{"title":"社会有益理性:战略农民、社会企业家和营利性企业在作物种植决策中的价值","authors":"Ming Hu, Yan Liu, Wenbin Wang","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2847477","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Price fluctuations in agricultural markets are an obstacle to poverty reduction for small-scale farmers in developing countries. We build a micro-foundation to study how farmers of heterogeneous production costs, under price fluctuations, make crop-planting decisions over time to maximize their incomes. We consider both strategic farmers, who rationally anticipate the near-future prices as a basis for making planting decisions, and naive farmers, who shortsightedly react to recent crop prices. The latter behavior may cause recurring over- or under-production, which leads to price fluctuations. We find it important to cultivate strategic farmers, because their self-interested behavior alone, made possible by sufficient market information, can reduce price volatility and benefit all farmers. Surprisingly, even a tiny number of strategic farmers may be enough to stabilize a market price. In the absence of strategic farmers, a well-designed pre-season procurement contract, offered by a non-profit or for-profit firm to a fraction of contract farmers, can bring benefit to all the farmers as well as to the firm itself and reduce income disparity among farmers. On the other hand, a poorly designed contract may distort the market and drive non-contract farmers out of business.","PeriodicalId":402954,"journal":{"name":"FoodSciRN: Other Agricultural Food Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2016-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Socially Beneficial Rationality: The Value of Strategic Farmers, Social Entrepreneurs and For-Profit Firms in Crop Planting Decisions\",\"authors\":\"Ming Hu, Yan Liu, Wenbin Wang\",\"doi\":\"10.2139/ssrn.2847477\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"Price fluctuations in agricultural markets are an obstacle to poverty reduction for small-scale farmers in developing countries. We build a micro-foundation to study how farmers of heterogeneous production costs, under price fluctuations, make crop-planting decisions over time to maximize their incomes. We consider both strategic farmers, who rationally anticipate the near-future prices as a basis for making planting decisions, and naive farmers, who shortsightedly react to recent crop prices. The latter behavior may cause recurring over- or under-production, which leads to price fluctuations. We find it important to cultivate strategic farmers, because their self-interested behavior alone, made possible by sufficient market information, can reduce price volatility and benefit all farmers. Surprisingly, even a tiny number of strategic farmers may be enough to stabilize a market price. In the absence of strategic farmers, a well-designed pre-season procurement contract, offered by a non-profit or for-profit firm to a fraction of contract farmers, can bring benefit to all the farmers as well as to the firm itself and reduce income disparity among farmers. On the other hand, a poorly designed contract may distort the market and drive non-contract farmers out of business.\",\"PeriodicalId\":402954,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"FoodSciRN: Other Agricultural Food Science\",\"volume\":null,\"pages\":null},\"PeriodicalIF\":0.0000,\"publicationDate\":\"2016-10-03\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"2\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"FoodSciRN: Other Agricultural Food Science\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"1085\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2847477\",\"RegionNum\":0,\"RegionCategory\":null,\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"\",\"JCRName\":\"\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"FoodSciRN: Other Agricultural Food Science","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2847477","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
Socially Beneficial Rationality: The Value of Strategic Farmers, Social Entrepreneurs and For-Profit Firms in Crop Planting Decisions
Price fluctuations in agricultural markets are an obstacle to poverty reduction for small-scale farmers in developing countries. We build a micro-foundation to study how farmers of heterogeneous production costs, under price fluctuations, make crop-planting decisions over time to maximize their incomes. We consider both strategic farmers, who rationally anticipate the near-future prices as a basis for making planting decisions, and naive farmers, who shortsightedly react to recent crop prices. The latter behavior may cause recurring over- or under-production, which leads to price fluctuations. We find it important to cultivate strategic farmers, because their self-interested behavior alone, made possible by sufficient market information, can reduce price volatility and benefit all farmers. Surprisingly, even a tiny number of strategic farmers may be enough to stabilize a market price. In the absence of strategic farmers, a well-designed pre-season procurement contract, offered by a non-profit or for-profit firm to a fraction of contract farmers, can bring benefit to all the farmers as well as to the firm itself and reduce income disparity among farmers. On the other hand, a poorly designed contract may distort the market and drive non-contract farmers out of business.