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.     

Price premiums,payment delays,and default risk: understanding developing country farmers’ decisions to market through a cooperative or a private trader

Smallholder farmers in developing countries face a competitive disadvantage in modern agricultural supply chains. Joint marketing through cooperatives is a potential tool to mitigate these disadvantages; yet cooperatives’ success in these settings is uneven at best. We develop an analytical model to study a farmer's choice of selling to a private trader who pays cash on delivery but may exercise market power or a cooperative that promises a price premium but delays payment and carries a concomitant risk of default. In the presence of impatient and risk‐averse farmers, we show that these factors can severely limit smallholder patronage of a cooperative, despite a promised price premium. We then construct and parameterize a simulation model to fit a profile of heterogeneous farmers within a prototype developing‐country village, and study the optimal decisions of farmers regarding marketing through a cooperative versus a private trader. Results suggest that modest improvements in either timeliness of payment or probability of default can induce a substantial increase in a cooperative's market share and economic viability. Extending the simulation analysis to a dynamic setting shows how implementing reasonable policies to improve a cooperative's payment timeliness and default probability can markedly improve its growth trajectory.     

基于CMS模型的中国茶叶出口东盟增长因素分析

茶叶是中国极具传统与规模优势的产品,进入21世纪以来东盟在中国茶叶出口市场中地位日益凸显,对中国茶叶出口东盟展开研究已成为中国茶叶出口研究的一个重点,而如何把握中国茶叶出口东盟的增长因素则成为此项研究的一个难点。文章在分析中国对东盟茶叶出口贸易增长、市场结构及产品结构现状基础上,运用CMS模型对中国茶叶出口东盟增长因素展开研究。研究发现结构效应及其细分下的增长效应、市场效应、商品效应对出口增长起正向带动作用,结构交互效应则起阻碍作用,其中结构效应、增长效应、市场效应为主要影响因素;竞争效应及其细分下的整体竞争效应和具体竞争效应对出口增长带动作用愈减,且具体竞争效应近阶段起阻碍作用,其中整体竞争效应是主要影响因素,中国各类茶叶产品在东盟市场均具有竞争力,其中绿茶竞争力水平有所降低,红茶基本保持,茶制品逐步提升;二阶效应在其细分的纯二阶效应和动态二阶效应共同作用下对出口的增长由阻碍作用转变为正向带动作用,纯二阶效应在各阶段起正向带动作用,动态二阶效应不断提升,在近阶段起正向带动作用。     

State Trading Enterprises: Some Legal and Conceptual Issues

State trading may become an important issue in the current WTO negotiations on agricultural trade as witnessed by some of the recent proposals for negotiating agendas. On the premise that state trading enterprises can hinder market access in importing countries and can affect export competition, it has been proposed that state trading enterprises should be pan of the negotiations. We consider the current status of state trading enterprises in the GATT framework and summarize the list of concerns relating to the effects which they may have on agricultural trade. Drawing on some recent research, we show that state trading enterprises are likely to influence market access and export competition under trade liberalization when measured relative to a benchmark of imperfect competition.     

Interlocked Village Markets and Trader Idiosyncrasy in Rural India

The role of traders and traditional exchange institutions has received little attention in empirical research on rural markets in developing countries. We use detailed data on transactions in a village commodity market in India and identify two observed anomalies: first, the repeal of the law of one price, and second, a trader‐idiosyncratic effect, namely that large volumes are sold to a trader who does not offer the best price. Econometric analysis demonstrates that trader idiosyncrasy can largely be explained by reciprocity motives in interlocked village markets. Reciprocity leads to market inefficiencies and can result in unexpected supply responses.     

Exporting to new destinations and the effects of tariffs: the case of meat commodities

This study uses a random parameter probit estimation to examine the effects of tariff liberalization on the probability of establishing new trading relationships in meat commodities. Our simulation results indicate that the effects of tariff reductions decrease with distance, but increase with the level of development. The probabilities of trade increase at an increasing rate with the size of tariff reductions thus justifying calls for ambitious liberalization schemes. Canada and Mexico are the NAFTA countries that are most likely to export in response to EU tariff reductions on bovine and poultry meats, while Brazil and Argentina emerge as the MERCOSUR countries most likely to penetrate the EU bovine meat market after EU tariff reductions. Uruguay's probability to export poultry meat is most responsive to EU tariff reductions.     

Determinants of a social clause in international trade negotiations

Survey data are used to examine the determinants of a “social clause” in international trade negotiations. Proponents of such a clause argue that the inclusion of labor laws, environmental impacts, and other social issues in international trade negotiations would ensure fair competition, an equitable distribution of the benefits of free trade, and, in the case of labor, protect the basic rights of workers. Opponents see these arguments as a disguised form of protectionism and self‐interest based on the protection of labor‐intensive industries in developed countries. Results from a logit model indicate a decreased likelihood for the inclusion of a social clause in international trade negotiations across farm sizes. In particular the results suggest that agricultural producers with annual gross sales including government payments between US$500,000 and US$999,000, are 40% less likely to want labor laws, environmental impacts, and food safety standards to be included as part of international trade negotiations. The results also show that agricultural producers with college experience or college degrees are less likely to want these social interventions while second generation farmers and first generation farmers with a master's degree want labor laws, environmental impacts, and food safety standards to be included as part of international trade negotiations.     

Analysis of export demand for Ghana's timber products: A multivariate co-integration approach

This study analyzed the factors that affect the export demand for Ghana's timber products. Export demand functions and error correction models for sawnwood, plywood, and veneer using data from 1961 to 2006 were estimated. Six categories of explanatory variables were hypothesized to determine export demand: world price of wood products, income of importing countries, Ghana's external debt, exchange rates, time-related variables, and policy changes (log export ban, reduction in annual allowable cut and the imposition of export levy on air-dried sawnwood). All variables except external debt were determined from augmented Dickey–Fuller unit root tests to be integrated of order one. The Johansen multivariate cointegration test showed that there was only one cointegration relationship in each timber product data. Exchange rates and income were significant determinants of exported timber products and had the theoretically expected positive signs. The three policy initiatives significantly reduced the exports of sawnwood, but increased the exports of plywood and veneer. Price was moderately elastic for sawnwood and plywood and had the expected negative signs in both cases, while it was positive and inelastic for veneer. The error-correction coefficients show that 68% of shocks to veneer exported is corrected in the following year, while only approximately 20% and 19% of this are corrected for sawnwood and plywood, respectively. Sawnwood and plywood face stiff competition in the international market and this has revenue and tax policy implications for Ghana's forestry sector. Policies that encourage domestic processing and restrictions on both legal and illegal harvesting would work to ensure greater value-added benefits to, and sustainable forest management in, Ghana.     

EU Food Safety Standards,Pesticide Use and Farm‐level Productivity: The Case of High‐value Crops in Kenya

This article provides an empirical analysis of the impact of European Union (EU) private food safety standards on pesticide use and farm‐level productivity among small‐scale vegetable producers in Kenya. We apply an extended three‐stage damage control production framework, accounting for multiple endogeneity problems, to farm‐level data collected from a random cross‐sectional sample of 539 small‐scale producers. Estimation results show that farmers producing vegetables for the domestic market use significantly lower quantities of pesticides than do export farmers. However, contrary to findings elsewhere, the econometric evidence here shows that both domestic and export‐oriented vegetable farmers in Kenya use pesticides at levels below the economic optimum. The results also show that the adoption of standards by export farmers does not have any significant impact on total pesticide use. However, adopter categories are distinguishable in terms of types of pesticide used, i.e. adopters use safer pesticides based on World Health Organization (WHO) classification. The third‐stage structural revenue model results demonstrate that adoption of standards has a positive and significant impact on revenue raised in vegetable production. Nevertheless, farmers producing for the export market are indistinguishable from those producing for the domestic farmers in terms of the total revenue earned from producing vegetables during the rainy season, on a ‘per acre’ basis. Although standards can potentially prevent resource‐poor smallholders from maintaining their position in the lucrative export markets, they can also result in positive changes in the production systems of those small‐scale farmers who adopt it, as shown by these results.     

Price dynamics in the Bangladesh rice market: implications for public intervention

In this paper, the price dynamics of a rice market are examined using dynamic programming techniques. The model is parameterised to the case of Bangladesh and thus represents the situation of a very poor country which has characteristically high price elasticity (due to income effects) and high storage and interest costs. The incentives for private sector storage and its impact on price stability are examined. Various options for public intervention in the storage sector are also explored, including price ceiling schemes and subsidisation of storage costs. Results show that interventions that remove private disincentives (such as storage subsidies) are much cheaper than direct intervention by government, but the impact on the probability distribution of prices is quite different. The effect of trade on the probability distribution of prices is also examined.     

中国苹果加工产业发展趋势分析

得益于资源优势和成本优势,中国苹果加工产业发展迅速,正由产能扩张向提质竞争过渡。综合产业发展和市场变化判断,加工产业发展的基本趋势是行业整合加快,产业布局向原料产地集中;受成本和出口价格快速增长、国际市场需求不足、贸易壁垒增强等因素影响,中国浓缩苹果汁出口约束增强。中国苹果加工产业应以转型升级为发展契机,通过行业整合、优化产业结构,建立、健全出口产品的质量标准体系和应对国际贸易壁垒的市场预警机制,积极开拓新兴市场。     

Residual demand measures of market power of Russian wheat exporters

Traditionally, the international wheat market has been considered a good example of a market with perfect competition. Yet, several articles provide evidence of imperfect competition and price discrimination in the wheat trade. However, these studies focused on traditional high‐quality wheat exporters such as Canada and the United States. In contrast, this article investigates whether Russian wheat exporters exercise market power in eight selected importing countries using the residual demand elasticity (RDE) model. The article makes two major contributions. First, it focuses on a nontraditional exporter, who exports mainly wheat of mediocre quality to low‐ and middle‐income countries. Second, the RDE model is estimated for the first time using a nonlinear estimator, the instrumental variable Poisson pseudo‐maximum likelihood estimator. This is important because the double logarithmic functional form can provide biased results in the presence of heteroskedasticity. The results indicate that Russian wheat exporters can exercise market power in only a few markets, while they are price takers in the majority of importing countries.     

我国水产品出口现状及发展对策分析

经过30多年的改革开放,中国水产品出口实现了跨越式发展,并以此为引擎推动了中国渔业经济的快速增长,是大农业中唯一实现贸易顺差的产业。本文总结了我国水产品主要出口国家的贸易量、品种和消费动向,剖析了水产品出口存在的质量与安全、人民币升值和加工成本上升、贸易方式和市场竞争等三大瓶颈,提出了我国在未来国际贸易竞争中继续保持相对优势地位,需要发挥行业组织作用、强化产品质量安全,化解不利因素、增强出口竞争力,转变出口方式、拓宽消费市场等对策措施。     

Industrial land price between China’s Pearl River Delta and Southeast Asian regions: Competition or Coopetition?

The planned economy system’s previous form of industrial land market control in China has led to current market failure because of a large amount of industrial land being sold at a very low price, causing extensive overuse of land and negative effects on land management. As the “World Factory”, the Pearl River Delta (PRD) is well known for its rapid urbanization largely driven by Foreign Direct Investment in labor-intensive industries. A low-land price strategy has been commonly adopted by the local government in order to attract industrial investment. In the past decade, the PRD has increasingly faced the increasing competition from its neighboring competition from its neighboring countries in Southeast Asia that have established preference policies to attract FDI and foreign enterprises. Despite a growing body of literature on the internal forces of industrial land in China, little is known of the external forces involved except for the importance of FDI and the intensity of interregional competition between China and other countries in attempting to attract foreign investment. This research fills the knowledge gap by modeling the situation in the form of an international cooperative game model aimed at revealing the industrial land price formation mechanism between the PRD region and Southeast Asian regions. The conditions of industrial land in the area and several Southeast Asian countries are first analyzed for their industrial land price movements in recent years. A game theoretic model is then built that exhibits similar characteristics. The result indicates that the governments’ low land price strategy and the competition between the PRD and its neighboring countries have created unnecessarily high social and environmental costs. Policy suggestions are made to encourage a more appropriate use of industrial land in China, and the most important being the need for a mindset shift from competition towards coopetition between the PRD and Southeast Asian regions.     

基于恒定市场份额模型的中国林产品出口分析

针对1992~2004年中国林产品出口规模的变动特征,采用恒定市场份额模型,对影响中国林产品出口规模变动的因素进行了分析。结果表明:中国林产品的出口明显受其产品竞争力的影响,提高林产品的竞争力对促进林产品出口具有非常积极的作用,世界林产品贸易规模的扩大和商品出口构成的优化对中国林产品的出口产生了正面影响,而市场分布效应则是负的。同时,提出通过提高林产品的竞争力、增加中国人造板的出口以及积极开拓新市场来促进中国林产品的出口等建议。     

The impact of entry costs on export market participation in agriculture

Theoretical models of market entry imply that sunk costs are an important factor in the decision to export. Following Helpman, Melitz, and Rubinstein (2008) , we develop a simple model of foreign market participation and use a Bayesian method to estimate the resulting dynamic discrete‐choice model with lagged dependent variable. Employing a balanced panel data that follows 81 trading partners for 30 years from 1971 to 2000, we estimate our model and compute the marginal effect of sunk costs on the likelihood of export market participation. We find that such costs are economically and statistically important for trade in all of the six major agricultural commodities (Cereals, Dairy, Fish, Meat, Vegetables and Fruits, and Sugar), for agricultural producers in both developed and developing countries. We also find evidence suggesting that, in general, market access for both developed and developing exporters had improved in the years following the Uruguay round of trade negotiations (1995–2000).     

中国钨品出口态势与调控策略

我国钨矿资源量 ,产品产量的出口贸易量均居世界首位且对国际市场有着举足轻重的影响 ,但由于近年来乱挖滥采、无序竞争 ,使我国钨矿资源以惊人的速度流失和逐渐失去优势地位。文章针对此种情况 ,分析了我国钨品的出口态势 ,并提出了五项宏观调控政策策略。包括 :实行专卖制度、控制出口总量 ;有序扩大或取消出口退税范围和幅度 ;提高钨产品科技含量和国际竞争力 ;建立钨矿出口储备体系 ;加强综合治理整顿等。     

Multilateral Trade and Agricultural Policy Reforms in Sugar Markets

We analyse the impact of trade liberalisation, removal of production subsidies and elimination of consumption distortions in world sugar markets using a partial‐equilibrium international sugar model calibrated on 2002 market data and current policies. The removal of trade distortions alone induces a 27% price increase while the removal of all trade and production distortions induces a 48% increase in 2011/2012 relative to the baseline. Aggregate trade expands moderately, but location of production and trade patterns change substantially. Protectionist Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries (the EU, Japan, the US) experience an import expansion or export reduction and a significant contraction of production in unfettered markets. Competitive producers in both OECD countries (Australia) and non‐OECD countries (Brazil, Cuba), and even some protected producers (Indonesia, Turkey), expand production when all distortions are removed. Consumption distortions have marginal impacts on world markets and the location of production. We discuss the significance of these results in the context of mounting pressures to increase market access in highly protected OECD countries and the impact on non‐OECD countries.     

金融危机对中国木质家具出口企业的影响

首先采用恒定市场份额模型对中国木质家具的出口增长源泉以及竞争力趋势进行了实证分析,指出木质家具产业的发展对外依存度较高,出口的增长动力除自身竞争优势外,显著地依靠国际市场需求。在此基础上,进一步分析了此次金融危机对中国木质家具出口企业造成的负面影响,最后对木质家具出口企业提出应对此次危机的对策建议。