bread and butter issues in ecuadorian food policy a comparative advantage approach abstract the effects of policy interventions on price incentives and resource use in wheat and dairying are analyzed for the ecuadorian sierra from 1970 to 1983 a period of rapid economic growth induced by a boom in petroleum revenues exchange rate and trade policies combined with subsidized transport services and farm credit to substantially tax wheat producers while milk producers received significant subsidies consequently self sufficiency in wheat production fell from about 50 in 1970 to near zero in 1983 while imports of dairy products remained very low throughout this period of rapidly expanding demand for both bread and livestock products measures of comparative advantage are constructed to show that these price distortions have led to substantial inefficiency in resource use due to thewidening gap between private and social profitability for wheat and for dairying

do formula or competitive grant funds have greater impacts on state agricultural productivity this article examines the impact of public agricultural research and extension on agricultural total factor productivity at the state level the objective is to establish whether federal formula or competitive grant funding of agricultural research has a greater impact on state agricultural productivity a pooled cross section time series model of agricultural productivity is fitted to annual data for forty eight contiguous states over 1970 1999 our results show that public agricultural research and agricultural extension have statistically significant positive impacts on state agricultural productivity in addition hatch formula funding has a larger impact on agricultural productivity than federal competitive grant funding and a reallocation of hatch formula funds to competitive grant funding would lower agricultural productivity this seems unlikely to be a socially optimal policy furthermore from a cost benefit perspective our study shows that the social marginal annualized real rate of return to public resources invested in agricultural research is 49 62 and to public agricultural extension the rate is even larger

u s sweeteners combating excess consumption with an excise tax obesity is a public health problem in the united states that has been linked to excess sweetener consumption the american heart association aha recommends no more than 6 9 teaspoons capita day while the u s food and drug administration fda recommends 200 calories capita day of caloric sweetener consumption both recommendations are well below the reported 2016 sweetener consumption levels we quantify the input tax rates needed to reduce the current excess sweetener consumption level to the aha and fda recommended standards we calculate the joint tax in the united states on two major sweeteners sugar and high fructose corn syrup hfcs to be 31 and 24 cents per pound respectively based on the aha standard and 19 and 17 cents per pound respectively using the fda standard these taxes would be roughly the magnitude of the existing sugar and hfcs prices in both cases the tax incidence on producers is much smaller than on consumers our focus is very different from past studies in that it deals with the effect of taxes on inputs to meet the recommended target rather than a selective tax sugar sweetened beverage tax if a sweetener tax were implemented u s sugar and hfcs producers would lose us 398 us 489 and us 683 us 844 million per year respectively

likely effects on obesity from proposed changes to the us food stamp program abstract some have suggested that the us food stamp program fsp should be revised with a view to combating obesity among the poor in this paper we assess the likely impacts of allowing fsp participants to purchase only healthy foods when using food stamps our results indicate that fsp participants would probably increase their consumption of healthy food but the implications for their purchases of unhealthy food are not clear market wide consequences are even less clear because changing what may be purchased using food stamps would lead to higher prices for healthy foods and lower prices for unhealthy foods and these price effects would feed back into consumer decisions with adverse effects on consumption patterns of both participants and non participants in the fsp in addition more restrictive rules on the use of food stamps would discourage participation in the fsp we conclude that while reforming the fsp may indeed to lead to better diets among participants it is likely to be an ineffective and inefficient instrument for bringing about desired nutritional outcomes unless accompanied by additional policy instruments

linking agricultural policies with obesity and noncommunicable diseases a new perspective for a globalising world abstract in light of the shift in policy paradigm in agriculture from state intervention to market liberalisation and globalisation this paper develops a series of hypotheses on the relationship between agricultural policies and consumer diets the first hypothesis is that the paradigm shift has led to greater specialisation of production so changing the ability and incentive for producers to supply certain foods relative to others second the shift has affected farmgate prices both up and down so creating opportunities for the industries which purchase farm commodities the food consuming industries fcis to substitute lower priced ingredients thereby influencing the nutritional quality and content of foods available in the marketplace third it has increased the ability of the fcis to add value through product innovation and marketing creating a market characterised by highly differentiated products targeted to individualised preferences thus increasing the acceptability of a wider variety and quantity of food products the changing agricultural policy paradigm has therefore altered the environment in which consumers make their food choices in the form of food availability affordability and acceptability nevertheless the paper finds no clear pattern when it comes to health the changes have affected both unhealthy and healthy foods and ingredients the key process of importance for health then is not whether the ingredients produced by agriculture are healthy or not but how they are substituted transformed distributed and marketed through the supply chain e g vegetable oils into transfats this leads to an important implication that policies to intervene directly in agricultural production to promote healthy eating are unlikely to be effective or efficient if they do not take into account how foods are processed distributed and marketed through the supply chain in practice this means that the potential for policy interventions in agriculture to improve diets is limited but nevertheless potentially important where it exists given the upstream nature of the change incentives could be created for the fcis to substitute healthier ingredients in their products and or to sell more of them in instances where these changes can be passed all the way to the consumer greater investment could also be made in fruit and vegetable production for local markets along with testing the hypotheses established in this paper the research priority should to identify the incentives that influence the products produced by the fcis with the objective of finding those most amenable to leveraging the supply chain towards healthier eating

do global risk perceptions influence world oil prices abstract this paper investigates the information transmission mechanism between world oil gold silver dollar euro exchange rate markets and volatility index vix accommodating for global risk perceptions we find that there is a unique long run equilibrium relationship where gold silver exchange rate and risk perceptions appear as long run forcing variables of world oil prices we uncover that global risk perceptions have a significantly suppressing effect on oil prices in the long run we also discover that global risk perceptions play a less important role in explaining the forecast error variance of oil prices in the short run than prices in the alternative investment markets our results also suggest that a shock in risk perceptions of global investors have a negative but short lived initial impact on oil prices

dynamic spillover effects among crude oil precious metal and agricultural commodity futures markets abstract this paper examines spillover effects among six commodity futures markets gold silver west texas intermediate crude oil corn wheat and rice by employing the multivariate deco garch model and the spillover index specifically we investigate the dynamics of return and volatility spillover indices to reveal the intensity and direction of transmission during the recent global financial and european sovereign debt crises our empirical results are as follows first we estimate a positive equicorrelation between commodity futures market returns and find that it increased sharply during the crises this effect can persist during periods of economic and financial turmoil diminishing the benefits of international portfolio diversification for investors second we identify bidirectional return and volatility spillovers across commodity futures markets and find more pronounced trends in their levels in the post crisis period this indicates the strong impact of spillovers during crisis periods third both gold and silver are information transmitters to other commodity futures markets while the remaining four commodity futures investigated were receivers of spillovers during recent periods of financial stress finally we analyse the optimal portfolio weights and time varying hedge ratios between metal and other commodities futures markets overall our findings provide new insights into channels of information transmission which may improve investment decisions and inform portfolio investors trading strategies

the impact of global oil price shocks on china s bulk commodity markets and fundamental industries this paper investigated the reaction of aggregate commodity market to oil price shocks and also explored the effects of oil price shocks on china s fundamental industries metals petrochemicals grains and oilfats we separated the volatilities of oil price into expected unexpected and negatively expected categories to identify how oil prices influence bulk commodity markets we contrasted the results between different periods and among classified indices in order to discover the significant changes in recent years and the differences at an industry level our results indicate that the aggregate commodity market was affected by both expected and unexpected oil price volatilities in china the impact of unexpected oil price volatilities became more complex after 2007 the metals and grains indices did not significantly respond to the expected volatility in oil prices in contrast to the petrochemicals and oilfats indices these results not only contribute to advancing the existing literature but also merit particular attention from policy makers and market investors in china

supply and demand driven oil price changes and their non linear impact on precious metal returns a markov regime switching approach abstract this paper examines the nonlinear effect of oil price shocks on precious metal returns using markov regime switching regression we use ready s 2018 approach to decompose oil price changes into supply demand and risk driven shocks results indicate a significant positive impact of demand and supply shocks and a negative impact of risk shocks on precious metal returns although we find evidence of switching between low and high volatility regimes we do not find strong regime effect on supply or demand shocks contemporaneous relationship with precious metal returns however risk shocks influence on precious metal returns is strongly regime dependent these results generally hold for different distributional specification of error terms

the hidden middle the quiet revolution in the midstream of agrifood value chains in developing countries the food security debate has focused largely on the farm sector and on trade relatively neglected or hidden from mainstream debate are the middle segments processing logistics wholesale of agrifood value chains in developing countries and yet this midstream forms 30 40 per cent of the value added and costs in food value chains the productivity of the midstream is as important as farm yields for food security in poor countries the article shows that over the past several decades the middle segments have transformed quickly and surprisingly with a huge volume expansion a proliferation of small and medium enterprises smes but also concentrating and multinationalizing in some places and products with technology change characterized by capital led intensification and with the incipient emergence of branding and labelling and packaging of new organizational arrangements in procurement and marketing interfaces with farmers and retailers and of private standards and contracts economic policies of market and foreign direct investment fdi liberalization commercial and business climate regulations hard and soft infrastructure investment and food safety laws have paved the path to the expansion and shaped the transformation of the important midstream segment of food value chains

nutrition agriculture and the global food system in low and middle income countries the entire food value chain and diet of low and middle income countries lmics are rapidly shifting many of the issues addressed by the nutrition community ignore some of the major underlying shifts in purchases of consumer packaged foods and beverages at the same time the drivers of the food system at the farm level might be changing there is a need for the agriculture and nutrition communities to understand these changes and focus on some of their implications for health this rapid growth of the retail sector will change the diets of the food insecure as much as that of the food secure across rural and urban lmic s this short commentary contents that current research programs and policies are ignoring these rapid dynamic shifts

evasive ability and the efficiency cost of the underground economy in the presence of differing abilities to evade taxes markets select producers for their evasive skills and their abilities to keep costs of production low inefficient firms crowd out efficient firms if the least efficient firms are the best tax evaders adverse selection is severe and output comes entirely from the high cost end of the supply curve tax revenue may be greater under tax evasion than without evasion if evasive ability allows government to act as a price discriminating monopolist when evasive and productive talents are unrelated this result disappears but the deadweight loss due to adverse selection of firms persists and rivals the size of the traditional triangle deadweight loss

farm policies and added sugars in us diets abstract we examine how us farm policies for sweetener crops have affected the consumption and composition of sweeteners in the us diet r d expenditures have lowered the unit cost of commodities used in sweeteners but have generated more technical progress in corn than in sugar crops increasing use of corn in food production ceteris paribus commodity programs have raised the price of sugar and decreased the price of corn thus high fructose corn syrup hfcs became an inexpensive substitute for sugar in food from 1970 on however the effect of policy on ingredient prices has become less important over time today the farm value share in sweetened food is below 5 and hfcs is a specialized input in many food items with limited substitution possibilities the current link between us sweetener consumption and farm policy is weak recent evidence from other high income countries shows little relationship between sweetener consumption and sugar policies

evaluation of the environmental impact of weekly food consumption in different socio economic households in australia using environmentally extended input output analysis this paper uses input output analysis to model the environmental impacts of the weekly food consumption of australia s households sorted by income quintile in 2003 we found that weekly food consumption of the relatively better off households caused greater environmental burden than that of the less well off household meat and bakery products flour cereals were the categories that contributed the largest share of environmental impacts in an average household s food consumption footprint 58 water 26 energy 29 co2 and 31 wasted materials per dollar spent fruit and vegetables generated 0 0874 m3 of water 0 0055 gj of energy 0 37 kg of co2 and 0 0114 kg of wasted materials this was lower than the per dollar impacts of bakery products 0 8482 0 0067 0 63 0 0204 meat 0 3471 0 0070 0 65 0 0203 dairy 0 0995 0 0114 0 98 0 0192 and edible fats 0 2373 0 0080 0 70 0 0165 eating out and fast food consumption also had a low per dollar impact 0 1317 0 0046 0 38 0 0141 we surmise that substituting fruit and vegetables at the expense of animal products processed foods and fats would decrease environmental impacts change at low income levels should be focused upon meat bakery and dairy consumption while higher incomes should be focused upon the consequences of eating food outside the home

farm subsidies and obesity in the united states national evidence and international comparisons abstract many commentators have claimed that farm subsidies have contributed significantly to the obesity epidemic by making fattening foods relatively cheap and abundant but u s farm policies have generally small and mixed effects on farm commodity prices which in turn have even smaller and still mixed effects on the relative prices of more and less fattening foods other factors have had much more influence on reducing the farm prices of food commodities and the consumer prices of food such that any effects of u s farm policies on u s obesity patterns must have been negligible moreover while many arguments can be made for changing u s farm subsidies even entirely eliminating the current programs could not be expected to have a significant influence on obesity rates international evidence reinforces this finding the countries that support their farmers most strongly tend to have relatively low obesity rates in these countries the main support for farmers comes through trade barriers and higher consumer prices which like u s policies for sugar dairy orange juice and beef discourage consumption and reduce obesity in contrast with agricultural subsidies agricultural r d has had a significant effect in the past on the relative price of food commodities and food and has the potential to influence obesity patterns in the future but r d policy is a very blunt instrument for pursuing public health policy objectives

retracted on the conditional dependence structure between oil gold and usd exchange rates nested copula based gjr garch model energy commodities and precious metals differ from other trading products both oil and gold prices are leading economic variables and drive the evolution of the world economy since the us dollar is used as the primary currency of international crude oil and gold trading the relationship between commodities metals and exchange rates has become a major research agenda recently therefore this study proposes a nested copula based gjr garch model to explore the dependence structure between oil gold and the usd exchange rate more importantly a comparative framework based on two sub periods is implemented to capture the co movement during normal and crisis periods empirical results suggest that for both crisis periods the dependence between oil gold and the usd exchange rate is stronger compared with the dependence during the untroubled period moreover the co movement is accelerated which is explained by the unusual movement of the usd during the global financial crisis of 2007 2009

oil prices and the rise and fall of the us real exchange rate abstract questions of the relative importance of real vs monetary shocks in explaining exchange rate movements still have no widely accepted answer despite their importance both for the research agenda and for policy questions we examine this issue using a variety of empirical techniques for the us effective exchange rate we find that a stable link exists between oil price shocks and the us real effective exchange rate over the post bretton woods period the results suggest that oil prices may have been the dominant source of persistent real exchange rate shocks and that energy prices may have important implications for future work on exchange rate behavior

metal volatility in presence of oil and interest rate shocks abstract this study uses three two factor volatility models of the garch family to examine the volatility behavior of three strategic commodities gold silver and copper in the presence of crude oil and interest rate shocks the results of the standard garch models suggest that gold and silver have almost the same volatility persistence which is greater than that of copper the cgarch estimates indicate that the short run transitory component of volatility converges to zero much faster for copper than for gold and silver in this sequence however the permanent volatility component demonstrates equally strong persistence in the long run for all three metals the egarch results suggest that the leverage effect is present and significant for copper only implying that gold and silver can be good investment in anticipation of bad times past oil shock does not impact all three metals similarly monetary policy and to leaser extent the oil shocks have calming effects on precious metals but not on copper if the t bill rate is used crises such as the 2003 iraq war heighten metal volatility these results have implications for derivatives valuations using gold as a reserve asset risk analysis and for the commodity exporting countries and commodity producing firms

the theory of taxation for developing countries tax policy has far reaching implications for economic development and public administration this book which presents a modern theory of public finance brings together many of the most distinguished economists who have written on the subject they provide coherent principles for tax design and a systematic framework for the analysis of practical questions of tax reform and pricing policy in developing countries the book is especially timely as countries experience increasing shortages of government revenue and the distortions brought about by poorly designed tax systems it pays particular attention to the special problems of developing countries such as the taxation of agriculture the aim throughout is to develop techniques that can be quantitatively applied given the data available and empirical case studies illustrate the methods in action the authors analyze the links between tax theory social cost benefit analysis and the pricing of publicly supplied goods and services they also explore the empirical and econometric problems of identifying the tradeoffs between equity and efficiency other topics treated include the analysis of labor markets the taxation of foreign private investment and of fuel and the pricing of education although the models used concentrate on developing countries most of the methods and discussion apply as well to the problems of more affluent countries

improper selection of high cost producers in the rent seeking contest the resources two rival businesses spend to raise their own chanceof getting a unique monopoly license are a cost of rent seeking when those businesses differ in the costs of producing themonopoly good there is an additional cost of rent seeking that hasnot been sufficiently studied in the literature if the high cost producer winsthe license the difference between his cost and the costs of hismore efficient rival is a social loss from improper selection ofproducers by the political process the loss becomes more severewhen the ability to lobby of the inefficient producer outstripsthat of the efficient producer this may help to explain whyspecialized lobbying evolved specialized lobbying reduces thesocial cost from improper selection of firms by allowing efficientproducers to hire expert rent seekers and so to raise theirchances of gaining monopoly concessions

food and consumer behavior why the details matter a growing body of literature now demonstrates the importance of behavioral factors in individual food consumption however whether addressing hunger nutrition or obesity food policies are often created to target changes at the aggregate level these policies ignore such behavioral tools or effects and their potential heterogeneous effects on consumers in this article we review the most important results examining food consumption and behavioral economics and provide a thorough discussion of how such tools are now being added to the lexicon of effective policy tools in addition we discuss how traditional policy tools that ignore the individual behavioral effects can miss the mark or even backfire the implication is clear a thorough understanding of behavioral economics is necessary to create efficient food policy

supply and demand functions for multiproduct u s cash grain farms biases caused by research and other policies this study presents new estimates of supply and demand elasticities for u s multiproduct cash grain farms and estimates of input and output bias effects caused by public and private crop research extension and farmers schooling the study also shows that the social rate of return to public crop research is large about 62 percent

gold oil dependence dynamics and the role of geopolitical risks evidence from a markov switching time varying copula model abstract this paper examines the dependence structure and dynamics between gold and oil prices specifically we study the hedge and safe haven ability of gold for oil prices using daily gold prices and west texas intermediate institute wti crude oil spot prices to this end we employ time varying markov switching copula models the period of the analysis spans from 2 january 1985 to 30 november 2017 the heterogeneity of market agents is captured by decomposing the raw original series into different multi resolution analysis mra investment horizons d1 s9 furthermore we examine the effect of geopolitical risks on the dynamic dependence between gold and oil we provide evidence of time varying markov tail dependence structure and dynamics between gold and oil while our results show that gold is a good hedge for oil returns and for short and medium term investors it cannot protect long term investors against losses arising from increasing oil prices we also provide evidence in support of the safe haven ability of gold for oil moreover we show that the inclusion of geopolitical risks in a pure gold and oil asset portfolio provides diversification benefits since the former has mostly a negative effect on the dependence structure between gold and oil

the effects of farm commodity and retail food policies on obesity and economic welfare in the united states many commentators claim that farm subsidies have contributed significantly to the obesity epidemic by making fattening foods relatively cheap and abundant and symmetrically that taxing unhealthy commodities or subsidizing healthy commodities would contribute to reducing obesity rates in this article we use an equilibrium displacement model to estimate and compare the economic welfare effects from a range of hypothetical farm commodity and retail food policies as alternative mechanisms for encouraging consumption of healthy food or discouraging consumption of unhealthy food or both we find that compared with retail taxes on fat sugar or all food or subsidies on fruits and vegetables at the farm or retail levels a tax on calories would be the most efficient obesity policy a tax on calories would have the lowest deadweight loss per pound of fat reduction in average adult weight and would yield a net social gain once the impact on public health care expenditures is considered

relative food prices under structural adjustment preliminary findings from latin america abstract this article examines the effects of changes in policies concerning exchange rates and consumer subsidies on relative prices of staple foods in selected latin american countries in countries where previously high subsidies on imported foods were reduced sharply or eliminated during the 1980s prices of imported tradables have risen relative to prices of domestically produced foods elsewhere the impact of structural adjustment programmes has not been very clear and more in depth research is needed

economic factors affecting the increase in obesity in the united states differential response to price abstract a sharp increase in obesity during the last 15 years in the united states became one of the nation s main public health problems the theory of rational addiction seems to explain human behavior in food consumption leading to obesity reasonably well the interesting thing about our results is that the tax policy normally used to correct various distortions is to serve in this case as the preventive policy additional taxes on future prices of the addictive sweet foods contribute to lower sugar consumption and bmi at present time on the other hand increasing education level is usually considered a preventive type of policy in this case it leads to lowering the levels of the bmi in already overweight and obese population

five a day a price to pay an evaluation of the uk program impact accounting for market forces we provide an ex post assessment of the uk 5 a day information campaign where the positive effects of information are disentangled from potentially conflicting price dynamics using 4 years of data from the expenditure and food survey between 2002 and 2006 we estimate that the 5 a day program has lifted fruit and vegetable consumption by 0 3 portions on average we also provide quantitative evidence of a differentiated impact by income group ranging from 0 2 to 0 7 portions all impacts are larger than those observed by simply comparing pre policy and post policy intakes

international dimensions of obesity and overweight related problems an economics perspective obesity is a growing concern new world health organization who figures indicate that obesity is spreading around the world as a global epidemic according to the who there are more people suffering from overweight related problems than malnutrition globally there are more than 1 billion adults who are overweight and at least 300 million of them are clinically obese while 800 million suffer from malnutrition who 2004 the economic costs due to obesity can be burdensome currently in the united states medical costs associated with obesity and smoking account for about 9 each of all health expenditures finkelstein fiebelkorn and wang u s obesity attributable medical expenditures reached 75 billion in 2003 obesity however is important not only from an economic perspective but also from a social perspective the social consequences of obesity are serious and multiple studies have shown that obesity affects in a negative and statistically significant way personal and working relations earnings and wages particularly for females cawley overall obesity is a complex phenomenon several recent economic studies have explored the role of different cultural and sociodemographic factors on obesity rates leaving genetics aside obesity is caused by the consumption of too many calories and or low expenditures of calories i e low physical activity consequently most published economic research provided a justification for the increased growth of obesity rates by analyzing several factors that may contribute to this imbalance of caloric consumption and usage see chou grossman and saffer cutler glaeser and shapiro lakdawalla and philipson philipson and posner there are mainly two arguments that could justify the growth of overweight problems around the world some researchers argue that obesity growth is mainly due to a higher intake of calories while others state that obesity is mainly caused by a lower expenditure of caloies in daily activities in line with the calorie consumption argument cutler glaeser and shapiro stated that americans have become more obese over the past twenty five years primarily due to the consumption of more calories analyzing changes in food consumption between the mid 1970s and the mid 1990s for

contract farming and food security contract farming has often been associated with an increase in the income of participating households it is unclear however whether contract farming increases other aspects of household welfare using data from six regions of madagascar and a selection on observables design in which we control for a household s marginal utility of participating in contract farming which we elicited via a contingent valuation experiment we show that participating in contract farming reduces the duration of a household s hungry season by about ten days on average and that it makes participating households about 20 percent more likely to see their hungry season end at any point in time further we find that these effects are more pronounced for households with a larger number of children and for households with a larger number of girls this is an important result as children especially girls often bear the burden of food insecurity

food value chain transformations in developing countries selected hypotheses on nutritional implications we examine how the transformation of food value chains fvcs influence the triple malnutrition burden undernourishment micronutrient deficiencies and over nutrition in developing countries we propose a fvc typology modern traditional modern to traditional and traditional to modern that takes into account the participants the target market and the products offered next we propose selected hypotheses on the relationship between each fvc category and elements of the triple malnutrition burden the primary finding is that the transformation of fvcs creates challenges and opportunities for nutrition in developing countries for example modern fvcs may increase over nutrition problems and alleviate micronutrient deficiencies for urban people with relatively high incomes however they have little nutritional impacts among rural residents and urban poor people who primarily depend on traditional fvcs to access adequate quantities of calories and micronutrients in addition modern food manufacturers are leveraging traditional distribution networks modern to traditional fvcs substantially increasing access to low priced processed packaged foods in rural areas and low income urban neighbors with mixed impacts on the triple burden of malnutrition further research should focus on the influence of fvc transformation on reduction of micronutrient deficiencies on modeling demand substitution effects across food categories and the attendant policy implications for malnutrition

the determinants of campaign spending the role of the government jackpot a slave has but one master the ambitious man has as many masters as there are persons whose aid may contribute to the advancement of his fortune jean de labruyere des ouvrages de l esprit i introduction this paper builds a model of elections in which contributors give money to candidates in return for promises of government favors each candidate spends to increase his chances of victory the candidate s probability of winning and the value of government resources that would be his to distribute if he won the jackpot determine the amount he can raise the model suggests a way to measure the influence of the jackpot on spending while controlling for other effects such as the probability of winning the search for this result is interesting because we wish to know what influences the resources devoted to courting politicians is the growth of government truly to blame why if government is for sale do contributors give so little relative to the size of government to control so much and why as abrams and settle 1978 found does campaign spending sometimes not grow even though government grows do official limits on public debt reduce the politician s discretionary control over government resources and hinder his ability to sell favors how does ideology interfere with the candidate s demand for contributions empirical models of contributions that can serve as a guide have been of two sorts abrams 1981 following the work of crain and tollison 1977 crain deaton and tollison 1977 and gifford and santoni 1978 regressed campaign spending on several proxies for the jackpot and found a positive effect a more popular approach to explaining campaign outlays pioneered by jacobson 1978 has been to regress spending or contributions on the candidate s probability of victory and to ignore the role of the jackpot the implicit assumption in such models is that the candidate s net worth to contributors determines spending the candidate cares only about winning and raises as much as he can the greater his chances of winning the more he can raise and the more he will spend i call this the supply side view because spending depends only on the supply of contributions this approach goes some way to explaining contributions but neglects the role of the jackpot and cannot explain why some strong candidates who are sought after by contributors accept little or nothing such as former senator william proxmire of wisconsin the present study takes something from both approaches but argues that candidates may not wish to spend all they can raise because contributions do not come free of charge as baron 1989 pointed out the candidate s demand albeit bounded by potential supply determines contributions candidates probably run for election to control government wealth and must ponder how much of the jackpot to auction for contributions the candidate s demand for contributions can be derived from a utility function that rises with his probability of victory but diminishes with the contributions he accepts how much a candidate demands depends on the size of the bernoulli variance of the outcome which i call closeness and the size of the jackpot the greater the closeness and the larger the jackpot the greater the candidate s demand a close race is defined here not by the number of rivals or the margin of victory but as one in which the outcome is very uncertain the typical candidate does not spend all he is able to raise but the effect of closeness fades if the candidate wishes to win greatly the model describes the simultaneous relationship between spending and closeness and imposes identifying restrictions i carry out tests on samples drawn from the 1978 and 1986 contests for u s state governorships and find that jackpots affect election spending but that closeness is less important in addition i find that in states where the legislature is constitutionally required to balance the budget governors sell less of the jackpot

a nonparametric analysis of the influence of research on agricultural productivity nonparametric productivity analysis is extended by modeling technical progress as a function of public and private research expenditures results indicate that 30 year lags are required to fully capture the effects of public research expenditures on u s agricultural productivity compared to public research private research has a stronger influence on farm productivity in the short term but a smaller influence in the longer term the internal rate of return is 0 28 for public research and 0 17 for private research

time frequency causality and connectedness between international prices of energy food industry agriculture and metals abstract this study analyzes the lead lag relationship between the price indices of energy fuels and each of food industrial inputs agriculture raw materials metals and beverages in the time frequency domain to this end we first use the wavelet coherency and phase differences next we use the diebold and yilmaz 2012 and barunik and krehlik 2017 spillover indices to analyse the connectedness among the set of the price indices under consideration the period of the study is 1990m1 to 2017m5 the wavelet coherency results reveal that there are important and significant relations between the fuel and food prices the fuel and industrial prices and the fuel and metal prices these results also show that there are phase relationships between those paired prices the volatility spillover results indicate that the agricultural sector is the most affected by shocks from the other markets the return series of the industrial input prices at all frequencies appears to be the main source of volatility transmission to the prices of the other commodities over the whole period this finding underlines the relevance of the industrial inputs to policy makers particularly when they design policies to provide incentives related to industrial production

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

dynamic link between oil prices and exchange rates a non linear approach abstract we explore the non linear relationship between crude oil prices and exchange rates of major currencies from quantitative and structural perspectives by utilizing bivariate normal mixture model the correlation coefficients between oil prices and exchange rates demonstrate that their dependences typically start from 2004 then dynamically change over time then we investigate whether business cycle and oil price shocks as two possible exogenous factors affect the dependence structure of oil fx linkage we find significant structural heterogeneity during economic expansion while little evidence of heterogeneity in recession this finding provides alternative interpretations for the enhanced dependence between oil prices and exchange rates and generates implications of financialization in commodity market in terms of oil price shocks kilian 2009 the normal mixture model captures significant heterogeneity implying that unstable oil fx dependence structure is frequently associated with oil aggregate demand shocks and oil specific demand shocks with an emphasis on the dynamic weights of two underlying states we interestingly find that structural heterogeneities coincide with a variety of geopolitical and economic events the application of normal mixture not only provide us knowledge of non linear relationship between oil prices and exchange rates but also guidance for investors in risk management and portfolio diversification complementary to the traditional portfolio theory based on normal distribution

world oil prices precious metal prices and macroeconomy in turkey we examine the long and short run transmissions of information between the world oil price turkish interest rate turkish lira us dollar exchange rate and domestic spot gold and silver price we find that the world oil price has no predictive power of the precious metal prices the interest rate or the exchange rate market in turkey the results also show that the turkish spot precious metals exchange rate and bond markets do not also provide information that would help improve the forecasts of world oil prices in the long run the findings suggest that domestic gold is also considered a safe haven in turkey during devaluation of the turkish lira as it is globally it is interesting to note that there does not seem to be any significant influence of developments in the world oil markets on turkish markets in the short run either however transitory positive initial impacts of innovations in oil prices on gold and silver markets are observed the short run price transmissions between the world oil market and the turkish precious metal markets have implications for policy makers in emerging markets and both local and global investors in the precious metals market and the oil market

the effects of a fat tax on french households purchases a nutritional approach this article assesses the effects of a fat tax on the nutrients purchased by french households across different income groups this is done by making a preliminary estimation of price elasticities using a complete demand system on household scanner data and by calculating nutrient elasticities using estimated price elasticities we find that a fat tax has small and ambiguous effects on nutrients purchased by french households and a slight effect on body weight in the short run with a greater effect in the long run such a tax generates substantial tax revenue but is highly regressive

milk in the data food security impacts from a livestock field experiment in zambia summary smallholder livestock ownership has potential to enhance food security by raising incomes of the poor and by increasing the availability of nutrient dense foods this paper exploits the staggered rollout of livestock distribution by heifer international in zambia to identify the effects of livestock using statistically similar treatment and control groups in a balanced panel of households results indicate that livestock ownership improves dietary diversity through both direct consumption of animal products produced on farm and through increased consumption expenditures further results indicate that expanded livestock ownership alters the local food economy to influence food consumption by households lacking farm animals

why do members of congress support agricultural protection it seems paradoxical that until recently developed countries have continued subsidizing agriculture even though their agricultural sectors had been declining in relative importance since the middle of the 20th century what drives support for agricultural protection the broad array of subsidies to farmers and taxes and quotas imposed on agricultural imports in developed countries we answer this question by testing three competing hypotheses about what drives support for agricultural protection in the us i legislator preferences ii electoral incentives or iii lobbying using data on the roll call votes of the members of the 106th through the 110th congresses 1999 2009 and the scores given to each legislator by the farm bureau our findings suggest that electoral incentives explain a great deal of the variation in support for agricultural protection but that legislator preferences and lobbying might play a role too moreover legislator preferences and electoral incentives appear to be substitutes for one another why does congress support agricultural protection because many members have electoral incentives to and because many of those who do not still have other personal or strategic interests at stake

the effects of oil prices on the price indices in taiwan international or domestic oil prices matter abstract this study employs the multivariate threshold model developed by tsay 1998 to examine the effects of international and domestic oil prices on the price indices in taiwan using monthly data from january 1999 to december 2011 the results show that changes in domestic oil prices do not granger cause changes in the price indices when the oil price change exceeds the threshold level however international oil price shocks still affect the wholesale price index through the effects of announcement and expectation therefore controlling domestic oil prices to prevent volatility in the price indices is ineffective if we focus on the period when the left wing party is in power we also find that changes in international oil prices have more critical effects on the price indices than changes in domestic oil prices however the lead lag relationship between changes in domestic oil prices and changes in the price indices vanishes except with respect to the transportation category where the consumer price index is affected by domestic oil prices this result may be due to the government s extensive intervention in setting oil prices

a rotten deal for schools an assessment of states success with the national school lunch program s in kind food benefit the national school lunch program nslp is one of the united states largest domestic food aid programs the nslp provides states with both cash and commodity foods for school meals this research assessed the success of the school commodity program by comparing states available annual funding to the value of foods that states actually received from 2001 to 2009 results indicate that an in kind food funding system is not desirable for schools states failed to receive entitled commodity food value in most years resulting in annual funding losses for schools of 35 87 million inconsistent funding inhibits schools ability to improve meals and ultimately child nutrition outcomes in light of these results it is recommended that a cash benefit should replace the national school lunch program s commodity food program

tracing the effects of agricultural commodity prices and food costs we estimate a system of product and input demand equations for food processing industries to trace the links among farm commodity prices food processing costs and food prices disembodied technical change which likely reflects increasing consumer demand for convenience and product variety has sharply reduced agricultural materials demand relative to most other food processing inputs this implies weakening impacts of farm price shocks on food prices but improving quality and falling relative prices for agricultural inputs in combination with increasing factor substitution has counteracted these forces to encourage greater usage of agricultural inputs in food processing and limit these trends food prices today often appear less responsive to farm price shocks than in the past a development sometimes attributed to failures in market institutions however powerful long run technological and social changes leading to adaptations in production processes and food consumption patterns have also altered the demand for primary agricultural materials by changing the structure of food processing industries the social shifts surrounding the expanded role of women in the labor force represent one striking example of such changes the fraction of married women in the labor force less than one third in 1960 rose sharply through the next three decades before stabilizing at around 61 in the 1990s such demographic shifts increased the demand for food products requiring less home preparation time which in combination with enhanced technology has led to more in plant processing of agricultural materials and likely a growing share of nonagricultural inputs in

getting consumers to eat more whole grains the role of policy information and food manufacturers the 2005 dietary guidelines were unique because they offered quantitative recommendations for consumption of whole grains this case study examines the hypothesis that the changed recommendations were responsible for the recent increase in retail sales and consumption of whole grain food products we find that release of the dietary guidelines and related media attention did increase availability and sales of whole grain foods a large impact on consumption occurred through reformulation of existing products induced by competition among food suppliers this study reveals the key role product reformulation plays in inter firm competition and in realization of dietary changes recommended by public

if agricultural land taxation is so efficient why is it so rarely used the land tax enjoys a distinguished pedigree in the theoretical literature on tax efficiency yet it is rarely used as a serious revenue source in rural areas of developing countries this article considers three drawbacks of the land tax relative to taxes on exports or marketed output 1 capitalization effects of the land tax impose a large burden on the current generation 2 land taxation increases the riskiness of net farmer income and 3 administration of the land tax entails costly informational requirements this article demonstrates that only the second and third drawbacks are valid economic arguments against the land tax simulations based on an economic model of farm behavior suggest that farmers may still prefer a land tax to an export tax despite the increased uncertainty of their after tax income administrative costs are therefore the best explanation of the weak link between the theoretical and practical aspects of land taxation

oil price agricultural commodity prices and the dollar a panel cointegration and causality analysis abstract this study examines the dynamic relationship between world oil prices and twenty four world agricultural commodity prices accounting for changes in the relative strength of us dollar in a panel setting we employ panel cointegration and granger causality methods for a panel of twenty four agricultural products based on monthly prices ranging from january 1980 to february 2010 the empirical results provide strong evidence on the impact of world oil price changes on agricultural commodity prices contrary to the findings of many studies in the literature that report neutrality of agricultural prices to oil price changes we find strong support for the role of world oil prices on prices of several agricultural commodities the positive impact of a weak dollar on agricultural prices is also confirmed

getting rid of trans fats in the us diet policies incentives and progress artificial trans fats in foods increase chronic disease risk in the us population federal nutrition label regulation enacted in 2003 requires mandatory disclosure of trans fat content on packaged foods this action created incentives for the food industry to reduce trans fats both in response to consumer demand and through competition to maintain product reputation subsequent public actions include a ban on trans fat use in new york city restaurants and lawsuits against food companies which created further incentives to remove trans fats especially in the food service industry industry has reformulated packaged foods and found substitutes for restaurant fry oils and trans fats are disappearing from the us food supply market response extends throughout the supply chain and has spurred research to alter oilseed crop characteristics the widespread and relatively rapid industry response likely has improved the quality of us diets and demonstrates the potential for policy actions to spur such improvements

integrating climate change and health into food policy an analysis of how climate change can affect food prices and population health abstract the inter related nature of food health and climate change requires a better understanding of the linkages and a greater alignment of policy across these issues to be able to adequately meet the pressing social and health challenges arising from climate change food price is one way through which climate change may affect health the aim of this study of the global and australian food systems is to provide a whole of system analysis of food price vulnerabilities highlighting the key pressure points across the food system through which climate change could potentially have the greatest impact on consumer food prices and the implications for population health we outline areas where there are particular vulnerabilities for food systems and food prices arising from climate change particularly global commodity prices agricultural productivity short term supply shocks and less direct factors such as input costs and government policies we use australia as a high income country case study to consider these issues in more detail the complex and dynamic nature of pricing mechanisms makes it difficult to predict precisely how prices will be impacted should prices rise disproportionately among healthy foodstuffs compared to less healthy foods there may be adverse health outcomes if less expensive and less healthy foods are substituted higher prices will also have equity implications with lower socio economic groups most impacted given these households currently spend proportionately more of their weekly income on food the ultimate objective of this research is to identify the pathways through the food system via which climate change may affect food prices and ultimately population health thereby providing evidence for food policy which takes into account environmental and health considerations

three bubbles and a panic an explanatory review of recent food commodity price events abstract this paper is a summary of the behaviour of food commodity prices in 2007 2008 and a review of the causes of the price increases extracted from a report to the chief scientific advisor to her majesty s government thirtle c piesse j 2008 an explanatory review of the world food commodity price events of 2007 2008 a report to the chief scientific advisor department for innovation universities and skills london the historical background shows that the price spike was much less severe than in the 1970s the conventional wisdom that prices of the main food commodities were falling prior to 2006 is questioned most ceased falling and were quite stable from the 1980s the paper separates the causes of the spike from the underlying changes driving the long run trends the literature on the causes of the spike is critically reviewed and summarised there is a reasonably broad consensus on most of the causes but much less on the impact of the depreciation of the us dollar there are also concluding speculations on the future

how much priority is given to nutrition and health in the eu common agricultural policy agriculture in the european union eu is strongly influenced by the common agricultural policy cap there have been repeated calls for cap to address nutrition related health particularly obesity and non communicable disease ncd in the eu however aligning agricultural policy such as cap with nutrition is complex not least because the aims of agricultural policy are predominantly economic presenting a challenge for developing coherence between agricultural trade and health policy this research examined the political priority given to nutrition related health concerns within cap to date and the solutions suggested by agricultural trade and health policy makers and public health nutrition advocates via interviews of 20 high level participants from respective sectors the participants provided diverse perspectives often varying by sector and institution on the connections between agricultural policy and nutrition related health the extent to which nutrition concerns have been addressed via cap and whether cap is an appropriate and effective policy approach to improve nutrition related health in the eu in the future the key findings suggest the need for communication and agreement of clear high level nutrition guidelines clarity on the eu mandate to address nutrition related health concerns via policy and stronger engagement of civil society in the issues if cap is to address nutrition more than it is doing currently the difference in worldviews between agricultural trade representatives and those from public health also needs to be addressed

the effect of global oil price shocks on china s agricultural commodities abstract this paper studied the effect of global oil price shocks on agricultural commodities in china including strong wheat corn soybean bean pulp cotton and natural rubber we regarded oil price volatility process as a combination of continuous process and jump process we not only separated oil price shocks into positive and negative categories to identify different effects on agricultural commodities in continuous process but also investigated how jump behavior influenced these agricultural commodities we found that the oil price was characterized by volatility clustering and jump behavior at the same time oil price shocks had different effects on agricultural commodities in addition the shocks on most agricultural commodities were asymmetric only natural rubber was under influence of the jump intensity of the oil price in contrast to strong wheat corn soybean bean pulp and cotton

global projections for root and tuber crops to the year 2020 abstract many of the developing world s poorest farmers and food insecure people are highly dependent on root and tuber crops as a contributing if not the principal source of food nutrition and cash income hence an improved understanding of the production utilization trade and estimated future economic importance of these crops has potentially far reaching implications for investments in agricultural research at both the international and perhaps even more importantly national levels previous projections for the evolution of global supply demand and trade into the 21st century however have focused on grains oilseeds and livestock this paper presents global projections of supply demand and trade for root and tuber crops to the year 2020 according to the baseline scenario roots and tubers will decline in relative economic importance only marginally vis a vis the other major food and feed crops over the next three decades according to an alternative high demand and production growth scenario the economic importance of roots and tubers versus the same commodities will increase slightly the results of this scenario contrast with earlier projections that predicted a decline in importance for roots and tubers policymakers should take cognizance of and act on the growth prospects for these crops in the past root and tuber crops have often been overlooked in policy deliberations precisely because their potential was considered more limited than actual growth rates clearly indicate or that current projections foresee

long memory and structural breaks in the returns and volatility of gold evidence from turkey this article examines the long memory properties and structural breaks in spot and futures gold returns and volatility in turkey the data cover the period from 2008 through 2013 in which gold prices hit an all time high arfima figarch model provides evidence of dual long memory in spot series and a lack of long memory property in futures returns anti persistence in spot returns is indicative of an overreaction of gold prices to new information thus disconfirming the weak form of market efficiency the findings further provide evidence of one structural break which is associated with correction in the gold prices during the post global financial crisis the analyses suggest that the long memory is true not spurious this implies that long memory is a feature of the data instead of an outcome of structural changes

waiting for the invisible hand novel products and the role of information in the modern market for food abstract this paper places the modern spread of diet related chronic disease in the united states within the context of more than a century of innovation in food processing technology discovery in nutrition science and corrective policy measures aimed at improving public health we ask whether the current state of affairs represents a market failure and if so what might be done about it we argue that while today s industrial food system has its advantages the asymmetric information problems inherent to this system have resulted in a lemons style breakdown in the market for processed foods the appropriate policy response to such situations namely verifiable quality standards is well known but such policies are likely in the short run to reduce profits for existing large industrial producers of food in light of the food industry s long history of success at regulatory capture we propose the formation of a new independent food standards agency devoted to protecting the interests of the american consumer

the rising disparity in the price of healthful foods 2004 2008 abstract nutrient dense foods that are associated with better health outcomes tend to cost more per kilocalorie kcal than do refined grains sweets and fats the price disparity between healthful and less healthful foods appears to be growing this study demonstrates a new method for linking longitudinal retail price data with objective nutrient based ratings of the nutritional quality of foods and beverages retail prices for 378 foods and beverages were obtained from major supermarket chains in the seattle wa for 2004 2008 nutritional quality was based on energy density kcal g and two measures of nutrient density calculated using the naturally nutrient rich nnr score and the nutrient rich foods index nrf9 3 food prices were expressed as 100 g edible portion and as 1000 kcal foods were stratified by quintiles of energy and nutrient density for analyses both measures of nutrient density were negatively associated with energy density and positively associated with cost per 1000 kcal the mean cost of foods in the top quintile of nutrient density was 27 20 1000 kcal and the 4 year price increase was 29 2 foods in the bottom quintile cost a mean of 3 32 1000 kcal and the 4 year price increase was 16 1 there is a growing price disparity between nutrient dense foods and less nutritious options cost may pose a barrier to the adoption of healthier diets and so limit the impact of dietary guidance nutrient profiling methods provide objective criteria for tracking retail prices of foods in relation to their nutritional quality and for guiding food and nutrition policy

the scarcity syndrome that may affect us profoundly in years ahead after half a century of conventional wisdom that the farm problem was one of surplus today s perception is that the problem is shortage i call this the scarcity syndrome it has seeped into farmer attitudes economic analyses and legislation it has helped escalate farmland prices and the demand for credit it will probably profoundly affect commodity programs during the 1980s we are not sufficiently aware of the far reaching effects of this new attitude in this note i examine the scarcity syndrome its validity and effects

does inflation cause gold market price changes evidence on the g7 countries from the tests of nonparametric quantile causality in mean and variance this paper utilises the newly proposed nonparametric causality in quantiles test to examine the predictability of mean and variance of changes in gold prices based on inflation for g7 countries the causality in quantiles approach permits us to test for not only causality in mean but also causality in variance we start our investigation by utilising tests for nonlinearity these tests identify nonlinearity showing that the linear granger causality tests are subject to misspecification error unlike tests of misspecified linear models our nonparametric causality in quantiles tests find causality in mean and variance from inflation to gold market price changes between the 0 20 quantile and the 0 70 quantile implying that very low and high price changes in gold markets are not related to inflation these changes should be related to other sources such as financial shocks and exchange market shocks we find support that gold serves as a hedge against inflation but only in the mid quantile ranges i e quantiles from 0 20 to 0 70 our results show that gold does not serve as a hedge against inflation during periods when gold market price changes are very low or very high which are respectively quiet and highly volatile periods

determining the impact of food price and income changes on body weight we develop a theoretical model to identify conditions under which price and income changes are most likely to change weight although it is intuitive that raising the price of high calorie food will decrease consumption of such goods it is not clear that such an outcome will actually reduce weight our empirical analysis demonstrates a case where a tax on food away from home a food intake category blamed for much of the rise in obesity could lead to an increase in body weight a finding which emphasizes the need to employ economic modeling when developing public policy to reduce obesity

food choice health information and functional ingredients an experimental auction employing bread abstract in this paper we present the results of an experimental auction conducted to examine the influence of health and nutritional information on food choice and in particular estimate consumer willingness to pay wtp for bread that contains functional ingredients employing a sandwich we find that consumers are wtp more for a whole grain and whole grain granary bread sandwich than other bread types including white bread that contains a functional ingredient we also find that consumers react positively to the provision of nutritional and health benefit information but that this effect occurs regardless of whether we supply specific or non specific health benefit information we discuss information provision and health policy implications that emerge from our analysis for bread products in the sandwich market

the political economy of third world food imports the case of wheat oping countries it focuses on wheat imports in the context of the wider food policy institutional and external trade environment in which these imports occur it departs substantially from the traditional econometric approaches which emphasize regional aggregates to analyze evidence at the country level where national food policies are made an analysis across countries interpreted in the light of national and international policies provides fresh insights into the political economy of rapidly increasing wheat imports wheat has special significance in the analysis of food policy and food imports in the third world first cereals constitute the bulk of third world food imports and among cereals wheat is by far the dominant food grain import in 1980 wheat accounted for an estimated 86 of food grain imports by third world countries 2 since the postwar years when europe was the major wheat buyer in international markets wheat imports have been increasingly destined for the third world including china which now accounts for two thirds of total world wheat imports in particular in the last decade wheat imports by developing countries have expanded extremely rapidly doubling

assessing food value chain pathways linkages and impacts for better nutrition of vulnerable groups abstract this article offers insights into assessing the effectiveness of post farm gate agri food value chains at improving the nutrition intake of vulnerable groups it develops a conceptual framework integrating the value chain concepts with agriculture and nutrition and identifies key outcomes and requirements for value chains to be successful at delivering substantive and sustained consumption of nutrient dense foods by poor households other frameworks linking value chains with nutrition have been published but this article provides the analytical lens to assess post farm gate value chains to achieve improvements in the intake of nutritious foods by the target populations food must be safe to eat on a sustained basis nutrient dense at the point of consumption and consumed in adequate amounts on a sustained basis this shifts the focus to the role of public actions and policy in terms of shaping the functioning of food value chains by assessing the limits of what business can and cannot contribute in a given market context policy makers and other relevant stakeholders will be more capable of creating an appropriate institutional environment that shapes how value chains operate for the benefit of vulnerable target groups designing and implementing effective policies and strategies with respect to the role and use of market based interventions

changing eu agricultural policy discourses the discourse analysis of commissioner s speeches 2000 2007 this paper is a combination of political economy and critical discourse analysis of public texts about the common agricultural policy cap by concerned agents and the eu s agricultural commissioner in the period of november 2004 until october 2007 the analysis reveals how concerned agents articulated three competing discourses neomercantilism multifunctionality and neoliberalism it also shows that elements of the discourse of neoliberalism in the commissioner s speeches despite her use of different discourses for different audiences are becoming more and more important in order to facilitate further reforms and liberalisation of the cap

the effect of global oil price shocks on china s metal markets this paper investigated the impacts of global oil price shocks on the whole metal market and two typical metal markets copper and aluminum we applied the autoregressive conditional jump intensity arji model combining with the generalized conditional heteroscedasticity grach method to describe the volatility process and jump behavior in the global oil market we separated the oil price shocks into positive and negative parts to analyze whether oil price volatility had symmetric impacts on china s metal markets we further used the likelihood ratio test to examine the symmetric effect of oil price shocks in addition we considered the jump behavior in oil prices as an input factor to investigate how china s metal markets are affected when jumps occur in the global oil market in contrast to the existing research paying little attention to this issue our results indicate that crude oil price shocks have significant impacts on china s metal markets and the impacts are symmetric when compared with aluminum copper is more easily affected by oil price shocks

world oil prices and agricultural commodity prices evidence from an emerging market abstract oil prices are thought to have direct effect on agricultural prices followed by an indirect effect through the exchange rate this paper examines the short and long run interdependence between world oil prices lira dollar exchange rate and individual agricultural commodity prices wheat maize cotton soybeans and sunflower in turkey to this end the toda yamamoto causality approach and generalized impulse response analysis for identification of the long and short run interrelationships are applied to the monthly data spanning from january 1994 to march 2010 the impulse response analysis suggests the turkish agricultural prices do not significantly react to oil price and exchange rate shocks in the short run the long run causality analysis reveals that the changes in oil prices and appreciation depreciation of the turkish lira are not transmitted to agricultural commodity prices in turkey hence our results support neutrality of agricultural commodity markets in turkey to both direct and indirect effects of oil price changes

the excess co movement of commodity prices reconsidered this paper provides an empirical reconsideration of evidence for excess co movement of commodity prices within the framework of univariate and multivariate garch 1 1 models alternative formulations of zero excess co movement are provided and corresponding score and likelihood ratio tests are developed monthly time series data for two sample periods 1960 85 and 1974 92 on up to nine commodities are used in contrast to earlier work only weak evidence of excess co movement is found

land taxes output taxes and sharecropping was henry george right economists have generally argued that if a land tax is administratively feasible then to increase efficiency it should be used to the exclusion of output taxes this article shows that underlying this policy prescription is the assumption that institutions for pooling and spreading production risks are perfect when account is taken of the imperfections in those institutions some use of output taxes will be pareto superior to a pure land tax regime and may induce higher output as well henry george was wrong these results generally apply even when the land tax is indexed to regional output and when land is farmed under sharecropping even in these cases a move from a pure land tax to a mix of land and low output taxes will reduce pre existing distortions in both consumption and production arising from the imperfection in risk markets

agricultural taxation in developing countries a survey of issues and policy this study surveys the experience of agricultural taxation in developing countries in the context of the ongoing policy debate about the tax structure and administration affecting agricultural producers using the examples of a number of countries it analyzes the conceptual and practical problems associated with different tax regimes governments in most countries have reduced indirect export taxes on agricultural producers however the revenue from direct taxes on farmers has not increased a major problem in most countries has been the measurement of actual agricultural income different measures for presumed income have been used with varying success they seem to have the most potential for increased revenue in many countries but their effective implementation is constrained by the political and administrative considerations

food product composition consumer health and public policy introduction and overview of special section as efforts to improve diets in high income countries intensify attention has turned to how policies may influence diet composition the case studies in this special issue contribute to our understanding of how two main types of policies have influenced food product composition and dietary outcomes 1 policies affecting food manufacturers input costs and 2 information policy affecting competition research on the first type of policy is relatively new but suggests that us commodity policies would not be good policy instruments to influence diets except through the long run impacts of agricultural research research on the impacts of information policy continues to demonstrate that it can spur food industry competition to introduce healthier products but may not result in healthier diets international comparisons show where the us experience may have relevance for other high income countries

relationship between oil price and exchange rate by fda and copula this article investigates the relationship between daily crude oil prices and exchange rates functional data analysis is used to show the clustering pattern of exchange rates and oil prices over the time period through high dimensional visualizations we select exchange rates for important currencies related to crude oil prices by using the objective bayesian variable selection method the selected sample data exhibits non normal distribution with fat tails and skewness under the non normality of the return series we use copula functions that do not require to assume the bivariate normality to consider marginal distribution in particular our study applies the popular and powerful statistical methods such as gaussian copula partial correlations and gaussian copula marginal regression we find evidence of significant dependence for all considered pairs except for the mexican peso brent our empirical results also show that the rise in the west texas intermediate wti oil price returns is asso

economics food choices and nutrition abstract our goal in this paper is to examine the role and influence of economic factors defined rather broadly on consumer food choices and hence nutritional outcomes we attempt to do this in a non technical fashion we examine the role of prices especially as they relate to the affordability of food in the united states and as a policy lever income is analyzed as a driving force behind changes in eating habits in particular increasing the demand for convenience the role of time constraints as well as time preference are examined as links to healthy eating habits and as forces behind current trends in eating patterns information and knowledge are given prominent play as counter balances to economic forces driving eating habits we conclude with and examination into maternal nutrition knowledge and children s dietary quality

a model of labeling with horizontal differentiation and cost variability we study optimal disclosure of variety by a multiproduct firm with random costs the prices for labeled varieties are increasing functions of the cost differential and do not reveal which variety is cheaper to produce nondisclosure is most common under moderate uncertainty about costs and not too much idiosyncrasy in valuations and quality asymmetry mandatory disclosure decreases expected welfare when cost variability is large and quality asymmetry is small the cheaper variety tends to be oversupplied undersupplied when disclosure is voluntary mandatory competition among multiproduct firms that source inputs in the same upstream market may not lead to more disclosure

cheap food policy fact or rhetoric abstract the term cheap food policy has frequently been used as a descriptor for us commodity programs by those who contend payments to farmers ultimately result in lower food costs for consumers more recently farm policy has been criticized for contributing to the obesity problem in the us by making large quantities of fattening foods widely available and relatively inexpensive this paper econometrically evaluates the impact of direct government payments on the affordability of food in the us in the aggregate and across specific food groups the models find direct payments do not significantly affect the affordability of food either in the aggregate or across specific food groups

should we stop meating like this reducing meat consumption through substitution high levels of meat consumption are increasingly being criticised for ethical environmental and social reasons plant based meat substitutes have been identified as healthy sources of protein that in comparison to meat offer a number of social environmental and health benefits and may play a role in reducing meat consumption however there has been a lack of research on the role they can play in the policy agenda and how specific meat substitute attributes can influence consumers to replace partially replace meat in their diets in this paper we examine consumers preferences for attributes of meat and meat substitute products and develop consumer segments based on these preferences the results of a choice experiment with 247 uk consumers using food labels and mince ground meat illustrate that the type of mince fat content country of origin and price are major factors that influence choice carbon footprint method of production and brand play a secondary role in determining consumers choices of meat meat substitutes latent class analysis is used to identify six consumer segments price conscious healthy eaters taste driven green organic and vegetarian consumers which have different socio demographic characteristics and meat consumption patterns future interventions and policies aimed at reducing meat consumption including labelling provision of more information financial incentives educational campaigns and new product development will be more effective if they are holistic and target specific consumer segments instead of focus on the average consumer