Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association最新文献

We estimate directional anisotropic models of linear correlation for crop yields. We find that directional distances (i.e., the degree to which yield correlation decays depending on direction) tend to differ from one another, with east to west distances being “longer” than north to south distances (i.e., correlation tends to decline slower in the east to west direction), at least for the major crops of corn and soybeans. Results for wheat are somewhat ambiguous. However, in all cases, average yield aggregates made up of east to west linked counties tend to be more accurate than is the case for north to south linkages. Implications for rating and contract design in the US area yield federal crop insurance program are offered.

We use rich spatial data on observed crop choices and ethanol production to estimate the local impacts of ethanol plants and the overall impact of the 2007 US Renewable Fuel Standard (the RFS2) on crop patterns. We find that the RFS2 increased total corn area by 9.7%, corn monoculture by 16.8%, and soybean area by 6.7%, with notable spatial heterogeneity in both the overall impact and the local effects of ethanol plants. The results indicate an RFS2-induced shift in the geography of corn and soybean cultivation within the Corn Belt—intensification in the core, and significant expansion near the periphery.

This article exploits a sharp age cutoff for eligibility of a nationwide senior citizen allowance program in Nepal to show that a universal social protection increased the likelihood of receiving financial assistance among the elderly, but did not improve food consumption. Eligible females are 8.8 percentage points more likely to eat fewer meals induced by inadequate resources and 5.3 percentage points more likely to sleep hungry in response to inadequate food. This adverse effect is driven by multi-generational households with young children, implying that the program exacerbated gender disparities in food security through changes in household size and childcare duties.

This paper revisits the 2008 paper in Food Policy, “Governance and agricultural productivity: A cross-national analysis.” We estimate a country-level production function to assess the relationship between institutional indicators and agricultural production. We extend the analysis to a 22-year panel and use different functional forms. We test whether the governance and agricultural production effect varies across high and low-income countries. To check whether the choice of institutional measure drives the findings, we use two alternative indices. Our findings confirm the role of governance and institutions with quantitative differences in the estimates. We further discuss these and other heterogeneity in the paper.

Despite extensive research on retailers' price responses to demand shocks, much less is known about their non-price responses. Using heterogeneity in timing, location, and magnitude of income and wealth shocks associated with the 2008 Great Recession, we explore how US retail stores adjusted product offerings under local demand shocks. We find that stores offer fewer products and varieties besides lowering prices. Using a structural demand model, we quantify the net welfare impact of the price and assortment adjustments. On average, the consumer welfare losses from variety reduction more than offset the welfare gains from price reductions.

The small-sample properties of robust, binary choice willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimators are analyzed. A Monte Carlo simulation compares the bias and mean-squared error of marginal and expected WTP estimates from probit, zero-centered $��\; ��t_{\nu }��$ (“robit”), logit, and a generalized Tukey lambda distribution called a “pregibit” regression under normal and nonnormal distributional assumptions. Robust binary choice estimators allow for variation in tail thickness (the robit and pregibit) or tail asymmetry (the pregibit). No previous studies have compared the performance of these WTP estimators. The findings will interest researchers who use contingent validation methods to estimate WTP for nonmarket or hypothetical goods.

A strong surge in fertilizer prices in 2021 led farmers and policymakers to question the factors that drive fertilizer pricing. This study examines the relationship among natural gas, corn, and fertilizer prices, finding five structural breaks from 1997 to 2022. The pass-through rates of natural gas and corn price changes to fertilizer prices show significant shifts after the passage of the biofuel mandate, with those changes fading as the market matured. Meanwhile, natural gas price changes are the main contributing factor in the latest period. However, the linkage among these prices continues to evolve and is likely to diminish over time.

US local and regional food systems (LRFS) garner significant support from the federal government. Congress has directed the US Department of Agriculture to collect data on farmers and ranchers that use these markets, but challenges remain. We provide information about the three national surveys that provide farm-level data on sales through LRFS, including how questions have changed over time. We highlight the benefits and challenges of using each survey from scale/scope and producer implication perspectives and offer recommendations to improve the existing survey instruments to support enhanced economic understanding of the implications of local and regional food markets.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) international baseline projections are crucial for US agricultural policy. Using a dynamic time warping algorithm, we examine whether corn, soybean, and wheat baselines exhibit a lack of significant distance indicating similarity in projections across countries. We then examine whether projections for countries with more similarity with the United States projections exhibit higher projection errors. We discover evidence of projections being similar to the United States, which is associated with lower errors for corn yield, harvested area, and exports and wheat import projections, but not for other variables. These findings offer valuable insights for USDA and stakeholders.

An online presence is crucial for agritourism operators to connect with consumers. In this study, we use count data regression models to examine the correlation between average broadband speed adopted and the number of agritourism operations. We found that adoption of fast broadband in 2012 was associated with a significantly higher number of agritourism operations nationally in 2017, underscoring the role of broadband connectivity in facilitating interactions between farmers and consumers, as well as in promoting agritourism. However, only a weak association exists in rural counties, indicating that the broadband–agritourism relationship does not extend to less populated areas.