The future of food demand: understanding differences in global economic models

Understanding the capacity of agricultural systems to feed the world population under climate change requires projecting future food demand. This article reviews demand modeling approaches from 10 global economic models participating in the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP). We compare food demand projections in 2050 for various regions and agricultural products under harmonized scenarios of socioeconomic development, climate change, and bioenergy expansion. In the reference scenario (SSP2), food demand increases by 59–98% between 2005 and 2050, slightly higher than the most recent FAO projection of 54% from 2005/2007. The range of results is large, in particular for animal calories (between 61% and 144%), caused by differences in demand systems specifications, and in income and price elasticities. The results are more sensitive to socioeconomic assumptions than to climate change or bioenergy scenarios. When considering a world with higher population and lower economic growth (SSP3), consumption per capita drops on average by 9% for crops and 18% for livestock. The maximum effect of climate change on calorie availability is ?6% at the global level, and the effect of biofuel production on calorie availability is even smaller.     

International entrepreneurship: a bibliometric overview

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the academic research on International Entrepreneurship (IE). To accomplish this, an exhaustive bibliometric analysis was carried out, involving a bibliometric performance analysis and a graphic mapping of the references in this field. Our analysis focuses on journals, papers, authors, institutions and countries. To perform the performance analysis, the work uses a series of bibliometric indicators such as h-index, productivity and citations. Furthermore, the VOS viewer to graphically map the bibliographic material is used. The graphical analysis uses co-citation, bibliographic coupling and co-occurrence of keywords. The results of both analyzes are consistent among them, and show that the USA is the most influential country in IE research as it houses the main authors and institutions in this research field. Moreover, is observed and expected the continued growth of the field globally. Our research plays an informative and complementary role as it presents most of the key aspects in International Entrepreneurship research.

     

The welfare effects of free trade agreements in quantitative trade models: A comparison of studies about Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

We compare different methodological approaches to predicting the welfare effects of trade policy experiments. We focus on studies that estimate the economic effects of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Methodologically, the studies can be divided into those employing computable general equilibrium (CGE) models and structural gravity (SG) models. We compare and critically discuss differences in the estimated trade cost reductions and in the economic models employed, and how these can explain the relatively wide range of economic effects found in the different TTIP studies. We conclude that reasonable estimates of the welfare effects for the TTIP partners are between 0.5% and 2%.     

Multi-activity contests

In many contests, players can influence their chances of winning through multiple activities or “arms”. We develop a model of multi-armed contests and axiomatize its contest success function. We then analyze the outcomes of the multi-armed contest and the effects of allowing or restricting arms. Restricting an arm increases total effort directed to other arms if and only if restricting the arm balances the contest. Restricting an arm tends to reduce rent dissipation because it reduces the discriminatory power of the contest. But it also tends to increase rent dissipation if it balances the contest. Less rent is dissipated if an arm is restricted as long as no player is excessively stronger than the other with that arm. If players are sufficiently symmetric in an arm, both players are better off if that arm is restricted. Nevertheless, players cannot agree to restrict the arm if their costs of using the arm are sufficiently low.     

Some theorems on the existence of competitive equilibrium

The purpose of this paper is to point out a relationship between theorems on the existence of competitive equilibrium in economies with externalities, and recent results (pioneered by A. Mas-Colell) on the existence of equilibrium for economies in which consumer preferences are neither complete nor transitive. This observation leads both to a substantial strengthening of the theorem on the existence of equilibrium with externalities, and at the same time to a revealing perspective on the Mas-Colell theorem.