The purpose of this note is to address a problem faced in using stated preference methods to estimate willingness to pay (WTP) for a project. The considered problem occurs under pure altruism. Even though an agent is equipped with well-behaved preferences, a conventional closed-ended (binary) valuation question may induce her to overrate or underrate her true WTP. On the other hand, an open-ended valuation format seemingly provides a correct answer, but such a format fails to be incentive compatible.
{"title":"On Misrepresentation of Altruistic Preferences in Discrete-Choice Experiments","authors":"P. Johansson, B. Kriström","doi":"10.22004/AG.ECON.303599","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22004/AG.ECON.303599","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this note is to address a problem faced in using stated preference methods to estimate willingness to pay (WTP) for a project. The considered problem occurs under pure altruism. Even though an agent is equipped with well-behaved preferences, a conventional closed-ended (binary) valuation question may induce her to overrate or underrate her true WTP. On the other hand, an open-ended valuation format seemingly provides a correct answer, but such a format fails to be incentive compatible.","PeriodicalId":54890,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics","volume":"46 1","pages":"126-133"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68538848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Valuable are Antimicrobials for Pig Production? An Econometric Analysis","authors":"J. Jensen, Dagim G. Belay, J. V. Olsen","doi":"10.22004/AG.ECON.310520","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22004/AG.ECON.310520","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54890,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68541797","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
USDA Economic Research Service’s (ERS) farm income forecasts play an important role in decision making and planning across the agricultural sector, yet recent studies suggest that ERS’s initial farm income forecasts are biased. This study examines the degree to which ERS’s initial forecast of net cash income and its components can be improved using information from USDA’s 10year Agricultural Baseline Projections. We apply several forecast evaluation tools to a unique set of ERS forecasts, Baseline projections, and official estimates from 1997 through 2019. Our forecast encompassing tests show that Baseline provides important information for predicting livestock receipts, direct government payments, farmrelated income, and cash expenses. Our findings are potentially useful for both ERS forecasters and a variety of farm income forecast users.
{"title":"Improving ERS's Net Cash Income Forecasts using USDA Baseline Projections","authors":"Todd H. Kuethe, Siddhartha S. Bora, A. Katchova","doi":"10.22004/AG.ECON.310528","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22004/AG.ECON.310528","url":null,"abstract":"USDA Economic Research Service’s (ERS) farm income forecasts play an important role in decision making and planning across the agricultural sector, yet recent studies suggest that ERS’s initial farm income forecasts are biased. This study examines the degree to which ERS’s initial forecast of net cash income and its components can be improved using information from USDA’s 10year Agricultural Baseline Projections. We apply several forecast evaluation tools to a unique set of ERS forecasts, Baseline projections, and official estimates from 1997 through 2019. Our forecast encompassing tests show that Baseline provides important information for predicting livestock receipts, direct government payments, farmrelated income, and cash expenses. Our findings are potentially useful for both ERS forecasters and a variety of farm income forecast users.","PeriodicalId":54890,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68541803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Key words: meatpacking, plant shutdown, oligopoly, oligopsony (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.) Introduction The unprecedented spike in beef price spreads (Figure 1) and drop in cattle slaughter (Figure 2), as beef-packing plants closed or slowed production because of COVID-19 (Dyal, 2020;Taylor, Boulos, and Almond, 2020) prompted calls for investigations into "inappropriate influence" during the pandemic by the highly concentrated packers in the beef market (National Cattlemen's Beef Association, 2020;R-Calf, 2020;Grassley, 2020). The extent to which packer concentration and market power are believed to have triggered or exacerbated the widening of the beef price spread during the pandemic is revealed in a series of letters from cattle producer groups to lawmakers and lawmakers to government agencies. On April 29, 2020, R-Calf (2020) wrote to President Trump and congressional leaders stating that packer concentration "stymies producers' market access and robust competition for cattle... [and] also transfers any marketing power America's cattle farmers and ranchers might possess to the highly concentrated beef packing industry." On July 22, 2020, 5 months into the pandemic, the USDA released the Boxed Beef & Fed Cattle Price Spread Investigation Report, which summarized, in addition to the market impacts of the Tyson fire on beef price spreads, the market impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2020a).
{"title":"COVID-19, Beef Price Spreads, and Market Power","authors":"A. Azzam, Sunil P. Dhoubhadel","doi":"10.22004/AG.ECON.313309","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22004/AG.ECON.313309","url":null,"abstract":"Key words: meatpacking, plant shutdown, oligopoly, oligopsony (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.) Introduction The unprecedented spike in beef price spreads (Figure 1) and drop in cattle slaughter (Figure 2), as beef-packing plants closed or slowed production because of COVID-19 (Dyal, 2020;Taylor, Boulos, and Almond, 2020) prompted calls for investigations into \"inappropriate influence\" during the pandemic by the highly concentrated packers in the beef market (National Cattlemen's Beef Association, 2020;R-Calf, 2020;Grassley, 2020). The extent to which packer concentration and market power are believed to have triggered or exacerbated the widening of the beef price spread during the pandemic is revealed in a series of letters from cattle producer groups to lawmakers and lawmakers to government agencies. On April 29, 2020, R-Calf (2020) wrote to President Trump and congressional leaders stating that packer concentration \"stymies producers' market access and robust competition for cattle... [and] also transfers any marketing power America's cattle farmers and ranchers might possess to the highly concentrated beef packing industry.\" On July 22, 2020, 5 months into the pandemic, the USDA released the Boxed Beef & Fed Cattle Price Spread Investigation Report, which summarized, in addition to the market impacts of the Tyson fire on beef price spreads, the market impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2020a).","PeriodicalId":54890,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68542750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Economic Implications of Citrus Greening Disease Management Strategies","authors":"S. Zapata, Felipe Peguero, M. Sétamou, O. Alabi","doi":"10.22004/AG.ECON.313310","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22004/AG.ECON.313310","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54890,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics","volume":"144 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68543137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rent-seeking behavior by participants in payment for environmental services auctions reduces the number of affordable contracts and decreases environmental protection. We propose a new auction mechanism, the provision point reverse auction (PPRA), to mitigate this rent-seeking behavior. The PPRA includes a public component where the probability of contract acceptance for one individual is affected by the sum of the other accepted offers. We provide theoretical support for the new mechanism and follow with laboratory experiments. The experiments yield average offers between 12.57% to 58.17% smaller in a PPRA compared to alternate reverse discriminative auctions, with the exact difference dependent on the compared mechanism and auction parameters. Implementing a PPRA to procure environmental or conservation goods may therefore increase the total quantity of these services acquired.
{"title":"Provision Point Reverse Auction: A New Auction Mechanism with Applications for Conservation Contracts","authors":"S. Otto, Gregory L. Poe, D. Just","doi":"10.22004/AG.ECON.302499","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22004/AG.ECON.302499","url":null,"abstract":"Rent-seeking behavior by participants in payment for environmental services auctions reduces the number of affordable contracts and decreases environmental protection. We propose a new auction mechanism, the provision point reverse auction (PPRA), to mitigate this rent-seeking behavior. The PPRA includes a public component where the probability of contract acceptance for one individual is affected by the sum of the other accepted offers. We provide theoretical support for the new mechanism and follow with laboratory experiments. The experiments yield average offers between 12.57% to 58.17% smaller in a PPRA compared to alternate reverse discriminative auctions, with the exact difference dependent on the compared mechanism and auction parameters. Implementing a PPRA to procure environmental or conservation goods may therefore increase the total quantity of these services acquired.","PeriodicalId":54890,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics","volume":"46 1","pages":"134-151"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68538627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Costs of Futures Hedging in Corn and Soybean Markets","authors":"R. Shi, Olga Isengildina Massa","doi":"10.22004/AG.ECON.313311","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22004/AG.ECON.313311","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54890,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68543181","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Forward pricing and allocation mechanisms for rail transportation serve critical functions for the grain-marketing system. We examine the effects of shipping costs on the origin and export basis using a panel simultaneous-equations model. Results indicate that the origin and export basis are determined simultaneously with each one affected by the dynamic variability of shipping costs. On average, a dollar increase for the shipping costs decreases the origin basis by 19 cents and increases the export basis by 82 cents per bushel of soybeans. The interaction between shipping cost and exports on the export basis impacts both marketing and trading strategies in the grain-marketing system.
{"title":"Origin and Export Basis Interdependencies in Soybeans: A Panel Data Analysis","authors":"Prithviraj Lakkakula, W. Wilson","doi":"10.22004/AG.ECON.302464","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22004/AG.ECON.302464","url":null,"abstract":"Forward pricing and allocation mechanisms for rail transportation serve critical functions for the grain-marketing system. We examine the effects of shipping costs on the origin and export basis using a panel simultaneous-equations model. Results indicate that the origin and export basis are determined simultaneously with each one affected by the dynamic variability of shipping costs. On average, a dollar increase for the shipping costs decreases the origin basis by 19 cents and increases the export basis by 82 cents per bushel of soybeans. The interaction between shipping cost and exports on the export basis impacts both marketing and trading strategies in the grain-marketing system.","PeriodicalId":54890,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics","volume":"46 1","pages":"69-84"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68537970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Vanishing U.S. Cattle Cycle: A Stochastic Cycle Approach","authors":"Yunhan Li, J. Shonkwiler","doi":"10.22004/AG.ECON.305225","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22004/AG.ECON.305225","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54890,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics","volume":"46 1","pages":"479-489"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68539527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Persistence in Commodity Prices","authors":"L. Gil‐Alana, Cecilia Font de Villanueva","doi":"10.22004/AG.ECON.310529","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22004/AG.ECON.310529","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54890,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68541812","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}