Identifying Macroeconomic Linkages to U.S. Agricultural Trade Balance

This study explores the short-run and long-run relationships between the U.S. agricultural trade balance and domestic macroeconomic aggregates and agricultural variables. We use cointegration analysis and a vector error-correction model with quarterly data for 1981–2003. The results show that, in the long run, the exchange rate, agricultural price, and disposable income are weakly exogenous in the U.S. agricultural sector and have significant effects on the trade balance. The combined short-run dynamic effects of the exchange rate, agricultural price and production, and the disposable income jointly explain changes in the trade balance.
La présente étude porte sur les liens à court et à long terme entre la balance commerciale agricole des États-Unis, les agrégats macroéconomiques et les variables agricoles. Nous avons utilisé une analyse de cointégration et un modèle vectoriel à correction d'erreur comprenant des données trimestrielles de 1981 à 2003. Les résultats ont montré que, à long terme, le taux de change, les prix agricoles et le revenu disponible sont faiblement exogènes dans le secteur agricole des États-Unis et qu'ils ont des effets substantiels sur la balance commerciale. Les effets dynamiques à court terme combinés du taux de change, des prix et de la production agricoles ainsi que du revenu disponible expliquent les changements observés dans la balance commerciale.     

Pure Altruism,Consumer Behavior and Choice Modeling*

An important assumption underlying non‐market valuation is that it is not the environment but the human preference that is valued. This paper attempts to test whether individual consumer behavior is influenced by a purely altruistic motive, examining the attitude of hikers towards the hypothetical removal of the Muju ski resort from the Mount Togyu National Park in South Korea. Data were collected from samples of hikers and skiers who visited the national park. The respondents were forced to consider trade‐offs between the recovery of the lost environmental assets in the Muju ski resort area, skiers’ additional travel time, and willingness‐to‐pay amounts for the hypothetical environmental improvement. It was found that hikers did not take into account skiers’ disutility represented by additional travel time.     

A dynamic demand analysis of the United States air-passenger service

This study examines the short- and long-run effects of various determinants on the demand for US air passenger-services using the Johansen cointegration analysis and a vector error-correction (VEC) model. Results show that, in the long-run, airfare, disposable income and NASDAQ have significant effects on US air travel demand. The combined short-run dynamic effects of disposable income, NASDAQ, population and airfare jointly explain changes in air passenger-miles. Finally, we find that the 9/11 terrorist attacks drop air passenger demand by 5% during 2001:Q3-2002:Q2, which in turn pushes down the seat capacity by 4%. However, it has little impact on airfare.     

Asymmetric effects of oil price changes on the balance of trade: Evidence from selected African countries

The main new contribution of this study was to delve into the asymmetric impacts of changes in oil prices on the trade balance in the framework of six major African economies. To tackle this topic carefully, we employ three measures of external balances—oil, non‐oil and total trade balances, and assess the asymmetric response of the external balances of those six economies to oil price changes in the short and long run. Like most previous studies, we first assume the impacts of oil price fluctuations to be symmetric and employ the linear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method to explore the topic. We then separate oil price hikes from oil price plunges and implement the non‐linear ARDL method to reveal that the price of crude oil has a vital role to play in the trade balances for those six African economies. Further, there is evidence of significant asymmetric impacts of oil prices typically on the oil trade balance of Africa's top oil producing countries. For the non‐oil and total trade balances, in contrast, there is little evidence of the asymmetry of oil price changes.     

Do fluctuations in crude oil prices have symmetric or asymmetric effects on the real exchange rate? Empirical evidence from Indonesia

Current research on the oil price impacts on exchange rates typically relies on the assumption that fluctuations in crude oil prices have symmetric impacts on a country's real exchange rate. Thus, the contribution of the paper is to use the non‐linear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method of Shin, Yu, and Greenwood‐Nimmo (2014) and examine whether crude oil prices are asymmetrically passed on to the real exchange rate in the case of Indonesia. We uncover that oil price changes indeed asymmetrically affect the Indonesian rupiah in both the long and short run; i.e., the movement in the Indonesian rupiah appears to be more responsive to rising oil prices than to declining oil prices.     

The J-curve effect and the US–Canada forest products trade

This paper examines the dynamic effect of the US–Canada exchange rate on bilateral trade of forest products between the two countries. Special attention is given to investigate the J-curve hypothesis: whether or not the trade balance for US forest products trade with Canada benefits from a decline in the value of the US dollar. We adopt the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration to estimate quarterly bilateral trade data between the US and Canada from 1989 to 2005. We find little evidence of the J-curve phenomenon for US forest products trade with Canada.     

An institutional and policy framework to foster integrated rice–duck farming in Asian developing countries

Asia has accounted for the vast majority of the world's rice and meat-duck production. In the integrated rice–duck farming (IRDF) system, ducklings are released into rice paddies in order to maximize the use of renewable resources in a closed-cycle flow of nutrients during rice vegetation periods. Rice–duck farming used to be widely adopted in tropical and subtropical eastern Asian countries, but has remained unpopular in the wake of prevailing agricultural productivism characterized by specialization, intensification, mechanization and excessive dependence on agrochemicals. This paper sets out institutional pathways that can redevelop IRDF in Asia. These include organic food certification systems, organic farmers' cooperatives, community-wide organic farming, localized technical extension and educational services, and between-farm rice–duck integration. A comprehensive package of these institutional tools would further expedite the expansion of IRDF particularly in low-income Southeast Asia where the rice or duck farming landscape is overwhelmingly dominated by smallholders.     

Crude oil prices and the balance of trade: Asymmetric evidence from selected OPEC member countries

The contribution of this article is to assess whether the effects of crude oil price fluctuations on the trade balance are symmetric or asymmetric in the context of an individual oil-exporting country, specifically four OPEC member countries – Iran, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. To examine this subject thoroughly, we use three different measures of trade balances such as oil trade balance, non-oil trade balance, and total trade balance, and examine whether oil prices are asymmetrically passed on to the trade balances for those OPEC countries in the long- and short-run. After implementation of the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, we find that changes in oil prices indeed have asymmetric effects on the oil trade balance for all four OPEC countries in the long-run, though not in the short-run. In the case of the non-oil and total trade balance, however, the asymmetry of oil price changes is not detected in both the long- and short-run.     

Economic uncertainty,monetary uncertainty and the Korean demand for money

Economic uncertainty and monetary uncertainty are said to affect public’s holding of money in either direction. In this paper, we consider the Korean demand for money, and after including two GARCH-based measures of output uncertainty and monetary uncertainty, we show that both measures exert significant effects on the demand for money in Korea in the short run. However, only the adverse effects of output uncertainty lasts into the long run. Indeed, including the two uncertainty measures yield a stable demand for money in Korea.     

Estimating the benefits and costs of forming business partnerships

I estimate a matching model of business-partnership formation to quantify the relative importance of productivity gains, financing gains, and the coordination failure of effort provision (moral hazard) among partners. Productivity gains account for 61% of the gain from the observed partnerships. For partners in the first quartile of the wealth distribution, however, financing accounts for 93% of the gain. The cost of moral hazard corresponds to 42% of the entire gain from partnerships. A loan policy specifically targeting partnerships is less effective in improving welfare than a conventional loan policy that provides loans to individual entrepreneurs.