Agricultural price transmission across space and commodities during price bubbles

This article investigates agricultural price transmission during price bubbles. The empirical approach concerns the horizontal transmission of cereal prices both across different market places and across different commodities. The trade policy intervention put forward to mitigate the impact of price exuberance is considered. The analysis is performed using Italian and international weekly spot (cash) price data over years 2006–2010, a period of generalized turbulence of agricultural markets. Firstly, the properties of price time series are explored; then, interdependence across prices is specified and estimated by adopting appropriate cointegration techniques. Results suggest that the bubble had only a slight impact on the price spread and the temporary trade‐policy measure, when effective, has limited this impact.     

Designing and evaluating sustainable development pathways for semi‐subsistence crop–livestock systems: lessons from Kenya

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in African agriculture requires a better understanding why high levels of poverty and resource degradation persist in African agriculture despite decades of policy interventions and development projects. In this article, we hypothesize that policies need to account for the key features of the semi‐subsistence crop–livestock systems (CLS) in the region to become effective. The semi‐subsistence CLS are characterized by a high degree of biophysical and economic heterogeneity and a complex, diversified production system involving a combination of subsistence and cash crops with livestock. We investigated the potential for interventions proposed by the Government of Kenya to meet the SDGs by 2030. The analysis uses an integrated modeling approach designed to deal with the key features of these systems. A strategy that stimulates rural development, increases farm size to a sustainable level, and reduces distortions and inefficiencies in input and output markets could lead to a sustainable development pathway and achieve the SDGs for rural households dependent on CLS.     

How Effective are WTO Disciplines on Domestic Support and Market Access for Agriculture?

A new round of trade negotiations through the World Trade Organization (WTO) was launched in 2001. One of the major aims of the Doha Development Round is to reduce agricultural protection and impose greater discipline on domestic agricultural subsidies, particularly those that are the most trade distorting. In this article, we examine whether the proposed WTO modalities for agriculture will actually achieve this aim in Norway, which ranks among the top providers of government assistance for agriculture. Norway has a complex system of farm subsidies buttressed by substantial import protection. The extent to which its agricultural support policies will have to change in response to new WTO disciplines provides an important indication of how successful these are likely to be. We find that Norway will probably be able to sustain its current agricultural activity and production levels while staying within the new WTO rules. Following recent practice in some other WTO members, Norway will be able to reduce its notified support without making real changes in some of its programmes. However, there will have to be a shift from market price support, which is paid for by consumers through higher food prices, to budgetary support paid by taxpayers. This could generate increased domestic pressure for policy reform.     

Immigrant business enterprises: A classification framework conceptualization and test

This article proposes the Immigrant Business Enterprises Classification Framework to organize immigrant‐owned businesses into categories associated with different levels of business integration into a host country's mainstream business community. The article applies the framework and reports the findings of structured face‐to‐face interviews with 199 Hispanic business enterprises (HBEs) in Indianapolis. The authors find Hispanic‐owned businesses hold different characteristics depending upon the integration category in which they are classified; the findings suggest that to support immigrant entrepreneurship, governments, business development organizations, and researchers should address category‐specific challenges, opportunities, and needs. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Convergence and divergence in regional agricultural productivity growth: evidence from Italian regions, 1951–2002

This article analyzes long‐term agricultural Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth at regional level by testing its time‐series properties and identifying factors associated with divergence as opposed to convergence. The empirical application concerns Italian regions over the 1951–2002 time period. TFP growth decomposition ultimately attributes the observed productivity growth performance to these contrasting (convergence vs. divergence) forces. We find that technological spillovers are the key convergence force regardless of how the spillover effects are computed. At the same time, forces favoring convergence are almost offset by divergence forces (mainly scale or learning effects). This decomposition may explain the persistence of TFP growth rate differences in Italian agriculture, and could be applicable elsewhere.     

Investment opportunities and R&D investments in family and nonfamily firms

The firm’s investment opportunity set (IOS) reflects the prospective growth opportunities related to physical and human capital investments. IOSs are largely firm specific, embedded in assets-in-place, or generated by experience curves, learning-by-doing, and other similar phenomena. However, the value of an IOS can be destroyed if a firm does not exercise the option to invest. In this study, we theorize that a firm’s ability to invest in R&D is conditional on the availability of a favorable IOS. We test our theoretical propositions in the European business environment using a sample of large publicly traded firms with concentrated ownership. Our findings support the notion that the IOS is a significant determinant of corporate R&D investments, but the magnitude of this effect depends on the identity of the ultimate owner. Specifically, the sensitivity of R&D investments of family- and state-owned corporations is higher to favorable IOS than that of widely held corporations, suggesting these firms are more responsive to favorable IOS than others. By introducing the IOS dimension, our results have interesting implications for both theory and practice.     

Building the Knowledge Stock: Lags,Depreciation, and Uncertainty in R&D Investment and Link with Productivity Growth

The search for an appropriate methodology to investigate the relation between R&D investment, knowledge stock and productivity growth is the main purpose of the paper. In analogy with physical assets, we present a model of knowledge capital formation which allows the calculation of the relevant user cost, as well. The proposed model accumulates R&D investment based on a stochastic gestation lag and a geometric depreciation of the stock. The basic parameters underlying the lag structure differ according to the types of research expenditure. The approach is applied to public R&D investment in Italian agriculture; the results provide interesting information about the economic structure of public research effort in Italian agriculture and plausible estimates of its internal rate of return.     

Monotone dependence in graphical models for multivariate Markov chains

We show that a deeper insight into the relations among marginal processes of a multivariate Markov chain can be gained by testing hypotheses of Granger noncausality, contemporaneous independence and monotone dependence. Granger noncausality and contemporaneous independence conditions are read off a mixed graph, and the dependence of an univariate component of the chain on its parents—according to the graph terminology—is described in terms of stochastic dominance criteria. The examined hypotheses are proven to be equivalent to equality and inequality constraints on some parameters of a multivariate logistic model for the transition probabilities. The introduced hypotheses are tested on real categorical time series.     

The Role of Beta and Size in the Cross-Section of European Stock Returns

This paper examines the ability of beta and size to explain cross-sectional variation in average returns in 12 European countries. We find that average stock returns are positively related to beta and negatively related to firm size. The beta premium is in part due to the fact that high beta countries outperform low beta countries. Within countries high beta stocks outperform low beta stocks only in January, not in other months. We reject the hypothesis that differences in average returns on size- and beta-sorted portfolios can be explained by market risk and exposure to the excess return of small over large stocks (SMB). Consistent with recent US evidence, we find that after controlling for size, there is no association between average returns and exposure to SMB.     

Single or double bounded contingent valuation? A Bayesian test

This paper evaluates the performance of asymptotic approximations of the Bayes factor to appraise the relative likelihoods of the bivariate and the restricted double bounded models for contingent valuation. The performance of the Bayes factor test is studied by Monte Carlo simulation showing that it correctly chooses the bivariate model when appropriate, but tends to over predict the double bounded model when the correlation coefficient is not estimated accurately. However, the quadratic error in estimating willingness to pay is reduced if the model preferred by the test is chosen. In addition, we consider the effect of averaging the estimates of WTP from both models, weighting each model with its posterior probability. The results show that ‘model averaging’ across the competing hypothesis further reduces the squared error. The applications with two data sets on National Parks show that the test rejects the restricted double bounded hypotheses against the bivariate model.