Journal of Agricultural Economics最新文献

Income comparisons between farm and non-farm households play a crucial role in many aspects of farm policy. Using household income data from tax returns of all Norwegian taxpayers in the period 2006–2015 we study these income differences. We find that the unconditional mean income is higher for farm households, but with important differences depending on the comparison group considered. We also find that the income difference is reduced when we control for differences in the personal characteristics of the different non-farm comparison sub-groups. This finding implies that income comparison using unconditional means, as frequently done in agricultural policy making, is potentially misleading. We also show that the income effect of personal characteristics is not the same for different comparison sub-groups, as has been assumed in previous studies of income disparities. Differences in personal characteristics, and the income effect of those characteristics, therefore need to be accounted for if income comparisons between farmers and non-farmers are to inform farm support policies.

Modern communication technologies make information more easily and quickly accessible, leading to more transparent and competitive markets. Based on a theoretical model, this paper provides new empirical evidence on the potential impact of online search intensity on asymmetric cost pass-through. Prices often move as ‘rockets and feathers’: they rise quickly in response to cost increases and they fall slowly in response to cost reductions. A panel threshold error correction model is applied to weekly producer and retail prices of chicken and mutton in Iran. The results suggest that the volume of online searches is associated with a more complete and less asymmetric cost pass-through from farmgate to retail prices. Thus, online platforms and search engines have the potential to increase competition by bringing prices closer together and reducing profit margins.

Geographical indications (GIs) aim to protect the names of specific high-quality products (food and wine) to preserve and promote the uniqueness linked to their geographical origin and traditional know-how. EU and extra-EU countries register domestic products with GIs. This study disentangles the effects of such registrations on the quality of imports using country-level product import data for the fruit, vegetable, coffee, tea, and spice sectors. Our results show that the registration of domestic products as GIs enhances the quality of imported goods only if the importing country has a lower level of quality of domestic production. The introduction of GIs into high-quality domestic markets can discourage import quality upgrades. This is because domestic producers may prefer to compete for quality rather than price, and imported goods represent a less expensive alternative to high-quality national goods for consumers. Conversely, in countries where domestic product quality is lower, the introduction of GIs may enhance import quality upgrading because the diffusion of GIs induces domestic consumers to become more demanding in terms of quality for foreign products.

We examine the evolution of productivity and markups in US food and beverage manufacturing from 1959 through 2018. We account for non-Hicks-neutral (labour-augmenting) productivity changes and compare markups with those in general manufacturing using the same dataset and model. We also compare our results with those of the increasingly popular De Loecker and Warzynski (2012, American Economic Review, 102, 2437) method, which does not account for non-Hicks-neutral productivity growth. Empirical results show that productivity growth in the food and beverage sector has been relatively slow and driven with equal intensity by Hicks-neutral and labour-augmenting productivity gains. General manufacturing shows higher productivity growth that is mostly labour-augmenting, with markups comparable to those of food manufacturing. We find that accounting for labour-augmenting productivity produces more moderate markup estimates than the De Loecker and Warzynski (2012) method. We also find no evidence of markups rising in either food manufacturing or general manufacturing in the last 20 years, in contrast to much of the recent economic literature.

The agglomeration bonus (AB) has been advocated as an incentive mechanism to boost spatially coordinated conservation efforts, where such coordination is thought to be beneficial to achieving biodiversity or other ecological outcomes. Specifically, an AB is paid to individual landholders if their conserved habitats are spatially connected to the conserved habitats of adjacent neighbours. This paper employs a series of controlled lab experiments with agriculture students to investigate the performance of AB in budget-constrained discriminatory-price auctions across different landscape types. We focus on the spatial correlation of opportunity costs and environmental benefits as one potentially important aspect of the landscape. We set up a stylised agricultural landscape where the conservation agency aims to connect fragmented wildlife habitats by incentivising farmers to enrol land in a conservation programme. We investigate the effects of an AB in landscapes where opportunity costs and environmental benefits are uncorrelated, negatively correlated or positively correlated over space. We found that the benefits of an AB in improving landscape-scale environmental outcomes were significant in the positive correlation landscape. However, the AB resulted in worse outcomes in the uncorrelated and negative landscapes.

Farmers' preferences toward practice- and results-based agri-environmental schemes (AES) are analysed using a labelled choice experiment. The analysis focuses on schemes involving an innovative satellite-based monitoring system, with different environmental objectives. Olive groves in southern Spain are used as a case study. Results show no statistically significant differences in farmers' willingness to accept (WTA) payment for participating in practice- versus results-based AES when the scheme targets carbon sequestration. By contrast, farmers require a significantly higher WTA payment for results-based AES when targeting biodiversity (using bird species as an indicator), mostly due to the uncertainties related to its provision and monitoring. WTA significantly increases with provision level and remote sensing monitoring, regardless of the type of scheme. Significant preference heterogeneity is observed, partly explained by farmers' attitudes toward risk and their beliefs about environmental service provision and monitoring capacity. The results suggest useful policy implications, including the potential of making use of joint provision of environmental services in the design of results-based AES and accompanying them with uncertainty mitigating measures.

Though tariffs have declined in recent years, the number of applied non-tariff measures (NTMs) in meat trade has expanded. We estimate the impacts of tariffs and NTMs (sanitary and phytosanitary [SPS] measures, technical barriers to trade [TBTs], quantitative restrictions, and special safeguard measures) on beef, pork and poultry trade using a structural gravity model. Our baseline regression results show tariffs hinder trade, but SPS measures and TBTs on average expand trade for these three meat products. Using the estimates from our structural gravity model, we simulate the differential effects of declining tariffs versus proliferation of NTMs between 2003 and 2019. The simulation results show that tariff reductions during this period expanded global trade by a cumulative US$466.2 million for the three products, ceteris paribus. In contrast, growth in the number of NTMs caused global meat trade to rise by US$8.4 billion. Our findings thus suggest that the marked increase in the number of applied NTMs in recent decades has had a dramatically larger impact on global meat trade than tariff reductions.

This paper examines the role of a ‘green’ value-added tax in the competitive environment of firms. Using data on firms in Romania and leveraging the introduction of a tax reduction on organic products in 2019, I show that although the overall market for organic goods grows and potential to generate windfall profit exists, the market share of incumbent firms decreases because of intensified competition post-reform driven by new entrants competing for profits in the market. The market share decreases by about 2 percentage points after the reform. The effect depends on the relative elasticity of demand vis-à-vis supply in the market and the ability of a firm to protect its sales from new market entrants. Firms operating geographically further from the main consumer (i.e., more rural firms) and further upstream from the retail sector are more vulnerable to losing market share because urban demand is less elastic than rural demand and retail demand is less elastic than primary demand. Firms that are in markets where it is easier to switch from non-organic to organic and that are less capital intensive (i.e., have fewer fixed costs) are more vulnerable to losing market share to new market entrants.

Basic economic logic, which often simplifies assessments and explanations of agricultural policy issues, is vitally important in communicating with policy-makers. Resources are limited, and there is a premium on getting decisions at least approximately right first time. Examples from southern Africa illustrate the importance of parity pricing, and its links to household food security (Lesotho), price risk, the emergence of an agricultural futures market, and its central role in allocating scarce agricultural resources (South Africa). Insights derived from an appreciation of parity pricing are relevant in other national contexts and also help explain how international grain markets operate. The parity pricing concept provides a framework for sense-checking complicated debates relating to two issues that have been prominent in recent years; first, whether and to what extent speculation in futures markets has been a driver of agricultural price spikes, and second, how far indirect land use change (ILUC), triggered by the use of agricultural feedstocks to produce renewable energy, is a material issue. These issues are likely to be of heightened importance in the face of climate change. Each emphasises that agricultural economics matters, and that it matters that we get the economics right.