Optimal Generic Advertising Decisions in Supply-managed Industries: Clarification and Some Further Results

Supply control enhances the incentive to promote through its ancillary trade policies that protect the domestic industry from foreign competition. Incentives are intensified when supply control is coupled with a price discrimination scheme that renders the supply of the agricultural product to the higher-priced (premium) market perfectly elastic. In this case, aper-unit levy imposed on the premium market to finance the advertising is shifted entirely to consumers, which means that the producer cost of advertising the premium product is nil. This in essence is the situation for fluid milk in Canada, Taiwan and California, which explains in part why fluid milk dominates the generic advertising scene in these regions. This article investigates these and related issues in some detail, using an earlier analysis by Goddard and McCutcheon as the point of departure. La gestion de l'offre amplifie les incitations à produire par le biais de ses politiques corrollaires de commerce extérieur qui mettent le secteur intérieur à I'abri de la concurrence étrangère. Les incitations sont defait intensifiées lorsque le contrôle de I'offre est coupléà un systéme de discrimination des prix qui rend I'offre d'unproduit agricole donné sur le marché les plus lucratifs parfaitement élastique. Dans ce cos, le droit unitaire imposé au marché le plus rentable pourfinancer la publicité est refilé entiérement aux consommateurs, de sorte que le coût à la production de la promotion duproduit vedette est nul. C'est essentiellement la situation qui prévaut pour le lait de consommation au Canada, à Taïwan et en Californie, ce qui en partie explique la prédominance de ce produit dans la publicité générique dans ces régions. Nous examinons ces questions plus ou moins en détail utilisant comme point de départ une analyse antérieure faite par Goddard et McCutcheon.     

Payment Limitations and Acreage Decisions under Risk Aversion: A Simulation Approach

Payment limits have played an important role in U.S. farm policy deliberations for the last thirty years. Current limits are largely nonbinding. Proposals to strengthen and enforce limits are currently in discussion. We evaluate the likely effects of such proposals on acreage for corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice in several important producing states. Our results generally indicate that payment limits are unlikely to significantly affect acreage in most cases; exceptions occur for cotton and rice, where the probability that limits would be binding is much greater and thus more likely to affect production.     

Optimal conservation policy under imperfect intergenerational altruism

In this paper we study the optimal conversion policy set by a society composed of a sequence of non-overlapping imperfectly altruistic generations. We show that society can be equivalently viewed as a sequence of hyperbolic discounting agents. Under uncertainty about future pay-offs we determine, as solution to an intergenerational non-cooperative dynamic game, the optimal timing of irreversible conversion. We show that under both naive and sophisticated beliefs about future time-inconsistency, the option value attached to the conversion decision is eroded and earlier conversion occurs. This determines a drastic bias toward the current generation gratification, which affects the intergenerational allocation of benefits and costs from deforestation.     

Labour on the Family Farm: a Theory under Uncertainty

This paper develops a theory of the family farm in conditions of uncertainty where attention is focussed on the labour-input decisions. Specifically, the farm family is faced with two labour decisions, namely with respect to hired labour and to family labour. The framework for analysis is expected utility maximisation. The analysis has implications for agricultural policy since policy pronouncements of economists are typically based on models which assume perfect certainty. These pronouncements do not survive the incorporation of uncertainty.     

Prevention versus Treatment under Precautionary Regulation: A Case Study of Groundwater Contamination under Uncertainty

Policy discussions on agricultural pollution problems characterize prevention as more cost effective and precautionary than ex post treatment. We derive conditions under which treatment alone is more cost effective in situations involving multiple sources of emissions, multiple sites affected, and a commonly used precautionary approach to uncertainty. We also show that a greater degree of precaution can result in less reliance on prevention. An empirical case study indicates that treatment alone is the most cost-effective means of dealing with nitrate in most Maryland community water system wells. The use of leaching prevention measures is restricted to the most intensive poultry producing areas. The incremental cost of precaution is substantial.     

Regulatory Actions under Adjustment Costs and the Resolution of Scientific Uncertainty

Food system regulators often decide whether to ban existing practices or approve new technologies without conclusive scientific evidence on possible damage and knowing that resolution is likely in the future. In a model with three decision points and stochastic resolution of uncertainty, we study interactions between expected losses due to regulation and information availability when a regulator is deciding on an early reversible ban and on a later reversible ban. Adjustment costs create inertia concerning intermediate signals such that earlier decisions are not overturned, and also a bias against imposing an early ban. The prospect of more later-stage information can increase or decrease the incentive to ban early, but research decreases the incentive to ban early.     

竹材的价格—成本加成率研究

价格—成本加成率是常用的企业或产业业绩衡量指标之一 ,它在某种程度上表现了企业或产业的市场竞争力。作者根据江西省林产品成本调查历史数据 ,对竹材生产的价格—成本加成率进行了实证研究。发现 ,竹材的价格—成本加成率有相当高的水平 ,农村劳动力价格以及经济增长状况对竹材的价格—成本加成水平及变动有着重要的影响。     

Technology Adoption under Production Uncertainty: Theory and Application to Irrigation Technology

We propose a theoretical framework to analyze the conditions under which a farmer facing production uncertainty (due to a possible water shortage) and incomplete information will adopt a more efficient irrigation technology. A reduced form of this model is empirically estimated using a sample of 265 farms located in Crete, Greece. The empirical results suggest that farmers choose to adopt the new technology in order to hedge against production risk. In addition, we show that the farmer's human capital also plays a significant role in the decision to adopt modern, more efficient irrigation equipment.     

Optimal Production Tax and Quota under Time Consistent Trade Policies

This article investigates the policy active importers' incentives and welfare implications of using production and trade policies in a dynamic framework where production decisions occur before consumption decisions. We show that the equilibrium for production taxes and quotas are not equivalent, and that each equilibrium depends on whether the trade policy instruments are tariffs or quotas. Under import quotas, the equilibrium policy is to tax domestic production, whereas under a tariff either a production tax or subsidy may be optimal. We also show that a collective agreement to ban production policies is likely to be welfare-improving in many circumstances.     

Resource Management under Production and Output Price Uncertainty: Implications for Environmental Policy

Various environmental policies have been proposed to control agricultural runoff of nutrients and pesticides. The impacts of these policies on input use are complicated because of the various sources of uncertainty farmers face and the precise nature of farmers' risk attitude. A risk–averse farmer's response to changed profit , input , and output taxes under output price and production uncertainty is examined. The impact of these policies on input use depends on the form of production uncertainty, risk–input relationships, risk attitudes, and degrees of output price and production uncertainty. These results have implications for the design and implementation of environmental and other production–related policies.     

Modeling the Reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy for Arable Crops under Uncertainty

The size of the insurance and wealth effects of a change in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for arable crops is estimated. The impact of price uncertainty is accounted for in the specific decision-making structure of the European Union (EU) arable crop producers under nonlinear mean-variance risk preferences. A system of output supply, input demand, and land allocation equations is estimated on a sample of Italian specialized arable crop farms. The simulation of the impact of the recent reforms confirms that farmers' output responses are consistently affected by the size of the insurance and wealth effects.     

Supply Response to Countercyclical Payments and Base Acre Updating under Uncertainty: An Experimental Study

We design an experiment to simulate how people make agricultural production decisions under three policy scenarios, each incorporating direct payments (DPs): ( a ) price uncertainty without countercyclical payments (CCPs); ( b ) price uncertainty with CCPs; and ( c ) price uncertainty, CCPs, and uncertainty regarding base acreage updating. Results are the CCP program and perceived possibility of future base updating created incentives for subjects to invest more in program (base) crops, despite payments being decoupled from current production decisions. Those choosing to reduce revenue risk by increasing plantings of base crops may face reduced incomes, suggesting the efficiency of crop markets may be diminished.     

A Model of Investment under Uncertainty: Modern Irrigation Technology and Emerging Markets in Water

This article develops a stochastic dynamic model of irrigation technology adoption. It predicts that farms will not invest in modern technologies unless the expected present value of investment exceeds the cost by a potentially large hurdle rate. The article also demonstrates that, contrary to common belief, water markets can delay adoption. The introduction of a market should induce farms with abundant (scarce) water supplies to adopt earlier (later) than they would otherwise. This article was motivated by evidence that, contrary to NPV predictions, farms wait until random events such as drought drive returns significantly above costs before investing in modern irrigation technologies.     

信贷约束下农户借贷需求行为的实证研究

本文以Iqbal模型框架为基础，利用1962户农户调查数据，对利率的外生性、农户借贷发生率、农户借贷需求规模方面进行了数理分析，结论认为，农村金融市场的利率是外生的，利率并不是农户借贷的主要考虑因素，农户家庭收入、生产经营特征和家庭特征是农户借贷需求行为的决定因素。     

新形势下的中国粮食供需趋势及对策

粮食问题是关系到社稷安危、国计民生的重大战略问题,而粮食问题又集中表现在生产与消费的平衡状态。故研究粮食的供给与需求变化趋势及其对策建议,是粮食问题研究的重要方向。采用数据分析、灰色理论预测等方法,对中国粮食进行供需预测,并在此基础上提出一些措施和建议。