Recent Macroeconomic Dynamics and Agriculture in Historical Perspective

This article explores the similarities, differences, and implications from the 1970s–1980s experience for the macroeconomic dynamic that may arise from the 2008 price spike and subsequent recession. Role of monetary policy (deviations from Taylor rule) is assessed. This is an argument that has not been too prominent in public discourse about causes of the financial crisis or the policies undertaken to restore stability to financial markets and avoid an even deeper downturn than occurred. The ‘‘misery index’’ is compared across the past and recent macroeconomic events. Effects on agriculture of exchange rates are reviewed, effects dependent on currency values and interest rates that can change quickly and in unexpected ways.monetary policy, exchange rates, macroeconomic effects on agriculture, Agribusiness, Agricultural Finance, Environmental Economics and Policy, Political Economy, Production Economics, Public Economics, E52, F41, Q18,

Can U.S. Farm Subsidies Be Bought Out?

Achieving substantial agricultural trade liberalization has proven elusive in the Doha Round. This paper examines policy reforms the United States might adopt to facilitate progress. The focus is on whether decoupling can be made more convincing through a long-term buyout that would end farm subsidies. Buyouts have not been feasible in the past but recent reforms for several specialty crops provide evidence of what might be done and the conditions under which it occurs. Although the political-economy conditions may not be conducive to such a buyout yet, estimates are provided of the potential cost of a buyout of the main U.S. farm support subsidies of direct fixed and counter-cyclical payments.Agricultural and Food Policy,

MEXICO-U.S. AVOCADO TRADE EXPANSION

International Relations/Trade,

Asymptotically efficient triangulations of the d-cube

Let $P$ and $Q$ be polytopes, the first of "low" dimension and the second of "high" dimension. We show how to triangulate the product $P \times Q$ efficiently (i.e., with few simplices) starting with a given triangulation of $Q$. Our method has a computational part, where we need to compute an efficient triangulation of $P \times \Delta^m$, for a (small) natural number $m$ of our choice. $\Delta^m$ denotes the $m$-simplex. Our procedure can be applied to obtain (asymptotically) efficient triangulations of the cube $I^n$: We decompose $I^n = I^k \times I^{n-k}$, for a small $k$. Then we recursively assume we have obtained an efficient triangulation of the second factor and use our method to triangulate the product. The outcome is that using $k=3$ and $m=2$, we can triangulate $I^n$ with $O(0.816^{n} n!)$ simplices, instead of the $O(0.840^{n} n!)$ achievable before.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures. Only minor changes from previous versions, some suggested by anonymous referees. Paper accepted in "Discrete and Computational Geometry

The polytope of non-crossing graphs on a planar point set

For any finite set \A of $n$ points in $\R^2$, we define a $(3n-3)$-dimensional simple polyhedron whose face poset is isomorphic to the poset of ``non-crossing marked graphs'' with vertex set \A, where a marked graph is defined as a geometric graph together with a subset of its vertices. The poset of non-crossing graphs on \A appears as the complement of the star of a face in that polyhedron. The polyhedron has a unique maximal bounded face, of dimension $2n_i +n -3$ where $n_i$ is the number of points of \A in the interior of \conv(\A). The vertices of this polytope are all the pseudo-triangulations of \A, and the edges are flips of two types: the traditional diagonal flips (in pseudo-triangulations) and the removal or insertion of a single edge. As a by-product of our construction we prove that all pseudo-triangulations are infinitesimally rigid graphs.Comment: 28 pages, 16 figures. Main change from v1 and v2: Introduction has been reshape

Agricultural policies in Indonesia

As in many other developing countries, the concerns about food security in Indonesia during the 1980s and early 1990s resulted in policies aimed at achieving self-sufficiency in food crops. The Government of Indonesia (GOI) combined price interventions and economic incentives to encourage agricultural production, especially of the staple crops. From 1985 to 1998, Indonesia started a series of domestic and trade reforms emanating from a combination of unilateral undertakings, the country's commitments to the WTO, and the government's agreement with the IMF following the 1997/98 financial crisis. This study computes nominal protection rates and producer support estimates (NPR and PSE) for Indonesia for the period 1985-2003 for six agricultural commodities, rice, maize, sugar, soybeans, crude palm oil, and natural rubber (representing more than two-thirds of Indonesian agricultural output) in an attempt to quantify the net effects of these policies. The NPRs and PSEs computed for Indonesia show that in spite of the reforms, the GOI has protected its agriculture over the past twenty years, although not uniformly across commodities. Although the reforms went a long way in reducing trade and domestic regulations on agricultural products, the study results demonstrate a return to protection for some commodities in recent years.

Electromagnetic interactions for the two-body spectator equations

This paper presents a new non-associative algebra which is used to (i) show how the spectator (or Gross) two-body equations and electromagnetic currents can be formally derived from the Bethe-Salpeter equation and currents if both are treated to all orders, (ii) obtain explicit expressions for the Gross two-body electromagnetic currents valid to any order, and (iii) prove that the currents so derived are exactly gauge invariant when truncated consistently to any finite order. In addition to presenting these new results, this work complements and extends previous treatments based largely on the analysis of sums of Feynman diagrams.Comment: 44 pages, 14 figure