The Economic Impact of a Foot‐and‐Mouth Disease Outbreak for Ontario's Beef Sector

Biosecurity is an increasingly prominent concern to the Canadian agri‐food sector given heightened public awareness of animal welfare and the continued importance of trade. Due to the potential for large‐scale animal depopulation and uncertain trade flow restrictions, the economic costs and animal welfare implications of disease outbreaks have prompted efforts to control their spread within and across trade boundaries. We build a partial equilibrium model of the beef supply chain in Ontario to examine the welfare impacts of a foot‐and‐mouth disease outbreak inside and outside the province. Somewhat surprisingly, economic impacts for Ontario are not dramatically different between an outbreak within the province versus an outbreak in western Canada: losses total $245 and $217 million, respectively. When the outbreak occurs outside Ontario and provincial zoning is recognized, losses total only $93 million. Restrictions on international and, inter‐ and intra‐provincial movement of livestock and beef products are the main driver of losses. A strength of our model is that we are able to disaggregate these impacts across the various market participants (i.e., producers, processors, retailers, consumers). Retailers and consumers incur little to no losses as imports from the United States easily fill shortages in supply. Production losses from livestock movement restrictions and depopulation are partially offset by higher prices, while processors bear the brunt of the losses due to reduced supply and higher livestock prices. La biosécurité revêt de plus en plus d'importance dans le secteur agroalimentaire canadien en raison de la sensibilisation accrue du public au bien‐être animal et de l'importance soutenue du commerce. Compte tenu de l’éventualité d'un dépeuplement animal à grande échelle et de mesures pouvant restreindre le flux des échanges commerciaux, le coût économique des éclosions de maladies et leurs répercussions sur le bien‐être animal ont stimulé les efforts afin de maîtriser leur propagation tant à l'intérieur qu’à l'extérieur des frontières commerciales. Dans la présente étude, nous avons élaboré un modèle d’équilibre partiel de la chaîne d'approvisionnement du b?uf en Ontario afin d'examiner les répercussions d'une éclosion de fièvre aphteuse à l'intérieur et à l'extérieur de la province. Étonnamment, que l’éclosion survienne en Ontario ou dans l'Ouest canadien, l'impact économique pour l'Ontario ne diffère pas considérablement : les pertes totales étant de 293 millions de dollars (M$) et de 267 M$ respectivement. Lorsque l’éclosion survient à l'extérieur de l'Ontario et que les zones de contrôle provinciales sont déterminées, les pertes totales s’élèvent à 27 M$ seulement. Les restrictions concernant le déplacement du bétail et des produits de b?uf entre pays, entre provinces et à l'intérieur d'une même province constituent les principaux facteurs entrainant des pertes. L'une des forces de notre modèle tient au fait que nous avons été en mesure de désagréger les impacts entre les différents acteurs dans le marché (producteurs, transformateurs, détaillants et consommateurs). Les détaillants et les consommateurs subissent peu ou pas de pertes étant donné que les importations en provenance des États‐Unis comblent facilement les pénuries de l'offre. Du côté des producteurs, les pertes causées par le déplacement et le dépeuplement du bétail sont en partie contrebalancées par des prix élevés, tandis que les transformateurs essuient les pertes les plus lourdes en raison d'une diminution de l'offre et du prix du bétail élevé.     

Short-term and long-term interest rates in a monetary model of a small open economy

This paper analyzes the effects of both anticipated and unanticipated monetary and fiscal disturbances on the dynamic behavior of a monetary model of a small open economy. It focuses on the adjustment of the short-term and long-term interest rates and the divergence of their transitional paths, particularly in anticipation of these disturbances. The analysis demonstrates how anticipation of a future policy change can generate perverse short-run behavior. The essential reason for the divergence between the short and long rates is that the latter is dominated by long-term expectations, while the former is primarily determined by current influences.     

Lemon laws in the United States: More hype than help?

Lemon laws are a recent phenomenon in the United States. Over thirty states have passed such laws since 1982 to give purchasers a refund/replacement remedy for a defective new motor vehicle. Prior to the passage of lemon laws, existing law provided little hope of consumer redress in this situation. This article reviews the various characteristics found in United States lemon laws and offers criticism in the areas of third-party dispute resolution mechanisms, objective quantification of what constitutes a lemon, and the refund/replacement remedy.     

Organizational performance and managerial turnover

Involuntary and voluntary managerial job‐termination hazard functions are estimated for English professional soccer for the period 1972–1997. A novel feature is the use of match‐level data, which reveals aspects of the hazard otherwise concealed by estimation using annual data. Short‐term fluctuations in performance strongly influence the involuntary termination hazard. The latter is also heavily dependent on the team's current league position relative to its position when the manager took charge, and on the win ratio over the entire spell. Managerial human capital attributes are found to have a greater influence on the voluntary rather than on the involuntary termination hazard. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Service-dominant logic — a guiding framework for inbound marketing

With the rise of a network economy, customers are part of an extended enterprise and co-producers of the firm’s marketing. Enterprises need to learn not to fear it but embrace it as a healthy part of a highly networked market economy. Inbound marketing is made more effective, efficient and whole when your customers are viewed as a partner to be “marketing with” or “co-creators of value”, which is the essence of service-dominant logic.     

The Economic Impact of the Small Business Administration's Intervention in the Small Firm Credit Market: A Review of the Research Literature*

The guaranteed lending programs of the Small Business Administration (SBA) are large and growing rapidly. The SBA's fiscal year 2009 Performance Budget calls for $28 billion in guaranteed loans for small businesses—a new record for the agency. Some critics of SBA programs suggest they do not help small businesses or overall economic performance. Other critics suggest that these programs unfairly benefit the financial institutions that participate in SBA's guaranteed lending programs. Whereas very little serious empirical evidence exists on whether the net economic impact of the SBA's guaranteed lending programs is positive or negative, a few recent studies provide some insight into the question. In general, they suggest a small positive impact of the SBA's programs on economic performance. However, the results are very tentative and further research is needed to declare a more definitive position. We provide a general overview of the SBA's guaranteed lending programs and summarize the results of these studies.     

Consumer‐generated media and product labelling: designed in California,assembled in China

Product country‐of‐origin labelling is an important extrinsic cue for consumers about a product's attributes. In a globalized world where products components and parts originate from multiple countries, companies have resorted to inventive country‐of‐origin labelling. The objective then of this paper is to better understand consumers' evaluation of products that have inventive country‐of‐origin labelling (i.e. Designed in California, Assembled in China). Exploratory qualitative data were collected from consumer‐generated media (36 weblogs) using Nielsen's Research BlogPulse tool. A grounded theory analysis revealed that four key themes emerged from the data that related to confusion about the labelling strategy, strong symbolic and emotional ties to country‐of‐origin, and the importance of country‐of‐origin as a quality signal.     

Impacts of Policy Reforms on the Supply of Mexican Labor to U.S. Farms: New Evidence from Mexico

The availability of immigrant farm-workers from Mexico is a critical factor affecting the U.S. fresh fruit and vegetable sector. This paper uses retrospective panel data from rural Mexico to examine the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Immigration Reform and Control Act on the supply of migrant labor to the United States. We find that, in contrast to expectations, both policies were associated with an increase in migration to U.S. farm jobs from rural Mexico.     

Government spending and the budget deficit

The business community of Canada manifests questionable moral and ethical standards in its criticism of government spending, since it itself bears considerable responsibility for the increase in government spending and budget deficits. The contradiction arises from the failure of the business community to recognize the liberalization of society at large and the associated social responsibility for the well-being of its citizens; a well-being manifested in income maintenance programmes, in access to education and training, in health care, and others. The failure to recognize such expectations is manifested in its failure to provide adequately for the retirement of its employees, for the health care of its employees, for laid-off and seperated employees, thereby shifting the burden to government. Further, it has failed to assume responsibility for the training and retraining of the workers it employs, including high-level workers trained specifically to its purposes in business schools. While expecting government to bear full financial responsibility for income maintenance, health, education and training, the business community makes every effort to deny government the revenues it needs to meet its obligations. The avoidance of tax payments stands high amongst business objectives, manifested in the employment of highly paid accountants and tax lawyers specifically for the purpose. Finally, in their criticism of government spending, business spokesmen deliberately fail to distinguish between consumption spending and capital investment spending, notwithstanding the significant contribution to the production infrastructure of the economy of government investment expenditures. If the capital expenditures were to be taken out of the government's budget, the deficit will decrease substantially. Professor of Economics and Head of the Department of Economics at The University of Calgary. Formerly Dean of the Faculty of Business at The University of Calgary, and Associate Director of the Human Resources Research Council of Alberta. In his 30 year academic career, he has taught and carried out research in the fields of economic development, employment policy, public finance, the financing of post-secondary education, and the economics of technology. He has published seven books, the latest of which is Women at Work: Discrimination and Response (1989), and numerous reports, articles and papers.