ملخص
An Economic Study for the Olive Oil Production, Marketing and the Impact of the Price Policy on Olive Oil Production in the Great Jamahiriya Abdul-Hakim Ahmed Eljadi* Khaled Ramadan Elbeydi* Abstract Olive trees has traditionally been a major crop in the Libyan culture, an average annual production in the period 1970-2006 was 151.5 thousands tones, which represents almost 8.5% of the total agricultural production. Olive oil is relatively expensive oil compared to other kinds of oil since it needs a special production treatment, olive crop is a long process (olives are produced only after the maturity of the tree, which means after five years). Prices paid to producers are quite unstable, mainly due to the change in the quantities produced from one year to another and to the level of stocks. However, it is difficult to assess the price formation mechanism. This study examines the characteristics of the olive oil market for the period 1970-2006. The main objective of the study is to investigate the impact of the price policy on the olive oil production. The study depends on using descriptive and statistical analysis and using econometric estimation, also the concept of dummy variable was added to capture the effect of olive oil price policy. The dummy variable takes the value of 0 in years before 1997 and a value of 1 after the price policy was applied. The results indicate that the short run elasticity is significantly less than unity (0.40), indicating that olive oil supply is inelastic with respect to the olive oil price in Libya, implying that Libyan olive farmers are relatively unresponsive to price changes. Specifically, a 10 percent increase in the price of olive oil will lead to an increase in olive oil output of 4.0 percent in the short-run. The coefficient of the dummy variable is * Plant Protection Dept., Faculty of Science, Omar El-Mukhtar University. درا ف اقت اد ف تا تيو ا ال تون أثر الييا ف اليعر ف علر إ تا ال تون 103 الدختار للعلوم العدد الثامن عشر 2008 م negative and insignificant at 5 percent level. This finding indicates that farmers don't response to the oil olive price policy in Libya. Additionally, the CUSUM test is consistently in the center of their 5% bounds. Finally, the study recommends the following 1- Reinvestigate the price policy mechanism. 2- Adopt extension and marketing programs to provide farmers with an advanced technology. 3- Subsidies the olive oil refinery company.