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on Agricultural Economics |
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Issue of 2006‒12‒09
ten papers chosen by |
| By: | Rousu, Matthew; Huffman, Wallace; Shogren, Jason F.; Tegene, Abebayehu |
| Abstract: | Food products containing genetically modified (GM) ingredients have entered the market over the past decade. The biotech industry and environmental groups have disseminating conflicting private information about GM foods. This paper develops a unique methodology for valuing independent third-party information in such a setting and applies this method to consumers’ willingness to pay for food products that might be GM. Data are collected from real consumers in an auction market setting with randomized information and labeling treatments. The average value of third-party information per lab participant is small, but the public good value across U.S. consumers is shown to be quite large. |
| JEL: | C9 D1 D8 |
| Date: | 2006–11–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:12702&r=agr |
| By: | Bohlin, Jan (Department of Economic History, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University) |
| Abstract: | After 1870 Swedish agriculture was transformed in the direction of more animal husbandry. Small farmers in particular specialized in animal produce. Yet, agricultural protectionism primarily served the interest of large landowners specializing in bread-grain production. The paper explores the impact of agrarian tariffs on the factor rewards of landowners, capitalists and workers. Landowners predictably benefited from agrarian tariffs, the more so if they specialized in bread-grain, as did rural workers. With an integrated ruralurban labour market real incomes of urban workers would have come under pressure if agrarian tariffs had been dismantled while capitalists would have been little affected. <p> |
| Keywords: | Economic History; Protectionism; Trade Policy; Income Distribution; Computable General Equilibrium Model |
| JEL: | C68 D33 F13 N23 N33 N43 |
| Date: | 2006–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunhis:0006&r=agr |
| By: | Ludena, Carlos; Hertel, Thomas; Preckel, Paul; Foster, Kenneth; Nin Pratt, Alejandro |
| Abstract: | There is considerable interest in projections of future productivity growth in agriculture. Whether one is interested in the outlook for global commodity markets, future patterns of international trade, or the interactions between land use, deforestation and ecological diversity, the rate of productivity growth in agriculture is an essential input. Yet solid projections for this variable have proven elusive - particularly on a global basis. This is due, in no small part, to the difficulty in measuring historical productivity growth. The purpose of this paper is to report the latest time series evidence on total factor productivity growth for crops, ruminants and non-ruminant livestock, on a global basis. We then follow with tests for convergence amongst regions, providing forecasts for farm productivity growth to the year 2040. The results suggest that most regions in the sample are likely to experience larger productivity gains in livestock than in crops. Within livestock, the non-ruminant sector is expected to continue to be more dynamic than the ruminant sector. Given the rapid rates of productivity growth observed recently, non-ruminant and crop productivity in developing countries may be converging to the productivity levels of developed countries. For ruminants, the results show that productivity levels may be diverging between developed and developing countries. |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gta:workpp:2220&r=agr |
| By: | Hertel, Thomas; Lee, Huey-Lin; Rose, Steven; Sohngen, Brent |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a CGE model with unique regional land types and detailed non-CO2 GHG emissions which it uses to analyze the potential for reductions in land-based greenhouse gas emissions as well as forest sequestration. In our global, general equilibrium analysis of carbon taxation, we find that forest carbon sequestration is the dominant means for global GHG emissions reduction in the land using sectors. However, when compared to the rest of the world, emissions abatement in the US comes disproportionately from agriculture, and, within agriculture, disproportionately from reductions in fertilizer-related emissions (primarily in maize production). In the world as a whole, agriculture-related mitigation comes predominantly in reduced methane emissions from ruminant livestock, which is followed in relative importance by reductions in methane emissions from paddy rice. We also find significant linkages between emissions in one region and mitigation in another (i.e. leakage). For example, in the US agriculture, abatement potential is cut in half when we move from a national tax to a global carbon tax. This is a consequence of the strong export orientation of US agriculture, which responds to reduced production in the rest of the world by increasing its own production and hence emissions. |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gta:workpp:2230&r=agr |
| By: | F. Arfini; M. Donati; D. Menozzi |
| Abstract: | The Tobacco CMO (Common Market Organization) is involved in a intense debate between the European tobacco industry and those who are against to a crop whose transformed product is dangerous to the health. European institutions have shown a strong interest in this complex issue introducing two Reforms (1992 and 1998) and one revision in 2004. This paper aims to analyse and investigate the socio-economic impact of the tobacco CMO Reform of 2004 in Italy, across the scenarios proposed by the EC Commission (2004), both on the tobacco production and processing sector. The considered socio-economic indicators are harvested surfaces, farm income and overall employment, while the sample of farms used in this research belong to the FADN–Italy sample. |
| Keywords: | Tobacco CMO, CAP reform, decoupling, Positive Mathematical Programming |
| JEL: | Q11 Q12 Q18 J21 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:par:dipeco:2005-ea01&r=agr |
| By: | Bohlin, Jan (Department of Economic History, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University); Larsson, Svante (Department of Economic History, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University) |
| Abstract: | Trends in wage-rental ratios have figured prominently in the recent literature on factor price convergence and globalisation in the late nineteenth century. In that literature Sweden has been described as a free trade country whose wage-rental ratio exhibited a distinguished upward trend before World War I. This article presents a new series of land prices which indicates an increase in land rentals and an evolution of the wage-rental ratio more in line with other European protectionist countries. We explore the determinants of the Swedish wage-rental ratio and assess the relative importance of protectionism and the change in the product mix from arable to animal products in Swedish agriculture. <p> |
| Keywords: | Economic History; Land prices; wages; wage-rental ratio; protectionism; Sweden |
| JEL: | F20 N13 N53 O47 |
| Date: | 2006–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunhis:0007&r=agr |
| By: | Randall Akee (IZA Bonn and Harvard University) |
| Abstract: | The Coase theorem emphasizes the role transactions costs play in efficient market outcomes. We document inefficient outcomes, in the presence of a transactions cost, in southern California land markets and the corresponding transition to efficient outcomes after the transactions cost is eliminated. In the late 1800s, Palm Springs, CA was evenly divided, in a checkerboard fashion, and property rights assigned in alternating blocks to the Agua Caliente tribe and a non-Indian landowner by the US Federal government. Sales and leasing restrictions on the Agua Caliente land created a large transactions cost to development on those lands; consequently, we observe very little housing investment. Non-Indian lands provide a benchmark for efficient outcomes for the Agua Caliente lands. Once the transactions cost for Agua Caliente lands was removed, there is a convergence between American Indian-owned and non Indian-owned lands in both the number of homes constructed and the value of those homes. |
| Keywords: | land markets, coase theorem, economic development |
| JEL: | R14 O12 |
| Date: | 2006–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2438&r=agr |
| By: | Oeindrila Dube (Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Uinversity); Juan F. Vargas (Department of Economics, Royal Holloway, University of London and IQSS, Harvard University.) |
| Abstract: | Between 1998 and 2003 production increases in Brazil and Vietnam drove down the price of coffee by 73 percent in global markets, triggering the "international coffee crisis". We examine the effect of this exogenous price fall on Colombia's civil war, exploring whether politically-motivated violencee presented different dynamics in the coffee-growing regions relative to the non-coffee regions, during the pre-crisis and crisis periods. Using a difference-in-difference framework, we find causal evidnece that the steep decline in coffee prices substantially increased both the incidence and intensity of Colombia's civil war. We also propose a simple model linking the price shock to violence and empirically examine the relative importance of three potential mechanisms. While crop substitution from coffee to coca explains very little of the variation, a disproportionate increase in poverty in coffee areas is associated with greater violence, as is a lower index of institutional development. |
| Keywords: | Colombia, Civil War, Coffee Crisis, Difference-in-Differences |
| JEL: | D74 Q1 |
| Date: | 2006–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hol:holodi:0605&r=agr |
| By: | A. Ninni; M. Raimondi; M. Zuppiroli |
| Abstract: | The role of quality is often stressed in explaining the Italian success in the international markets for consumption goods. Here the proxy for a quality led domain is a strong price rigidity of the demand in rich consuming countries for some food imports coming from Italy. Our analysis does not support this idea, as the usual price competition seems to be quite common also in very detailed food markets. It suggests that the quality image of Italian goods offers protection for some traditional products, but that this protection is not strong enough to counteract price competition. Then, the supposed incidence of the qualitatively superior Italian products on the total of the Italian products is probably overestimated. |
| Keywords: | Quality, Italian trade, food |
| JEL: | F14 L15 L66 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:par:dipeco:2006-ep10&r=agr |
| By: | Salifou B. Diarra; Niama Nango Dembélé (Department of Agricultural Economics, Michigan State University) |
| Keywords: | food security, food policy, Mali |
| JEL: | Q18 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:msu:icpwrk:ml-promisam-tn-per&r=agr |