A simple model of endogenous agricultural commodity price fluctuations with storage

A debate has been raging for centuries regarding the effects of interannual storage on commodity prices. Most analysts consider storage to function as a price stabilizer, while others place it at the core of an explanation of intriguing features of commodity price series, such as skewed distributions. Most studies have been developed in the context of the theory of competitive storage where random shocks affect supply or demand. Recently, the endogenous chaotic behavior of markets has become another possible hypothesis regarding the origin of commodity price fluctuations. We develop a nonlinear cobweb model with intra‐ and interannual storage, risk averse agents, and adaptive expectations. Like the theory of competitive storage, this nonlinear cobweb model with storage can reproduce some of the stylized facts of agricultural commodity prices (autocorrelation of first rank, low kurtosis, and skewness). In addition, the effects of storage on price variation are mixed. In the presence of interannual storage, chaotic price series show less variation compared to a situation without interannual storage but we find that storage contributes to the endogenous volatility of prices by making chaotic dynamics more likely.     

The impact of food price increases on caloric intake in China

World food prices have increased dramatically in recent years. We use panel data from 2006 to examine the impact of these increases on the consumption and nutrition of poor households in two Chinese provinces. We find that households in Hunan suffered no nutrition declines. Households in Gansu experienced a small decline in calories, though the decline is on par with usual seasonal effects. The overall nutritional impact of the world price increase was small because households were able to substitute to cheaper foods and because the domestic prices of staple foods remained low due to government intervention in grain markets.     

The impact of OECD biofuels policies on developing countries

OECD countries’ biofuels policies, derived from energy and environmental legislation and activated by high oil prices, were the primary cause of not only the sudden spike in grain and oilseed prices in 2007–2008 but also of the ensuing price volatility. Even though developing countries have a comparative advantage in biofuels production, they were shut out of rich countries’ biofuel markets by trade discriminating biofuels policies. Developing countries would not have been able to take full advantage of the price spike in the short run anyway given the low supply elasticities and the long time required for biofuel production to come online, unlike for corn‐ethanol. The controversy over the right price of food is misplaced and policy makers should instead focus on improving biofuels policies, which like their counterpart agricultural policies in previous decades, have damaged the welfare of developing countries.     

On the nature and magnitude of cost economies in hog production

In this article, we assess the impact of farm size on production cost and evaluate the marginal costs and margins by considering that input prices may change with the scale of production. By using French hog farm data, we estimate a system of equations including a feed price function, input demand functions, and an output supply function based on a technology approximated by a combined generalized Leontief‐Quadratic form. Our results suggest that the marginal costs are over‐estimated when the adjustment of the feed unit prices to a change in farm size is not controlled for. More specifically, the cost economies for large farms (enjoying the highest profits) arise primarily from lower feed prices, with technological scale economies having little impact. In contrast, farms with no hired labor exhibit technological scale economies and reach higher price‐cost margins compared to larger farms.     

Monetary policy shocks and the dynamics of agricultural commodity prices: evidence from structural and factor‐augmented VAR analyses

Fluctuation in commodity prices is a significant and timely issue to be studied. This study is to examine the impact of monetary policy and other macroeconomic shocks on the dynamics of agricultural commodity prices. The major contributions of this study are twofold. First, unlike other studies that use indexes, this study analyzes the commodities individually, affording the inclusion of commodity‐specific fundamentals such as the level of inventory—an important determinant of commodity price—in a structural VAR framework. Second, it exploits a rich data set of agricultural commodity prices which includes commodities that are usually overlooked in the literature, and extracts a common factor using the dynamic factor model to understand the extent of comovement of the prices and to gauge the extent to which macroeconomic shocks drive the “comovement” in a factor‐augmented VAR (FAVAR) framework. The findings show that monetary policy, global economic conditions, and the U.S. dollar exchange rates play an important role in the dynamics of agricultural commodity prices.     

图们江区域开发下延吉市环城游憩带发展的深层思考

通过对延吉市环城游憩带建设的市场供给与需求、发展条件与机遇、发展潜力、发展原则的分析,从区域开发的角度对延吉市环城游憩带建设的可行性进行探索,提出延吉市应在目前环城游憩带雏形的基础上,抓住中国图们江区域合作开发的契机,在考虑生态环境、民族文化、居民态度的条件下,因地制宜、循序渐近地利用本地边境优势和民族特色,充分挖掘延吉市环城游憩的需求市场潜力,进一步优化延吉市的环城游憩带,建立和完善城市旅游的空间布局体系。     

The impact of commodity price and conservation policy scenarios on deforestation and agricultural land use in a frontier area within the Amazon

Deforestation in the Amazon is caused by the complex interplay of different drivers. Price of commodities such as beef and soya, and incoming migration are paramount factors. Construction of new highways is a key aspect, as they enable a growing flow of people and economic activities, provoking an intensification of the conversion of forests into pasture and agricultural areas. The pavement of road BR-163 accelerates the expansion of the agricultural frontier from the state of Mato Grosso to Pará, inside the Amazon. Today, the Brazilian government applies two main kinds of policies to protect the environment. First by establishing conservation units (CUs) that include an array of reserve types from natural areas to indigenous lands, and second by enforcing the Forest Code (FC), a law that limits the occupation and use of forests. Legal reserve requirements for rural properties are 80% in the Amazon rainforest, 35% in the Cerrado shrublands and 20% in other regions. However, the effectiveness of these policies relies on a fragile institutional capacity, which causes a flawed monitoring, law enforcement and control. To assess the impact of effective conservation policies on land use and deforestation by 2020, we used the LUSMAPA model in combination with two scenarios, one that included different commodity price developments and migration rates and one on the assumption of the institutional strength to uphold the conservation policies. A revision of the FC from an average 80% policy target to 60% effective implementation and disregard borders of CUs by allowing 5% deforestation in CUs, that both corresponds to a ‘weak’ governmental enforcement, leads to additional deforestation of 41–57%, depending on the commodity price scenario. The results of the simulations are discussed in the light of recent policy changes in Brazil.     

东道国地区人才吸引力对国际人才根植意愿的影响

随着“一带一路”建设的深入推进,中国水利国际工程企业及东道国对国际人才的缺口不断扩大,而吸引和保留国际人才让其具有根植意愿的关键在于为其提供具有国际竞争力和吸引力的环境条件。基于场论及承诺理论,依据“环境-态度-行为”的理论逻辑,将表征东道国环境的东道国地区人才吸引力视为外部因素,将体现国际人才对地区的积极态度的区域承诺视为个体因素,探讨东道国地区人才吸引力通过区域承诺对人才根植意愿产生影响的机制。基于63个国际水利工程项目所在地与392名中国水利国际工程企业海外员工配对样本,运用跨层次分析方法进行了实证检验。结果表明:东道国地区人才吸引力正向影响人才根植意愿,且这种影响是通过区域承诺这一中介机制发挥作用的,意味着良好的东道国环境与积极的个体态度有利于提升国际人才的根植意愿。     

Effective use of public funding in the Murray‐Darling Basin: a comparison of buybacks and infrastructure upgrades

Policy instruments designed to increase environmental flows in the Murray–Darling Basin are compared using TERM‐H₂O, a detailed, dynamic regional CGE model. Voluntary and fully compensated buybacks are much less costly than infrastructure upgrades as a means of obtaining a target volume of environmental water, even during drought, when highly secure water created by infrastructure upgrades is more valuable. As an instrument of regional economic management, infrastructure upgrades are inferior to public spending on health, education and other services in the Basin. For each job created from upgrades, the money spent on services could create between three and four jobs in the Basin.     

The regional economic effects of a reduction in carbon emissions

Concern about climate change has led to policy to reduce CO₂ emissions although it is likely that policy will have differential regional impacts. While regional impacts will be politically important, very little analysis of them has been carried out. This paper contributes to the analysis of this issue by building a small model involving two regions, incorporating the right to emit CO₂ as a factor of production with the level of permitted emissions set by the national government. We argue that there is likely to be pressure on governments to use other policies to offset the possible adverse regional economic consequences of the pollution‐reduction policy; we also consider a range of such policies. Using numerical simulation, we find that a 10 per cent reduction has relatively small but regionally differentiated economic effects. Standard fiscal policies are generally ineffective or counterproductive while labour market policies are more useful in offsetting the adverse effects.     

Costs and benefits of forest conservation: regional and local comparisons in Eastern Finland

In addition to environmental interests vs. timber production, debates on forest conservation have typically dealt with nationwide vs. local and regional interests. While most previous studies have focused on the nationwide perspective, this paper considers the benefits and costs of existing conservation areas from the regional and local point of view. The non-market benefits of conservation are measured by means of contingent valuation. Unlike most discrete-choice CV studies, we allow for zero willingness to pay. The results of our cost-benefit analysis suggest that the aggregate benefits of conservation clearly exceed the total opportunity costs when viewed from a regional (or nationwide) perspective, but at the local level costs exceed the benefits of conservation. Differences were also found in locally vs. regionally relevant benefits and costs.     

新发展格局下虚拟水流动对区域粮食安全的影响

选取2012—2020年中国31个省(自治区、直辖市)的面板数据,基于彭曼公式估算稻谷、小麦、玉米、大豆四大粮食作物的虚拟水含量和贸易流量,通过固定效应回归模型分析虚拟水流动对区域粮食安全的影响。结果表明：粮食作物的虚拟水含量在品种、空间上存在明显的差别,虚拟水从北方流向南且流动量逐年增加;虚拟水净调出量与区域粮食安全呈显著的倒“U”形关系,说明虚拟水在区域间的转移应存在一定限度;播种面积、人均水资源量、农业机械化水平和城镇化水平等因素对区域粮食安全均具有显著的影响。为此,提出了筑牢水利保障、优化种植结构、发展节水农业、提升粮食综合生产能力等保障区域粮食安全的对策建议。     

The use of organized commodity markets to manage food import price instability and risk

The article explores the possibility of insuring the price risks of wheat and maize imports of low‐income food‐deficit countries (LIFDCs). Optimal strategies for an importing agent, who hedges with futures and options are derived, based on the objective of minimizing the unpredictability of import bills. Ex post simulations for a set of LIFDCs are run on wheat and maize imports hedged with futures and options in the Chicago Board of Trade, to explore the extent to which hedging reduces the unpredictability in import bills. Simulations encompass both periods of normal price behavior, as well as the period of global upheaval that occurred in 2007 and 2008. Results show that hedging with futures alone affords agents considerable opportunities for reducing import cost unpredictability, and the same holds with options, albeit, to a lesser extent. However, during the recent price spike of 2007–2008, hedging with options would have increased the unpredictability of some countries’ maize import bills, due to the combination of erratic import patterns and pronounced market uncertainty.     

区域竞争力研究的经济地理学价值

在经济全球化趋势中,日益激烈的全球竞争更加凸现了区域竞争力的经济地理特性,成为当前区域发展研究的前沿议题和经济地理学的发展方向之一;开展区域竞争力研究有利于丰富经济地理学理论,推动区域竞争力的宏观与微观相结合的研究,丰富我国区域竞争力理论研究的区域层次,促进区域在市场经济条件下开展竞争和发展竞争优势。     

Food quality in domestic markets of developing economies: a comparative study of two countries

Food quality has become an important determinant of success in global food trade and growers for international markets have to continuously adjust to buyers’ requirements. It is, however, not clear to what extent there is a demand for food quality—and how much buyers are willing to pay for it—in domestic food markets of developing economies. Based on unique comparable price and trader data in a poor country in Africa (Madagascar) and an emerging economy in Asia (India), we compare food quality and quality's pricing. We find significantly better quality and higher quality premiums (using revealed as well as stated preference methods) in India than in Madagascar. These findings are consistent with a simple theoretical model, solely based on average income gaps between the two countries.     

The impact of coffee price changes on rural households in Uganda

Employing household survey data covering the periods 1992–1993, 1995–1996, and 1999–2000, this article shows for the case of Uganda that a coffee market liberalization followed by a price boom was associated with substantial reductions in poverty, which could even be sustained when prices went down again. Coffee is not planted by the richest farmers and the gains from higher coffee prices accrued to poorer and richer coffee farmers alike. Nor were poorer farmers hurt disproportionately when prices fell. In addition, we find strong spillovers from coffee production to other agriculture, which tends to favor the poor, and to nonagricultural activities. These multiplier effects are concentrated in coffee regions. In an economic environment characterized by a booming agricultural sector, coffee farmers were able to accommodate the negative price shock, in particular through agricultural diversification. General agricultural growth also cushioned possible negative multiplier effects in coffee regions. Overall, the case of coffee in Uganda thus lends support to the view that agricultural trade liberalization is beneficial for the poor.     

我国区域海洋经济技术效率实证研究

本文利用沿海省市海洋GDP面板数据,运用随机前沿分析方法SFA,对我国区域海洋经济的技术效率进行了实证分析。研究发现:1998~2008年间沿海各区域海洋经济技术效率都呈上升趋势,但仍存在较大的提高空间;区域间技术效率差异与区域间海洋经济发展水平的差距相一致;上海、广东的技术效率水平较高,在地区发展中处于核心地位。根据研究结论,本文认为技术效率水平的差距成为导致区域海洋经济发展差异的重要原因之一,进而建议各地区加大海洋科研投入,提高海洋经济技术效率并充分发挥核心区域的技术辐射效应。研究的结论和建议对我国区域海洋经济的质量提升和协调发展具有一定的参考和借鉴意义。     

The road from Doha to Hong Kong in the WTO agricultural negotiations: a developing country perspective

Developing countries have both offensive and defensive interestsin the Doha Round of WTO trade negotiations. This paper discussesthe extent to which these interests have been addressed in theJuly 2004 Framework Agreement and in the subsequent negotiations.Many of the key demands of developing countries appear to havebeen accepted in principle in the Agreement, but the lack ofspecific details on how most of these principles will be operationalisedmakes it hard to evaluate their real significance. Progressis needed on the development dimension of the negotiations ifthe Hong Kong Ministerial Council meeting is to succeed.