structural change in urban chinese food preferences we undertake a range of tests for structural food preference change in urban china using provincial level panel data from 2002 to 2010 we introduce a time transition function into the generalized quadratic almost ideal demand system gqaids to represent consumer preferences we apply this system to evaluate the demand structure for seven food groups the use of the gqaids specification relaxes many empirical demand system restrictions associated with previous analyses of structural preference change our findings suggest that chinese food preferences are continuing to evolve

fuel demand elasticities for energy and environmental policies indian sample survey evidence india has been running large scale interventions in the energy sector over the last decades still there is a dearth of reliable and readily available price and income elasticities of demand to base these on especially for domestic use of traditional fuels this study uses the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids using micro data of more than 100 000 households sampled across india the la aids model is expanded by specifying the intercept as a linear function of household characteristics marshallian and hicksian price and expenditure elasticities of demand for four main fuels are estimated for both urban and rural areas by different income groups these can be used to evaluate recent and current energy policies the results can also be used for energy projections and carbon dioxide simulations given different growth rates for different segments of the indian population

impact of food safety information on us poultry demand the impact of poultry product recall events on consumer demand in the us was empirically tested for four major categories of poultry broiler young chicken eggs turkey and other chicken mature or nonbroiler chicken from 2000 to 2004 poultry food safety inspection service fsis recall events had a consistent positive impact on demand for turkey but no significant impact on other types of poultry products united states department of agriculture usda fsis recall as a complement to food labelling did not undermine poultry consumption but promoted turkey demands on the contrary media recall undermined poultry demands moreover it demonstrated that turkey consumers were a special behaviour group of poultry consumers

impacts of declining u s retail beef demand on farm level beef prices and production a systems model was estimated to determine the effects of declining u s retail beef demand on farm level beef prices and production retail beef demand declined by nearly 66 from 1976 to 1999 results indicate autonomous shifts in retail demand significantly impacted farm level demands and production based on equilibrium multipliers the 1976 99 reduction in beef demand decreased real slaughter cattle prices and production by 32 1 and 11 2 respectively real feeder cattle prices and production decreased by 8 0 and 22 6 respectively combining the decreases in farm prices and production slaughter and feeder cattle producers experienced a real revenue reduction of 13 3 billion 61 due to the long term decline in demand

sustainability of diets from concepts to governance abstract the production of food for consumption produces environmental stress and raises ethical issues as humans are able to choose different foodstuffs in their diets food consumption guidance may have large benefits for the environment meat consumption is often identified as the most environmentally harmful foodstuff to produce and animal welfare and rights issues are receiving ever more attention by combining both issues this article proposes a conceptual framework for combining alternative dietary habits and agricultural production styles in general environmental policy strategies two means to lower meat consumption are proposed 1 redeveloping the pigouvian food taxation system introduced by goodland 1997 in which foodstuffs are taxed according to their environmental burden an elaborated version could also include an ethical tax that incorporates consumers attitudes on animal welfare and a coefficient that takes into account the inherent value of animals 2 taking the composition of a national stockpile as a starting point and designing the agricultural production system from a combined environmental and ethical perspective in this system the environmentally and ethically preferable foodstuffs would be purchased by the government and sold to the global markets the premiums between these two prices would constitute the subsidies for the national production

nontrade concerns reconciling domestic policy objectives with freer trade in agricultural products since the conclusion of the uruguay round of trade negotiations in 1994 there has been increasing debate about the implications of freer trade for domestic or nontrade objectives in agriculture these range from traditional concerns such as food security and rural development to more recent issues such as the relationship between agriculture and the environment and the effects of agricultural practices on human health and animal welfare for countries reluctant to reduce agricultural protection a key issue is the extent to which domestic policy objectives would need to be sacrificed under freer trade for countries espousing trade liberalization the issue is whether domestic policy objectives will be used as a guise to undermine freer trade in agricultural products in this paper we focus on two areas of concern that are stressed by rich developed countries the linkage between agriculture and the environment and animal welfare environmental issues are prominent in asia europe and increasingly in north america while animal welfare is a major issue in europe it is generally acknowledged that agricultural support provided through implicit consumer taxes and direct subsidies in developed countries generates much of the distortion in global agricultural trade the more than 300 billion of agricultural support that is provided annually by oecd countries disadvantages developing country exporters and causes distortions in importers ensuring that there are effective disciplines on trade distorting forms of support will be vital to the suc

do individual preferences explain the environmental kuznets curve abstract some economists maintain the optimistic view that individual preferences of rich people eventually lead to a virtuous circle relationship between rising income and environmental degradation in this article i review some of the models that establish a relationship between individual preferences and environmental quality these models provide a basis for discussion of the key role played by two factors individual preferences and technology they do not however capture the distributive conflicts that occur between different social groups in the process of defining environmental policy neither do they provide a good basis for distinguishing between environmental costs caused by the decisions of particular consumers and those which affect the same consumers this point is related to the various manners in which environmental costs are displaced displacement often occurs within a country for current costs and is even clearer and more relevant when costs are transferred across a great distance or to a remote future in such cases there are few incentives to reduce consumption or alter its composition displacement moreover can become a strategy pursued more or less consciously for maintaining high and rising levels of consumption without dealing with the associated environmental costs

demand for food fats and oils the role of demographic variables and government donations a systems model of u s food fats and oils demand is estimated using quarterly time series data for the period 1962 87 demographic scaling is used to incorporate demographic variables and per capita government butter donations in addition to price income and demographic demand elasticities dietary fat intake elasticities are calculated for each of the demographic characteristics included in the study all of the five own price elasticities are statistically significant as are fifteen of the twenty cross price elasticities fourteen of the fifteen demographic elasticities are statistically significant

bivariate garch estimation of the optimal commodity futures hedge six different commodities are examined using daily data over two futures contract periods cash and futures prices for all six commodities are found to be well described as martingales with near integrated garch innovations bivariate garch models of cash and futures prices are estimated for the same six commodities the optimal hedge ratio ohr is then calculated as a ratio of the conditional covariance between cash and futures to the conditional variance of futures the estimated ohrs reveal that the standard assumption of a time invariant ohr is inappropriate for each commodity the estimated ohr path appears non stationary which has important implications for hedging strategies

welfare economics of decision making with changing preferences the paper considers the properties a decision tree needs to guarantee that there are no preferences such that the sophisticated equilibrium is pareto dominated when all agents act completely myopically it shows that the only decision trees with this property are the most trivial problems the analysis is generalized to agents who are not completely myopic and gives an example of union and shareholder conflict to illustrate the results 1 this paper is concerned with the welfare aspects of decision making in a non cooperative game where the players have different preferences over future actions and must move sequentially typically two outcomes are analysed in this context one is the naive or myopic outcome which is the result of all individuals making irrational myopic choices and the other is the sophisticated or perfect equilibrium 1 the results of hammond 1976 show that if there is no essential inconsistency2 between agents preferences then these two outcomes coincide the welfare comparison when there is essential inconsistency remains an open question and this paper will attempt to provide some answers although this issue has not been explicitly considered the terminology perfect and sophisticated compared to myopic or naive is itself persuasive the literature has tended to enhance this view e g blackorby et al 1973 the sophisticated solution would appear to be an improvement over naive planning by explicitly considering the future preferences each generation realises a level of utility greater than that which is possible under inconsistent naive planning it will be shown that this view is incorrect for all degrees of myopia of course there are many cases where the perfect equilibrium in non cooperative games is inefficient thus it is not surprising that actions by some agents which deviate from rational behaviour can result in a better outcome for all agents it is less obvious that if everyone behaved myopically this is possible yet it will be shown that in all but the most trivial decision trees there always exist preferences such that this is true the following section outlines the model that will be used and section 3 contains the results section 4 gives a topical economic example that reduces to the decision tree structure used extensively in section 3 this example clarifies the structure of the results and also highlights some of the difficulties with introducing precommitment

measuring market power in multi product oligopolies the us meat industry this paper develops and estimates an economic model for measuring market power in a quantity setting oligopoly engaged in the joint production of demand related goods the model which allows for firms conjectures about both same and cross market responses to own output variation is applied to the us meat beef and pork industry he hypothesis that the industry s equilibrium reflects price taking behaviour is rejected the hypothesis of no cross effects cannot be rejected roughly half of the farm to retail price spreads for beef and pork appear to be attributable to market power

neoclassical growth the j curve for abatement and the inverted u curve for pollution abstract this paper reexamines the neoclassical environmental growth model of forster to gain insights into the dynamic relationships among pollution abatement effort and economic development whereas the model has heretofore been used to examine steady state levels of capital consumption and environmental quality it also provides a theoretical basis for recent empirical research on j curves for abatement effort and inverted u curves for pollution

is there an animal welfare kuznets curve abstract the concept of a kuznets curve has been applied to income inequality and to the environment the kuznets curve takes an inverted u shape with income or gdp on the x axis and environmental degradation or inequality on the y axis it is hypothesized here that an animal welfare kuznets curve may exist with harm to animals initially rising with economic growth followed by improvement in the treatment of animals after some peak value why an animal welfare kuznets curve might theoretically exist is explored empirical evidence supporting or refuting the existence of such a curve is also examined the evidence is both quantitative and qualitative in nature since some issues in welfare cannot be easily quantified the evidence and theoretical presentation explores multiple areas of concern to animals including animal agriculture the use of animals in laboratories companion animals pets and the fur industry the conclusion is that evidence is mixed with some measures indicating a turning point while other measures showing no sign of peaking improving animal welfare

taste changes in the demand for food by demographic groups in the united states a nonparametric empirical analysis this study uses nonparametric techniques to analyze the stability of demand for nineteen major food categories among various demographic groups in the united states households are divided into population groups by income the head s age and the spouse s education level the data used are from the 1980 90 diary portion of the bureau of labor statistics s annual consumer expenditure survey the programming model developed by sakong and hayes with the modifications suggested by chalfant and zhang is used to test for and measure taste changes substantial differences in preference trends between population groups are found for many of the food commodities

conceptual and functional form issues in estimating demand elasticities for food in estimating demand elasticities for food we must choose a functional form for the statistical model because this choice can have untoward consequences for the user king we seek a form which does not impose undue restrictions on the estimated demand elasticities statistically we seek a functional form which gives close approximations to the elasticities of interest in this connection gallant 1981 1982 points out that the key consideration is the method of approximation there are two taylor s series and fourier series methods the problem with taylor s theorem is that it applies only locally on a region of unspecified size this method can yield testable implications of the theory at the point of approximation but this point is in general unknown and may not even be in the range of the data caves and christensen white moreover the approximation error from taylor s series can be large for small departures from the unspecified point of expansion white in short there is nd guarantee that taylor s theorem will give close approximations at any point in the sample gallant 1981 thus there is no assurance that even the recently popularized locally flexible functional forms translog generalized leontief almost ideal demand system will give close approximations to the true demand system

household demand for convenience and nonconvenience foods states the budget shares are generally more responsive to prices than to real total expenditure additionally the quantities demanded of convenience and nonconvenience foods are generally more sensitive to changes in income and own prices than to changes in cross prices with regard to demographic variates primary users of convenience foods are white households with employed household managers less than 35 years of age

disaggregated household meat demand with censored data previous research on meat demand has generally used highly aggregated data across time products and consumers however meat products across species are likely stronger substitutes than some products from the same species further demand for specific meat products would be expected to respond differently to market information about food safety or other events this study uses monthly consumer panel data collected between 1992 and 2000 to estimate a disaggregated meat product demand system the use of the expectations maximization algorithm is introduced to estimate a demand system that adjusts for the econometric problem of censored data resulting from purchased shares of some products by individuals often being equal to zero results indicate that certain individual meat products have noticeably different own price elasticities than existing aggregate meat product estimates of their respective species some individual meat products have stronger substitutes across species than within species e g be

estimating structural change with smooth transition regressions an application to meat demand this paper explores the role of structural change in systems of demand equations specifically we adapt the time varying regression framework of lin and terasvirta 1994 which in turn is related to the dynamic smooth transition models introduced by terasvirta 1994 unlike previous efforts at modeling structural change in demand systems we do not impose the nature of the change to be monotonic several non monotonic alternatives are considered an application is presented using the almost ideal inverse demand system iaids applied to u s meat demand data 1960 2004 results show the importance of modeling structural change and that moreover the best fitting model is associated with a form of symmetric non monotonic structural change

the price elasticity of selective demand a meta analysis of econometric models of sales the author describes a meta analysis of econometric studies that estimated the elasticity of selective sales or market share to price the literature review yielded 367 suitable price elasticities

a demand systems analysis of food commodities by u s households segmented by income using the 1987 88 nationwide food consumption survey twelve food commodity groups were analyzed according to household poverty status parameter estimates were used to obtain subsistence expenditures own price elasticities expenditure elasticities and income elasticities own price elasticities were similar between the income groups for most commodities however income elasticities were consistently higher for the lower income group the use of average estimates of price and income elasticities for the population as a whole for the projection of individual commodity demands is not likely to be successful if notable changes are evident in income distribution

demand for beef and chicken products separability and structural change several studies have indicated that the recent shift from beef to poultry in consumption is not entirely caused by changes in rela tive prices or income braschler chavas dahlgran hudson and vertin moschini and meilke frank thurman most studies of structural change have focused on red meat consumption only thurman has looked closely at the poultry market and no one has considered poultry products yet the mix of chicken products marketed changed dramat ically during the last twenty years and should have influenced aggregate meat demand the share of broiler slaughter marketed as whole birds declined from 74 in 1965 to 28 in 1985 while cut up parts and processed chick en products increased from 26 to 72 whole birds are inferior goods and cut up parts and processed chicken are normal goods haidacher et al the shift in chicken prod uct mix away from whole birds should have increased the preference for total chicken in this article two related questions are ad dressed first do consumers allocate expendi tures among meats by animal origin or by product type second does disaggregation of meat into products in a meat demand model give insight into the causes of structural

animal welfare and social decisions is it time to take bentham seriously abstract this paper analyzes and questions the standard welfare economics assumption of anthropocentric welfarism i e that only human well being counts intrinsically alternatives where also animal welfare matters intrinsically are analyzed both theoretically and empirically the general public s ethical preferences are measured through a survey of a representative sample in sweden and the responses from a clear majority suggest that animal welfare should indeed carry intrinsic weight in public decision making current legislation in many countries is consistent with this a brief review of moral philosophy on animal welfare indicates that a large majority of philosophers believe that animal welfare should count intrinsically it is moreover demonstrated that it is theoretically and practically possible to generalize welfare economics in order to give intrinsic value also to animal welfare the paper concludes that there are strong reasons to sometimes generalize welfare economics in order to take animal welfare into account directly i e in addition to effects through individual utilities the practical implications of doing so are likely to be more important over time as the scientific methods of measuring animal welfare are gradually improving

applying theil s multinomial extension of the linear logit model to meat expenditure data one of the chief drawbacks of the multinomial extension of the linear logit model is that after the standard linearization the parameters which are directly estimated have no obvious economic meaning this paper presents alternative transformations which facilitate interpretation in one linearization the estimated coefficients will be elasticities at a selected data point such as the mean in another form the coefficients will be slutsky parameters the latter version is chosen for an empirical analysis of the demand for meat in great britain a number of issues concerning the model s error structure and dynamic specification are discussed

the demand for cigarettes in japan a two stage budgeting procedure was used to estimate demand elasticities for cigarettes in japan cigarettes were disaggregated into japanese u s and rest of world testing for habit effects was performed at both stages results indicated that habit effects occur for total expenditures on cigarettes but not between types

dynamic hedge ratio estimations in the european union emissions offset credit market following the introduction of the european union emissions trading scheme in 2005 the size of the carbon market has been growing at a tremendous rate to meet the emissions reduction targets the regulated parties can choose to participate in the allowance based market by purchasing the spot allowances commencing in 2008 the regulated parties are also allowed to purchase the offset credits to meet their allowance limit given the risky nature of the offset credits this paper evaluates the hedging performance of dynamic hedge ratios for the carbon offset credit certified emissions reduction market in the eu ets to the best of our knowledge this paper is the first attempt to evaluate the hedging performance of dynamic and constant hedge ratios in the carbon offset credit market based on the variance reduction and utility improvement measurements the findings generally support the use of static hedge ratios over the more sophisticated dynamic hedge ratios

case study on initial allocation of shanghai carbon emission trading based on shapley value abstract carbon emission trading is an effective measure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide china has publicized plans to initiate the demonstration of carbon emission trading in seven regions as of 2013 initial allocation is fundamental but it proposes difficulty in the mechanism design of the carbon emission trading system benchmark grandfathering and the shapley value have been employed to simulate a specific case which consists of the initial allocation of carbon emission allowances of three power plants in shanghai china the results of the shapley value are regarded as a theoretical equitable reference the results of benchmark are similar to those of the shapley value however it is apparent that the allocation regarding grandfathering is inequitable considering other factors we proposed the following at the introduction of experimental stage free allocation pertaining to grandfathering can be adopted meanwhile benchmark should be prepared and adopted at the appropriate time furthermore a portion of the initial allowances can be reserved for auction and this portion for auction will escalate to the extent of 100 upon entering the formal stage in addition the tiered price mechanism and the subsidy policy are also suggested

the inverse almost ideal demand system abstract a new demand system related to the almost ideal demand system aids of deaton and muellbauer is developed and illustrated this inverse aids iaids retains all of the desirable theoretical properties of the aids model with the exception of consistent aggregation an empirical issue is whether a linear approximation will work as well for the iaids as it has for the aids model since quantities are not as highly correlated as prices an application to u s meat demand demonstrates that the linear approximation of the iaids is excellent which enhanced the ease and range of application

willingness to pay for other species well being abstract benefit cost analysis of environmental policies typically focuses on benefits to human health and well being for other species economists have attempted to measure human wtp for changes in the numbers of individuals for different types of wildlife and to preserve biodiversity when it comes to humans wtp for improvements in the quality of life for other species however the evidence is limited morbidity and quality of life considerations may be particularly important to the task of valuing non fatal harm to wildlife in the wake of an environmental disaster we argue that the other species morbidity reduction component of wtp should be calculated net of any outrage component associated with the cause of the harm this net wtp is likely to be correlated with the premium that people are willing to pay for chicken products from birds for which the quality of life has been enhanced by improved animal welfare measures this paper uses a conjoint choice stated preference survey to reveal the nature of systematic heterogeneity in preferences for humanely raised versus conventionally raised chicken we also use latent class analysis to distinguish between two classes of people those who are willing to pay a premium for humanely raised chicken and those who are not

an error correction almost ideal demand system for meat in greece this paper represents a dynamic specification of the almost ideal demand system aids based on recent developments on cointegration techniques and error correction models based on greek meat consumption data over the period 1958 1993 it was found that the proposed formulation performs well on both theoretical and statistical grounds as the theoretical properties of homogeneity and symmetry are supported by the data and the lechatelier principle holds regardless of the time horizon beef and chicken may be considered as luxuries while mutton lamb and pork as necessities in the short run beef was found to have price elastic demand pork an almost unitary elasticity whereas mutton lamb chicken and sausages had inelastic demands in the long run beef and pork were found to have a demand elasticity greater than one whereas mutton lamb chicken and sausages still had inelastic demands all meat items are found to be substitutes to each other except chicken and mutton lamb and pork and chicken

quantifying the structure of food demand in china an econometric approach this article examines food demand structure and its dynamics for 11 commodities in urban china the analysis is based on household level expenditure survey data for two cross sectional surveys of chinese households pertaining to food expenditure patterns during 1995 and 2003 pre committed components of commodity demands that are insensitive to economic variables are explored we use the generalized quadratic almost ideal demand system gqaids for its empirical superiority to the generalized almost ideal demand system gaids and estimate the associated parameters via full information maximum likelihood procedure fiml accounting for endogeneity of total expenditures on food for home consumption fah we also use quality adjusted commodity unit values to control for quality differences resulting from commodity aggregation and food choice furthermore we derive gqaids elasticity formulas and estimate income elasticities without restrictions the results partially support the hypothesis that an average chinese household has incorporated elements of western diet fine grains into traditional chinese food diet over time moreover the outcome of a simple test developed here points to possible preference changes for a majority of food staples under study

generalized optimal hedge ratio estimation a generalized approach to estimating optimal hedge ratios on futures markets is developed the generalized approach is not difficult to apply and provides a framework for evaluating the appropriateness of conventional simple regression approaches to optimal hedge ratio estimation in an application to storage hedging of corn soybeans and wheat it is found that simple regression using price levels or returns leads to errors in optimal hedge ratio estimation but that simple regression using price changes provides reasonably accurate estimates

the poultry market demand stability and industry structure the stability of the demand for poultry meat and specification issues in its estimation are explored the analysis concludes that the demand for poultry meat shifted out in the early 1970s at the same time the demand relationship between poultry and pork changed from substitution to independence a second conclusion is that poultry price is predetermined for demand in annual u s data while quantity is not a predetermined price suggests several market structures exogeneity tests are performed to distinguish among them the results are consistent with a competitive constant returns to scale industry facing elastic factor supplies

crisis and consumption smoothing the dramatic impact of the current crisis on performance of businesses across sectors and economies has been headlining the business press for the past several months extant reconciliations of these patterns in the popular press rely on ad hoc reasoning using historical data on currency crisis episodes across the world we show that the impact of the crisis on a firm s business is best understood by focusing on the impact of the crisis on the behavior of consumers our analyses show that consumer behavior in a crisis is characterized by consumption smoothing at various levels intertemporal intercategory and intracategory these behavioral adjustments result in significant reallocation of consumption expenditures more importantly the smoothing decisions because of a crisis are distinct and independent of the impact of changes in income and prices that accompany a crisis interestingly there is marked variation in the patterns of consumption smoothing across different types of economies taken together these results have important and interesting implications for managers policy makers and academics

the economic value of improvements in beef tenderness by genetic marker selection a genetic simulation model is combined with an economic model of the u s beef industry to determine how consumer demand shifts resulting from bull and heifer selection strategies that improve steak tenderness affect economic profitability at four points in the beef supply chain the results indicate that a selection strategy in which bulls in the upper 30 of genetic merit are selected each year would result in increased profitability of 9 60 head for feeder cattle and 1 23 head for fed cattle in 20 years the net present value of the genetic improvement program is estimated to produce economic benefits of 7 6 billion

the logic of testing structural change in meat demand a methodological analysis and appraisal in the past two decades the profession has expended valuable resources testing structural change in meat demand with mixed results overlooked to date is a fundamental methodological problem that transcends all methods of testing for structural change in this study a methodological framework is used to show that there is no valid test of structural change because of this result additional criteria from the methodology literature are used to evaluate the literature on structural change in meat demand and to provide suggestions for fertile areas of future research

prices poaching and protein alternatives an analysis of bushmeat consumption around serengeti national park tanzania abstract the consumption of meat from wild animals or bushmeat occurs throughout africa and highlights the conflict between two distinct development goals food security and biodiversity conservation growing human populations throughout the greater serengeti ecosystem rely heavily on bushmeat as a source of protein which places pressure on migratory wildlife populations this paper uses unique data from protein consumption surveys from 131 households over 34 months in a generalizable empirical framework to estimate price cross price and expenditure elasticities of protein sources and analyze the potential economic effects of policies to mitigate bushmeat hunting and consumption results suggest that 1 directly increasing the price of bushmeat through enforcement or other policies to reduce supply will have the most direct and largest effect of bushmeat consumption 2 increasing income increases bushmeat consumption as well as consumption of other meat sources 3 if surrounding fisheries experience a negative shock or collapse this will lead to a dramatic increase in bushmeat consumption overall these results strongly indicate that policies to reduce bushmeat hunting while maintaining food security must be considered in a broad and comprehensive framework

the minimum cvar strategy with semi parametric estimation in carbon market hedging problems abstract effective hedging strategies are important in reducing price volatility risk for business investors and companies participating into carbon markets in this paper we investigate the risk triggered by price fluctuation of european union allowance eua a semi parametric approach with cornish fisher expansion which approximates the quantile using the higher moments of the distribution is provided to estimate hedging ratios using cvar as risk objective function the approach can successfully capture the features of higher moments with the heavy tailed and higher kurtosis distribution of the eua returns which tends to be neglected the hedging performances of minimum cvar model we proposed and the conventional minimum variance model are evaluated and compared our empirical results show that minimum cvar hedging strategy generally outperforms the other in sample using all the effectiveness criteria while it is not consistent out of sample the proposed semi parametric minimum cvar strategy with cornish fisher expansion is advisable in carbon market hedging problems

the hedging performance of electricity futures on the nordic power exchange the nordic power exchange nord pool the first multinational exchange for electricity trading has existed since january 1996 spot and futures contracts are traded on this exchange and its typical characteristics are very high volatilities as well as non normally distributed returns this article looks at electricity futures and how they can be used for short term hedging of positions taken in the spot market it studies the minimum variance hedge ratio and how it can be estimated in different ways the traditional naive hedge and the ols hedge are compared out of sample to more elaborate moving average and garch hedges and the empirical results indicate some gains from hedging with futures despite the lack of straight forward arbitrage possibilities in the electricity market furthermore we find a slightly better performance of the simple ols hedge compared to the conditional hedges

farm animal welfare and food policy abstract legislation has been the main policy approach for protecting the welfare of farm animals the use of legislation raises issues such as whose preferences the legislation reflects and whether the preferences of some people in society should constrain the food consumption choices of others the paper outlines a survey in great britain which sought to measure people s willingness to pay to support legislation to ban the use of battery cages for egg production in the european union eu it discusses the implications of the survey findings for animal welfare and food policy it concludes that legislation which constrains food consumption choices may be justified where there are significant negative animal welfare externalities as a result of livestock product consumption however the combination of legislation and producer subsidies may provide an appropriate policy which improves animal welfare without directly constraining food consumption choice and could help to achieve other policy aims regarding agriculture in the eu

accounting for changes in tastes health concerns are thought by many to have shifted consumption away from red meats though econometric evidence is mixed testing for structural change is difficult especially when one time series is used for both estimating demand equations and testing their stability specification errors may suggest a shift where none has occurred using nonparametric demand analysis we find that meat consumption patterns in the united states and australia can be explained using only relative prices and expenditures only imposing particular functional forms can reverse the conclusion suggesting that specification errors in econometric demand studies can account for findings of taste changes

characteristics and hedonic pricing of differentiated beef demands we estimate a cbs system model of u s derived demand for meat we use this model 1 to examine relationships between three quality categories of beef and three other meats and 2 to simulate how taste shifts have affected demands for meats over time we extend previous studies by disaggregating wholesale beef production into three quality categories 1 usda choice grade or higher 2 usda select or lower and 3 cow and bull beef innovative features of our empirical model include a breakout of table cuts into choice and select and the use of a hedonic characterization of the two breakouts to value choice ness and beef ness our model demonstrates important shifts in separate demands for choice and select beef we show that separately the demand for choice grade beef declined in the 1980s and 1990s and the demand for select beef increased a departure from the relatively stable demand characterizations of more aggregated measures of combined choice and select beef jel classification q11 q13

correcting for measurement error in food demand estimation use of disappearance data as proxies for actual consumption causes inconsistent estimates of own price retail demand elasticities a system of equations describing consumer processor and producer behavior is used to consistently estimate the retail demand elasticity for beef using available data while avoiding the restrictive assumption of fixed input proportions implicit in disappearance data this approach yields an estimate of the own price retail demand elasticity for beef of 0 45 which is more inelastic than the estimate 0 66 obtained using a traditional approach the methodology is applicable to other food commodities for which disappearance data serve as proxies for actual consumption copyright 1993 by mit press

preference variable impacts in direct and inverse differential demand systems preference variables are included in the inverse rotterdam model based on the tintner ichimura basmann relationship linking preference effects on quantities demanded to price effects and preference effects on marginal utilities restrictions are placed on the effects of the preference variables on the marginal utilities resulting in reductions in the parameter space for the preference variables in both direct and inverse demand systems the model is used to analyze impacts of product quality on fresh citrus demand

the dynamic volatility spillover between european carbon trading market and fossil energy market abstract with the rapid spread of carbon trading in the world the interaction of carbon prices and fossil energy prices has raised growing attention but little research has discussed their time varying correlation and dynamic volatility spillover this paper employs the threshold dynamic conditional correlation dcc generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity garch model and the full baba engle kraft and kroner bekk garch model to explore these issues for the daily data of european carbon futures prices and the three fossil energy prices coal natural gas and brent oil from january 2 2008 to september 30 2014 the results indicate that first there is significant unidirectional volatility spillover from coal market to carbon market and from carbon market to natural gas market whereas there exists no significant volatility spillover between carbon market and brent oil market second carbon market and fossil energy markets have significantly positive correlation across time specifically among the three fossil fuels coal market has the highest correlation with carbon market followed by natural gas and brent oil markets finally as for the three fossil fuels their price decrease may have stronger impact on carbon price volatility than their price increase with the same degree while there is asymmetric impact of carbon price increase and decrease only on brent oil price volatility these results may help investors to well configure their portfolios and manage their investment risks and help emission trading installations to join in carbon market in a cost effective way

a welfare analysis of convergence to rational expectations abstract this paper investigates a model with intertemporally inconsistent preferences where individuals begin by making mistakes and converge to rational expectations it is shown that the properties of rational expectations do not carry over to paths that monotonically converge to re and that if individuals begin by making mistakes then everyone cannot benefit by convergence to rational expectations

time series minimum wage studies a meta analysis time series minimum wage studies a meta analysis author s david card and alan b krueger reviewed work s source the american economic review vol 85 no 2 papers and proceedings of the hundredth and seventh annual meeting of the american economic association washington dc january 6 8 1995 may 1995 pp 238 243 published by american economic association stable url http www jstor org stable 2117925 accessed 04 11 2011 15 46

structural change in the demand for meat economists have long thought that shocks in the economy sometimes lead to permanent changes in behavioral relationships hence supply or demand elasticities estimated from econometric models may change over time the source of such structural change may be technological adoption a shift in consumer preferences or an institutional change one way to handle this problem in linear models is to allow the parameters to change as the situation changes so that the model provides a local approximation of the behavioral relationship this approach is an attractive way to deal with structural change problems econometricians have extended the classical

the quantity and variety of households meat purchases a censored demand system approach this study investigates the demand for 10 disaggregated meat products by u s households a censored demand system which imposes budget constraints in both observed and latent shares is estimated along with a detailed explanation of the estimation procedure additional details about the methodology not provided in previous studies should help researchers to empirically apply the model an innovation of the study is to introduce the censored demand system model for studying the variety of a household s food purchases most households buy between seven and eight different products and hardly change the variety of their purchases with changes in meat expenditure