triple win for trade in renewable resource goods by use of export taxes abstract we challenge the free trade paradigm in particular for developing countries exporting natural resource goods by demonstrating positive economic and environmental effects of an export tax for renewable resource goods the two sector general equilibrium model designed has an open access renewable resource industry and a manufacturing industry the economic environmental and social effects of using an export tax on goods from the open access renewable resource industry are analysed it is demonstrated that the gross domestic product the steady state resource stock and the domestic consumption of both products increase with the resource export tax compared to free trade with no trade taxes

market and nonmarket influences on curriculum choice by college students many labor economists and other researchers have attempted to develop models of the workings of the market for college trained manpower this paper reviews this previous research on curriculum choice and then tests an alternative model with data on choices made by male baccalaureates across a wide spectrum of science and engineering curricula the influence of both methodology and the analytical framework on the identification of relevant variables is explored particular attention is then given to nonmarket influences typically assumed in previous studies not to play a significant role results for pooled and time series specifications provide some support for the hypothesis that curriculum choice follows labor market developments but they also suggest that abilities and interests may be important predictors

black agricultural economists in the labor market theoretical and empirical issues the american economic association aea and the american agricultural economics association aaea have had a long tradition of monitoring the labor market characteristics for economists and agricultural economists evaluations of labor market conditions for economists are represented by the works of breneman and kleinman clague and levine tolles jones and clague and tolles and melichar labor market characteristics for agricultural economists have been evaluated by helmberger melichar schotzko lee broder and ziemer and strauss and tarr it is somewhat surprising however given the emphasis on resource allocation efficiency and equity among economists that no comprehensive research has been conducted on the labor market characteristics of black economists and agricultural economists despite the failure of economists to apply their analytical tools to the issues of participation by blacks in the economists labor market it is significant that the aea demonstrated awareness of the problem and issues in this area in 1969 when it sponsored a session entitled increasing the supply of black economists at its annual meeting at this session boulding argued cogently that the cultureboundness of economists was an obvious factor associated with the profession s neglect of problems of particular interest to disadvantaged racial and cultural groups concurrently chandler addressed the status of blacks in the economics profession and presented an affirmative action plan for the profession

demand for an undergraduate education in the agricultural sciences undergaduate enrollments in the agricultural and natural resource sciences agnr declined during the 1980s the present study sought to analyze factors affecting the drop in demand for an agnr education two time series pooled models were employed a household production function hpf variant and a mincerian human capital form the hpf variant offers the empirical advantage of a price expression that accounts for changes in agnr demand beyond significant wealth structural regional and gender effects high opportunity costs of agnr careers stalled demand during the 1980s a problem that may persist for some agnr career areas

distribution of research gains in multistage production systems research irrespective of the incidence of the levy and benefits no longer is valid we have no disagreement with this important observation but we are concerned about the lack of reliable estimates of the elasticity of substitution building on muth s analysis for which we suggest some changes we explore further the sensitivity of the effects of the distribution of benefits of research to different ways in which research can impact on a multistage production system and to the effects of the elasticities

modeling the earnings and productivity of agricultural economists discussion data from the 1981 82 registry of agricultural economists sponsored by the illinois department of labor and the american agricultural economics association are used by strauss and tarr to estimate earnings and productivity parameters for agricultural economists a short run predictive model is employed to compare the earnings of agricultural economists among different employer types including educational institutions federal government state and local government private business and miscellaneous international government inferences are drawn from the different types of employers large and small educational institutions women and blacks versus whites in a 1971 paper strauss referred to a crisis caused by the failure to find the most desirable position upon entry in the market by new ph d s such a situation is occurring in the early 1980s helmberger studied the market for agricultural economists in the early 1970s concluding that an excess supply would exist throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s boulding gave attention to the need for increasing the supply of black economists generally during this period suggesting that the economics profession is culture bound boulding suggests a subculture among economists which may explain the racial sexual structure and characteristics strauss and tarr revisit the market for economists considering some market and nonmarket factors

determinants of agricultural economics faculty salaries in the spring of 1980 500 randomly selected agricultural economists at land grant universities were asked to complete a pretested mailed questionnaire the questionnaire was designed to secure individual information and preserve respondent anonymity the 311 returned questionnaires represented a response rate of nearly 60 two hundred and forty one of the respondents held ph d degrees these individuals formed the sample for the following analysis 2

labor market returns to college major specificity abstract this paper develops a new approach to measuring human capital specificity in the context of college majors and estimates its labor market return over a worker s life cycle to measure specificity we propose a novel method grounded in human capital theory a gini coefficient of earnings premia for a major across occupations our measure captures the notion of skill transferability across jobs education and nursing are the most specific majors while philosophy and psychology are among the most general using data from the american community survey we find that the most specific majors typically pay off the most with an early career earnings premium of about 5 6 over average majors 15 20 over the most general majors driven by higher hourly wages general majors lag far behind at every age despite their earnings advantage graduates from specific majors are the least likely to hold managerial positions with graduates from majors of average specificity being the most likely to do so it may be that managerial positions require a mix of specific knowledge and broadly applicable skills

a longitudinal analysis of white women s wages according to human capital theory women s work participation decisions will strongly affect their wages and wage growth we test human capital predictions about how labor force withdrawals both past and prospective part time work experience and working in male rather than in female jobs affect wages and wage growth for white women we do this by estimating a wage change model for the years 1967 1979 for a national sample of white women we find that wages drop immediately following withdrawals but that this is followed by a rapid wage growth so that the net loss in wages from dropping out of the labor force is small we further find that wage growth is not significantly lower in female than in male jobs but that part time work experience does not lead to significant wage growth in either male or female jobs

distinguished fellow mincering labor economics jacob mincer has helped set the research agenda and professional style in labor economics for over 30 years his research helped uncover the empirical content of human capital theory where he used those ideas to study the determinants of earnings and the sources and nature of earnings inequality he was also a pioneer in studying labor force participation decisions of married women for the past decade jacob has set his characteristic stamp on the empirical study of job mobility the following brief survey is meant to convey some of the flavor of jacob mincer s work and why it has been so influential in labor economics

agricultural graduate earnings the impacts of college career and gender survey data were used to identify determinants of starting and current salaries of agricultural graduates from kansas state university from 1976 97 salaries were significantly influenced by major field advanced degrees job location gender and family variables motivation for accepting a job and job mobility salary structures were estimated separately for male and female alumni women earned less than men after controlling for observed differences between the two groups decomposition of the salary differential revealed that gender salary differences were primarily due to differences between sexes in starting salaries field of study job experience and higher returns to married men careers of agricultural alumni have changed rapidly over the past several decades as the food economy has entered the information age goodman employers of agricultural graduates have increased their emphasis on computer people and teamwork related skills litzenberg and schneider andelt barrett and bosshamer given the major changes in the career expectations and experiences of agricultural alumni up to date information on salaries and career experiences is a vital ingredient for sound forward looking college and career decisions the purpose of this study is to identify and quantify the determinants of both starting and current august 1997 salaries of agricultural alumni with the use of a large survey sample of twenty two graduating classes 1976 to 1997 from the college of agriculture at kansas state university ksu this recent and extensive sample provides new insight on how starting salaries have changed over time and how sal

understanding the family gap in pay for women with children as the gender gap in pay between women and men has been narrowing the family gap in pay between mothers and nonmothers has been widening one reason may be the institutional structure in the united states which has emphasized equal pay and opportunity policies but not family policies in contrast to other countries that have implemented both the authors now have evidence on the links between one such family policy and women s pay recent research suggests that maternity leave coverage by raising women s retention after childbirth also raises women s levels of work experience job tenure and pay

differential export taxes along the oilseeds value chain a partial equilibrium analysis this paper studies the implementation of differential export tax det rates along value chains in particular in the oilseeds chain seeds vegetable oils biodiesel this trade policy consists in relatively high export taxes on raw commodities and relatively low taxes on processed goods this policy may generate public revenues and benefit final consumption by lowering domestic prices of vegetable oils and biodiesel and also promotes production at more processed stages of transformation particularly in response to tariff escalation by importing partners we first study the theoretical justification of this trade policy with a simple international trade model it shows how implementing a tax on exports of raw agricultural commodity in a country exporting seeds and vegetable oils augments the sum of profits and final consumers surplus in the processing sector of farmers surplus and of public revenues then we develop a world partial equilibrium model of the oilseed value chain that illustrates these theoretical conclusions we simulate i the elimination of dets in argentina indonesia and ukraine ii the elimination of import tariffs applied by the eu and the us on the same goods iii the elimination of dets in argentina indonesia and ukraine and of import tariffs applied by the eu and the us according to our estimates both consumers and producers throughout the world benefit from the removal of export taxes in these value chains respectively 931 million usd and 2 2 billion usd the third scenario leads to a significant expansion of world production of all activities along the value chain including the production of biodiesel for which world output would expand by one percent

an economic evaluation of peru s liquefied natural gas export policy abstract peru s camisea gas fields hold nearly 90 of the country s natural gas reserves in the 1990s the government had a policy to prioritize camisea gas for domestic consumption the revocation of this policy in the 2000s allowed private developers to export 40 of camisea s proven reserves equivalent to one third of peru s total this usd 3 9 billion liquefied natural gas lng export project boasts the largest single foreign direct investment in peru s history a major component of the financing was granted by international financial institutions on economic grounds while the project was expected to yield a substantial return to private investors the export of one third of peru s total proven natural gas reserves is not in line with its long term interests we undertake cost benefit analyses for a series of scenarios starting with the project s formative stage in the mid 2000s and then in 2012 two years after it began its commercial operation in all cases peru does not have sufficient reserves to warrant export and the economic costs far exceed the benefits this policy of lng exports should not have been approved by the government nor should the loans have been granted by international financial institutions to make it possible

how to achieve full electrification lessons from latin america electricity coverage in latin america has increased substantially in recent decades rising from 50 of the population in 1970 to more than 95 in 2015 growth however slowed in the 1990s as many countries experienced difficulties in extending their networks further in particular to serve those living in isolated and rural areas in spite of this the process of electrification was not interrupted and at the beginning of the 2010s decade most countries in the region were able to provide access to electricity to almost all of their populations in this paper we examine the main strategies used in latin america to increase coverage and argue that only a combination of policy efforts has made it possible to achieve the current situation we also examine the remaining obstacles at policy and institutional levels to achieving full coverage

time consistent export quotas in an oligopolistic world market abstract we investigate the strategic behavior between exporting countries that face endogenous terms of trade on the world market in a non cooperative setting if production decisions occur before consumption decisions the ex ante optimal export quota is not time consistent as the ex post elasticity of the residual foreign import demand curve is lower than the ex ante elasticity however we show that the exporters inability to irrevocably commit to their quota may be welfare superior to the precommitment solution if exporters can sell forward a proportion of their exports before production decisions are made they will do so even though in equilibrium it may decrease welfare compared to a situation in which forward markets do not exist moreover the equilibrium with forward markets is welfare inferior to the commitment equilibrium for exporters

the link between ability and specialization an explanation for observed correlations between wages and mobility rates wage levels and turnover rates are negatively correlated across types of employment and this fact is often interpreted as evidence that high wage jobs are rationed a simple training model illustrates however that this correlation may arise because able workers have an incentive to choose highly specialized jobs in any job the most able workers possess the most valuable stocks of specific skills and therefore face the highest mobility costs thus able workers may have a comparative advantage in specialized employments data from the national longitudinal survey of youth provide an opportunity to evaluate the merits of the training model developed here data on worker training and mobility provide support for several implications of the model the model also provides new ways to interpret existing results in the literature on interindustry wage differentials

the trend in the male female wage gap in the united states despite the rise in the feminist movement the enactment of equal opportunity legislation and the rapid increase in women s labor force participation a substantial sex differential in wages has persisted in the united states for at least 4 decades measured by hourly earnings of year round workers this wage gap was 31 in 1955 widened to a 35 37 range by the 1960s and early 1970s and then narrowed to 33 by 1982 this paper examines the extent to which changes in the characteristics of men and women in the labor force and other factors can account for the observed pattern the main finding is that increases in women s labor force participation were initially associated with a declining skill level of employed women relative to employed men where skill is measured by years of schooling and job tenure more recently the work experience of employed women has been increasing which helps account for the recent narrowing trend in the wage gap during the 1970s the wage gap probably woul have narrowed m

notes on farm retail price transmission and marketing margin behavior perfect farm retail price transmission sometimes is taken to mean an elasticity of price transmission ept equal to 1 we show that this definition is inconsistent with gardner s 1975 model we also show that the absolute marketing margin defined as the difference between the retail price and farm price responds differently to shifts in retail demand input supply and technical change in the marketers production function than does the relative marketing margin defined as the ratio of the retail price to the farm price the empirical implications of these results are discussed in some detail

optimal policies and marketing board objectives abstract in this paper we examine optimal tax subsidy policies with export marketing boards that compete as oligopolists in world markets by taking a targeting approach to identifying optimal policies we are able to show how optimal policies vary with the objectives of board the nature of competition in world markets as well as assumptions about market segmentation and regulation in none of the cases examined does a marketing board without tax subsidy policy replicate the social optimum moreover we show that the policies necessary to attain the social optimum are quite different with the institutional variation considered arbitrage and regulation is the only case considered in which the optimal export policy is definitely a tax and in which the marketing board s objective does not affect policy

the optimal tax on antebellum us cotton exports abstract the us produced about 80 of the world s cotton in the decades prior to the civil war how much monopoly power did the us possess in the world cotton market and what would have been the effect of an optimal export tax this paper estimates the elasticity of foreign demand for us cotton exports and uses the elasticity in a simple partial equilibrium model to calculate the optimal export tax and its effect on prices trade and welfare the results indicate that the export demand elasticity for us cotton was about 1 7 and that the optimal export tax of about 50 would have raised us welfare by about 10 million about 0 3 of us gdp or about 1 of the south s gdp

monetary returns to bachelors and masters degrees in agricultural economics characteristics of agricultural economics alumni from the university of georgia were discussed and a general linear model was developed to explain differences in bachelors and masters alumni salaries graduate education work experience resource mobility gender family background and high school size were found to influence alumni salaries returns to a masters degree were computed along with capital recovery periods assistantship levels cost of borrowed and human capital and nonmonetary benefits were relevant in decisions to attend graduate school some costs and benefits of graduate education were found to be subjective to vary across individuals and to be influenced by prevailing economic conditions

measuring oligopsony power with shadow prices u s markets for pulpwood and sawlogs empirical estimation of input market power hindered by problems in measuring an input s value of marginal product vmp by estimating a variable profit function system however one can infer a factor s vmp through its shadow price this technique is used here to specify a structural equation system which is estimated using time series data for the u s sawmilling and paper industries to empirically measure the degree of oligopsony power for sawlog and pulpwood inputs respectively results evaluated at sample means indicate that pulpwood markets are more oligopsonistic than sawlog markets though both perform closer to perfect competition than monopsony time trends for market power differ for each product and perfect competition cannot be rejected for sawlogs in later years copyright 1995 by mit press

optimal generic advertising in an imperfectly competitive food industry with variable proportions abstract this paper determines the impact of food industry market power on farmers incentives to promote in a situation where funds for promotion are raised through a per unit assessment on farm output and food industry technology is characterized by variable proportions specifically building on earlier studies by azzam am j agric econ 80 1998 76 and holloway am j agric econ 73 1991 979 muth s oxford econ papers 16 1965 221 model is extended to consider the farm level impacts of generic advertising when downstream firms possess oligopoly and or oligopsony power and advertising expenditure is endogenous at the market level applying the model to the us beef industry we find that for plausible parameter values market power reduces farmers incentives to promote however the disincentive is moderated by factor substitution and effectively vanishes as the factor substitution elasticity approaches the retail demand elasticity this suggests that the dorfman steiner theorem suitably modified to account for factor substitution suffices to indicate optimal advertising intensity in the us beef sector

a global assessment of the economic effects of export taxes trade negotiations have been largely driven by mercantilist interests seeing imports as a threat and exports as opportunities therefore policy makers and negotiators have focused in making concessions aimed to trade market access i e reductions in import duties and in ensuring fair competitions i e putting disciplines in production and export subsidies therefore even if export taxes and export restrictions are used by many countries in 2004 piermartini noted that approximately one third of world trade organization wto members impose export duties they have been a much lower source of concerns for policy makers trade negotiators and economists however the effects of export taxes are various the terms of trade effect market power of key suppliers consumer price e g food security or intermediate input price industrial policy in favor of processed goods reduction and or stabilization government revenue and income redistribution and this versatility has made them popular in many countries even if they create serious negative externalities for their trade partners the recent years have been marked by a renewal of interests from the trade community on this issue the 2007 2008 food price crisis bouet and laborde 2010 anderson and martin 2011 has shed light on their dangerous consequences on food security in period of price hikes and export restrictions on key inputs such as rare earths has led to trade dispute between the european union and china this paper using a new detailed dataset aims to address the impact of export restrictions on global welfare the mirage computable general equilibrium cge model which is multisectoral multiregion and dynamic is used to investigate how global removal of export taxes affects global trade and real income of major trading blocks the limited analysis of export taxation under a global and multisectoral framework is largely due to the lack of data in recent years the macmaphs6 and g

time allocation decisions associated with job market preparation undergraduate perceptions versus market realities a survey of agribusiness firms identifies characteristics associated with above average starting salary offers in the allied fields of agribusiness agricultural economics business and economics a complementary survey is made of students at texas a m university and university of georgia results show that firms value work experience and leadership experience more than students do whereas students value raising grade point average and interview preparation more than do firms students seeking a firm s maximum starting salary offer will need to enhance academic performance with substantial work experience and leadership experience copyright 2002 oxford university press

ordering the extraction of polluting nonrenewable resources energy markets are often characterized by the use of multiple nonrenewable resources such as coal and natural gas with different pollution characteristics the same resource may have different qualities as when high and low sulfur coal is used to generate electricity multiple resources are used in providing transportation services such as cars running on gasoline or plug in hybrids that may be fueled by electricity produced from coal when these nonrenewable resources contribute differentially to pollution what is the opti mal sequence of extraction over time harold hotelling 1931 developed the classical theory of extraction of a nonrenewable resource orris c herfindahl 1967 extended the hotelling model by considering many resources with different unit costs of extraction and proposed the least cost first principle extraction must be ordered by cost with the cheapest resource used first others have examined whether herfindahl s model remains valid in a variety of situations in a general equilibrium setting see murray kemp and ngo v long 1980 tracy r lewis 1982 in the presence of setup costs g rard gaudet moreaux and stephen w salant 2001 under het erogeneous demands chakravorty and darrell l krulce 1994 and when the extraction rate is constrained jean pierre amigues et al 1998 stephen p holland 2003 in these studies following hotelling and herfindahl resources were differentiated by cost alone in this paper we abstract from cost considerations and focus on how the sequence of extraction may be affected when resources are differentiated only by their pollution character istics we consider two resources one more polluting than the other without loss of generality consider coal to be the dirty resource and natural gas the clean one both may be used to generate electricity environmental regulation is imposed through a cap on the stock of pollution this may be a stylized approximation of an international agreement such as the kyoto protocol which aims to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere 1 with heterogeneity in pollution the results are nonintuitive and do not depend on the emis sion rates of the resources when the economy is already at its allowable stock of pollution the clean natural gas is used first and use of the dirty coal is postponed to the future this is what one would expect armed with insights from the herfindahl model however when the economy starts from below the ceiling and accumulates pollution coal may be used first and use of the clean natural gas is postponed the optimal strategy is to benefit from natural dilution by build ing the stock of pollution as quickly as possible this is done by burning coal rather than natural

why the gender gap in wages narrowed in the 1980s since 1976 the gender gap in wages on average declined by about 1 per year this article focuses on identifying the factors underlying this trend three data sets are analyzed the current population survey the panel study of income dynamics and the national longitudinal survey we find that convergence in measurable work related characteristics schooling and work experience explains one third to one half the narrowing the remainder is attributable to a relative increase in women s returns to experience as well as to declining wages in blue collar work and other factors

optimal policies with strategic distortions abstract this paper analyzes the jointly optimal levels of a variety of policy instruments when markets are imperfectly competitive a targeting principle to identify optimal policies under imperfect competition is derived using the concept of a strategic distortion this allows us to interpret when trade policy is first best and links the literature on optimal policies with imperfect competition to the standard targeting literature we show that optimal tax subsidy policy depends crucially on the presence of other regulations and assumptions about market segmentation

distribution of gains from research and promotion in multi stage production systems the case of the u s beef and pork industries a producer financed program that leads to either an increase in retail demand from promotion or a decrease in marketing costs from research will generate returns to producers that are generally smaller than returns generated through an equivalent change in producer supply from research the distribution of gains depends on the degree of substitutibility between farm and nonfarm inputs comparative statics of equal absolute changes in demand supply and marketing costs in the u s beef and pork industries show the significance of input substitutibility for distribution of gains and sensitivity of the results to beef and pork demand interrelationships

behavior of the firm under regulatory constraint a recent article by akira takayama discusses an earlier paper by harvey averch and leland l johnson on fair rate of return regulation of public utilities although takayama p 255 agrees with averch and johnson s general conclusions that a firm will tend to increase its investment with the introduction of an active constraint on its rate of return he criticizes the a j argument as being confusing ambiguous and in error takayama then attempts a clarification and presents a new formulation which leads to the a j result quoted above this comment will discuss several of takayama s criticisms in addition to showing that the so called a j effect cannot be derived from the basic assumptions made by both averch and johnson and takayama 1 we will show that the very assumptions used to prove the a j effect by defining the region of x require an assumption that the a j effect exists in the first place

show me the money the value of college graduate attributes as expressed by employers and perceived by students employers of agricultural undergraduates are presented with hypothetical job candidates with different attributes and salaries and are asked which candidate if any they would hire the employer choices are then used to estimate the additional salary they will pay for undergraduates with certain attributes students are administered similar surveys where they indicate which hypothetical candidate they think will be hired which can be used to estimate students perceived salary increase associated with each attribute employers stated values are then compared to students perceived values to identify any misperceptions regarding the monetary return of select attributes

semiparametric censored regression models aregression model is censored when the recorded data on the dependent variable cuts off outside a certain range with multiple observations at the endpoints of that range when the data are censored variation in the observed dependent variable will understate the effect of the regressors on the true dependent variable as a result standard ordinary least squares regression using censored data will typically result in coefficient estimates that are biased toward zero traditional statistical analysis uses maximum likelihood or related procedures to deal with the problem of censored data however the validity of such methods requires correct specification of the error distribution which can be problematic in practice in the past two decades a number of semiparametric alternatives for dealing with censored data have been proposed in a semiparametric approach part of the functional form of the model usually the regression function is parametrically specified by the researcher based upon plausible assumptions while the rest of the model is not parameterized 1 while the theoretical literature has produced several semiparametric estimators for the censored data model published applications of these estimators to empirical problems in economics have lagged far behind this paper reviews the intuition and computation of a handful of semiparametric estimators proposed for the censored regression model the various estimators are used to examine changes in black white earnings inequality during the

the market for agricultural economists discussion the three papers on the market for agricultural economists present a rather wide array of thinking on the subject it is good and necessary for the profession to be concerned about the demand for and supply of agricultural economists at both the ph d and master s levels our graduate programs must be market driven to be successful as such these programs will recognize the changing nature of the market and respond with a supply of young professionals who can find a productive place in the market the demand for agricultural economists has become very broad and diverse over the years the various segments of that market can be broken down as follows a academic this is the largest segment of demand and includes our traditional efforts

empirical age earnings profiles the human capital earnings function in which earnings are expressed as a quadratic in potential experience is probably the most widely accepted empirical specification in economics in spite of its widespread acceptance the human capital earnings function provides a very poor approximation of the true empirical relationship between earnings and experience the standard formulation understates early career earnings growth by about 30 50 and overstates midcareer growth by 20 50 however simple alternative specifications that fit the data are available

black agricultural economists discussion the authors of these three papers have performed a valuable service by reviewing and analyzing the status of blacks who have chosen agricultural economics as their profession occupation the estimated number of black agricultural economists continues to be small relative to the total number 32 in 1970 41 in 1981 and 56 in 1983 during this period the estimated number of blacks holding ph d degrees has risen slightly from 17 54 in 1970 to 18 44 in 1981 and then to 25 45 in 1983 however the percentage of blacks with ph d degrees remains lower than the percentage for all agricultural economists which has exceeded 60 since 1976 strauss and tarr apparently data on the number of black female economists were not tabulated

employers discriminatory behavior and the estimation of wage discrimination this paper considers the linkage of empirical estimates of wage discrimination between two groups introduced by oaxaca 1973 to a theoretical model of employers discriminatory behavior it is shown that conditional on different assumptions about employers discriminatory tastes oaxaca s estimators of wage discrimination can be derived that the approach is more generally useful is demonstrated by deriving an alternative estimator of wage discrimination based on the assumption that within each type of labor e g unskilled skilled the utility function capturing employers discriminatory tastes is homogeneous of degree zero with respect to labor inputs from each of the two groups the estimators are compared empirically in an application to male female wage differentials

judging agricultural policies a survey this survey provides a structured picture of 40 years of literature which uses welfare economic tools to judge agricultural policy challenges and developments of normative agricultural policy analysis are discussed in an easily accessible graphical framework it is shown how the literature has gone from examining a very small discrete set of simple policies to a much broader often continuous set of policies that combine policy instruments simultaneously the importance of the pareto criterion used to explore the limits of how government can affect welfare is revealed moreover given the importance of the objective of income redistribution in agricultural policy agricultural economists have often departed from the purely efficiency oriented tradition in economics it is shown that they have tried to incorporate equity considerations by either adding these criteria as constraints to the social welfare function or directly incorporating these criteria in the functional form of the social welfare function

evidence on discrimination in employment codes of color codes of gender there is substantial racial and gender disparity in the american economy as we will demonstrate discriminatory treatment within the labor market is a major cause of this inequality the evidence is ubiquitous careful research studies that estimate wage and employment regressions help wanted advertisements audit and correspondence studies and discrimination suits that are often reported by the news media yet there appear to have been periods of substantial reductions in economic disparity and discrimination for example donohue and heckman provide evidence that racial discrimination declined during 1965 1975 1 gottschalk has produced statistical estimates that indicate that discrimination against black males dropped most sharply between 1965 and 1975 and that discrimination against women declined during the interval 1973 1994 2 but some unanswered questions remain why did the movement toward racial equality stagnate and eventually decline after the mid 1970s what factors are most responsible for the remaining gender inequality what is the role of the competitive process in the elimination or reproduction of discrimination in employment

trends and characteristics of ph d degrees in agricultural economics in the united states the purpose of this paper is to discuss the trends that have occurred in the number of and some of the characteristics of recipients of ph d degrees in agricultural economics in the united states in recent years it includes an updating of work i initiated five years ago schrimper 1981a b c 1982 the latest information used in the previous work included degrees awarded through 1980 this paper is based on an additional three years of information this allows a detailed examination of changes over the last nine years as well as comparison with the earlier tabulations also information for three more institutions arizona rhode island and yale has been included as previously the major source of information is listings of ph d recipients for the previous year in the may issues of this journal the cooperation of several individuals contacted to obtain missing information and answer questions about data for various years is gratefully acknowledged without their help the information would have been incomplete and comparisons over time would have been meaningless the latest data available for developing this paper was the list of 1983 graduates even this information is somewhat dated however since it reflects admission financial assistance and enrollment decisions made at least five years ago the first part of this paper summarizes changes that have occurred in total output of ph d degrees in agricultural economics as well as distributional adjustments among regions individual institutions and between domestic and foreign students the second part focuses on some characteristics of domestic students who received ph d degrees in agricultural economics it contains information about where individuals received their undergraduate training and geographical and institutional migration for graduate training similar types of information about foreign ph d students is included in the third section of the paper finally a short summary and conclusions section is provided

salary patterns of agricultural economists in the early 1980s systematic explanation of wages in the service sector typically has been hampered by the absence of information on physical productivity of service workers frequently the analyst must rely on input information and make strong assumptions about the transformation of inputs and cost into outputs to model the long run pattern of wages in the service sector it may be sufficient to look primarily at relative wages and long term demand factors such as income and population a number of professions in the service sector have been successfully modeled using the familiar cobweb formulation for example hansen et al report the results of estimating a multiequation model of the long run supply and demand for economists generally and conclude among other things that the real salary of new ph d s will fall throughout this decade short run analysis of academic wages usually focuses on various sorts of earnings functions in which the natural log of earnings is regressed against a variety of human capital variables there is an extensive literature on the determinants of general economists salaries and on the determinants of salaries for agricultural economists on salary determinants see for example boddy hansen weisbrod and strauss strauss tolles and melichar and tuckman gapinski and hagemann among others which have examined various aspects of the general market for economists for agricultural economists salaries see for example broder and ziemer 1980 1982 fuller helmberger lane lee lundeen and clausen melichar peck and babb schotzko schrimper ziemer broder and spurlock and redman the more recent literature has emphasized the importance of using actual productivity measures such as publications in explaining variations in earnings along with human capital variables a deficiency in some of this second type of research involves the absence of a welldefined theoretical justification for particular statistical specifications and the reliance on single equation models the objective of this study is to take advantage of a new relatively underutilized data source on agricultural economists in order to examine the general characteristics of agricultural economists and to examine the determinants of their salaries in the early 1980s in particular we examine the 1981 registry of agricultural economists maintained by the american agricultural economics association and the illinois department of labor the registry when examined in conjunction with melichar and unpublished 1976 tabulations of the association s membership list indicate that it is broadly representative of the profession the plan of the paper is as follows the next section describes the data base and provides some general characteristics of agricultural economists in the early 1980s then we examine salary patterns of agricultural economists in various types of employment and focus in more detail on the salaries of academicians especially those who are from and at educational institutions with doctoral programs which have been ranked in terms of the quality of their faculty and in terms of the quality of their graduate programs special attention is paid to the salaries of female agricultural economists and differences in salaries attributable to the race ethnicity of agricultural economists we conclude with a prospectus on outstanding research issues robert p strauss is a professor of economics and public policy school of urban and public affairs carnegie mellon university michael j tarr is a student at cornell university the authors wish to express their gratitude to the aaea and dr emanuel melichar for making unpublished data available for this study and to farm foundation for financial support responsibility for the views and any errors in this paper rests solely with the authors

value chain clusters and aquaculture innovation in bangladesh abstract farmers adopting and implementing innovations such as new technologies and new products often require collaborative inter segment innovation by other actors in other segments of the value chain such as wholesalers implementing new product innovations such as supply of commercial fish feed and chemicals and buying and marketing non traditional fish species we tested whether the clustering and thus economies of agglomeration with implied lower transaction costs encourage and facilitate farmers to innovate that potential determinant of farmer choices has not been studied in agriculture or aquaculture or indeed the food sector we use a unique data set from our own primary survey of the aquaculture value chain in bangladesh including micro data for 1500 fish farm households and 20 districts 77 villages for meso level data we calculate an index to include both horizontal agglomeration and vertical interconnections among actors in the value chain we find being in an area with a high clustering index is associated with a higher probability of farmers using more modern inputs and growing non traditional commodity fish species controlling for farmers other characteristics as well as proximity to cities

welfare effects of an export tax thailand s rice premium an empirically based applied general equilibrium model is used to study the welfare and distributional effects of an export tax when the implementing country possesses some monopoly power in the world market a method is demonstrated through which a general equilibrium model can be used to find the optimal value of a tax or subsidy the approach makes it possible to conduct the welfare analysis of a particular intervention in an explicit second best context to study its income distributional implications and to explore the sensitivity of the results to variations in key behavioral parameters structural assumptions and the government s distributional objectives copyright 2001 oxford university press

human capital specificity evidence from the dictionary of occupational titles and displaced worker surveys 1984 2000 measures of four basic skills constructed from the dictionary of occupational titles are used to examine the source of human capital specificity the measures are used to characterize the skill portfolio of each job and to construct distance measures between jobs wage losses in the displaced worker surveys are shown to be more closely associated with switching skill portfolios than switching industry or occupation code per se these switches represent large decreases in the skill portfolio in the postdisplacement job the recent evidence for industry specific capital is reexamined the results suggest a difference between fluid and crystallized skills

economics of agricultural supply chain design a portfolio selection approach agrifood firms in a globalizing and competitive market both in developing and developed countries often undertake innovations in products and technologies innovators such as firms and other agents develop supply chains to accommodate the nature of the innovations in this article we analyze an innovator s supply chain design problem the design of the supply chain involves three sets of decisions the first is how much to produce the second involves how to undertake production and how many resources to allocate to the production of feedstock agricultural products that are inputs for processing processing and marketing the third set involves deciding on the amount of feedstock to be obtained through contracts with farmers we show that the innovator determines its overall level of production by taking advantage of its monopoly power derived from the innovation in the output market and behaves as a monopsony in buying feedstock from contractors these decisions are constrained by the marginal cost of capital and the properties of production and marketing technologies when the innovator is risk averse risks in farm production processing and marketing will affect both processed output and the share of feedstock bought through contracts

the optimal export tax for a primary commodity in a vertical market the conventional formula for the optimal export tax derived from a partial equilibrium model that ignores importers welfare is extended to include the deadweight loss to the domestic economy associated with the tax applying the extended formula to the tax russia imposes on its exports of logs results suggest ignoring the marketing channel causes the optimal export tax for a primary commodity to be understated the degree of understatement increases as the supply of logs and processing marketing inputs become less price elastic and as buyer and seller power in the downstream lumber industry increases for plausible values of model parameters however the degree of understatement is modest less than 19

captive supplies market conduct and the open market price in this paper i examine the anatomy of the price captive supplies relationship to ascertain if some of the interpretations offered in the empirical literature are defensible gardner s one product two input model is extended to consider a partially integrated oligopsonistic industry the main result is that although the empirical relationship between captive supplies and the price received by independent producers is negative it may or may not be attributed to noncompetitive conduct hence for an econometric model to detect what type of conduct the relationship reflects more structural detail is needed than what so far has been provided in the literature

demand elasticities in international trade are they really low the authors analyze the u s demand for bangladeshi imports for products restricted under the multifiber arrangement because bangladesh is only a small supplier of these products and latin american and asian countries can supply close substitutes the authors expected a high elasticity of demand for bangladeshi imports and they found consistently high estimates based on statistically significant coefficients their finding accords with trade theorists prejudice that small countries can essentially behave as price takers but conflicts with the empirical literature view that demand elasticities are low rarely exceeding 3 and generally between 1 and 2 the authors analysis differs from the existing literature in three ways they derive a set of estimation equations from an explicit utility maximization model and use the estimated parameters of the utility function to obtain the marshallian own price and cross price elasticities as well as the income elasticity of demand they take explicit account of u s imports from competitors of bangladesh relying directly on competitors prices and they use highly disaggregated data that make the unit value of exports a better proxy for price than using aggregated export data commonly used in this literature the authors outline their theoretical model for deriving their estimated equations in section 1 preliminarily determine who bangladesh s competitors are in section 2 and estimate the demand equation derived in section 1 and derive the price and income elasticities facing bangladesh in section 3

projected replacement needs for agricultural economists comment in the august 1980 issue of this journal schotzko reported that the number of ph d s in agricultural economics required to offset anticipated retirements and deaths would increase during the next decade this finding is in contrast to recent concerns about overproduction and overeducation in the united states considering the rapid expansion of graduate enrollments in most fields cartter freeman implications of growth in the number of ph d s in agricultural economics during the 1970s were noted by helmberger boddy warned however that the scare talk about the current and prospective general ph d glut is greatly overdrawn in economics and agricultural economics the prospects are far less discouraging than in most other fields p 724 the primary purpose of this comment is to note some problems with schotzko s analysis a second purpose is to discuss some changes in the characteristics and aggregate number of ph d s granted in agricultural economics in the united states during the last two decades

evidence on barriers to the parallel advancement of male and female agricultural economists barriers to parallel advancement of male and female economists and managers but not agricultural economists have been studied in some detail reagan strober epstein gordon and strober reagan wrote on the supply side barriers to full career development for women are likely to be those common to all professional occupations plus the effect of women s perceptions of the intensity of the demand side barriers of the particular profession i e any lack of support of male colleagues professional isolation and lack of access to information network or employers lack of perception of the women s career potential one group of supply side barriers in

the effects of rising labour costs on global supply chains the case of china s cotton yarn industry abstractrapid economic growth in china and india has resulted in rapidly rising labour costs in those countries in this study a muth type model is used to assess the potential effects of this deve

optimal taxation of a monopolistic extractor are subsidies necessary abstract this note reconsiders the optimal taxation problem when extraction of an exhaustible resource is monopolistic in a standard model i explicitly characterize and examine all the efficiency inducing paths of taxes subsidies on the resource consistently with the literature there is a family of such optimal paths in contrast with im 2002 it may not be necessary to subsidize the monopoly at any date within the family of optimal paths of taxes subsidies there may exist some paths along which the regulator raises positive revenues at all dates this illustrates how the static trade off between inducing efficiency and raising tax revenues in the presence of market power is relaxed under exhaustibility

demand for farm output in a complete system of demand functions demand interrelationships for farm outputs that are theoretically consistent with consumer demand and marketing group behavior provide important linkages between retail and farm prices a conceptual model based on reduced form specifications for retail and farm prices is formulated and applied empirically to a set of eight disaggregated food commodities this approach circumvents the need for retail quantities which are frequently unavailable for disaggregated food commodities the results are consistent with theory and generally indicate significant substitution between farm and marketing inputs except for poultry derived demand elasticities are at least 40 larger compared to those derived assuming fixed proportions

temporal analysis of income earned by former agriculture students earnings profiles of students formerly enrolled in a college of agriculture were analyzed in the context of labor market information analysis of covariance was used to estimate models explaining how salary determinants changed during the alumni s careers gender education year of job market entry profit sharing and personal emphasis on earnings were found to be significant determinants of starting incomes starting incomes were found to be a prime determinant of later year salaries along with experience on the immediate job profit sharing oral and technical skills marital status and place of residence labor market information was found to vary in quality across participants and have a limited shelf life

does the jack of all trades hold the winning hand comparing the role of specialized versus general skills in the returns to an agricultural degree this paper examines the roles of specialized versus general skills in explaining variation in the returns to an agriculture degree among graduates working both inside and outside the agricultural industry the focus on returns by sector of employment is motivated by our finding that most agricultural graduates are employed in non agricultural jobs in that study a sample of alumni graduating from a large midwestern public university between 1982 and 2006 shows that alumni with majors more specialized in agriculture earned a premium from working in the agriculture industry but this advantage has diminished over time agricultural graduates with more general training earn more outside than inside agriculture higher ability graduates in more industry focused curricula tend to sort into the agricultural industry while higher ability graduates in broader curricula tend to choose jobs outside of agriculture all graduates are more likely to accept agricultural employment when the farm economy is strong but agricultural graduates who enter agricultural jobs when the farm economy is weak suffer lifetime earnings reductions these findings suggest that greater levels of specialization may limit a graduate s ability to adjust to changing economic circumstances agriculture degree programs could benefit from curriculum innovations that focus on developing more generalized skills

demand and supply factors of black agricultural economists a review of the economics and agricultural economics literature over the past twenty years reveals that considerable attention has been given to the demand supply and market for economists and agricultural economists boddy 1962 1973 harmon clague and levine helmberger and strauss and tarr however much of the work until fairly recently has focused on the demand supply and market for all economists and agricultural economics with very little attention given to how sex and or race may differentiate the produce that is the majority of these studies tend to treat economists and agricultural economists as homogenous products and the market as perfectly competitive recent studies on the role and status of women in the two

work power and earnings of women and men numerous studies have established that part of the very substantial male female earnings gap is explained by differences in the amount of human capital workers have accumulated see for example jacob mincer and haim ofek 1983 institutional factors have also been found to play a role in determining wages david gordon et al 1982 occupation further helped to explain the remaining gap but several researchers have shown that introducing dimensions of work authority by taking into account the individual s position in the work hierarchy explains more of the variation in earnings than does occupation martha hill 1980 last two recent studies ferber and spaeth 1984 spaeth 1985 also included control over monetary resources this variable added substantially to the explanatory power of earnings regressions even after human capital variables institutional factors and several other measures of work authority had been entered like the other studies ferber and spaeth also found that reward structures for men and women are quite different suggesting the possible existence of discrimination the question whether women may also be at a disadvantage in achieving control over monetary resources was not investigated when hill examined the process of achievement of work authority she found substantial differences between male and female workers in this paper we examine whether the same is true for attaining financial control i data and analysis

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