Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy最新文献

Blacks have been systematically under-represented in the Agricultural Economics profession, representing only 7% of agricultural economists in academia and between 5% and 10% in the private and public sectors, respectively. Although different policies and funding strategies have been implemented to increase the representation of minorities in the profession, these numbers have not shown significant improvements over time. This paper provides an overview of the history, role, and struggles of 1890 Land-Grant Historically Black Colleges and Universities in general, and in particular, their agricultural economics and business (AEB) Programs. Recommendations and thoughts on how to increase diversity in AEB programs are also discussed.

There is an international consensus that Africans consume less fruits and vegetables (FV), and animal products (AP) than they need for adequate nutrition, and that production and supply chains of these products are constrained. Yet, in this paper, we show that despite these problems, there is a lot of dynamism in demand and supply of these nutrient-dense products in Africa: (1) macro evidence of “domestic supply booms"—with supply growing as fast as or faster than in Asia and Latin America; (2) only 2–4% of FV, and 10% of AP consumption in Africa is imported, and only about 1–2% of the output of FV and AP is exported: the supply booms have thus been overwhelming domestically sourced, not imported; (3) micro evidence of substantial shares of consumption of FV and AP in total food consumption, similar to Asia's; (4) evidence of rapid development of spontaneous clusters of farms and off-farm SMEs (output wholesalers, logistics, processors, and agro-dealers supporting farmers). These clusters are important in fueling the supply booms. Illustrative cases from Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zambia are presented. We recommend that African governments and international partners: (1) internalize the fact that these spontaneous clusters are forming and already fueling supply booms; (2) note that important drivers of the booms have been government investments in wholesale markets, roads, and other infrastructure like electrification, and agricultural research/extension; (3) leverage and support existing spontaneous clusters and help new ones to form by greatly increasing those three types of public investments.

The proposed reductions in farm input uses foreseen in the European Green Deal may penalize European farm production while increasing environmental leakages to foreign countries where production may expand. These expected impacts have led to calls for a more restrictive trade policy based on mirror clauses. This paper considers as a case study a potential ban on glyphosate in vegetable and fruits production. We develop an original computable general equilibrium model with endogenous adoption of new European production standards by foreign producers on currently latent markets. We find in our case study that adding mirror clauses to the Green Deal marginally improves European farm income and the global environmental footprint of food. We find that foreign producers as a whole can gain from these clauses and not lose as in a standard analysis. European households support these clauses by paying higher food bills while consuming vegetables and fruits produced without glyphosate.

Agricultural and Applied Economics departments in the United States have evolved to serve traditional and new stakeholders under the three-legged land grant mission: extension, research, and teaching. Substantial shifts in the focus of faculty, sometimes matching demand from stakeholders and sometimes not, raise fundamental questions about their strategic direction. We argue agricultural and applied economics has a mission to solve problems, current and future, by working with physical sciences; specifically, the study of economic problems of the food supply chain and bioeconomy. By focusing on this mission, agricultural and applied economics will provide more value-added to society and may even improve economics while doing so.

In this paper, we use transaction data from a large grocery store retailer to describe changes in grocery shopping behavior associated with the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic before and after the vaccines were developed. We find that in general, households increased their spending and decreased their number of transactions early in the pandemic. Further, most households increased their reliance on online shopping during the pandemic and this shift persisted into the post-vaccine period. We find somewhat mixed results on how overall healthfulness of grocery store purchases changed during the pandemic, and we find that changes in healthfulness vary with market and household demographics. Perhaps most interestingly, we find that changes in a store's spending and transactions, along with the healthfulness of these purchases, vary significantly with the racial composition of a store's market and that these differential changes persisted after vaccines were available.

This study examined the impact of the mad cow (BSE) and bird flu (HPAI) outbreaks on the demand for beef, pork, and broiler meat in the United States from 1997 to 2022. Using time-varying elasticities obtained from the Rotterdam model extended to include animal disease outbreaks, we found that the BSE outbreaks significantly reduced beef consumption. These reactions were indeed time-varying, ranging from 1.312% in 2003 to 1.212% in 2005. HPAI outbreaks had a delayed reaction, with a rebound in broiler meat consumption in the quarter following the start of the outbreak. In general, the magnitude of these reactions was proportional to the severity of an outbreak.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) protects geographical indication (GI) wines such as Bordeaux and Chianti. However, there is scant empirical evidence on the effectiveness of this protection. Our triple difference panel data analysis of EU wine exports from 1995 to 2019 finds a significant effect. When countries join the WTO, their import of GI wines increases by about 25% more than non-GI wines, compared to non-joiners. Our findings suggest that specific trade provisions matter and that the EU policy of also including wine GIs in bilateral agreements is an attempt to further improve enforcement of GI protection in third countries.

Through the perspectives of impact investors, and the nutrition community, this paper explores whether impact investment in food-related small and medium enterprises (SMEs) creates a viable path to improved nutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa. From the nutrition perspective, investment in food SMEs could help address coexisting multiple forms of malnutrition by shifting nutritional quality of available foods. From the investor perspective, attractiveness of investment in food SMEs depends on financial risks, how costs are passed on to consumers, and probability of impact. Clear nutritional objectives and investment criteria are needed, as well as research to maximize the potential of this innovative approach.