Towards a better estimation of agricultural supply elasticity: the case of soya beans in Brazil

Brazil is a major exporter of several agricultural commodities and has shown strong interest in agricultural trade negotiations. For several commodities, trade liberalization is expected to be followed by farmgate prices increase and to boost domestic production. However, in a country as big as Brazil, possible supply responses to price increase will probably strongly differ from one region to another. This article focuses on soya beans for which Brazil became a top exporter. The panel data technique is used to estimate the soy bean supply response at national and regional level. Soya bean supply is shown to be very price elastic. Moreover, soya bean supply own price elasticity is much higher in the Center-North regions than in the South of the country. Substitution between livestock and soya bean is also very significant in the Center-North region. World agricultural trade models should take account for such regional variability of soya bean supply elasticity. The results also allow us to discuss the issue of soya bean expansion at the Amazon border.     

美国、欧盟、日本的“绿箱”支持政策及其评价

随着农业贸易自由化的推进,国内农业支持政策对于提高农业竞争力和解决"三农"问题至关重要。自1995年以来,WTO成员为遵循《农业协议》的要求,通过调整国内农业政策,将国内农业支持逐渐由"黄箱"转向"绿箱"。通过对WTO成员中大量使用"绿箱"支出的三个发达成员——美国、欧盟、日本的国内农业支持政策改革及其"绿箱"政策实施情况的考察,可以看出,由于"绿箱"补贴增加了农民收入并使农民面临的风险减少,会刺激农民进行生产性投入,增加农业生产,加剧国际农产品市场竞争的不公平性,使发展中国家的农业生产者在国际竞争中处于不利地位。因此,WTO成员在实现农业支持向"绿箱"转变的同时,应对其补贴总量进行控制和削减,减少变相的价格支持。     

Did the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture Affect Trade Flows? An Empirical Investigation for Meat Commodities

The Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA) was designed to reduce trade barriers and temper domestic and export policies that affect trade flows in agricultural commodities. This paper employs a dynamic framework to estimate the effects of the URAA on trade flows, as measured by export volumes, of three meat commodities. The model controls for several important factors, including regional trade agreements, and finds that the URAA had mixed effects on meat exports. Several complicating factors and policy responses, including increasing use of non-negotiated trade barriers, smaller export subsidies and domestic support, and limited effectiveness of market access provisions, explain the mixed empirical results.     

Rice market integration in the Mekong River Delta1

In the last decades Vietnam has become a major supplier in the world's rice market. This position is the result of the policy reforms that have been implemented in the agricultural sector. This paper assesses the impact of the liberalization policies and focuses on the spatial price differences in the domestic rice market. The results show that price patterns correlate strongly in the Mekong River Delta. Even prices in other regions are integrated with price patterns in the South. Interestingly, private traders in the Mekong Delta are only indirectly responsible for the latter result. They satisfy local demand and deal with state‐owned enterprises (SOEs). In the framework of the national food security policy, the state‐owned food companies ‘subsidize’ transactions between the South and the North. Moreover, the state‐owned food companies still dominate export transactions. The latter issues constitute two major queries for policy makers involved in the liberalization of the rice market, as further policy measures should not jeopardize the interests of domestic rice consumers.     

Impacts of Institutional Intervention on Price Transmissions: The Case of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange

In the aftermath of the market liberalization reforms, interventions in developing countries shifted toward building institutions. One of such interventions is the introduction of commodity exchanges. The theoretical justification is that commoditization reduces the high transaction costs associated with the information and enforcement problems characterizing agricultural markets of these countries. However it is not known whether these potential gains are transmitted to the various markets along a value chain. By taking the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) as a case, this paper examines the impacts of the introduction of the commodity exchange in transmitting price signals along the coffee value chain (world‐export‐auction‐producer prices). We found that both the speed and symmetry of transmission remains weak even after the launch of ECX. At each level, the market chain was found to favor buyers. This implies that not only the country's gains from export are sub‐optimal, the cumulative burden is on the millions of smallholder farmers who are located at the bottom of the chain. In a context where local agricultural markets remain traditional and export markets barely competitive, the introduction of the commodity exchange will have limited impacts in improving the performance of markets in transmitting price signals. Other policy measures to further liberalize both local and export markets are required.     

Fuel Efficiency Improvements: Feedback Mechanisms and Distributional Effects in the Oil Market

We study the interactions between fuel efficiency improvements in the transport sector and the oil market, where the efficiency improvements are policy-induced in certain regions of the world. We are especially interested in feedback mechanisms of fuel efficiency such as the rebound effect, carbon leakage and the “green paradox”, but also the distributional effects for oil producers. An intertemporal numerical model of the international oil market is introduced, where OPEC-Core producers have market power. We find that the rebound effect has a noticeable effect on the transport sector, with the magnitude depending on the oil demand elasticity. In the benchmark simulations, we calculate that almost half of the energy savings may be lost to a direct rebound effect and an additional 10% to oil price adjustments. In addition, there is substantial intersectoral leakage to other sectors through lower oil prices in the regions that introduce the policy. There is a small green paradox effect in the sense that oil consumption increases initially when the fuel efficiency measures are gradually implemented. Finally, international carbon leakage will be significant if policies are not implemented in all regions; we estimate leakage rates of 35% or higher when only major consuming regions implement fuel economy policies. Non-OPEC producers will to a larger degree than OPEC producers cut back on its oil supply as a response to fuel efficiency policies due to high production costs.     

Strategic interoperability standards and trade taxes

In a two-country international trade framework, the paper considers the interplay between the governments' incentives for conducting traditional trade policies and their incentives for the policies toward compatibility between the products of the firms competing in the international market. The model assumes that one domestic and one foreign firm supply partially incompatible products for the home country market while consumers value both variety and a network externality. Motivated by the benefits of the network externality, the home government sets a standard requiring the foreign firm to guarantee a minimum level of compatibility between its own product and the product of the domestic rival. The paper analyzes the home country standard setting and import tariff policies as well as the incentives of the foreign country for imposing the export tax and conducting a policy which enhances the degree of compatibility between the rival products in the export market.     

Economic Performance, Trade Restrictiveness, and Efficiency

The paper addresses the question of whether trade restrictiveness impacts economic performance, via a trade restrictiveness index that is decomposable into a trade distortion and a domestic distortion component. The paper builds on the Anderson and Neary price index measure of trade distortion, in evaluating trade restrictiveness via a distance function approach. This is accomplished by adding a “dual” version to their trade restrictiveness price index, based on distance functions that scale output quantities. The authors compute the trade restrictiveness quantity index (TRQI) using a parametric frontier approach to model the production side of the economy, and a panel of information on the agricultural sector of a set of European Community countries. The results suggest that the use of TRQI makes a considerable difference to interpretations of the efficiency impact of agricultural trade policies in EC countries, as compared to policy‐oriented aggregates or result‐oriented measures of trade restrictiveness.     

EXPORT SUBSIDIES VERSUS EXPORT QUOTAS WITH INCOMPLETELY INFORMED POLICY MAKERS*

This paper analyses export subsidies (price incentives) and export quotas (quantity controls) in the Brander‐Spencer (1985) model when policy makers have limited information on demand and cost structures. We examine necessary or sufficient information for policy makers to determine welfare‐enhancing policies. It is crucial that they know the elasticity value of the slope of the inverse demand curve and the market share. It is also shown that for policy makers, export quotas are superior to export subsidies under certain conditions.     

The price of energy and potential growth of developed countries: An attempt at quantification

A growth model based on a theoretical discussion of the impact of oil prices on developed countries is used to predict the impact of higher prices of energy on the growth of developed countries. The results suggest that the growth impact is small, that domestic price policies may have a large impact on oil imports, and that the investment of foreign assets accumulated by oil producers may make a significant contribution to the GNP of OECD.     

The Short-Term Impact of a Domestic Cap-and-Trade Climate Policy on Local Agriculture: A Policy Simulation with Producer Behavior

This study is intended to develop understanding of possible impact of a domestic cap-and-trade climate policy on local agriculture. We focus the study on the transition period after the policy has raised input prices for production but before establishment of new equilibrium in agricultural commodity markets. We construct a policy simulation model based on production economics that explicitly considers producer behavior in the focal period. We apply the model to a production region in the US to quantify the impact of different levels of carbon price on production cost, production value, and farm income. Our case study shows that: (1) producers have ability to alleviate the cost impact, (2) producers may benefit by selling carbon credits in the carbon market but the revenue is likely to be limited, (3) the economic return of farm production is critical to the impact assessment, (4) the impact may vary across producers, and (5) regulation on the fertilizer industry is an important policy element that can influence the assessment of the impact. This study has important implications for climate policy design.     

Legal rules as a source of comparative advantage: A case study of telecommunication equipment interconnection

Legal rules governing the interconnection of customer-premises equipment (CPE) to the telephone network have economic implications for both producers and users of such equipment. The United States instituted a free-interconnection policy between 1968 and 1976; Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom adopted similar policies in the 1980s. A free-interconnection policy can impose costs on domestic producers as a result of increased competition among both foreign and domestic producers, but it can also provide benefits to domestic users who gain access to the world market in CPE. Interconnection rules can therefore provide a comparative advantage to countries that adopt the most favorable policy.It is shown here that free interconnection has been a favorable policy for the United States. Costs to domestic CPE producers have been small, and benefits to large users appear to have been large, both in terms of increased product diversity and in terms of price and quality of established products. The movement toward free interconnection in other countries appears to be based on the favorable experience in the countries that have already made this change.This CPE example suggests a generalization that can be expressed in terms of the “market for regulation” concept. It is suggested that an equilibrium in this market occurs at the point of maximum benefits minus costs, as experienced by the participants in this market. This equilibrium is a “rule equilibrium.” In the case of CPE, the old equilibrium was at the no interconnection point while the new equilibrium is at the free interconnection point toward which the world is presently moving.     

Trade Policies for Exporting Industries under Free Entry

This paper computes optimal export taxes and domestic production subsidies for exporting industries under free entry. We show that domestic welfare is not at maximum, as is typically believed, when the export price is a monopoly price, and the domestic price is a competitive price, because a market structure effect has to be taken into account. Furthermore, we show that the optimal tax/subsidy formulas for an oligopoly coincide with those under perfect competition, if foreign and domestic demand functions are both linear. We also discuss optimal trade policies when only one instrument is available, and we run numerical simulations to determine and compare optimal trade taxes under endogenous and exogenous market structures.     

面向内需与新丝绸之路 ——环渤海经济发展新战略

目前的环渤海经济发展战略仍沿袭着过去20多年通过承接发达国家产业转移并从低端加入全球价值链的出口导向型经济发展战略。这种战略存在着严重的内在缺陷，与发达国家成功崛起的历史经验背道而驰。国际金融危机爆发后，内需主导和南南贸易的快速发展正在推动着世界经济新格局的逐步形成，环渤海经济应该把更多的注意力转向内需和“新丝绸之路经济带”，在建立以中国企业为龙头的全球价值链的新战略和新模式上先行先试，率先取得突破，成为我国经济增长、转型升级和世界经济发展强有力的新引擎。     

产需双重不确定情形下绿色农产品供应链的协调研究

为解决产需不确定性给绿色农产品供应链运营带来的复杂影响,寻求绿色农产品生产商和销售商面对产需双重不确定情形下各自的最优决策,研究从农产品产出和市场需求双重不确定性视角出发,结合目前消费者对绿色农产品的需求偏好,构建由生产商和销售商组成的Stackelberg博弈模型,探究收益共享契约能否有效协调产需都不确定的绿色农产品供应链。研究结果表明:分散决策时的批发价契约无法协调此供应链。引入收益共享契约后,在合适的共享系数范围内,生产商的农资投入量会增加,农产品的绿色度会比分散决策时高,同时销售商的销售价格降低;当农产品订购量变大后,引入契约后的生产商和销售商各自的利润相较于分散决策时更高。     

浅析日本农产品价格政策及其对中国的启示

中国加入WTO后,农业面临着一系列的机遇和挑战,农产品价格体系的建设问题尤为严峻。日本农产品的国内价格政策和对外贸易政策及其政策效果,可为中国优化农产品价格政策提供借鉴。     

Oil dependency of the Russian economy: An econometric analysis

A macro econometric model of the Russian economy is tailored to analyze the effects of changes in the oil price and alternative fiscal policies. Model simulations indicate that the Russian economy is vulnerable to large fluctuations in the oil price, but we also find evidence of significant economic growth capabilities in the absence of oil price growth. A higher oil price not only leads to higher economic growth and savings in the sovereign wealth fund, but also induces a rupture in the Russian economy. Public spending and household spending increase while the traditional export industries suffer from real appreciation, in line with the Dutch disease hypothesis. We also show that alternative policies for spending of the petroleum income may have considerable consequences for economic growth, the degree of crowding out of traditional export industries and wealth accumulation in the fund.     

Producer price adjustment to commodity price shocks: An application of threshold cointegration

During the 1980s and 1990s, most developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America implemented structural adjustment reforms, which included the liberalization of export crop markets and the abolition of marketing boards. The emergence of new marketing systems may have altered price transmission mechanisms, especially if collusion behaviors have appeared among domestic stakeholders along the marketing chain. I use threshold cointegration tools to analyze the dynamics of world price transmission to coffee growers in three deregulated markets. The methods I use allow me to test the presence of a threshold in both the cointegrating relationship and its corresponding error correction model. Over the pre-reform period, I detect asymmetric price adjustments that appear favorable to producers - deviations from the long-run equilibrium resulting from largest increases in world prices being eliminated relatively quickly - and disappear in the post-reform period. On the contrary over the post-reform period, the results suggest that largest decreases in world prices may be transmitted relatively quickly to growers. These results can be seen as expressions of a favorable pricing policy over the pre-reform period and an unfavorable influence of new private agents over the post-reform period, meaning that in some cases reforms may have failed to create competitive market structures.     

Consumption opportunities and the real value of the external debt

Developing countries have, in the period since the oil shock of 1973–1974, built up large external indebtedness. At the same time world inflation has in good part eroded the real value of existing debts. But the measurement of the inflation effects on real debt depend critically on which among a number of deflators is selected. The deflators proposed in this context have traditionally been export prices, import prices or prices in world trade. This paper argues that the correct deflator is the domestic consumer price index. Using the consumer price index as a debt deflator it is readily shown that conventional results in trade theory are recovered in the presence of external indebtedness: The income effect of an export price increase is proportional to the level of exports, the income effect of an import price increase is proportional to the level of imports. Real income, using a comprehensive income measure, is equal to the value of domestic output less the real value of real interest payments on external debt.     

基于完全成本的碳酸稀土理论价格研究——兼论中国稀土资源定价机制改革

文章基于完全成本核算了2008-2010年碳酸稀土的理论价格,并与国内市场价格和出口价格进行了比较。研究发现,碳酸稀土的国内价格严重偏离其理论价格,市场价格严重扭曲。出口管制政策是校正稀土市场价格扭曲、弥补稀土资源折耗成本和生态环境外部成本补偿不足的一种手段,为我国政府在本次稀土国际贸易争端中提出出口管制政策是"基于保护资源和环境的考虑,为实现可持续发展"的观点提供了经验支持。破解当前稀土生产与出口内外困局的关键是改革稀土资源价格形成机制。文章提出了按照市场化原则和WTO规则改革稀土资源定价机制的政策建议。