the economic consequences of reduced fertilizer use a virtual pricing approach the virtual pricing approach is applied to perform an ex ante analysis of reduced chemical use on agricultural output input demand and profitability aggregate data on indiana agriculture spanning the 1950 86 period are used to estimate parameters of a normalized quadratic profit function using bayesian techiques empirical results on the response of substitute and complementary inputs to a 15 and a 30 fertilizer restriction are obtained and the ad valorem taxes required to accomplish such restriction are calculated

a globally flexible almost ideal demand system the almost ideal demand system is combined with the fourier expenditure system subject to the assumption that preferences are of the price independent generalized logarithmic class the resulting demand system has the desirable features of each of its components aggregate demand equations are consistent with preferences of a representative consumer and consistent estimates of elasticities are obtained for all observed prices application of the new demand system to u s consumption of meats and fish reveals that it fits the data well and that the restriction to the usual specification is rejected

econometric developments in agricultural and resource economics the first 100 years this article reviews the major contributions of agricultural and resource economists in the area of econometrics over the past 100 years early on a number of agricultural economists were in on the ground floor in terms of developing new econometric methods over time as the economics profession became more empirically oriented agricultural and resource economists increasingly assumed the role of early adopters of new econometric methods even so agricultural and resource economists continue to make useful modifications to econometric techniques in order to adapt the methods to the unique nature of the problems and applications that we study

a bayesian approach to aggregation in demand systems smoothing with perfect substitution priors demand analysis requires aggregation of commodities some are imposed at the data collection level leaving some for the estimation level when data are collected the implicit assumption underlying the aggregation is perfect substitutability one gallon of gasoline is viewed by consumers as equivalent to another gallon hence the two are added together while such aggregation can be carried out further by the data analyst it is difficult to incorporate perfect substitutability into the estimation of direct demand systems perfect substitution in that context implies discontinuous demand functions which are not nested within standard empirical demand systems perfect substitution is much more easily handled in a system of inverse demands though an empirical method to impose perfect substitutability in an inverse demand system has not previously appeared in the literature in this article we develop such a method which allows perfect substitutability to be imposed as a prior restriction we use leame

the silence of the lambdas a test of the almost ideal and rotterdam models during the past decade the linear approximate la almost ideal demand system and the rotterdam model have been adopted by agricultural economists as the demand systems of choice in most applications the apparent explanation is that the two models are both second order locally flexible and compatible with demand theory they have identical data requirements and are equally parsimonious with respect to parameters and both are linear in the parameters while the two models are thus equally attractive in most respects and indeed appear very similar in structure they lead to different results in some applications this article develops a test of each against the other in an illustrative application to u s meat demand the almost ideal model is rejected while the rotterdam model is not

conditional and unconditional food demand elasticities in a dynamic multistage demand system this paper estimates conditional and unconditional demand elasticities in a three stage analysis of consumer demand for food and non food items in greece a dynamic version of the aids model is specified and estimated and full system misspecification tests applied correction formulas for price and expenditure elasticities are used to calculate unconditional elasticities from conditional demand sub systems all food items rank as price inelastic deviations between the calculated conditional and unconditional price and expenditure elasticities are found to be significant demonstrating the importance of correcting conditional elasticities before they can be used for policy purposes or welfare analyses

tariff jumping antidumping duties abstract this paper examines the tariff jumping response of all firm and product combinations subject to us antidumping investigations from 1980 to 1990 using a newly constructed database previous studies have focused only on japanese fdi responses to antidumping protection and found large tariff jumping responses in contrast this paper finds quite modest tariff jumping responses and the evidence suggests that tariff jumping is only a realistic option for multinational firms from industrialized countries this may partially explain developing countries concerns about addressing ad protection in the wto despite high tariff jumping responses there is no evidence of a japanese specific propensity to tariff jump holding other economic factors constant

integrated markup rules for optimal pricing decisions in expanding markets for organic produce in expanding markets firms face uncertainty about demand response to changing conditions and the appropriate pricing response inclusion of retail demand factors in explaining markup decisions by wholesalers is crucial to accurate evaluation of the effects of price and market changes on profitability we apply an integrated demand and markup model to markets for organic broccoli and carrots where wholesalers set markups facing retail demand the estimated integrated system includes crossequation restrictions on organic and conventional prices received from retail publicity about food safety scares and availability of a competing certification programme the results show that organic wholesalers behave strategically in response to observable demand factors as they expand into fresh produce markets wholesalers arbitrage markups across items to increase market share combining crop specific and overall market information to decide on appropriate responses wholesalers also attempt to moderate markups in r

evaluating prior beliefs in a demand system the case of meat demand in canada an almost ideal demand system for meats is estimated using canadian data a bayesian approach is used to impose inequality restrictions on substitution elasticities via monte carlo integration and importance sampling in order to conform with prior beliefs about curvature and monotonicity restrictions and substitution relationships results are more consistent with the concavity and monotonicity restrictions from demand theory than with the added restriction that all meats are substitutes

foreign direct investment local content requirement and profit taxation we develop a partial equilibrium model of foreign direct investment fdi in which identical foreign firms locate themselves in a host country to compete in an oligopolistic market for a non tradeable commodity the host country assumed to be small in the market for fdi makes use of two instruments viz a profit tax and a local content requirement to compete for fdi in the international market we assume the existence of unemployment in the host country the structure of optimal instruments and their relationship to the number and the relative efficiency levels of the domestic firms are established

wheat demand in japanese flour milling industry a production theory approach a production approach based on the translog cost function is used to analyze import demand for wheat differentiated by class and country of origin in the japanese wheat flour milling industry results indicate that us wheat faces strong competition in the japanese wheat market but its multiple classes and end use characteristics enable the us to preserve the largest market share in japan

price relationships between qualitatively differentiated agricultural products organic and conventional wheat in germany organic agriculture which produces commodities that can be qualitatively differentiated from conventional food products has grown into an important market in many countries the dynamics of commodity prices in both sectors are partly interdependent but are also shaped by independent determinants and have rarely been studied we analyze organic food markets and their interdependencies with conventional markets in the context of wheat markets in germany which have been subject to a number of fundamental changes during the last two decades based on institutional market characteristics we suggest a flexible markov switching asymmetric time series model we find a pronounced temporal sequence of market phases that differ in their asymmetric dynamics and the extent to which the organic price is influenced by the conventional price organic wheat prices tend to be increasingly connected to prices of conventional wheat

supply and demand factors for organic produce although the organic produce industry is growing dramatically little is known about market structure we estimate a system of reduced form equations to evaluate supply and demand factors that influence equilibrium farm price and quantity in wholesale markets for organic broccoli carrots and lettuce in the long run demand factors dominate supply factors reduced wholesaling costs increased margins by which organic wholesale price exceeds nonorganic price and higher consumer income stimulate both farm price and output increasing the nonorganic farm price decreases equilibrium quantity of organics market expansion strategies should target consumers and wholesalers

revisiting aggregate u s meat demand with a bayesian averaging of classical estimates approach do we need a more general theory although meat demand is one of the most studied issues in agricultural economics our understanding of this phenomenon has been hampered by valid concerns about model specification uncertainty this article revisits the need for more general theories of aggregate u s meat demand using a bayesian averaging of classical estimates approach we draw comprehensive inferences over 1 048 576 demand systems we find very little evidence supporting the need for more general theories that include demand determinants beyond prices and expenditures we find strong evidence in support of symmetry and negativity but strong evidence against homogeneity which is consistent with other research copyright 2008 oxford university press

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

bootstrapping your fish or fishing for bootstraps precision of welfare loss estimates from a globally concave inverse demand model of commercial fish landings in the u s great lakes we extend holt and bishop s 2002 normalized quadratic inverse demand function by obtaining measures of precision of elasticities and consumer welfare loss estimates due to reductions in commercial landings in the u s great lakes even with curvature constraints imposed confidence intervals are obtained by using the bootstrap subsample bootstrap and subsample jackknife

a statistical model of speculative bubbles with applications to the stock markets of the united states japan and china it is common knowledge that the more prices deviate from fundamentals the more likely it is for prices to reverse taking this into account we propose a simple statistical model to identify speculative bubbles in financial markets through the estimates of the time varying parameters including transition probabilities we can identify when and how newly born bubbles grow and burst over time the model can be estimated by recursive computations which require a huge storage capacity for standard computers for this reason we introduce an approximation in the computation maintaining the recursive nature of our estimation technique we then apply this model to the stock markets of the united states japan and china estimate its parameters and the probabilities of a bubble crash and obtain several interesting results the time series data of the stock price bubble show an inherently non stationary development and the probability of a bubble crash indeed increases as the stock price becomes too high or too low

testing for rational bubbles in the presence of structural breaks evidence from nonstationary panels this paper presents new results on the rational bubbles hypothesis for a panel of 18 oecd countries using the model developed by campbell 2000 we provide an analysis of international data that exploits increased power deriving from the panel unit root and cointegration methodology together with the flexibility of allowing explicitly for multiple endogenous structural breaks in the individual series differently from the time series methodology the panel data approach allows for a global analysis of the financial crashes that are related to rational bubbles we find strong evidence in favor of bubbles phenomena

is there a monthly effect in stock market returns evidence from foreign countries abstract in a recent paper ariel documents a monthly pattern for u s stock market returns our paper examines this pattern of returns in four other countries we find only weak evidence supporting this phenomenom in these foreign markets just one country exhibits a significant seasonal consistent with ariel s work however we do find stronger evidence of a last day of the month effect in addition there is evidence of a country unique monthly pattern i e one that is not consistent with the u s pattern

consistent estimation of armington demand models traditional methods of empirically implementing the popular armington trade model are shown to result in theoretically and statistically inconsistent parameter estimates a method for removing these inconsistencies within the framework of the armington model is provided along with a comparison of results of our new consistent procedure with those of the previous procedure

bidding for firms recently toyota sought a plant location in the united states the 800 million plant will employ 3000 workers and numerous states offered toyota generous investment incentives hoping this would induce toyota to select their state the commonwealth of kentucky won this competition but the price was high the present value of the payments exceeds 125 million the payment of investment incentives for the toyota plant is not unique in 1976 pennsylvania paid 75 million to attract a volkswagen plan nissan honda and mazda received generous investment incentives when locating plants in the united states and this bidding is not limited to states to attract the headquarters of the presbyterian church usa with its 1300 jobs and 38 million annual payroll civic leaders in louisville kentucky offered the church a warehouse and 6 2 million for renovation of the structure bidding the church away from kansas city missouri in this paper we contend that this competition may result from the average cost pricing of publicly provided goods and services 2 when the marginal cost of providing a firm and its workers with public services is less than the tax revenue they generate a government may offer the firm subsidies that reduce the distortions the average cost pricing of the public service creates thus this competition for industry is not a zero sum game where the subsidies are only transfers from the government to the firm rather these subsidies may facilitate the efficient location of industry

estimating a demand system with nonnegativity constraints mexican meat demand a new information based approach for estimating systems of many equations with nonnegativity constraints is presented this approach called generalized maximum entropy gme is more practical and

cost structure and technical change in rural banking abstract using the multi product translog cost function this paper examines the cost structure and technical change occurring within the novel ghanaian rural banks the results of the seemingly unrelated error components model indicate substantial unexploited economies of scale in individual products as well as in overall intermediation there is presence of pairwise complementarity between loans and government securities and between deposits and government securities but absence of pairwise complementarity between loans and deposits overall capital using and labour saving technical change has occurred but efficiency loss in deposit mobilization outweighs the efficiency gains in government securities and lending activities operation of agencies reinforces the overall efficiency loss the rural banks must not be hindered from expanding but in any growth strategy deposit mobilization should take a central position and the cost of operating agencies watched closely

comment on a neglected method of separating demand and supply in time series regression by stephen e haynes and joe a stone this article examines some difficulties associated with the haynes stone model and attempts to clarify how the model can be justified as representing the hypothesis that quantity is demand determined and price is supply determined it also argues that the applications of such a model as was done by haynes and stone might not have resolved the controversies related to the phillips curve and the supply function of exports or imports

gradualism in tax treaties with irreversible foreign direct investment bilateral international tax treaties govern the host country taxation for the vast majority of the world s foreign direct investment fdi of particular interest is the fact that the tax rates used under these treaties are gradually falling although the treaties themselves do not specify any such reductions since there is no outside governing agency to redress treaty violations such reductions must be both mutually beneficial and self enforcing furthermore the optimal tax rates must be less than those initially set otherwise no reductions would be necessary to explain such behavior we model a two country setting with two way capital flows in particular only part of fdi is immediately reversible as the extent of irreversibility increases the likelihood of pareto optimal tax rates obtaining as a self enforcing outcome in the initial period is reduced more modest tax reductions from the non treaty levels are still possible these limited tax reductions generate an increase in bilateral fdi as countries increase the stock of capital in one another further reductions in taxes become self enforcing depending on the extent of irreversibility and asymmetry pareto optimal tax rates may be obtainable in the long run thus the amount of inbound investment a country can attract may be related to the commitment to which its outbound investment binds it this final insight provides an additional rationale for the observed pattern of capital flows in which those countries with the greatest outbound capital flows are also those with the highest inbound flows

regional tax coordination and foreign direct investment this paper analyses the effects of a regionally coordinated profit tax or location subsidy in a model with three active countries one of which is not part of the union and a globally mobile firm we show that regional coordination can lead to two types of welfare gain first for investments that would take place in the union in the absence of coordination a coordinated tax increase can transfer location rents from the firm to the union second by internalising all of the union s benefits from foreign direct investment a coordinated tax reduction can attract more welfare enhancing investment than when member states act in isolation depending on which motive dominates tax levels may thus rise or fall under regional coordination

organic or conventional optimal dairy farming technology under the eu milk quota system and organic subsidies this paper assesses the competitiveness of organic and conventional dairy farms under different milk market and organic farming policy scenarios we use a dea based model to estimate for each policy scenario the sample farms profit potential in both technologies the model enables identification of a farm s optimal technology based on its input output observations the empirical analysis is based on the annual accounts of 1300 bavarian dairy farms results indicate that approximately 69 78 of the organic conventional farms have chosen their optimal farming system the remaining organic conventional farmers could increase their profit on average by roughly 6 10 by switching to the other technology abolishment of the eu milk quota results in a considerable decline in the number of sample farms for which organic farming is the optimal technology suggesting that ceteris paribus organic dairy farms may lose competitive advantage with the deregulation of the eu s milk market regime in 2015 organic maintenance payments more than double the number of farms with a higher earning potential in organic farming but their effectiveness could decline when the milk quota is abolished c 2010 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

competition for foreign direct investments abstract this paper models international competition for foreign direct investment as a common agency problem using the theory of menu auctions developed by bernheim and whinston in the model national governments act as principals and a multinational corporation as the single agent governments are assumed to maximize the net wage income generated by the corporation s investment it is shown that in the equilibrium of this game a high wage country may be able to attract investment even though all countries use subsidies furthermore it is shown that a country may choose to pay the highest subsidies even if it attracts less investment than in the unsubsidized regime our framework can also be used to study interregional subsidy competition within a country

stated and revealed preferences for organic and cloned milk combining choice experiment and scanner data the u s food and drug administration s recent announcement that milk from cloned cows is as safe to drink as that from conventionally bred cows prompted interest among farmers food retailers and regulators in the market impacts of the introduction of milk from clones because milk from cloned animals is not currently labeled in the market we utilized a stated preference experiment to determine consumer preferences for the attribute but also sought to determine whether the survey based choices were consistent with people s revealed preferences given by scanner data our analysis indicates that a pooled model combining stated and revealed preference data exhibits overall better out of sample prediction performance than either data set used alone results from the pooled model indicate that consumers are willing to pay large premiums to avoid milk from cloned cows an amount that is over three times that for organic or rbst free milk the results are used to calculate the value of a mandatory labeling program

multinationals multi plant economies and the gains from trade a general equilibrium model of a multinational enterprise based on economies of multi plant operation is developed these economies are modelled as arising from the existence of a joint input whose productivity in each production facility is independent of the number of facilities maintained by a firm the multinational thus offers the world increased technical efficiency by eliminating the duplication of the joint input that would occur with independent national firms since this technical efficiency may come at the expense of increased market power the full determinants of home country host country and world welfare are considered

tax competition and leviathan abstract attitudes towards downward pressure on tax rates from international tax competition depend on attitudes towards government this paper synthesises the two extremes which as in other areas of public finance have dominated the debate typically being presented as stark alternatives the view of government as a leviathan from which tax competition emerges as a useful constraint on policy makers and the view of government as a benevolent maximiser of their citizens welfare from which it emerges as a source of inefficiency conditions are derived under which when policy makers are neither entirely benevolent nor wholly self serving tax coordination benefits the representative citizen

imposing smoothness priors in applied welfare economics an application of the information contract curve to environmental regulatory analysis economic effects of public policy alternatives often are analyzed with simulation models the value of simulation is enhanced when model parameters can credibly be estimated econometrically but unrestricted estimation can be expected to result in problematic estimates for example estimated parameters contrary in sign to what economic theory dictates the information contract curve icc developed by leamer provides a flexible means to impose regularity on estimated parameters at minimum likelihood cost we extend the icc methodology using conically uniform priors and apply it to measuring the welfare costs of environmental regulations in the u s pulp paper and paperboard industry

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

modeling the pattern of structural change in u s meat demand the hypothesis of structural change in u s meat demand is tested in a four meat almost ideal demand system with parameters following a gradual switching regression model the results support the notion that structural change partly explains the observed u s meat consumption patterns structural change is biased against beef neutral for pork in favor of chicken and fish and it does not affect estimated elasticities the estimated path of structural change implies a rapid transition to a new regime in the mid 1970s although a smooth path cannot be ruled out

an almost ideal demand system incorporating habits an analysis of expenditures on food and aggregate commodity groups breusch t s and a r pagan the lagrange multiplier test and its applications to model specification in econometrics the review of economic studies 47 jan 1980 239 254 eden benjamin the insurance buying gambler economic inquiry 18 july 1980 504 508 henderson charles f estimation of variance and covariance components biometrics 9 june 1953 226 252 hill daniel h deborah a ott lester d taylor and james m walker incentive payments in time of day electricity pricing experiments the arizona experiment this review 65 feb 1983 59 65 maddala g s and t d mount a comparative study of alternative estimators for variance components models used in econometric applications journal of the american statisticalassociation 68 june 1973 324 328 selby e b and w beranek sweepstakes contests analysis strategies and survey american economic review 71 mar 1981 189 195 spence michael and richard zeckhauser the effect of the timing of consumption decisions and the resolution of lotteries on the choice of lotteries econometrica 40 mar 1972 401 403 wallace thomas d and ashiq hussain the use of error components models in combining cross section with time series data econometrica 37 jan 1969 55 72 winett richard a and michael t nietzel behavioral ecology contingency management of consumer energy use american journal of community psychology 3 june 1975 123 133

policy competition for foreign direct investment between asymmetric countries the present paper analyses policy competition for foreign direct investment between countries of different size and different market structure we demonstrate how policy competition affects the location decision of the foreign investor and derive welfare implications the key variables in our analysis are intra regional trade costs differences in market size and minimum wages

structural change in factor demand relationships in the u s food and kindred products industry this analysis utilizes multivariate gradual switching regression techniques and bayesian inferential procedures to evaluate structural change in factor demand relationships in the food manufacturing industry food materials are included as an input into the food manufacturing industry the results confirm a significant gradual structural change that initiated in 1980 price elasticities indicate that the demands for raw food materials and energy have become more elastic while the demand for labor has become less elastic morishima elasticities of substitution indicate that nearly all factors are substitutes and that the degree of substitutability has significantly increased in recent years

the role of theoretical restrictions in forecasting with inverse demand models in recent years the theoretical restrictions of consumer demand have been examined in post sample forecasting exercises however this work has uniformly ignored the concavity restrictions of consumer demand in this paper we evaluate a series of normalized quadratic inverse demand system nqids specifications using rolling windows and generating one to four step ahead forecasts to estimate the models eleven categories of south atlantic fish are used from 1980 through 2001 in addition to the nqids we also examine the forecasting performance of a purely time series model we find that the best predictions are achieved using a composite forecast

modeling the demand for alcoholic beverages and advertising specifications in this paper the demand for beer wine spirits and soft drinks in ontario is modeled in two parts an equation is specified to endogenize group expenditures and a demand system is set up to allocate budgeted group expenditures across types of beverages advertising is allowed to influence both the level of group expenditures and its allocation three popular advertising specifications are compared using the j test and the likelihood dominance criterion even though all three specifications fitted well according to standard criteria the calculated expenditure price and advertising elasticities were sensitive to the manner with which advertising is specified this clearly highlights the need to rely on a sound criterion to identify a dominant specification from the identified dominant specification we found that advertising has very subtle effects on expenditures on alcoholic beverages group and individual beverages thus advertising is not effective in enlarging markets and this suggests that firms especially breweries use advertising to compete in zero sum market share games from a public policy perspective our results are comforting but future research should investigate whether the neutral effect of advertising on aggregated expenditures hide substantial offsetting changes in the drinking habits of individuals 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

bayesian efficiency tests for commodity futures markets the study of asset price behavior and asset market efficiency began with fama s analysis of stock prices since then a multitude of studies have investigated the restrictions on asset price dynamics implied by economic notions of arbitrage and efficient markets the basic issue investigated in asset market efficiency studies is whether the future price of an asset can be predicted accurately enough to earn a forecaster investor a risk adjusted economic profit if yes the asset market is not efficient if no the market is efficient as all currently available information has been incorporated into asset prices in a manner that prevents profitable arbitrage opportunities achieved through accurate forecasting in the majority of studies the null hypothesis of an efficient market is equated to the statistical relationship that asset prices follow a unit root data generating process also referred to as a random walk such a process cannot be predicting in any profitable way because the optimal forecast of future prices is simply the current price the alternative is a stationary data generating process implying the time series of prices tends to revert toward its mean such mean reversion excludes market efficiency because investors observing price deviating from its mean can appropriately buy or sell the asset in anticipation of realizing a profit when the asset price moves back toward its mean the present paper follows this tradition and tests for market effi

profit taxation and the mode of foreign market entry abstract this paper studies the role of profit taxation for an international firm s decision upon how to penetrate a foreign market through exports or through foreign direct investment fdi and local supply we show that with harmonized taxes the international firm may choose fdi even though this has welfare costs from a global point of view with tax competition the host country can enforce exporting instead of fdi this leads to a nash equilibrium associated with higher world welfare than harmonized taxes thus because of the effect on entry mode tax competition provides heretofore unexplored benefits as compared to tax harmonization

does organic command a premium when the food is already local the emergence of community supported agriculture csa farms has been recognized as a new way for small farms to remain competitive while engaging in their local community through direct marketing in this study we report on first revealed preference valuation of csa attributes using data on share prices and csa characteristics for the summer 2012 growing season using data covering 453 csa farms in michigan new york ohio and pennsylvania we develop a hedonic model based on firm level prices to reveal consumer valuations of csa attributes including various types of organic certification we also test for competition in the csa market using a model of firm entry to evaluate whether firms appear perfectly competitive which is a requirement when using firm level prices in our hedonic analysis our results reveal a price premium of approximately 7 for usda organic certification although this value is heterogeneous across states we find no premium associated with competing certified naturally grown programs finally we find that csa farms exhibit little market power and appear to act competitively even with few market entrants

the oecd model tax treaty tax competition and two way capital flows model tax treaties do not require tax rate coordination but do require that either credits or exemptions be applied to repatriated earnings this contradicts recent models with a single capital exporter where deductions are most efficient i incorporate the fact that capital flows are typically bilateral with symmetric countries credits by both is the unique and efficient treaty equilibrium this equilibrium weakly dominates the nontreaty equilibrium with asymmetric countries the treaty need not offer improvements without tax harmonization with harmonization it is always possible to reach efficient capital allocations while increasing both countries welfares only if neither uses deductions

explaining armington what determines substitutability between home and foreign goods for decades trade economists have modeled imperfect substitution between home and foreign goods in consumption often called the armington assumption with little analysis of what explains the wide variation in these substitution elasticities across sectors using a varying coefficients model the authors estimate armington elasticities between u s domestic and foreign goods across over one hundred industrial sectors from 1980 to 1988 and examine the role of product industry political and home bias factors as determinants they find strong support that the presence of foreign owned affiliates affects armington elasticities in important ways and some support that entry barriers and union presence have an effect

the semiflexible almost ideal demand system abstract the concept of a semiflexible functional form is applied to the almost ideal ai demand system this yields a demand model that is more parsimonious than standard ones while preserving a degree of flexibility that satisfies the curvature property of concavity of the underlying expenditure function at least locally and that preserves the desirable properties of the ai model aggregation across consumers and nonlinearity of the engel curves the model is illustrated with an application to a relatively large demand system emphasizing food consumption

tax evasion tax competition and the gains from nondiscrimination the case of interest taxation in europe this paper uses a game tlieoredc approach to analyse the taxadon of interest income in europe in the presence of tax evasion the model allows tis to assess the success of various reform proposals we argue tbat the tax treatment of nonresidents interest income plays a crucial role when decisions on discriminatio n and on withholding tax rates are made noncooperadvely the outcome is similar to a prisoners dilemma all countries discriminate but in equilihrium internationally mobile portfolio capital evades taxation successfully in contrast if all governments did not discriminate tax competition leads to less tax evasion the integration of capital markets in europe has hrought various benefits at the same time however governments struggle to contain tax evasion international capital flight as an attempt to evade taxes is particularly relevant in the area of taxation of interest income banking secrecy laws in some eu countries and low tax rates in small countries like luxembourg which hoost its role as financial centre have led to the effective elimination ofthe taxation of interest income for some investors the economist speaks not surprisingly about the disappearing taxpayer may 31 1997 several proposals have been made in order to overcome this situation the european commission supports the introduction of a minimum tax rate and or the status of a community resident under the concept of a community resident a country s tax on interest income is independent of the residence of the investor practically realising the source principle by contrast a proposal of the oecd 1977 argues in favour of a maximum withholding tax rate on interest income none of these proposals has been unanimously accepted since gains and losses from non coordinated policies differ greatly across member states the main beneficiary of the present situation is luxembourg which attracts large amounts of foreign capital in particular from germany the united kingdom opposes any coordination for political reasons and because tax coordination may also threaten london s role as the leading financial centre in europe in contrast germany sticks to its traditional bank secrecy law which enables resident investors to evade german taxation by investing abroad

testing restrictions on a model of japanese meat demand tests for quasi separability net substitutability and perfect substitutability are developed and implemented on an almost ideal demand system model of the japanese meat sector the data set satisfies both symmetry and homogeneity there is evidence of net complimentarity between chicken and dairy beef and chicken and pork the tests indicate that japanese wagyu beef is considered a separate commodity to both imported beef and dairy beef the results also indicate that fish can be treated as separable in the japanese meat demand system

the relative effects of demand and supply on output growth and price change this study demonstrates an analytical model for evaluating the relative importance of demand and supply factors in determining output growth and price change empirical analysis of the 1947 80 data shows that for most industry groups demand effects are more dominant in determining output growth whereas supply effects are more dominant in determining price change the conclusion remains the same when the effects of uncontrollable variables such as taste and technology are excluded the study provides useful information for analyzing the effectiveness of demand and supply management policies in affecting output growth and price change introduction recently the stability and validity of the phillips curve and the effectiveness of demand management policies to deal with stagflation have been questioned by many economists evidence has been accumulated e g eckstein 1984 to suggest that variations in aggregate supply price were the predominant influences on the general price level of the u s economy but little is known about whether demand or supply factors were more dominant in determining economic growth studies on the relative importance of demand and supply factors at the industry level have been very few but the recent studies by houthakker 1979 and 1981 suggested the importance of supply shifts and or economies of

political models of the business cycle should be revived political models of the business cycle have typically been ignored because they appear inconsistent with rational behavior and because empirical evidence is inconclusive this paper addresses the second issue demonstrating for u s real gnp unemployment and inflation that electoral cycles persistent patterns across electoral terms are significant but apparently only for republican incumbents and that partisan cycles persistent differences between parties are also significant these findings are consistent with the conjecture that a minority party is more constrained by electoral concerns whereas a majority party is freer to pursue partisan objectives

welfare home market effects and horizontal foreign direct investment we investigate the spatial distribution and organization of an imperfectly competitive industry when firms may choose to operate more than a single production unit focusing on a short run setting with a fixed mass of firms we fully characterize the spatial equilibria analytically comparing the equilibrium and the first best we show that both organizational and spatial inefficiencies may arise in particular when fixed costs are low enough the market outcome may well lead to overinvestment and therefore to too many multinationals operating from a social point of view furthermore once multinationals are taken into account the market outcome may well lead too little agglomeration

rural chinese food consumption the case of guangdong chinese consumer behavior is analyzed based on rural guangdong household survey data for most food items own price elasticities estimated with an aids model are inelastic commodity substitution due to relative price changes is small except in the case of grain commodities most responsive to expenditure changes are meats poultry fruits sweets and durable goods

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

elasticities in aids models in the literature a variety of approaches have been used to calculate demand elasticities in almost ideal demand system aids models of demand it is common to estimate the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids instead of the aids when the la aids is estimated all of the previously reported approaches to compute elasticities are theoretically incorrect this paper presents correct formulas for la aids elasticities and illustrates the potential errors from using incorrect computing the almost ideal demand system aids of deaton and muellbauer 1980a b has become popular in recent years anderson and blundell blanciforti and green 1983a b blanciforti green and king chalfant eales and unnevehr fujii khaled and mak fulponi heien and willett murray parsons ray a variety of approaches to computing elasticities has been used and some of the approaches may lead to significant errors this paper clarifies the differences between alternative approaches to estimating demand elasticities in aids models

non stationarity and the import demand for virgin olive oil in the european union the aim of this study is to analyse the importation of virgin olive oil to european union countries paying special attention to the spanish export contribution the method used is based on the estimation of an imports demand system the novelty of the paper lies not in the modelling approach but in the explicit consideration of the univariate characteristics of series that is included in the analysis since prices are non stationary cointegration among them has been tested results indicate that they are cointegrated and that homogeneity holds as a result relative prices are included in the imports demand system structural change is also considered so as to account for the entrance of both spain and greece into the eu during the period studied results demonstrate the leadership of spain within the eu virgin olive oil market as well as the increasing competitiveness of greek oil

preferential trade agreements and tax competition for foreign direct investment abstract this paper examines how free trade agreements and customs unions affect the location of foreign direct investment fdi and social welfare taking into account that governments may adjust taxes and external tariffs to compete for fdi conditions are identified under which a free trade agreement leads to fdi and under which this improves welfare the welfare effect is shown to depend on the relative size of efficiency gains in production and government revenue losses due to tax competition a free trade agreement may fail to induce welfare improving fdi creating a role for a customs union

theoretical production restrictions and agricultural technology in the united states agricultural production studies are usually conducted using classical econometrics that make it difficult if not impossible to impose conditions derived from economic theory on flexible functional forms therefore such conditions need not hold in estimation we apply bayesian econometrics to estimate a flexible production function using u s agricultural data under alternative restrictions dictated by theory including a fully theoretically consistent model that satisfies all restrictions at each point of the data the probability density functions of parameters output elasticities scale elasticity and productivity gains vary substantially across models output elasticities from the fully theoretically consistent model suggest that agricultural production in the united states has typically been more responsive to land than to other factors of production however output became more responsive over time to changes in materials and less responsive to changes in land and labor by the early 2000s the elasticity of output to materials was very similar to the elasticity of output to land the elasticity of output to capital remained relatively stable over the entire sample the estimates from the fully theoretically consistent model also show a slight increase in the average rate of productivity gains between the 1960s and the 1970s a relative slowdown in the 1980s and 1990s and a relative stabilization afterwards all inputs are substitutes in production all the elasticities of substitution have increased through the decades though at different rates

adjustment costs and threshold effects in factor demand relationships abstractit has been recently argued that producers may not respond to every input price change in the way that a linear factor demand model would predict this lumpy response is due to adjustment costs that are inherent in the act of adjusting the mix of inputs applied in the underlying production technologies this study aims to provide a solid conceptual framework for these nonlinearities in factor demand relationships industry specific implications of convex and non convex adjustment costs for the linearity of the factor demand relationships as well as price and substitution elasticities are explored a two regime threshold system of factor demand equations is estimated for several manufacturing industries in the united states empirical results suggest significant threshold effects in the factor demand relationships in most nondurable goods sectors the size and the nature of thresholds depend upon industry characteristics including input composition and non convexity of underlying adjustment costs

political parties and the variable duration of business cycles a number of recent studies explore how political factors influence real economic activity with electoral models economic performance peaks near the election as in the retrospective model of nordhaus 30 electoral cycles also emerge at least in fiscal policy in the rational expectations model of rogoff and sibert 34 and rogoff 33 with partisan models economic activity differs systematically by party as in both the ideological model of hibbs 26 and the rationalexpectations model of alesina 1 economic activity surges after election of democratic presidents and recedes after election of republican presidents although recent tests of the electoral approach are supportive 21 22 24 25 the partisan approach enjoys the more compelling support 2 3 9 10 23 26 27 the electoral and partisan views are not mutually exclusive as the possibility of conflict between ideology and the desire to be reelected as the election approaches is well recognized indeed our evidence here is consistent with a combined electoralpartisan model the macroeconomic literature at large however has been slow to absorb accumulating evidence that the party affiliation of the incumbent president together with the timing of the electoral period are linked to real economic activity in this study we gauge the significance of these links for the united states and relate them to two important strands of the macroeconomic literature one strand the time series literature investigates the statistical properties of measures of real economic activity finding that these measures often exhibit nonconstant means and heteroscedastic variances in autoregressive integrated moving average arima models the conditional mean is a function of past innovations while the conditional variance is constant applications of arima and related models beginning with nelson and plosser 29 suggest that real economic activity for the united states exhibits near random walk behavior in autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic arch models the conditional variance is a function of past squared innovations while the conditional mean is constant applications of arch and related models beginning with engle 17 suggest that real activity exhibits heteroscedastic variances

on the welfare effects of competition for foreign direct investments abstract this paper investigates welfare effects of subsidy competition for the location of a multinational enterprise one of the competing regions benefits more from the inward investment but in the absence of incentives the multinational s preferred location is the other more advanced region the paper shows that subsidies by making the multinational switch location may increase aggregate welfare if the multinational exports in the absence of incentives the welfare effects of subsidy competition may look very different allowing subsidies attracts the direct investment which otherwise would not take place in one of the two regions further it intensifies competition in the market the paper shows that the welfare increasing role of incentives may be amplified but also that the competition effect by hurting domestic firms may cancel out any other positive role of incentives

tax competition in imperfectly competitive markets abstract the literature on strategic trade policy has shown that in imperfectly competitive markets governments have an incentive to subsidize exports of their own firms yet the consequence of the departure from laissez faire is a wasteful subsidy race in contrast this paper shows that even in imperfectly competitive markets there is a strong tendency for laissez faire to prevail the driving force is the firms willingness to exploit tax or subsidy differentials by relocating production a small tax differential induces firms to change their place of production the change in market structure has a negligible effect on the oligopoly equilibrium but a non negligible impact on government revenues when tax policy is non discriminatory governments gain lose by attracting all firms when production is taxed subsidized hence laissez faire is the only equilibrium since from the point of view of the two producing countries laissez faire nondiscrimination pareto dominates the intervention equilibrium discrimination nondiscrimination is a simple device to result in a mutual beneficial outcome

a knowledge and physical capital model of international trade flows foreign direct investment and multinational enterprises abstract this paper addresses two important issues at the nexus of the literatures on international trade foreign direct investment fdi foreign affiliate sales fas and multinational enterprises mnes first the introduction of a third internationally mobile factor physical capital to the standard 2 2 2 knowledge capital model of mnes with skilled and unskilled labor allows us to resolve fairly readily the puzzle in the modern mne literature that foreign affiliate sales among two identical economies completely displace their international trade intra industry trade and intra industry fdi and fas can coexist for national and multinational firms with identical productivities in identical countries second the introduction also of a third country to the model suggests a formal n country theoretical rationale for estimating gravity equations of bilateral fdi flows and fas in a manner consistent with estimating gravity equations for bilateral trade flows

modeling multiple adoption decisions in a joint framework a multinomial probit mnp model is applied to the modeling of adoption decisions by farmers facing multiple technologies which can be adopted in various combinations this model allows for full investigation of the interactions between decisions to adopt or not adopt several technologies estimation is carried out in a bayesian framework employing gibbs sampling to circumvent past difficulties encountered in maximum likelihood estimation of the mnp model the model is estimated for a sample of u s apple growers with four possible sustainable production technology bundles the results show that adoption decisions are most significantly influenced by off farm labor supply

willingness to pay for natural organic and conventional foods the effects of information and meaningful labels vague food labels and distorted product claims have persisted in the natural food industry while organic claims can be certified by the u s department of agriculture usda using experimental methods and a sample of randomly selected subjects we test food label and information treatment effects on subjects willingness to pay wtp for organic natural and conventional foods random nth price auctions are used to elicit wtp after subjects received one of five randomly assigned information treatments we find large information effects including asymmetric cross market effects for natural and organic foods perhaps surprising is that organic premiums increase in response to subjects seeing the natural foods industry s perspective on its products demographics effects are also important the results have practical implications for natural and organic food marketing and valuing products where there are vague claims about their attributes

firm location decisions regional grants and agglomeration externalities we examine whether discretionary government grants influence where domestic and multinational firms locate new plants and how the presence of agglomeration externalities interacts with these policy instruments we find that a region s existing industrial structure has an effect on the location of new entrants grants do have a small effect in attracting plants to specific geographic areas but importantly we find that firms are less responsive to government subsidies in areas where there are fewer existing plants in their industry this suggests that these subsidies are less effective in influencing firms location decisions in the face of countervailing co location benefits