Heroes, villains and victims: agricultural subsidies and their impacts on food security and poverty reduction

Subsidies have been a pervasive feature of agricultural policy in both high and low income countries. This chapter describes different kinds of subsidies and reviews evidence on their economic, food security and poverty impacts. The evidence suggests that different subsidy programmes have had in some contexts profoundly positive and in other contexts profoundly negative impacts on food security and on the livelihoods of poor people and poor societies. Discussions of the historical and potential roles of subsidies and their more recent use have, however, been the victim of an unhealthy over-emphasis on their negative effects without sufficient consideration of the potential to overcome these. These issues need to be addressed if agricultural subsidies are to fulfill their potential to make a significant contribution in addressing continuing and emerging challenges to food insecurity and poverty

Blockchain-driven dual-channel green supply chain game model considering government subsidies

In order to improve the performance of green supply chain and promote the adoption of blockchain, this paper establishes a dual-channel green supply chain consisting of a green manufacturer and a retailer, and builds Stackelberg game model considering different scenarios. We analyze the impact of blockchain operating costs and consumer uncertainty about the product greenness. Furthermore, we study the government subsidy for manufacturers' green costs and its impact on supply chain performance and blockchain adoption. Findings reveal that without blockchain technology, government subsidy can improve manufacturers' and retailers' profits. However, when blockchain is adopted, the subsidy effect depends on the blockchain operating costs. In case of higher blockchain operating cost, the product prices and greenness decrease as the green cost subsidies increase; In case of lower blockchain operating cost, the increase in green cost subsidies will lead to increased product prices and greenness; Green cost subsidies can raise profits and lower the blockchain adoption threshold

Effects of Carbon Policies and Technology Change

We develop and estimate an index-based measure of expected consumer welfare under various carbon emissions control policies in the electricity generation sector. This approach estimates welfare effects by a somewhat less data intensive methodology than econometric approaches or more complex modeling. We include anticipated technological change in the production of renewable and nonrenewable power generation during the next two decades. We estimate welfare improvements from 2000 to 2020 as renewable energy technologies continue to be improved and gradually adopted, compared with a counterfactual scenario allowing for continual improvement of nonrenewable generation technology. We formally incorporate uncertainty. We evaluate the model under alternative carbon emissions control policies, including policies that create incentives through price mechanisms and policies that mandate the composition of the generation portfolio. We focus on three countries that differ widely in their power fuel mix: India, Germany, and the United States.carbon emissions control, electricity generation, technological change, consumer welfare

CURRENT ISSUES AFFECTING TRADE AND TRADE POLICY: AN ANNOTATED LITERATURE REVIEW

This review provides a base of literature describing current issues and research on the impacts of lobalization and the industrialization of agriculture and recent approaches to analyze and model agricultural trade and trade policies. Three key factors of the survey are differentiated goods, global economic integration and international supply chain linkages. The review covers 182 publications, which are presented alphabetically by author with a brief annotation describing how it relates to the above criteria. The articles are also indexed by keyword. A brief summary highlights the documented literature and includes a series of issues for future discussion and research.International Relations/Trade,