Food security, food safety and small farmers

Some of the elements that characterize the globalization of food and agriculture are industrialization and intensification of agriculture and liberalization of agricultural markets, that favours elongation of the food chain and homogenization of food habits (nutrition transition), among other impacts. As a result, the probability of food contamination has increased with the distance and the number of “hands" that may contact the food (critical points); the nutritional quality of food has been reduced because of increased transport and longer periods of time from collection to consumption; and the number of food-related diseases due to changes in eating patterns has increased. In this context, there exist different agencies and regulations intended to ensure food safety at different levels, e.g. at the international level, Codex Alimentarius develops standards and regulations for the marketing of food in a global market. Although governments determine the legal framework, the food industry manages the safety of their products, and thus, develops its own standards for their marketing, such as the Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) programs. The participation of the private sector in the creation of regulatory standards strengthens the free trade of food products, favouring mostly large agribusiness companies. These standards are in most cases unattainable for small producers and food safety regulations are favouring removal of the peasantry and increase concentration and control in the food system by industrial actors. Particularly women, who traditionally have been in charge of the artisanal transformation process, can be more affected by these norms than men. In this project I am analysing the impcact of food safety norms over small farms, based on the case of artisanal production made by women in Spain.

On the computational security of a distributed key distribution scheme

In a distributed key distribution scheme, a set of servers helps a set of users in a group to securely obtain a common key. Security means that an adversary who corrupts some servers and some users has no information about the key of a noncorrupted group. In this work, we formalize the security analysis of one such scheme which was not considered in the original proposal. We prove the scheme is secure in the random oracle model, assuming that the Decisional Diffie-Hellman (DDH) problem is hard to solve. We also detail a possible modification of that scheme and the one in which allows us to prove the security of the schemes without assuming that a specific hash function behaves as a random oracle. As usual, this improvement in the security of the schemes is at the cost of an efficiency loss.

Social Security in Theory and Practice (II): Efficiency Theories, Narrative Theories, and Implications for Reform

166 countries have some kind of public old age pension. What economic forces create and sustain old age Social Security as a public program? Mulligan and Sala-i-Martin (1999b) document several of the internationally and historically common features of social security programs, and explore "political" theories of Social Security. This paper discusses the "efficiency theories", which view creation of the SS program as a full of partial solution to some market failure. Efficiency explanations of social security include the "SS as welfare for the elderly" the "retirement increases productivity to optimally manage human capital externalities", "optimal retirement insurance", the "prodigal father problem", the "misguided Keynesian", the "optimal longevity insurance", the "government economizing transaction costs", and the "return on human capital investment". We also analyze four "narrative" theories of social security: the "chain letter theory", the "lump of labor theory", the "monopoly capitalism theory", and the "Sub-but-Nearly-Optimal policy response to private pensions theory". The political and efficiency explanations are compared with the international and historical facts and used to derive implications for replacing the typical pay-as-you-go system with a forced savings plan. Most of the explanations suggest that forced savings does not increase welfare, and may decrease it.

Market versus limit orders in an imperfectly competitive security

This paper analyzes the choice between limit and market orders in animperfectly competitive noisy rational expectations economy. There is a uniqueinsider, who takes into account the effect their trading has on prices. If theinsider behaves as a price taker, she will choose market orders if her privateinformation is very precise and she will choose limit orders otherwise. On thecontrary, if the insider recognizes and exploits her ability to affect themarket price, her optimal choice is to place limit orders whatever the precisionof her private information.

Social security, retirement, and the single-mindedness of the electorate

We propose a positive theory that is consistent with two important featuresof social security programs around the world: (1) they redistributeincome from young to old and (2) they induce retirement. We construct avoting model that includes a political campaign or debate prior to theelection. The model incorporates single-mindedness of the groups that donot work: while the workers divide their political capital between their age concerns and occupational concerns , the retired concentrate alltheir political capital to support their age group. In our model, theelderly end up getting transfers from the government (paid by the young)and distortionary labor income taxes induce the retirement of the elderly.In addition, our model predicts that occupational groups that work morewill tend to have more political power. The opposite is true fornon-occupational groups (such as the elderly). We provide some evidencethat supports these additional predictions.

Social security in theory and practice (II): Efficiency theories, narrative theories and implications for reform

166 countries have some kind of public old age pension. What economic forcescreate and sustain old age Social Security as a public program? Mulligan and Sala-i-Martin (1999b) document several of the internationally and historically common features of social security programs, and explore "political" theories of Social Security. This paper discusses the "efficiency theories", which view creation of the SS program as a full of partial solution to some market failure. Efficiency explanations of social security include the "SS as welfare for the elderly" the "retirement increases productivity to optimally manage human capital externalities", "optimal retirement insurance", the "prodigal father problem", the "misguided Keynesian", the "optimal longevity insurance", the "governmenteconomizing transaction costs", and the "return on human capital investment". We also analyze four "narrative" theories of social security: the "chain letter theory", the "lump of labor theory", the "monopoly capitalism theory", and the "Sub-but-Nearly-Optimal policy response to private pensions theory".The political and efficiency explanations are compared with the international and historical facts and used to derive implications for replacing the typical pay-as-you-go system with a forced savings plan. Most of the explanations suggest that forced savings does not increase welfare, and may decrease it.

Social security and democracy

Many political economic theories use and emphasize the process of votingin their explanation of the growth of Social Security, governmentspending, and other public policies. But is there an empirical connectionbetween democracy and Social Security program size or design? Using somenew international data sets to produce both country-panel econometricestimates as well as case studies of South American and southern Europeancountries, we find that Social Security policy varies according toeconomic and demographic factors, but that very different politicalhistories can result in the same Social Security policy. We find littlepartial effect of democracy on the size of Social Security budgets, onhow those budgets are allocated, or how economic and demographic factorsaffect Social Security. If there is any observed difference, democraciesspend a little less of their GDP on Social Security, grow their budgetsa bit more slowly, and cap their payroll tax more often, than doeconomically and demographically similar nondemocracies. Democracies andnondemocracies are equally likely to have benefit formulas inducingretirement and, conditional on GDP per capita, equally likely to induceretirement with a retirement test vs. an earnings test.

What social security: Beveridgean or Bismarckian?

Why are Bismarckian social security systems associated with largerpublic pension expenditures, a smaller fraction of private pension andlower income in-equality than Beveridgean systems? These facts arepuzzling for political economy theories of social security whichpredict that Beveridgean systems, involving intra-generationalredistribution, should enjoy larger support among low-income people andthus be larger. This paper explains these features in a bidimensionalpolitical economy model. In an economy with three income groups,low-income support a large, redistributive system; middle-income favoran earning-related system, while high-income oppose any public system,since they have access to a superior saving technology, a privatesystem. We show that, if income inequality is large, the voting majorityof high-income and low-income supports a (small) Beveridgean system,and a large private pillar arises; the opposite occurs with lowinequality. Additionally, when the capital market provides higherreturns, a Beveridgean system is more likely to emerge.

Is altruism important for understanding the long-run effects of social security?

This paper quantifies the effects of social security on capital accumulation and wealth distribution in a life cycle framework with altruistic individuals. The main findings of this paper are that the current U.S. social security system has a significant impact on capital accumulation and wealth distribution. I find that social security crowds out 8\% of the capital stock of an economy without social security. This effect is driven by the distortions of labor supply due to the taxation of labor income rather than by the intergenerational redistribution of income imposed by the social security system. In contrast to previous analysis of social security, I found that social security does not affect the savings rate of the economy. Another interesting finding is that even though the current U.S. social security system is progressive in its benefits, it may lead to a more disperse distribution of wealth.

Pay-as-you-go social security and the distribution of bequests

This paper studies the impact of an unfunded social security system on the distribution of bequests in a framework where savings are due both by life cycle and by random altruistic motivations. We show that the impact of social security on the distribution of bequests depends crucially on the importance of the bequest motive in explaining savings behavior. If the bequest motive is strong, then an increase in the social security tax raises the bequests left by altruistic parents. On the other hand, when the importance of bequests in motivating savings is sufficiently low, theincrease in the social security tax could result in a reduction of the bequests left by altruistic parents under some conditions on the attitude of individuals toward risk and on the relative returns associated with private saving and social security. Some implications concerning the transitional effects of introducing an unfunded social security scheme are also discussed.

The intra-generational redistributive effects of social security

This paper provides a quantitative evaluation of the intra--cohortredistributive elements of the United States social security system in thecontext of a computable general equilibrium model. I determine how thewell--being of individuals that differ across {\sl gender, race} and {\sl education}is affected by government social security policy. I find that females, whitesand non--college graduates stand less to gain (lose) from reductions(increases) in the size of social security than males, non--whites andcollege graduates, respectively. Differences in mortality risk and laborproductivity translate into differences in the magnitudes of capitalaccumulation and labor supply distortions, that are responsible for theobserved welfare difference between types. Results imply that the currentprogram is lifetime progressive across gender and education, yet lifetimeregressive across race.

Migration across Spanish provinces: Evidence from the social security records (1978-1992)

This paper uses Social Security records to study internal migrationin Spain. This is the first paper that uses this data source, whichhas some advantages with respect to existing data sources: it includesonly job-seeking migrants and it allows to identify temporary migration. Within the framework of an extended gravity model, we estimate a Generalized Negative Binomial regression on gross migration flows between provinces. We quantify the effect of local labor market imbalances on workers' mobility and discuss the equilibrating role of internal migration in Spain. Our main results show that the effect of employment opportunities have changed after 1984; migrants seem to be more responsive to economic conditions but, consistently with previous studies for the Spanish labor market, the migration response to wage differentials is wrongly signed. Our analysis also confirms the larger internal mobility of highly qualified workers.

Social security in theory and practice (I): Facts and political theories

166 countries have some kind of public old age pension. What economic forcescreate and sustain old age Social Security as a public program? We document some of the internationally and historically common features of Social Security programs including explicit and implicit taxes on labor supply, pay-as-you-go features, intergenerational redistribution, benefits which areincreasing functions of lifetime earnings and not means-tested. We partition theories of Social Security into three groups: "political", "efficiency" and "narrative" theories. We explore three political theories in this paper: the majority rational voting model (with its two versions: "the elderly as the leaders of a winning coalition with the poor" and the "once and for all election" model), the "time-intensive model of political competition" and the "taxpayer protection model". Each of the explanations is compared with the international and historical facts. A companion paper explores the "efficiency" and "narrative" theories, and derives implicationsof all the theories for replacing the typical pay-as-you-go system with a forced savings plan.