In our report, our overall goal is to understand how soybean trade policy changes and changes in soybean trade flows that China has experienced between 1997 and 2003 have affected China's producers, consumers and users of soybeans. To do so, we will:

1. briefly analyze the nature of China's soybean markets; and understand the nature of the links between soybean trade, domestic market development, price, production, and consumption;

2. analyze the responses of households that are affected by soybean trade-related changes;

3. predict the magnitude and direction of responses to trade liberlalization-induced price shifts and suggest if policies are needed to offset adverse effects

In order to meet these objectives, we will describe in great detail using a number of data sets: the nature of soybean markets in China; the linkages between soybean producers, consumers and poverty; use our CAPSIM model to understand the impacts of trade changes on soybean producers, livestock producers and consumers; and finally discuss policy options.

This paper investigates whether there is a non-linear relationship between income and the private transfers received by households in developing countries. If private transfers are unresponsive to household income, expansion of public social security and other transfer programs is unlikely to crowd out private transfers, contrary to concerns first raised by Barro and Becker. There is little existing evidence for crowding out effects in the literature, but this may be because they have been obscured by methods that ignore non-linearities. If donors switch from altruistic motivations to exchange motivations as recipient income increases, a sharp non-linear relationship between private transfers and income may result. In fact, threshold regression techniques find such non-linearity in the Philippines and after accounting for these there is evidence of serious crowding out, with 30 to 80 percent of private transfers potentially displaced for low-income households [Cox, D., Hansen, B., and Jimenez, E., 2004, How responsive are private transfers to income? Evidence from a laissez-faire economy, Journal of Public Economics.]. To see if these non-linear effects occur more widely, semiparametric and threshold regression methods are used to model private transfers in four developing countriesChina, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Vietnam. The results of our paper suggest that non-linear crowding-out effects are not important features of transfer behaviour in these countries. The transfer derivatives under a variety of assumptions only range between 0 and -0.08. If our results are valid, expansions of public social security to cover the poorest households need not be stymied by offsetting private responses.