IMPLICATIONS OF STRUCTURAL CHANGE FOR FARMS AND RURAL ECONOMICS

Community/Rural/Urban Development, Farm Management, Industrial Organization,

FOOD STAMPS: PROGRAM PARAMETERS AND STANDARDS OF LIVING FOR LOW-INCOME HOUSEHOLDS

Food Security and Poverty,

Doable General Equilibrium Models: Comments on Three Papers Presented to the AAEA Summer Meetings 1986

Adelman, I., and S. Robinson. The Application of General Equilibrium Models to Analyze U.S. Agriculture. Clarets, R.L., and J. A. Roumasset. Comparative Equilibrium Models and Development Policy Analysis: Problems, Pitfalls, and Challenges. Derpanopoulos, J. Optimal Control of General Equilibrium Models. The three papers listed above are different yet have a common theme: the application of computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling in agricultural policy analysis. Adelman and Robinson emphasize the agricultural sector in a social accounting matrix (SAM) for the United States. Derpanopoulos provides an optimal control formulation for CGE-like models. It is interesting and telling that the papers, although advocating the CGE approach, are about models only partially incorporating the associated concepts (Scarf 1983). After some general comments on CGE modeling, brief observations are offered on the three papers

Managing Sustainable Development

For transition economies, sustainable development of agriculture can be most effectively achieved by aggressive steps to increase the role of markets in resource allocation and distribution, according to this paper. Using resources efficiently and producing the foods and services most highly valued by consumers can take agriculture a long way toward the goal of sustainable development. Leaders in transition economies have the difficult task of orchestrating the change of an economic system, but an unusual and perhaps one-time opportunity for carrying reforms

Agriculture and Agribusiness Reform in the CEE Nations and NIS: Issues and Opportunities

Economic transition and reforms in the Central and Eastern European nations and the Newly Independent States have been uneven and probably slower than expected by many observers, with agriculture experiencing special difficulties. Johnson says that there is a real need for practical and consistent assistance in defining strategies that will help complete the reforms while maintaining political stability and a sense of economic security

Structural Change in Meat Demand: The End of the Chicken Little Era

Meat consumption patterns have changed in the United States. A cursory inspection of the disappearance statistics for meat in the United States reveals that generally, the consumption of red meats has decreased or remained constant while the consumption of poultry and other meats has increased. Economists have had only modest success in developing cogent explanations for these changed consumption patterns, and a chicken little psychology has come to dominate much of the recent discourse. Arguments, for the most part not based on demand theory, have been put forth that recent consumption changes cannot be explained by relative prices, income, and simple demographic effects. Conjecture about lifestyles, health concerns, consumer attitudes toward red meats, and other factors suggest implicit prophesy of doom for the beef industry. Systematic analyses of consumption changes and assessments of the theory are needed to address these largely unsupported suppositions

DYNAMICS AND PRICE VOLATILITY IN FARM-RETAIL LIVESTOCK PRICE RELATIONSHIPS

This study uses an error correction model (ECM) to investigate dynamics in farm-retail price relationships. The ECM is a more general method of incorporating dynamics and the long-run, steady-state relationships between farm and retail prices than has been used to data. Monthly data for beef and pork are used to test the time-series properties for the ECM specification. The model is extended to study price volatility through the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) process. Accommodation of the GARCH process provides a useful way of analyzing both mean and variance effects of policy or market structure changes.Demand and Price Analysis, Livestock Production/Industries,

IMPACTS OF LIBERALIZING THE JAPANESE PORK MARKET

The Japanese pork market is protected by a complex set of restrictions, including a variable levy and an import tariff. The combination of these policies distorts the quantity, price, and form of Japanese pork imports. An important issue relevant to the liberalization of the Japanese pork market is the accurate measurement of the price wedge between Japanese and world pork prices. The analysis indicates that the tariff equivalent of the price wedge over the 1986-88 period was 44%. If the tariff equivalent of the price wedge is reduced over a ten-year period, Japanese pork imports are projected to increase by over 39% initially and by over 215% compared to baseline projections by the year 2000. Producer welfare can be maintained by a deficiency payment scheme. A less costly alternative is an industry buffer scheme, which maintains the level of the pork industry for two years and then implements a declining deficiency payment scheme that limits the decrease in production levels to 5% per year.International Relations/Trade,

Food Demand Projections Using Full Demand Systems

Disaggregated food demand projections for developing countries, although essential for improved development planning and effective policy making, are rare. Moreover food demand projection models are usually based on aggregated, national-level data. In this article, under conditions of weak separability and multistage budgeting decisions, a structural model capable fo generating regional-level food demand projections for a disaggregated set of commodities is developed and estimated using data from an Indonesian expenditure survey. Regional food demand projections in Indonesia obtain under a scenario assuming constant real prices are then combines into national-level estimates.