Bioenergy and global land-use change

This is the first article that econometrically estimates the global land-use change impact of bioenergy. Applying time-series analytical mechanisms to fuel, biofuel and agricultural commodity prices and production, we estimate the long-run relationship between energy prices, bioenergy production and the global land-use change. Our results suggest that rising energy prices and bioenergy production significantly contribute to the global land-use change both through the direct and indirect land-use change impact. Globally, the total agricultural area yearly increases by 35 578.1 thousand ha due to increasing oil price, and by 12 125.1 thousand ha due to increasing biofuel production, which corresponds to 0.73% and 0.25% of the total worldwide agricultural area, respectively. Soya land-use change and wheat land-use change have the highest elasticities with respect to both oil price and biofuel production. In contrast, nonbiomass crops (grassland and rice) have negative land-use change elasticities. Region-specific results suggest that South America faces the largest yearly total land-use change associated with oil price increase (+10 600.7 thousand ha), whereas Asia (+8918.6 thousand ha), South America (+4024.9 thousand ha) and North America (+1311.5 thousand ha) have the largest yearly total land-use change associated with increase in biofuel production.     

Job creation and job destruction in EU agriculture

This is the first paper to study job creation and destruction in EU agriculture. We disaggregate gross employment patterns and net job flows into detailed intra-sectoral labour adjustment dynamics based on a unique EU-wide farm level panel dataset for 1990–2005. We find that: (1) job creation and destruction rates in EU agriculture are comparable to other sectors; (2) there is some evidence of ongoing substitution of family labour for hired labour; (3) there are important differences in job creation and destruction rates between different Member States; (4) these differences can be attributed to structural differences across countries, sectors and farm types; (5) time variation of job reallocation fluctuates countercyclically; and (6) idiosyncratic effects are the main driver of time variance in job reallocation.     

Does Economic Integration Affect the Structure of Industries? Empirical Evidence from the CEE

In this paper we study the impacts of regional integration on the structure of industries in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) transition economies. Our empirical analysis is based on the economic geography framework, which is able to predict not only the industry location after integration, but also to capture other general equilibrium effects, such as transition to market economy, which turn out to be highly significant in the CEE. Our empirical results complement previous findings that industry location is strongly related to economic integration. We also find that CEE integration of the Council on Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) has distorted the industry location pattern predicted by the underlying economic geography theory. These distortions are higher in those regions that were more integrated in the CMEA. Our ex-ante simulation results suggest a convergence in regional specialisation after CEE integration with the EU.     

Structural Estimation of Variety Gains from Trade Integration in Asia

This article studies the variety gains of trade integration in Asia. Adopting a heterogeneous firm model of trade of monopolistic competition allowed us to estimate not only the welfare gains because of country specialisation, but also the variety gains arising from trade integration. The underlying structural parameters were estimated econometrically, based on a large panel of firm‐level data for the Asian economies (ORIANA). Our empirical findings suggest that, when relaxing the assumption of firm homogeneity and accounting for export market entry costs, the gains from trade integration are higher than in conventional models with representative firms.