Disciplining exporting state trading enterprises under economies of scale and oligopoly

The paper develops a two-stage duopoly model to investigatethe effects of eliminating subsidies to state trading enterprises(STEs) as discussed in the WTO Doha Development Agenda negotiationson agriculture. Unlike the STE, the private firm may chooseto integrate vertically in order to avoid transaction costsarising from dealing with downstream operators. The theoreticalmodel shows that eliminating subsidies to the STE may inducea change in market structure and not necessarily lead to increasedcompetition. In fact, if transaction costs are large enoughrelative to fixed costs, then the result may be a monopoly bythe private firm.     

Voluntary Funding for Generic Advertising Using a Provision Point Mechanism: An Experimental Analysis of Option Assurance

The mandatory nature of check-off programs remains a contentious policy issue. A provision point mechanism with a money-back guarantee offers an attractive, alternative voluntary funding approach, yet faces the problem of how to maintain future administrative capacity should contributions fall short of the funding threshold in the present period. To address this concern, a novel two-threshold, provision point mechanism is tested that sets a high threshold to fund marketing and a low threshold, if necessary, to secure administrative capacity for future advertising. Experimental results demonstrate that providing such "option assurance" sustains high overall contributions and, in some settings, can increase producer surplus.     

Economies of scale and market structure in international grain trade

A large body of literature has examined international grain trade in imperfectly competitive models. The article develops a two-stage duopoly model that considers a private trader and a State Trading Enterprise (STE) competing on a foreign market. The key difference between the private trader and the STE is their international organization; while the STE makes use of external agents to export, the private firm may choose to internalize international transactions. The game is solved for different modes of competition and under both assumptions of homogeneous and differentiated products, in order to assess how these assumptions affect the outcome of the game. The results of the game are examined by using numerical examples. The analysis shows that external shocks on export markets may result in a change of market structure and, consequently, of market shares. These effects depend on the initial market structure. Furthermore, the degree of product differentiation and the assumed mode of competition significantly affect the relative values of transaction and fixed costs at which the market structure changes.     

On the market risk of securitized timberlands

Over 10 million acres of timberlands in the United States have been securitized through Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) in recent years. Publicly traded timber REITs have better liquidity and tax efficiency than private ownership, but at the same time, they are exposed to higher market risk as public firms. In this study, copula modeling is employed to assess the joint distribution between daily returns of five timber REITs and a stock market index. Both constant and time-varying symmetrized Joe-Clayton copulas are estimated to evaluate the dependence of timber REITs on the equity market from 1994 to 2010. In most cases, there exist lower tail dependence for market stresses, upper tail dependence for market booms, and tail asymmetry between individual firms and the market. On average, the dependence measure becomes larger after a firm is converted into a REIT. Each firm has smaller volatility of tail dependence after the conversion, except for Plum Creek. These findings reveal that the REIT structure has introduced non-diversifiable market risk into its ownership, and thus the diversification benefit of publicly traded timber REITs in a portfolio may be limited.     

MARKETING COOPERATIVES IN MIXED DUOPOLIES

This paper analyses a market in which agents with different ownership structures compete with each other by simultaneously choosing quantities. In the first part of the paper, the government can choose to support the formation of a marketing cooperative by a group of farmers, or to establish a public marketing firm. The resulting market structures will thus be a duopoly of one marketing cooperative and one private wholesaler, or a mixed duopoly including a public firm. The equilibrium outcomes of the two market arrangements are analysed and the welfare implications compared. It is shown that both consumers' surplus and total welfare are higher in a mixed duopoly with public firm than in a mixed duopoly with cooperative, which is in turn socially superior to a pure private duopoly. In the second part, agents' incentives with regard to choice of ownership structure are discussed and analysed in a two-stage game.     

Fertilizer subsidies and private market participation: the case of Kano State,Nigeria

This article estimates the effect of a fertilizer voucher program on farmer participation in the private fertilizer market in Nigeria. Using a double‐hurdle model (to address corner solution challenges with estimating input demand) and a control function approach (to account for the endogeneity of subsidized fertilizer acquired), the study finds evidence that receiving subsidized fertilizer in Kano, Nigeria increased both the probability and extent of participation in the private fertilizer market. Findings demonstrate that under certain circumstances, e.g., where input dealers’ links to farmer are weak; there could be significant gains from the temporary use of voucher programs to strengthen such links.     

Intermediaries in environmental offset markets: Actions and incentives

Transaction cost theory and application tells us that when buyers and sellers in a market incur transaction costs, intermediaries may become involved. Specifically, intermediaries influence the cause of the transaction costs to buyers and sellers such that transaction costs are reduced. In this paper we assess if and how this occurs for a number of case study government created and private emergent intermediaries in Australian environmental offset markets. We find that the causes of transaction costs to buyers and sellers in offset markets – asset specificity, uncertainty and transaction frequency are influenced downwards by intermediaries. The degree of influence depends on the nature of the good traded in the offset market. We also assessed if the public intermediaries studied were operating in the offset markets to reduce the incidence of probity hazard (poor transactions) from private intermediaries. We found that this was not the case.     

Spatial regulation and international differences in the housebuilding industries

Housebuilding firms vary across the world in size and in the scope of their activities. This variety may seem surprising in an industry with open technologies and ease of entry. While market and technological factors may go some way to explain such differences, much of the causes of variation lie in dissimilarities in regulatory and institutional frameworks. These themes are explored through a comparative analysis of the structure of the residential development industry in Australia, the UK and the USA and in analysis of firm size hierarchies. The firm concentration ratio is much higher in the UK than the other two countries and the reasons may lie in the geography of the country but also in the peculiarities of its planning system.     

A model of entry–exit decisions and capacity choice under demand uncertainty

Many investment decisions of agribusiness firms, such as when to invest in an emerging market or whether to expand the capacity of the firm, involve irreversible investment and uncertainty about demand, cost or competition. This paper uses an option‐value model to examine the factors affecting an agribusiness firm's decision whether and how much to invest in an emerging market under demand uncertainty. Demand uncertainty and irreversibility of investment make investment less desirable than the net present value (NPV) rule indicates. The inactive firm is more reluctant to enter the market when it takes into account demand uncertainty because it preserves the opportunity of making a better investment later. The active firm is more reluctant to abandon the investment because there is an option value of keeping the operation alive. There is a greater distance between the entry and exit thresholds under the option‐value approach than under the NPV rule due to demand uncertainty. The results have implications for agribusiness decision‐making.     

Private land use for public housing projects: The Influence of a Government Announcement on Housing Markets in Hong Kong

Insufficient land supply and housing shortage limit the development in Hong Kong. To tackle such obstacles, the Hong Kong government launched a new housing initiative in June 2018, that is, to reallocate private housing sites for public housing in East Kowloon. Yet, the initiative may give rise to two important questions: (1) how does this initiative affect the housing searching behaviour in the housing market; and (2) in what way should the new public housing be developed, if it is to be compatible with the host neighborhood - by the public sector, or with the participation of the private sector. Little is known about the possible impacts of such an initiative.To fill this research gap, this paper adopts an improved spatial econometric model by incorporating spatial and temporal information to explore the above two questions. Our results indicate that (1) the announcement of the initiative leads to a 5% change in time-on-market for private housing in East Kowloon; (2) people in private property prefer more to live near public housing developed by the private sector. These findings somehow echo the invasion theory of urban change: Neighborhood changes in private housing areas will spill-over to adjacent urban areas.     

Private transaction costs of participation in water quality improvement programs for Australia's Great Barrier Reef: Extent,causes and policy implications

The direct private cost to landholders of participating in programs that result in improved farming activities (IFAs) is generally well understood. However, the private indirect or transaction costs, such as the cost of a landholder's time and the expense to learn about IFAs and apply for assistance to implement these changes on‐farm, are not so well understood. Where these have been studied, they have been shown to be extensive. We assess the extent and causes of private transaction costs incurred by sugarcane growers participating in the Australian Government's Reef Rescue scheme which pays farmers to adopt environmentally beneficial farm management practices. Utilising a mail‐out‐mail‐back survey of 110 growers, we found that the average total transaction cost per farm of participating in the program was AU$8389. The average total transaction costs per farm as a percentage of the average funding provided was 38 per cent. We also assessed which type of improved farming activity (soil, nutrient, pest or water management) generated the greatest transaction costs and how landholder characteristics such as bounded rationality, opportunism and social connection impacted on the extent of transaction costs.     

Structural and productivity change in US agriculture, 1950–1982

This paper tests whether structural change in US agriculture is an important channel to TFP growth and evaluates the relative impact of (i) public research and education policies, (ii) private R&D and market forces, and (iii) government farm programs on structural change. We specify a structural econometric model, fit it to US state aggregate data, 1953–1982, and use the associated reduced‐form model to perform counter‐factual policy simulations. The findings include: structural change is a channel to TFP growth in both crop and livestock subsector, i.e. specialization, size, and part‐time farming do impact TFP, holding other variables constant. Public R&D and education have been at least as important as private R&D and market forces for changing livestock specialization, farm size, and farmers’ off‐farm work participation over the study period, but private R&D and market forces have been relatively more important for crop specialization. Changes in farm commodity programs had little impact on farm structure over these study period. Overall, we conclude that if public R&D and education policies had been unchanged at their 1950 values over 1950–1982, major structural changes in US agriculture would have occurred anyway. The forces of private R&D and market forces were at work, including a decline in the price of machinery services and agricultural chemicals, relative to the farm wage.     

明晰产权 建设矿业市场主体

矿业企业市场主体的产权界定有其特殊性。国有矿业企业的产权界定可通过股份制公司制改革、国有资产的资本化改革、混合所有制经济改革等措施实现;通过推进探采一体,建设完整的市场主体。民营矿业企业也需要界定产权,实现体制转型升级,解决民营矿业企业发展的体制机制障碍,改善政策环境和社会环境,发展混合所有制经济,给民营矿业企业发展提供机遇。对于国有地勘单位要事企分开,明晰产权,使地勘企业成为商业性地勘市场主体;地勘行业事业单位分类改革要做好顶层设计,明确分类改革组建原则和操作方式,建议国家公益性地质工作队伍由中央统一组建,生产经营类地勘单位以省为单元重组。     

Accounting for harvested wood products in a forest offset program: Lessons from California

Carbon offset programs, such as that overseen by the California Air Resources Board (CA ARB), have emerged as a strategy for climate change mitigation. Offset projects sequestering carbon earn credits that can be traded on the Cap-and-Trade market to compensate for carbon emissions. The carbon stock embodied in harvested wood products can make up a substantial portion of the sequestered carbon in forest offset projects. In this paper we investigate the sensitivity of the calculations for the number of credits allocated to a forest offset project in the California system. We also examine how alternative models for the decay of harvested wood products might better reflect the dynamics of both the lifetime and cascade chain progression of the products and how this might change the amount of credits earned. The results suggest improved data collection and refinement in methodology would help to improve accuracy and reduce uncertainty in a large and important carbon stock. We conclude with offering suggestions on how an understanding of the dependence of harvested wood product stocks on life cycle parameters might affect the economics of offset programs and assist targeted mitigation efforts.     

The effectiveness of state preferential property tax programs in conserving forests: Comparisons,measurements, and challenges

Forest property taxes have been identified as one of the major driving forces behind forest loss and parcelization. Among various policy alternatives for reducing the burden of forest property taxes on landowners, preferential property tax programs have been widely used across states. Existing research has mostly focused on individual property tax programs, particularly those based on current use valuation, while little has been done to document, analyze and compare programs across states. By examining survey data from state preferential property tax program administrators across the United States, this paper describes the commonalities and differences among states regarding their preferential property tax programs, provides a preliminary understanding of the relationship between state preferential property tax policy and trends in private forest conditions, and identifies issues related to the effectiveness of state preferential property tax programs and private forest land management and conservation. Our analysis revealed three fundamental disconnects: (1) Program attributes that were previously considered to be important for preferential property tax programs to be effective in retaining forest land and fostering management did not consistently correlate with program effectiveness as viewed by the administrators of these programs; (2) These program attributes did not consistently correlate with actual program effectiveness as measured at the state level by forest trend indicators used in this study (i.e., change in private forest land cover, change in average size of private forest holdings, extent to which private forest land is being actively managed); and (3) The self-assessed program effectiveness did not consistently correlate with actual program effectiveness, either. The various ways in which the effectiveness of preferential property tax programs is defined and measured contribute to explaining these disconnects. It is particularly important for researchers and policy makers to be explicit about how they define and measure effectiveness and the scale on which they conduct their analysis before assessing and comparing programs or suggesting improvement strategies.     

ETHICS AND EXTERNALITIES: AGRICULTURAL STEWARDSHIP AND OTHER BEHAVIOUR: PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

Neo classical micro-economic theory of the firm and household rests on the foundations of profit maximising and utility maximising behaviour respectively. This paper explores the issue of whether market efficiency can be improved when economic agents' behaviour is motivated by ethical objectives such as fairness and altruism. In particular the paper examines agricultural stewardship as an ethically motivated form of behaviour, which is profit sacrificing, but which improves economic efficiency by reducing environmental externalities. The paper also reiterates the limitations of Pareto optimality as a criterion of economic welfare because its rejection of interpersonal welfare comparisons rules out ethical considerations of income and wealth distribution.     

The Consequences of Cobenefits for the Efficient Design of Carbon Sequestration Programs

In this paper, we study the social efficiency of private carbon markets that include trading in agricultural soil carbon sequestration when there are significant cobenefits (positive environmental externalities) associated with the practices that sequester carbon. Likewise, we investigate the efficiency of government run conservation programs that are designed to promote a broad array of environmental attributes (both carbon sequestration and its cobenefits) for the supply of carbon. Finally, policy design and efficiency issues associated with the potential interplay between a private carbon market and a government conservation program are studied. Empirical analyses for an area that represents a significant potential source of carbon sequestration and its associated cobenefits illustrate the magnitude and complexity of these issues in real world policy design.     

The promise (and pitfalls) of ICT for agriculture initiatives

The widespread growth of information and telecommunication technologies (ICTs) in rural areas of developing countries offers new opportunities to provide more timely and low‐cost information services to farmers, as well as assist in coordinating agricultural agents. Over the past decade, the number of public and private sector initiatives in this space has increased substantially, with over 140 deployments worldwide in 2015. While there is substantial potential for such services to address farmers’ and traders’ information and credit market constraints, economic research suggests that the impacts of such services on agricultural adoption, behavior and welfare is mixed. While this can, in part, be explained by the degree of the information asymmetry and the presence of other market failures in different contexts, research from other disciplines provides additional insights into these findings. In particular, work in the domain of human–computer interaction (HCI) focuses heavily on users’ interaction and experience with a given technology, thus explaining why users may not fully engage with ICT‐based agricultural interfaces. Furthermore, sociological and anthropological approaches study the provision of information and trust and how these may be altered by ICT platforms. Drawing upon these disciplines, we suggest that future ICT for agriculture initiatives should first seek to better understand the information and complementary market failures in a given context, in order to better understand whether information is a binding constraint. Second, even if information is missing, the information services provided should be of high quality and from a trusted source, which can be a challenge with some ICT platforms. Finally, such services should be delivered via platforms that build upon local ICT access and usage, paying particular attention to the gender digital divide.     

Firm-level Intermediate Demand for Pacific Whiting Products: A Multi-attribute, Multi-sector Analysis

Variation in seafood prices resulting from differences in product characteristics are often obscured by highly aggregated data or data representing only upstream sectors. This can lead to myopic commodity-based analysis that fails to identify how changes in public and private fisheries management may impact product characteristics, market development, and long-run social benefits. Given these problems, alternative methods are needed to complement traditional demand, supply and cost-benefit analysis. Mail and personal surveys of seafood wholesalers were conducted to determine preferences for Pacific whiting products. The relative importance of fillet and headed and gutted product characteristics are determined using conjoint analyses and factorial-based market experiments. Estimation of relative profitability, probability of purchase and short-run "conditional" demand models reveal the importance of wholesaler characteristics, physical product characteristics and contractural arrangements. Marketing margins and demands for improved products are also estimated. Implications for private and public resource management are discussed.