This study exploits temporal and cross-sectional variation in weather and long-run climate trends to investigate their effects on farm-level productivity. Using panel data for a sample of Wisconsin dairy producers, three stochastic production frontier models are estimated and a random parameters approach is chosen as the most desirable, which accounts for stochastic observed and unobserved environmental factors. The estimated coefficients are used to decompose a multiplicative total factor productivity index that accounts for different sources of productivity growth. Annual productivity growth is estimated at 2.16 per cent, driven primarily by technical progress (1.91 per cent per annum). The average per year contribution of the other productivity components is: climate adaptation efforts −0.31 per cent; scale-mix efficiency change +0.13 per cent and technical efficiency +0.05 per cent.

It is increasingly recognized that a transition to sustainable finance is crucial to scale up the low-carbon investments needed to achieve the global climate targets. A main barrier to portfolios' decarbonization is the lack of conclusive evidence on whether low-carbon investments add value to a portfolio, and on whether markets react to climate announcements by rewarding (penalizing) low-carbon (carbon-intensive) assets. To fill this gap, we develop an empirical analysis of the low-carbon and carbon-intensive indices for the EU, US and global stock markets. We test if financial markets are pricing the Paris Agreement (PA) by decreasing (increasing) the systematic risk and increasing (decreasing) the portfolio weights of low-carbon (carbon-intensive) indices afterwards. We find that after the PA the correlation among low-carbon and carbon-intensive indices drops. The overall systematic risk for the low-carbon indices decreases consistently, while stock markets' reaction is mild for most carbon-intensive indices. Moreover, the weight of the low-carbon indices within an optimal portfolio tends to increase after the PA. This evidence suggests that stock market investors have started to consider low-carbon assets as an appealing investment opportunity after the PA but have not penalized yet carbon-intensive assets.

In order to integrate ecosystem services (ES) in designing agri-environmental policy, we investigated both the demand for, and supply of, ES from agricultural environments in Finland. Using the discrete choice experiment method, we measured citizens’ willingness to pay (WTP) for four different ES and analysed farmers’ compensation request (willingness to accept [WTA]) for producing these services. Biodiversity and water quality gathered the highest WTA of farmers, but also the highest WTP of citizens. Overall, the average WTA exceeded the WTP for almost all attributes and levels, but 20–27 per cent of farmers were willing to produce the ES with the compensation lower than citizens’ WTP.

This paper explores the direct network effect for online platforms supporting industrial symbiosis (IS), which is a recommended strategy to support the transition towards the circular economy. Through IS, companies can use wastes produced by other companies as inputs to production processes. Online platforms supporting companies in operating IS relationships can play a critical role in developing the IS practice. In this paper, an agent-based model is designed to simulate the emergence of IS relationships among companies located in a given geographical area. Companies can establish relationships traditionally (relying on face-to-face contacts) or by using a platform. Several scenarios, defined by different platform usage rates, are simulated. Results show that there is a minimum platform usage rate allowing companies to benefit from using the platform. If the platform usage rate is lower than this threshold, the platform does not contribute to generate further benefits for companies. When the platform usage rate is higher than the threshold, the individual benefits for users are higher the greater the number of other companies using the platform. Based on these results, implications on how to ensure a win-win approach for companies and platform owners can be provided, as well as implications for policymakers.

Climate change will affect tourism as one of the sectors most dependent on natural resources. Due to the strong dependency of many peripheral areas on tourism, climate change has the potential to destabilize regional economies. The objective of this paper is to assess the impacts of climate change on ski tourism demand. A tourist survey (n = 1957) with a choice experiment conducted in 53 ski areas in Austria provides the data for our analyses. Results show that snow is the most important factor for destination choice. Nevertheless, preferences of respondents are heterogeneous. Measures that enhance price-performance ratio, i.e. lowering lift ticket prices and avoiding crowding, turn out to be the most suitable compensation for suboptimal snow conditions. As long as substitute ski areas with better snow conditions exist, destinations with marginal snow conditions are likely to face severe demand losses (up to 60%). Nevertheless, dynamic pricing has the potential to compensate medium snow reliability. If all destinations are affected by deteriorating snow conditions, total demand reduces by 64% if snow reliability is low. If these conditions and effects are limited to the beginning and the end of the ski season, demand is projected to decline by 18%.

Some experimental and archival studies have found support for the scope-severity paradox (SSP), according to which the perceived harm of the same crime or wrongdoing decreases when the number of victims is greater. In the context of environmental wrongdoing, we investigate whether the SSP applies when the number of perpetrators of a wrongdoing increases. Using a survey experiment with two scenarios and five treatments (variations of the number of perpetrators and the individual and total harms committed), we test whether the perceived severity and punishment recommendation for perpetrators of an environmental wrongdoing decrease as the number of perpetrators increases, independent of the total environmental harm committed. Unlike the studies that look at the SSP phenomenon as regards number of victims, we do not find direct support for the existence of an SSP effect regarding number of perpetrators. We do find, however, that participants evaluating the one-perpetrator treatments are more likely to judge with the highest severity. We also provide some collateral insights such as the insensitiveness of participants to the individual pollution level, once the environmental damage exceeds a certain threshold. Our results extend previous SSP studies in important directions and suggest some policy implications, and avenues for further research.

The Canadian federal, provincial, and territorial governments recently enacted a new 5‐year agricultural policy framework, the Canadian Agricultural Partnership. While the framework contained few changes to existing policies, the governments also committed to a full review of Canadian business risk management (BRM) programs. In this article, I provide an overview of the existing suite of BRM programs and summarize the BRM program review. I conclude by making recommendations for future policy frameworks.

This paper explores the economic implications of fall armyworm (FAW) and its management strategies by exploiting exogenous variation in FAW exposure amongst households in southern Ethiopia. We find that FAW exposure affects maize yield and sales negatively, but not consumption. Furthermore, we find evidence of crowding-in and intensification of insecticide use in response to FAW exposure. We also find suggestive evidence that existing extension service arrangements lack the capacity to deal with emerging threats such as FAW. Results imply that targeted interventions aimed at improving the effectiveness of control measures and institutional capacity would be key to reduce the adverse effects of FAW. Highlights The economic impact of fall armyworm (FAW) in southern Ethiopia assessed Fall armyworm significantly reduces maize yields and maize sales A positive correlation observed between FAW exposure and intensity of insecticide use Existing individual FAW control strategies do not significantly abate losses from FAW Improving institutional capacity is essential to control FAW

This article proposes a new theoretical explanation to the question of environmental governance failures, combining micro and macro explanations in the long run. We put forward the concept of Transversal Transaction Costs (TTCs) as a critical source of governance failures. TTCs are transaction costs induced by interlinkages between public policies and property rights, an area under-investigated by the natural resources governance literature. We emphasise that TTCs are consequential in limiting the ability of environmental governance to coordinate natural resource uses. Drawing on institutional complementary and cluster literature, we argue that TTCs increased significantly over the years shaping governance evolution at the macro level in the long run. We show that institutional resource regimes tend to get locked into an Institutional Complexity Trap (ICT), which prevents improvement in coordination capacity and explains the persistence of environmental governance failures. Four cases substantiate our conceptual proposition of transversal transaction costs. In addition, the process-tracing of six water governance cases in Europe from 1750 to 2004 provides empirical support to the macro dynamics of institutional complexity trap.

Worldwide increasing demand for agricultural products poses the critical question of where this additional production will take place. In this context, the phenomenon of large scale Foreign Land Acquisition (FLA) is one strategy that has been controversially discussed in scientific and public debates. A better understanding of what factors drive FLA-flows between investor and target countries is still needed. This project applies a gravity model to estimate the effect of agro-environmental determinants in target countries. The response variables are derived from improved data obtained from the Land Matrix Global Observatory and the explanatory variables from a range of climatic and agricultural data sets. The issue of large numbers of zero flows in such a data set is tackled using zero-inflating regression models. Overall the results highlight the crucial role of water resources, in particular the potential of rainfed crop production in the targeted areas, and not just land abundance alone as found in previous studies. Moreover, in line with previous studies, we show that in contrast to other types of investment flows, agricultural investment flows are not negatively affected by weaker institutional regulations or corruption.

We present a systematic review of the extensive body of research on farmer risk preference measurement across Europe. We capture the methodological developments over time and discuss remaining challenges and potential areas for further research. Given the constantly evolving policy environment in Europe, and increasing climate‐change related risks and uncertainties, there is large value to be gained from enhancing our understanding of this fundamental aspect of farmers’ decision‐making processes and consequent actions.

We develop an index that measures the overall trade effects of domestic support payments. Our index is based on the Mercantilist Trade Restrictiveness Index (MTRI) and is capable of analysing the development of the trade restrictiveness of domestic support payments over time and across countries. It facilitates the evaluation of agricultural policy reforms introducing changes in the composition of domestic support payments. We conduct this analysis with a computable general equilibrium model that is extended to depict detailed agricultural policies using the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union (EU) as an example. For the representation of agricultural policies, we updated the underlying database by incorporating detailed EU domestic support payments taken from the OECD Producer Support Estimate (PSE) tables and reconcile PSE data with the WTO classification scheme. Our index confirms a decrease in trade distortion stemming from the implementation of decoupled support in the EU. In addition, the trade‐equivalent protection rate shows that the trade restrictiveness of domestic support payments depends on the assumptions made with regard to the degree of decoupling of those payments.

We quantitatively assess the impacts of re‐allocating budgetary resources within Pillar 1 of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) from direct income support to a direct greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction subsidy for EU farmers. The analysis is motivated by the discussion on the future CAP, with calls for both an increased ambition on climate action from the agricultural sector and for a more incentive‐based delivery system of direct payments under strict budgetary restrictions. By conducting a simulation experiment with an agricultural partial equilibrium model (CAPRI), we are able to factor in farmers’ supply and technology‐adjusting responses to the policy change and to estimate the potential uptake of the GHG‐reduction subsidy in EU regions. We find that a budget‐neutral re‐allocation of financial resources towards subsidised emission savings can reduce EU agricultural non‐CO2 emissions by 21% by 2030, compared to a business‐as‐usual baseline. Two‐thirds of the emission savings are due to changes in production levels and composition, implying that a significant part of the achieved GHG reduction is offset globally by emission leakage. At the aggregated level, the emission‐saving subsidy and increased producer prices compensate farmers for the foregone direct income support, but differences in regional impacts indicate accelerated structural change and heterogeneous income effects in the farm population. We conclude that the assumed regional budget‐neutrality condition introduces inefficiencies in the incentive system, and the full potential of the EU farming sector for GHG emissions reduction is not reached, leaving ample room for the design of more efficient agricultural policies for climate action.

We develop a methodology addressing the issue of confounded beliefs and preferences in models of discrete choice. First, we formalise the theoretical framework and logical underpinnings of a belief‐preference model of choice for experience and credence goods, where subjective beliefs relate to uncertain product quality. We then present the experimental procedure within the context of an online choice experiment studying consumer food preferences. The empirical strategy leverages information from a quality sorting task to identify and estimate beliefs, while choice data are used to recover preferences. By conditioning product choices on predicted quality perceptions, the issue of endogenous beliefs is resolved.

Russia's transition to a market economy in the early 1990s shocked its agricultural sector, creating the potential for profit and gains from specialisation and productivity improvements. However, subsequent regional agricultural development has been highly uneven, and the sources of the sector's productivity improvement remain unclear. Drawing on a newly‐assembled Russian regional farm production and policy dataset, we evaluate agricultural total factor productivity growth from 1994 to 2013, decomposing that growth into technical progress and efficiency gains, for the nation as a whole and for the major agricultural districts of the South and Central. We then test how investments in road and rail infrastructure and human capital have influenced those gains. The South substantially outperformed the Central district and the nation at large with respect to all three performance indicators. However, contrary to the literature, we find that these particular state policies provided no substantial growth advantages, there or elsewhere. Rather, the dominant force behind Russia's agricultural growth has been informal technical change.

We present empirical evidence on how changes in food preferences have contributed to nutrition transition, where the dietary pattern of households shifts away from traditional staples. Using household‐level time series cross‐section survey data for India, we estimate time varying demand elasticities, revealing evidence of the declining importance of cereals in Indian household diets. The estimates show that Indian demand for cereals has become more income inelastic and price elastic. We also find that cereals are a substitute rather than a complement to animal products in household diets. Since changes in elasticities can only be attributed to variation in utility parameters, this indicates that cereals are losing favour with Indian households. These findings have implications for Indian food policy design and implementation.

We evaluate the performance of area yield crop insurance (AYCI) and farm yield crop insurance (FYCI) using farm‐level yield data from China, focusing on their effects on farmers' welfare, and their cost‐effectiveness in terms of government subsidy. Given a subsidy rate sufficient to generate a politically acceptable participation level, the price advantage of AYCI may no longer offset its higher basis risk, and consequently FYCI may be preferred by farmers. From the government's perspective, AYCI is the cheapest option to maintain reasonable farmer participation in insurance, but is not necessarily the most cost‐effective choice. Our findings suggest that, contrary to an assumption that informs many developing country agricultural insurance programmes, AYCI schemes are not necessarily preferred to FYCI. Decisions on the structure of a national agricultural insurance programme should be based on careful consideration of local conditions.

Cowpea covers the largest area of any grain legume in Africa and is especially important in West Africa where Nigeria and Niger alone account for over 75% of the total cowpea production in the world. Despite successes of international and national cowpea improvement research in the development and release of several improved varieties, there is limited empirical evidence of adoption and ex‐post impacts of improved cowpea. Using a nationally representative survey data from a sample of 1,525 cowpea‐growing households in northern Nigeria cultivating over 2,500 cowpea plots, we assess the adoption and impacts of improved cowpea varieties on cowpea yields, net returns and production costs. We apply a control function approach and propensity score matching models to estimate the causal effects of adoption of improved cowpea varieties. Our results show that 38% of the cowpea plots were planted with improved varieties, and cowpea yields, net returns and production costs increase significantly with the adoption of improved cowpea varieties. Adoption of improved cowpea varieties is associated on average with 26% yield gains, 61% increase in net returns and 14% increase in production costs. We also show that farmers who have a lower propensity to adopt improved cowpea varieties also face higher costs of production.

We examine heterogeneous consumer preferences in Chinese milk markets. Using a discrete choice experiment, we examine how the brand, quality certification, traceability label and price influence consumers' milk choices. We identify four consumer segments using a latent class model: price conscious (9.8%), balanced thinking (19.8%), health conscious (57.5%), and environment conscious (12.9%) consumers. These four segments have distinct preferences: price conscious consumers prefer green certification; balanced thinking consumers have the highest willingness to pay for traceability labels; health conscious consumers have strong brand awareness; and environment conscious consumers prefer organic certification and traceability labels and use price as a quality signal. Such diversity of consumer preference can be explained by four psychological factors: price consciousness, food safety concerns, health consciousness and environmental concerns.

The ‘high speed’ rotavator is used for shallow tillage to create a fine tilth and incorporate crop residues, often with a single tractor pass. Rotavator tillage has spread quickly in many parts of South Asia, despite short‐term experimental trials suggesting deteriorating soil quality and crop yield penalties. Evidence of rotavator impacts on farmer fields across soil gradients and time is largely absent. From a farm household survey conducted among wheat farmers in Nepal, we estimate wheat yield and profitability outcomes for rotavator adopters and non‐adopters using propensity score matching. We find that rotavator adoption leads to inferior outcomes, despite significant cost savings for land preparation (US$ 11–15 per hectare). With rotavator adoption, farmers lose about 284–309 kg of wheat grain and about US$ 93–101 of profits on average per hectare per season, and these penalties increase with longer‐term use of the technology. Adoption of rotavator appears to be driven by the cost and time savings for land preparation. Against this backdrop, new policy and extension efforts are required that discourage rotavator use and favour more sustainable tillage technologies.

Despite extensive efforts made by national and international certification agencies, Indonesian smallholder farmers’ participation in palm oil certification schemes adoption remains low. A fundamental obstacle is the smallholder practice of rainforest transformation into oil palm plantation which is forbidden by the agencies. In this context, we investigate three policies that could lead to a reduction in rainforest deforestation by smallholders: price premium on certified palm oil; the provision of environmental information; contributor recognition. In order to evaluate the influence of the policies ex‐ante, we conduct a social dilemma experiment involving rubber and oil palm smallholders in Jambi Province, Sumatra, Indonesia. The findings indicate that the price premium and provision of context‐specific environmental information could reduce rainforest transformation. However, a statistically significant effect of contributor recognition was not found.

Drought Tolerant Maize Varieties (DTMV) and Rainfall Index Insurance (RII) are potential complements, though with limited empirical basis. We employ a multivariate spatial framework to investigate the potential for bundling DTMV with a simulated multi‐site and multi‐environment RII, designed to insure against mild, moderate and severe drought risk. We use yield data from on‐farm trials conducted by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and partners over 49 locations in Eastern and Southern Africa spanning 8 countries and 5 mega‐environments (dry lowland, dry mid altitude, wet lower mid altitude, low wetland and wet upper mid altitude) in which 19 different improved maize varieties including DTMV were tested at each location. Spatially correlated daily rainfall data are generated from a first‐order two‐state Markov chain process and used to calibrate the index and predict yields with a hierarchical Bayes multivariate spatial model. Results show high variation in the performance and benefits of different bundles which depend on the maize variety, the risk layer insured, and the type of environment, with high chances of selecting a sub‐optimal and unattractive contract. We find that complementing RII with a specific DTMV produces contracts with lower premiums and higher guaranteed returns especially in dry lowland increasing the chances of scaling up RII within this environment.

We investigate the extent of variation in output sharing in land rental contracts and alternative hypotheses to explain this variation. Close to half of the rental contracts in our study in northern Ethiopia have output shares that deviate from the dominant 50–50 equal sharing. Variation in land quality, the relative bargaining power of landlords and tenants, production risks and shocks are hypothesised to influence output shares. Matched data of landlords and tenants are used. The importance of endogenous matching of landlords and tenants is investigated by assessing how endogenous tenant characteristics are correlated with landlord characteristics. We find evidence of negative assortative matching for key resource characteristics. A control function approach is used to control for endogenous matching in the output share models. The results reveal that production risks, as well as relative bargaining power, affect output shares in the reverse tenancy setting where tenants are relatively wealthier and more influential than landlords.

This paper attempts to explore the spillover effects of ecological lands, including forest, grassland, wetland, and cultivated land, on housing prices. To this end, we test hypotheses from a spatial multilevel hedonic model in Wuhan, China. We find that forest size and wetland size has a linear positive spillover effect on urban housing prices, and a moderate grassland area and distance from wetland generates positive spillover effect on urban housing prices, while too much or poor grassland area and distance from wetland may not. Also, only cultivated land very proximity to urban residential areas may raise the housing prices, most of the cultivated land in our case may reduce the housing prices. This article contributes to the literature by integrating different ecological lands into the hedonic analysis based on spatial multilevel models and deepens the relationship between the accessibility and visibility of ecological lands and housing prices. This result implies that demand for the forest, grassland, and wetlands can be well reflected in the housing market, while demand for cultivated land is less reflected in the housing market. Our findings urge policymakers to increase the effective supply of ecological lands through urban development planning and maintain the continuous supply of existing ecological lands by implementing market, differential ecological protection mechanisms.

Schistosomiasis is a serious health problem in many parts of Africa which is linked to poor water quality and limited sanitation resources. We administered a discrete choice experiment on water access and health education in rural Uganda, focussing on interventions designed to reduce cases of the disease. Unlike previous studies, we included a payment vehicle of both labour hours supplied per week and money paid per month within each choice set. We were thus able to elicit both willingness to pay and willingness to work for alternative interventions. Respondents exhibit high demand for new water sources. From the random parameter model, only households with knowledge about water-borne parasites are price sensitive and exhibit willingness to pay values. Through a latent class model specification, higher income respondents exhibit higher willingness to pay values for all programme attributes; however, lower income participants have higher willingness to work values for certain new water sources. We found a shadow wage rate of labour that is between 15 and 55% of the market wage rate.

We develop a global dataset of methane inventories derived from production, supply use (final production), and consumption activities for 1997–2014, disaggregated to 78 countries/regions. Our dataset extends existing data on methane emissions to 2014 and allows to trace emissions embodied in international trade in intermediates and in final goods. Anthropogenic emissions are quantitatively important for global warming and increased by about 18% from 1997 to 2014. The bulk of produced emissions is attributable to developing economies, though a considerable amount is exported mainly via manufactured goods to high income countries, which are net-importers of methane. Trade-embodied emissions increased by 8% more than nationally produced emissions during 1997–2014, with the strongest increase experienced by China, India, and Indonesia. Decompositions of the growth rate of emissions over this period suggest that methane efficiency improved, but the effect of these efficiency gains on total emissions was outweighed by the effect of economic and population growth in low- and middle-income countries. In high-income countries, by contrast, methane efficiency gains were larger the effect of economic and population growth.

In this note, we propose a local maximum likelihood estimator for spatially‐dependent distributions. Our estimator adopts the Poisson regression approach for density ratio models and incorporates spatial smoothing via local regression. We also present a method of smoothing parameter selection. We illustrate this easy‐to‐implement estimator with an application to the estimation of corn yield distributions of Iowa counties. The usefulness of the approach is further demonstrated via an application to the estimation of crop insurance premium.

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was referred to by U.S. President Trump as one of the worst trade deals ever made. Given this billing, one might have expected the result of its renegotiation to be a major change to the trading relationship between the United States and Canada. The new United States, Mexico, Canada Agreement (USMCA), however, retains a great deal of its predecessor. This is particularly true for agricultural trade. Canadian market access into the United States remains virtually unchanged. No major domestic regulatory changes were agreed to by Canada. While there were concessions made on market access for U.S. products into Canada's heavily protected sectors where the supply management policy applies, they do not appear to threaten the system. While the value of the compensation has not yet been announced, compensation for losses that will be suffered by farmers producing under supply management is agreed in principle. The USMCA is an agreement to keep things pretty much the same.

Organic farming is a way to address environmental issues. In Kenya, organic production for domestic markets based on local certification represents a solution to both economic and environmental issues. We propose to address this latter issue. Indeed, no quantitative studies have been dedicated to these systems’ impacts on the environment. However, their theoretical benefits can be weakened, first by their functioning based on internal control and indirect external control, and second by the risk of self‐selection since farmers using low levels of synthetic inputs have less effort to make in order to enter in conversion process. Thanks to unique farm‐level survey data along with the propensity score matching method, we assess the producer‐level effects of organic certification for fruits and vegetables on agro‐ecological practices. We show that conversion and certification are associated with organic farming techniques and positive perceptions of different statements about environmental values. However, we do not notice any additional effects of certification compared to conversion alone. Although economic issues are important, we focus on environmental issues that appear as important for smallholders. In a context with no public regulation, conversion‐only farmers and locally certified farmers could be a lever for a more sustainable agriculture.

Crop insurance may affect harvested acreage and yield by influencing producers’ behavior such as land allocation and input use. Although specialty crops are a major source of farm income, especially on the U.S. west coast, they have not received as much attention as field crops in previous empirical studies. This paper assesses the effect of moral hazard and adverse selection associated with the federal crop insurance program (FCIP) on the acreage and yield of major specialty crops in California. An econometric method that expands the switching regression model is developed to assess the effect. Results suggest that federal crop insurance can change specialty crop growers’ production responses to climate and soil conditions. The moral hazard effect tends to increase the acreage and yield of the specialty crops, whereas the adverse selection effect tends to have the opposite effect. The overall effect of the FCIP on acreage and yield of specialty crops is found to be moderate.

Using data generated from surveys conducted on First Nations throughout Canada, we use regression analysis to examine factors influencing food insecurity. To our knowledge, this is the first time a regression‐based analysis has been conducted to examine food insecurity on First Nations in Canada. As expected, income is inversely related to the likelihood that one reports their household as experiencing food insecurity. In addition, individuals in extremely remote areas are more likely to report their household as experiencing food insecurity. Although traditional food consumption is prevalent, we do not find evidence that it is associated with reductions in the prevalence of self‐reported household food insecurity. We find that gender and mental health are associated with perceived household food insecurity. Although this study is novel, for reasons and limitations detailed in the paper, it should be viewed as an initial effort to establish potential relationships that underscore one of the most important issues facing Canada: the high prevalence of food insecurity in First Nations communities.

We estimate the impact of the 2012 removal of the Canadian Wheat Board's (CWB) single‐desk on the spatial pattern of durum wheat acres in Western Canada. We analyze changes in durum seeded acres with a panel regression and Census Agricultural Region data from 2004 to 2016. Our results indicate that removal of the CWB single‐desk had a significant impact on total durum production in Western Canada. In addition, we find that the spatial distribution of durum wheat acres shifted away from marginal durum‐growing areas and toward drier areas, an increase in specialization that arguably improved the efficiency of resource allocation.

We explain the interplay of law and economics in the successful WTO challenge by Canada of U.S. mandatory country‐of‐origin labeling (COOL) measures for beef and pork, which hinged on origin of livestock used in U.S. meat production. Canada mounted a successful legal and economic strategy to convince WTO adjudicating bodies that the United States had violated specific WTO provisions. Canada's economic evidence shows that through costs of segregation the COOL measure harmed the competitive position of Canadian cattle and hogs in the U.S. market. Economic evidence was built into the strategy and cited by the WTO Panels in support of their legal findings that the COOL measure violated U.S. obligations under WTO agreements. Canada was awarded rights to more than one billion Canadian dollars in retaliation and the United States responded by eliminating the offending COOL measure. The COOL case demonstrates how economic and econometric evidence can be used in complex dispute settlement proceedings dealing with technical trade barriers. Economics is especially valuable in the initial stage of framing the effects at issue, in the intermediate stages of documenting empirical causation and in the final stage of litigation, which was to calculate and defend the amount of retaliation.

Mexico and Canada successfully challenged the U.S. mandatory country of origin labeling (COOL) requirements for beef and pork as inconsistent with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, which ultimately led to arbitration over the level of trade lost due to the COOL measure. During this phase of the dispute, Mexico, Canada, and the United States provided the Arbitration Panel with estimates of the trade losses caused by COOL that were produced using different quantitative methods. The U.S. estimates were based on an equilibrium displacement model (EDM). This article presents a version of the EDM used by the U.S. Government to calculate trade losses due to COOL. The Panel developed its own analysis combining econometric analysis and an EDM that used only supply‐side information to calculate changes in Canadian and Mexican livestock trade. The U.S. EDM includes both the supply and demand sides of the market. We use the U.S. EDM and the Panel's assumptions to re‐estimate the value of lost trade due to COOL. The inclusion of demand‐side effects and domestic COOL costs produces lower estimated trade damages than those produced using the Panel's analysis, validating the EDM as a useful quantitative tool for this type of trade policy analysis.

We investigate how a combination of the sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measure and product differentiation affects beef trade and the consequences for the United States (US)–European Union (EU) hormone‐treated beef trade dispute. We develop a partial equilibrium model to represent the global beef markets and product differentiation between non‐hormone‐treated beef, hormone‐treated beef, and other beef. The results show that removing the SPS measure increases EU hormone‐treated beef imports from the US and Canada and decrease beef consumption. In addition, EU hormone‐treated beef consumption and imports can be related to a few key indicators of product differentiation. The framework we develop can estimate EU hormone‐treated beef consumption and imports based on a minimum of parameters relating to product differentiation, thereby providing useful applied economic analysis of a key trade measure.

In response to disease outbreak alerts in exporting countries, importing countries usually impose trade bans that vary in terms of product coverage and in terms of duration. We rely on a unique balanced panel dataset that covers four‐digit disaggregated beef products over the 1996–2013 period, to estimate the effect of a hypothetical removal of animal diseases outbreaks on trade flows. More specifically, we investigate how bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and the foot and mouth diseases (FMDs) affect beef trade flows. We use a sectoral structural gravity approach to measure direct, conditional, and full effects, allowing inward and outward multilateral resistance indices, expenditures, and factory‐gate prices to adjust to the eradication of animal diseases. The indirect channels through which BSE and FMD impact trade are important. Our counterfactual experiment suggests that Canada would secure substantial gains from BSE and FMD eradication.

In 2016, the United States launched a formal dispute with the World Trade Organization (WTO) concerning China's wheat, corn, and rice tariff‐rate quota (TRQs) administration. A formal panel was requested in August 2017, with several major grain exporters, including Canada, joining as third‐party members. This study employs two unique micro‐level datasets to investigate the role of state‐owned and non‐state‐owned enterprises’ (SOE and non‐SOE, respectively) in China's agricultural imports. Results suggest that SOEs are noticeably more active in importing quota‐bound commodities compared to quota‐free imported commodities. Moreover, the larger role of SOEs in China's cereal grain imports is negatively correlated with China's food security targets, as measured by estimated prior year stocks‐to‐use ratios. Conversely, above average food security targets in China's cereal grain market leads to an important extensive margin adjustment of non‐SOE import participation. Finally, we find very little compelling evidence that China's September reallocation of unused TRQ has any economic or statistically significant impact on non‐SOE entry into importing or the intensity with which their imports occur.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the vivid political discussion on the consequences of the Russian agricultural import ban on the German export market by quantifying export losses that German agri‐food exporters encountered on the Russian market due to the agricultural import ban of 2014. A gravity‐type approach is used to measure the sanction effect in a panel of German agri‐food exports covering the period from January 1999 to June 2018. The ban effect is disentangled from a sequence of different geopolitically‐ and economically driven episodes. Once macroeconomic developments of the Russian economy as well as individual stages of decreasing trade cooperation in the preban period are accounted for, the import ban reduced German agri‐food exports significantly but was not the major cause. Therefore, a simple elimination of the ban will not be enough to restore trade to the presanctions level.

A trade restrictiveness index (TRI) aggregates an entire protection structure into a single uniform measure that is consistent with trade theory and reflects the extent of policy interventions on trade or welfare. Although there are several variants of a TRI, all approaches aggregate protective measures using weights that depend on import demand and export supply elasticities; some studies ignore cross‐price effects while others account for them. This study measures the degree of bias introduced by ignoring cross effects. It provides a practical approach to account for demand‐ and supply‐side cross‐price effects in a multi‐commodity TRI setting. This approach is illustrated with a case study of distortions in the Canadian crop and livestock sector. Domestic demand and supply cross effects are approximated using a “constant differences of elasticities of substitution” functional form. On average, over the period 1996–2016, we find that cross‐price effects do make a difference, and that including them makes the TRI 27% higher than an approach which ignores them. Furthermore, both TRI approaches produce indices that are higher and more variable than the OECD's percentage Producer Support Estimate (PSE) that measures policy transfers as a share of gross farm receipts. The fundamental differences between a TRI and PSE% is driven by market price support for milk.

This paper deals with the controversial measure of indirect land use changes of the European biodiesel policy. Two studies sponsored by the European Commission find significant, but contrasted, land use impacts for the different vegetable oils used for biodiesel production. The first study uses an aggregate computable general equilibrium model capturing direct, indirect and induced effects. The second more recent study uses a biotechnical partial equilibrium model providing a detailed representation of the indirect effects occurring through the livestock sectors. We develop an original economic emulator to understand the diverging key results of these studies and test their sensitivity. We find that the direct and indirect effects on vegetable oil and land markets explain most of the differences. We also find that indirect effects on the feed markets and the induced effects have less influence on the biodiesel results. We finally argue that the development of emulators as done here can help to understand complex policy assessments.

Consumers have responded negatively to agricultural products originating from the Fukushima prefecture after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant incident. These consumers’ behavioural changes have caused substantial economic losses for the producers located in contaminated regions through reductions in market prices, consumption quantities and market shares. Remarkably, these losses are observed also for uncontaminated products, posing an opportunity for research in reputation damage. However, existing literature is very rare on empirical modeling of such losses. We utilise the Dixit–Stiglitz demand framework to derive a simple but efficient empirical model that uses market data to quantify reputation damage. This model estimates changes in the perceived quality of a product originating in contaminated regions in relation to those products originating from other competing regions. The model also measures subsequent loss in market share for those products grown in contaminated regions. In our application to Fukushima, results suggest that consumers’ valuation of peaches from Fukushima decreased dramatically (between 22.5% and 23.6%) in the year the nuclear accident occurred, but rapidly recovered in the following years. The results also show that the degree of impact varies across wholesale markets. Fukushima farmers lost about 13.1–18.9% of sales due to reputation damage. Estimates from our proposed models deliver meaningful information in the context of policy interventions such as transfer programmes financed by gainers to compensate reputation losses.

Exports from Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan (RUK) help to improve global wheat availability and, hence, global food security. During the past 15 years, however, RUK wheat exports have shown high variability, mainly because they have been repeatedly diminished by severe harvest failures. We present an outlook for RUK wheat production and exports up to 2027, taking into account possible yield variability and harvest failures, and focusing on the impact on food security in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the world’s major wheat importing region. For the analysis we use the stochastic version of the Aglink‐Cosimo model. Simulation results show that wheat yields in RUK are a major source of uncertainty for international wheat markets. The projected substantial increases in world market prices due to limited RUK wheat exports threaten food security in MENA and highlight the need for both stabilising RUK yields and novel complementary food security approaches to decrease MENA’s vulnerability to disruptions in agricultural world markets.

Agricultural biotechnology (genetic modification) has encountered resistance from many consumers, resulting in disparate regulatory approaches across different jurisdictions. The recent advent of CRISPR‐Cas9, or gene editing, offers the potential for significant improvements in plant breeding. However, little is known currently about consumer responses to the technology. A factor often omitted from previous economic analyses of consumer acceptance of new food technologies is underlying human values or worldviews. Drawing upon cultural cognition theory and using data from a survey of Canadian consumers, we examine the influence of cultural values on food choice behaviours. Respondents’ pre‐existing cultural values are measured on two dimensions: hierarchy‐egalitarianism and individualism‐communitarianism. Choice behaviours are captured using a discrete choice experiment featuring a sliced apple product with two consumer‐oriented attributes (non‐browning and antioxidant‐enhanced) and three novel food technologies (gene editing, genetic modification, edible coating). Using a random parameters logit model with error components we find pre‐existing cultural values to be significant determinants of choice behaviours. Individuals pre‐disposed towards a hierarchical worldview are more accepting of novel food technologies, as are individuals with a communitarian worldview. While the use of gene editing results in negative marginal utilities in a food choice situation, the effect is not as large as with genetic modification, suggesting there is scope to ameliorate potentially negative reactions to the technology with value‐compatible messages.

China’s research and development (R&D) policy has changed considerably over recent decades, and great changes occurred in 2006 when the main programme objective of China’s R&D changed from the 863 Programme and 973 Programme to the National Science and Technology Major Project. One topic that has drawn extensive attention is whether the investment reform improved R&D productivity in China. Using a unique panel dataset from 160 universities, this paper examines the effect of the investment reform on productivity improvement in China’s agricultural biotechnology sector. We use a panel count data model with a dynamic feedback mechanism to model the knowledge production process. Strong evidence indicates that the investment reform greatly contributes to knowledge output production in China’s agricultural biotechnology sector. We also find that the input quality is more important than the absolute quantity; human research capacity exhibits the greatest contribution to the output of patents; past knowledge accumulation helps produce more patents; and entry barriers to patent production exist in China’s agricultural biotechnology sector. Moreover, the patent explosion in China may have been largely caused by improvements in the human capital input quality.

The use of corn as an ethanol feedstock has been stimulated by US biofuels policy. This has changed both the position and the slope of the corn demand curve and increased the pass‐through from crude oil to corn prices. The principal constraints on ethanol consumption and production have been regulation (the biofuels mandate), capacity constraints in ethanol refining and the blend wall, which puts a ceiling on the ethanol content of gasoline. The incidence of these constraints has varied over time. We model these impacts within the competitive storage model using structural break regression analysis. Our analysis shows that the pass‐through has varied over time in relation to the share of ethanol in total US corn use. Our analysis provides robust empirical evidence of an increase in the pass‐through from crude oil to corn prices over the period from the start of the century to a high level over 2004–2008 when corn use in ethanol was growing very fast. This enhanced sensitivity was driven by competition for corn as an ethanol feedstock with stock demand exerting strong upward pressure on the corn price.

We investigate the willingness to pay (WTP) for cultural ecosystem services from grasslands using a meta‐analysis based on 32 eligible research papers that provide in total 79 estimates. The average WTP (corrected for purchasing power) across these studies is 38 Euros per person per year. Yet, our analysis reveals that the transfer of these results needs careful evaluation. More specifically, it is essential to frame the monetary valuation exercise in relation to the direction of grassland change. A switch from cropland to grassland reduces WTP by 90 Euros while an increase in less‐intensive land‐use in mountain regions raises WTP by 53 Euros. We conclude that for an adequate consideration of grasslands in holistic ecosystem services assessments, the direction of grassland change is important.

This study is motivated by the need to understand how the rise of medium‐scale farms in Africa is affecting small‐scale farm households. Survey evidence over the past decade has shown a dramatic rise in the prevalence of ‘medium’ sized farms between 5 and 100 hectares, but smaller farms still constitute the vast majority of farms and rural households. Prior evidence highlights a co‐evolution between the concentration of landholdings, surplus production volumes, and entry of larger traders into the market. Whether these changes tend to impact on smallholders negatively, crowding them out of markets, for example, or positively, potentially opening new marketing channels, is an empirical question. Using a multi‐stage model for maize market participation in Zambia, we find that in areas where medium‐scale farms are growing, even the smaller farms are becoming more likely to sell maize, more likely to sell to the private sector, more likely to sell to larger traders, and expected sales amongst sellers are higher. On balance, the growth of medium‐scale farms and large‐scale traders seems to have positive spillover effects on nearby smallholder marketing options.

Commercialisation of smallholder agriculture is important for rural economic growth. While previous studies have analysed effects of commercialisation on productivity and income, implications for farm household nutrition have received much less attention. We evaluate the effects of commercialisation on household food security and dietary quality with a special focus on calorie and micronutrient consumption. We also examine transmission channels by looking at the role of income, gender, and possible substitution effects between the consumption of own‐produced and purchased foods. The analysis uses survey data from farm households in Kenya and a control function approach. Generalised propensity scores are employed to estimate continuous treatment effects. Commercialisation significantly improves food security and dietary quality in terms of calorie, zinc and iron consumption. For vitamin A, effects are insignificant. Commercialisation contributes to higher incomes and increased nutrients from purchased foods, but it does not reduce the consumption of nutrients from own‐produced foods. Enhancing market access is important not only for rural economic growth, but also for making smallholder agriculture more nutrition‐sensitive.

Population growth, increasing wealth and changing diets require agriculture in Sub‐Saharan Africa to intensify to meet future food demand and ensure food security in the region. Conservation agriculture can increase yields in the long run and reduce the negative environmental impacts of intensive farming. In changing the mix of resources used and how they are managed, the adoption of conservation agriculture can have a direct impact on farm labour. We study the relationship between conservation agriculture and labour input requirements as observed in five Sub‐Saharan African countries. We focus on the amount of work required and the source of the work employed (household or hired, by gender, by children and by production stage). We apply multinomial endogenous switching regression models on a panel of household and farm data from Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. We find that conservation agriculture increases farms’ labour input requirements. Higher demand is driven by more work during the harvesting and threshing stages. Increases in labour requirements are usually met by household labour, not paid work. The workload change is also higher for women than for men, and, in certain cases, is met by children.

Increasing popularity of economic experiments for policy impact analysis has led to an on‐going debate about the suitability of students to substitute professionals as experimental subjects. To date, subject pool effects in agricultural and resource economics experiments have not been sufficiently studied. In order to identify differences and similarities between students and non‐students, we carry out an experiment in the form of a multi‐period business management game that is adapted to an agri‐environmental context. We compare the compliance behaviour of German agricultural students and German farmers with regard to water protection rules and analyse their responses to two different green nudge interventions. The experimental results reveal that the direction of the response to the policy treatments is similar. Even unexpected behaviour could be reproduced by the student sample. Nevertheless, the magnitude of the treatment effects differed between the two samples. This implies that experimenters in the field of agricultural and resource economics could use the subject pool of students to analyse the direction of nudge policies. If predictions should be made about the magnitude effects, we suggest using a professional subject pool.

Without enforced standards or reliable third‐party verification, food safety threats such as pesticide residues and aflatoxin contamination are generally unobservable or only partially observable to both buyers and sellers, especially of staple foods in rural maize markets in sub‐Saharan Africa. As a result, sellers have more information about food quality than do buyers. Such information asymmetries can impede market development and undermine human health. We study farm household behaviour in the context of imperfect food safety information. We pool observations obtained from 707 food storage containers maintained by 309 farm households in Benin, surveyed following the maize harvests of 2011/2012 and 2013/2014. Our results indicate that when a household perceives a food safety risk associated with application of insecticides, on average it is 33 percentage points less likely to apply insecticides to maize it intends to consume than it is to maize it intends to sell. These individuals are also more likely to sell maize than households without food safety concerns. Results highlight the potential value of improved storage technologies and quality control to promote market transactions and reduce hidden health risks.

Using a new detailed dataset on country‐product information on European Union (EU) Geographical Indications (GIs), we study the impact of this food quality policy on trade margins over the 1996–2014 period. We consider the effect of GIs on both intra‐ and extra‐EU trade margins (extensive and intensive), as well as on export (and import) unit values. Our main results show that GIs affect trade flows differently depending on whether GIs are produced by the exporter or importer country. The presence of GIs in the exporter country systematically exerts a positive trade effect on both the extensive and intensive trade margin. When registered only in the importer country, GIs seem to act weakly as a trade‐reducing measure, at least at the intensive trade margin. In addition, GIs positively affect export prices, consistent with the idea that GI products are perceived by consumers as higher quality goods. Importantly, extra‐EU trade margins react similarly to those on intra‐EU trade. These results have clear and interesting implications concerning the EU strategy of promoting the protection of GIs worldwide.

The UK Brexit vote triggered a new wave of policy developments for a future outside the EU. In this context, we analyse the business performance of English hill and upland farms, characterised by marginal economic conditions but also high nature value (HNV). The analysis aims to help identify farm‐level management and policy options for greater economic, environmental and social sustainability. Business performance is measured as technical efficiency and the occurrence and persistence of abnormal profits, estimated through stochastic frontier analysis and static and dynamic panel‐data methods. The results help indicate rationales for recent trends including farm enlargement, farm family diversification, and agri‐environment scheme entry. The single farm payment is found to be negatively associated with farm technical efficiency while agri‐environmental subsidies were positively associated to short‐term farm profitability. Farm adaptation and resilience during a period of likely turbulence in external circumstances is discussed in light of these findings, as well as potential parallels with marginal HNV areas across Europe.

This address explores the importance for agricultural sustainability of different types of capital assets, especially knowledge capital, drawing on recent research in New Zealand that has aimed to expand the contribution of the primary sector to sustainable wellbeing. I begin with an overview of the theory on what constitutes sustainability and wellbeing, focusing on connections between wellbeing, capabilities and different types of capital stocks, and highlighting the importance of knowledge capital for wellbeing. Recent trends in New Zealand and United Kingdom agriculture provide the applied context for analysis of some key knowledge issues facing agriculture, framed by the capability theory of the firm following David Teece. The paper finishes with a brief conclusion on the implications for the UK.

The increasing policy interest and academic debates on non‐tariff measures (NTMs) has stimulated a growing literature on how NTMs affect agri‐food trade. The empirical literature provides contrasting and heterogeneous evidence, with some studies supporting the ‘standards as catalysts’ view, and others favouring the ‘standards as barriers’ explanation. To the extent that NTMs can influence trade, understanding the prevailing effect, and the motivations behind one effect or the other, is a pressing issue. We review a large body of empirical evidence on the effect of NTMs on agri‐food trade and conduct a meta‐analysis to disentangle potential determinants of heterogeneity in estimates. Our findings show the role played by the publication process and by study‐specific assumptions. Some characteristics of the studies are correlated with positive significant estimates, others covary with negative significant estimates. Overall, we found that the effects of NTMs vary across types of NTM, proxies used for NTMs, and levels of detail of studies. The estimated effects are also influenced by methodological issues and publication processes.

Livestock products, such as dairy and beef, are increasingly regarded as resource intensive and concerns are raised about animal welfare and environmental sustainability. As a result, consumer awareness of these issues has led to an increasing demand for products with high quality credence attributes (CAs) that cannot be directly experienced or identified. A number of empirical studies have attempted to estimate consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for CAs, which represents the additional value placed on the benefits that they derive from those products. However, there are significant differences in these WTP estimates, mainly because both consumers' perceptions of CAs and the conditions of the studies vary. We conduct a meta‐analysis to examine consumers' WTP for different CAs of livestock products based on a systematic review of relevant studies. Meta‐regression models are used to control for the heterogeneity of WTP estimates and investigate factors that affect the estimation of WTP. Overall 555 estimates derived from 94 papers reporting WTP are included in this study. Meta‐regression results establish the presence of systematic WTP variation associated with types of products, CAs, and locations, though also indicate that WTP is subject to systematic variation associated with study methodology.

Index insurance has been heralded as a potential solution to risk management problems faced by smallholder farmers in developing countries. Despite its potential, demand for standalone index insurance contracts has remained low in early field trials. We investigate the willingness to pay for drought index insurance‐backed loans in northern Ghana using contingent valuation. We find that index insurance lowers overall demand for agricultural loans. We also compare micro‐level index insurance, provided directly to farmers, with meso‐level insurance, provided to the credit agency and find that farmers appear to prefer micro‐level insurance. Finally, farmers are willing to pay to avoid basis risk.

Agriculture is a significant source of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. GHG mitigation through agri‐environmental programmes could be important in achieving emission reduction targets under the 2015 UN climate agreement. This study uses the principal‐agent model to examine a peatland retirement programme to reduce agricultural emissions in Norway. The focus is on the role of the government's private information in programme design. Two cases are examined. First, optimal contracts are derived when farmers have private information about the costs of implementing peat land retirement, but the government reveals its information on the resulting public benefits through differentiated contracts. This corresponds to the standard targeting strategy with one‐sided information asymmetry. In the second case, an informed principal model developed by Maskin and Tirole in a 1990 study is employed to address bilateral information asymmetry. Using the informed principal model, the government offers the same menu of contracts to farmers in order not to disclose information on the public benefits from land retirement. Empirical results show that the government can achieve a higher payoff by using a pooling offer.

In this paper, we generalise existing approaches to the treatment of stated attribute non‐attendance data in discrete choice experiments by allowing attribute specific impacts. We implement this approach by employing an extended hierarchical Bayes logit model specification. To illustrate this approach, we consider data collected to examine Indian consumers’ preferences for traditional aromatic rice varieties. Our results regarding stated attribute non‐attendance reveal that, our new approach shrinks marginal utilities of non‐attenders substantially compared to stated attenders, with significant differences in the shrinkage between some of the attributes. In addition, our results reveal the way in which non‐attendance of attributes interact with each other and the impact that this has on the distribution of willingness to pay estimates.

We apply a value chain approach to examine how blackberry producers in Ecuador can improve production and marketing practices to obtain more favorable prices. Results show that general upgrading actions are associated with improved producer prices, and specific activities, such as seeking information from reputable sources can lead to substantial welfare improvements. The paper goes beyond most value chain studies which treat participation in a ‘modern’ value chain as a discrete state. Ecuador's blackberry industry is evolving incrementally with no clearly discernible ‘modern’ market chains. Instead, producers incrementally make improvements in multiple dimensions. Relatively low‐cost practices, many of which do not imply substantial risk or investment, are associated with price improvements. Obstacles to participation in incremental value chain upgrading activities are not insurmountable. In particular, scale of production is not a limiting factor: small‐scale producers are not precluded from adopting improved practices and they do not suffer in terms of price received.