the economics of a blend mandate for biofuels a biofuel blend mandate may increase or decrease consumer fuel prices with endogenous oil prices depending on relative supply elasticities biofuel tax credits always reduce fuel prices tax credits result in lower fuel prices than under a mandate for the same level of biofuel production if tax credits are implemented alongside mandates then tax credits subsidize fuel consumption instead of biofuels this contradicts energy policy goals by increasing oil dependency co 2 emissions and traffic congestion while providing little benefit to either corn or ethanol producers these social costs will be substantial with tax credits costing taxpayers 28 7 billion annually by 2022 copyright 2008 oxford university press

the expansion of modern agriculture and global biodiversity decline an integrated assessment the world is banking on a major increase in food production if the dietary needs and food preferences of an increasing and increasingly rich population are to be met this requires the further expansion of modern agriculture but modern agriculture rests on a small number of highly productive crops and its expansion has led to a significant loss of global biodiversity ecologists have shown that biodiversity loss results in lower plant productivity while agricultural economists have linked biodiversity loss on farms with increasing variability of crop yields and sometimes lower mean yields in this paper we consider the macro economic consequences of the continued expansion of particular forms of intensive modern agriculture with a focus on how the loss of biodiversity affects food production we employ a quantitative structurally estimated model of the global economy which jointly determines economic growth population and food demand agricultural innovations and land conversion we show that even small effects of agricultural expansion on productivity via biodiversity loss might be sufficient to warrant a moratorium on further land conversion

taking account of governance implications for land use dynamics food prices and trade patterns deforestation mainly caused by unsustainable agricultural expansion results in a loss of biodiversity and an increase in greenhouse gas emissions as well as impinges on local livelihoods countries governance performance particularly with respect to property rights security exerts significant impacts on land use patterns by affecting agricultural yield related technological investment and cropland expansion this study aims to incorporate governance factors into a recursive agro economic dynamic model to simulate governance impacts on land use patterns at the global scale due to the difficulties of including governance indicators directly into numerical models we use lending interest rates as discount rates to reflect risk accounting factors associated with different governance scenarios in addition to a reference scenario three scenarios with high low and mixed divergent discount rates are formed to represent weak strong and fragmented governance we find that weak governance leads to slower yield growth increased cropland expansion and associated deforestation mainly in latin america sub saharan africa south asia and southeast asia this is associated with increasing food prices particularly in sub saharan africa and southeast asia by contrast strong governance performance provides a stable political and economic situation which may bring down deforestation rates stimulate investment in agricultural technologies and induce fairly strong decreases in food prices

cournot equilibrium calculation in power networks an optimization approach with price response computation since deregulated power markets are very often oligopolistic ones efficient models that are able to describe strategic behavior of firms must be developed in particular transmission constraints can easily increase the opportunities of market players to exercise market power this paper presents a model that describes the firms strategic interaction based on nash cournot equilibrium when the power network is taken into account specifically this paper introduces a new iterative algorithm that explicitly considers how the production at a certain bus affects the whole network and consequently models the opportunities for the firms of exercising market power taking into account their ability to influence the composition of the set of constrained lines the theoretical basis of the method as well as a case study based on the central european network is included

welfare effects of expansions in equilibrium models of an electricity market with fuel network the welfare of electricity producers and consumers depends on congestion in the transmission grid generation costs that consist mainly of fuel costs and strategic behavior we formulate a game theoretic model of an oligopolistic electricity market where generation costs are derived from a fuel supply network the game consists of a fuel dispatcher that transports fuels at minimum cost to meet generator demands generators that maximize profit in cournot competition and an independent system operator iso that sets nodal prices to balance electricity supply with linear demand functions we prove the existence of an equilibrium if fuel supplies are unlimited the same equilibria hold in a simplified version of the game in which each generator optimizes its fuel acquisition from the network in some very simple examples under different assumptions about the rationality of generators with respect to iso decisions paradoxical effects on total welfare can occur from expanding either electricity transmission capacity or the transportation capacity of low cost fuel we find some instances in which the paradox occurs only under bounded rationality of the generators others where it occurs only if the generators are fully rational and still others where it occurs to different degrees under the two rationality assumptions

induced innovations and farm mechanization cal change in agriculture then they come mainly from the public agent of farm technology the agricultural research system the research system should be held responsible for the social consequences of farm mechanization and it should be budgeted and directed accordingly on the other hand if mechanization and exit from farming are caused mostly by external price and wage changes the responsibility of the research system is limited principally to technology improvement in this note we discuss the newly emerging tradition of induced innovation and its relation to the alternative explanations of machine labor substitution in agriculture we first clarify the conceptual basis of the induced innovation hypothesis and the related innovation possibility function second we call into question the validity of some of the empirical applications we argue that an incomplete conceptualization of the induced innovation idea has led to invalid empirical tests and to inappropriate implications on the causes of american farm mechanization

agriculture in the global economy agriculture is diverse and full of contradictions the sector accounts for a griculture is diverse and full of contradictions the sector accounts for a comparatively small share of the global economy but remains central comparatively small share of the global economy but remains central to the lives of a great many people in 2012 of the world s 7 1 billion to the lives of a great many people in 2012 of the world s 7 1 billion people an estimated 1 3 billion 19 percent were directly engaged in farming people an estimated 1 3 billion 19 percent were directly engaged in farming but agriculture including the relatively small hunting fi shing and forestry sectors but agriculture including the relatively small hunting fi shing and forestry sectors represented just 2 8 percent of overall income world bank 2012 however in represented just 2 8 percent of overall income world bank 2012 however in today s middle and low income countries where most of the world s farmers are today s middle and low income countries where most of the world s farmers are to be found agriculture accounts for a much greater share of national income and to be found agriculture accounts for a much greater share of national income and employment for instance in india agriculture represents 18 percent of national employment for instance in india agriculture represents 18 percent of national income and 54 percent of employment income and 54 percent of employment 1

global population growth technology and malthusian constraints a quantitative growth theoretic perspective we structurally estimate a two sector schumpeterian growth model with endogenous population and finite land reserves to study the long run evolution of global population technological progress and the demand for food the estimated model closely replicates trajectories for world population gdp sectoral productivity growth and crop land area from 1960 to 2010 projections from 2010 onwards show a slowdown of technological progress and because it is a key determinant of fertility costs significant population growth by 2100 global population reaches 12 4 billion and agricultural production doubles but the land constraint does not bind because of capital investment and technological progress

reflections on agricultural r d productivity and the data constraint unfinished business unsettled issues sixty years ago t w schultz introduced the idea of the productivity residual to agricultural economics 1956 schultz s main message was that growth in conventional inputs accounted for little of the observed growth in agricultural output and that there was work to be done by agricultural economists to understand and ultimately eliminate this unexplained residual called productivity thus was launched the economics of agricultural productivity as a sub field within agricultural economics along with the economics of agricultural r d and innovation and related government policy much progress has been made in the decades since still critical issues remain unresolved this matters because agricultural innovation and productivity matter and so do the related policies that rest to some extent on our established understanding of the economic relationships in this paper i review some unsettled issues related to economic models and measures applied to agricultural r d and productivity and some unfinished business in terms of economic and policy questions that are not yet well answered before doing that i present some evidence on agricultural productivity and why it matters next with a nod to factology i present available productivity measures from the u s department of agriculture usda and international science and technology practice and policy instepp center and compare them in the context of translog cost function models in subsequent sections i use these and other data to develop new evidence related to two contentious questions a do farmers benefit from public agricultural r d b has u s agricultural productivity growth slowed in recent decades the answers are revealed within

strategic bidding in secondary reserve markets electricity markets are based on several sequential energy and reserve trading mechanisms to constantly maintain the balance between generation and demand during the last years reserve markets are getting much importance all around the world with the increasing social awareness of the renewable energy benefits additional reserve quantities and larger remunerations are being implemented by the regulators since this renewable energy is highly dependent on weather conditions uncertainties utilities are therefore demanding more and more powerful models to better optimize their reserve bidding curves to be sent to the system operators this paper describes a new methodology to obtain an optimized real bidding curve for the secondary spinning reserve market the approach is based on the maximization of a company profit assuming a set of residual demand curves scenarios for its competitors representation and considering the day ahead market opportunity cost to build the reserve cost curve the case study validates the main features of the proposed methodology by its application to the spanish secondary reserve market this methodology is being daily used by one of the most important electricity companies in spain

second best biofuel policies and the welfare effects of quantity mandates and subsidies abstract the quest for biorenewable energy sources is held to justify a number of government interventions including support policies for biofuels such as those responsible for the recent rapid growth of us ethanol production this article provides an analytical assessment of such policies we construct a general equilibrium open economy model that captures the rationale typically invoked to justify government intervention in this setting to alleviate the environmental impact of energy consumption and to decrease us energy dependence on foreign sources the model is used to study both the positive and normative implications of alternative policy instruments including the subsidies and mandates specified by the 2007 energy independence and security act from a positive perspective we find that biofuels mandates are equivalent to a combination of fuel taxes and biofuels subsidies that are revenue neutral from a welfare perspective we show that biofuels mandates dominate biofuels subsidies and that combining fuel taxes with mandates would be welfare enhancing

returns to food and agricultural r d investments in sub saharan africa 1975 2014 research enabled growth in agricultural productivity is pivotal to sub saharan africa s overall economic growth prospects yet investments in research and development rd median 38 0 py around 78 5 of the evaluations relate to the commodity specific consequences of agricultural research while 5 5 report on the returns to an all agriculture aggregate the weight of commodity specific evaluation evidence is not especially congruent with the composition of agricultural production throughout africa nor to the best that can be determined the commodity orientation of public african agricultural r d

international productivity patterns accounting for input quality infrastructure and research in this paper we present measures of land and labor productivity for a group of ninety eight developed and developing countries using an entirely new data set with annual observations spanning the past three decades the substantial cross country and intertemporal variation in productivity in our sample is linked to both natural and economic factors we extend previous work by dealing with multiple sources of systematic measurement error in conventional agricultural inputs the mix of conventional inputs indicators of quality of agricultural inputs and the amount of publicly provided infrastructure are all significant in explaining observed cross sectional differences in productivity patterns

technology spillovers and land use change empirical evidence from global agriculture we estimate the effects of agricultural technological progress on cropland expansion at various geographical resolutions from the country level to the world as a whole while formally accounting for the international interdependence of national supply responses evidence for these effects has thus far been scant contributing to polarized perceptions about the potential for improving agricultural technologies as a means to slow down deforestation we find that in most countries of the world growth in total factor productivity tfp is either uncorrelated or is positively associated with cropland expansion yet worldwide tfp growth have been an important source of global land savings the divergence between the country level and the global results is explained by the changes in production patterns as countries interact in international markets our preferred point estimate of the elasticity of global cropland to global tfp growth is 0 34 moreover we estimate that satisfying food demand from 1991 to 2010 without observed tfp growth would have necessitated an additional 173 million hectares or close to 10 of the area covered by tropical rain forests

productivity growth in world agriculture sources and constraints during the last half century advances in crop production came from expansion in areas irrigated from more intensive application of fertilizers and crop protection chemicals and from crop varieties that were more responsive to technical inputs and management advances in animal production came from genetic improvements and advances in animal nutrition differences among developed and developing countries in output per hectare and per worker have widened if these gaps are to be narrowed agricultural research capacity in developing countries will have to be substantially strengthened

does it matter who your buyer is the role of nonprofit mission in the market for corporate control of hospitals abstract the hospital industry is one of this country s largest mixed industries with for profit nonprofit and government hospitals operating in the same local markets but how do ownership types differ previous studies have compared costs among different hospitals however these studies have not been entirely successful because costs cannot be meaningfully compared without controlling for hard to measure quality of service in this study we look to the market for corporate control or takeovers for evidence of ownership related differences we find that nonprofit and for profit firms pay different prices and that these differences relate to the nonprofit s mission specifically nonprofits and for profits pay the same price when buying for profits but nonprofits pay less when buying a like minded nonprofit so religious nonprofits pay less for other religious nonprofits for example the resulting dual price equilibrium suggests that nonprofits have a different objective than do for profits but

the role of regulatory learning in energy transition the case of solar pv in brazil abstract an important problem that has attracted significant amount of attention within the context of energy transitions is the carbon lock in a situation in which energy systems are locked in to high carbon technologies through a path dependent process several measures to avoid the carbon lock in involve technology specific measures which in turn implies that those measures may result in an energy system locked in to certain low carbon technologies we consider that the brazilian system needs policies to escape the carbon lock in which are based on providing incentives to low carbon technologies we develop an analytical framework to analyze the role of regulatory institutions in the possible lock in to utility scale photovoltaic in the sense that they create barriers to the adoption of distributed generation photovoltaic we show that the definition of a process to adapt the institutional framework in a context of stress in the innovation system is crucial for the adoption of new technologies applying our framework to the brazilian power sector we observe that only when regulators consider the possibility that the system is locked in to centralized production technologies and not when they just consider the carbon lock in they manage to eliminate barriers to distributed generation based on solar pv

global economic growth and agricultural land conversion under uncertain productivity improvements in agriculture we study how stochasticity in the evolution of agricultural productivity interacts with economic and population growth at the global level we use a two sector schumpeterian model of growth in which a manufacturing sector produces the traditional consumption good and an agricultural sector produces food to sustain contemporaneous population agriculture demands land as an input itself treated as a scarce form of capital in our model both population and sectoral technological progress are endogenously determined and key technological parameters of the model are structurally estimated using 1960 2010 data on world gdp population cropland and technological progress introducing random shocks to the evolution of total factor productivity in agriculture we show that uncertainty optimally requires more land to be converted into agricultural use as a hedge against production shortages and that it significantly affects both optimal consumption and population trajectories

grand missions of agricultural innovation abstract this paper discusses three related examples of mission oriented agricultural institutional innovations associated with substantial crop yield increases in the 20th century it begins with the implementation of the united states land grant system and then discusses in turn the planning and implementation of the two grand missions that led successively to the yield increases in wheat and rice that heralded the onset of the green revolution it notes the remarkable role of the rockefeller foundation in identifying these two missions and selecting personnel developed within the land grant system to execute them with remarkable effectiveness

exchange rate effects on agricultural exports transaction level evidence from pakistan this article examines the effects of domestic currency depreciation on agricultural exports from pakistan including the responses of price and quantity margins it uses highly disaggregated firm level data that contains the exchange rates of the actual currencies of invoicing at the transaction level the study finds that the currency depreciation positively affects both intensive and extensive margins the intensive margin increase in agricultural exports operates mainly through prices whereas the response of quantities is relatively smaller moreover depreciation improves the extensive margins of firms and products and expands the client base in existing markets these responses vary widely across firms exporting experience trade orientation sectoral and spatial distribution exchange rate regimes and invoicing currencies

exploring the widening food gap an international perspective using data for a long panel of 90 developed and developing countries this article explores the effects of research and development r d and fixed capital stock on agricultural land productivity over the period 1961 2012 instruments are used for r d to deal with feedback effects and measurement errors the results show very high social returns to investment in r d and to fixed capital stock suggesting that increasing investment in these factors are promising ways of arresting the increasing food prices due to increasing demand for animal protein population growth desertification salinization soil erosion climate change and decreasing growth in land productivity