Title
Agriculture, Markets and Poverty - A Comparative Analysis of Laos and Cambodia
Abstract
Laos and Cambodia have been transitioning to a market-oriented policy regime. Both are agrarian economies with agriculture contributing about one-third of the GDP. We assess prospects of achieving MDG1 and centrality of agricultural growth in achieving this goal. As these are macro relationships, richer insights into determinants of poverty are obtained by detailed analyses of recent household surveys in Laos and Cambodia. Some of these insights relate to access to markets, returns to crops, education, land size, non-farm activities, ethnic affiliation, and rural infrastructure, with unavoidable variation due to differences in the coverage of the household surveys used. Another major theme studied for Cambodia is integration of farmers - especially smallholders - into markets. The focus is on barriers between large and smallholders-for example, transaction costs. An accelerated transition to a more market-oriented policy regime may promote not just a more efficient agriculture but also a more equitable outcome.
Keywords
agriculture, poverty, MDG1, smallholders, markets, transaction costs, Laos and Cambodia
JEL Classification
N 55, H 53, I 32.
Inquiries
Economics, Australian National University, Australia
Md Shafiul AZAM
Economics, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, UK
Samuel ANNIM
Department of Economics, University of Central Lancashire, UK
Katsushi S. IMAI
Economics, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, UK
and
Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration
Kobe University
Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe
657-8501 Japan
Phone: +81-78-803-7036
FAX: +81-78-803-7059