where has all the bias gone detecting gender bias in the intrahousehold allocation of educational expenditure abstract the reliability of the household consumption based engel curve methodology in detecting gender bias has been called into question because it has generally failed to confirm bias even where it exists this article seeks to find explanations for this failure by exploiting a data set that has educational expenditure information at the individual level and also by aggregation at the household level i find that in the basic education age groups the discriminatory mechanism in education is via differential enrollment rates for boys and girls education expenditure conditional on enrollment is equal for boys and girls the engel curve method fails for two reasons first it models a single equation for the two stage process second even when we make individual and household level expenditure equations as similar as possible the household level equation still fails to pick up gender bias in about one third of the cases where the individual level equation shows significant bias this article

threshold effects in price transmission the case of brazilian wheat maize and soya prices recent studies into price transmission have recognized the important role played by transport and transaction costs threshold models are one approach to accommodate such costs we develop a generalized threshold error correction model to test for the presence and form of threshold behavior in price transmission that is symmetric around equilibrium we use monthly wheat maize and soya prices from the united states argentina and brazil to demonstrate this model classical estimation of these generalized models can present challenges but bayesian techniques avoid many of these problems evidence for thresholds is found in three of the five commodity price pairs investigated

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

financial disclosure and customer satisfaction do companies talking the talk actually walk the walk using the emerging technology of large scale textual analysis this study examines the use of the term customer satisfaction and its variants in the annual reports issued by publicly traded u s corporations and filed with the securities and exchange commission as form 10 k we document the frequency of the term s occurrence in 10 ks over the 1995 2013 period and the differences in usage across industries we then relate the term s usage in 10 ks to subsequent scores from the american customer satisfaction index acsi to determine whether management s discussion of customer satisfaction in financial disclosures is credible the commitment of management to shareholders versus more broadly stakeholders is a central question in business ethics and the integrity of management communication is a fundamental construct in the american marketing association s statement of ethics we document a complex relation between management s discussion of customer satisfaction and subsequently reported satisfaction we find that the general use of customer satisfaction and similar terms in 10 k documents is negatively correlated with subsequent acsi scores however for retail firms when the phrase is located near words indicating measurement or monitoring of the phenomenon the empirical relation is reversed and becomes positive

time series econometric analyses of biofuel related price volatility time series econometrics studies have analyzed volatility interactions between biofuel and food and fossil fuel markets we review data modeling techniques and the main findings in the literature and present our latest contributions we identify areas for further research

bayesian estimation and selection of nonlinear vector error correction models the case of the sugar ethanol oil nexus in brazil nonlinear adjustment toward long run price equilibrium relationships in the sugar ethanol oil nexus in brazil is examined we develop generalized bivariate error correction models that allow for cointegration between sugar ethanol and oil prices where dynamic adjustments are potentially nonlinear functions of the disequilibrium errors a range of models are estimated using bayesian monte carlo markov chain algorithms and compared using bayesian model selection methods the results suggest that the long run drivers of brazilian sugar prices are oil prices and that there are nonlinearities in the adjustment processes of sugar and ethanol prices to oil price but linear adjustment between ethanol and sugar prices

measuring market integration in the presence of transaction costs a threshold vector error correction approach applied econometric analyses of market integration based on price data alone have been criticised because they neglect the role of transaction costs to meet this objection threshold vector error correction models are used threshold models can account for the effects of transaction costs in price transmission without directly relying upon information about these costs which are often unavailable it is argued that threshold models that are based on two thresholds provide results that are economically more intuitive than those obtained from one threshold models however to this point no adequate econometric test is available for threshold significance in a two threshold model such tests are only available for the one threshold model in this paper a restricted two threshold model is developed in which the significance of the thresholds can be tested this model is therefore amenable to economic interpretation and statistical inference the model is used to estimate market integration in the european pig market

crude oil corn ethanol nexus a contextual approach this paper offers a holistic study on the complex relationships between crude oil corn and ethanol during a turbulent period between 2006 and end of 2011 through a holistic mapping of the current market situation and a contextual analytical design we show that there exists a strong relationship between crude oil and corn markets on one side and crude oil and ethanol on the other however the price relationship between corn and ethanol was revealed to be less straightforward and is driven by the us government fuel policy furthermore the study indicates that corn markets have became more prone to volatility due to ethanol production especially when the demand for corn is high and or the crude oil prices are high enough to create a competitive market for ethanol

uncertainty effects on production mix and on hedging decisions the case of brazilian ethanol and sugar abstract the use of food crops to produce biofuels has been subject of interest in literature the relationship between food and fuel prices can remarkably affect production strategies these prices are subject to high uncertainty and producers must adopt hedging and storage strategies in order to avoid financial losses this study investigates the effect of uncertainty on production storage and hedging of ethanol and sugar in brazilian mills a robust optimization model to define production storage and hedging strategies is proposed uncertainty sets on returns are constructed based on a state space model kalman filter the presented model was applied to brazilian ethanol and sugar markets in different economic scenarios the study analyses efficient frontiers and optimal strategies and the results indicate that even adopting good price forecast models the optimal strategies can be deeply affected by uncertainty

food versus fuel an updated and expanded evidence abstract this paper replicates the study of zhang et al 2010 food versus fuel what do prices tell us energy policy 38 pp 445 451 we confirm the findings of the original paper that there was only a weak relationship between ethanol and food commodities in the period between march 1989 and july 2008 in addition we extend that study and examine the cointegration relationship between biofuels and related commodities for a considerably enlarged dataset 3 vs 1 market 26 vs 8 commodities analysis up till 2017 vs 2008 weekly vs monthly data frequency focusing on the biofuel markets of brazil the eu and the usa in the three separate periods before during and after the food crisis of 2007 and 2008 we show that studying the time variation of the relationships plays an essential role in their proper understanding our results help to clarify the wide extensive discussion about the role of biofuels prices in food shortages manifested particularly during the food crises in agreement with the original study we confirm that price series data do not support strong statements about biofuels uniformly serving as main leading source of high food prices and consequently the food shortages

acreage decisions under risk the case of corn and soybeans an acreage supply response model is developed under expected utility maximization the resulting framework is used to specify and estimate a system of risk responsive acreage equations for corn and soybeans in the united states particular attention is given to the truncation effects of government price supports on the distribution of corn and soybean prices also a wealth variable is included in the acreage equations the empirical results indicate that risk and wealth variables play an important role in cornsoybean acreage decisions the analysis also shows that cross commodity risk reduction is important in acreage allocation decisions

considering macroeconomic indicators in the food before fuel nexus abstract a structural vector autoregression svar model along with a direct acyclic graph is employed to decompose how supply demand structural shocks affect food and fuel markets the results support the hypothesis that fundamental market forces of demand and supply are the main drivers of food price volatility increased biofuel production may cause short run food price increases but not long run price shifts decentralized freely operating markets will mitigate the persistence of any price shocks and restore prices to their long run trends the main policy implications are that oil gasoline and ethanol market shocks do not spillover into grain prices which indicates no long run food before fuel issue in the short run grain prices can spike due to market shocks so programs designed to blunt these price spikes may be warranted

the cut and paste society isomorphism in codes of ethics regulatory responses to the business failures of 1998 2001 framed them as a general failure of governance and ethics rather than as firm specific problems among the regulatory responses are section 406 of sarbanes oxley act sec and exchange requirements to provide a code of ethics however institutional pressures surrounding this regulation suggest the potential for symbolic responses and decoupling of response from organizational action in this article we examine codes of ethics for a stratified sample of 75 u s firms across five distinct industries and find that content and language converge across organizations in ways undesired by the regulators and that language is used to minimize the effects of the code on constraining organizational behavior there is however a noteworthy exception in the sections of the codes dedicated the ethics of financial reporting although this material still contains legalistic boilerplate information it does offer concrete guidance and emphatic language pertaining to the need to maintain the integrity of reporting practices this suggests that the corporate understanding of the source of the failures is one of fraudulent financial reporting aside from the matter of financial reporting the vague and stylized content of the codes was a predicted response and constitutes a rational response to the regulation the regulation however clearly states the belief that codes should vary from firm to firm and that individual firms should determine the specific content of a code aside from financial reporting matters the observed result suggests that regulatory efforts may have failed to instigate corporate change in attitudes toward and enforcement of higher ethical standards by corporate actors

determinants of the intrahousehold allocation of food in the rural philippines this study shows that the opportunity cost of time for husbands and wives can affect the intrahousehold distribution of food in a developing country equations which explain the relative allocation of calories within households were estimated for husbands wives and children with data for the rural philippines the estimating equation is derivable from both a joint household utility function and a bargaining model because the same households were included in the four survey rounds the various observations for a given individual were averaged for each variable in the estimation procedure wages were estimated using the heckman approach

food energy nexus in europe price volatility approach abstract the literature on food biofuel price volatility spillovers is growing published articles so far have widely ignored nonlinearities and the influence of exogenous variables on volatility patterns this article allows for these issues when characterizing eu biodiesel industry price dynamics while brazilian and us ethanol markets have been thoroughly investigated less attention has been paid to eu biodiesel markets pure eu biodiesel and rapeseed oil prices are the object of our research two different methods are applied to model these data a parametric approach and long et al s 2011 semiparametric approach empirical results suggest significant asymmetries in volatility spillovers between pure biodiesel and rapeseed oil prices rapeseed stock levels and euro dollar exchange rates are found to play a significant role in reducing food and biofuel price volatilities

the structure of technology in brazilian sugarcane production 1975 87 an application of a modified symmetric generalized mcfadden cost function sugarcane based ethanol has become a primary automotive fuel in brazil over the past 15 years because sugarcane costs are over two thirds of the costs of ethanol production the economic efficiency of this renewable petroleum substitute hinges on the structure of technology in sugarcane production in this paper a modified symmetric generalized mcfadden sgm cost function for sugarcane is estimated and the presence of technical change and economies of scale are investigated the original sgm proposed by diewert and wales 1987 is modified to allow for fixed factors of production this allows the cost function to be applied to processes which have fixed factors the results suggest that there is no empirical evidence of economies of scale and very little technical change only in the north of brazil the implications for the future economic efficiency of this petroleum substitute are discussed

global growing area elasticities of key agricultural crops estimated using dynamic heterogeneous panel methods we estimate the short and long run global response of corn soybeans wheat and rice growing areas to output price changes allowing responses to vary across countries using methods from the panel time series literature our estimates of growing area response are considerably lower than estimates obtained using more traditional models previous findings appear biased due to the assumption of homogeneous response across countries our aggregate estimates of short and long run elasticities of four crop growing areas with respect to average price are 0 024 and 0 143 respectively crop specific results indicate that both corn and soybean growing areas are generally more responsive than wheat and rice for corn and soybeans the long run own price growing area elasticities are 0 274 and 0 793 respectively the long run own price elasticities for wheat and rice are 0 279 and 0 045 respectively the short run own price elasticities for corn and soybeans are 0 133 and 0 199 respectively which are higher than wheat 0 037 and rice 0 00001

volatility linkages between energy and agricultural commodity prices abstract we investigate price and volatility risk originating in linkages between energy and agricultural commodity prices in germany and study their dynamics over time we propose an econometric approach to quantify the volatility and correlation risk structure which has a large impact for investment and hedging strategies of market participants as well as for policy makers volatilities and their short and long run linkages are analyzed using an asymmetric dynamic conditional correlation garch model as well as a multivariate multiplicative volatility model our approach provides a flexible and accurate fitting procedure for volatility and correlation risk we find that in the long run prices move together and preserve an equilibrium while correlations are mostly positive with persistent market shocks our results reveal that concerns about biodiesel being the cause of high and volatile agricultural commodity prices are rather unjustified

biofuel related price transmission literature a review abstract in this article an extensive review of the rapidly growing biofuel related time series literature is carried out the data used the modeling techniques and the main findings of this literature are discussed providing a review of this flourishing research area is relevant as a guidepost for future research this literature concludes that energy prices drive long run agricultural price levels and that instability in energy markets is transferred to food markets

saving growth and investment a macroeconomic analysis using a panel of countries this paper provides a descriptive analysis of the long and short run correlations among saving investment and growth rates for 123 countries over the period 1961 94 three results are robust across data sets and estimation methods i lagges saving rates are positively related to investment rates ii investment rates granger cause growth rates with a negative sign iii growth rates granger cause investment with a positive sign

gender bias investments in children and bequests the impacts of pure sex preference and differential earnings opportunities by gender on investments in children are modelled with altruism if bequest constraints do not bind human investments are privately efficient with the higher earning gender receiving more education education does not depend on parental wealth the gender differential in bequests is ambiguous however even in this case when bequest constraints bind education may depend on wealth and it is also possible for the gender with better earnings opportunities to get less education the model is tested with data from philippine villages where bequest constraints are generally nonbinding the schooling differential slightly favors daughters estimated bequest behavior however reflects pure sex preference in terms of our model copyright 1995 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

worldwide acreage and yield response to international price change and volatility a dynamic panel data analysis for wheat rice corn and soybeans this study estimates a worldwide aggregate supply response for key agricultural commodities namely wheat rice corn and soybeans by employing a newly developed multi country crop and calendar specific seasonally disaggregated model with price changes and price volatility applied accordingly the findings reveal that although higher output prices serve as incentives to improve global crop supply as expected output price volatility acts as a disincentive depending on the crop the results show that own price supply elasticities range from about 0 05 to 0 40 output price volatility however has negative correlations with crop supply implying that farmers shift land other inputs and yield improving investments to crops with less volatile prices simulating the impact of price dynamics since 2006 we find that price risk has reduced the production response of wheat in particular and to a lesser extent rice thus dampening price incentive effects the simulation analysis shows that the increase in own crop price volatility during the 2006 2010 period has dampened yield by about 1 2 for the crops considered

an empirical analysis of gender bias in education spending in paraguay summary gender affects household spending in two areas that have been widely studied in the literature one strand documents that greater female bargaining power within households results in a variety of shifts in household production and consumption one important source of bargaining power is ownership of assets especially land another strand examines the gender bias in spending on children this paper addresses both strands simultaneously in this paper differences in spending on education are examined empirically both at the household and individual levels results are mixed though the balance of evidence weighs toward pro male bias in spending on education at the household level results also indicate that the relationship between asset ownership and female bargaining power within the household are contingent on the type of asset

volatility spillovers between food and energy markets a semiparametric approach previous literature on volatility links between food and energy prices is scarce and mainly based on parametric approaches this article examines these links by using a semiparametric garch model recently proposed by long et al 2011 which is essentially a nonparametric correction of the parametric conditional covariance function the analysis focuses on price links between crude oil ethanol and sugar prices in brazil results suggest strong volatility links between the prices studied parametric approximations of the conditional covariance matrix may lead to misleading results that can be improved upon by using nonparametric techniques

household production in the philippines a non neoclassical approach the starting point of any economic analysis is a microeconomic theory of the decision making unit by providing a set of explicit assumptions regarding individual choices a microeconomic theory lays the necessary foundation for the explanation of economic behavior just as a theory of the firm underlies analyses of market production a theory of the family underlies analyses of household production explanations of long run trends such as fertility decline grow out of assumptions regarding the nature of household decision making developing what they term the economic approach to human behavior gary becker and other neoclassical economists forcefully argue that household behavior is motivated primarily by a collective concern for economic efficiency they assume that households seek to maximize exogenously given joint utility functions and they hypothesize that differences in household behavior represent efficient responses to differences in the prices and incomes which households face this approach provides the foundation for an explanation of fertility decline based on long run changes in relative prices associated with economic development simply stated the argument runs as follows as the rate of return to human capital rises and levels of education increase the cost of rearing children goes up as higher wages draw women out of the household into the labor force the opportunity cost of mothers time goes up further increasing the cost of children the demand for children decreases and fertility levels gradually adjust 2 the assumption that joint utility functions are exogenous constant over time and vary randomly if at all across households is crucial to this argument systematic differences in unobservable joint utility functions could seriously confound the interpretation of observed relationships between changes in household behavior and changes in rela

food versus fuel what do prices tell us abstract sorting out the impacts of biofuels on global agricultural commodity prices is impossible without turning to data and distinguishing between the short run versus the long run impacts using time series prices on fuels and agricultural commodities the aim is to investigate the long run cointegration of these prices simultaneously with their multivariate short run interactions results indicate no direct long run price relations between fuel and agricultural commodity prices and limited if any direct short run relationships in terms of short run price movements sugar prices are influencing all the other agricultural commodity prices except rice with sugar the number one world input for ethanol results indicate increased ethanol production is potentially influencing short run agricultural commodity prices overall results support the effect of agricultural commodity prices as market signals which restore commodity markets to their equilibria after a demand or supply event shock

the impact of rising ethanol production on the brazilian market for basic food commodities an econometric assessment the controversial debate on the impacts of rising biofuel production on food commodity markets is of great policy relevance in brazil this paper contributes to the discussion by applying panel data regression models with fixed effects using ols our dataset comprises annual production harvested area data for sugar ethanol and five other staple commodities ranging from 1981 to 2009 for 24 brazilian states our results indicate that rising ethanol production exerts statistically significant positive impacts on sugarcane negative impacts on rice beans and soybeans acreage but no statistically significant effect on the areas for corn and manioc the negative impacts on commodities acreage have implications for the associated prices ceteris paribus rising ethanol production puts some upward pressure on the prices for rice beans and soybeans however the economic implication of these direct land use effects is attenuated due to the moderate scale of any effect

gender biased redistribution and intra household distribution abstract this paper examines the implications of income redistribution from men to women for the welfare of married women and children we develop a cournot model of a two person household where agents provide market labor and allocate their spending between a private consumption good and goods for children we show that under plausible restrictions on individual preferences small redistributions to married women reduce their welfare this happens because the income redistribution induces men to reduce their own spending on children by more than the amount redistributed a relative increase in women s independent earnings may however improve children s welfare

the financial markets and customer satisfaction reexamining possible financial market mispricing of customer satisfaction we investigate the association between information contained in the american customer satisfaction index acsi metric and future stock market performance some past research has provided results suggesting that the financial markets misprice customer satisfaction i e firms advantaged in customer satisfaction are posited to earn positive future period abnormal stock returns we reexamine this relationship and find that statistically significant evidence of financial market mispricing of customer satisfaction is limited to firms in the computer and internet sector the results suggest that the mispricing anomaly reported in past research appears not to stem from a systemic failure of the financial markets to impound the financial implications of customer satisfaction into current stock price but rather from abnormal returns achieved by a small group of satisfaction leaders in the computer and internet sector over the period of study analyses based on unconditional risk covariates and analyses using conditional risk covariates estimated from short window high frequency data support this finding

the economics of brazil s ethanol sugar markets mandates and tax exemptions sugarcane in brazil is processed into sugar and or ethanol often in flex plants that can switch between the two products we develop an economic model of flex plants export demands and two domestic fuel demand curves for a blend of ethanol with gasoline consumed by conventional cars and ethanol consumed only by flex cars we analyze the market impacts of the following policies the blend mandate fixing gasoline prices below world prices the high gasoline tax and a higher tax exemption for ethanol blended with gasoline because brazilian and u s ethanol prices have become linked a change in brazilian ethanol policy or a shock in world sugar markets can now impact u s ethanol and corn prices we show that in theory each policy analyzed has an ambiguous impact on ethanol and sugar prices empirically however a low gasoline tax and a high tax exemption for ethanol used in the fuel blend reduce ethanol and sugar prices this contradicts conventional wisdom overall we find that policy reforms implemented in 2010 offset the ethanol price increase by about 27 due to outward shifts in fuel transportation and sugar export demand curves and due to a reduced sugarcane supply caused by bad weather our model illustrates the importance of brazil s ethanol policies on world commodity markets it also provides insight into how the brazilian government can adjust policies to better control domestic inflation while minimizing impacts on investment

gender agricultural production and the theory of the household virtually all models of the household assume that the allocation of resources is pareto efficient within many african households agricultural production occurs on many plots controlled by different members of the household pareto efficiency implies that factors should be allocated efficiently across these plots i find in contrast that plots controlled by women are farmed much less intensively than similar plots within the household controlled by men the estimates imply that about 6 percent of output is lost because of inefficient factor allocation within the household the paper suggests a new approach to modeling intrahousehold allocation consistent with the empirical results

modeling farmers decisions on child labor and schooling in the cocoa sector a multinomial logit analysis in cote d ivoire since 2000 children working in the cocoa sector of c ote d ivoire have found themselves in the media spotlight this situation has assumed particular importance because approximately 40 of the world s cocoa production occurs in c ote d ivoire concerned parties have since taken great interest in this thorny issue there is a need to better understand the reality of child labor utilization in this sector this article investigates child labor issues in the cocoa sector of c ote d ivoire in conjunction with schooling status of children the study is based on a survey done in 2002 over a representative sample of more than 11 000 members of cocoa households the multinomial logit model is used to capture choice probabilities across work and or school options the results reveal that child labor in cocoa farms and nonenrollment in schools are significant moreover many children are involved in potentially dangerous and or harmful tasks data also highlight gender and age dimensions in the participation of children in tasks and the way labor is allocated econometric results generally indicate that the gender and age of children whether or not the child is the biological child of the household head parents education the origin of the farmer household welfare household size the household dependency ratio the size of other perennial crop farms the number of sharecroppers working with the household head and communities characteristics are all pertinent in explaining the child work schooling outcome in the cocoa sector of c ote d ivoire

nonlinearities in the u s corn ethanol oil gasoline price system we use a smooth transition vector error correction model to assess price relationships within the u s ethanol industry monthly ethanol corn oil and gasoline prices from 1990 to 2008 are used in the analysis results indicate the existence of long run relationships among the prices analyzed strong links between energy and food prices are identified

the estimation of threshold models in price transmission analysis the threshold vector error correction model is a popular tool for the analysis of spatial price transmission and market integration in the literature the profile likelihood estimator is the preferred choice for estimating this model yet in certain settings this estimator performs poorly in particular if the true thresholds are such that one or more regimes contain only a small number of observations if unknown model parameters are numerous or if parameters differ little between regimes the profile likelihood estimator displays large bias and variance such settings are likely when studying price transmission for simpler but related threshold models greb et al 2011 have developed an alternative estimator the regularized bayesian estimator which does not exhibit these weaknesses we explore the properties of this estimator for threshold vector error correction models simulation results show that it outperforms the profile likelihood estimator especially in situations in which the profile likelihood estimator fails two empirical applications a reassessment of the the seminal paper by goodwin and piggott 2001 and an analysis of price transmission between german and spanish markets for pork demonstrate the relevance of the new approach for spatial price transmission analysis

biofuels and land use change sugarcane and soybean acreage response in brazil scientists and economists are increasingly worried that biofuels production is leading to land use changes in the form of competition with food crops or loss of natural ecosystems i estimate acreage conversion in response to shocks in sugarcane a biofuels feedstock and soybean thought to be affected by united states corn ethanol production prices in brazil at a national and regional level using county level data from 1973 to 2005 i consider a dynamic panel data model of input demand for agricultural land conditioning on price changes of other commodities the short run crop price elasticity of sugarcane acreage in brazil is estimated to be approximately zero whereas the elasticity of soybean acreage is 0 9 when both spot and futures prices change the regional estimates for soybeans show considerable variation and are highest in areas of ecological importance such as the cerrado sugarcane estimates are more homogeneous these results should be taken into account in impact assessments of biofuels

futures prices in supply analysis are instrumental variables necessary citation nathan p hendricks joseph p janzen aaron smith futures prices in supply analysis are instrumental variables necessary american journal of agricultural economics volume 97 issue 1 1 january 2015 pages 22 39 https doi org 10 1093 ajae aau062

inter and intra seasonal crop acreage response to international food prices and implications of volatility understanding how producers make decisions to allot acreage among crops and how decisions about land use are affected by changes in prices and their volatility is fundamental for predicting the supply of staple crops and hence assessing the global food supply situation this study makes estimations of monthly i e seasonal versus annual global acreage response models for the world s principal staple food crops wheat corn soybeans and rice primary emphasis is given to the magnitude and speed of the allocation process estimation of intra annual acreage elasticity is crucial for expected food supply and for input demand especially in the light of the recent short term volatility in food prices the econometric results indicate that global crop acreage responds to crop prices and price risks input costs as well as a time trend depending on respective crop short run elasticities are about 0 05 to 0 40 price volatility tends to reduce acreage for some of the crops comparison of the annual and the monthly acreage response elasticities suggests that acreage adjusts seasonally around the globe to new information and expectations given the seasonality of agriculture time is of an essence for acreage response the analysis indicates that acreage allocation is more sensitive to prices in the northern hemisphere spring than in winter and the response varies across months

how policies affect international biofuel price linkages abstract we estimate the role of biofuel policies in determining which country is the price leader in world biofuel markets using a cointegration analysis and a vector error correction vec model weekly prices are analyzed for the eu us and brazilian ethanol and biodiesel markets in the 2002 2010 and 2005 2010 time periods respectively the us blender s tax credit and brazil s consumer tax exemption are found to play a role in determining the ethanol prices in other countries for biodiesel our results demonstrate that eu policies the consumer tax exemption and blending target tend to determine the world biodiesel price

women s income and household expenditure patterns gender or flow evidence from niger be targeted for credit and small enterprise programs not only because their income boosts household income but also because it meets global societal objectives such as increased spending on food and children s goods some researchers however have speculated that the observed impact of female income share on household expenditure patterns does not reflect gender differentiated preferences but rather reflects the differential lumpiness seasonality of male and female income flows that is women may earn income in flows that ensure a higher propensity to purchase certain items

commodity dynamics a sparse multi class approach abstract the correct understanding of commodity price dynamics can bring relevant improvements in terms of policy formulation both for developing and developed countries agricultural metal and energy commodity prices might depend on each other although we expect few important effects among the total number of possible ones some price effects among different commodities might still be substantial moreover the increasing integration of the world economy suggests that these effects should be comparable for different markets this paper introduces a sparse estimator of the multi class vector autoregressive model to detect common price effects between a large number of commodities for different markets or investment portfolios in a first application we consider agricultural metal and energy commodities for three different markets we show a large prevalence of effects involving metal commodities in the chinese and indian markets and the existence of asymmetric price effects in a second application we analyze commodity prices for five different investment portfolios and highlight the existence of important effects from energy to agricultural commodities the relevance of biofuels is hereby confirmed overall we find stronger similarities in commodity price effects among portfolios than among markets

intra household resource allocation an inferential approach if household income is pooled and then allocated to maximize welfare then income under the control of mothers and fathers should have the same impact on demand with survey data on family health and nutrition in brazil the equality of parental income effects is rejected unearned income in the hands of a mother has a bigger effect on her family s health than income under the control of a father for child survival probabilities the effect is almost twenty times bigger the common preference or neoclassical model of the household is rejected if unearned income is measured with error and income is pooled then the ratio of maternal to paternal income effects should be the same equality of the ratios cannot be rejected there is also evidence for gender preference mothers prefer to devote resources to improving the nutritional status of their daughters fathers to sons

assessing the impact of us ethanol on fossil fuel markets a structural var approach abstract despite the growing importance of biofuels the effect of biofuels on fossil fuel markets is not fully understood we develop a joint structural vector auto regression var model of the global crude oil us gasoline and us ethanol markets to examine whether the us ethanol market has had any impact on global oil markets the structural var approach provides a unique method for decomposing price and quantity data into demand and supply shocks allowing us to estimate the distinct dynamic effects of ethanol demand and supply shocks on the real prices of crude oil and us gasoline ethanol demand in the us is driven mainly by government support in the form of tax credits and blending mandates shocks to ethanol demand therefore reflect changes in policy more than any other factor in contrast ethanol supply shocks are driven by changes in feedstock prices a principle finding is that a policy driven ethanol demand expansion causes a statistically significant decline in real crude oil prices while an ethanol supply expansion does not have a statistically significant impact on real oil prices this suggests that even though us ethanol market is small the influence of us biofuels policy on the crude oil market is pervasive we also show that ethanol demand shocks are more important than ethanol supply shocks in explaining the fluctuation of real prices of crude oil and us gasoline

endowments and the allocation of schooling in the family and in the marriage market the twins experiment 03 we show how comparisons between the within twin correlations of human capital outcomes across identical and nonidentical twins can be used to identify the variability in the individual specific component of endowments and the responsiveness of schooling to individual specific endowments in the family and in the marriage market even when schooling is measured with error estimates from two twins samples indicate that 27 42 percent of the variance in log earnings obesity is due to variability in individual specific endowments allocations of schooling reinforce specific endowments and individual specific earnings endowments of men and their wives schooling are negatively associated

convergence of the static estimation toward the long run effects of dynamic panel data models abstract this article focuses on the estimation of long run effects on panel data we show that the probability limit of the between estimator of a static relation whereas the true specification is a dynamic error components model converges to the long run effects

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

non parametric and parametric modeling of biodiesel sunflower oil and crude oil price relationships abstract multivariate local linear regression and parametric error correction models are applied to assess price linkages and price transmission patterns between food and energy prices in spain weekly biodiesel sunflower and crude oil prices observed from november 2006 to october 2010 are used in the empirical analysis results suggest the existence of a long run equilibrium relationship between the three prices studied biodiesel is the only variable that adjusts to deviations from this long run relationship local linear regression techniques show that the speed of adjustment of biodiesel prices is faster when biodiesel is relatively cheap than when it is expensive energy prices are also found to influence sunflower oil prices through short run price dynamics

vegetable oil market and biofuel policy an asymmetric cointegration approach abstract the present paper analyses the long run relationship between vegetable oil prices and conventional diesel prices in the eu for the period 2005 2007 we applied recent developments in the threshold cointegration approach to investigate the presence of asymmetric dynamic adjusting processes between the prices of rapeseed oil sunflower oil and soybean oil and the price of a mineral oil diesel the results presented suggest a two regime threshold cointegration model only for the rapeseed oil diesel price pair thus the rapeseed oil price adjusts rapidly to its long run equilibrium determined by fossil diesel prices but this adjustment is asymmetric it differs if the divergence between the two prices is above or below a critical threshold consequently rapeseed oil appears particularly exposed to external shocks deriving from global political scenarios suggesting the reassessment of the high quota 80 of eu biodiesel represented by this vegetable oil

market opportunities genetic endowments and intrafamily resource distribution child survival in rural india the authors examine how intrafamily resource allocations respond to changes in economic conditions and to genetic differences in children by estimating the determinants of variations in the sex specific survival differentials of rural indian children based on standard census and household survey data they explore in particular the hypothesis that such differences are related to the relative returns to survival with households selectively allocating resources to children in response to variation in sex differences in their expected earnings opportunities as adults data are from the 1961 census and a 1971 household survey excerpt

flex fuel vehicle adoption and dynamics of ethanol prices lessons from brazil abstract focusing on dynamics of the relative prices of substitute fuels namely ethanol and gasoline this study quantifies the impact of the increase in shares of flex fuel vehicles ffvs in the vehicle fleet on the domestic ethanol prices in brazil a modified partial adjustment model is employed estimation results provide strong support for our research hypotheses i when consumers can choose between the fuels the relative ethanol and gasoline prices converge to a long run equilibrium level which is determined by the fuel economy and ii price dynamics are largely determined by market supply and demand factors including the price of sugar ethanol exports and composition of vehicle fleet furthermore the impacts of demand factors such as ethanol exports are strengthened by the increasing proportion of ffvs in the vehicle fleet

heterogeneity intrafamily distribution and child health data were collected in candelaria colombia from 1968 to 1974 to evaluate the impact of child health services in all households in which there were any children under 6 years old to estimate the birth outcome equation and post birth health equation a subsample of 109 households was selected in which at least 2 children were born during the 7 year program the sample size was 238 children estimates of the parameters of the normalized weight equations were obtained using seemingly unrelated regression sur the family fixed effects procedure ffe and the lagged instrumental fixed effects technique life an illustrative dynamic model of intra family allocative behavior incorporating variations in individual child characteristics was formulated to show how both the timing of childbearing and child specific allocations vary with both family and child specific health endowments the information restrictions were used in the model associated with the sequencing of births to develop an estimation procedure which takes into account both intrafamily and interfamily heterogeneity longitudinal data on children and households compared estimates of the effects of birth order birth spacing and timing per capita food consumption inoculations and the incidence of breast feeding on the age standardized weight of children at 2 life cycle points at birth and within 6 months after birth the estimates indicated that healthier families for given income had more children and more closely spaced children but consumed no more food per capita than did less well endowed families these results imply that families behave so as to reduce inherent interfamily inequalities in child health however while the estimates suggest that the healthier the prior surviving child the more quickly parents are likely to have a subsequent child parents are also more likely to breastfeed an inherently healthier child

family decision making for educational expenditure new evidence from survey data for nigeria this study examines the determinants of educational expenditures by households in nigeria data from the nigerian general household survey panel 2012 2013 wave 2 was used and a double hurdle mode

energy and food security linkages through price volatility abstract this study examines the linkages between energy price and food prices over the period 2000 2016 by using a panel var model in the case of eight asian economies our results confirm that energy price oil price has a significant impact on food prices according to the results of impulse response functions agricultural food prices respond positively to any shock from oil prices our results show that there is a linkage between energy and food security through price volatility since inflation in oil price is harmful for food security it would be necessary to diversify the energy consumption in this sector from too much reliance on fossil fuels to an optimal combination of renewable and nonrenewable energy resources that will be in favor of not only the energy security by also the food security in addition the paper found that the impact of biofuel prices on food prices is statistically significant but explains less than 2 of the food price variance however by increasing the demand for biofuel there should be more concern about the global increase in agricultural commodities prices and endangering food security especially in vulnerable economies

spatial market arbitrage and threshold cointegration goodwin and piggott reported that corn and soybean prices in spatially separated markets in north carolina exhibited threshold cointegration and that commodity prices in different markets may persistently diverge here a multivariate approach is used to test for threshold cointegration and nonlinear cointegration the results suggest that departures from the law of one price do not persist indefinitely goodwin and piggott gp examined daily corn and soybean prices across spatially separated markets in north carolina and reported that bivariate pairings of prices were threshold cointegrated gp used a twothreshold model in which price differences across markets could persist indefinitely they concluded that empirical models should consider threshold effects in order to adequately characterize spatially integrated markets the purpose of this article is to extend the gp analysis in several directions gp employed the techniques of martens kofman and vorst which involve a multistepped search for thresholds in the residuals of a cointegrating regression this single equation search process is subject to potential misspecification so it is interesting to determine whether the direct multivariate test of threshold cointegration of hansen and seo provides confirmatory evidence in addition gp allowed two thresholds to affect each commodity pair without directly testing for the number of thresholds the second extension uses hansen tests to determine the number of thresholds two thresholds imply no arbitrage bounds that allow persistent departures from the law of one price one threshold is consistent with the traditional view that price differentials are fleeting as arbitrageurs drive excess returns to zero the final extension recognizes that spatially integrated markets might follow a nonlinear relationship that depends on transactions costs peter s sephton is professor school of business queen s university kingston ontario canada the author would like to thank nick piggott for providing his dataset and the dean s research fund in the school of business for financial assistance two anonymous referees provided helpful comments sufficiently large deviations from the law of one price should lead to a reduced price dispersion a direct test of nonlinear cointegration demonstrates that price differences tend to be resolved over time background