an alternative view of pricing in retail food markets the pricing mechanism of intracity retail food markets has received the attention of agricultural economists who are interested in the competitive nature of food price determination attention has focused on the information theory paradigm and potential impact of publically available comparative price reports in this paper a spatial economic model is developed to describe and analyze consumer choice seller behavior and price determination in retail food markets empirical evidence is then used to test hypotheses developed from the spatial model it is concluded that the spatial model offers added explanatory power of observed food market responses to retail price reporting

price distortions in agriculture and their effects an international comparison the central thesis of this paper is that agricultural pricing policies pursued by developing countries produce effects which are diametrically opposite to those produced by the pricing policies of many developed countries and that the policies of both are costly in terms of global welfare in general the agricultural sector in developing countries is heavily taxed while that in the developed countries receives substantial price protection the effects of agricultural price distortions on output consumption trade and rural employment are estimated for nine countries in addition the effects of price distortions on the distribution of income between producers and consumers on government revenue and foreign exchange and the net social losses of the policies are calculated the results indicate that there are large income transfers and impacts on migration from the rural to the urban sector in developing countries and from the urban to the rural sector in developed economies

integration of spatial markets studies of spatial market integration draw their implications from a theory which assumes that there are no intraregional transport costs an alternative theory is offered based on the assumptions that buyers and sellers are spatially dispersed and intraregional transport costs are significant this implies that the market is a linked oligopoly or oligopsony and that market integration tests are tests of alternative oligopoly price formation processes for example collusive basing point pricing produces results typically assumed to imply efficiently integrated markets while competitive fob pricing does not the theoretical implications are illustrated with an analysis of hog prices in canada

uma aplicacao de modelos tar para o mercado de carne de frango no brasil cointegration has been the most used technique in analyzing commodities market integration this paper discusses the use of cointegration as a mean of directly testing market integration it was pointed out the main limitations especially in relation to its adequability to the principals of the economic theory an application for the national

the supply response of aggregate agricultural output in jamaica abstract a dominant theme in the development literature is that individual agricultural products responds to price incentives not because of shifts between products but that total agricultural output is not responsive to price the econometric evidence for jamaica shows that this presumption is not valid the paper begins by reviewing the growth experience of the jamaican economy it then analyzes the trends in agricultural production the remainder of the paper provides the econometric estimates of broad agricultural output to price the empirical evidence shows that aggregate agricultural output is responsive to price but it will take time for agricultural production to materialize a summary of the published estimates of the supply response for individual crops is also presented

system theoretic time series forecasts of weekly live cattle prices multivariate time series forecasts of weekly live cattle prices in six different geographic markets are developed using a procedure based on the principles of linear systems theory these forecasts were found to be informative and superior to those obtained from an alternative model following the approach developed for stock prices by cerchi and havenner arbitrage portfolios were constructed from the model parameters a simulation exercise based on 208 weekly observations withheld from model specification and estimation suggests that these arbitrage activities would have been profitable in practice

cointegration tests and spatial price linkages in regional cattle markets this analysis empirically evaluates spatial linkages in regional cattle markets using cointegration tests of regional price series several markets were not cointegrated over the 1980 through 1987 period however significant increases in cointegration of several regional livestock markets are observed through the 1980s the increased cointegration parallels significant structural changes in the livestock industry a formal analysis of market characteristics reveals that distances between markets industry concentration ratios market volumes and market types have significant influences on cointegration relationships between markets

moving up the processing ladder in primary product exports sri lanka s value added tea industry governments in many developing countries influenced by the experience of the east asian newly industrialized countries have adopted policies to enhance domestic processing of primary commodities as a tool for accelerating employment growth export revenues and development sri lanka has traditionally exported tea in the form of bulk commodity teas but value added teas such as packaged teas tea bags etc have expanded in recent years this article examines factors affecting the processing of value added tea products in sri lanka by modeling export supply behavior estimates of the long run relationship and short run dynamics of export supply are presented and discussed the price of value added tea relative to bulk tea and industry capacity are identified as the main determinants of export supply while exchange rate changes have no discernible effect the policy implications of the analysis for enhancing further expansion of such value added teas are presented these are of interest for both policy makers and development analysts in particular the reasons that undermine the effectiveness of exchange rate policy as an instrument to stimulate value addition of primary products have much relevance for similar developing countries

the nature and extent of the market for high quality beef in japan before the abolition of import quotas it is examined whether wagyu beef produced in japan and high quality beef produced in the united states and exported to japan are components of the same product market in addressing this issue an approach is used for defining the nature and extent of a product market relying on the concept of instantaneous causality the results for selected cuts of beef suggest that the markets are in fact separate

timber price dynamics following a natural catastrophe catastrophic shocks to existing stocks of a renewable resource can cause long run price shifts with timber these long run price shifts may be accompanied by a short run price drop due to salvage hurricane hugo damaged 20 of southern pine timber in the south carolina coastal plain in 1989 to estimate the short and long run effects of the hurricane on the prices of timber stocks we estimated an intervention model of the residuals of cointegration of south carolina sawtimber and pulpwood stumpage prices with prices of similar products from other regions modeling revealed a 30 negative price spike due to salvage and a long run enhancement effect leading to prices that are 10 to 30 higher than they would have been had hugo not occurred

response to embodied energy and emergy analyses of a concentrating solar power csp system 2012 while emergy analysis i e emergy synthesis environmental accounting was developed in the early 1980s by h t odum building upon his seminal work outlining the energy basis for man and nature the method is still developing some very important aspects of the method such as the global baseline for renewable emergy and how the emergy yield ratio eyr a critical index for implicating the contribution of a process to society is to be calculated are still under debate in the scientific community this makes it all the more critical that when an emergy analysis is done all methodology is laid bare and justified unfortunately zhang et al 2012 energy policy 42 pp 232 238 is deficient in doing so in the response below i lay out the problems i observed in the paper and propose a revision to their analysis i should note that no issues were found with the embodied energy portion of the analysis and the inconsistencies with accepted methodology were likely due to an unfamiliarity with the emergy method

optimal grain pricing and storage policy in controlled agricultural economies application to zimbabwe abstract maize pricing and storage policies of zimbabwe s grain marketing board are compared to those that would be optimal under certain objective function risk and risk aversion assumptions optimal producer prices and storage levels are found to be interdependent and to respond to prices at other levels of the marketing chain the ideal maize reserve stock increases with uncertainty over import transportation costs a factor to consider in light of the threat of south african sanctions but at a reasonable risk aversion level optimal reserves still are much lower than those presently held by the board

the performance of the food producing sector in jamaica 1962 1979 a policy analysis the purpose of this article is to analyze the performance of the domestic food producing sector in jamaica such an evaluation is warranted on several grounds first jamaica stands out as a country that experienced approximately 8 consecutive years of negative rates of growth for its national economy from 1972 to 1980 however the domestic food sector grew at an average annual rate of 3 21 over the same period understanding the factors behind this growth during a downward cycle is needed second this increase in food production occurred while agricultural export production declined dramatically in this respect the agricultural sector s performance is unusual in latin america where most countries promoted agricultural exports during the 1970s largely at the expense of domestic food production third the populist government of michael manley 1972 80 has claimed that its programs designed to promote equity and efficiency among agricultural producers were responsible for the resulting rapid growth of domestic foodstuffs in jamaica in the late 1970s this analysis is of particular importance in view of a recent study suggesting that policies motivated by equity e g land reform and related rural development schemes frequently have negative consequences for efficiency and output 2 the degree to which the jamaican case may or may not constitute an exception to this rule forms the basis of this article in addressing this issue we also illustrate the misconceptions and the distortions that frequently accompany a populist food policy program to start we review the overall patterns of growth of the jamaican economy during this period and the major trends of structural change

bootstrapping confidence intervals an application to forecasting the supply of pork the article demonstrates how the distribution free method of bootstrapping can be applied to the construction of confidence intervals for forecasts generated by a dynamic econometric model because the exogenous variables must be forecast the forecasts of the dependent variable are functions of stochastic forecast period exogenous variables a dynamic model of pork supply is used to illustrate the procedure

co integration and error correction modelling of agricultural export supply in cameroon abstract estimates of factors influencing cameroon s exports of cocoa coffee and cotton are derived in a system of equations using the engle granger and johansen co integration and error correction representation procedures two co integrating vectors involving cocoa and coffee exports as endogenous variables are identified in the system while tests for exogeneity of cotton exports are consistent with the independence of cotton from the other two commodities these findings are corroborated by estimates of a restricted error correction model which lead to acceptance of the hypothesis that cocoa and coffee exports are indeed determined endogenously to the system and not linked to cotton exports statistical significance of the error correction terms for cocoa and coffee validates the existence of an equilibrium relationship among the variables in each of these co integrating vectors the combined short run dynamic effect of lagged quantities of cocoa and coffee export domestic price ratio and gdp jointly explain changes in exports of cocoa whereas lagged quantities exported do not seem to have a significant short run dynamic effect on changes in coffee exports

regulated price and stock policies abstract setting administered domestic prices according to just c i f of f o b border price is advisable only if the direction of trade is certain and all groups interests are weighted equally if the good randomly may be imported of exported prices and stocks should be determined simultaneously on the basis of domestic demand and supply conditions as well as border prices a framework is proposed for testing which optimizing model an ldc government employs when administering price and stock levels the framework suggests zimbabwe policy makers have treated maize as an export crop weighting consumers interests moderately below those of producers and government

social polarisation in global cities theory and evidence this paper examines the debate over social polarisation in global cities it focuses on the claims made by sassen that the processes of economic change in such cities are leading to a growing polar

the extent pattern and degree of market integration a multivariate approach for the brazilian rice market the extent pattern and degree of integration are analyzed in a multivariate system with cointegrating restrictions the extent of the market is found by identifying locations that are linked by trade and where prices share identicall ong run information permanent component the pattern of integration characterizes interdependence and is analyzed by estimating a vector error correction model the degree of integration is calculated with persistence profiles of the long run relations we demonstrate that bivariate models are inadequate for capturing the spatial dynamics of price adjustment the methodology is applied to the brazilian rice market and policy implications are

searching for price parity in the european whitefish market the purpose of this paper is to test for price parity across different species of whitefish in the european union price parity is defined by a system of cointegrated prices and would be evidence of a single european market for whitefish whitefish are of interest because eu fishers receive the largest share of their income from these fish species notwithstanding the single market policy of the eu by establishing national and regional associations to stabilize or increase the local price of fish fishers operate as if the european market is made up of separate submarkets with price being determined largely within each submarket if whitefish markets were price cointegrated such associations would be largely ineffective in that case what are required are regulations that encompass the european market

the transmission of world maize price to south african maize market a threshold cointegration approach this article seeks to provide an explanation for the relationship between domestic maize price in south africa and world maize prices in order to evaluate comovement and transmission of world prices to domestic prices in sub sahara african countries this is done by comparing nested and nonnested models that capture different forms of nonlinearity in the price spread adopting a bayesian approach that allows for comparison of models using bayes factor we found that the relationship between south african price and world price for maize indicates the presence of nonlinearity in price transmission with three regimes that is triggered by the price spread in previous period

estimating policy effects on spatial market efficiency an extension to the parity bounds model the standard parity bounds model pbm is extended to allow for dynamic shifts in regime probabilities in response to changes in marketing policy the approach allows estimation of the length of the adjustment period and a statistical test for no policy effects the extended pbm is applied to maize and wheat markets in ethiopia evidence of a dynamic adjustment path is found and grain marketing reforms are found to have improved spatial efficiency in a few markets worsened it in a few others but generally to have had little effect on the spatial efficiency of ethiopian grain markets

social polarisation economic restructuring and welfare state regimes the central argument of this paper is that it is misconceived to view social polarisation of occupational structure and incomes in global cities as either inevitable or as a direct product of econo

emergy evaluation of the sustainability of chinese steel production during 1998 2004 abstract this paper deals with the application of emergy analysis to the sustainability of chinese steel production in 1998 2004 emissions impacts were quantified using emergy synthesis and other methods dilution method disability adjusted life years daly method and ecological cumulative exergy consumption ecec method the results show that its sustainability is very low and declining in this period emissions obviously reduce the sustainability although their impacts are generally decreasing and the main reasons lie in its low nonrenewable resources and energies efficiencies finally the related suggestions were put forward for improving its comprehensive performance

the integration of the market for soybeans and soybean products abstract this article addresses the question of whether soybeans soybean meal and soybean oil produced in the usa and exported were part of a single world geographic market during the decade of the 1980s an answer to this question is sought using an approach to defining a geographic market based on the notion of instantaneous causality the empirical results based on prices for soybeans soybean meal and soybean oil for three spatially diffuse locations suggest that there was but a single identifiable world market for these commodities over the period of study this has implications for the continued presence of soybean production subsidies and discussions on international agreements designed to reduce or eliminate these subsidies

market integration between wild and farmed seabream and seabass in spain abstractgilthead seabream sparus aurata and european seabass dicentrarchus labrax production from aquaculture has been increasing since the 1990s nowadays about 95 of their production comes from aquaculture in this study we analyse if the rapid growth in the aquaculture production of both species has affected the capture fisheries prices of both species in other words we investigate if there is market integration between wild and farmed gilthead seabream and european seabass in order to do this analysis we use data from the main gilthead seabream and european seabass markets in spain the results show that there is no market integration between wild and farmed gilthead seabream and european seabass this implies that capture fisheries are not affected by increases in the aquaculture production of both species but gilthead seabream and european seabass aquaculture producers face a smaller demand that explains the difficulties this aquaculture segment is facing

price policy and agricultural export performance in jamaica abstract jamaica experienced one of the longest uninterrupted periods of negative growth among ldcs in the 1970s agricultural exports led this decline with an unusually poor growth performance exacerbating foreign exchange shortages commodity board pricing policies played a strong role in penalizing these exports further board policies appear to be inefficient in either maximizing profits or foreign exchange implicit and unstated objectives of board policies are discussed supply functions show that farmers do react positively to price changes contrary to board assumptions beneficiaries of this penalizing price policy are identified and an important implication for foreign aid policy is underscored

how integrated is the indian wheat market abstract applying the momentum threshold autoregressive m tar model due to enders and granger enders w and granger c w j 1998 unit root tests and asymmetric adjustment with an example using the term structure of interest rates journal of business and economic statistics 16 3 pp 304 311 this article examines the relationship between the various prices of wheat quoted at different market centres in four indian states we find evidence of m tar asymmetric adjustments of wheat prices indicating that price signals within states are transmitted over time in an asymmetric manner this type of price adjusting behaviour is consistent as to how price differentials may respond to poor dissemination of knowledge regarding market conditions and high transactions costs the results offer important policy implications

spatial integration at multiple scales rice markets in madagascar the dramatic increase in the price of rice and other commodities over the past year has generated new interest in how these markets work and how they can be improved this article uses an exceptionally rich data set to test the extent to which markets in madagascar are integrated across space at different scales of analysis and to explain some of the factors that limit spatial arbitrage and price equalization within a single country we use rice price data across four quarters of 2000 2001 along with data on transportation costs and infrastructure availability for nearly 1 400 communes in madagascar to examine the extent of market integration at three different spatial scales subregional regional and national and to determine whether non integration is due to high transfer costs or lack of competition the results indicate that markets are fairly well integrated at the subregional level and that factors such as high crime rates remoteness and lack of information are among the factors limiting competition

market liberalization and integration of maize markets in malawi the paper studies the extent of market integration of maize markets in malawi in order to understand how it has been affected by market liberalization several measures of integration are introduced to analyze both the comovement of prices and the price adjustment process over time monthly retail prices of maize at eight main locations over the period january 1984 to december 1991 are considered the main conclusion is that liberalization has increased market integration

the changing social structure of global cities professionalisation proletarianisation or polarisation this paper addresses a simple but very important question how has the occupational class structure of major world or global cities changed in recent decades this has major social and theoretica

modelling trends in food market integration method and an application to tanzanian maize markets abstract pushed by increasing availability of price data and extensive market liberalisation efforts in many developing countries research on food market integration has evolved rapidly over the last two decades empirical methods to measure market integration diverged in two directions on the one hand there is the parity bounds model pbm using a switching regressions technique while on the other hand the use of threshold autoregressive tar models has been proposed this article provides a discussion on the two methods and argues that tar models are better able to capture the dynamics of the arbitrage process underlying interconnected markets furthermore we extend the standard tar model to include a time trend in both the threshold and the adjustment parameter using weekly maize price data on seven selected markets in tanzania we illustrate how both transaction cost and the speed of adjustment have changed during the nineties

a re examination of the demand for money in small developing economies this paper re examines the money demand function in three small open economies of asia korea pakistan and singapore in addition to using the relatively new procedure of error correction modelling the roles of variables such as a the expected change in the exchange rate b foregin interest rates and c foreign exchange risks on money demand are examined in testing the importance of these variables in the money demand function special attention is paid to testing the assumptions of the classical linear regression model the sample period for each country spans from 1973 1 through 1990 1 the empirical results suggest that the error correction specification performs very well in addition to the traditional variables the results suggest that at least some measure of foreign monetary developments appear to have some significant effect on money demand behaviour in these small developing economies

price transmission and market integration vertical and horizontal price linkages for salmon relationships between prices are of interest when testing for market integration as well as analyses of supply chains a feature that has received little attention is that if two supply chains are linked by market integration at some stage then the whole supply chain will be linked furthermore the leading price in such a system can be in one supply chain and will not be revealed in market integration studies or analysis of a single supply chain an empirical analysis is provided for the supply chains for salmon which originates in norway and the united kingdom and is then sold at retail level in france as smoked salmon we find a high degree of price transmission in both supply chains as well as integrated markets

the rigidity of prices this paper uses evidence on individual transaction prices to analyze price behavior the evidence shows that for many transactions pricesremain rigid for periods exceeding one year the rigidity of price ispositively correlated with industry concentration for several productsthe correlation of price changes across buyers is low the paper alsoinvestigates the relationship between price rigidity price change andthe length of time a buyer and seller have been doing business together the author interprets the evidence as emphasizing the importance of nonprice rationing and the inadequacy of models in whichprice movements alone clear markets copyright 1986 by american economic association

the effects of railroad development on price convergence among the states of the usa from 1866 to 1906 this study examines the effects of the reduced transaction costs on the price behaviours in the second half of the nineteenth century where declines in transaction costs were mainly caused by railroad development during this period it employs a panel test introduced by levin and lin 1992 on the convergence of wheat and corn prices using a panel of 48 us states from 1866 to 1906 the results show that by decreasing transportation costs railroads played an important role in price convergence among states of the usa for wheat and corn during the postbellum period

social polarization in global cities measuring changes in earnings and occupational inequality abstractsocial polarization in global cities measuring changes in earnings and occupational inequality regional studies there is a paradox in the scholarly contributions to the social polarization debate studies that rely on occupational descriptions to measure employment change produce results that take the form of a professionalizing pattern of growth by contrast studies that rank occupations by income to measure employment change produce evidence in support of social polarization this study applies both methods to measure employment change in greater johannesburg south africa from 1996 to 2012 in order to demonstrate why these different methods produce such different results the results have important implications for how statistical evidence is used to test the social polarization hypothesis

gendering the polarisation debate a comment on hamnett s social polarisation economic restructuring and welfare state regimes this note looks at the juxtaposition of a polarising income distribution and a professionalising occupational structure as an account of recent trends in london it suggests that hamnett may read too much occupational upgrading from the data and that he does not tackle adequately the question of earned income polarisation while welfare systems always mediate the relationship between the global and the local esping anderson s welfare state categorisations do not help to explain differences between new york and london gender relations are seen to underpin occupational and income trends in metropolitan areas

does the law of one price really hold for commodity prices in spite of the empirical failure of the law of one price it is usually assumed that commodity prices are perfectly arbitraged at least in the long run this paper argues that this assumption is counterfactual and that much of the empirical evidence provided to support it is flawed and affected by econometric shortcomings spurious regressions nonstationarity in the data inappropriate use of first differences an alternative methodology co integration by which a long run relationship between nonstationary series can be tested is proposed tests of nonstationarity and co integration for a group of commodities show quite uniformly that the law of one price as a long run relationship fails and that deviations from the pattern are permanent

how integrated are world beef markets the case of australian and u s beef markets abstract the objective of the paper is to examine market integration between australian and u s beef prices at the farmgate level if these two prices are found to be integrated then it can be alleged that australian beef prices can be used as a world price in empirical analyses and or as a reference price to measure the level of support accorded the u s beef sector co integration analysis and a time varying parameter estimation procedure based on the kalman filter model are applied the paper distinguishes between steer and cow beef segments and it uses monthly data over the 1972 1 to 1993 2 period the results indicate that australian and u s beef prices are co integrated albeit not fully and that the degree of convergence between the various price pairs has not substantially increased over time the results also suggest that australian prices can not unequivocally be adopted as a world price in empirical analyses

social polarisation or professionalisation another look at theory and evidence on deindustrialisation and the rise of the service sector the debate over whether or not the deindustrialisation of cities is accompanied by the occupational and income polarisation of their working populations has been characterised by some confusion ove

spatial market integration in the presence of threshold effects a large body of research has evaluated price linkages in spatially separate markets much recent research has applied models appropriate for nonstationary data such analyses have been criticized for their ignorance of transactions costs which may inhibit price adjustments and thus affect tests of integration this analysis utilizes threshold autoregression and cointegration models to account for a neutral band representing transactions costs we evaluate daily price linkages among four corn and four soybean markets in north carolina nonlinear impulse response functions are used to investigate dynamic patterns of adjustments to shocks our results confirm the presence of thresholds and indicate strong support for market integration though adjustments following shocks may take many days to be complete in every case the threshold models suggest much faster adjustments in response to deviations from equilibrium than is the case when threshold behavior is ignored a large amount of empirical research has evaluated the extent to which spatially separate markets are integrated though the term is used loosely in the literature tests of market integration usually consider the extent to which shocks are transmitted among spatially separate markets the integration of markets can have important implications for price discovery and the operation of the market since persistent deviations from integration may imply riskless profit opportunities for spatial traders

the roles of countries in the international fossil fuel trade an emergy and network analysis abstract a better understanding of the roles of countries in the international fossil fuel trade is crucial for trade security and policy optimization this study aims to provide a new way to quantitatively analyze the roles of countries in the international fossil fuel trade by complex network analysis and emergy theory we transform the trade quantity of coal crude oil and natural gas into emergy and the sum of the three emergies is the emergy of fossil fuel we build up network models of fossil fuel based on the value of fossil fuel emergy then the top relationships the central position the intermediary ability of the countries and the roles of countries in the trade groups were used to analyze the roles of countries in the international fossil fuel trade network we choose four countries the usa china russia and saudi arabia as examples to show the analysis of roles and policy implications we suggest that the usa and russia should try to improve their intermediary abilities by diversifying their trade orientations and pay more attention to building up relationships with countries in different communities china should seek for more tight relationships with other countries to improve its central position and more pipelines connecting china russia and other middle asia countries are needed as for saudi arabia expanding its industrial chain of crude oil is a better way to deal with the more fierce competition in the market

on market integration and liberalisation method and application to ethiopia the article suggests further improvements in the methodology to analyse market integration it provides corrections to and methodological extensions of recent work in this journal it also presents a way of applying market integration techniques to the analysis of shocks such as market liberalisation and war the method is applied to the effects of liberalisation and the end of the civil war on food markets in ethiopia the conclusion is that liberalisation had important effects on the long run and short run integration of food markets