Economic reform and aggregate cropping patterns for Egypt

Beginning in the early 1980s, the government of Egypt embarked on an aggressive initiative to progressively change its centrally planned economy to a system more dependent on domestic and international markets. The agriculture and food sectors have taken the lead in the economic reforms. This paper investigates changes in Egyptian cropping patterns as an indicator of the 'success' of the transition toward a more market-oriented economy. First, trends in cultivated area and gross margins during the economic reforms are described. Responses of cropping patterns to changes in gross margins are then evaluated. A random effect distributed lag model with pooled cross-sectional time-series methods is used to examine the relationship for individual crops. Canonical correlation analysis provides a more general assessment of responsiveness of the overall cropping pattern