the federal funds rate and the channels of monetary transmission the authors show that the interest rate on federal funds is extremely informative about future movements of real macroeconomic variables then they argue that the reason for this forecasting success is that the funds rate sensitively records shocks to the supply of bank reserves that is the funds rate is a good indicator of monetary policy actions finally using innovations to the funds rate as a measure of changes in policy the authors present evidence consistent with the view that monetary policy works at least in part through credit i e bank loans as well as through money i e bank deposits copyright 1992 by american economic association

gasoline price volatility and the elasticity of demand for gasoline abstract we examine how gasoline price volatility impacts consumers price elasticity of demand for gasoline results show that volatility in prices decreases consumer demand for gasoline in the intermediate run we also find that consumers appear to be less elastic in response to changes in gasoline price when gasoline price volatility is medium or high compared to when it is low moreover we find that when we control for variance in our econometric model gasoline price elasticity of demand is lower in magnitude in the long run

demystifying rins a partial equilibrium model of u s biofuels markets abstract we explore four fundamental channels of mandate compliance available under current u s biofuel policy increased ethanol blending through e10 or e85 increased biodiesel blending and a reduction in the overall compliance base simulation results highlight the interplay and varying importance of these channels at increasing blend mandate levels in addition we establish how rin prices are formed the value of a rin in equilibrium is shown to reflect the marginal cost of compensating the blender for employing one additional ethanol equivalent unit of biofuel this contrasts with existing research equating the price of rins to the gap between ethanol supply and demand evaluated at the mandate level we demonstrate the importance of this distinction in case of binding demand side infrastructure constraints such as the ethanol blend wall as percentage blend mandates increase the market for low ethanol blends may contract in order to reduce the overall compliance base this has important implications for implied ethanol demand in the economy

beyond the hype intellectual property and the knowledge society knowledge economy this paper explores the debates surrounding whether or not we have now moved into a new knowledge economy andsor knowledge society and if so whether this shift is as significant and as far reaching as the industrial revolution in this possible transformation the place of information communications technologies has been crucial debate has occurred across both economics and sociology with differing emphases as is shown in the ranges of definitions that we review in the paper one consistent factor is the lack of clarity and consistency between them both within and across the disciplines in order to explore the issues that the debates raises in a more grounded way the paper explores them in relation to intellectual property ip and the intellectual commons in the process of innovation growth and economic development the paper is developed through an analysis first of the industrial revolution and the role within this of uncertainty technologies complementarities and elective affinities and the way ip was protected and controlled through patents secrecy being first to the market and copyright the second part of the paper examines definitions of the knowledge economy and society and the role within these of information communication technologies in order to explore whether the ways that ip is protected and controlled have changed in the debate about the knowledge economy and society the role of innovation via human capital with a greater reliance on intellectual capabilities has been emphasized the role of ip thus remains central but is now challenged by the rise of new forms of communication which make its protection harder and move much of the concern with respect to regulation to a global rather than national and local level copyright 2006 the authors journal compilation 2006 blackwell publishing ltd

green revolution land reform and household income distribution in the philippines income of agricultural households consists of returns to labor capital and land from farming supplemented mainly by labor earnings from nonfarm sources agricultural technology affects farmers income through its effect on factor demands and factor prices which in turn induce changes in the allocation of farmers own resources to different uses income from farming is also affected by village institutions such as land tenure which governs the distribution of income between landlords and tenants as well as resource allocations

women s work and economic development using a cross country dataset and microdata from india and thailand we examine how women s work status changes with economic development several clear patterns emerge women s labor force participation first declines and then rises with development women move from work in family enterprises to work as paid employees fertility declines and gender gaps in education narrow women s education levels and those of their spouses appear to be important determinants of women s labor market activities broad welfare indicators such as mortality rates and education levels indicate that women s well being improves on average with development both in absolute terms and relative to men

exploitative briefcase businessmen parasites and other myths and legends assembly traders and the performance of maize markets in eastern and southern africa summary small scale assemblers are both the most vilified and least understood actors in food value chains in sub saharan africa drawing on data from kenya zambia malawi and mozambique this article explores how maize assemblers influence the market access conditions of small scale farmers assembly markets for maize are found to be highly competitive in terms of the number of traders operating and marketing margins farmers market access conditions in remote areas are particularly improved by the operation of assembly traders direct state operations in markets have sometimes unintentionally exacerbated market access conditions for farmers through their effects on rural assembly markets while smallholder farmers face important marketing challenges the brightest prospects for effectively addressing them require greater support for the development of competitive assembly markets rather than supplanting them

compliance path and impact of ethanol mandates on retail fuel market in the short run past studies have examined the impact of ethanol mandates with a long run perspective and were thus able to assume away short run rigidities and some of the specifics of the biofuel mandates these studies have been of limited use in informing current policy debates because the short to medium run reality is one of strong regulatory and infrastructure rigidities that restrict how ethanol can be consumed in the united states our objectives in this paper are to provide a more coherent framework than currently exists to model and understand how compliance with ethanol mandates in the short run cannot be met with conventional gasoline blends how compliance impacts fuel prices and consumer and producer welfare and also to measure the size of the transfer that occurs between refineries and ethanol producers through the market s renewable identification numbers rins in a model calibrated to 2015 data we find that the effects of increasing ethanol mandates that are physically feasible are close to zero on the retail price of gasoline this result is robust to different gasoline prices supply elasticities and export demand elasticities increased mandates can have a large negative effect on the price of high level ethanol gasoline blends such as e85 if the mandates are increased to approach consumption capacity

agricultural household models extensions applications and policy this book presents the basic model of an agricultural household that underlies most of the case studies undertaken so far the model assumes that households are price takers and is therefore recursive the decisions modeled include those affecting production and the demand for inputs and those affecting consumption and the supply of labor comparative results on selected elasticities are presented for a number of economies the empirical significance of the approach is demonstrated in a comparison of models that treat production and consumption decisions separately and those in which the decisionmaking process is recursive the book summarizes the implications of agricultural pricing policy for the welfare of farm households marketed surplus the demand for nonagricultural goods and services the rural labor market budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings in addition it is shown that the basic model can be extended in order to explore the effects of government policy on crop composition nutritional status health saving and investment and to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the effects on budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings methodological topics primarily the data requirements of the basic model and its extensions along with aggregation market interaction uncertainty and market imperfections are discussed the most important methodological issues the question of the recursive property of these models is also discussed

the economics of rising stars this paper analyzes an occupation in which there is substantial uncertainty about individual performance and past performance is correlated with future outcomes in equilibrium only the young enter the occupation and only the successful stay on the young are numerous and earn incomes well below what their current alternative o ffers success is rare and rewarded highly the implied distribution of earnings must have positive skewness copyright 1988 by american economic association

blending under uncertainty real options analysis of ethanol plants and biofuels mandates abstract the value of a representative ethanol producer that benefits from both low and high gasoline prices in the short run is modeled ethanol producers make a modest competitive profit in the mandate induced region of production a low price of gasoline increases the demand for blend ethanol and consequently increases the profit of ethanol producers on the other hand when gasoline becomes costlier than ethanol the capacity constraints of the biofuels sector bind and ethanol producers gain large quasi monopoly margins this is an interesting example of a market where two commodities are complement up to a point and then substitute after that we postulate the value of an ethanol producer as a strangle option consisting of two real options the option to substitute gasoline at times of expensive crude oil and the option to expand supply of blend at times of cheap gasoline using a dynamic model we show that the higher volatilities of crude oil and ethanol costs increase biofuels firms value we also find non monotonic relationships between the value of an ethanol plant and several underlying variables including gasoline price level we estimate the value provided by a 10 blend mandate to be around 150 000 000 for a representative ethanol unit our results offer a novel view of oil and feedstock price risks in contrast to the common belief that considers those risks as a negative factor for the biofuels sector

global oil prices and local food prices evidence from east africa it is widely believed that oil prices impact food prices in developing countries yet rigorous evidence on this relationship is scarce using maize and petrol price data from east africa we show that global oil prices do affect food prices but primarily through transport costs rather than through biofuel or production cost channels we find that global oil prices transmit much more rapidly to the pump and then to local maize prices than do global maize prices suggesting that the immediate effects of correlated commodity price shocks on local food prices are driven more by transport costs than by the prices of the grains themselves furthermore we present suggestive evidence that for markets furthest inland changes in world oil prices have larger effects on local maize prices than do changes in world maize prices

a farm household model for agri food policy analysis in developing countries application to smallholder farmers in sierra leone this paper presents a generic farm household model for use in the context of developing countries to gain knowledge on food security and rural poverty alleviation under different policy options it is a static positive programming model which simultaneously solves a set of microeconomic farm models reproducing the behaviour of representative individual farm households this model is designed to capture key features of developing countries agriculture such as the non separability of production and consumption decisions due to market imperfections the inter linkage between transaction costs and market participation decisions the interaction among farm households for factor markets and the seasonality of resource use model use is illustrated in this paper by simulating the impact of rice seed policy on the livelihood of representative smallholder farmers in sierra leone results show that the seed policy would improve farm productivity and boost household income but that it is not sufficient to fight poverty since 90 of the surveyed farm households would continue to live below the extreme poverty line of 1 usd equivalent per person per day

market structure and performance in intellectual property the case of copyright collectives abstract copyright collectives are associations to whom authors transfer copyrights for purposes of exploitation these collectives grant licenses for the use of works in their repertory they negotiate and collect royalties which they distribute to their members and they take legal actions against those who infringe the copyrights to which they hold title this paper investigates the consequences of the formation of collectives on the number of copyrighted works produced and circulation of these works in the framework of a model of joint production welfare issues are also addressed

the effect of nonfarm income on investment in bulgarian family farming this article documents a relationship between nonfarm income primarily earnings and pensions and agricultural investment in bulgaria specifically expenditures on working capital variable inputs such as feed seed and herbicides and investment in livestock among those with positive spending on farm inputs the estimated elasticity of these expenditures with respect to nonfarm income is 0 14 nonfarm income also has an effect on the number of households that purchase farm animals with an estimated elasticity of 0 35 the use of nonfarm income for farm investment is consistent with the presence of credit constraints as is the fact that less than one percent of farmers report outstanding debts for agricultural purposes yet many farm households take out large unsecured loans for other purposes primarily to cover consumption expenditures implying that credit is available but that farmers prefer not to use borrowed funds to finance agricultural investment this would suggest that increases in the availability of agricultural credit may have little effect on farm outcomes whereas increases in nondebt financed sources of liquidity such as subsidies or transfers may better stimulate investment

what s in a sign trademark law and economic theory the aim of this paper is to summarize the extant theory as it relates to the economics of trademark and to give some suggestions for further research with reference to distinct streams of literature the proposed line of study inevitably looks at the complex relationship between signs and economics copyright 2006 the authors journal compilation 2006 blackwell publishing ltd

copyright and artists a view from cultural economics most of the standard economic literature on copyright ignores a number of aspects that have considerable significance for cultural production and for artists the primary creators of copyright works the supply of which copyright is supposed to stimulate specifically there is little mention in that literature of moral rights no distinction is made between copyright for authors and neighbouring rights for performers the distributional effects of copyright are barely referred to and the question of how much artists earn from copyright is ignored in this article i survey work that relates copyright and cultural economics showing that cultural economics offers another view to the standard economics of copyright moreover the case for government intervention in the arts and heritage made by cultural economists has resonance for the economic rationale of copyright

the effects of a large discrete maize price increase on the distribution of household welfare and poverty in rural kenya1 this study estimates the effects of a large discrete maize price increase on the welfare of a sample of rural kenyan households the usual first order welfare approximation formula is extended to a second order formula that allows for supply and demand responses to the price change results show that many rural households are not affected greatly by the price change and there are about as many gainers as losers however these full sample results mask important differences across regions welfare gains generally take place in major production areas while losses are in areas where most households are net buyers of maize semiparametric methods are used to investigate the relationship between income and the size of the welfare effect and poverty dominance techniques are applied to study the impacts of the maize price increase on rural poverty

food price variability and economic reform an arch approach for ghana changes in maize price levels and variability in ghana are investigated a model of wholesale price determination is reviewed in which grain stocks are held for speculative storage as well as export to neighboring countries in the sahel to test the model an autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic arch regression is applied to monthly maize data for two markets over the period 1978 93 the regression is used to measure changes in maize price volatility in ghana and to infer the importance of past prices domestic and regional production and commodity storage and trade in explaining these changes

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

can crop purchase programs reduce poverty and improve welfare in rural communities evidence from the food reserve agency in zambia the last decade has seen a resurgence of parastatal crop marketing institutions in sub saharan africa many of which cite improving food security and incomes as key goals however there is limited empirical evidence on the welfare effects of these programs this article considers one such program the zambian food reserve agency fra which purchases maize from smallholder farmers at a pan territorial price that typically exceeds maize market prices in surplus production areas using both fixed effects and an instrumental variables approach combined with correlated random effects we estimate the effects of the fra s maize marketing activities on smallholder farm household welfare results suggest that fra activities have positive direct welfare effects on the small minority of smallholder households that are able to sell to it however the results also suggest negative indirect fra effects as higher levels of fra activity in a district are associated with higher levels of poverty

putting the 2007 2008 global food crisis in longer term perspective trends in staple food affordability in urban zambia and kenya abstract staple food prices in cities in eastern and southern africa rose sharply between late 2007 and early 2009 leading to estimates of massive increases in food insecurity and hunger however in assessing the impacts of soaring food prices on urban consumers access to food it is important to consider food price changes relative to changes in per capita incomes in this study we use the case studies of zambia and kenya where data are available on food prices wage rates incomes and other indicators of urban purchasing power to answer two main questions i how did staple food purchasing power at the height of the food price crisis compare to levels over the last 15 years and ii did the food price crisis exacerbate an already declining trend in staple food purchasing power or did it reverse a trend of stable or improving staple food affordability results indicate that staple food purchasing power in urban zambia and kenya improved markedly in the 10 12 years prior to the food price crisis most measures of bread and maize meal affordability at the start of the crisis in 2007 were at levels 1 0 4 3 times higher than in the mid 1990s these gains for urban consumers were slashed but not completely reversed during the food crisis between 2007 and 2009 maize meal and bread were still more affordable in urban zambia than all periods between 1994 and 2003 in urban kenya staple food purchasing power as of 2008 2009 was comparable to levels in 2000 2001 2004 2005 according to some indicators while other measures suggest that the food price crisis reduced staple food purchasing power to levels lower than any other year in the period 1994 1995 2007 2008

subsistence and semi subsistence farming in selected eu new member states factor and cluster analysis are used to analyse the attitudes and perceptions of agricultural households in five eu new member states towards farming commercialisation and barriers to and drivers for an increased integration in agricultural markets the contribution of unsold output to the total household income is valued a stepwise linear regression is employed to detect important variables explaining the degree of agricultural market integration of farm households the analysis indicates that subsistence farming is of utmost importance for the rural poor and particularly in bulgaria and romania the proportion of consumption from own production manual cultivation techniques and distance to an urban centre negatively affect output sales rural development policies targeted at rural physical and market infrastructure might relieve some of these constraints

price policy poverty and power within rural west african households abstract this paper explores the impact of agricultural price policy on poverty in west africa a region in which prices are an important tool for raising rural household incomes a game theoretic collective model of household income generation and resource allocation is developed that incorporates three features typical of west african rural households preference heterogeneity among women and men individual resource control and power mediated bargaining over resource control in the face of changes in households economic environments to explore price effects the model is used to simulate the income impacts of large increases in cotton prices accompanying fast paced agricultural liberalisation in burkina faso in the 1980s the paper shows that where resources are controlled individually by household members rather than pooled pareto efficiency in income generation does not hold the impact of agricultural price policy on poverty is mediated by bargaining over resource control within households bo

the effects of ncpb marketing policies on maize market prices in kenya the government of kenya pursues maize marketing policy objectives through the national cereals and produce board ncpb which procures and sells maize at administratively determined prices and stores maize as a contingency against future shortages a private sector marketing channel competes with the ncpb this article estimates the effects of ncpb activities on the historical path of private sector prices in kenyan maize markets between 1989 and 2004 the analysis is carried out using a reduced form vector autoregression model var estimated with sparse data and imposing only minimal identification restrictions results show that ncpb activities have stabilized maize market prices in kenya reduced price levels in the early 1990s and raised average price levels by roughly 20 between 1995 and 2004 over the past decade the price raising activities of the ncpb have transferred income from urban consumers and a majority of small scale farm households that are net buyers of maize to a relatively small number of large and small scale farmers who are sellers of maize

the population problem theory and evidence this study is concerned with the relationships among population growth poverty and environmental degradation with particular focus on the situation in developing countries the author rejects the concept of a general theory of fertility behavior in favor of an interpretation of these relationships which might be applicable to certain situations in the poorest parts of the indian subcontinent and sub saharan africa such situations include unacceptable risks of maternal death for poor illiterate women and a condemnation to extreme poverty in conditions of the deterioration of local resources and of the environment the author concludes that population growth rates are too high in certain specific areas and that an appropriate policy reaction to such conditions would be to try to change the options that men and women face so that their reasoned choice would be to lower their fertility

social influence and collective action effects on farm level soil conservation effort in rural kenya abstract this paper analyzes the effects of social influence and participation in collective action initiatives on soil conservation effort among smallholder farmers in lake naivasha basin kenya we apply binary and ordered probit models in a two stage regression procedure to cross sectional data collected through a household survey among randomly selected smallholder farmers smallholder farming systems in the research area are associated with practices that render farmlands susceptible to soil erosion causing negative impacts on land and the environment therefore strategies that encourage soil conservation are likely to also offer solutions for dealing with agri environmental challenges and poverty alleviation results indicate that social capital facilitates participation in collective action initiatives which then influence individual soil conservation efforts neighborhood social influences subjective norms gender education level farm size access to credit and livestock ownership also emerge as key determinants of soil conservation effort policy implications drawn by this study encourage strategies to increase participation and effectiveness in collective action initiatives as a boost to soil conservation implementation of soil conservation practices could also be encouraged through awareness increasing instruments facilitating access to agricultural micro credit and paying attention to gender related challenges on knowledge access and rights over land and other natural resources

university research intellectual property rights and european innovation systems this paper surveys the literature on university patenting from the point of view of the economic theory of patents it is argued that patenting knowledge developed by university researchers is paradoxical patents are normally intended to stimulate knowledge development by providing property rights but universities operate also under a different incentive scheme i e they receive public funds to perform socially useful knowledge in the debate surrounding the so called bayh dole act in the usa it has however been argued that patents on university inventions may be necessary to stimulate technology transfer from universities to private firms the first part of the paper addresses two major questions first what is the economic logic of bayh dole and second what were the effects on universities and the knowledge they develop in the second part the paper addresses the issue of whether bayh dole like legislation would be beneficial for european countries in a number of european countries a suggestion has been made that this could enhance knowledge transfer from the public to the private sector using a new database resulting from a survey among patent inventors in six european countries an assessment is given of the degree of university patenting in europe because university researchers are often involved in patented inventions without the university being listed as a patent applicant statistics based on the patent office databases alone often underestimate university patenting in europe the paper ends with a discussion of how this european practice of university patenting affects public private knowledge transfer in europe and how this compares to the effects of the bayh dole act in the usa

impacts of subsidized hybrid seed on indicators of economic well being among smallholder maize growers in zambia we test the hypotheses that subsidies on hybrid seed change maize production total household income the severity of poverty and relative deprivation among smallholder maize growers in zambia the analysis contributes to the literature by measuring the quantitative effects of seed as compared to fertilizer subsidies on indicators of household well being rather than input demand we apply a combination of econometric approaches to a nationally representative balanced panel of smallholder maize growing households and invoke the chain rule to generate quantitative estimates of impacts per kilogram of subsidized seed our findings demonstrate that in the initial years of the program subsidized seed enhanced the well being of smallholder maize growers according to each indicator but by small magnitudes simple calculations suggest high private and social benefit cost ratios when benefits are measured in terms of household income although magnitudes are sensitive to seed price and administrative costs

inefficiency of male and female labor supply in agricultural households evidence from uganda this article analyzes the efficiency of the intra household allocation of female and male labor inputs in agricultural production in a collective household model spouses optimal on farm labor supply is such that the marginal rate of technical substitution between male and female labor is equated over different crops using the uganda national household survey 2005 06 we test whether this condition holds by estimating production functions and controlling for endogeneity using a method proposed by gandhi navarro and rivers 2009 we find that women are less productive than men that there is more female labor input on low productivity parcels and that men are relatively more productive on female controlled plots compared with male controlled plots total farm output could be higher and pareto improvements could be possible if male labor was reallocated to female controlled plots and or female labor was reallocated to male controlled plots

the effects of the food reserve agency on maize market prices in zambia over the last decade governments throughout eastern and southern africa have increasingly used strategic reserves and or marketing boards to influence grain market outcomes yet little is known about how these activities are affecting grain markets this article estimates the effects of the food reserve agency fra on maize market prices in production and consumption regions in zambia using a vector autoregression model and monthly data from july 1996 through december 2008 in recent years fra has become the dominant buyer of smallholder maize in zambia simulations show that fra activities stabilized market prices throughout the july 1996 december 2008 study period and raised mean prices between july 2003 and december 2008 by 17 19 the price raising effects of fra policies have assisted surplus maize producers but adversely affected net buyers of maize in zambia namely urban consumers and the majority of the rural poor the increase in maize price stability is unlikely to have had substantial welfare effects on poor households in contrast relatively wealthy producers are likely to have benefited from the higher average and more stable maize prices resulting from fra policies

indigenous knowledge and intellectual property a sustainability agenda the paper argues that the current ways of protecting intellectual property are limited in their scope for recognizing indigenous rights to indigenous knowledge indigenous knowledge is often defined as being holistic and collectively owned and an appropriate protection should allow for maintaining the cultural and physical environment that has generated it after examining the failure of the patent system to recognize indigenous input using examples from the us patent and trademark office the analysis is directed towards alternatives the world s first case of indigenous intellectual accreditation through the partnership between mt romance australian sandalwood company aveda us based multinational cosmetics corporation and the kutkabubba community represented by the songman circle of wisdom is presented the accreditation allows for the indigenous people to be recognized as traditional owners of the land and for their care and knowledge about the sandalwood trees it also gives them a share of the profits made from the contemporary use of the pure sandalwood oil the paper argues that sustainability and indigenous sustainability in particular provides a conceptual framework for a change in the way of protecting intellectual property this implies that appropriate policies should be put in place for businesses to feel responsible towards the community

a comparative political economic analysis of maize sector policies in eastern and southern africa abstract maize sector policies in eastern and southern africa are characterized by a large and often growing presence of the state yet the scope scale and modalities of state activities vary substantially across countries drawing on data from malawi zambia kenya and mozambique this article compares the relative degree of state intervention in the maize sector we show that relative preferences for output market subsidies input market subsidies trade restrictions or non interventionist approaches reflect the interplay of interest group lobbying patronage networks and ethnic and regional political affiliations these relationships have deep historical roots and have often been intensified in the context of the emergence of multiparty politics we show that interventionist orientations in output markets and trade do not translate into better performance or welfare outcomes input subsidy preferences produce more ambiguous welfare results when the opportunity costs are not fully accounted for

where are we now on cultural economics a survey of progress in cultural economics since its virtual birth in 1966 with the publication of baumol and bowen performing arts the economic dilemma distinguishing between theoretical progress and empirical progress following in the footsteps of towse s recent anthology of classic papers in cultural economics i address nine topics that between them cover the subject namely 1 taste and taste formation 2 demand and supply studies 3 the media industries 4 the art market 5 the economic history of the arts 6 the labour market for artists 7 baumol s cost disease 8 non profit arts organisations and 9 public subsidies to the arts i conclude that there has been some theoretical and empirical progress in the treatment of almost all these topics

stabilizing food markets in eastern and southern africa a major challenge for agricultural policy in africa is how to address the market instability related causes of low farm productivity and food insecurity this paper highlights structural changes affecting the behavior of food markets in eastern and southern africa and discusses their implications for the design of strategies to stabilize food prices these changes include 1 an increasing trend in maize prices toward import parity levels reflecting an emerging structural maize deficit in much of the region 2 increasingly diversified food consumption patterns in both rural and urban areas 3 highly concentrated marketed maize surplus which have largely unrecognized implications for the magnitude of price risk faced by most farm households and 4 the strategic interactions between private and public marketing actors leading in some cases to heightened market instability and food crises in the prevailing dual market environment now characterizing most of the region greater coordination transparency and consultation between private and public market actors is needed to achieve reasonable levels of food price stability and predictability

the demand for ethanol as a gasoline substitute abstract this paper estimates household preferences for ethanol e85 as a gasoline e10 substitute i develop a theoretical model linking the shape of the ethanol demand curve to the underlying distribution among households of willingness to pay for ethanol i estimate the model using instrumental variables techniques and data from many retail fueling stations i find that a 0 10 per gallon increase in ethanol s price relative to gasoline leads to a 12 16 decrease in the quantity of ethanol demanded my findings imply that preferences for ethanol are heterogeneous and that a substantial fraction of households are willing to pay a premium for the fuel this reduces substantially the simulated efficiency cost of an ethanol content standard since some households choose ethanol without large subsidies mitigating deadweight losses

liberalization and food price distributions arch m evidence from madagascar abstract there is no well articulated theory of how stochastic food prices respond to economic liberalization measures a surprising oversight in the vast literature on market oriented reforms this paper presents reduced form estimates of the effects of liberalization measures on food commodity prices in madagascar using autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic in mean arch m methods the data indicate that the short term effects of liberalization on the mean and variance of food prices vary substantially by commodity region and season in the long term liberalization increases both the mean and the variance of food prices the abandonment of a quantity rationed state marketing system with administrative pricing also leads to smaller inter regional and interseasonal differences in mean food prices and a sharp increase in price autocorrelation real exchange rates have pronounced positive effects on mean food prices but these effects emerge indirectly rather than directly through induced changes to border parity prices

modeling farm households price responses in the presence of transaction costs and heterogeneity in labor markets we develop a farm household model to analyze price responses of farm households this model incorporates various types of transaction costs as well as labor heterogeneity nonproportional variable transaction costs or labor heterogeneity imply that production and consumption decisions become nonseparable even when the household buys or sells labor an empirical model is estimated using data from midwest poland the results show that nonproportional variable transaction costs and labor heterogeneity significantly influence household behavior not all price elasticities however change significantly if these are neglected

pass through of the policy induced e85 subsidy insights from hotelling s model abstract we build a structural model of imperfect competition for a retail market that supplies both low ethanol e10 and high ethanol e85 gasoline blends the model permits us to study some impacts of the e85 subsidy induced by the u s renewable fuel standard specifically how the pass through of this subsidy to retail prices is affected by market power the model is rooted in hotelling s horizontal differentiation framework which is extended to also represent the imperfect substitutability between e10 and e85 a vertical product differentiation attribute the model naturally captures two sources of imperfect competition in the fuel market refueling stations market power arising from their spatial location and limited availability of e85 stations we derive both analytical and numerical solutions for nash equilibrium outcomes under various scenarios in our baseline parameterization when the penetration of e85 stations is incomplete we find that the pass through rate is about 0 7 complete penetration of e85 stations leads to near complete pass through notwithstanding the market power enjoyed by stations because of their spatial location with monopolistic market power e g collusion however with full penetration of e85 stations the pass through rate is lower moreover when market power only arises from location differentiation duopoly model with full penetration of e85 the pass through rate converges to one as the subsidy gets large whereas it converges to zero if a station has exclusivity in selling e85 partial penetration of e85 or there is collusion monopoly power from collusion

the demand for e85 geographical location and retail capacity constraints abstract consumption of high ethanol gasoline blends must increase if united states renewable biofuel mandates are to rise above current levels as envisioned by the renewable fuel standard one such blend is e85 which contains no more than 85 ethanol and no less than 15 gasoline we derive the demand for e85 based on a model of motorists preferences for motor fuel blends and calibrate the demand for e85 using data on the location of flex vehicles and fuel stations that sell e85 in the united states we also show how limits on the capacity of fuel stations to sell e85 affect demand and explore the potential future demand for e85 by increasing the number of fuel stations offering e85 and the number of flex vehicles we show that the existing fleet of flex vehicles is sufficient to accommodate more than 15 billion gallons of ethanol without a large price discount on e85 only if the number of stations that sell e85 increases substantially provided with fast enough installation of new e85 pumps this level of consumption would be sufficient to meet the mandates envisioned for conventional ethanol by 2015

markov switching estimation of spatial maize price transmission processes between tanzania and kenya we discuss the markov switching vector au toregressive ms var class of nonlinear time series models that can be used to analyze recurring discrete structural changes in time series hamilton s 1989 seminal markov switching ms model of the u s business cy cle triggered considerable interest in the ms approach in economics most empirical appli cations to date have focused on the business cy cle and financial markets but we see potential for ms var models in agricultural economics for example in price transmission analysis in the following we first provide an overview of the ms var framework we then present an illustrative application to maize price trans mission between tanzania and kenya the article closes with a discussion of strengths weaknesses and potential uses of the ms var approach in price transmission analysis

policy shocks and market based regulations evidence from the renewable fuel standard the renewable fuel standard mandates large increases in u s biofuel consumption and is implemented using tradable compliance credits known as rins in early 2013 rin prices soared causing the regulator to propose reducing future mandates we estimate empirically the effect of three policy shocks that reduced the expected mandates in 2013 we find that the largest of these shocks decreased the value of the fuel industry s 2013 compliance obligation by 7 billion we then study the effects of the shocks on commodity markets and the market value of publicly traded biofuel firms results show that the burden of the mandate reductions fell primarily on advanced biofuel firms and commodity markets of the marginal compliance biofuel we argue that the policy shocks reduced the incentive to invest in the technologies required to meet the future objectives of the rfs and discuss alternative policy designs to address the problems that arose in 2013

flex fuel vehicle adoption and dynamics of ethanol prices lessons from brazil abstract focusing on dynamics of the relative prices of substitute fuels namely ethanol and gasoline this study quantifies the impact of the increase in shares of flex fuel vehicles ffvs in the vehicle fleet on the domestic ethanol prices in brazil a modified partial adjustment model is employed estimation results provide strong support for our research hypotheses i when consumers can choose between the fuels the relative ethanol and gasoline prices converge to a long run equilibrium level which is determined by the fuel economy and ii price dynamics are largely determined by market supply and demand factors including the price of sugar ethanol exports and composition of vehicle fleet furthermore the impacts of demand factors such as ethanol exports are strengthened by the increasing proportion of ffvs in the vehicle fleet

cross country maize market linkages in africa integration and price transmission across local and global markets in order to study short run price shock propagation we model twenty seven sub saharan africa ssa domestic maize markets within a global vector autoregression framework the main purpose is to fully embed multilateral trade flows as a way to better structure local price transmission dynamics and interdependencies and get a more comprehensive picture of food price shocks propagation we found significant between country market contagion and prompt regional price shock propagation when trade connection exists yet the integration of ssa domestic maize markets within the continent and with global markets remains generally weak furthermore under regular market conditions most local price series appear to be more responsive to regional neighbors than to global shocks

using the competitive storage model to estimate the impact of ethanol and fueling investment on corn prices abstract the impact of biofuel mandates on the prices of commodities used to produce food continues to be a major consideration by policy makers more recently concern about high compliance costs of oil companies due to mandates led to reductions in us biofuel mandates to gain insights into the policy impacts of mandates on agricultural commodity prices and compliance costs requires development of dynamic models that can capture the fact that many agricultural commodities used to produce biofuels can be stored and that flexible compliance mechanisms allow for banking and borrowing of tradable permits us biofuel mandates are enforced using a system of tradable permits called rins rin market dynamics are important because rins can be banked for the future or borrowed from the future corn is the primary u s biofuel feedstock and is storable rational expectations competitive storage models are well suited to capture the dynamic behavior of commodity markets such a model is developed here for corn and rin markets to estimate the impacts of alternative future ethanol mandate levels the model considers corn use for ethanol storage and all other uses in each period accounting for two random variables oil prices and corn yields borrowing and banking provisions of the renewable fuels standard mandate are explicitly integrated into the model we use the model to provide estimates of the impact on corn prices corn plantings and ethanol production under two ethanol mandate scenarios for six marketing years from 2016 17 our scenarios are a combination of volume requirements and infrastructure investment the first scenario is one in which corn ethanol mandates stay the same as required in the current and proposed rfs and additional e85 stations are introduced that allow for compliance with higher mandates the second scenario is one in which no investment occurs and the environmental protection agency reduces the mandate to 13 87 billion gal a level that can just be met with 10 percent ethanol blends comparing the results for two scenarios we find that average corn prices are about 5 to 6 lower with the reduced mandates or about 22 to 30 cents per bushel while average rin prices drop from around 60 to 40 cents per rin