Agricultural Economics最新文献

Lately, economies have been facing an increase in the frequency and magnitude of droughts, which come with potential consequences on food prices. This article aims to analyze how drought disturbances affect price differences in local food markets. Special attention is paid to differences in product quality and marketing channels. To study the mechanism behind price differences, our analysis is framed within the food market integration theory. Our methodology follows a dyadic regression approach, which allows us to exploit the panel data structure of our market price data. We use monthly Asterix potato and long shelf-life tomato market prices from traditional markets and supermarkets in Chile. To measure drought intensity, we use remote sensing data to construct a drought index. Results show that drought shocks reduce market price differentials around harvesting and commercialization periods, which is supported by the existence of market integration. We also find that prices of high-quality products, less perishable products, and those taken from traditional markets respond more intensively to droughts and take more time to be transmitted. A direct link between droughts and crop quality, as well as supermarkets’ larger capacity for buffer stock, may be behind these interpretations. Product differentiation and retail price rigidity arguments are also discussed.

Among the millions of food insecure people in high income countries, only a modest fraction uses food pantries. Stigma is commonly cited as a barrier to use and may arise due to the perceived low product quality of pantry offerings. This study tests the hypothesis that “product stigma” is present among prospective pantry clients. In an online experimental survey of low-income respondents, we ask participants to evaluate food items under four different treatments. In a two-by-two randomized design, in one dimension they are told the food is from a grocery store or from a food pantry, and in the other dimension they are or are not provided with photos of the food items, in some cases indicating a popular brand. The study finds that respondents exhibit a negative perception of the quality of food from a pantry, but that perception is largely offset when they are shown an informative visual depiction of that food. The effect of brand information is explored in a second online experimental survey and found to be an important component of consumer perception, partly mitigating the product stigma effect of food pantry offerings, but less so than a photo does. Results suggest that food banks and food pantries may combat product stigma through marketing that uses photos, brand names, or both to depict the quality of the products they offer. Such interventions may encourage current users to visit more frequently and needy non-users to visit at all.

This study revisits the issue of long-term price convergence of rice export prices for India, Pakistan, Thailand, Uruguay, the United States, and Vietnam using a two-stage pairwise unit root testing approach. To deduce evidence or lack of proof of convergence in price series, we also examine convergence using sigma and beta convergence specified in both unconditional and conditional frameworks. The methodology used is driven by the need to address three key concerns: (i) the likelihood of finding stationary price differentials, (ii) the magnitude of these differentials, and (iii) their speed of adjustment. To evaluate these concerns, we use monthly data for 18 price series drawn from these six countries from September 2011 to February 2021. The evidence points to a lack of international convergence. This gives rise to the possibility that a shield from a general downward export price trend is already in place for some exporters. Furthermore, we find that the likelihood of convergence is greater between pairs of price series that are characterized as high quality or having the same country of origin or having similar market share. Evidence also suggests that a converged pairing is more likely to have a smaller price differential if both price series are for low-quality rice.

This study evaluates whether genetically modified (GM) corn hybrids with rootworm resistant traits (GM-RW) have lower yield risk. A crop insurance actuarial performance measure, the loss cost ratio (LCR), is used to represent yield risk. High-dimensional methods are utilized in this study to maintain parsimony in the empirical specification, and facilitate estimation. Specifically, we employ the Cluster-Lasso (cluster-least absolute shrinkage and selection operator) procedure. This method produces uniformly valid inference on the main variable of interest (i.e., the GM-RW variable) in a high-dimensional panel data setting even in the presence of heteroskedastic, non-Gaussian, and clustered error structures. After controlling for a large set of potential weather confounders using Cluster-Lasso, we find consistent evidence that GM corn hybrids with rootworm resistant traits have lower yield risk.

This paper provides an overall picture of women's representation and gender parity in the field of Agricultural Economics by constructing and analyzing a database of agricultural economists in China. We find that female scholars “occupy half the sky” in number, but not all the way up to the higher-ranking academic positions. Women lag behind men in terms of research performance and academic promotion; even more so, gender disparity becomes more prominent when moving up the ranking ladder. A closer examination of agricultural economists of different age cohorts indicates that the gender gap, both in numbers engaged in the profession and academic performance measured by Chinese paper publications and nation-level projects chaired, is narrowing. However, gaps in the number of high-quality paper publications and the time span before promotion, alongside the phenomenon of a “leaky pipeline” in academia, are growing significantly over time. The representation of “star scientists” shows similar, yet steeper trends. In the absence of detailed studies, the paper explores possible explanations of the converging gender gap in scale but increasing gender disparity that is termed a “leaky pipeline.” It concludes that the Policy of Enrollment Expansion in Higher Education provides vulnerable young females with more opportunities to access higher education, which increases both the number and proportion of women in the profession.

Livestock markets influence income generation for producers, but also accessibility and affordability of highly nutritious animal-sourced foods for consumers. Despite their importance, the functioning of livestock markets in lower-income countries is poorly understood and rarely studied compared to more developed countries. This study analyzes wholesale cattle markets in Ethiopia using a uniquely rich large-scale dataset covering both prices and cattle characteristics in 39 markets (in both highland and lowland areas) over a 10-year period, and hedonic regression models structured to understand both cattle price formation and seasonal and secular price dynamics. We show that cattle prices are influenced by a wide range of factors, including proxies for meat quality, religious fasting practices, climate-based seasonality but also climate shocks and availability of grazing land, competition from animal traction services, and rising consumer incomes. However, the implied effects of these factors are often significantly different in highland mixed crop-livestock areas compared to agro-pastoralist lowland areas, emphasizing the dualistic nature of cattle markets in Ethiopia. The analyses help inform the systemic challenges that Ethiopia will need to overcome to meet rising demand for beef products in the face of sustained income and population growth, as well as the adverse effects of climate change.

We adapt a Ricardian general equilibrium model to the setting of U.S. domestic agri-food trade to assess states’ vulnerability to adverse production shocks and supply chain disruptions. To this end, we analyze how domestic crop supply chains depend on fundamental state-level comparative advantages—which reflect underlying differences in states’ cost-adjusted productivity levels—and thereby illustrate the capacity of states to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of such disruptions to the U.S. agricultural sector. Based on the theoretical framework and our estimates of the model's structural parameters obtained using data on U.S. production, consumption, and domestic trade in crops, we undertake simulations to characterize the welfare implications of counterfactual scenarios depicting disruptions to (1) states’ agricultural productive capacity, and (2) interstate supply linkages. Our results emphasize that the distributional impacts of domestic supply chain disruptions hinge on individual states’ agricultural productive capacities, and that the ability of states to mitigate the impacts of adverse production shocks through trade relies on the degree to which states are able to substitute local production shortfalls by sourcing crops from other states.

This article documents the existence of a leaky pipeline based on complete enumeration of faculty in two large public academic networks: state agricultural universities and institutions of the Indian Council of Social Science Research. We then examine if there are gender differences in the quantity and quality of research publications of women relative to men that can explain this. As proxies for quality and visibility, we use several metrics, including the number of citations, h-index, i10 index, and Scimago rank of the journal in which the research is featured. A novel aspect of the analysis is the comparison of time paths of cumulative publications over career paths of men and women professors. Our analysis of research performance is based on scraping publicly-available data sources, including faculty and institutional websites, and google scholar pages, and represents one-third (and likely positively selected) of all faculty in these institutions. Our results suggest that women are disadvantaged in terms of number of publications during early career years, however, the disadvantage is mitigated with seniority and women perform equally well or even surpass men later in their careers. Women are more likely to write single-authored articles and have fewer collaborators than men, indicating that they do not access collaborative spaces as much, and are less networked than men. In spite of this, there is suggestive evidence that women are more quality conscious than men. This nuanced look at research productivity suggests the source of the leaky pipeline does not arise from differences in performance.

Most of the empirical literature assessing the impacts of climate change on agriculture has modeled crop yields as a function of the levels or deviations in the growing-period rainfall. However, an aspect that has received little attention in the empirical literature relates to the relationship between the timing of monsoon rains and crop yields. Using a pan-India district-level panel dataset for 50 years, this article investigates two interrelated issues critical to understanding the impacts of weather-induced agricultural risks and their management. It first examines the impact of the timing of monsoon onset on crop yields and then assesses the role of irrigation in mitigating its effects. The article finds that the delayed onset of monsoon is detrimental to crops, and its effects are realized beyond the rainy season. The findings also demonstrate that irrigation helps mitigate the harmful effects of delayed monsoon. Finally, to link these findings to farm-level adjustments, the article shows that farmers explicitly adjust the timing of irrigation in response to delays in monsoon rains.

Understanding how and why economies structurally transform away from agriculture as they grow is crucial for developing sensible growth strategies and farm and food policies. Typically, analysts who study this and related structural change issues focus on sectoral shares of gross domestic product (GDP) and employment. This article draws on trade theory to focus as well on exports. It also notes that the trade costs of some products are too high at early stages of development to make international trade profitable, so a nontradables sector is recognized. The general equilibrium model presented in the theory section provides hypotheses about structural transformation in differently endowed open economies as they grow. Those hypotheses are tested econometrically with a new annual endowments dataset covering 1995–2018 for more than 130 countries. The results are consistent with long run de-agriculturalization in the course of national economic growth in terms not only of sectoral shares of GDP and employment but also of exports. We find those shares are not significantly affected by either differences across countries in relative factor endowments or relative rates of sectoral assistance from government; but the agricultural GDP and employment shares are higher the higher is the share of agriculture in national exports.