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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: 2006-09-30
Papers: 6
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. Seasonal Cycles in European Agricultural Commodity Prices
Jumah, Adusei; Kunst, Robert M.
2. Green Revolutions and Miracle Economies : Agricultural
Innovation, Trade and Growth
Brishti Guha
3. The Value of Third-Party Certification of Preconditioning
Claims at Iowa Feeder Cattle Auctions
Bulut, Harun; Lawrence, John D.
4. Financing and Access in Cooperatives
REY, Patrick; TIROLE, Jean
5. Trade performances, product quality perceptions and the
estimation of trade price-elasticities
Matthieu Crozet; H?l?ne Erkel-Rousse
6. Collective Voluntary Agreements and the Production of Less
Polluting Products
Rasha Ahmed; Kathleen Segerson
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1. Seasonal Cycles in European Agricultural Commodity Prices
Jumah, Adusei (Department of Economics and Finance,
Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, Austria and
Department of Economics, University of Vienna, Austria)
Kunst, Robert M. (Department of Economics and Finance,
Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, Austria and
Department of Economics, University of Vienna, Austria)
This paper explores the seasonal cycles of European agricultural
commodity prices. We focus on three food crops (barley, soft and
durum wheat) and on beef. We investigate whether seasonality is
deterministic or unit-root stochastic and whether seasonal cycle
for specific agricultural commodities have converged over time.
Finally, we develop time-series models that are capable of
forecasting agricultural prices on a quarterly basis. Firstly, we
find that seasonal cycles in agricultural commodity prices are
mainly deterministic and that evidence on common cycles across
countries varies over agricultural commodities. The prediction
experiments, however, yield a ranking with respect to accuracy
that does not always match the statistical in-sample evidence.
Keywords: Seasonal cycles, Seasonal unit roots, Forecasting,
Agricultural commodities
JEL: C32 C53 Q11
Date: 2006-09
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ihs:ihsesp:192&r=agr
2. Green Revolutions and Miracle Economies : Agricultural
Innovation, Trade and Growth
Brishti Guha (School of Economics and Social Sciences,
Singapore Management University)
The purpose of this paper is to develop a simple model of an
economy in which growth is driven by a combination of exogenous
technical change in agriculture as well as by a rising world
demand for labor-intensive manufactured exports. We explore the
relative roles of agricultural innovation and rising export
demand in a model with two traded industrial goods and a non-
traded agricultural good, food. When the non-traded sector uses a
specific factor, we show that technical change in agriculture may
be the key to sustained factor accumulation in industry, in
particular driving intersectoral labor migration. A key
assumption is a less than unitary price elasticity of demand for
food. Our results could form a crucial link in capturing the
story of labor-abundant economies which experienced structural
transformation and growth through labor-intensive manufactured
exports, without prior technology breakthroughs in industry. They
contribute to explaining the massive growth in factor
accumulation which shows up in some growth accounting studies :
they may also imply that some of the contribution of ?technical
progress? is mistakenly attributed solely to factor
accumulation.
Keywords: Structural change, agricultural productivity, labor
migration, terms of trade.
JEL: O3 O4 F1
Date: 2005-09
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:siu:wpaper:20-2005&r=agr
3. The Value of Third-Party Certification of Preconditioning
Claims at Iowa Feeder Cattle Auctions
Bulut, Harun
Lawrence, John D.
After controlling a variety of feeder cattle characteristics and
market and sale conditions, we estimate the price premiums for
preconditioning (vaccinations and minimum 30 days weaning) claims
with and without third-party certification (TPC) as $6.15/cwt and
$3.40/cwt, respectively, in Iowa feeder cattle auctions. These
premiums differ statistically (p-value less than 0.0001) and
their difference exceeds the additional participation cost of TPC
$1/cwt) on average. This indicates that the third party
certification is valued in the market to credibly signal
preconditioning investment under asymmetric information.
Keywords: Asymmetric information, Feeder cattle auctions,
Quality, Signaling, Third party certification.
JEL: C2 Q1
Date: 2006-09-25
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:12683&r=agr
4. Financing and Access in Cooperatives
REY, Patrick
TIROLE, Jean
JEL: L2 L3 D7
Date: 2006-06
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ide:wpaper:5852&r=agr
5. Trade performances, product quality perceptions and the
estimation of trade price-elasticities
Matthieu Crozet (TEAM - Th?ories et Applications en
Micro?conomie et Macro?conomie - [CNRS : UMR8059] -
[Universit? Panth?on-Sorbonne - Paris I])
H?l?ne Erkel-Rousse (TEAM - Th?ories et Applications en
Micro?conomie et Macro?conomie - [CNRS : UMR8059] -
[Universit? Panth?on-Sorbonne - Paris I], DP - Direction
de la Pr?vision - [Minist?re de l'Economie des Finances
et de l'Industrie])
Traditional trade models ignoring the dimension of product
quality generally lead to excessively low trade price
elasticities. In this paper, we show that higher estimated trade
price elasticities, more in conformity with theory, can be
obtained by controlling product quality in trade equations. To do
so, we have estimated trade equations including a product quality
proxy derived from survey data. Our estimation results, based on
panel data for the four main EU member States, confirm the part
played by product quality in the estimation of trade price
elasticities, at least for traditionally highly differentiated
products.
Keywords: Trade performances ; trade equations ; trade price
elasticities ; imperfect competition ;<br />product
differentiation ; quality ; unit value indices
Date: 2006-09-20
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:papers:halshs-00096826_v1&r=agr
6. Collective Voluntary Agreements and the Production of Less
Polluting Products
Rasha Ahmed (University of Connecticut)
Kathleen Segerson (University of Connecticut)
Recently, some industries have collectively agreed not to
produce models that do not meet an energy efficiency (and hence
an environmental) standard. This paper presents a simple model
that can be used to examine a voluntary collective agreement to
limit or completely eliminate the low efficiency model of a given
product (e.g., a low efficiency washing machine). We show that,
when there is competition between firms, a collective agreement
to limit or even eliminate production of the polluting model can
actually increase profits for all firms in the industry. This
suggests that a collective agreement of this type might actually
be beneficial to firms, while at the same time improving
environmental quality. However, the implicit enforcement that
comes from the public nature of the commitment is necessary to
ensure this outcome. This suggests that, by promoting such
agreements, policymakers may be able to achieve substantial
environmental gains with relatively little inducement. The impact
on social welfare will then depend on whether these gains are
sufficiently large to offset consumer losses from reductions in
product variety and the associated price increases.
Keywords: Voluntary agreements, collective agreements,
energy/fuel efficiency
JEL: Q48 Q58
Date: 2006-07
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uct:uconnp:2006-18&r=agr
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