Orderly Marketing in Agriculture Revisited

This paper presents a model of economic behavior that explicates the phenomenon known as “orderly marketing,†which was a main objective of the Marketing Orders agricultural program introduced early in the New Deal. Recent analyses of marketing orders start with an implicit assumption that there is no market failure—thus, that price regulation can cause only deviations from the first-best market solution. However, historical evidence suggests that disorderly marketing might refer to a kind of market imperfection. In the model presented here, a monopsonist processor sets a price to be paid, and an aggregate quantity to be purchased. In some states of the world, some farmers are excluded from the market. In other words, nonprice rationing can occur, and changes in consumer expenditure for the final product are absorbed by the processor rather than passed along to the farmer. The classified price and pooling provisions of federal orders can lead to a Pareto improvement in welfare.disorderly marketing, market orders, Marketing,

Are Cooperatives Efficient When Membership is Voluntary?

If profit-maximizing farmers are free to join or not to join a cooperative, it may appear reasonable to assume that a cooperative will exist only when it has cost advantaged over non-cooperative marketing. This paper presents a model in which that result fails. Every individual farmer chooses either to join or not join a cooperative depending on whether transactions costs are lower from cooperative membership or nonmembership. As cooperative membership increases, transactions costs for members decline, but for nonmembers these costs increase. Results of this analysis reveal that an equilibrium exists in which all farmers voluntarily choose to join the cooperative, but more than half of the members wish the cooperative had not been formed, and transactions costs in the aggregate are higher with the cooperative then without it.cooperatives, transactions costs, Agribusiness,

A PRIMER ON NUTRITION POLICY IN THE UNITED STATES

Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Effect of remote ischaemic conditioning on clinical outcomes in patients with acute myocardial infarction (CONDI-2/ERIC-PPCI): a single-blind randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Remote ischaemic conditioning with transient ischaemia and reperfusion applied to the arm has been shown to reduce myocardial infarct size in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI). We investigated whether remote ischaemic conditioning could reduce the incidence of cardiac death and hospitalisation for heart failure at 12 months. METHODS: We did an international investigator-initiated, prospective, single-blind, randomised controlled trial (CONDI-2/ERIC-PPCI) at 33 centres across the UK, Denmark, Spain, and Serbia. Patients (age >18 years) with suspected STEMI and who were eligible for PPCI were randomly allocated (1:1, stratified by centre with a permuted block method) to receive standard treatment (including a sham simulated remote ischaemic conditioning intervention at UK sites only) or remote ischaemic conditioning treatment (intermittent ischaemia and reperfusion applied to the arm through four cycles of 5-min inflation and 5-min deflation of an automated cuff device) before PPCI. Investigators responsible for data collection and outcome assessment were masked to treatment allocation. The primary combined endpoint was cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure at 12 months in the intention-to-treat population. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02342522) and is completed. FINDINGS: Between Nov 6, 2013, and March 31, 2018, 5401 patients were randomly allocated to either the control group (n=2701) or the remote ischaemic conditioning group (n=2700). After exclusion of patients upon hospital arrival or loss to follow-up, 2569 patients in the control group and 2546 in the intervention group were included in the intention-to-treat analysis. At 12 months post-PPCI, the Kaplan-Meier-estimated frequencies of cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure (the primary endpoint) were 220 (8·6%) patients in the control group and 239 (9·4%) in the remote ischaemic conditioning group (hazard ratio 1·10 [95% CI 0·91-1·32], p=0·32 for intervention versus control). No important unexpected adverse events or side effects of remote ischaemic conditioning were observed. INTERPRETATION: Remote ischaemic conditioning does not improve clinical outcomes (cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure) at 12 months in patients with STEMI undergoing PPCI. FUNDING: British Heart Foundation, University College London Hospitals/University College London Biomedical Research Centre, Danish Innovation Foundation, Novo Nordisk Foundation, TrygFonden

DEBT AND EFFICIENCY AS DETERMINANTS OF FARM SURVIVAL: AN EMPIRICAL APPROACH

Thls paper presents a method for empirical evaluation of the relative importance of debt and efficiency as determinants of farm survival. For a sample of Wisconsin farms, for the period 1960-1975, debt has a significant negative effect on survivability; efficiency does not have a significant impact

Orderly Marketing in Agriculture Revisited

This paper presents a model of economic behavior that explicates the phenomenon known as “orderly marketing,” which was a main objective of the Marketing Orders agricultural program introduced early in the New Deal. Recent analyses of marketing orders start with an implicit assumption that there is no market failure—thus, that price regulation can cause only deviations from the first-best market solution. However, historical evidence suggests that disorderly marketing might refer to a kind of market imperfection. In the model presented here, a monopsonist processor sets a price to be paid, and an aggregate quantity to be purchased. In some states of the world, some farmers are excluded from the market. In other words, nonprice rationing can occur, and changes in consumer expenditure for the final product are absorbed by the processor rather than passed along to the farmer. The classified price and pooling provisions of federal orders can lead to a Pareto improvement in welfare

Allocable fixed inputs as a cause of joint production: an empirical investigation

Leathers (1991) shows that while the existence of allocable fixed inputs can cause joint production (as in Shumway, Pope and Nash, 1984), it will not necessarily lead to joint production. The extent to which allocable fixed inputs cause joint production in agriculture is an empirical question. This paper offers an empirical answer. By estimating a short-run joint cost function, it is possible to identify levels of outputs for which joint production may be optimal in the short run but not in the long run. Only in these output regions will there be jointness caused by allocable fixed inputs. For the data in this paper (160 Wisconsin farms), these output regions are very small; thus allocable fixed inputs do not appear to be an important cause of jointness for these farms. Technical causes of jointness appear to be a significant cause of joint production

Dairy Policy: An Overview

Milk has been called the most regulated of farm commodities. Price supports, milk market orders, import restrictions, sanitary regulations, and product grading are all ways in which the Government influences the economic environment of decision making in the dairy industry. Rapidly rising food prices, Federal budget costs, and pressure for increased scrutiny of Government regulations have made policy decisions concerning dairy programs an increasingly visible issue

Are Cooperatives Efficient When Membership is Voluntary?

If profit-maximizing farmers are free to join or not to join a cooperative, it may appear reasonable to assume that a cooperative will exist only when it has cost advantaged over non-cooperative marketing. This paper presents a model in which that result fails. Every individual farmer chooses either to join or not join a cooperative depending on whether transactions costs are lower from cooperative membership or nonmembership. As cooperative membership increases, transactions costs for members decline, but for nonmembers these costs increase. Results of this analysis reveal that an equilibrium exists in which all farmers voluntarily choose to join the cooperative, but more than half of the members wish the cooperative had not been formed, and transactions costs in the aggregate are higher with the cooperative then without it