What a Difference a Day Makes: An Estimate of Potential Gains from Trade Facilitation

The current paper uses a series of metrics of customs and administrative procedures produced by the World Bank to estimate gravity models. The metrics include estimates of the number of days at the border, the number signatures and the number of documents necessary for a product to cross the border of the importer and the exporter. Simulations using the estimated elasticities show that to improve trade reductions would need to be made in the different metrics. For the greatest benefits all trading partners would have to make the improvements. Additionally, some products are more sensitive to the metrics than others.International Relations/Trade,

Linkages amongst Foreign Direct Investment, Trade and Trade Policy: An Economic Analysis with Applications to the Food Sector

Our models show that, in OECD countries, tariffs and domestic support, which raise domestic market input prices, can have an effect on how FDI is distributed geographically. FDI may be used to jump tariffs. Investors in a home country may invest in a host country to exploit the preferential tariffs, as from an RTA, which the host has with a third country. Domestic support to agriculture, an input sector into the food sector, can encourage outward investment and discourage inward investment. FDI and trade appear to complement one another. Therefore, policies that open trade may increase FDI and vice versa.International Relations/Trade,

It Happened All at Once: Switching Regressions, Gravity Models and Food Safety

Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

POLICY RISK: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF A MARKET FOR A GOVERNMENT-CREATED ASSET

This paper investigates the California dairy quota. The quota rate of return has been relatively high. The variability of returns is high relative to government bonds but not relative to the S&P500. Most of the returns are from monthly dividends, but most of the variability is from the capital gains.Livestock Production/Industries,

A STATIC POLICY FOR A DYNAMIC INDUSTRY: THE CALIFORNIA YOUNG ACT OF 1935

An economic history of the development of California dairy policies from 1935 to 1965 is used to support the hypothesis that the incompatibility of discrete policy changes for a dynamic industry generates deadweight losses. Combining quantitative industry data with legal and personal narratives provides evidence in support of the hypothesis.dairy policy, quota, agricultural history, Agricultural and Food Policy,

Evaluating Teaching Methods: Is It Worth Doing Right?

Reviewers of manuscripts on classroom experiments often ask the authors to provide evidence of the effectiveness of the method, presumably to justify substituting experiments for lectures. After reviewing the current state of evaluation methodology, we argue that such evidence may be neither sufficient nor even necessary for the purpose.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Explaining Variations in the Price of Dairy Quota: Flow Returns, Liquidity, Quota Characteristics, and Policy Risk

An econometric model based on the net present value model is used to examine factors that drive the variation of California dairy quota values over a 29-year period. The results suggest the price of quota is based on expected returns, variations in quota owner liquidity, and the risk of policy default. The dominant influence on the variation of the quota price was the historical variation in monthly flow of net benefits from owning quota. This analysis confirms that the rate of return to quota rises in periods of policy uncertainty.adaptive expectations, capitalization of policy, dairy policy, policy risk, quota, Demand and Price Analysis,

Effects of Food Safety Standards on Seafood Exports to US, EU and Japan

Estimating the panel gravity model with bilateral pair and country-by-time fixed-effects separately for each seafood product, we found that food safety regulations have differential effects across seafood products. In all three industrialized markets, shrimp is most sensitive, while fish is the least sensitive to changing food safety policies. The enforcement of the US HACCP, the EU Minimum Required Performance Level and the Japanese Food Safety Basic Law caused a loss of 90.45%, 99.47%, and 99.97% to shrimp trade in these markets, and a reduction associated with fish trade was 66.71%, 82.83%, and 89.32%.food safety, seafood, international trade, gravity model, HACCP, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, International Relations/Trade, C33, F13, Q17, Q18,

QuPARA: Query-Driven Large-Scale Portfolio Aggregate Risk Analysis on MapReduce

Stochastic simulation techniques are used for portfolio risk analysis. Risk portfolios may consist of thousands of reinsurance contracts covering millions of insured locations. To quantify risk each portfolio must be evaluated in up to a million simulation trials, each capturing a different possible sequence of catastrophic events over the course of a contractual year. In this paper, we explore the design of a flexible framework for portfolio risk analysis that facilitates answering a rich variety of catastrophic risk queries. Rather than aggregating simulation data in order to produce a small set of high-level risk metrics efficiently (as is often done in production risk management systems), the focus here is on allowing the user to pose queries on unaggregated or partially aggregated data. The goal is to provide a flexible framework that can be used by analysts to answer a wide variety of unanticipated but natural ad hoc queries. Such detailed queries can help actuaries or underwriters to better understand the multiple dimensions (e.g., spatial correlation, seasonality, peril features, construction features, and financial terms) that can impact portfolio risk. We implemented a prototype system, called QuPARA (Query-Driven Large-Scale Portfolio Aggregate Risk Analysis), using Hadoop, which is Apache's implementation of the MapReduce paradigm. This allows the user to take advantage of large parallel compute servers in order to answer ad hoc risk analysis queries efficiently even on very large data sets typically encountered in practice. We describe the design and implementation of QuPARA and present experimental results that demonstrate its feasibility. A full portfolio risk analysis run consisting of a 1,000,000 trial simulation, with 1,000 events per trial, and 3,200 risk transfer contracts can be completed on a 16-node Hadoop cluster in just over 20 minutes.Comment: 9 pages, IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData), Santa Clara, USA, 201

The Fate of Local Food Systems in the Global Industrialization Market: Food and Social Justice in the Rural South

This paper investigates the connection between local food systems, health disparities, and social justice in the rural South. It begins with the relationship between food insecurity and health disparities that disproportionately affect racial and ethnic minority populations, and non-minority women and children. First, we discuss the concept of health disparities within the context of bioethics and public health ethics in order to explore the link between the food system and health as a social justice issue. Second, we define health disparities and discuss how they have historically plagued and disadvantaged racial minority populations. Third, we examine these disparities within the context of the structure of the food system and the related social justice issues. We conclude that food insecurity in the rural south is ethically unacceptable because it harms the disadvantaged populations living in these areas. It worsens their vulnerability, truncates their flourishing, and makes their optimal health a mirage