examining crop price effects on production decision and resource allocation an ex ante approach this article examines the output price effects on the us crop production employing an ex ante approach to the differential systems of input demand and output supply the estimation results of the

evaluating the impact of rising fertilizer prices on crop yields because of tensions on fossil energy and phosphorus markets the rise in fertilizer prices observed during the last decades may continue in the future putting into question production pathways relying heavily on crop intensification to evaluate how in this context economic choices may alter crop yields we first construct different fertilizer price scenarios to 2050 based on an econometric relation with oil and gas prices other possible scenarios such as the continuation of historical trends are also considered the resulting changes in fertilizer price range between 0 8 and 3 6 per year over the 2005 2050 period these scenarios are tested in a global land use model incorporating an endogenous representation of the land fertilizer substitution we find that the supply side response to rising fertilizer prices could lower crop yields in 2050 from 6 to 13 with a corresponding increase in global cropland area ranging between 100 and 240 mha if the demand for food and nonfood products has to be met the sensitivity of these results is tested with regard to assumptions on food consumption change in potential yield and nutrient use efficiency resume d auteur

the global supply and demand for agricultural land in 2050 a perfect storm in the making the number of people which the world must feed is expected to increase by another 2 billion people by 2050 when coupled with significant nutritional improvements for the 2 1 billion people currently living on less than 2 day this translates into a very substantial rise in the demand for agricultural production most past growth in the demand for food has been met by improvements in productivity but there is evidence of declining growth rates for agricultural yields climate change is likely to have important impacts on productivity through changes in temperature and precipitation land based climate mitigation policies are also projected to lead to increasing pressure on agricultural lands meanwhile supplies of water for irrigation are under pressure urban land use is on the rise and demands for setting aside land for environmental purposes continue to increase clearly an enormous amount of additional research on ways to deal with this potential perfect storm is needed this paper highlights the explores the roles of biophysical and economic uncertainty in these projections of long run land use change using this to suggest a future research agenda

combining results of different models the case of a levy on the dutch nitrogen surplus economic instruments such as levies are considered by the dutch government for reducing the harmful effects of the production and application of manure to analyse these levies a framework which makes it possible to combine and to choose among different types of research is developed the results are integrated along the line of the marginal abatement cost curve the problems related to integrating different types of research are taken into account the method developed allows every farmer to react to a levy differently a levy turns out to be more effective to reduce the nitrogen surplus on farm level in the pig fattening sector when compared to the pig breeding sector but even a levy of 2 guilders kg of nitrogen does not remove the total manure surplus in the pig sector and results in large profit losses further research is needed to underpin the empirical input required by the model

neoclassical consumer demand theory and the demand for money m friedman 1956 suggests that the demand for money should be analyzed in terms of consumer demand theory although often the interpretation of empirical results from studies using aggregate data appears to be in terms of the motives approach i e transactions precautionary and speculative motives the authors develop friedman s ideas within an explicit model of consumer theory and find that they provide a consistent framework for analyzing portfolio choice and offer greater insights into results from aggregate studies of the demand for money than the motives approach in particular the authors provide a new interpretation of the role of nominal interest rates inflation and a hicksian measure of wealth in the demand for money function copyright 1991 by royal economic society

a comparison of nonparametric tests of weak separability for annual and quarterly data on consumption leisure and money among the most fundamental assumptions made in economics are utility maximization and the separability of the arguments in the representative consumer s utility function these assumptions are important for theoretical and empirical applications of economics in this article we present results from nonparametric tests of these assumptions of consumer behavior we find that utility maximization generally obtains with either annual or quarterly per capita data on consumption goods leisure and relatively liquid monetary assets annual data on consumption goods leisure and all monetary assets are consistent with utility maximization there is some evidence in support of using partial adjustment models when estimating quarterly data models of the demand for monetary assets further annual data on consumption goods and leisure and on liquid monetary assets meet the necessary and sufficient conditions for weak separability these results support the notion of a monetary aggregate more broadly based than cu

financial deregulation and household saving the last decade has seen widespread domestic financial deregulation in the industrial world particularly in the united states united kingdom and the nordic countries resulting in an increase in competition both between banks and saving institutions thrifts or building societies as they moved into each others services and within each sector this opened up new financial options particularly for households the sector that was probably most affected by government regulation for example there was a significant increase in equity withdrawals from personal housing wealth in both the united kingdom and united states over the ig8os 2 this period also saw a significant change in household consumption behaviour the most dramatic illustration being the fall in the household saving ratio in those countries where the process of deregulation has gone furthest this paper reports the results from estimating a model of household saving using regional data for the united kingdom with a particular emphasis on the interaction between household saving and financial deregulation the estimates are used to calculate the relative importance of different factors in the fall in personal saving over the i98os i conclude that deregulation lowered the equilibrium level of saving over the i98os probably 2 percentage points per annum as well as making saving significantly more dependent on changes in wealth income and real interest rates there have been a number of earlier empirical studies looking at the interaction between financial deregulation and household behaviour manchester and poterba i 989 miles i 992 and koskela et al i 992 present empirical evidence on the interaction between deregulation the housing market and saving in the united states united kingdom and finland respectively others have estimated saving functions which include variables representing the effects of financial deregulation or have considered the impact of financial deregulation on liquidity constraints in consumption 3 the

corporate control in germany the article presents the german system of corporate control compared with the uk the number of listed joint stock companies in germany is relatively low the most important shareholders are companies whereas institutional investors play a minor role an essential feature of german corporate culture is the concept of the interest of the company as a whole and the long term approach in pursuing company goals joint stock companies operate under a two tier structure with a managing board controlled by the supervisory board the body which plays the central role in corporate governance in germany in contrast to what is widely believed german banks do not dominate companies even though they exert considerable influence through industrial holdings supervisory board mandates and proxy voting rights in addition to their regular banking business control via the market is less pronounced here than in the uk but is growing in importance copyright 1992 by oxford university press

a semi nonparametric approach to the demand for uk monetary assets we estimate an asymptotically ideal model of the demand for uk personal sector monetary assets we use data that are consistent with utility maximizing behaviour and find that uk monetary assets are generally substitutes in use the estimated elasticities of substitution during the 1980s and the early 1990s indicate that a relatively broad monetary aggregate should be used in economic studies the results also suggest that any policy based on interest or user cost elasticities of substitution between financial assets should be based on the morishima elasticities as the allen uzawa calculation can give misleading results

dynamic fertilizer nutrient demands for corn a cointegrated and error correcting system past studies of the demand for fertilizer have typically been based on static models which assume that adjustments toward equilibrium are instantaneous this article builds on past studies by developing a dynamic model of nutrient demands of corn unit root and cointegration tests demonstrate that fertilizer demands of corn are dynamic therefore statistically correct estimates can be obtained using a dynamic model a set of error correction models for nitrogen phosphate and potash use in corn production are estimated results provide strong statistical evidence that nutrient demands of corn are price inelastic both in the short and the long run

non parametric tests of consumer behaviour the neoclassical model of consumer behaviour postulates that a consumer s choice behaviour can be described as deriving from utility maximization subject to a budget constraint one is then naturally led to ask what this model implies about observed behaviour this question has been addressed from two quite distinct approaches the first approach originating in the work of slutsky 1915 and antonelli 1886 derives necessary and sufficient conditions involving the derivatives of the demand functions the second approach originating in the work of samuelson 1938 1947 1948 derives algebraic conditions on the demand functions implied by maximizing behaviour

nitrogen land substitution in corn production a reconciliation of aggregate and firm level evidence in this paper we seek to reconcile low farm level substitution elasticity between nitrogen fertilizer and land with larger industry level values for the corn sector this is accomplished with a micro simulation model which identifies twenty three heterogeneous groups of corn farmers based on survey data for indiana after controlling for soil quality slope crop rotation and natural nitrogen sources considerable variation in fertilizer application rates remains model simulations indicate that the estimated substitution elasticity at the state level 1 15 is consistent with very low farm level substitutability the difference is attributable to compositional changes in the wake of relative price shocks these compositional effects are potentially very important but they are ignored in most policy analyses

the social costs of second best policies evidence from agricultural ghg mitigation abstract this paper investigates the social costs of second best agricultural greenhouse gas ghg mitigation policies adjustments along the land use and input intensity margins are represented within a regionalized optimization model of california crop production calibrated to economic and agronomic information second best policies relying on spatially aggregated ghg emission factors lead to small abatement efficiency losses while policies targeting a single ghg lead to moderate losses in contrast policies targeting a single input entail large abatement efficiency losses which nonetheless can be reduced by combining instruments

nonparametric demand analysis of u k personal sector decisions on consumption leisure and monetary assets a reappraisal this paper utilizes a new data set to test for utility maximizing behavior and weakly separable subutility functions in the context of a utility function comprising durables nondurables services leisure and monetary asset holdings for the u k personal sector all the data sets analyzed demonstrated consistency with respect to utility maximizing behavior the weak separability results prove to be relatively invariant to the degree of aggregation over goods but highly sensitive to the assump tion made regarding the representative consumer per household scaling of the data produced a utility function that is weakly separable in goods services and leisure and in monetary assets

capital market information and industrial performance the role of west german banks in orthodox theory external capital markets play a dual role supplying various forms of investment finance and disciplining firms which are inefficient or fail to pursue profit goals an extensive literature speaks of the efficiency of external capital markets meaning that firms can make production investment decisions and investors can choose among the securities that represent ownership of firms activities under the assumption that security prices at any time fully reflect all available information fama i970 1 however this concept of efficiency is purely technical it depends critically on what information is available and we know there are problems of appropriability and failure in information markets deriving ultimately from certain peculiarities of information as a commodity arrow i962 thus another growing literature focusses on problems of achieving equilibrium in markets where agents are imperfectly or asymmetrically informed amongst other things this literature shows that informational failures of the kind in question can lead to capital rationing in loan and credit markets and the use of strict collateral requirements as screening devices jaffee and russell i976 stiglitz and weiss i98i cable and turner i983 these may then be expected to affect the efficiency of individual firms and the system as a whole capital shortage implies that some profitable investment opportunities are foregone and production choices may also be distorted by the need to satisfy additional financial constraints contrived to elicit signals of creditworthiness of the firms undertaking them similarly the disciplining role of external capital markets can be impaired by information impactedness williamson i975 and the costs of mobilising and giving effect to shareholders preferences thus in the principal agent framework developed by jensen and meckling i976 and fama i980 the degree of constraint on managerial pursuit of non profit goals as posited by managerial theorists depends on the transactions costs of stock owner intervention the result is an optimal degree of departure from cost minimising profit maximising behaviour determined by the level of transactions costs institutional factors which affect the way information is distributed amongst agents can therefore have an important bearing on allocative and technical efficiency and the west german system of industrial finance provides an in

a non parametric analysis of personal sector decisions on consumption liquid assets and leisure this paper uses the non parametric techniques developed by varian i982 i983 and afriat i967 1973 from the theory of revealed preference see samuelson 1947 to address a number of questions of interest to those who model the determination of consumption liquid assets and leisure hours 1 the primary assumption underlying much work in this area whether it deals with highly aggregated categories such as the consumption of non durables or relatively disaggregated categories such as the consumption of energy products or food is that demand functions for consumer goods are consistent with the hypothesis that they are derived from the maximisation of a well behaved utility function subject to a relevant budget constraint the absence of liquid assets or leisure from such studies involves the implicit assumption of weak separability between consumption goods and these other goods the parametric approach then assumes a particular functional form for either the utility function indirect utility function or cost function and estimates the parameters that best describe the data however as varian i983 points out when it comes to testing hypotheses in such a framework it is always a joint hypothesis comprising both the restrictions and the choice of functional form which is being tested 2 to avoid this problem varian developed the nonparametric revealed preference approach to provide algebraic conditions which are imposed by maximising behaviour on a set of data with a finite number of observations this non parametric approach is exploited here in several ways there have been a number of studies using a parametric approach at a fairly disaggregated level to the determinants of consumers expenditure see for example deaton i974 anderson and blundell i982 and ray i984 for applications using

the choice among monetary aggregates as targets and guides for monetary policy difficulties in meeting its monetary targets led the federal reserve in october 1979 to adopt a new operating procedure to achieve firmer control over monetary aggregates yet the inflationary environment has fostered financial developments that affect the behavior of the traditional monetary aggregates and that raise questions whether different aggregates may not be better this paper compares the various monetary aggregates for their usefulness as guides for monetary policy in the light of recent financial developments the criterion of usefulness is the ability to influence and predict gnp growth this ability is tested in two ways first by the stability of the velocities of the monetary aggregates and second by the advance information they provide of gnp growth it is presumed that the aggregates with the most stable velocities make the best targets for monetray policy and that those containing the most advance information make the best guides for policy the paper has three main sections the first discusses the criteria for using monetary aggregates as targets and guides the second two sections describe and report tests of the various monetary aggregates as targets and guides a summary of findings is presented as a final section

the indirect land use impacts of united states biofuel policies the importance of acreage yield and bilateral trade responses recent work has highlighted agricultural land conversion as a significant debit in the greenhouse gas accounting of ethanol as an alternative fuel this work has at the same time sparked considerable debate on the role of crop yield growth as a means of avoiding rapid land conversion we examine the agricultural land use impacts of mandate driven ethanol demand increases in the united states in a formal economic equilibrium framework which allows us to examine the importance of yield price relationships we find that the standard assumption of trend yield growth is likely restrictive for analysis of equilibrium response to significant demand increases for fuel feedstocks furthermore we identify both the acreage response and bilateral trade specification of a multi country model as important sources of variability in terms of parametric uncertainty in predicting global land use change from the biofuels boom

welfare impacts of alternative public policies for agricultural pollution control in an open economy a general equilibrium framework a general equilibrium approach is used to evaluate the welfare impacts of alternative policies for reducing agricultural pollution in an open economy with preexisting distortions caused by income taxes and agricultural subsidies the policies examined here include the removal of distortionary agricultural subsidies we find that even though these distortions are small compared to others in the economy removing them and imposing nitrogen reduction subsidies and or output taxes can enhance welfare and reduce nitrogen pollution thereby leading to a substantial double dividend the relative efficiency of the alternative policies examined here depends on the level of the nitrogen reduction target copyright 2008 oxford university press

spatial heterogeneity and the choice of instruments to control nonpoint pollution because it is difficult to monitor emissions and to implement differentialtaxes and standards uniform taxes and standards on agricultural chemicaluse are often proposed and used to control nonpoint source pollution thisarticle analyzes the relative efficiency of these uniform instruments in thepresence of spatial heterogeneity we show that the relative slopes of themarginal pollution cost and marginal profit of chemical use are only one ofthe factors that affect the relative efficiency other factors includecorrelation between marginal pollution costs and marginal profits and theslope and variability of marginal profits in addition a uniform tax mayresult in some farmers not using the chemical and a uniform standard mayhave no effect on low input land we show empirically that the presence ofcorner solutions can reverse a conventional finding of tax or standardsuperiority based on the relative slop rule

output the stock market and interest rates this paper develops a simple model of the determination of output the stock market and the term structure of interest rates the model is an extension of the is lm model and borrows from it the assumption that output is determined by aggregate demand and that the price level can only adjust over time to its equilibrium value however whereas the is lm emphasizes the interaction between the interest rate and output this model emphasizes the interaction between asset values and output asset values rather than the interest rate are the main determinants of aggregate demand and output current and anticipated output and income are in turn the main determinants of asset values it is this interaction that the model intends to capture its goal is to characterize the joint response of asset values and output to changes in the environment such as changes or announcement of changes in monetary and fiscal policy as the above brief description makes clear anticipations are central to the story the assumption made in this paper will be one of rational expectations the paper is organized as follows section i describes the model and sections ii iv characterize the behavior of the economy under the extreme but convenient assumption that prices are fixed forever sections v and vi extend the analysis to the case where prices adjust over time to their equilibrium value

nonparametric tests of utility maximization and weak separability for consumption leisure and money some of the most fundamental assumptions of economics are utility maximization and weak separability of the arguments in the represen tative consumer s utility function this paper contains results from nonparametric tests of these assumptions about consumer behavior the authors find that quarterly per capita data on consumption goods le isure and monetary assets are consistent with utility maximization further consumption goods and leisure meet necessary and sufficient conditions for weak separability additionally one grouping of relat ively liquid monetary assets meets the necessary conditions for weak separability they also test and find no evidence of homothetic prefe rences copyright 1987 by mit press

long term crop productivity response and its interaction with cereal markets and energy prices abstract crop yields are endogenous as long as economic agents adjust to permanent changes in expected prices the literature however does not offer a definitive value of how much yield would change in response to sustained price changes to fill the gap we use available scientific findings and data to estimate yield elasticities that enable agricultural commodity and food policy analysis using a world market model with short to long run yield response we show the impacts of sustained energy price shocks on global cereal supply and demand the results highlight substantial differences in quantity and price effects depending on the yield elasticities these results demonstrate the need to recognize yield response when assessing impacts of energy prices or biofuel production on food uses or more generally on food security in the face of income and population growth evolving dietary patterns climate change implications or other long run pressures

output consumption and the stock market implications for european convergence this paper investigates the nature of the relationship between output and stock prices and consumption and stock prices with respect to the different financial structures that exist primarily in the european union eu evidence is found of a long run relationship for both relationships with the exception of germany and to an extent france which is argued is due to their bank dominated financial systems kalman filter estimates reveal that both relationships have increased in strength although little evidence is found of any convergence in the strength of the relationship across the eu

agricultural research spending must increase in light of future uncertainties abstract agricultural productivity depends critically on investments in research and development r d but there is a long lag in this response failing to invest today in improvements of agricultural productivity cannot be simply corrected a few decades later if the world finds itself short of food at that point in time this fundamental irreversibility is particularly problematic in light of uncertain future population income and climate change as portrayed in the ipcc s shared socio economic pathways ssps this paper finds the optimal path of agricultural r d spending over the 21st century for each ssp along with valuation of those regrets associated with investment decisions later revealed to be in error the maximum regret is minimized to find a robust optimal r d pathway that factors in key uncertainties and the lag in productivity response to r d results indicate that the whole of uncertainty s impact on r d is greater than the sum of its individual parts uncertainty in future population has the dominant impact on the optimal r d expenditure path the robust solution suggests that the optimal r d spending strategy is very close to the one that will increase agricultural productivity fast enough to feed the world under the most populous scenario it also suggests that society should accelerate r d spending up to mid century thereafter moderating this growth rate