distinguishing between equilibrium and integration in spatial price analysis this article introduces a new spatial price analysis methodology based on maximum likelihood estimation of a mixture distribution model incorporating price transfer cost and trade flow data this method permits differentiation between market integration and competitive market equilibrium and derivation of intuitive measures of intermarket tradability competitive market equilibrium perfect integration segmented equilibrium and segmented disequilibrium one can also use these estimates to derive semiparametric measures of time varying regime probabilities to track changing market conditions an application to trade in soybean meal among pacific rim economies demonstrates the usefulness of the method copyright 2002 oxford university press

risk preferences and short run pricing efficiency analysts are paying renewed attention to the economics of price disequilibrium some have looked at ways in which disequilibrium prices approach an equilibrium while others have concentrated on pricing efficiency during disequilibrium periods in the following i discuss pricing efficiency and investigate factors affecting it in the short run i argue that besides being influenced by such factors as firm concentration and information monopolies pricing efficiency is influenced by traders risk preferences costs and diversification strategies experimental evidence of efficiency determinants is discussed

integration of spatial markets studies of spatial market integration draw their implications from a theory which assumes that there are no intraregional transport costs an alternative theory is offered based on the assumptions that buyers and sellers are spatially dispersed and intraregional transport costs are significant this implies that the market is a linked oligopoly or oligopsony and that market integration tests are tests of alternative oligopoly price formation processes for example collusive basing point pricing produces results typically assumed to imply efficiently integrated markets while competitive fob pricing does not the theoretical implications are illustrated with an analysis of hog prices in canada

cointegration tests and spatial price linkages in regional cattle markets this analysis empirically evaluates spatial linkages in regional cattle markets using cointegration tests of regional price series several markets were not cointegrated over the 1980 through 1987 period however significant increases in cointegration of several regional livestock markets are observed through the 1980s the increased cointegration parallels significant structural changes in the livestock industry a formal analysis of market characteristics reveals that distances between markets industry concentration ratios market volumes and market types have significant influences on cointegration relationships between markets

the impact of the global food crisis on self assessed food security the paper provides the first large scale survey based evidence on the impact of the global food crisis of 2007 08 using an indicator of self assessed food security from the gallup world poll for the sampled countries as a whole this subjective indicator of food security remained the same or even improved seemingly owing to a combination of strong economic growth and limited food inflation in some of the most populous countries particularly india however these favorable global trends mask divergent trends at the national and regional levels with a number of countries reporting substantial deterioration in food security the impacts of the global crisis therefore appear to be highly context specific

global financial services and a global single currency abstract the purpose of this paper is to highlight the evolution of financial institutions in the context of increasingly volatile foreign exchange markets the paper discusses the importance of the formation of a single currency in the us in the 19th century and the formation of the euro in the 20th century for reducing volatility in foreign exchange markets that have assisted financial institutions international business expansion the paper also considers some of the key assumptions of an optimal currency theorem such as labour mobility and argues that in the 21st century more comprehensive financial market integration and a single global currency could emerge provided that capital mobility and hence foreign capital flows continue meeting labour in the host countries for production rather than the other way round

the future and dynamics of global systemically important banks abstract the purpose of this paper is to analyse some of the issues associated with supervision and regulation of global systemically important banks g sib the paper highlights the importance of managing liquidity risk and creating a global financial system that can minimise regulatory arbitrage by large financial institutions the paper argues that unlike some industries such as the airline industry in which risk has been contained and yet the size and capacity of aircrafts have increased in the banking system less progress has been made to contain financial risk and allow large banks to expand their global activities the paper argues that g sib are able to continue remaining large provided that a globally integrated financial system ensures effective global supervision of these large banks the paper compares the us banking crises in the 19th century and the subsequent emergence of the us federal reserve system to the possibility of establishing a world central bank and a global supervisory board such new global institutions will have the capacity to reduce regulatory arbitrage increase effective supervision reduce systemic and liquidity risk and create a more stable global financial system

threshold cointegration and spatial price transmission when expectations matter we examine the performance of the threshold cointegration approach specifically band tvecm to price transmission analysis in an explicit context where trade decisions are made based on expectation of final prices because trade takes time we find that following a standard inference strategy a large portion of three regime cases are not identified as such results show that transfer costs are systematically underestimated particularly in three regime models the speed of price transmission is also biased in three regime models furthermore inferences about occurrence of trade are poor with estimated models suggesting far lower market integration than is true in the data generating process

industry growth and capital allocation does having a market or bank based system matter are market based or bank based financial systems better at financing the expansion of industries that depend heavily on external finance facilitating the formation of new establishments and improving the efficiency of capital allocation across industries we find evidence for neither the market based nor the bank based hypothesis while legal system efficiency and overall financial development boost industry growth new establishment formation and efficient capital allocation having a bank based or market based system per se does not seem to matter much

global oil prices and local food prices evidence from east africa it is widely believed that oil prices impact food prices in developing countries yet rigorous evidence on this relationship is scarce using maize and petrol price data from east africa we show that global oil prices do affect food prices but primarily through transport costs rather than through biofuel or production cost channels we find that global oil prices transmit much more rapidly to the pump and then to local maize prices than do global maize prices suggesting that the immediate effects of correlated commodity price shocks on local food prices are driven more by transport costs than by the prices of the grains themselves furthermore we present suggestive evidence that for markets furthest inland changes in world oil prices have larger effects on local maize prices than do changes in world maize prices

pro poor trade policy in sub saharan africa abstract this paper examines the presence of a pro poor bias in the existing structure of protection of six sub saharan african ssa countries burkina faso cameroon cote d ivoire ethiopia gambia and madagascar we build on a simple agricultural household production model and we propose an extension to include adjustments in labor income our approach which can be implemented without repeated cross sections of household level data suits well the data constraints in ssa it also allows us to capture the heterogeneity in trade protection at the tariff line level the pro poor bias indicators suggest that ssa s trade policies tend to be biased in favor of poor households as these policies redistribute income from rich to poor households this is because protection increases the agricultural prices of goods that are sold by african households and this effect dominates both the impacts of higher consumption prices and the strong stolper samuelson effects that benefit skilled over unskilled workers

severing the electoral connection shirking in the contemporary congress studies of representation focusing on legislative shirking tend to offer an interesting tension when the opportunity presents itself it seems that exiting members do not change their votinq behavior ideological shirking but do reduce their effort level by voting less participatory shirking our analysis avoids the pitfalls of prior studies by defining a simple quasi experimental research design contrasting those certain that they are seeking reelection with those sure that they are departing the house for the102nd 103rd and 104th congresses 1991 1996 we measure changes in ideology and participation using all roll call votes in the last six months of election years controlling for possible member selection effects and short term influences and show that legislators are disposed toward ideological and participatory shirking while selection effects are unimportant thus we reconcile results seemingly at odds and suggest that policies affecting member turnover such as term limits can interfere with representation a fundamental issue concerning political representation is the extent to which the necessity of reelection constrains officeholders if incumbents plan to retire thus freeing themselves of their electoral shackles or if they pursue higher office and face a distinct constituency will they behave differently or do members continue to behave in the same manner even in the absence of an electoral connection to the districts they represent answers to such questions have important implications for how we understand and model the representative process additionally they have ramifications for the likely impact of public policy choices that affect member turnover rates such as the imposition of term limits on the political system a primary means of drawing inferences regarding shirking which we simply define as legislator behavior that differs from what would be observed given perfect monitoring and effective punishment by constituents is to determine if politicians change their behavior when electoral discipline is removed most notably scholars examine members actions during their last period in office on the grounds that those voluntarily departing can behave according to a distinct set of preferences even if they run afoul of their districts or of their electoral coalitions empirical results on final period behavior are voluminous and sometimes contradictory bender and lott 1996 nevertheless two general inferences seem to have gathered support first there is little evidence for shirking in terms of vote choice ideological shirking while as we will discuss shortly there are a variety of potential explanations for such nonfindings one intuitive and frequently offered reason is that they reflect member specific selection effects this implies that

testing market integration a model of spatial price differentials for a tradable good is proposed which avoids the inferential dangers of received methods using static price correlations the proposed method also extracts more information on the causes of price differentials from the same data the method is illustrated using monthly rice price data for postindependence bangladesh including the very substantial regional price shocks during the 1974 famine impediments to market integration are indicated

international commodity prices growth and the outbreak of civil war in sub saharan africa to learn more about the effect of economic conditions on civil war we examine whether sub saharan civil wars are more likely to start following downturns in the international price of countries main export commodities the data show a robust effect of commodity price downturns on the outbreak of civil wars we also find that sub saharan countries are more likely to see civil wars following economic downturns in their main oecd export destinations

monitoring global and national food price crises this paper develops calibrates and runs a new food price crisis monitoring framework the proposed framework has an integrated approach to capture global and national vulnerabilities and offers an alternative to existing food insecurity information systems which suffer from a lack of consensus on the definition of food crisis the framework successfully identifies the recent episodes of food price crises in 2008 2011 and 2012 this paper also recommends ways in which the framework could be refined to increase country coverage and provide better information on country level food inflation

empirical effects of short term export bans the case of african maize abstract temporary export restrictions have been widely used in recent years in an attempt to stabilize domestic prices of staple grains i use monthly market level price data to investigate the empirical effects of 13 short term export bans on maize implemented by 5 countries in east and southern africa i find no statistically significant effect of export bans on the price gaps between pairs of affected cross border markets my results for price gaps match those from a model simulation in which export bans are not implemented however prices and price volatility in the implementing country are significantly higher during export ban periods in the data than in the model simulation with no bans export bans in the region are imperfectly enforced divert trade into the informal sector and appear to destabilize domestic markets rather than stabilizing them

the marginals never vanished incumbency and competition in elections to the u s house of representatives 1952 82 the average vote margin enjoyed by incumbent candidates for the u s house of representatives increased sharply during the 1 960s despite this and contrary to assumptions common in the literature on recent congressional elections electoral data show that house incumbents are no safer now than they were in the 1950s the marginals properly defined have not vanished the swing ratio has diminished little if at all and competition for house seats held by incumbents has not declined vote margins increased without adding to incumbent security diminishing competition or dampening swings because the heterogeneity of interelection vote swings increased at the same time

international prices costs and markup differences relative cross border retail prices in a common currency comove closely with the nominal exchange rate using product level prices and wholesale costs from a grocery chain operating in the united states and canada we decompose this variation into relative costs and markup components the high correlation of nominal and real exchange rates is driven mainly by changes in relative costs national borders segment markets retail prices respond to changes in costs in neighboring stores within the same country but not across the border prices have a median discontinuous change of 24 percent at the border and 0 percent at state boundaries jel f31 l11 l81

the impact of ballot access restrictions on electoral competition evidence from a natural experiment measuring the effect of ballot access restrictions on electoral competition is complicated because the stringency of ballot access regulations cannot be treated as being exogenous to candidates entry decisions this paper exploits the 1968 u s supreme court decision to strike down ohio s ballot access law as a natural experiment to overcome the endogeneity problem the evidence from difference in difference estimations suggests that the court s decision and the accompanying sharp decrease in ohio s petition requirements resulted in major parties facing a significant increase in competition from third party and independent candidates

evaluating the integration of contiguous discontinuous markets this paper applies the concepts of structural models of markets market integration and market discontinuity to show that discontinuous markets alter the integration characteristics of continuous markets when analyzing systems of contiguous markets some of which are discontinuous it appears that the continuous markets are less well integrated when the discontinuous markets are operating than when they are not operating

spatial equilibrium and price transmission between southern african maize markets connected by informal trade policies regulating the international grain trade in southern africa sa are motivated by uncertainty regarding private sector performance and in turn private sector performance is generally constrained by the policy environment we study spatial price transmission between sa maize markets where trade is dominated by informal product flows this provides an opportunity to study private sector market performance in a largely unregulated market environment contrary to some existing evidence on the performance of sa grain markets connected by formal trade we find that informally trading markets work quite well long run price equilibrium is consistent with competitive trade price transmission is rapid and potential trade constraints have no disruptive impact on long run relationships nevertheless we do find evidence of occasionally high transfer costs that may impede informal trade flows the conclusion is that a policy focus on encouraging informal trade and lowering informal trade costs would lead to improved market performance

food marketing and pricing policy in eastern and southern africa a survey abstract this article surveys the empirical record of grain marketing and pricing policy in eastern and southern africa over 1930 1995 the paper addresses five key issues with major implications for food policy throughout africa a why the anticipated supply response to market liberalization has not yet occurred b why the common assumption of state taxation of farmers to support a cheap food policy does not apply in most of the countries in the region c why the temporary successes of the state led approach to stimulating smallholder grain production were unsustainable d why the elimination of government food subsidies associated with market reform has not adversely affected consumers and e why the fiscal cost of the marketing systems at least initially worsened rather than improved after the reforms were implemented in most countries the key future challenges for marketing policy are how to develop coordinated and financially sustainable input finance and commodity marketing systems for raising productivity growth in smallholder agriculture while overcoming inherited agricultural dualism and how to mitigate the effects of food price instability in a cost effective manner

spatial integration transport costs and the response of local prices to policy changes in ghana abstract this paper investigates the respective roles of spatial integration and transport costs in explaining price changes in ghana we introduce a model of price formation and market integration that incorporates the price transmission process between local and central markets and also captures the implications for volatility of local prices we explore the implications of the model for the time path of price adjustments as determined directly and indirectly through the marketing sector we show that the price adjustment process in a local market is determined by the degree of interdependence between that market and the central market in which a price shock originates and estimate the intertemporal and interspatial dynamics of the price adjustment process using data from wholesale maize markets in ghana we find that reductions in local prices and local price variance following the introduction of economic reforms in 1983 can be traced to both local and central market forces but that differences in the degree of market integration have important implications for long run changes in transport costs and the evolution of prices in outlying markets

cointegration and market integration an application to the indonesian rice market this article suggests improvements in the use of regression analysis to measure spatial market integration the procedure pioneered by ravallion is still widespread but is valid only under certain conditions of exogeneity the alternative offered here is an error correction mechanism which makes it possible to test for exogeneity as well as indicating the direction and strength of causality in price formation between markets the method is illustrated with data on rice prices in different parts of the indonesian market the results confirm among other things that supply sources are more important than demand sources in driving prices

the extent pattern and degree of market integration a multivariate approach for the brazilian rice market the extent pattern and degree of integration are analyzed in a multivariate system with cointegrating restrictions the extent of the market is found by identifying locations that are linked by trade and where prices share identicall ong run information permanent component the pattern of integration characterizes interdependence and is analyzed by estimating a vector error correction model the degree of integration is calculated with persistence profiles of the long run relations we demonstrate that bivariate models are inadequate for capturing the spatial dynamics of price adjustment the methodology is applied to the brazilian rice market and policy implications are

a variance components approach to food grain market integration in northern nigeria a variance components methodology is developed for joint tests on a sample of time series of prices for seasonal differences in the price integration of markets the approach requires a statistically adequate number of observations for each market within seasons characterized by constancy of transactions costs among markets the model is applied to eighteen months of weekly grain prices for twenty two villages in northern nigeria results suggest that markets are not well integrated in the six months covering the harvest period implications are drawn for research on market performance in the region

export restrictions do consumers really benefit the wheat to bread supply chain in serbia abstract our approach combines price transmission and gross margin analysis at different stages of the wheat to bread supply chain results suggest that the effects of export restrictions on the end consumer prices for bread and thus food price inflation heavily depend on the price behavior of the intermediates in contrast to theory consumers in serbia experienced welfare losses despite comprehensive governmental market interventions in particular consumers were confronted with increasing flour and bread prices which cannot be fully explained by increasing production costs whereas mills bakeries and retailers increased their profits thus export controls in combination with high price volatility in the supply chain have to be considered as a further factor driving food price inflation

empirics of hills plateaus mountains and plains a markov switching approach to growth abstract most economic growth research has been aimed at explaining cross country differences in average growth rates however it is well known that growth experiences differ over time within a country almost as much as they differ among countries this paper builds on pritchett s 2000 pritchett lant understanding patterns of economic growth searching for hills among plateaus mountains and plains world bank economic review may 2000 14 2 221 250 observation that the growth process can be thought of as transitions between different growth regimes and proposes a framework for systematic analysis of such regimes and the dynamics of the transitions i estimate a markov switching regression to characterize four distinct growth regimes and transitions between them the results show that countries switch among regimes of stable growth miracle catch up stagnation and crisis with the transition probabilities determined by the quality of institutions better institutions appear to improve long run growth by making episodes of fast growth more persistent low average growth rates in countries with weak institutions are a result of these countries spending more time in stagnation regimes rather then being incapable of fast growth at all weak institutions do not rule out growth takeoffs but limit their sustainability the approach directs attention to shifts in growth performance and highlights the fact that identical average growth rates can mask very distinct growth paths

how much intraregional exchange rate variability could a currency union remove the case of asean 3 abstract a multilateral currency union removes intraregional exchange rates but not the union rate the pre union intraregional exchange rate variability is thus latent a two step procedure is developed to measure this the measured variables are used to model inflation and intraregional trade growth of individual union members counterfactual simulations of the union impact are carried out using the resulting models application to asean 3 shows that the intraregional variability mainly consists of short run exchange rate shocks that the variability significantly affects inflation and intraregional trade of major asean 3 members and that a union would reduce inflation and promote trade regionwide

the effects of ncpb marketing policies on maize market prices in kenya the government of kenya pursues maize marketing policy objectives through the national cereals and produce board ncpb which procures and sells maize at administratively determined prices and stores maize as a contingency against future shortages a private sector marketing channel competes with the ncpb this article estimates the effects of ncpb activities on the historical path of private sector prices in kenyan maize markets between 1989 and 2004 the analysis is carried out using a reduced form vector autoregression model var estimated with sparse data and imposing only minimal identification restrictions results show that ncpb activities have stabilized maize market prices in kenya reduced price levels in the early 1990s and raised average price levels by roughly 20 between 1995 and 2004 over the past decade the price raising activities of the ncpb have transferred income from urban consumers and a majority of small scale farm households that are net buyers of maize to a relatively small number of large and small scale farmers who are sellers of maize

wheat export restrictions and domestic market effects in russia and ukraine during the food crisis abstract studies investigating the effects of wheat export controls on the domestic market in the exporting country itself are scarce this paper analyses the domestic market impact of wheat export controls in russia and ukraine during the 2007 2008 global food crisis within a spatial price transmission approach using a markov switching vector error correction model we contrast our estimation for russia and ukraine with germany and the usa two countries that did not intervene in their wheat export markets an explicit crisis regime during times of export controls is exclusively identified for russia and ukraine we find that export restrictions temporarily reduced the degree of integration of russian and ukrainian domestic markets in world wheat markets which pushed the growers prices below their long run equilibrium level further domestic markets were disconnected from their equilibrium and market instability increased these effects were even more pronounced and long lasting in ukraine export quota than in russia export tax the negative market effects discouraged private investors thereby preventing russia and ukraine from maximizing their grain potential and contributing to global food security

barriers to competition and the effect on political shirking 1953 1992 economists and political scientists have offered a variety of explanations for why legislators might rationally choose to ignore the preferences of their constituents political parties and presidents the broad conclusion of this literature is that there is an element of shirking in congressional voting the objective of this paper is to suggest that the effects of shirking in congressional voting may have increased over time largely in response to the raising of barriers to competition in congressional elections thereby enabling legislators to vote their own preferences without fear of losing reelection we use a quasi experimental design that controls for the effects of party region electoral safety presidential control of the white house and constituency factors in isolating the causal effects of barriers to entry on a continuous series of roll calls regarding the raising of the debt limit between 1953 and 1992 we find that shirking in legislative voting on debt limit legislation is a post 1970s phenomenon

information efficiency and welfare in agricultural markets information and communications technologies icts have spread rapidly in the developing world there has been considerable interest in the potential role icts particularly mobile phones have begun to play in the marketing of agricultural outputs in these countries in this article we discuss the potential impacts icts may have on welfare both in terms of potential efficiency gains via improved arbitrage and welfare transfers among agents in the supply chain via reduced informational asymmetries and market power we also review the recent empirical evidence for such effects

the effects of price deregulation on maize marketing margins in south africa abstract there has been continuous controversy over the impact of food market reforms on food security in africa in south africa the government and media have often questioned the effects of price deregulation of maize meal the major staple food on consumers this article determines the effect of retail price deregulation on the size of maize milling retail margins in south africa regression models of monthly milling retail margins are run from the period may 1976 to december 2004 to assess the robustness of our findings we estimate several different models of structural change vary the sample period to examine the sensitivity of findings to unusual weather and market conditions in the region during episodes between 2001 and 2004 and run the models using different estimation techniques ols with newey west robust estimators and feasible general least squares in virtually all models the results indicate that real maize milling retailing margins in south africa have increased by at least 20 since the deregulation of retail prices in 1991 moreover there is evidence of trend growth in the size of the milling margin over time simulations indicate that the deregulation of maize meal prices has entailed a transfer of at least us 179 million year from consumers to agents in the marketing system further study is needed to understand why this outcome in south africa differs from findings in other countries in the region concerning the effects of reform on food marketing margins

can openness mitigate the effects of weather shocks evidence from india s famine era transformation of countries throughout history rural citizens in developing countries today however remain highly exposed to fluctua tions in the weather this exposure affects the incomes these citizens earn and the prices of the foods they eat recent work has documented the significant mortality stress that rural house holds face in times of adverse weather robin burgess olivier deschenes dave donaldson and michael greenstone 2009 masayuki kudamatsu torsten persson and david stromberg 2009 famines times of acutely low nominal agricultural income and acutely high food prices are an extreme manifestation of this mapping from weather to death lilian c a knowles 1924 describes these events as agricultural lockouts where both food sup plies and agricultural employment on which the bulk of the rural population depends plummet the result is catastrophic with widespread hun ger and loss of life though now confined to the world s poor est countries food shortages and famines were features of most preindustrial societies over time there has been intense debate over what role openness to trade in food might play in

attendance rates political shirking and the effect of post elective office employment attendance rates political shirking and the effect of post elective office employment i introduction political shirking the degree to which a politican s actions deviate from the wishes of his constituents can take many different dimensions economists e g amacher and boyes 1978 davis and porter 1989 dougan and munger 1989 kalt and zupan 1984 lott 1987d nelson and siberberg 1987 and peltzman 1984 have debated whether shirking exists in how a politician votes when he does vote this divergence is measured through some particular special interest voting ratings e g american conservative union americans for democratic action etc however shirking can obviously take as many forms as there are outputs that a politician produces besides how he votes he also produces services for his constituents involving everything from being personally available to listen to the constituents grievances to ensuring effective handling of case work by his staff see for example fiorina 1977 fenno 1978 and cain et al 1987 1 one dimension that has not been sufficiently examined is the extent to which politicians shirk by failing to vote on pending legislation 2 no attention has been given to which mechanisms will make this particular type of shirking relatively more costly most economists agree that opportunitic behavior by politicians is limited by the threat of reelection e g amacher and boyes 1978 barro 1973 kalt and zupan 1984 nelson 1976 and telser 1976 3 by implication the level of shirking should be the greatest when a politician decides to leave office however this opportunistic behavior might be reduced to the extent that political parties or constituencies impose costs for shirking through affecting politicisns post elective office career or the careers of their children thus a politicians last term in elective office may not represent his last period in any meaningful sense the next section outlines the differing views on how politicians act when they no longer face the threat of reelection section iii describes some empirical evidence on what mechanisms may prevent this last period problem the final section discusses the impliactions of these results ii the last period whether economists view politicians as ideologues e g kau and rubin 1979 and kalt and zupan 1984 or as simply attempting to maximize political support e g barro 1973 ferejohn 1986 nelson 1976 and peltzman 1984 the threat of reelection is seen as preventing shirking as kalt and zupan 1984 298 phrase it it appears that the proximity of the next election inhibits ideological shirking even those who do not view the last period as affecting how a politician votes argue that it will affect how often he votes lott 1987a 1987b has argued that if voters can determine and elect politicians that have ideological preferences corresponding exactly to the wishes of constituents politicians voting patterns should continue to reflect those values even when the cost of shirking in terms of forgone future votes is low the penalty to ideologues of not votingfor their constituency in the last period when they no longer face reelection is the forgone utility from not doing what they personally value assuming that politicians also desire leisure politicians should continue to vote for what they believe in but they should vote less frequently since they no longer receive the additional return of larger future support mechanisms to overcome this last period problem have been suggested by becker and stigler 1974 9 10 they argue that opportunistic behavior can be controlled if officeholders face the loss of a pension or equivalently a posted bond in the event of opportunistic behavior in their last term however the actual pension system does not effectively eliminate the last period for politicians since retirement payments are not based on cheating in the last period

food aid and food markets lessons from mozambique abstract a consensus has emerged on food aid policy acknowledging the importance of short run relief considerations while emphasizing that such policy must be driven by a long run developmental perspective this requires explicit attention to the effects of food aid on food markets yet it has long been clear that short and long run objectives of food aid may conflict this tension stands in high relief in mozambique one of the most food aid dependent countries in the world this paper examines the factors determining the effects of yellow maize food aid on markets for yellow maize and white maize the staple crop in mozambique the paper finds that a food aid has helped fuel the growth of a competitive small scale milling industry and informal marketing system b yellow and white maize are substitutes in consumption and c continued availability of yellow maize food aid at prices well below import parity will depress incentives for producers and traders to invest in the white maize production and marketing system this paper presents recommendations for reforming the monetized food aid program and coordinating it more effectively with emergency aid

market analysis methods are our enriched toolkits well suited to enlivened markets the past fifteen years have brought historic reduction of government intervention in agricultural markets in the developing world most economists and policy makers believe these reforms enliven markets previously fettered by excessive government authority nonetheless the impact of market oriented reforms on the spatial and intertemporal extent and the competitiveness of markets remains an inherently empirical question meanwhile there also have been major innovations in methods used to analyze markets and prices due largely to the rapidly emerging time series econometric literature agricultural economists toolkits have changed nearly as rapidly and dramatically as have developing economy markets but can these enriched toolkits answer the

why did the incumbency advantage in u s house elections grow theory a simple rational entry argument suggests that the value of incumbency consists not just of a direct effect reflecting the value of resources such as staff attached to legislative office but also of an indirect effect reflecting the fact that stronger challengers are less likely to contest incumbent held seats the indirect effect is the product of a scare off effect the ability of incumbents to scare off high quality challengers and a quality effect reflecting how much electoral advantage a party accrues when it has an experienced rather than an inexperienced candidate hypothesis the growth of the overall incumbency advantage was driven principally by increases in the quality effect methods we use a simple two equation model estimated by ordinary least squares regression to analyze u s house election data from 1948 to 1990 results most of the increase in the incumbency advantage at least down to 1980 came through increases in the quality effect i e the advantage to the incumbent party of having a low quality challenger this suggests that the task for those wishing to explain the growth in the vote denominated incumbency advantage is to explain why the quality effect grew it also suggests that resource based explanations of the growth in the incumbency advantage cannot provide a full explanation

escaping poverty and becoming poor who gains who loses and why abstract different households have followed very different economic trajectories this study of 35 north indian villages shows members of 11 1 of 6 376 households in these villages have overcome poverty in the last 25 years while members of another 7 9 have fallen into poverty households escape from poverty is assisted by one set of factors but an entirely different set of factors is associated with households decline two distinct sets of policies are required thus one set to promote escape from poverty and another set to arrest decline into poverty poverty has some distinctly local antecedents a methodology for tracking changes in poverty at the local level is developed that community groups and others can use to assess change and examine causes

empirical investigation into spatial integration without direct trade comparative analysis before and after the establishment of the ethiopian commodity exchange this paper presents a comparative analysis of the spatial price cointegration of coffee markets in ethiopia in the pre and post ethiopian commodity exchange ecx era using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl cointegration framework the study takes into consideration a market condition in which government policy restricts arbitrage coffee trade between coffee producing areas using coffee price data from 1998 2013 and applying a bounds test approach and toda yamamoto granger causality test the study finds that the establishment of ecx has strengthened regional integration rather than a national harmony between producer markets we also find evidence that since the establishment of ecx an opportunity was created for high quality coffee to dominate price formation while also allowing lower quality coffee producing areas to establish themselves the study underlines the importance of market transparency and exchange of price information between producer markets

globalisation growth and institutions abstract we are currently in the second wave of globalisation despite the fact that over the past two decades a number of national financial and other barriers have been removed there are still a number of national regional and global factors that are slowing down the process of financial globalisation from trickling down to all parts of the world this paper briefly discusses the process of globalisation and considers the human development index including education as a way of measuring economic growth and financial wealth in different parts of the world the paper analyses the process of financial globalisation and the way some nations have become the recipients of more foreign capital than others as a way of seeing the importance of both national and international economic and financial integration as important ingredients for sustained economic growth the process of financial integration in europe is analysed as a model for acceleration of the process of globalisation and sustained economic growth in this century the 21st century is referred to as the pacific century and hence financial integration in the asia pacific region apec could create a new impetus for the eu to increase its internal integration including its fiscal policies as a way of remaining competitive in the global economy

spatial price transmission and asymmetry in the ghanaian maize market abstract this paper utilizes recently developed threshold cointegration tests that allow for asymmetric adjustment toward a long run equilibrium relationship to examine price linkages between principal maize markets in ghana unlike previous studies the approach employed here assumes that economic agents only act to move the system back to equilibrium when the deviation from equilibrium exceeds a critical threshold whereby the benefits of this adjustment exceed the costs the findings indicate that major maize markets in ghana are well integrated both the threshold cointegration and asymmetric error correction models reveal that wholesale maize prices in local markets accra and bolgatanga respond more swiftly to increases than to decreases in central market techiman prices accra prices are found to react faster than bolgatanga prices to changes in techiman market prices

on the extent of the market wholesale gasoline in the northeastern united states this paper develops the classical view of the extent of markets by introducing explicitly in the analysis the concept of arbitrage costs arbitrage or transaction costs imply that market boundaries are essentially stochastic while a set of products or regions may have binding arbitrage conditions i e may be in the same market at a given point in time they may not at another thus in defining a market the probability that a set of agents or regions would h3ve binding arbitrage conditions has to be assessed this paper develops an econometric methodology to estimate the transaction costs required to arbitrage among a given set of products as well as the probability that that set of products would be bound by binding arbitrage condi tions finally the methodology is applied to wholesale gasoline in the northeastern part of the united states address for communications pablo t spiller herbert hoover memorl l bldg 9348 stanford ca 94305

market liberalization and integration of maize markets in malawi the paper studies the extent of market integration of maize markets in malawi in order to understand how it has been affected by market liberalization several measures of integration are introduced to analyze both the comovement of prices and the price adjustment process over time monthly retail prices of maize at eight main locations over the period january 1984 to december 1991 are considered the main conclusion is that liberalization has increased market integration

modelling trends in food market integration method and an application to tanzanian maize markets abstract pushed by increasing availability of price data and extensive market liberalisation efforts in many developing countries research on food market integration has evolved rapidly over the last two decades empirical methods to measure market integration diverged in two directions on the one hand there is the parity bounds model pbm using a switching regressions technique while on the other hand the use of threshold autoregressive tar models has been proposed this article provides a discussion on the two methods and argues that tar models are better able to capture the dynamics of the arbitrage process underlying interconnected markets furthermore we extend the standard tar model to include a time trend in both the threshold and the adjustment parameter using weekly maize price data on seven selected markets in tanzania we illustrate how both transaction cost and the speed of adjustment have changed during the nineties

food price seasonality in africa measurement and extent everyone knows about seasonality but what exactly do we know this study systematically measures seasonal price gaps at 193 markets for 13 food commodities in seven african countries it shows that the commonly used dummy variable or moving average deviation methods to estimate the seasonal gap can yield substantial upward bias this can be partially circumvented using trigonometric and sawtooth models which are more parsimonious among staple crops seasonality is highest for maize 33 percent on average and lowest for rice 16 percent this is two and a half to three times larger than in the international reference markets seasonality varies substantially across market places but maize is the only crop in which there are important systematic country effects malawi where maize is the main staple emerges as exhibiting the most acute seasonal differences reaching the sustainable development goal of zero hunger requires renewed policy attention to seasonality in food prices and consumption

exploring the logic behind southern africa s food crises summary government action during food crises in southern africa frequently exacerbates the problems driving food staple prices well beyond import parity we argue that an inability to make credible commitments due largely to a lack of trust between public and private sectors contributes to this dynamic empirical policy analysis can facilitate resolution only within a consultative process involving a broad range of stakeholders the policies emerging from such a process are not likely to approximate first best recommendations yet the precise policies may be less important than the fact that they exist and that main stakeholders find them credible

identifying price linkages a review of the literature and an application to the world market of cotton this paper reviews the literature of price linkages and examines the degree to which cotton prices are linked it also tests whether such linkages have improved over the last decade it concludes that the degree of linkage has improved over the last decade while the main source of this improvement appears to be a result of short run price transmission and to a lesser extent long run co movement

how integrated are world beef markets the case of australian and u s beef markets abstract the objective of the paper is to examine market integration between australian and u s beef prices at the farmgate level if these two prices are found to be integrated then it can be alleged that australian beef prices can be used as a world price in empirical analyses and or as a reference price to measure the level of support accorded the u s beef sector co integration analysis and a time varying parameter estimation procedure based on the kalman filter model are applied the paper distinguishes between steer and cow beef segments and it uses monthly data over the 1972 1 to 1993 2 period the results indicate that australian and u s beef prices are co integrated albeit not fully and that the degree of convergence between the various price pairs has not substantially increased over time the results also suggest that australian prices can not unequivocally be adopted as a world price in empirical analyses

ideology and legislator shirking we argue that legislator shirking voting on the basis of personal ideology rather than the interests of one s constituents can exist but its appearance should conform to the law of demand we test and confirm this theory using votes on defense expenditure bills in the u s senate in 1982 we assume the cost of shirking is relatively higher on narrowly focused bills on specific weapons systems with well defined beneficiaries and relatively lower on general defense expenditure bills with uncertain final distribution of funds we find greater influence for senators ideology in general versus specific bills

some problems in studying the effects of resource allocation in congressional elections after analyzing 1 data aggregated to the congressional district level and 2 individual level data from the 1978 cps election survey johannes and mcadams conclude that congressional casework has no electoral impact the following commentary explains such null findings as the product of oversimplistic expectations and methodological weaknesses specifically the johannes and mcadams aggregate data analysis is misspecified on two counts first it attempts to reduce to a single regression equation a temporal sequence in which casework activity and electoral outcomes are mutually intertwined second even were such a drastic reduction possible the single equation employed would be poorly specified because of inattention to the differential productivity of cases constituents and representatives the individual level analysis also is rife with statistical problems chief among which is multicollinearity aggravated by small numbers of cases analyses that do what is possible to minimize such problems reveal a statistically and substantively significant impact of casework on electoral outcomes further analyses that go beyond the johannes and mcadams limitation of casework effects to the individuals directly helped suggest that the electoral effects of an incumbent s reputation for service may approach the effects of party identification

what drives local food prices evidence from the tanzanian maize market this study quantifies the relationship between tanzanian and external maize markets while also accounting for domestic influences it concludes that external influences on domestic prices originate from regional rather than global markets it also shows that compared to external factors domestic factors exert a greater influence on tanzanian maize markets further the mechanisms through which trade policies influence maize markets involve interactions with both external market shocks and domestic weather shocks overall it provides evidence that the intermittent imposition of export bans in tanzania has had adverse impacts on its maize markets and consequently on the development of its agrarian economy

markov switching estimation of spatial maize price transmission processes between tanzania and kenya we discuss the markov switching vector au toregressive ms var class of nonlinear time series models that can be used to analyze recurring discrete structural changes in time series hamilton s 1989 seminal markov switching ms model of the u s business cy cle triggered considerable interest in the ms approach in economics most empirical appli cations to date have focused on the business cy cle and financial markets but we see potential for ms var models in agricultural economics for example in price transmission analysis in the following we first provide an overview of the ms var framework we then present an illustrative application to maize price trans mission between tanzania and kenya the article closes with a discussion of strengths weaknesses and potential uses of the ms var approach in price transmission analysis

us food aid and civil conflict we study the effect of us food aid on conflict in recipient countries our analysis exploits time variation in food aid shipments due to changes in us wheat production and cross sectional variation in a country s tendency to receive any us food aid according to our estimates an increase in us food aid increases the incidence and duration of civil conflicts but has no robust effect on interstate conflicts or the onset of civil conflicts we also provide suggestive evidence that the effects are most pronounced in countries with a recent history of civil conflict jel d74 f35 o17 o19 q11 q18 we are unable to determine whether our aid helps or hinders one or more parties to the conflict it is clear that the losses particularly looted assets constitutes a serious barrier to the efficient and effective provision of assistance and can contribute to the war economy this raises a serious challenge for the humanitarian community can humanitarians be accused of fueling or prolonging the conflict in these two countries medecins sans frontieres amsterdam 1

transfer costs spatial arbitrage and testing for food market integration conventional tests for food market integration ask often misleadingly whether prices in different locations move together in this paper an alternative methodology the parity bounds model pbm is developed which uses information on transfer costs in addition to food prices to assess the efficiency of spatial arbitrage monte carlo experiments using data generated by a point space spatial price equilibrium model show the pbm to be statistically reliable an application to philippine rice markets demonstrates that the pbm detects efficient arbitrage when other tests do not

export restrictions and price insulation during commodity price booms for individual countries variable trade barriers can be used to reduce the volatility of domestic relative to world prices if this is done by countries accounting for a large share of the market its effect is offset by increases in world price volatility this study shows the nature of the resulting collective action problem with the policy being ineffective on average in stabilizing domestic prices while increasing the volatility of the income transfers from terms of trade changes a simple approach to assessing the contribution of insulation to the price increases is developed and used with new estimates of agricultural distortions to assess its contribution to the price spikes in 1972 74 and 2006 08 for rice and wheat the analysis suggests that 45 percent of the increase in rice prices in 2006 08 and 30 percent of the increase in wheat prices was due to insulating behavior one sign of progress since 1972 74 was a substantial reduction in the extent of price insulating behavior by the industrial countries this provides little stabilizing benefit in the rice market because countries not classifying themselves at the world trade organization as developing account for only 3 percent of world rice consumption but it does offer some benefit for the wheat market where non developing countries account for 27 percent of consumption

implications of higher global food prices for poverty in low income countries in many poor countries the recent increases in prices of staple foods raise the real incomes of those selling food many of whom are relatively poor while hurting net food consumers many of whom are also relatively poor the impacts on poverty will certainly be very diverse but the average impact on poverty depends upon the balance between these two effects and can only be determined by looking at real world data results using household data for ten observations on nine low income countries show that the short run impacts of higher staple food prices on poverty differ considerably by commodity and by country but that poverty increases are much more frequent and larger than poverty reductions the recent large increases in food prices appear likely to raise overall poverty in low income countries substantially

estimating incumbency advantage without bias in this paper we prove theoretically and demonstrate empirically that all existing measures of incumbency advantage in the congressional elections literature are biased or inconsistent we then provide an unbiased estimator based on a very simple linear regression model we apply this new method to congressional elections since 1900 providing the first evidence of a positive incumbency advantage in the first half of the century incumbency advantage is the most frequently studied factor in the last 15 years of congressional elections research discovery of the increase in incum bency advantage has sparked controversy over its origins historical pattern cur rent magnitude and electoral democratic and policy consequences even the most basic descriptive information about incumbency advantage is flawed be cause every previous measure based on aggregate data in this literature is plagued by selection bias inconsistencies and inefficiencies we prove this result and also propose a new unbiased and statistically efficient measure that is very easy to calculate congressional elections from 1900 to the present fit our theoretical model our empirical reanalyses do not challenge the existing scholarly consen sus that incumbency advantage is much larger than it once was however we do challenge the prevailing belief that incumbency advantage was nonexistent and the evidence that it was negative in house elections during the first half of this century alford and brady 1988 we show instead that the average advantage of incumbency in these elections was about two percentage points in section 1 of this paper we define incumbency advantage and section 2 gives an intuitive sense of the problems identifying it even in ideal electoral sys tems section 3 formally proves that sophomore surge and retirement slump are biased estimates of incumbency advantage and section 4 briefly reveals the flaws

cross country maize market linkages in africa integration and price transmission across local and global markets in order to study short run price shock propagation we model twenty seven sub saharan africa ssa domestic maize markets within a global vector autoregression framework the main purpose is to fully embed multilateral trade flows as a way to better structure local price transmission dynamics and interdependencies and get a more comprehensive picture of food price shocks propagation we found significant between country market contagion and prompt regional price shock propagation when trade connection exists yet the integration of ssa domestic maize markets within the continent and with global markets remains generally weak furthermore under regular market conditions most local price series appear to be more responsive to regional neighbors than to global shocks

spatial market integration in the presence of threshold effects a large body of research has evaluated price linkages in spatially separate markets much recent research has applied models appropriate for nonstationary data such analyses have been criticized for their ignorance of transactions costs which may inhibit price adjustments and thus affect tests of integration this analysis utilizes threshold autoregression and cointegration models to account for a neutral band representing transactions costs we evaluate daily price linkages among four corn and four soybean markets in north carolina nonlinear impulse response functions are used to investigate dynamic patterns of adjustments to shocks our results confirm the presence of thresholds and indicate strong support for market integration though adjustments following shocks may take many days to be complete in every case the threshold models suggest much faster adjustments in response to deviations from equilibrium than is the case when threshold behavior is ignored a large amount of empirical research has evaluated the extent to which spatially separate markets are integrated though the term is used loosely in the literature tests of market integration usually consider the extent to which shocks are transmitted among spatially separate markets the integration of markets can have important implications for price discovery and the operation of the market since persistent deviations from integration may imply riskless profit opportunities for spatial traders

some further evidence on the law of one price the law of one price still holds international trade models often postulate the existence of a representative price i e the price which prevails at all markets this is known as the law of one price in this paper the law of one price is tested for seven commodities among four countries by explicitly considering transaction costs the empirical evidence suggests that in most cases the law of one price cannot be rejected asa maintained hypothesis furthermore for the remaining cases transaction costs seem to cause the failure

time series evidence on shirking in the u s house of representatives this paper presents time series evidence on the voting behavior of members of the u s house of representatives from 1975 to 1990 the empirical results indicate that voting behavior of individual congressmen is remarkably stable over time we find no evidence of economically significant last term effects on voting behavior nor are there important effects of legislative tenure on voting patterns the most significant deviations in voting behavior occur for congressmen who failed to win their reelection bid suggesting that sizable deviations from previous policy positions may result in swift retribution by constituents in the district

on market integration and liberalisation method and application to ethiopia the article suggests further improvements in the methodology to analyse market integration it provides corrections to and methodological extensions of recent work in this journal it also presents a way of applying market integration techniques to the analysis of shocks such as market liberalisation and war the method is applied to the effects of liberalisation and the end of the civil war on food markets in ethiopia the conclusion is that liberalisation had important effects on the long run and short run integration of food markets