Monetary Impacts and Overshooting of Agricultural Prices in an Open Economy

This article's focus is on the time adjustment paths of the exchange rate and prices in response to unanticipated monetary shocks. First, we expand the theoretical specification of the overshooting hypothesis by generalizing Dornbusch's model to include a third sector (i.e., agricultural prices). Second, we employ Johansen's cointegration test along with a vector error correction model to investigate whether agricultural prices overshoot in an open economy. The empirical results indicate that agricultural prices adjust faster than industrial prices to innovations in the money supply, affecting relative prices in the short run, but strict long-run money neutrality does not hold.     

A Model of Spatial Arbitrage with Transport Capacity Constraints and Endogenous Transport Prices

This article solves a high-frequency model of price arbitrage incorporating storage and trade when the amount of trade is limited by transport capacity constraints. In equilibrium there is considerable variation in transport prices because transport prices rise when the demand to ship goods exceeds the capacity limit. This variation is necessary to attract shipping capacity into the industry. In turn, prices in different locations differ by a time varying amount. Thus while the law of one price holds, it holds because of endogenous variation in transport prices.     

Farmland Prices in the Presence of Transaction Costs: A Cautionary Note

Explicit consideration of transaction costs is highly relevant for modeling farmland price behavior in a realistic manner. Unfortunately, there are numerous theoretical and empirical difficulties associated with doing so. From a research standpoint, such difficulties greatly increase the likelihood of mistakes in the theoretical derivations and/or in the design and application of empirical methods, thereby undermining the validity of the ensuing findings. This article highlights these issues by discussing the theoretical and empirical pitfalls of two seminal recent articles analyzing farmland prices in the presence of transaction costs.     

市场化改革前后中国粮食生产 和价格波动比较研究

该文通过比较市场化改革前后中国粮食生产和价格波动的差异后发现,改革后粮食生产的稳定性得到提高,但粮食价格波动更加剧烈,产量对价格变化的反应和价格对产量变化的反应都更加敏感。原因在于:市场化改革后,市场在资源配置中的基础作用日益得到加强,粮食流通对其生产的促进作用日益明显,但价格因素在市场中被放大了。所以,应进一步深化粮食购销市场化改革,建立以期货市场为先导的粮食市场体系和现期货市场相结合的宏观调控机制。     

Market Incentives for Safe Foods: An Examination of Shareholder Losses from Meat and Poultry Recalls

Meat and poultry recalls, while voluntary, are carried out under governmental oversight. If firms have financial incentives to avoid being implicated in a recall situation, governmental involvement in recalls may cause firms to internalize social costs when making investment decisions concerning food safety controls. To examine these incentives, we analyze federally supervised meat and poultry recalls from 1982 to 1998 within an event study. Results show significant shareholder losses when publicly traded food companies are implicated in a recall involving serious food safety hazards. We find no evidence that the stock market reacts negatively when recalls involve less severe hazards.     

粮食价格波动对农民增收的影响探析——以河南省为例

粮食价格对农民收入至关重要,是农民维持基本生活的重要保证。文章在分析我国粮食价格波动的历史轨迹的基础上,阐述了农民收入的构成,并对粮食价格波动对农民增收造成的影响进行研究。结果表明:粮食价格波动会影响农民收入水平,进而影响农民的农业生产积极性;粮食价格下降,会促进非农就业的工资收入,进而提升农民收入水平,粮食价格波动对相关工业品价格上涨的影响较小。并从加强政府引导、加快农业产业化进程、建立健全粮食价格稳定长效机制、加强粮食流通体系建设等方面提出稳定粮食价格的关键策略,以期为我国粮食安全及农民增收提供一定的理论参考。     

信息质量、交易成本与农户的销售价格——基于海南、云南466个橡胶种植户的调研数据

利用466个农户的调查数据,以农户行为理论为支撑,研究信息质量、交易成本、农户特征对农户所获得销售价格的影响。研究结果表明:信息质量、生产专业化程度的提高以及高水平的橡胶收入有助于农户获得更高的价格;议价能力、组织化程度与销售价格呈现负相关,销售产品形式、交易对象的选择会在一定程度上影响销售价格;交易环境的熟识度、交易距离的远近以及农户受教育程度对农户所能获得价格的高低没有显著的影响。因此,提出加强天然橡胶市场建设和产业信息技术服务、鼓励农户专业化经营等建议。     

Effects of Label Information on Consumer Willingness-to-Pay for Food Attributes

Choice experiments (CEs) are often used to elicit consumer willingness-to-pay (WTP) for food attributes. A concern about these approaches is that food attributes provided to respondents are assumed independent of attributes not provided. We use surveys containing a series of CEs to investigate effects of adding beef steak attributes. WTP for important attributes in the CEs decrease when the number of attributes increases from three to four, while WTP increases when the number of attributes increases from four to five. Changes in WTP for attributes depend on their relationships with newly added attributes and the number of attributes presented.     

Recovering the Shadow Value of Nutrients

This article investigates the shadow values of twenty-eight different nutrients. It links the unit price of foods to the shadow values of nutrients by building on a utility theoretic model first proposed by Gorman. Maximum entropy principles are then used to reason consistently about the values of the parameters of interest. The resulting estimates are discussed and analyzed.     

皖江城市带主要城市商务成本比较分析

商务成本既是皖江城市带成功承接长三角产业转移,进行产业合理布局的重要依据,也是衡量和对外宣传皖江城市带投资环境的一个关键指标。在文献回顾和专家访谈的基础上,构建皖江城市带主要城市商务成本评价指标体系,基于数据分析,结果显示马鞍山、铜陵、合肥三市商务成本综合得分位列前三;合肥、芜湖、马鞍山三市的要素成本、营业成本相对较高;巢湖、池州、滁州三市制度成本得分较高;而巢湖、六安和安庆其他成本则较高;表明皖江城市带主要城市商务成本整体结构仍需优化。     

Land suitability,water balance and agricultural technology as a Geographic-Technological Index to support regional planning and economic studies

Land suitability, water balance and agricultural technological inputs are important characteristics of the soil as a natural resource and can play a significant role in the agricultural production and productivity. Based on these characteristics, a Geographic and Technological Index, the GeoTec Index, is proposed in order to help detecting regional agricultural income inequalities and also to be used as a geographic variable in economic studies. The GeoTec Index is built as a weighted average of three sub indices, namely, Land Suitability, Hydrological and Technological Indices. The Land Suitability Index is based on the agricultural suitability or the aptitude of a given land to support a defined agricultural use. The Hydrological Index (HyI) is based on a water balance which determines the potential and actual amounts of evapotranspiration and water surplus, or excess of precipitation over evapotranspiration, and corresponds to a number that represents either the annual soil water excesses or deficits. And the Technological Index is the sum of several sub indices, based on technological inputs used in the agriculture, such as soil conservation practices, farmer’s technical assistance, use of soil fertilizers and correctives, presence of electric power, use of pest and disease control and use of irrigation. The Geographic and Technological Index (GeoTec) is a combination of the Land Suitability, Hydrological and Technological Indices and it is calculated with data from Minas Gerais State, Brazil, for the period of 1990–2001. The criterion for the regional subdivision of Minas Gerais State was the one proposed by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), which divides the state into 66 micro regions. The highest values of GeoTec Index are obtained at micro regions of the most developed part of the state, whereas the lowest values of the GeoTec Index are found in micro regions located in the poorest part of Minas Gerais State. There was a strong and positive relationship between the GeoTec Index and the productivity of grains and, at the same time, there is a strong negative relationship between the GeoTec Index and the percentage of poor people in Minas Gerais State micro regions. The GeoTec Index can be a powerful instrument for detecting regional inequalities and to implement public policies as an attempt to decrease the agricultural income disparities among regions.     

Calculating environmental cost indicators of apple farm practices indicates large differences between growers

This study evaluates the environmental impact of current apple cultivation practices in Flanders, Belgium. It evaluates integrated production, the most common practice, and it compares this production method with conventional and organic production. The assessment was based on Farm Accountancy Data Network data from 2010 to 2012 for 64 farms in the region and a life cycle approach was used. The findings showed no significant improvement in environmental impacts for integrated farms compared to conventional farms and, even more, the former showed significantly higher average impacts per hectare for the categories ‘acidification’, and ‘non-renewable energy use’ in comparison with the latter. The organic production group showed higher average impacts per kilogram due to lower yields. Secondly, impacts related to the categories ‘acidification’, ‘eutrophication’ and ‘global warming potential’ were monetized based on the shadow price method in order to obtain external costs. Results show that external costs increase the production costs for integrated farming at least with 5%, both when these costs are expressed per kilogram and per hectare. However, the findings show a large variability in impacts and costs per farm. Farm-specific practices have therefore an important influence on the total environmental cost rather than production group-specific practices.