Suchergebnisse

Trade can affect relative equipment prices because equipment production is concentrated among a small group of developed countries and many developing nations rely heavily on equipment imports. We construct a new dataset of relative equipment prices for thirteen Latin American countries from 1970 to 2011 in order to help identify which trade channels affect these prices. We show that both the composition of trade and countries' trade partners matter. Overall, increasing trade intensity in equipment with major equipment‐producing countries is associated with the largest relative price reductions, but there is significant heterogeneity across countries in their responsiveness to changes in trade intensity and trade restrictions.

AbstractBiofuel policies and concomitant market forces in the mid‐2000s systemically altered US corn markets. Because corn production requires large nitrogen fertilizer inputs, those policies may have also impacted US fertilizer markets. We model fertilizer price relationships across US regions and leverage the natural experiment of biofuel policy intervention to show the secondary impacts on fertilizer markets. Long‐run fertilizer price adjustments became faster and short‐run price dynamics became more responsive to corn markets and less affected by natural gas prices. Additionally, regions where corn production significantly increased after the policies had a 10–20% increase in influencing the fertilizer price discovery process.

AbstractThis study uses farm‐level information from the ARMS database to evaluate the distribution of payments from major 2014 Farm Bill safety net programs—federal crop insurance, Agricultural Risk Coverage, and Price Loss Coverage—across farm size. Results indicate that farms within the top decile for crop sales receive over two‐thirds of the total payments from these programs. Recent legislative proposals to implement payment caps on each farm are shown to impact a relatively small percentage of farms that are almost entirely within the top decile of crop sales. However, implementing these caps is likely to result in as much as $2.51 billion in taxpayer savings. These help provide direction for continued efforts to design cost‐effective, equitable agricultural safety net policies.