Bilateral trade agreements between Japan and major wine-exporting countries have resulted in tariff eliminations in Japan. This raises questions about how tariffs affect the competitiveness of wine-exporting countries. The generalized dynamic Rotterdam model was used in estimating Japanese wine demand by source. Estimates were then used to project the impact of tariffs on imports of Australian, Chilean, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and U.S. wine. Tariff reductions primarily benefit affected countries, with limited adverse effects on competing countries. The elimination of tariffs on U.S. wine should offset any losses from competing trade agreements.

Recent studies have investigated the efficiencies of policies that use several policy instruments simultaneously (for example, a policy that uses a production subsidy combined with a production quota). Several studies of very specific cases find that optimal combination of two policy instruments is more efficient than optimal independent use of either. In this note we demonstrate using set theory and maximization theory, that all such specific results are examples of a more general result, which is that by combining m instruments efficiently, a government can always be at least as efficient as when using a subset of those m instruments. This result holds for any of the several definitions of “efficiency” in the literature.

A voluntary program is developed to achieve environmental goals through the self-interested choices of farmers under environmental risk and asymmetric information. Farmers behave to maximize expected net returns, and environmental quality standards are formulated through chance constraints. Because the government may not know each farmer's soil type, policy options must be self-selecting. The model is applied empirically to nitrate leaching and runoff from corn production in three New York regions. Asymmetric information between producers and the government would impose additional cost burdens on society, but these costs are modest in the context of other farm programs.

Economic policy analysis is extremely important for the relevancy of the agricultural economics profession, as applied economics is our professional niche. Economic policy analysis, however, as a public decision-support tool, is a challenging endeavor that is difficult to do well. Furthermore, if analysis is to be an input into public policy formulation and implementation, it is not sufficient for applied economists to merely supply high quality economic policy analysis; there must also be a demand for it. As a profession, applied economists appear to pay more attention to the supply of policy analysis, with less consideration of who wants and will use our analysis, or how they will come to know it.

The Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act (MPR) of 1999 was implemented in April 2001. Empirical evidence indicates a significant change in intra-week price dispersion associated with publicly reported fed cattle grid premiums and discounts occurring after MPR implementation.

The research objective is to evaluate the effect of increased market transparency resulting from implementation of MPR, on grid intra-week premium and discount dispersion levels. Empirical results suggest that increased transparency is compatible with intra-week dispersion levels increasing. Increased dispersion suggests that during the pre-MPR period weekly premium and discount data may have been drawn from a non-representative sample. From the empirical evidence, it is concluded that reform of the livestock price-reporting system appears to have been necessary in the case of publically reported grid premiums and discounts.

The objective of this analysis was to identify the production practices used by farmers to change seasonal production. Production practices included milk production per cow, proportion of cows milking, number of first lactation animals entering the herd, number of cows leaving the herd, number of days to first breeding, and calves born. Farms that participated in a seasonal pricing plan during 1993, 1994, and 1995 decreased production practice seasonality in response to price premiums, which caused a decrease in production seasonality compared to nonparticipating farms. Participating farms showed a preference for adjusting entering first lactation animals and number of calves born, but did make adjustments in other practices as well.

Virginia and other northeastern coastal states have adopted legislation in an effort to diminish the rate at which coastal wetlands are being “reclaimed” for development as residential, commercial, or industrial sites. In all these states, the arguments for public protection of natural wetlands were based upon a growing, but still incomplete, body of scientific evidence linking wetlands to any array of non-market ecological services such as waste assimilation and provision of fish and wildlife habitat.

While access to reliable electricity can significantly constrain industrial production, little is known as to how unreliability impacts firm level productivity. This is a particularly salient issue for firms in developing countries, where electricity provision is still unreliable and self-generation is costly. This paper analyzes the impact of electricity provision on productivity, instrumenting for electricity demand with district level solar irradiance. Results indicate that firms exhibit decreasing productivity in the initial stages of electricity adoption that decreases over time. Furthermore, I find that unreliability negatively impacts productivity initially and over time, and this effect is larger for smaller firms.

This study investigates reasons for adoption of best management practices (BMP), crawfish farmers' participation in the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), and economic impacts of BMP adoption using data from a 2008 survey of crawfish producers. Most-cited reasons for BMP adoption are farmers' perceptions of increases in profit and long-run productivity. Land tenancy, education, double-cropping or crop rotation, and proximity to a stream influence EQIP participation. Perceptions of economic profits depend on the practices used. Participation in EQIP negatively impacts farmers' perceptions of profitability from adopting BMPs. The results underscore the importance of economic incentives in promoting BMP adoption.

This paper reports results from a contingent valuation based public good experiment conducted in the African nation of Botswana. In a sample of university students, we find evidence that stated willingness to contribute to a public good in a hypothetical setting is higher than actual contribution levels. However, results from regression analysis suggest that this is true only in the second round of the experiment, when participants making actual contributions have learned to significantly lower their contribution levels. As globalization expands markets, and economies such as Botswana's continue to modernize, there is a growing need to understand how hypothetical bias will influence the valuation of public goods.

In this article, research on the application of science to policy issues is reviewed and applied to economic science. Economists who want their professionally credentialed economic research to have an impact on public policy are advised to consult with policy decision-makers in framing their research questions and throughout the research process, thus assuring that the resulting findings will be relevant. A minimal degree of bias in framing, conducting, and presenting research complements a high degree of relevance for the results, allowing economic research to make a difference.

The Truckee/Carson/Walker River watershed in northern Nevada is under an imminent threat of infestation by the New Zealand mud snail, an aquatic nuisance species with the potential to harm recreational fisheries. We combine a utility-theoretic system-demand model of recreational angling with a Bayesian econometric framework to provide estimates of trip and welfare losses under different types of regulatory control policies. We find that such losses can be substantial, warranting immediate investments in preemptive strategies via public outreach and awareness campaigns.

Withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) could be costly for U.S. beef exports to Japan given existing trade agreements such as the Japan-Australia Economic Partnership Agreement (JAEPA). We estimate the demand for imported beef in Japan by source and product and assess the impact of tariff reductions on exporting countries. Our results suggest JAEPA will result in considerable increases in Australian beef exports to Japan, largely at the expense of the U.S. beef. However, similar tariff reductions for U.S. beef could eliminate these negative effects and even result in a net increase in beef imports from both countries.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires concentrated animal feeding operations to develop and implement a comprehensive nutrient management plan. Changes in manure management to meet nutrient application standards will generally increase production costs. Some of these costs can be offset by savings from replacing commercial fertilizer with manure nutrients, and through financial assistance programs such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). A manure application cost model was used to examine the costs to confined dairy farms of meeting nutrient application standards, and the ability of fertilizer offsets and EQIP to reduce these costs.

This study illustrates the differences in empirical results due to data measurements and estimating procedures when applying the single index market model in agriculture. Gross and net return betas along with systematic and unsystematic risk proportions are estimated and found to be different. The stochastic coefficients model is used to show the difference in beta-risk estimates compared with the traditional fixed coefficients OLS procedure. A third estimating technique, weighted least squares/Prais Winsten method, is also proposed.

An equilibrium displacement model of the U.S. meat markets is used to measure the potential impacts of promotion investment, differentiating meats by types and by supply source, taking into account the U.S. participation in global meat markets, and considering imperfect competition in the meat industry. The increase in U.S. producer welfare resulting from a 10 percent increase in promotion ranges from -$1.29 million to $2.60 million for U.S. beef producers and from -$0.96 million to $1.67 million for U.S. pork producers, depending primarily on the advertising elasticity used.

This paper examines agricultural use-value legislation in light of statewide reassessment in New York. Historically, farm real estate has been underassessed relative to other classes of property. Thus, statewide reassessment at full value would significantly increase farmland property taxes. These increases could be more than offset by widespread application of use-value assessment. In 1979, the tax reductions, when compared with full-value assessment, would be about $8 per acre. The tax bases of some rural communities may be reduced significantly by use-value assessment.

This paper presents a model of the farm labor allocation decision based on risk and return characteristics of different activities. It is shown that off-farm employment can play an important role in the diversification of farm family income, implying that portfolio models of risk and return to farm activities should take into account the possibility of off-farm employment. A model of the labor allocation decision based on the risk and return characteristics of each activity is developed and tested using a state level cross section of the United States over the post-war period, and performs well in explaining variation in reliance on off-farm income.

Before the 1970s, the U.S. economy was so large relative to the rest of the world that few American economists worried about the international sector and its relation to the U.S. economy. That view has changed dramatically in the past two decades. Total U.S. trade has increased from only $83 billion in 1970 to $866 billion in 1990, averaging a 12.4% increase each year. Exports accounted for less than 4% of U.S. gross national product (GNP) in the 1950s and 1960s, but now exports account for about 6% of U.S. GNP. These changes have radical implications for U.S. firms and government policies. The U.S. can no longer disregard economic occurrences in the rest of the world.