Local impacts of a global crisis: Food price transmission,consumer welfare and poverty in Ghana

This paper takes a local perspective on global food price shocks by analyzing food price transmission between regional markets in Ghana. It also assesses the impacts of food price increases on various household groups. Taking the 2007–2008 global food crisis as an example, we show that prices for domestic grain products are highly correlated with world market prices. This is true both for products for which Ghana is highly import-dependent (e.g., rice) and the products for which Ghana is self-sufficient (e.g., maize). The econometric results also show that price transmission is high between regional producer markets and markets located in the country’s largest cities, and the distance between producer and consumer markets and the size of consumer markets matter in explaining the price transmission. The welfare analysis for households as consumers shows that the effect of world food prices appears relatively modest for the country as a whole due to relatively diverse consumption patterns within country. However, the national average hides important regional differences, both between regions and within different income groups. We find that the poorest of the poor—particularly those living in the urban areas—are hardest hit by high food prices. The negative effect of the food crisis is particularly strong in northern Ghana. The main explanations for this regional variation in the price effect is the different consumption patterns and much lower per capita income levels in the North of Ghana compared to other regions in the country.     

Buyer Market Power and Innovative Activities

This empirical paper deals with the effects of supplier and buyer market concentration on the innovative behavior of suppliers within the German automobile industry. The data set contains firms from all size classes and covers measures of innovation input as well as innovation output. It can be shown that (a) firms' innovation and R & D-employment intensity will decline (increase) in buyer concentrations if supplier markets are low (high) concentrated; (b) buyers' pressure on input prices reduces suppliers' innovation expenditures and their incentive to develop new products; (c) a small number of competitors in suppliers markets and a large stock of customers stimulates innovative behavior; (d) small and medium sized suppliers invest more in their innovative activities but have less probability of realizing innovations than larger firms; and (e) higher technological capabilities lead to higher innovation input and output.     

The Heterogeneous Effects of Trade Protection: A Study of US Antidumping Duties on Portland Cement

For many traded products, high transportation and trade costs can lead to regionally segmented markets, which affect both the pattern of trade and the impact of trade policy. This paper studies the imposition of antidumping duties in the cement industry and finds striking regional variation in their impact on domestic prices, sales and imports. Duties that were imposed on Japanese producers that were shipping cement to the US West-Coast coastal markets led to imperfect substitution to other imports, which allowed domestic prices and production to increase. Imperfect substitution also occurred following duties that were imposed on Mexican producers that were shipping cement to the US Gulf of Mexico coastal markets. But in the US Southwest border markets, the same duties had no impact on the domestic prices of cement. I link the variation in responses across regions to hysteresis that was due to high exit costs.     

The implications of economic efficiency for US telecommunications policy

Subsidizing local residence telecommunications service from toll services has produced large distortions in US state and interstate toll markets. While both the business and residence groups as a whole would benefit from lower toll prices and higher residence prices, the fact that toll usage is concentrated means that most residence subscribers would be made worse off. It is therefore politically difficult to implement efficient telecommunications pricing. However, this same concentration of toll usage makes it advantageous for large toll users to bypass the local network to escape the subsidy-laden carrier access charges. Such a bifurcation of the telecommunications network has the potential for making most residence subscribers even worse off than they would be under an efficiency- enhancing reduction in toll prices.     

Immigration and the Property Market: Evidence from England and Wales

This article investigates the link between immigration and property markets in England and Wales. Evidence from fixed effects and shift‐share–based instrumental variable regressions suggests that an increase in regional immigration, depending on the specification, either decreases prices at the lower end of the distribution up to the median or leaves them unchanged and has (almost) no effect on mean property prices or prices above the median. The evidence suggests that these findings can be explained through an interaction between the markets for rented and owned properties as well as through changes in the usage of housing space.     

The Ethiopian Commodity Exchange and spatial price dispersion

In this article, we study the impact of an institutional intervention on market efficiency in Ethiopia. More specifically, we analyze to what extent the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) in combination with regional warehouses have contributed to a reduction in price spreads between regional markets. Our hypothesis is that warehouses connected to the ECX reduce the dispersion between export prices and local retail prices in different coffee growing areas, as well as the dispersion between export prices and local retail prices in different coffee growing areas. By doing so, the ECX has the potential to improve the market efficiency. To identify the causal effect, we combine retail price data with information on the gradual rollout of warehouses connected to the ECX from 2007 to 2012. Our results suggest that, when two markets both have access to an operating warehouse, the average price spread is 0.86–1.78 ETB lower than it is for markets where at least one part lacks warehouse access. This is a substantial reduction considering that the average price spread over the full period is 3.33 ETB. The main results are robust to various econometric specifications, and our analysis thus suggests that local warehouses connected to the ECX have indeed improved market efficiency.     

Towards a differentiated modeling of origin effects in hedonic analysis: An application to auction prices of specialty coffee

Origin matters. This has been shown by numerous studies using either discrete choice or hedonic approaches to derive implicit prices for origin as a product attribute. In most of the hedonic studies, intercept dummies were introduced for specific regional origins and statistically significant coefficients of those variables were seen as an indication of either a superior or inferior reputation, compared to products from other origins. We argue that hedonic pricing models of this type may be too simple to detect the true origin effects if assessments of a product’s sensory quality are available and interact with prior beliefs about reputation. Based on a supply-and-demand framework to explain auction prices, a reduced-form hedonic pricing model is suggested that includes intercept- as well as slope-dummy effects of the regional origin. Because reputation and the objective product quality are particularly important for markets of differentiated, high-quality foods and beverages, we analyze electronic auction markets for specialty coffees. The findings for the Cup of Excellence data reveal that it is important to distinguish reputation, sensory quality, and their interaction as determinants of coffee auction prices, as well as varying origin impacts across market segments.     

Retail Mergers and Food Prices: Evidence from France

This paper analyzes the impact of a merger in the French supermarket industry on food prices. Using consumer panel data, we compare the changes in prices for merging and rival firms in affected and comparison markets. We use a novel definition of affected markets when some firms have a local pricing strategy and others a more centralized pricing strategy. We find that prices increase significantly following the merger, and that the merging firms lose market shares. For the rivals, the price increases are larger in local markets, in which concentration increased and differentiation changed after the merger.     

Hedging House Price Risk in China

The increasing risk associated with China's housing prices is globally recognized. However, hedging this risk is challenging because of a lack of financial derivatives on China's housing assets. We suggest that the short sale of futures contracts for construction raw materials, i.e., iron ore or/and steel, can act as useful tools to hedge the systematic risk of China's new home price. We first present evidence that there is a strong and stable correlation between changes in China's housing prices and global steel/iron ore prices. Using a hedging strategy model, we then show that, during the sample period between 2009 and 2015, 20.6% of the total unpredicted variance in Chinese housing prices can be hedged by shorting rebar and iron ore futures. We further examine this strategy with an event study based on the announcement of the “home‐purchase restriction” policy in April, 2010. The cumulative abnormal returns show that both steel and iron ore prices reacted significantly to this negative shock, and therefore the proposed strategy could substantially help investors offset losses in the housing market. We finally provide some evidences that this strategy can also help investors in specific regional housing markets, or the resale housing markets.     

Meat marketing in Burkina Faso after the devaluation of the FCFA: Insights into the functioning of informal market systems

The strategies that participants in informal African markets adopt in response to shocks have rarely been analysed, yet these can provide important insights into how such markets function. Policy advice often seeks to modernise trading practices within such markets so as to improve efficiency. However, efforts to improve efficiency could have undesirable consequences if the current functioning of the markets is inadequately understood. In Burkina Faso, the FCFA devaluation in 1994 led to increasing livestock exports and a subsequent meat shortage on the domestic market. Based on market statistics from Burkina Faso and household interviews, the study investigates the status of meat consumption before and up to four years after the devaluation. Results indicate that the price increase for cattle was only transmitted to consumers after a time lag. Meat is more frequently sold in little heaps than on a weight basis. Lower per-kg prices of smaller size heaps imply an income gain for poorer consumers. Butchers use all edible body parts in addition to the carcass (i.e. head, hoofs, intestines) to buffer price fluctuations and to cope with the consumers’ notion of a fixed nominal price. This suggests that butchers and their clients are embedded in networks of what [S. Plattner, 1989. Economic behavior in markets. In: Plattner S. (Ed.), Economic anthropology, Stanford, pp. 209–222.] called equilibrating economic relations, which are favoured by the perishable nature of meat. Selling live animals or meat by weight is often considered as a measure to increase transparency within informal markets. However, the introduction of formalized or standardized marketing measures alone, without lowering the transaction costs of other components of the value chain, risks undermining the equilibrating social relationships that play an important role particularly for the poorer market actors, and thereby disadvantaging vulnerable population groups.     

Dynamic oligopoly pricing: Evidence from the airline industry

We explore how pricing dynamics in the European airline industry vary with the competitive environment and with customer heterogeneity. We document three main findings. First, the rate at which prices increase towards the scheduled departure date is significantly reduced in more competitive markets. Second, the sensitivity of the intertemporal slope to competition increases in the heterogeneity of the customer base. Third, ex-ante predictable advance purchase discounts account for 83 percent of within-flight dispersion in prices and for 17 percent of cross-market variation in pricing dynamics.     

Are margins more procyclical in concentrated industries?

In a series of recent papers, Domowitz, Hubbard and Peterson (DHP) have explored the temporal behavior of price-cost margins in a panel of 284 four-digit SIC industries. This paper reexamines DHP's apparent finding of more procyclical margins in concentrated industries, concluding that it is not robust. The result appears to arise from long-run trend correlations between margin and demand levels, rather than from short-run cyclical effects. Consistent with DHP, prices are found to be stickier and unit costs more countercyclical in concentrated industries. However, (1) an omitted variables bias is uncovered which substantially reduces the estimated cyclical effect on costs, and (2) prices are found to be more flexible in low concentration, low-PCM industries than DHP estimate. With prices more responsive to growth in demand and a countercyclical effect on cost of substantially lower magnitude, margins are thus estimated to bemore procyclical in less concentrated industries. This finding explains the relative rise in low concentration margins in the sixties which, in turn, helps account for the declining significance of the cross-sectional concentration-margins relationship.I would like to acknowledge helpful comments from Roy Rotheim, and two anonymous reviewers.     

Stabilizing food markets in eastern and southern Africa

A major challenge for agricultural policy in Africa is how to address the market instability-related causes of low farm productivity and food insecurity. This paper highlights structural changes affecting the behavior of food markets in eastern and southern Africa and discusses their implications for the design of strategies to stabilize food prices. These changes include (1) an increasing trend in maize prices toward import parity levels, reflecting an emerging structural maize deficit in much of the region; (2) increasingly diversified food consumption patterns in both rural and urban areas; (3) highly concentrated marketed maize surplus, which have largely unrecognized implications for the magnitude of price risk faced by most farm households; and (4) the strategic interactions between private and public marketing actors leading in some cases to heightened market instability and food crises. In the prevailing dual market environment now characterizing most of the region, greater coordination, transparency, and consultation between private and public market actors is needed to achieve reasonable levels of food price stability and predictability.     

不动管柱水力喷射分段压裂工艺在川西水平井中的应用

通过将封隔器多层压裂的投球滑套技术引入到了水力喷射压裂工艺中,在国内外现有的常规水力喷射分段压裂技术基础上创造性地开发出了不动管柱滑套水力喷射分段压裂技术。该工艺结合了水力喷射技术和滑套多层压裂的优点,在不动管柱的情况下,不使用封隔器就能实现分层改造。根据该工艺的特点,对现场实施关键控制技术进行了优化,确保了工艺的成功应用。     

Oligopoly intermediation,relative rivalry and market conduct

We consider two firms that compete against each other jointly in upstream and downstream markets under two pricing games: Purchasing to stock (PTS), in which firms select input prices prior to setting consumer prices; and purchasing to order (PTO), in which firms sell forward contracts to consumers prior to selecting input prices. The antitrust implications of the model depend on the relative degree of oligopoly rivalry in the upstream and downstream markets. Firms strategically precommit to setting prices in the less rivalrous market, which serves to soften competition in the more rivalrous market, resulting in anticompetitive effects. Bertrand prices emerge in equilibrium when the markets are equally rivalrous, while Cournot outcomes arise with upstream monopsony or downstream monopoly markets. The slope of firm reaction functions depends on relative rivalry, a feature we use to derive testable hypotheses for antitrust analysis of a wide variety of industry practices.     

油品市场价格分析与测算

根据国家调整后的成品油定价机制 ,采用北美纽约市场以及欧洲鹿特丹市场汽柴油价格对新加坡市场原油与油品价格关系进行修正 ,对四大油品市场价格进行分析与测算。     

THE ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE MARATHON‐ASHLAND JOINT VENTURE: THE IMPORTANCE OF INDUSTRY SUPPLY SHOCKS AND VERTICAL MARKET STRUCTURE*

This study measures the effects of the Marathon/Ashland Petroleum (MAP) joint venture on rack and retail reformulated (RFG) gasoline prices in the four cities where both firms sold RFG before the joint venture. MAP was an early transaction in the recent era of petroleum mergers and resulted in large regional increases in concentration. While wholesale (rack) prices increased in the two cities experiencing the largest change in market structure in the year following the transaction, retail prices did not increase. Our results also highlight the importance of identifying the marginal source of supply in correctly identifying merger effects.     

A structural model on the impact of prediscovery licensing and research joint ventures on innovation and product market efficiency

Using a novel database on prediscovery licensing agreements (one type of R&D cooperation) as well as detailed firm-level and semiconductor market-specific information, we estimate the impact of prediscovery licensing agreements (PDLAs) on innovation and product market efficiency. Our results show that PDLAs reduce innovative activity in the semiconductor industry by 10 percent, or 4089 patents, throughout the 1989–1999 period. On the contrary, research joint ventures (a different type of R&D cooperation) increase innovative activity. Based on a structural model, we provide evidence that PDLAs increase production costs and semiconductor prices by 1 percent, which results in customers paying an additional $1.1 billion for semiconductors per year. Beyond the common concern that R&D cooperations facilitate coordination activities in product markets via price fixing, our study highlights that PDLAs can be used as an instrument to coordinate R&D activities, which can reduce innovation activity and increase costs and prices.     

当前国内外油气行业发展形势及展望

2012年上半年,石油需求低迷,供应充足,库存高企,供需从2011年同期的偏紧转为宽松;国际油价波动较大,一季度升至2008年金融危机后的最高水平,二季度大幅回落.天然气市场需求和产量小幅增长,供需保持平衡;北美、欧洲、亚太三大天然气区域市场价差扩大.全球油气并购活动持续低迷,北美非常规气并购市场迅速降温.国际大石油公司生产经营指标下滑.中国石油需求增速大幅回落,对外依存度再创新高;成品油价格前升后降,石油石化行业效益持续下滑;天然气消费快速增长,进口量大幅上升,进口气价倒挂严重.下半年,预期世界经济依然疲软.石油供需仍将宽松,油价略有回升,但将低于去年同期水平;天然气供需继续平衡,三大市场价差仍将维持.中国经济企稳,国内成品油需求有望平稳增长,但涨幅低于预期;天然气将保持消费量与产量、进口量齐增的态势.     

Housing Attributes Associated with Capital Gain

Housing units are heterogeneous goods. Rates of change in housing prices are typically modelled as if they arise from factors unrelated to the housing unit itself. For example, housing price increases in the latter part of the 1970s and early 1980s are argued to have arisen primarily from demographic factors and the differential effects of inflation on the effective rate of taxation on income from corporate capital and on owner-occupied housing. Cross-sectional variation in price inflation is not addressed. Consumers who purchased housing units are not indifferent to their attributes. To the extent that expectations vary within regional housing markets as a consequence of variation in housing attributes, standard linear hedonic price regression may generate biased estimates of implicit prices. This paper identifies sufficient conditions for the estimates of implicit prices in linear hedonic price regressions to be unbiased and generate unbiased estimates of implied price changes. Finally, this paper identifies living space (house size) as a significant attribute related positively to the increase in individual housing prices in a regional market.