evolution of the economics of agricultural policy agricultural economists helped develop farm programs to respond to the dire economic situation of the 1920s and 1930s some early authors appreciated that such policies created problems in markets for commodities and inputs over time our understanding of agricultural issues and policies has deepened through the application of improved models and tools of analysis to more extensive data we have developed better answers to old questions and have responded to changing policy instruments market contexts and policy concerns this article traces the evolution of our deepening economic understanding of the causes and consequences of agricultural policy

is there a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use and or carbon emissions abstract we analyze the effect of fuel mix model specification and the level of development on the presence and size of a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use and or carbon emissions the results indicate that fuel mix the specification for income and the level of economic development affect conclusions about whether there is a turning point in the relationship between economic activity and energy use and carbon emissions including fuel shares generally reduces the size of a turning point that is estimated from a panel that includes observations from both oecd and non oecd nations but this result varies according to the level of development for oecd nations there is limited support for a turning point in the relationship between income and per capita energy use and or carbon emissions for non oecd nations there is no turning point in the relationship between income and either energy use or carbon emissions instead the relationship is positive together the results indicate that forecasters and policy makers should not depend on a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use or carbon emissions to reduce either

tariff endogeneity evidence from 19th century europe abstract this paper tests an endogenous tariff model for six european countries from around the mid 19th century until the eve of world war 1 ww1 the tariff rate was generally cointegrated with real gnp real wages the price level and the external trade balance results from granger causality tests suggest that real gnp and the price level may be important endogenous determinants of tariff levels

indicators for sustainable energy development a multivariate cointegration and causality analysis from tunisian road transport sector this paper studies causal mechanism between indicators for sustainable energy development related to energy consumption from tunisian road transport sector the investigation is made using the johansen cointegration technique and the environmental kuznets curve ekc approach it examines the nexus between transport value added road transport related energy consumption road infrastructure fuel price and co2 emissions from tunisian transport sector during the period of 1980 2010 empirical results show that road transport related energy consumption transport value added transport co2 emissions and road infrastructure are mutually causal in the long run these results do not support the hypothesis of neutrality between energy and income for the tunisian road transport sector also there is a unidirectional causality running from fuel price to road transport related energy consumption with no feedback in both the short and long runs the fuel price and the road infrastructure are significant in the causal chain though the estimated long run cointegrated equation we conclude that there is an inverse n shaped relation between transport value added and transport co2 emissions with income turning point respectively equal to 75 and 579 constant 2000 tnd prices therefore our empirical findings refute the hypothesis of an inverted u shaped ekc for transport co2 emissions in tunisia the findings of this study have a number of policy implications economic growth environmental degradation energy and transportation policies should be recognized in order to improve the energy efficiency in transport sector all measures that should reduce petroleum consumption and greenhouse gas emissions without affecting economic growth may be undertaken the policymakers in tunisia should plan urban transport relocate production units improve fuel efficient vehicles and reinforce legislation on controlling emissions in order to copying with policies based on low carbon development and climate resilient strategies

estimating market power of u s dairy cooperatives in the fluid milk market a structural econometric model of vertical relationships is adopted to identify pricing behavior in the supply chain for fluid milk in the united states the model consists of a system of equations that allows estimation of oligopoly power of dairy co operatives and downstream firms exploiting federal milk marketing order regulations to identify co operatives marginal cost a key finding is that co operatives use their market power to raise the farm price of milk by almost 9 above marginal cost resulting in an income transfer of more than 600 million per year in markets regulated by federal milk marketing orders copyright 2012 oxford university press

cointegration relationships and hedonic pricing of differentiated commodities an application to price dynamics in the us dairy sector this study investigates the implications of hedonic pricing for price dynamics of differentiated commodities a conceptual model of hedonic pricing is developed under a leontief technology showing how commodity prices reflect the underlying value of their components implications for the existence of cointegration relationships among commodity prices are derived an application to the pricing and dynamics of selected us dairy commodities is presented it provides evidence on the role of component valuation in the dynamics of dairy commodity prices in the short run as well as in the long run distinguishing between market regime and government regime when the government price support is active the analysis finds significant differences in dairy price dynamics between the two regimes

an equilibrium displacement approach to oligopoly market analysis an application to trade in the korean infant formula market this article uses an equilibrium displacement model edm to assess the impact of a change in trade policy in the korean infant formula market that is assumed to be oligopolistic domestic oligopolists compete in a market for a homogenous good with importing firms who enjoy the same level of market power as the domestic producers within an edm framework we investigate how the market adjusts to a new equilibrium in response to an external policy shock that improves access to foreign goods our empirical work consists of two steps we first econometrically estimate the market demand elasticity and market power parameter then using these estimates we simulate our edm model to assess the distributional effects of tariff cuts and other changes in marginal cost simulation results show that with a lower market price and increased consumption the change in consumer surplus resulting from tariff reduction is unambiguously positive but that the change in social welfare can be in either direction depending on who receives market rents associated with imports when importing firms are domestic the domestic welfare change is definitely positive however in the case of foreign importing firms the direction of the welfare change crucially depends on the demand elasticity

effects of milk marketing order regulation on the share of fluid grade milk in the united states the share of raw milk meeting fluid quality grade a standards in the united states rose steadily through the latter half of the twentieth century but a shrinking portion of that was used in fluid products grade a milk exceeds the quality standards for the manufactured products for which it has been increasingly used we present an econometric model that exploits regional and temporal variation in policy implementation to identify the effect of marketing orders on the grade a share of milk results support the hypothesis that marketing orders significantly encouraged the growth in the grade a share of milk milk marketing orders are central to dairy market regulation in the united states since the agricultural marketing agreement act amaa of 1937 and similar state legislation of the same period federal and state governments have administered marketing orders that determine minimum prices that processors must pay farmers for fluid grade milk these marketing orders have significantly influenced the economic performance of milk markets in this paper we show empirically that marketing orders have helped increase the production of fluid grade milk beyond the demand for fluid milk because the industry is large and the policies have important economic consequences milk marketing orders are among the most studied of all agricultural policies see among others cox and chavas 2001 dobson and salathe 1979 ippolito and masson 1978 kessell 1967 sumner and wolf 1996 this literature has established what have come to be stylized facts of milk marketing orders price discrimination by marketing orders raises the relative price of milk used in beverages fluid milk

economic growth and transport energy consumption in the latin american and caribbean countries abstract transport is a strategic sector for economic development whilst being one of the most polluting sectors of the economy the latin american and caribbean countries have been consolidated as the region with significantly faster energy consumption growth this paper analyzes how the gdp per capita affects the transport energy consumption testing possible non linear relationships between variables a transport energy consumption function depending on gdp and its squared and cubed value is estimated for 22 lac countries over the period 1990 2014 the results support an n shaped curve while the elasticity values of transport energy consumption with respect to gdp per capita do not show a tendency to decrease in the long term fourteen lac countries show absolute coupling levels at the end of the period while the rest exhibit partial couplings likewise trade openness population density degree of urbanization and structural changes in the economy have positive effects on the transport energy consumption this paper proposes some energy efficiency measures to control the growing energy use and the promotion of biofuels and electric vehicles is also considered necessary to reduce the negative effects of transport energy use

spatial allocation and the shadow pricing of product characteristics abstract the paper considers an industry transforming primary commodities farm products into processed commodities food products it focuses on the allocation of embedded characteristics carbohydrate protein etc both across space and among commodities the approach generates a spatial competitive market equilibrium of production consumption transformation and trade for both primary and processed commodities along with the spatial distribution of shadow prices for the product characteristics the model provides a basis for analyzing the allocation and pricing of agricultural products food products and characteristics in spatial markets the empirical usefulness of the model is illustrated in the context of regional resource allocation in the u s dairy sector

energy price reform and food markets the case of bread supply chain in iran reforming energy price is the core of iranian economic reform plan during 2010 2014 however increasing price of energy may have adverse effects on the agricultural and food markets this study was conducted to address these problems in the most important food of iranian people bread by developing a spatial supply chain model results show that consumers welfare would experience a sharp decrease though the impacts on farmers are trivial also results indicate that the key to success the reform without political backlash in the short run is the cash transfer program under which the government redistributes part of the reform s benefits among consumers per capita compensation payments would be equal to 51 50 and 46 09 us per year for a typical rural and urban person respectively moreover the results provide more detailed information about the market characteristics and the payments both in nationwide and regional scale as well as in different income groups

price discrimination or price stabilization debating with models of u s dairy policy two views on u s dairy policy are first that it is an instance of the capture theory of economic regulation that it serves the interests of dairy producers at the expense of consumers and taxpayers by raising dairy product prices and second 2 that dairy policy to correct market failure is an instance of governmental action that dairy policy serves the joint interests of producers consumers and taxpayers this paper discusses several analytical issues which have been important in the debate between these views

investigation of the environmental kuznets curve for carbon emissions in malaysia do foreign direct investment and trade matter abstract environmental degradation has become a central issue of discussion among the economists and environmentalists in view of malaysia s position as one of the main contributors to co2 emissions in asia and its status as a fast growing economy it is vital therefore to conduct a study to identify the relationship between economic growth and co2 emissions for malaysia this study attempts to examine empirically the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for malaysia in the presence of foreign direct investment and trade openness both in the short and long run for the period 1970 to 2008 the bounds testing approach and granger causality methodology are applied to test the interrelationships of the variables the results of our study indicate that the inverted u shaped relationship does exist between economic growth and co2 emission in both the short and long run for malaysia after controlling for two additional explanatory variables namely fdi and trade importantly the results of the study also provide some crucial policy recommendations to the policy makers

regulation in a dynamic market the u s dairy industry an econometric model of the u s dairy market is estimated for the period 1950 80 the economic costs of the dairy program for the period 1965 80 are calculated using ex ante ex post and long run demand and supply functions results indicate that the costs of the dairy program averaged from 430 to 590 million 1980dollars per year depending upon the choice of economic surplus measure the cost estimates depend only slightly on the year that the dairy program is assumed to have been terminated

measuring structural change and energy use decomposition of the us economy from 1997 to 2002 abstract the steadily increasing focus on energy production and consumption has led to growing research attention to patterns of energy use within economies of particular interest has been comparing the driving forces of increasing efficiency and economic structural change input output analysis ioa and decomposition analysis have become critical tools for performing such analyses this study analyzes aggregate energy use in the united states in 1997 and 2002 to discover the causes of changing energy usage and flows results show that rising population and household consumption acted to drive up energy demand but this driving force was offset by considerable structural change within the economy particularly related to a quickly increasing trade deficit in manufacturing goods thus while total energy intensity the ratio of energy use to economic output declined by approximately 12 between 1997 and 2002 changes in the structure of the economy explain this drop more than increased energy efficiency the level of aggregation at which decomposition analyses are run was identified as a crucially sensitive parameter for the determination of structural change and future studies should specifically address the amount of detail necessary to adequately measure changes in economic structure

an interregional analysis of price discrimination and domestic policy reform in the u s dairy sector the u s dairy sector has experienced several reforms in both government price support and classified pricing under state and federal milk marketing orders an interregional spatial market equilibrium model of the u s dairy sector is used to provide quantitative measures of the aggregate and regional impacts of alternative domestic deregulation scenarios the model simulates the allocation of farm milk used in the production of nine dairy products in a way consistent with milk component balances for milk fat protein and carbohydrate both within and across regions results suggest current policies induce substantive aggregate and regional distortions relative to an unregulated policy

measuring the effects of generic dairy advertising in a multi market equilibrium we develop a multi market equilibrium displacement model that allows demand linkages across downstream product markets and supply linkages through the common use of a raw commodity as the key input applying the model to the dairy sector we find that the effectiveness of producer funded advertising depends on the demand relationships across dairy product markets cross price and cross advertising elasticities as well as the reallocation of milk toward the advertised market we show that the previous literature which ignores the horizontal linkages highlighted here tends to overstate the effectiveness of generic commodity promotion for dairy and thus results in too much advertising

an analysis of 1980s dairy programs and some policy implications excessive government purchases of dairy surpluses during the early 1980s prompted three corrective measures the milk diversion program dairy termination program and lower support prices an eight equation econometric model of the dairy sector simulates these programs and shows them to be incomplete or impermanent in their effects however further analysis shows that a more aggressive policy of lower support prices would be effective in reducing costs to government and consumers and lowering transfers to producers

electricity consumption and economic growth a cross country analysis abstract electricity has been the foundation of economic growth and constitutes one of the vital infra structural inputs in socio economic development the world faces a surge in demand for electricity that is driven by such powerful forces as population growth extensive urbanization industrialization and the rise in the standard of living this paper attempts to ascertain whether there is a systematic relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth to this end we use a large set of data that spans 88 countries during the period 1975 2004 a statistically significant inverted u shaped relationship between per capita consumption of electricity and per capita income is detected nevertheless by using a purchasing power parity that is much higher than the per capita income of all the countries in the world the level of per capita income is estimated at the peak point of per capita electricity consumption to be 61 379 in 2000 constant international dollars moreover we segment the sample into organization for economic cooperation and development oecd countries and non oecd countries and separately analyze the developed and developing countries the separate estimation shows that even though the peak income is higher than the average per capita income a statistically significant inverted u shaped relationship is found in oecd and developed countries but not in non oecd and developing countries

gdp and environment pressure the role of energy in latin america and the caribbean abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between economic growth and energy consumption for a sample of 21 latin american and caribbean countries during the 1970 2007 period the investigation is made on the bases of the energy environmental kuznets curve eekc hypothesis using a panel data analysis energy consumption at aggregate level is used as an indicator of human environmental pressure and gdp per capita as an indicator of economic activity based in a cointegration approach our results does not support the existence of a stable long run relationship between the series rejecting the validity of such hypothesis for the selected sample over the 1970 2007 period

an international literature survey on energy economic growth nexus evidence from country specific studies in this paper an extensive review of the rapidly growing in the literature on the nexus between economic growth and four types of energy consumption total energy consumption electricity consumption nuclear consumption and renewable consumption the various hypotheses associated with the causal interaction between these variables along with a survey of the empirical literature are also discussed the survey focuses on country coverage periods modeling techniques and empirical conclusions a general observation from these studies that results are found to be sensitive to methodology and type of energy considered the empirical results for the specific countries surveyed show that i for energy consumption growth nexus 29 supported the growth hypothesis 27 the feedback hypothesis 23 the conservation hypothesis and 21 the neutrality hypothesis ii for the electricity consumption growth nexus 40 supported the growth hypothesis 33 the feedback hypothesis and 27 conservation hypothesis iii for the nuclear consumption growth nexus 60 supported the neutrality hypothesis and 40 the growth hypothesis and iv for the renewable consumption growth nexus 40 supported the neutrality hypothesis 40 the conservation hypothesis and 20 the growth hypothesis these mixed results may be attributed to the different used data selected variables and econometric approaches undertaken

quotas without supply control effects of dairy quota policy in california unlike the federal milk marketing order system california s system includes a milk quota program oddly this quota restricts neither production nor marketing in aggregate the quota program leads to more milk production than a typical marketing quota but less milk than blend pricing without the quota the california program generates more producer surplus and smaller welfare losses than a federal style program without quota when class 1 milk sales expand production expands less under the quota program than with blend pricing without a quota finally increases in aggregate quota lower production because they lower the marginal price of milk facing producers

the environmental kuznets curve and the structural change hypothesis we provide a very simple macroeconomic investigation of the role that structural changes might play in generating inverted u shaped income pollution relationships differently from previous research which mainly focuses on empirical static or general equilibrium models we develop a standard balanced growth path bgp analysis we show that along the bgp equilibrium an inverted u shaped income pollution relationship may occur as a response to structural changes but whether this is the case or not it will crucially depend upon the magnitude of a production externality parameter moreover we show that the negative relationship between income and pollution can only be a transitory phenomenon and in the long run pollution will increase as income rises generating overall an n shaped pattern

how china s urbanization impacts transport energy consumption in the face of income disparity abstract this paper estimates the transport energy consumption of 30 provinces in china from 1997 to 2011 by applying the stirpat model the relationship between urbanization and transport energy consumption using control variables such as population gdp per capita and the proportion of tertiary industry in gdp is investigated considering the disparities of income the impacts of urbanization on transport energy consumption might be distinct therefore this paper estimates the income threshold value and analyzes the effects of urbanization on transport energy consumption in the light of income differential using the panel threshold regression model based on the results some policy suggestions are offered

energy consumption and income a semiparametric panel data analysis this paper proposes a semiparametric analysis for the study of the relationship between energy consumption per capita and income per capita for an international panel dataset it shows little evidence for the existence of an environmental kuznets curve for energy consumption energy consumption increases with income for a majority of countries and then stabilizes for very high income countries neither changes in energy structure nor macroeconomic cycle technological change have significant effect on energy consumption

welfare maximization pricing and allocation with a product performance or environmental quality standard illustration for the gasoline and additives market programming models approximate market prices and quantities when regulations constrain firm choices because market outcomes result when welfare is appropriately defined and includes performance and environmental constraints this study discusses market operation in quality constrained sectors like gasoline and additives processors expand output until marginal processing cost equals the processing margin between product revenues and raw material costs retailers who buy gasoline and additives from processors and sell blended retail gasoline price sales at a marginal cost that includes the blended input value plus adjustments for values of constrained attributes and market supplies and demands of measurable attributes like octane are balanced this method can enhance predictions about the effects of new policies that regulate product quality analysis can now include price and output adjustment in factor and product markets and the competitiveness of new processes and products