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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: 2006-09-16
Papers: 11
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. Selling a Piece of the Farm Credit System
Jolly, Robert W.; Roe, Josh
2. History and Unique Features of the Farm Credit System
Harl, Neil E.
3. Are Rural Credit Markets Competitive? Is There Room for
Competition in Rural Credit Markets?
Kilkenny, Maureen; Jolly, Robert W.
4. On Modelling Variety in Consumption Expenditure on Food
Raghbendra Jha; Raghav Gaiha; Anurag Sharma
5. Economies of Feedlot Scale, Biosecurity, Investment, and
Endemic Livestock Disease
Hennessy, David A.
6. FCSA Sale to Rabobank: Selling What? On Whose Authority? And
For Whose Benefit?
Ginder, Roger
7. Productivity in Economies with Financial Frictions: Facts and
a Theory
David Benjamin, Felipe Meza
8. Environmental Liability and Redevelopment of Old Industrial
Land
Hilary Sigman
9. Playing Chiken with Salmon
Jon Olaf Olaussen
10. Social dynamics of obesity
Mary Burke; Frank Heiland
11. Reflections on U.S. Disaster Insurance Policy for the 21st
Century
Howard Kunreuther
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1. Selling a Piece of the Farm Credit System
Jolly, Robert W.
Roe, Josh
Not available.
JEL: G0
Date: 2006-05-31
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:12633&r=agr
2. History and Unique Features of the Farm Credit System
Harl, Neil E.
Not available
Date: 2006-09-08
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:12677&r=agr
3. Are Rural Credit Markets Competitive? Is There Room for
Competition in Rural Credit Markets?
Kilkenny, Maureen
Jolly, Robert W.
Not available.
Date: 2006-05-31
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:12634&r=agr
4. On Modelling Variety in Consumption Expenditure on Food
Raghbendra Jha
Raghav Gaiha
Anurag Sharma
In this paper we compute nutrient-expenditure elasticities for
two macro nutrients (calories and protein) and five micro
nutrients (calcium, thiamine, riboflavin, calcium and iron) using
an all India sample of rural households for 1994. We show that in
each case the respective elasticities are positive and
significant. This lends support to our hypothesis that an
increase in income would increase nutrient intake by varying
amounts, contrary to some assertions. We then compute differences
in the elasticity of substitution for rich and poor across
commodity groups and show that these differences, while
significant, are small. This further corroborates our conclusion
that increases in income of the poor would lead to greater
increases in their nutrient intake as compared to the non-poor,
although the magnitudes will be small.
JEL: C34 I32 J21 J43
Date: 2006
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pas:papers:2006-10&r=agr
5. Economies of Feedlot Scale, Biosecurity, Investment, and
Endemic Livestock Disease
Hennessy, David A.
Infectious livestock disease creates externalities for proximate
animal production enterprises. The distribution of production
scale within a region should influence and be influenced by these
disease externalities. Taking the distribution of the unit costs
of stocking an animal as primitive, we show that an increase in
the variance of these unit costs reduces consumer surplus. The
effect on producer surplus, total surplus, and animal
concentration across feedlots depends on the demand elasticity. A
subsidy to smaller herds can reduce social welfare and immiserize
the farm sector by increasing the extent of disease. While Nash
behavior involves excessive stocking, disease effects can be such
that aggregate output declines relative to first-best. Disease
externalities can induce more adoption of a cost-reducing
technology by larger herds so that animals become more
concentrated across herds. For strategic reasons, excess overall
adoption of the innovation may occur. Larger herds are also more
likely to adopt biosecurity innovations, explaining why larger
herds may be less diseased in equilibrium.
Keywords: agricultural industrialization, biosecurity,
inefficiency, Nash behavior, overinvestment, technology
adoption.
Date: 2006-09-08
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:12676&r=agr
6. FCSA Sale to Rabobank: Selling What? On Whose Authority? And
For Whose Benefit?
Ginder, Roger
Currently not available.
Date: 2006-06-07
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:12642&r=agr
7. Productivity in Economies with Financial Frictions: Facts and
a Theory
David Benjamin, Felipe Meza
We document and account for two facts regarding the relation
between international interest rates and total factor
productivity (TFP) in a sample of developing countries. First,
there is a negative correlation between both variables at
quarterly frequency. Second, the share of agricultural labor and
interest rates are positively correlated, whereas the share of
agricultural labor and TFP are negatively correlated.
Manufacturing labor shows opposite correlations. These
relationships are particularly strong in the aftermath of
financial crises. We then construct a model in which the presence
of costly intermediation can produce such relationships. We show
that, after increases in interest rates, the presence of
significant requirement to intermediate factors of production in
high productivity sectors, like manufacturing, causes resources
to leave these sectors. Resources end up in low productivity
sectors where intermediation is cheaper like agriculture. We show
that the channel we identify is quantitatively important in the
case of Korea after the 1997 financial crisis. Keywords; small
open economy, financial intermediation, total factor productivity
JEL Classification: E44, F41,F32
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stn:sotoec:0613&r=agr
8. Environmental Liability and Redevelopment of Old Industrial
Land
Hilary Sigman (Rutgers University)
Many communities are concerned about the reuse of potentially
contaminated land ("brownfields") and believe that environmental
liability is a hindrance to redevelopment. However, with land
price adjustments, liability might not impede the reuse of this
land. Existing literature has found price reductions in response
to liability, but few studies have looked for an effect on
vacancies. This paper studies variations in state liability rules
-- specifically, strict liability and joint and several
liability --- that affect the level and distribution of expected
private cleanup costs. It explores the effects of this variation
on industrial land prices and vacancy rates and on reported
brownfields in a panel of cities across the United States. In the
estimated equations, joint and several liability reduces land
prices and increases vacancy rates in central cities. Neither a
price nor quantity effect is estimated from strict liability. The
results suggest that liability is at least partly capitalized,
but does still deter redevelopment.
Keywords: Environmental policy, Tort reform, Real estate,
Brownfields
JEL: Q5 K32 R33
Date: 2006-08-18
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rut:rutres:200609&r=agr
9. Playing Chiken with Salmon
Jon Olaf Olaussen (Department of Economics, Norwegian
University of Science and Technology)
Wild Atlantic salmon are traditionally harvested from both the
sea and spawning rivers during spawning runs. From an economic
point of view, the return from sport fishing in rivers is several
times higher than marine ?for meat only? harvests. This
situation calls for a side payment regime where river owners pay
marine fishermen not to fish, and where both parties gain. This
paper argues that the reason why such side payment regimes are
rarely seen, despite the obvious mutual gain, is due to the
potential free-riding incentives among river owners. Although it
is shown that the decision each river owner faces can be
described as a game of chicken, taking the stochastic ecology
into account may reveal a different pay-off structure. It is also
demonstrated that the stochastic ecology of salmon, combined with
price rigidities in the rivers, may explain the lack of side
payment regimes.
Keywords: Atlantic salmon; game of chicken; recreational versus
commercial fishing; side payment; stochastic ecology
JEL: Q22 Q26 D81
Date: 2006-08-29
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nst:samfok:7406&r=agr
10. Social dynamics of obesity
Mary Burke
Frank Heiland
In order to explain the substantial recent increases in obesity
rates in the United States, we consider the effect of falling
food prices in the context of a model involving endogenous body
weight norms and an explicit, empirically grounded description of
human metabolism. Unlike previous representative agent models of
price-induced gains in average weight, our model, by including
metabolic heterogeneity, is able to capture changes in additional
features of the distribution, such as the dramatic growth in
upper-quartile weights that are not readily inferred from the
representative agent setting. We calibrate an analytical choice
model to American women in the 30-to-60-year-old age bracket and
compare the model?s equilibrium weight distributions to data
from NHANES surveys spanning (intermittently) the period from
1976 through 2000. The model predicts increases in average weight
and obesity rates with considerable accuracy and captures a
considerable portion of the relative growth in upperquantile
weights. The differential response to price declines across the
distribution depends on the fact that human basal metabolism (or
resting calorie expenditure) is increasing and yet concave in
body weight, and therefore food price effects on weight tend to
be larger for individuals who are heavier initially. The lagged
adjustment of weight norms helps to explain recent observations
that obesity rates have continued to rise since the mid 1990s,
despite an apparent leveling off of price declines. The predicted
increase in body weight aspirations agrees with an observed trend
in self-reported desired weights, and it defies the conventional
wisdom that thinness has been a growing obsession among American
women in recent decades.
Keywords: Food prices ; Obesity
Date: 2006
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedbpp:06-5&r=agr
11. Reflections on U.S. Disaster Insurance Policy for the 21st
Century
Howard Kunreuther
The devastation caused by hurricanes during the 2004 and 2005
seasons has been unprecedented and is forcing the insurance
industry to reevaluate the role that it can play in dealing with
future natural disasters in the United States. As shown in Table
1 the four hurricanes that hit Florida in the fall of 2004 --
Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne---and Hurricanes Katrina and
Rita in 2005 comprised half of the top 12 disasters with respect
to insured losses between 1970 and 2005. On a related note, 18 of
the 20 most costly disasters occurred between 1990 and 2005 and
10 occurred in the 21st Century. This context is totally
different than the scale of economic loss the country has
suffered from natural disasters and other extreme events in the
20th century. The first section of the paper addresses the first
question by outlining two principles on which a disaster
insurance program should be based. Section 3 then focuses on the
second question by analyzing the insurability of a risk and
examining the challenges facing the private sector in providing
coverage against natural disasters. Section 4 turns to the third
question and delineates the opportunities and challenges of a
comprehensive disaster insurance program. Section 5 poses a set
of open issues that are currently being addressed by a research
project on disaster insurance undertaken by the Wharton Risk
Center in conjunction with the Insurance Information Institute
and Georgia State University. The concluding section summarizes
the key issues associated with providing disaster insurance in
the 21st century.
JEL: G22 H23
Date: 2006-08
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12449&r=agr
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