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NEP: New Economics Papers
Agricultural Economics
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Edited by: Angelo Zago
http://ideas.repec.org/e/pza49.html
Universita degli Studi di Verona
Date: 2006-02-19
Papers: 7
This document is in the public domain, feel free to circulate it.
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In this issue we have:
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1. The Economic Impacts of Climate Change: Evidence from
Agricultural Profits and Random Fluctuations in Weather
Michael Greenstone; Olivier Deschenes
2. Differentiated management of GM diffusion in China: Further
hampering the self-sufficiency in cereal production?
Michel Fok; Weili Liang; Guiyan Wang; Yuhong Wu
3. Examining the Factors Influencing Environmental Innovations
Massimiliano Mazzanti; Roberto Zoboli
4. Rural Credit in Vietnam
Mikkel Barslund; Finn Tarp
5. SELF-ENFORCING INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL AGREEMENTS
REVISITED
Alistair Ulph; Santiago J. Rubio
6. On the Robustness of Robustness Checks of the Environmental
Kuznets Curve
Marzio Galeotti; Matteo Manera; Alessandro Lanza
7. Determinants of Environmental Innovation ? New Evidence
from German Panel Data Sources
Jens Horbach
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1. The Economic Impacts of Climate Change: Evidence from
Agricultural Profits and Random Fluctuations in Weather
Michael Greenstone (MIT)
Olivier Deschenes (University of California)
This paper measures the economic impact of climate change on US
agricultural land by estimating the effect of the presumably
random year-to-year variation in temperature and precipitation on
agricultural profits. Using long-run climate change predictions
from the Hadley 2 Model, the preferred estimates indicate that
climate change will lead to a $1.1 billion (2002$) or 3.4%
increase in annual profits. The 95% confidence interval ranges
from -$1.8 billion to $4.0 billion and the impact is robust to a
wide variety of specification checks, so large negative or
positive effects are unlikely. There is considerable
heterogeneity in the effect across the country with
California?s predicted impact equal to -$2.4 billion (or nearly
50% of state agricultural profits). Further, the analysis
indicates that the predicted increases in temperature and
precipitation will have virtually no effect on yields among the
most important crops. These crop yield findings suggest that the
small effect on profits is not due to short-run price increases.
The paper also implements the hedonic approach that is
predominant in the previous literature. We conclude that this
approach may be unreliable, because it produces estimates of the
effect of climate change that are very sensitive to seemingly
minor decisions about the appropriate control variables, sample
and weighting. Overall, the findings contradict the popular view
that climate change will have substantial negative welfare
consequences for the US agricultural sector.
Keywords: Cost of climate change, Hedonics, Agricultural profits,
Agricultural production, Crop yields
JEL: Q50 Q12 Q54 Q51
Date: 2006-01
URL: http://d.repec.o
rg/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2006.6&r=agr
2. Differentiated management of GM diffusion in China: Further
hampering the self-sufficiency in cereal production?
Michel Fok (UPR10 - Syst?mes cotonniers en petits
paysannats - http://www.cirad.fr/fr/pg_rech
erche/ur.php?
id=36 - CIRAD)
Weili Liang (HEBAU-DA - Department of Agronomy of HEBAU -
Hebei Agricultural University)
Guiyan Wang (HEBAU-DA - Department of Agronomy of HEBAU -
Hebei Agricultural University)
Yuhong Wu (HEBAU-DA - Department of Agronomy of HEBAU -
Hebei Agricultural University)
China is a big country in terms of biotech achievements. It is
also a rare country demonstrating crop-differentiated policies in
the dissemination of the GMOs. While the release of GMOs is
authorized notably for cotton in 1998, it is still prohibited for
food crops. In spite of the positive outcomes on cotton, at least
in the short run, and of the persisting decrease of the cereal
production, the hesitation to release GMO on food crops should
keep on prevailing. This seems to be founded when the qualitative
dimension of the food production is taken into consideration.
Keywords: China; GMO; food security; cotton; foodcrops;
productivity; biotechnology
Date: 2006-02-08
URL: http
://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:papers:halshs-00008939_v1&r=agr
3. Examining the Factors Influencing Environmental Innovations
Massimiliano Mazzanti (University of Ferrara)
Roberto Zoboli (CERIS-CNR)
Technological innovation is a key factor for achieving a better
environmental performance of firms and the economy as a whole, to
the extent that it helps to increase the material/energy
efficiency of production processes and to reduce
emission/effluents associated to outputs. Environmental
innovation may spur from exogenous driving forces, like policy
intervention, and/or from endogenous factors associated to firm
market and management strategies. Despite the crucial importance
of research in this field, empirical evidence at firm
microeconomic level, for various reasons, is still scarce.
Microeconomic-based analysis is needed in order to assess what
forces are lying behind environmental innovation at the level of
the firm, where innovative practices emerge and are adopted. The
paper exploits information deriving from two surveys conducted on
a sample of manufacturing firms in Emilia Romagna region -
Northern Italy- in 2002 and 2004, located in a district-intense
local production system. New evidence is provided by testing a
set of hypotheses, concerning the influence of: (i) firm
structural variables; (ii) environmental R&D; (iii) environmental
policy pressure and regulatory costs; (iv) past firm performances;
(v) networking activities, (vi) other non-environmental techno-
organizational innovations and (vii) quality/nature of industrial
relations. We estimate input and output-based environmental
innovation reduced form specifications in order to test the set
of hypotheses. The applied investigation shows that environmental
innovation drivers, both at input and output level, are found
within exogenous factors and endogenous elements concerning the
firm and its activities/strategies within and outside its natural
boundaries. In the present case study, the usual structural
characteristics of the firm and performances appear to matter
less than R&D, induced costs, networking, organisational flatness
and innovative oriented industrial relations. Environmental
Policies and environmental voluntary auditing schemes exert some
relevant direct and indirect effects on innovation, although
evidence is mixed and further research is particularly needed.
Although this new empirical evidence is focussing on a specific
industrial territory, we provide food for discussion on firm
environmental innovation strategies, and research suggestions for
further empirical work.
Keywords: Environmental innovation, Environmental R&D,
Manufacturing sector, Local system, Environmental
policy, Networking
JEL: C21 L60 O13 O30 Q20 Q58
Date: 2006-01
URL: http://d.repec.
org/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2006.20&r=agr
4. Rural Credit in Vietnam
Mikkel Barslund (Department of Economics, University of
Copenhagen)
Finn Tarp (Department of Economics, University of Auckland)
This paper uses a survey of 932 rural households to uncover how
the rural credit market operates in four provinces of Vietnam.
Households obtain credit through formal and informal lenders, but
formal loans are almost entirely for production and asset
accumulation. Interest rates fell from 1997 to 2002, reflecting
increased market integration; but the determinants of formal and
informal credit demand are distinct. Credit rationing depends on
education and credit history, but we find no evidence of a bias
against women. Regional differences are striking, and a ?one
size fits all? approach to credit policy is clearly
inappropriate.
Keywords: rural credit; household survey; Vietnam
JEL: O12 O16 O17 O1
URL: http://d.repec.org
/n?u=RePEc:kud:kuiedp:0603&r=agr
5. SELF-ENFORCING INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL AGREEMENTS
REVISITED
Alistair Ulph (University of Manchester)
Santiago J. Rubio (Universitat de Val?ncia)
In Barrett's (1994) paper on transboundary pollution abatement
is shown that if the signatories of an international
environmental agreement act in a Stackelberg fashion, then,
depending on parameter values, a self-enforcing IEA can have any
number of signatories between two and the grand coalition.
Barrett obtains this result using numerical simulations and also
ignoring the fact that emissions must be non-negative. Recent
attempts to use analytical approaches and to explicitly recognize
the non-negativity constraints have suggested that the number of
signatories of a stable IEA may be very small. The way such
papers have dealt with non-negativity constraints is to restrict
parameter values to ensure interior solutions for emissions. We
argue that a more appropriate approach is to use Kuhn-Tucker
conditions to derive the equilibrium of the emissions game. When
this is done we show, analytically, that the key results from
Barrett's paper go through. Finally, we explain why his main
conclusion is correct although his analysis can implicitly imply
negative emissions.
Keywords: international externalities, self-enforcing
environmental agreements, Stackelberg equilibrium, non-
negative emissions constraints
JEL: C72 D62 F02 Q20
Date: 2004-06
URL: http://d.repec.
org/n?u=RePEc:ivi:wpasad:2004-23&r=agr
6. On the Robustness of Robustness Checks of the Environmental
Kuznets Curve
Marzio Galeotti (Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei)
Matteo Manera (University of Milan-Bicocca and Fondazione
Eni Enrico Mattei)
Alessandro Lanza (Eni S.p.A. and Fondazione Eni Enrico
Mattei)
Since its first inception in the debate on the relationship
between environment and growth in 1992, the Environmental Kuznets
Curve has been subject to continuous and intense scrutiny. The
literature can be roughly divided in two historical phases.
Initially, after the seminal contributions, additional work aimed
to extend the investigation to new pollutants and to verify the
existence of an inverted-U shape as well as assessing the value
of the turning point. The following phase focused instead on the
robustness of the empirical relationship, particularly with
respect to the omission of relevant explanatory variables other
than GDP, alternative datasets, functional forms, and grouping of
the countries examined. The most recent line of investigation
criticizes the Environmental Kuznets Curve on more fundamental
grounds, in that it stresses the lack of sufficient statistical
testing of the empirical relationship and questions the very
existence of the notion of Environmental Kuznets Curve. Attention
is drawn in particular on the stationarity properties of the
series involved ? per capita emissions or concentrations and
per capita GDP ? and, in case of unit roots, on the
cointegration property that must be present for the Environmental
Kuznets Curve to be a well-defined concept. Only at that point
can the researcher ask whether the long-run relationship exhibits
an inverted-U pattern. On the basis of panel integration and
cointegration tests for sulphur, Stern (2002, 2003) and Perman
and Stern (1999, 2003) have presented evidence and forcefully
stated that the Environmental Kuznets Curve does not exist. In
this paper we ask whether similar strong conclusions can be
arrived at when carrying out tests of fractional panel
integration and cointegration. As an example we use the
controversial case of carbon dioxide emissions. The results show
that more EKCs come back into life relative to traditional
integration/cointegration tests. However, we confirm that the EKC
remains a fragile concept.
Keywords: Environment, Growth, CO2 Emissions, Panel data,
Fractional integration, Panel cointegration tests
JEL: O13 Q30 Q32 C12 C23
Date: 2006-02
URL: http://d.repec.
org/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2006.22&r=agr
7. Determinants of Environmental Innovation ? New Evidence
from German Panel Data Sources
Jens Horbach (University of Applied Sciences Anhalt)
In most cases, empirical analyses of environmental innovations
based on firm-level data relied on survey data for one point in
time. These surveys, especially designed for the analysis of
environmental innovations, are useful because they allow for the
inclusion of many explanatory variables such as different policy
instruments or the influence of stake-holders and pressure groups.
On the other hand, it is not possible to address the dynamic
character of the environmental innovation process. This paper
uses two German panel data bases, the establishment panel of the
Institute for Employment Research (IAB) and the Mannheim
Innovation Panel (MIP) of the Centre for European Economic
Research (ZEW), to explore the determinants of environmental
innovations. These data bases were not specifically collected to
analyze environmental issues, but they contain questions that
allow the identification of environmental innovations. We use
discrete choice models for each of the data bases to analyze
hypotheses derived from the theoretical (environmental)
innovation literature. The econometric estimations show that the
improvement of the technological capabilities (?knowledge
capital?) by R&D or further education measures triggers
environmental innovations ? this result is confirmed by both
data bases and both methods to measure environmental innovation.
The hypothesis that ?Innovation breeds innovation? is
confirmed by the analysis of the MIP data. General and
environmental innovative firms in the past are more likely to
innovate in the present. Environmental regulation, environmental
management tools and general organizational changes and
improvements trigger environmental innovation, a result that has
also been postulated by the famous Porter-hypothesis.
Environmental management tools especially help to detect cost-
savings (specifically material and energy savings). Following our
econometric results, cost-savings are an important driving force
of environmental innovation.
Keywords: Environmental innovation, Panel data analysis,
Discrete choice models
JEL: Q55 O33 O38 C25
Date: 2006-01
URL: http://d.repec.
org/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2006.13&r=agr
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