potential economic impacts of zero thresholds for unapproved gmos the eu case as the pipeline of new biotech crops has continued to expand regulatory approvals of such crops across different countries have become less synchronized as a result some biotech crops can be cultivated in one or more countries but may not be approved for use in others under such circumstances small amounts of unapproved biotech crops can be found in the food feed supplies of some countries and under zero threshold policies they must be withdrawn and can lead to market disruptions in this paper we examine the potential economic implications of regulatory asynchronicity and zero threshold policies for unapproved gmos using the eu as a case study to measure the potential economic impacts from possible trade disruptions between the eu and its major suppliers of soybeans we develop a spatial equilibrium model and examine alternative scenarios where bilateral trade flows are set to zero from our analysis we find that when asynchronous approvals become a systemic problem leading to trade disruptions with multiple trading partners the impacts can be severe for instance we find that if the eu were to stop imports from its three main suppliers the us brazil and argentina it would pay roughly 220 more for soybeans 211 more for soybean meal and 202 more for soy oil

information technology and productivity evidence from country level data this paper studies a key driver of the demand for the products and services of the global it industry returns from it investments we estimate an intercountry production function relating it and non it inputs to gdp output on panel data from 36 countries over the 1985 1993 period we find significant differences between developed and developing countries with respect to their structure of returns from capital investments for the developed countries in the sample returns from it capital investments are estimated to be positive and significant while returns from non it capital investments are not commensurate with relative factor shares the situation is reversed for the developing countries subsample where returns from non it capital are quite substantial but those from it capital investments are not statistically significant we estimate output growth contributions of it and non it capital and discuss the contrasting policy implications for capital investment by developed and developing economies

the elasticity of export demand for u s cotton the conceptually relevant elasticity for policy analysis is the total export demand elasticity which takes into account feedback effects of the u s price on other countries prices in this paper a total export demand elasticity for u s cotton is estimated in an extended armington framework the results indicate that the export demand facing the united states is probably elastic however estimated total demand elasticities are considerably less elastic than the estimated direct demand elasticities which do not account for feedback effects resulting from finite excess supply elasticities in the rest of the world in designing agricultural policy a knowledge of relevant elasticities is essential given the current economic climate characterized by volatile export markets and prices the price elasticity of export demand has received considerable attention economists however have not reached a consensus about the magnitude of this parameter in their review of studies of price elasticity of export demand for agricultural commodities gardiner and dixit report seven estimates of the elasticity of export demand for u s cotton ranging from 0 02 taylor and collins to 5 5 johnson because the policy recommendations based on the assumption of an elastic foreign demand could differ dramatically from those based on the assumption of inelastic foreign demand further research in this area is warranted the objective of this paper is to develop estimates of the elasticity of foreign demand for u s cotton the armington approach was used to formulate models for estimation because it is simple to formulate is a powerful method for modeling u s crop exports sarris 1981 thompson and had not been used extensively in modeling cotton trade the study differs from previous works by extending the armington framework to estimate total elasticities of demand in which feedback effects of u s price on the price of other countries cotton is taken into account results from this paper should be useful in estimating the elasticity of export demand for u s cotton and in demonstrating the importance of estimating total export demand elasticities

grading minimum quality standards and the labeling of genetically modified products we relate the labeling of genetically modified gm products to the theory of grading and minimum quality standards the model represents three stages in the supply chain assumes a vertical product differentiation framework allows for the accidental commingling of non gm products and treats regulation as a purity threshold for non gm products we find that a non gm purity level that is too strict leads to the disappearance of the non gm product and that some quality standard benefits farmers indeed the standard that is optimal from the perspective of producers is stricter than what is optimal for consumers and for societal welfare

consumption effects of genetic modification what if consumers are right this paper develops a model of differentiated consumers to examine the consumption effects of genetic modification gm under alternative labelling regimes and segregation enforcement scenarios analytical results show that if consumers perceive gm products as being different than their traditional counterparts gm affects consumer welfare and thus consumption decisions when the existence of market imperfections in one or more stages of the supply chain prevents the transmission of cost savings associated with the new technology to consumers gm results in welfare losses for consumers the analysis shows that the relative welfare ranking of the no labelling and mandatory labelling regimes depends on i the level of consumer aversion to gm products ii the size of marketing and segregation costs under mandatory labelling iii the share of the gm product in total production and iv the extent to which gm products are incorrectly labelled as non gm products

inserting gm products into the food chain the market and welfare effects of different labeling and regulatory regimes the purpose of this article is to examine the system wide effects of the introduction of genetically modified gm products with and without labeling and to compare these two regimes to a third regime where gm products are not present either because they have not yet been developed or because they have been banned for each regime the decisions and welfare of consumers producers and life science companies are examined the article explicitly incorporates the consumer response to the introduction of gm technology and considers different market structures of the life science sector

genetically modified crops corporate pricing strategies and farmers adoption the case of bt cotton in argentina this article analyzes adoption and impacts of bt cotton in argentina against the background of monopoly pricing based on survey data it is shown that the technology significantly reduces insecticide applications and increases yields however these advantages are curbed by the high price charged for genetically modified seeds using the contingent valuation method it is shown that farmers average willingness to pay is less than half the actual technology price a lower price would not only increase benefits for growers but could also multiply company profits thus resulting in a pareto improvement implications of the sub optimal pricing strategy are discussed recently genetically modified gm crops have brought about important changes in the global market for agricultural technologies especially seeds prospects of high economic returns and tightened intellectual property rights iprs have provided new incentives for the private sector to invest in crop improvement and extend its business to nontraditional markets the increasingly proprietary nature of seed technologies has implications for farmers adoption and benefit distribution private innovators endowed with a patent on a technology will attempt to capture the gains from their innovation through monopoly pricing moschini and lapan recent studies have looked into the partitioning of welfare created by gm crops among agricultural producers consumers and innovating input firms e g moschini lapan and sobolevsky falckzepeda traxler and nelson in these studies however the market price of the technology is

concentration in ownership of plant variety rights some implications for developing countries this paper explores concentration levels in the ownership of intellectual property rights over plant varieties worldwide an analysis of data for 30 upov member countries shows a high degree of concentration in the ownership of plant variety rights for six major crops at the national level in the developed world much of this concentration has arisen owing to the rapid consolidation of the seed industry through mergers and acquisitions especially in the 1990s a high degree of concentration in the ownership of plant variety rights in combination with recent efforts to strengthen plant variety protection regimes is likely to have significant effects on the prospects for future innovation in plant breeding and the distribution of market power between companies for developing countries concentration in intellectual property right ownership may have important implications for the structure of domestic seed industries and access to protected varieties and associated plant breeding technologies these implications for developing countries are likely to become apparent in the context of the rapid spread of plant variety protection and access legislation emerging changes in the international exchange regime for plant material and liberalised investment policies permitting foreign investment in the seeds sector

innovation and trade with endogenous market failure the case of genetically modified products a partial equilibrium two country model is developed to analyze implications from the introduction of genetically modified gm products in the model innovators hold proprietary rights farmers are competitive adopters some consumers deem gm food to be inferior in quality to traditional food and the mere introduction of gm crops affects the costs of non gm food because of costly identity preservation among the results derived it is shown that although gm innovations have the potential to improve efficiency some groups can be made worse off indeed it is even possible that the costs induced by gm innovations outweigh the efficiency gains

welfare impacts of intellectual property protection in the seed industry we examine the welfare impact of different intellectual property protection ipp regimes in private sector seed research and development r d we take into account the period after expiration of legal ipp and require simultaneous equilibrium in markets for r d seeds and final product optimal ipp is remarkably insensitive to alternative parameterizations except for r d productivity results suggest that optimal ipp is greater than ipp in the u s seed corn market but lower than the ipp that could be attained with genetic use restriction technologies optimal ipp is much higher than ipp achieved under open pollinated crops or where legal ipp is limited

genetically modified crops and product differentiation trade and welfare effects in the soybean complex a partial equilibrium four region world trade model for the soybean complex is developed in which roundup ready rr products are weakly inferior substitutes to conventional ones rr seeds are priced at a premium and costly segregation is necessary to separate conventional and biotech products solution of the calibrated model illustrates how incomplete adoption of rr technology arises in equilibrium the united states argentina brazil and the rest of the world row all gain from the introduction of rr soybeans although some groups may lose the impacts of rr production or import bans by the row or brazil are analyzed u s price support helps u s farmers despite hurting the united states and has the potential to improve world efficiency

do lower yielding farmers benefit from bt corn evidence from instrumental variable quantile regressions abstract there have been serious questions about whether lower yielding farmers in developing countries who are typically poor smallholders benefit from genetically modified crops like bacillus thuringensis bt corn this article examines this issue by estimating the heterogeneous impacts of bt corn adoption at different points of the yield distribution using farm level survey data from the philippines a recently developed estimation technique called instrumental variable quantile regression ivqr is used to assess the heterogeneous yield effects of bt corn adoption and at the same time address potential selection bias that usually plague impact assessment of agricultural technologies we find that the positive yield impact of bt corn in the philippines tend to be more strongly felt by farmers at the lower end of the yield distribution this result suggests that bt corn could be a pro poor technology since most of the lower yielding farmers in the philippines are poor smallholders with low incomes

valuing product innovation genetically engineered varieties in us corn and soybeans we develop a discrete choice model of differentiated products for us corn and soybean seed demand to study the welfare impact of genetically engineered ge crop varieties using a unique data set spanning the period 1996 2011 we find that the welfare impact of the ge innovation is significant in the last five years of the period analyzed our preferred counterfactual indicates that total surplus due to ge traits was 5 18 billion per year with seed manufacturers appropriating 56 of this surplus the seed industry obtained more surplus from ge corn whereas farmers received more surplus from ge soybeans

surplus distribution from the introduction of a biotechnology innovation we examine the distribution of welfare from the introduction of bt cotton in the united states in 1996 the welfare framework explicitly recognizes that research protected by intellectual property rights generates monopoly profits and makes it possible to partition these rents among consumers farmers and the innovating input firms we calculate a total increase in world surplus of 240 3 million for 1996 of this total the largest share 59 went to u s farmers the gene developer monsanto received the next largest share 21 followed by u s consumers 9 the rest of the world 6 and the germplasm supplier delta and pine land company 5

payoffs from investment in information technology lessons from the asia pacific region abstract this paper examines the factors influencing investment in information technology it and the payoffs from investment in it use on productivity and economic growth in 12 asia pacific countries for 1984 1990 it finds a significant positive correlation between growth in it investment and growth in both gdp and productivity over the seven year period countries with higher growth rates in it investment achieved consistently higher growth rates of gdp and productivity this finding is consistent with the notion of it led development it challenges the so called productivity paradox or the notion that investment in it has not paid off in productivity improvements

risk perceptions endogenous demand and regulation of agricultural biotechnology abstract this paper presents a dynamic model of optimal product regulation in which consumer acceptance and the rate of product innovation are included as endogenous variables insights derived from the model are used to critically evaluate recent policy controversies regarding regulation of agricultural biotechnology the results of the analysis indicate that if regulatory policy significantly affects consumer risk perceptions more stringent regulatory requirements than those based solely on scientific risk assessment may be economically efficient when demand is endogenously affected by regulatory policies industry may also benefit from stronger regulations even if this results in a significant increase in product development costs

market equilibrium under incomplete and imperfect information in bilateral electricity markets in contrast to the centralized pool model bilateral markets present a decision making situation in which information plays a major role along with the physical and operative constraints of the network we propose a model that includes network constraints for competitive bilateral electricity markets based on an evolutionary bipartite complex network in which the nodes and weighted links represent the players and transactions respectively the strong stable equilibrium of the network is applied to detect possible market equilibria obtained through a dynamic game with incomplete and imperfect information in which the players form an evolutionary network while trying to maximize their own utilities the model is conceptually illustrated with a four bus test system and then applied to the ieee30 test system to analyze the impact of the transmission network and information on the equilibria and market performance

research note determinants of country level investment in information technology investment in information technology it is an important driver of economic growth and productivity in the united states and other developed countries but as yet it is not shown to be a significant driver in developing countries previous research suggests that it investment and complementary assets are insufficient for developing countries to realize economic benefits this research note examines the factors that influence it investment in developed and developing countries to determine how greater investment might be stimulated to achieve productivity gains we use the flexible accelerator model of investment and find that it is a good predictor of country level it investment we also extend the model to include country level variables and find a negative relationship between it investment and interest rates but positive and significant relationships between investment openness to trade and telecommunications infrastructure when we include interaction effects between national income levels and country variables we find that the impacts of interest rates size of the financial sector teledensity and intellectual property rights are strongest in shaping it investment for developed countries in contrast we find that the impact of openness to trade is greater for developing countries as is the size of government and education levels

intellectual property rights and the welfare effects of agricultural r d the profound changes that have affected agriculture in modern times are perhaps best illustrated by the evolution of production techniques due to mechanization new chemical inputs such as herbicides pesticides and fertilizers genetic selection of crops and animals new crop varieties and countless other technical and organizational improvements these innovations have allowed a generalized increase in physical output while at the same time agriculture has suffered a massive exodus of labor forces towards the non farm sectors indeed a stylized fact of developed countries post war growth is that productivity in agriculture has grown faster than in other sectors jorgenson and gollop 1992 this remarkable record naturally begs the question of what is at its root and a view that commands considerable consensus is that agricultural productivity growth is due to past investments in scientific research and development r d

valuing varieties with imperfect output quality measurement markets for agricultural products may be inefficient when signals do not adequately reflect product characteristics important to market participants preferences can be explicitly reflected in price premiums for measurable characteristics using hedonic methods however when product quality information is costly to obtain the problem is compounded bundling of quality traits by variety can serve to signal product quality a procedure is developed to derive the value of different varieties in meeting buyer demands an application to the hard red spring market wheat illustrates the use of a procedure to distinguish among varieties and provides empirical support for the existence of akerlof s lemon market in the release of wheat varieties

an ex ante economic and policy analysis of research on genetic resistance to livestock disease trypanosomosis in africa abstract this paper undertakes an ex ante economic analysis of research on how resistance to trypanosomosis a dominant livestock disease in africa can be maintained and enhanced while retaining and reinforcing characteristics of economic importance to farmers and on how trypanotolerance can be imparted to susceptible animals while retaining their other important traits the results indicate that potential benefits to research historically field based but increasingly biotechnology driven range from two to nine times potential costs and that the internal rate of return on investments can be six times the real interest rate field based research while exhibiting lower potential benefits on aggregate than does biotechnology research is also less costly and because of its more immediate payback has higher internal rates of return returns to biotechnology research hinge on close links with field based research and on strategic but relatively small incremental human and capital investments the results also suggest that further research is needed to consistently identify and track the impacts of alternative intellectual property rights iprs options on the levels and distributions of biotechnology research benefits

ex ante evaluation of the economic impact of agricultural biotechnology the case of porcine somatotropin advances in biotechnology are leading to the creation of products which are expected to have a significant impact on agricultural production much discussion in the literature has focused on possible impacts of biotechnology on agriculture kalter and tauer hueth and just stallman and schmid but few quantitative estimates of the probable impact exist this paper examines the impact of a new growth hormone porcine somatotropin pst on the u s pork industry our approach is generally useful for ex ante analyses of new biotechnologies where experimental estimates of the impact of the technology are available and where the nature of the commodity produced may be affected by the new biotechnology pst is a naturally occurring somatotropin protein produced in the pig s pituitary supplemental pst has been shown in experimental research to lead to improvement in average daily gain improvement in feed efficiency and change in carcass composition of the pig by converting fat to lean meat the purpose of this paper is to simulate the likely impact of supplemental pst use on prices and quantities of pork at the retail and farm levels and on net benefits of producers and consumers the approach taken here to quantifying the impact of pst is in the spirit of previous ex ante approaches to estimating returns to agricultural research norton and davis this study explicitly takes into account a interrelationships between the domestic hog and pork markets b interrelationships between pork and other meats c interrelationships between the domestic and international mar

ex ante analysis of the benefits of transgenic drought tolerance research on cereal crops in low income countries this article develops a framework to examine the ex ante benefits of transgenic research on drought in eight low income countries including the benefits to producers and consumers from farm income stabilization and the potential magnitude of private sector profits from intellectual property rights iprs the framework employs country specific agroecological drought risk zones and considers both yield increases and yield variance reductions when estimating producer and consumer benefits from research benefits from yield variance reductions are shown to be an important component of aggregate drought research benefits representing 40 of total benefits across the eight countries further estimated annual benefits of us 178 million to the private sector suggest that significant incentives exist for participation in transgenic drought tolerance research

the costs and benefits of refuge requirements the case of bt cotton abstract refuge requirements have been the primary regulatory tool to delay pest resistance to bt crops this paper presents a simple method to estimate the annual cost of refuges to producers applying it to bt cotton it also examines broader welfare impacts estimating how bt cotton acreage restrictions affect producer surplus consumer surplus seed supplier profits and commodity program outlays the implications of grower adoption behavior partial adoption aggregate adoption and refuge choice for regulatory costs are examined empirical examples illustrate how providing multiple refuge options significantly reduces regulatory costs

the effects of imperfect competition on the size and distribution of research benefits studies of agricultural research benefits usually assume perfectly competitive markets studies that have allowed for market power of agribusiness firms have generally assumed unrealistic pure monopsony or monopoly behavior this paper allows for processing firms to exhibit a range of degrees of oligopsony power in buying raw farm products and oligopoly power in selling processed farm products the results indicate that different types of research induced technical change can exacerbate or ameliorate distortions from the exercise of market power by agribusiness firms which affects the size and especially the distribution of research benefits

the potential benefits of herbicide resistant transgenic rice in uruguay lessons for small developing countries abstract in many developing countries the potential benefits from adopting a transgenic variety developed by a multinational corporation are limited by the crop s small production base this paper presents an ex ante evaluation of the economic impact of herbicide resistant transgenic rice in a small developing country uruguay to fully account for the multinational s market power the firm s seed markup is assumed to affect the adoption rate for the variety stochastic simulation techniques are employed to understand how potential benefits may vary with changes in technology yield costs and adoption parameters the results indicate a 1 82 million mean net present value for producers from the development and utilization of transgenic rice in uruguay and 0 55 million for the multinational these relatively small multinational firm benefits suggest that a firm will not undertake significant efforts to develop transgenic varieties adapted to local conditions without either strategic partnerships with local institutions or access to wider regional markets

strategic behavior and equilibrium in experimental oligopolistic electricity markets the method of experimental economics is applied to research of oligopolistic electricity markets the design of experimental platform principles of experimental economics and experimental design are introduced the experiments are organized on base of the cournot model of oligopolistic electricity markets a set of experiments are conducted on the experimental oligopolistic markets with three generating companies gencos and the experimental results are analyzed with strict statistics approaches the results show that the market competition will converge to the results between perfect competition equilibrium and nash equilibrium in oligopolistic electricity markets with asymmetric production cost functions and repeated play among the gencos the decision support tools of gencos have significant influences on experimental results the markets converge to static cournot nash equilibrium when the bounded rational subjects repeatedly play equipped with the tools that can give best response strategies the experimental method provides a complement to the theoretical research and computer simulation and has many merits in modeling realistic electricity markets

pharmaceutical and industrial traits in genetically modified crops coexistence with conventional agriculture this paper discusses the implications of using genetically modified crops to biomanufacture pharmaceuticals and industrial compounds from the perspective of their co existence with conventional agriculture such plant made pharmaceuticals and plant made industrial products rely on exciting scientific and technological breakthroughs and promise new opportunities for the agricultural sector but they also entail novel risks the management of the externalities and of the possible unintended economic effects that arise in this context is critical and poses difficult questions for regulators

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

bt cotton in india field trial results and economic projections abstract the performance of bt cotton in india is analyzed on the basis of field trial data from 2001 the amounts of pesticides applied during the trials were reduced to one third of what was used in conventional cotton while under severe pest pressure yield gains were 80 productivity effects are modeled econometrically with a damage control specification the first approval for the commercial cultivation of bt hybrids was given in 2002 by 2005 the technology is expected to cover one quarter of total indian cotton area medium term projections show sizeable welfare gains for the overall economy with farmers being the main beneficiaries

the economics of intellectual property rights discussion intellectual property rights iprs are becoming more important in agriculture as agriculture becomes increasingly industrialized as the outcome of the recent round of the general agreement on tariffs and trade gatt takes hold and as government withdraws from and or changes the nature of its research and development r d effort the two papers presented in this session provide a good starting point for an analysis of the economic impacts of iprs lesser s paper is an excellent overview of the history and forms of iprs he also provides a good survey of the ipr literature in agriculture especially with regard to the impact of ipr legislation such as plant breeders rights langford s paper stresses the incentive effects of iprs arguing that iprs facilitate institutional change and encourage competition and economic growth a focus of both papers is the effect of iprs on the incentives for r d and the structure of the agricultural industry the issues of incentives and structure are not only important but also closely linked as i will argue in this paper the extensive use of iprs in agriculture can occur only if technology firms are oligopolistic and possesses market power with this type of industrial structure iprs create the incentives not only for increased innovation but also for technology firms to focus their attention on certain types of technologies paradoxically iprs can also create conditions where innovations that are economically feasible are not carried out or are not adopted in this paper i will develop the linkage between iprs and industrial structure and discuss some of the implications of this structure for agricultural r d

can gm technologies help the poor the impact of bt cotton in makhathini flats kwazulu natal abstract the results of a two year survey of smallholders in makhathini flats kwazulu natal show that farmers who adopted bt cotton in 1999 2000 benefited according to all the measures used higher yields and lower chemical costs outweighed higher seed costs giving higher gross margins these measures showed negative benefits in 1998 99 which conflicts with continued adoption but stochastic efficiency frontier estimation which takes account of the labor saved showed that adopters averaged 88 efficiency as compared with 66 for the nonadopters in 1999 2000 when late rains lowered yields the gap widened to 74 for adopters and 48 for nonadopters

the potential impact of tobacco biopharming the case of human serum albumin biopharming stands to significantly expand the uses of many agricultural crops this article examines the potential size and distribution of welfare gains from biopharming transgenic tobacco as a source of human serum albumin hsa using an economic surplus model under imperfect competition the results suggest that hsa from transgenic tobacco will generate annual profits for the innovating firm of between 25 million and 49 million on the other hand consumers are unlikely to benefit during the patent life of the product given the innovator s market power

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

implementing cool comparative welfare effects of different labeling schemes country of origin labeling cool is being implemented in different forms and degrees in the united states and other countries across the world the first implementation of mandatory country of origin labeling mcool in the united states was for seafood in 2005 this is an example of partial mcool because it exempts the foodservice sector and excludes processed seafood from labeling using a conceptual framework we analyze the welfare impacts of partial mcool when compared to no voluntary and total mandatory cool taking into account imperfect competition in the downstream markets information asymmetry and diversion of low quality product to the unlabeled market the model is general enough to apply to any incomplete regulation for which the perceived low quality product is required to be labeled such as the labeling of genetically modified food in the european union our results show that when consumers have a strong enough preference for domestic relative to imported product regulators can overestimate the gain in consumer welfare from partial mandatory labeling if they ignore the diversion of lower quality imports to the unlabeled sector we show that if the preference for domestic product is large enough total mcool benefits the home market the most overall including domestic consumers and producers but not the imperfectly competitive downstream agents however if total mcool is too costly to implement partial mcool is the second best solution but only if consumers falsely believe the unlabeled product to be of higher quality than it truly is our results suggest more research is needed to determine the extent to which consumers value the information provided by mcool and to enable regulators to consider the welfare impact of diversion in evaluating incomplete mandatory labeling regulations

e commerce readiness institutional environment and international competitiveness a systematic cross country analysis of e commerce activity reveals that although physical infrastructure explains much of the variation in basic internet use e commerce activity also depends significantly on a supportive institutional environment chief among the characteristics of such an environment are national respect for the rule of law and secondarily the availability of credible payment channels such as credit cards these results suggest that an institutional environment that facilitates the building of transactional integrity is critical to the development of e commerce

economic and welfare impacts of commercializing a herbicide tolerant biotech wheat abstract a transgenic variety of spring wheat was proposed for deregulation in north america in 2002 more recently the developer shelved this plan in this paper a quantitative model is used to analyze the possible economic impact of commercializing a crop for which there may be sizable consumer resistance at issue is whether and under what conditions the economic benefits from biotech wheat could be outweighed by economic costs the analysis also addresses the distribution of costs and benefits among stakeholders producers consumers and us taxpayers specific attention is given to the impacts on consumers in non biotech and biotech market segments and those in the united states and foreign countries under base case assumptions the analysis suggests that commercialization of biotech wheat could lead to a small net loss of total economic welfare results depend critically on several model parameters the rate of biotech adoption unit cost savings for biotech producers the share of the non biotech market segment and extra costs associated with a dual marketing system for wheat

labeling regulations and segregation of first and second generation genetically modified products innovation incentives and welfare effects we review some of the most significant issues and results on the economic effects of genetically modified gm product innovation with emphasis on the question of gm labeling and the need for costly segregation and identity preservation activities the analysis is organized around an explicit model that can accommodate the features of both first generation and second generation gm products the model accounts for the proprietary nature of gm innovations and for the critical role of consumer preferences vis a vis gm products as well as for the impacts of segregation and identity preservation and the effects of a mandatory gm labeling regulation we also investigate briefly a novel question in this setting the choice of research direction when both cost reducing and quality enhancing gm innovations are feasible

an empirical study of applied game theory transmission constrained cournot behavior restructured energy markets present opportunities for the exercise of market power meaning market players can potentially maintain prices in excess of competitive prices in this paper we investigate cournot equilibrium in a simple example network we analyze three market players in a transmission constrained system and consider nonconstant marginal cost several scenarios are evaluated that show a pure strategy equilibrium can break down even when a transmission constraint exceeds the value of the unconstrained cournot equilibrium line flow

impact of bt cotton on pesticide poisoning in smallholder agriculture a panel data analysis while substantial research on the productivity and profit effects of bt cotton has been carried out recently the economic evaluation of positive and negative externalities has received much less attention here we focus on farmer health impacts resulting from bt related changes in chemical pesticide use previous studies have documented that bt cotton has reduced the problem of pesticide poisoning in developing countries but they have failed to account for unobserved heterogeneity between technology adopters and non adopters we use unique panel survey data from india to estimate unbiased effects and their developments over time bt cotton has reduced pesticide applications by 50 with the largest reductions of 70 occurring in the most toxic types of chemicals results of fixed effects poisson models confirm that bt has notably reduced the incidence of acute pesticide poisoning among cotton growers these effects have become more pronounced with increasing technology adoption rates bt cotton now helps to avoid several million cases of pesticide poisoning in india every year which also entails sizeable health cost savings