This paper examines the fertilizer subsidy program in Nepal from two different angles, both important for policy makers in the country. First, it analyzes who is benefiting from the program, and second, it examines how farmers rank the importance of public spending on fertilizer subsidies compared with other potential public investments. Whereas the former question is important for judging whether the program is meeting its objectives, the latter is essential to understanding the scope for reform, in particular the extent to which we could expect citizens to resist reforms to the subsidy program. We draw on these analyses as well as on examples from other countries to make policy recommendations to improve program implementation.

This book takes forward our understanding of agricultural input subsidies in low income countries.

An overarching goal of the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) has been to influence policy outcomes in ways that lead to agricultural transformation and economic inclusion. The technical quality of this research is well recognized (CAS Secretariat 2020). Yet, high-quality, rigorous research is not sufficient to achieve policy influence in any domain. Other factors may shape policy uptake — for instance, elections may alter policy priorities, ideological biases may hinder the acceptance of research findings, and vested interest groups may lobby against data-driven or evidence-informed recommendations. A political economy perspective allows for a more holistic and realistic understanding of how policies are determined by governments and which pathways are more viable for achieving development outcomes through policy change.

This book publishes consolidated information on the soils of Nepal from all possible sources. The Survey Department, Government of Nepal, conducted two national scale soil survey projects to classify soils of Nepal (Land Resource Mapping Project ended in 1985, and National Land Use Planning Project ended in 2021). Both projects adopted the United States Department of Agriculture system of soil classification. Besides, National Soil Science Research Center (previously known as Soil Science Division) of Nepal Agricultural Research Council and Soil Management Directorate, Department of Agriculture, also worked on soils of Nepal. To date, the information on the soils of Nepal is not published in well-documented form but has been reported widely as gray literature (project report or government report) or peer-review articles. 'The Soils of Nepal’ is a part of ‘World Soils Book Series’ which constitutes twelve chapters—covering broad aspects such as soil research history, climate, geology, soil classification and mapping, and soil fertility. Furthermore, information about soil properties and relation between soil constituents of the dominant soil types of Nepal and their scope of use in the context of land use are described. This book also tries to simplify the intricate relationship among soil, culture, and people. Each chapter contains a comprehensive, richly illustrated, and up-to-date overview of the soils of Nepal. We believe it fulfils a quest for a global audience including students, educators, extension workers, and soil scientists, who are interested to know the young soils of Nepal.

This paper addresses the problems of defining and measuring government subsidies, examines why and how government subsidies are used as a fiscal policy tool, assesses their economic effects, appraises international empirical evidence on government subsidies, and offers options for their reform. Recent international trends in government subsidy expenditure are analyzed for the 16-year period from 1975 to 1990, using general government subsidy data for 60 countries from the System of National Accounts (SNA) and central government expenditure on subsidies and other current transfers for 68 countries from Government Finance Statistics (GFS). The paper reviews major policy options for subsidy reform, focusing on ways to improve the cost-effectiveness of subsidy programs.

Policy making in food security is at a crossroads in India, particularly for the rice crop. Whereas India has emerged has a leading rice exporter over the last two years, the government has also introduced a large food subsidy program called the National Food Security Act. The program requires that 33.6 million metric tons of rice per year be distributed to the marginalized rural and urban populations of the country. In this study, we analyze the long-term impact of India’s Food Security Act on its domestic rice market and the international market for rice. We specify and apply a structural demand-and-supply model to India’s rice market and link it with the world rice market, as part of a broad partial equilibrium modeling system of international agriculture commodity markets. We specifically focus on three different scenarios—subsidy as a price effect, subsidy as an inelastic income effect, and subsidy as an elastic income effect—under the broader framework of the National Food Security Act. We find that at the end of the projection period (the 2024/2025 crop year), as a result of the rice subsidy program, the consumption of rice increases significantly by 6,831 thousand metric ton (MT) in the case of the price effect while the inelastic income effect has little on production, consumption which increase by 265 thousand MT and 269 thousand MT, respectively and no impact on rice export of India.

This book sheds light on the causes and effects of food price policy during the development process by examining it in a variety of settings—in Asian countries that range from large to small, and include food importers and exporters, protectionists and free marketers, capitalists and socialists.

This book argues that mainstream economics cannot explain the underdevelopment and poverty of Nepal, neither can it be explained in terms of economics alone nor capital inadequacy even, as is conventionally believed. The author asserts that Nepal's underdevelopment needs to be located in the nature of the state which has been shaped by the collusion of interest among politicians and the resulting bureaucracy, triggering the growth of crony capitalism. The book presents a critical and radical analysis of factors that have kept Nepal in a state of underdevelopment and poverty, with huge section of the society in underprivileged and deprived socio-economic conditions, despite six decades of planning, seven decades of dependence on foreign aid, and numerous political regime changes, from the Rana regime for over a century from 1846-1950 through to the republic regime from 2007 onwards. To support this argument, the book delves into an exploration of growth performance in Nepal, government attempts at poverty alleviation, foreign aid and its effects in the economy and the nature of the state, with a focus on Maoists' 10-year rebellion. Each chapter presents the existing picture and examines the possible reasons for the failure in achieving the desired results. A comparative analysis of Nepal's position with respect to South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries is also presented in a number of chapters. The audience for the book will be students, academics and researchers, and within Nepal itself, intellectuals, politicians, and officials of the National Planning Commission, the central bank and other banks and financial institutions.