Farm policies and added sugars in US diets

We examine how US farm policies for sweetener crops have affected the consumption and composition of sweeteners in the US diet. R&D expenditures have lowered the unit cost of commodities used in sweeteners, but have generated more technical progress in corn than in sugar crops, increasing use of corn in food production, ceteris paribus. Commodity programs have raised the price of sugar and decreased the price of corn. Thus, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) became an inexpensive substitute for sugar in food from 1970 on. However, the effect of policy on ingredient prices has become less important over time. Today the farm value share in sweetened food is below 5% and HFCS is a specialized input in many food items, with limited substitution possibilities. The current link between US sweetener consumption and farm policy is weak. Recent evidence from other high-income countries shows little relationship between sweetener consumption and sugar policies.     

Global restrictions on the parameters of the CDES indirect utility function

This paper extends the analytical and empirical application of the basic indirect utility function of Houthakker–Hanoch—called the CDES specification (constant differences of elasticities of substitution). The non-homothetic CDES preferences are the natural parametric extension on the global domain of the homothetic CES preferences with many commodities, and CDES can conveniently be used in specifying CGE multisector models with a demand side satisfying observable Engel curve patterns. Moreover, all Marshallian own-price elasticities are no longer restricted to exceed one, and positive and negative cross-price effects are allowed for in empirical demand analyses. Explicit calculations of the Allen elasticities of substitution are instrumental in demonstrating the economic implications of the parameters of indirect utility functions with global regularity properties and flexibility of the derived demand systems.