownesses of the studied arrivals beneath three arrays by applying seismic beamforming to inter-station cross-correlations and locate the regions where the signals were generated by using the ray tracing in a spherically symmetric Earth model. Our results show that the energetic arrivals seen at near-zero times in seismic noise cross-correlations are formed by teleseismic P, PP, and PKP waves. Similar to noise-forming surface waves, generation of this ambient body waves is strongly seasonal with sources located in southern and northern oceans during the summer and the winter, respectively. Moreover, body wave array analysis is accurate enough to unambiguously demonstrate that significant amount of the microseism's energy is generated far from the coast in deep oceans.

Relations between rupture velocity changes, seismic radiation, and fault geometry during the Kokoxili earthquake (Tibet, 2001/11/14)

Determining how rupture velocity varies during an earthquake provides decisive information on the... more Determining how rupture velocity varies during an earthquake provides decisive information on the nature of the rupture process and the associated seismic radiation. We present here an innovative analysis of the 400-km- long Kokoxili earthquake (Tibet, 14 November 2001) using the HIMNT broadband stations located in Nepal as a dense seismic array. This approach reveals that the speed of the propagating rupture tip reached extremely high values, very close to the velocity of seismic compressional waves, over a long fault segment. Although theoretically known since the 1970"s, direct evidences for the existence of this regime had not been provided up to now. We show that the acceleration or deceleration locations related to the transition between low and high velocity regimes are not randomly located but correlate very well with fault geometrical complexities. These transitions are shown to generate strong high frequency radiations and are therefore a very serious candidate to explain the origin of the damaging waves induced by earthquakes.

Global oceanic microseism sources as seen by seismic arrays and predicted by wave action models

Estimated locations of P-wave microseism generation obtained from seismic arrays analyses are com... more Estimated locations of P-wave microseism generation obtained from seismic arrays analyses are combined with ocean wave-wave interaction models to improve the understanding of microseism generation. Source regions of likely microseism generation are found by combining data from three different networks located in the northern hemisphere. For each array, teleseismic P-wave arrivals are extracted from station-station correlations of ambient noise associated

Marketing Costs and Margins in International Trade

A Report from the Economic Research Service

by Shikha Jha and Maurice Landes

Intellectual property rights such as patents protect new inventions from imitation and competitio... more Intellectual property rights such as patents protect new inventions from imitation and competition. Patents' major objective is to provide incentives for invention, sacrificing short-term market efficiency for long-term economic gains. Although patents are primarily granted to private firms, policy changes over the last 25 years have resulted in greater use of patenting by the public sector. This study examines government patenting behavior by analyzing case studies of patenting and licensing by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. ARS uses patenting and licensing as a means of technology transfer in cases in which a technology requires additional development by a private sector partner to yield a marketable product. Licensing revenue is not a major motivation for ARS patenting. More widespread use of patenting and licensing by ARS has not reduced the use of traditional instruments of technology transfer such as scientific publication. Once the decision has been made to patent and license a technology, the structure of the licensing agreement affects technology transfer outcomes. As commercial partners gain experience with the technology and learn more about the market, mutually advantageous revisions to license terms can maintain the incentives through which private companies distribute the benefits of public research.

Uptake and outcomes of a prevention-of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) program in Zomba district, Malawi

BMC Public Health, 2011

Background: HIV prevalence among pregnant women in Malawi is 12.6%, and mother-to-child transmiss... more Background: HIV prevalence among pregnant women in Malawi is 12.6%, and mother-to-child transmission is a major route of transmission. As PMTCT services have expanded in Malawi in recent years, we sought to determine uptake of services, HIV-relevant infant feeding practices and mother-child health outcomes.

Growth and Equity Effects of Agricultural Marketing Efficiency Gains in India

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

The New Economics of India's Green Revolution

American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 1994

Growth Prospects for India's Cotton and Textile Industries

Growth, 2005

Demand for cotton and manmade fibers in India will likely strengthen in response to rising consum... more Demand for cotton and manmade fibers in India will likely strengthen in response to rising consumer demand in India and increased exports of textiles and apparel following the removal of the Multifiber Arrangement quotas. The pace of growth in cotton demand will hinge on execution of reforms to policies, including taxes that discriminate against the use of manmade fibers and regulations affecting the scale, technology use, and export competitiveness of the textile and apparel industries. Imports of raw cotton have increased in concert with rising demand in recent years, but future growth will depend on the extent to which India can boost chronically low cotton yields and improve cotton quality.

The Response of Consumption to Income Shocks: Evidence from the Indian Trade Liberalization

2011 Annual Meeting July 24 26 2011 Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, May 1, 2011

This paper uses the Indian tariff reforms of the early nineties to estimate how households respon... more This paper uses the Indian tariff reforms of the early nineties to estimate how households responded to the negative income shocks caused by the tariff decreases. Households more hurt by the tariff reform decreased overall expenditure, but the response is not uniform across food items. In particular, households more hurt by the reform did not change their consumption of cereals, but decreased their consumption of all other food items. Although this coping mechanism helped maintain overall levels of calorie consumption, diet diversity and the associated benefits were sacrificed.

Counting India’s Food Insecure Is Complicated

Estimating the Range of Food-Insecure Households in India

This study provides a quantitative assessment of food security using a large household-level expe... more This study provides a quantitative assessment of food security using a large household-level expenditure survey conducted by the Government of India during 2004/05. The analysis tests the impact of several key assumptions required to estimate actual calories consumed from the expenditure data. The authors found significant differences in the estimates of calories consumed and the number of food-insecure people under alternative plausible assumptions for computing the calorie content of nonprocessed foods, processed foods, and meals eaten outside the household. The measurement errors were largest in accounting for calories consumed by the highest and lowest income households. Overall, the difference between the highest and lowest estimate of the number of people consuming an average of less than 2,100 calories per day was equivalent to about 17 percent of India’s population, or 173 million people in 2004/05. Given the significant measurement error in estimating calories consumed, it ...

Counting Indiaâ€™s Food Insecure Is Complicated

Coping Strategies in Response to Rising Food Prices: Evidence From India

Along with world food prices, the prices of staple grains in India surged between 2006 and 2010. ... more

The Response of Consumption to Income Shocks: Evidence from the Indian Trade Liberalization

2011 Annual Meeting, July 24-26, …, 2011

This paper uses the Indian tariff reforms of the early nineties to estimate how households respon... more This paper uses the Indian tariff reforms of the early nineties to estimate how households responded to the negative income shocks caused by the tariff decreases. Households more hurt by the tariff reform decreased overall expenditure, but the response is not uniform across food items. In particular, households more hurt by the reform did not change their consumption of cereals, but decreased their consumption of all other food items. Although this coping mechanism helped maintain overall levels of calorie consumption, diet diversity and the associated benefits were sacrificed.

Analyzing modern food retailing expansion drivers in developing countries

Agribusiness, 2011

ABSTRACT The recent rapid growth in modern food retailing can be either driven by price decreases... more ABSTRACT The recent rapid growth in modern food retailing can be either driven by price decreases associated with efficiency gains in the supply chain over time, or it can be driven by growing consumer demand for nonprice characteristics, such as added convenience and higher quality goods. However, the price decreases associated with efficiency gains are likely to have a much larger effect on food demand and welfare in developing countries. Despite the importance of the question, few studies have empirically analyzed which driver has been more important to the spread of modern food retailing. Using a newly constructed data set of 103 developing countries, we find suggestive evidence of the expansion being primarily driven by growth in demand for nonprice characteristics. Specifically, we find that variation in demographic characteristics, such as share of the population who would benefit most from the convenience offered by modern formats, are associated with large variations in supermarket growth over the past decade. On the other hand, growth in modern food retailing appears uncorrelated with variation in the ease of developing efficient supply chains. Thus, although having the possibility to deliver large welfare gains to developing countries, the expansion of modern supermarkets likely has had much more muted effects. [EconLit citations: O100; L100; Q130]. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Indian Wheat and Rice Sector Policies and the Implications of Reform

by Maurice Landes, Shikha Jha, and P. Srinivasan

During 1998-2002, India experienced record public surpluses of wheat and rice, sharply higher gov... more During 1998-2002, India experienced record public surpluses of wheat and rice, sharply higher government grain subsidy outlays, and declining per capita consumption of wheat and rice. By 2006, despite continued high subsidies and sluggish domestic consumption, India developed a large wheat deficit because of reduced price incentives, weak yield growth, and rising subsidized consumption. The pronounced market cycles and declining per capita consumption for India's major food staples are creating pressure for Indian policymakers to adjust longstanding policies. While there has been no political consensus on more fundamental reform, recent policy changes have moved toward better targeting of food subsidies to low-income consumers, decentralization of government operations, and slowed growth in producer price subsidies. Decentralization is likely to reduce government costs with little impact on producers, consumers, or trade. Lower price supports would aid consumers at the cost of producers, and sharply lower government costs. Adoption of a U.S.-style deficiency payment program could maintain producer support with less market distortion and lower cost, but would require devising a viable system to make and monitor farmer payments.

Lamp and desk pad

Studying shallow seafloor structure based on correlations of continuous seismic records

SEG Technical Program Expanded Abstracts 2009, 2009

ABSTRACT

Studying the origin of deep ocean microseisms using teleseismic body waves

Recent studies of oceanic microseisms concentrated on fundamental-mode surface waves. One of the ... more Recent studies of oceanic microseisms concentrated on fundamental-mode surface waves. One of the reasons for this is that extraction of fundamental-mode Rayleigh and Love wave Green functions from station-station correlations of ambient seismic noise has recently been demonstrated to be a very powerful tool for imaging of the Earth's crust and uppermost mantle. Extracting body wave Green functions from noise cross-correlations remains however problematic. In this study we concentrate on energetic arrivals in the microseismic frequency band that appear at near zero times in noise cross-correlations. We demonstrate their clearly seasonal behavior. For stations located in the Northern hemisphere, relative amplitudes of these arrivals are significantly stronger during the summer. Polarization analysis of cross-correlations of continuous records by stations of the Eastern Turkey Seismic Experiment (ETSE) helps us to identify this near-zero time signal as upcoming P waves. We determine the origin of these signals by simultaneously analyzing records at stations of seismic arrays located in Turkey, Yellowstone, and Kyrgyzstan. We define apparent slownesses of the studied arrivals beneath three arrays by applying seismic beamforming to inter-station cross-correlations and locate the regions where the signals were generated by using the ray tracing in a spherically symmetric Earth model. Our results show that the energetic arrivals seen at near-zero times in seismic noise cross-correlations are formed by teleseismic P, PP, and PKP waves. Similar to noise-forming surface waves, generation of this ambient body waves is strongly seasonal with sources located in southern and northern oceans during the summer and the winter, respectively. Moreover, body wave array analysis is accurate enough to unambiguously demonstrate that significant amount of the microseism's energy is generated far from the coast in deep oceans.

Relations between rupture velocity changes, seismic radiation, and fault geometry during the Kokoxili earthquake (Tibet, 2001/11/14)

Determining how rupture velocity varies during an earthquake provides decisive information on the... more Determining how rupture velocity varies during an earthquake provides decisive information on the nature of the rupture process and the associated seismic radiation. We present here an innovative analysis of the 400-km- long Kokoxili earthquake (Tibet, 14 November 2001) using the HIMNT broadband stations located in Nepal as a dense seismic array. This approach reveals that the speed of the propagating rupture tip reached extremely high values, very close to the velocity of seismic compressional waves, over a long fault segment. Although theoretically known since the 1970"s, direct evidences for the existence of this regime had not been provided up to now. We show that the acceleration or deceleration locations related to the transition between low and high velocity regimes are not randomly located but correlate very well with fault geometrical complexities. These transitions are shown to generate strong high frequency radiations and are therefore a very serious candidate to explain the origin of the damaging waves induced by earthquakes.

Global oceanic microseism sources as seen by seismic arrays and predicted by wave action models

Estimated locations of P-wave microseism generation obtained from seismic arrays analyses are com... more Estimated locations of P-wave microseism generation obtained from seismic arrays analyses are combined with ocean wave-wave interaction models to improve the understanding of microseism generation. Source regions of likely microseism generation are found by combining data from three different networks located in the northern hemisphere. For each array, teleseismic P-wave arrivals are extracted from station-station correlations of ambient noise associated

Marketing Costs and Margins in International Trade

A Report from the Economic Research Service

by Shikha Jha and Maurice Landes

Intellectual property rights such as patents protect new inventions from imitation and competitio... more Intellectual property rights such as patents protect new inventions from imitation and competition. Patents' major objective is to provide incentives for invention, sacrificing short-term market efficiency for long-term economic gains. Although patents are primarily granted to private firms, policy changes over the last 25 years have resulted in greater use of patenting by the public sector. This study examines government patenting behavior by analyzing case studies of patenting and licensing by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. ARS uses patenting and licensing as a means of technology transfer in cases in which a technology requires additional development by a private sector partner to yield a marketable product. Licensing revenue is not a major motivation for ARS patenting. More widespread use of patenting and licensing by ARS has not reduced the use of traditional instruments of technology transfer such as scientific publication. Once the decision has been made to patent and license a technology, the structure of the licensing agreement affects technology transfer outcomes. As commercial partners gain experience with the technology and learn more about the market, mutually advantageous revisions to license terms can maintain the incentives through which private companies distribute the benefits of public research.

Uptake and outcomes of a prevention-of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) program in Zomba district, Malawi

BMC Public Health, 2011

Background: HIV prevalence among pregnant women in Malawi is 12.6%, and mother-to-child transmiss... more Background: HIV prevalence among pregnant women in Malawi is 12.6%, and mother-to-child transmission is a major route of transmission. As PMTCT services have expanded in Malawi in recent years, we sought to determine uptake of services, HIV-relevant infant feeding practices and mother-child health outcomes.

Growth and Equity Effects of Agricultural Marketing Efficiency Gains in India

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

The New Economics of India's Green Revolution

American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 1994

Growth Prospects for India's Cotton and Textile Industries

Growth, 2005

Demand for cotton and manmade fibers in India will likely strengthen in response to rising consum... more Demand for cotton and manmade fibers in India will likely strengthen in response to rising consumer demand in India and increased exports of textiles and apparel following the removal of the Multifiber Arrangement quotas. The pace of growth in cotton demand will hinge on execution of reforms to policies, including taxes that discriminate against the use of manmade fibers and regulations affecting the scale, technology use, and export competitiveness of the textile and apparel industries. Imports of raw cotton have increased in concert with rising demand in recent years, but future growth will depend on the extent to which India can boost chronically low cotton yields and improve cotton quality.

The Response of Consumption to Income Shocks: Evidence from the Indian Trade Liberalization

2011 Annual Meeting July 24 26 2011 Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, May 1, 2011

This paper uses the Indian tariff reforms of the early nineties to estimate how households respon... more This paper uses the Indian tariff reforms of the early nineties to estimate how households responded to the negative income shocks caused by the tariff decreases. Households more hurt by the tariff reform decreased overall expenditure, but the response is not uniform across food items. In particular, households more hurt by the reform did not change their consumption of cereals, but decreased their consumption of all other food items. Although this coping mechanism helped maintain overall levels of calorie consumption, diet diversity and the associated benefits were sacrificed.

Counting India’s Food Insecure Is Complicated

Estimating the Range of Food-Insecure Households in India

This study provides a quantitative assessment of food security using a large household-level expe... more This study provides a quantitative assessment of food security using a large household-level expenditure survey conducted by the Government of India during 2004/05. The analysis tests the impact of several key assumptions required to estimate actual calories consumed from the expenditure data. The authors found significant differences in the estimates of calories consumed and the number of food-insecure people under alternative plausible assumptions for computing the calorie content of nonprocessed foods, processed foods, and meals eaten outside the household. The measurement errors were largest in accounting for calories consumed by the highest and lowest income households. Overall, the difference between the highest and lowest estimate of the number of people consuming an average of less than 2,100 calories per day was equivalent to about 17 percent of India’s population, or 173 million people in 2004/05. Given the significant measurement error in estimating calories consumed, it ...

Counting Indiaâ€™s Food Insecure Is Complicated

Coping Strategies in Response to Rising Food Prices: Evidence From India

Along with world food prices, the prices of staple grains in India surged between 2006 and 2010. ... more

The Response of Consumption to Income Shocks: Evidence from the Indian Trade Liberalization

2011 Annual Meeting, July 24-26, …, 2011

This paper uses the Indian tariff reforms of the early nineties to estimate how households respon... more This paper uses the Indian tariff reforms of the early nineties to estimate how households responded to the negative income shocks caused by the tariff decreases. Households more hurt by the tariff reform decreased overall expenditure, but the response is not uniform across food items. In particular, households more hurt by the reform did not change their consumption of cereals, but decreased their consumption of all other food items. Although this coping mechanism helped maintain overall levels of calorie consumption, diet diversity and the associated benefits were sacrificed.

Analyzing modern food retailing expansion drivers in developing countries

Agribusiness, 2011

ABSTRACT The recent rapid growth in modern food retailing can be either driven by price decreases... more ABSTRACT The recent rapid growth in modern food retailing can be either driven by price decreases associated with efficiency gains in the supply chain over time, or it can be driven by growing consumer demand for nonprice characteristics, such as added convenience and higher quality goods. However, the price decreases associated with efficiency gains are likely to have a much larger effect on food demand and welfare in developing countries. Despite the importance of the question, few studies have empirically analyzed which driver has been more important to the spread of modern food retailing. Using a newly constructed data set of 103 developing countries, we find suggestive evidence of the expansion being primarily driven by growth in demand for nonprice characteristics. Specifically, we find that variation in demographic characteristics, such as share of the population who would benefit most from the convenience offered by modern formats, are associated with large variations in supermarket growth over the past decade. On the other hand, growth in modern food retailing appears uncorrelated with variation in the ease of developing efficient supply chains. Thus, although having the possibility to deliver large welfare gains to developing countries, the expansion of modern supermarkets likely has had much more muted effects. [EconLit citations: O100; L100; Q130]. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.