Vertical price transmission in timber and lumber markets

Timber and lumber markets are linked and integrated through prices at several stages along timber supply chain. In this study, the degree of vertical integration and the presence of asymmetric price transmission are investigated for sawtimber and lumber products in the southern and western United States. The data utilized are quarterly stumpage price, delivered timber price, and lumber price of softwood between 1977 and 2011. Linear and threshold cointegration models are used for long-term price analyses, and symmetric and asymmetric error correction models are used for short-term price analyses. The integration in the early stage (i.e., stumpage/delivered timber price pair) is found to be stronger than that in the latter stage (i.e., delivered/lumber price pair). The South shows slightly stronger market cointegration than the West. Asymmetric price transmission is found along the timber supply chain. In the long term, prices are more responsive when the price margin is increased than decreased.     

Measuring producer welfare under output price uncertainty and risk non-neutrality

Procedures to measure the producer welfare effects of changes in an output price distribution under uncertainty are reviewed. Theory and numerical integration methods are combined to show how for any form of Marshallian risk-responsive supply, compensating variation of a change in higher moments of an output price distribution can be derived numerically. The numerical procedure enables measurement of producer welfare effects in the many circumstances in which risk and uncertainty are important elements. The practical ease and potential usefulness of the procedure is illustrated by measuring the producer welfare effects of USA rice policy.     

Business risk management programs under review

The Canadian federal, provincial, and territorial governments recently enacted a new 5-year agricultural policy framework, the Canadian Agricultural Partnership. While the framework contained few changes to existing policies, the governments also committed to a full review of Canadian business risk management (BRM) programs. In this article, I provide an overview of the existing suite of BRM programs and summarize the BRM program review. I conclude by making recommendations for future policy frameworks.     

Finding optimal price risk management instruments: the case of the Spanish potato sector

This article offers a comprehensive analysis of the problem of choosing between alternative market risk management instruments. We model farmers' behavior to optimize the certainty equivalent, formulated by a mean–variance model, by combining instruments with and without basis risk. Results are expressed as the demands for hedging with futures, forward contracts and insurance. Theoretical results are applied to a selection of Spanish producers of fresh potatoes, a sector that is exposed to significant market risks. Amsterdam's Euronext provides potato futures prices, and the recently launched revenue insurance in Spain provides the example for price insurance. Three conclusions summarize the article's main findings. First, we show that Spanish potato revenue insurance subsidies are a factor that determines the instrument rankings and choice. Second, the efficiency of insurance subsidies is generally low. Finally, the Amsterdam potato futures market does not provide a cost‐effective means to manage price risks for Spanish fresh potato growers.     

Urban water management: optimal price and investment policy under climate variability*

Australian urban water utilities face a significant challenge in designing appropriate demand management and supply augmentation policies in the presence of significant water scarcity and climate variability. This article considers the design of optimal demand management and supply augmentation policies for urban water. In particular, scarcity pricing is considered as a potential alternative to the predominant demand management policy of water restrictions. A stochastic dynamic programming model of an urban water market is developed based on data from the ACT region. Given a specification of the demand and supply for urban water state dependent optimal price and investment policies are estimated. The results illustrate how the optimal urban water price varies inversely with the prevailing storage level and how the optimal timing of investment differs significantly between rain dependent and rain independent augmentation options.     

Non-parametric estimation of decision makers' risk aversion

A new non‐parametric method to estimate a decision maker's coefficient of absolute risk aversion from observed economic behaviour is explained. The method uses the expected value‐variance (E‐V) framework and quadratic programming. An empirical illustration is given using Norwegian farm‐level data.     

Farm-gate tomato price negotiations under asymmetric information

This article provides an empirical analysis of farm‐gate tomato price negotiations under asymmetric information. Regression models are estimated to analyze when and by how much sellers stick to their initial ask prices and what explains the variation in the initial ask–offer price spread. Detailed information on 66 farm‐gate tomato transactions and daily tomato wholesale price data from the central vegetable market in Addis Ababa are used for the analysis. Estimation results show that farmers are less committed to their initial ask price when the buyer speaks out the transaction price first, when their quality perceptions of the tomatoes being transacted differ from those of the buyers, and when their tomato farm is at a large distance from the main road. Sellers stick more to their initial ask price when they know that the central market price is high. The initial ask–offer price spread decreases when the buyer speaks out the initial negotiation price first, but increases in the difference in quality perception between buyer and seller, and in the quantity of tomatoes being transacted.     

浅议企业风险与风险管理

企业在市场经济活动中要面临来自各方面的风险,尤其是加入WTO后短暂的过渡期内,企业面临的挑战大于机遇,即由相对稳定的国内市场转向国际的全球市场。种种经营风险直接威胁着企业的生存与发展。针对种种风险,提出严格按照风险管理程序加强企业风险分析和风险管理,确定风险分析的财务定位,提高财务管理水平,增强财务管理对风险的抗衡,合理规避风险。     

排污权交易市场下的厂商最优决策

针对水污染物排放权交易市场中排污权的转让问题,分别构建了高污染处理成本厂商和低污染处理成本厂商在行业间排污权转让的最优决策模型,以及同行业内的双寡头厂商之间的排污权转让的博弈模型,从而求得排污权的最优定价,以及两种转让方式下厂商的最优生产量以及最佳排污权交易量,为排污权交易市场下厂商的最优决策提供参考依据。     

Downside risk in reservoir management

Downside risk, which refers to deviations below a threshold, is often important in water management decisions, especially in areas with large and skewed variations in precipitation patterns. In this paper, we present a model for a reservoir manager who is downside risk averse and who performs a dynamic allocation of irrigation water, taking into account the negative effects of droughts on farm profits and different environmental constraints. We analyse the water stock, flows and agricultural profits for alternative environmental restrictions and thresholds for irrigation levels and find that stricter environmental constraints increase total water supply and carryover stock, while higher penalty thresholds lead to their overall decrease. Furthermore, increasing penalty thresholds leads to a higher emphasis on avoiding shortages, at the expense of lower average profits.     

Improving recommendations resulting from on-farm research: agroforestry,risk, profitability and vulnerability in southern Malawi

Leguminous agroforestry (AF) species have been investigated and promoted in Malawi as a means to improve soil quality and maize (Zea mays) yields. Our objective was to determine whether AF systems' recommendations that solely consider impacts on average maize yields differ from those that include an analysis of production risk, profitability among different wealth groups and socioeconomic vulnerability. Employing participatory quantitative and qualitative on-farm research techniques, we investigated three AF-based maize/legume relay-cropping practices in southern Malawi. The perennial legumes included Sesbania sesban, Tephrosia vogelii and Cajanus cajan (pigeonpea). We found that AF species recommendations did diverge from those based solely on maximizing maize yields when incorporating risk, profitability and socioeconomic vulnerability as additional variables. For instance, the highest yielding system (the S. sesban/maize relay crop) was never recommended for the most vulnerable farmers based on the vulnerability analysis, and the cropping systems were often more profitable for the least vulnerable farmers than they were for the most vulnerable farmers. Cropping system recommendations based solely on obtaining the highest average maize yields would also have generally overlooked the economic and nutritional importance of pigeonpea, and the difficulty for the most vulnerable farmers to profit from fertilizers, potentially placing these farmers at greater risk.     

城市水务市场化背景下我国城市水价分析

在以地理学的视角分析城市居民用水水价总体水平的基础上,分别对我国各类城市的自来水价格、水资源费、污水处理费作了比较分析,论证了城市的4项基本地理特征(城市规模、经济发展水平、居民收入水平、水资源水平)与城市水价之间的关系及对城市水务市场化的影响,最后对我国未来城市水务市场化的水价改革进行了设想,提出了阶梯式水价方案。     

Optimal weed control under static and dynamic decision rules

Dynamic and static weed control decision rules are derived analytically and compared. The dynamic rule leads to increased farm profits and greater control of weeds and weed seeds than the static rule, while total herbicide use is unchanged. The magnitude of the differences is estimated for atrazine control of foxtail and cocklebur in corn production. Incorporating weed dynamics into weed control strategies increases farm profits between 1.0 and 1.4%.     

PPP模式下水利工程项目物有所值决策评价

在物有所值(VFM)理论分析的基础上,通过相关研究,比较不同国家VFM决策评价体系,并结合水利工程项目的特点,分析我国PPP模式下水利工程项目VFM决策评价流程。从定性和定量分析两个角度,研究PPP模式下水利工程项目VFM决策评价方法,为有效构建并完善PPP模式下水利工程项目的 VFM决策评价体系提供依据。