Price Transparency in the Voluntary Price Reporting System for Live Cattle: Theory and Empirical Evidence from South Dakota

The ability of the former federal voluntary price reporting system to facilitate market efficiency in the cash markets for U.S. livestock was questioned by producer groups and academic researchers prior to implementation of federal mandatory price reporting regulations. In the cash market for slaughter cattle, concerns raised in the literature centered on the effect of thinning cash markets and strategic price reporting behavior on the robustness of voluntary cash price reports issued by the USDA-Agricultural Marketing Services. A theoretical framework is developed describing the interregional spatial linkages between cash markets and price reporting regimes (mandatory versus voluntary). Data from South Dakota and Nebraska cash markets for live cattle are used to test if the conditions necessary for interregional price transparency did exist prior to implementation of federal price reporting regulations. A set of testable hypotheses, based on the theoretical framework, is developed to test if the concerns raised in the literature about the voluntary price reporting system can be empiracally verified. The empirical results do not support the literature's proposition that the voluntary price reporting system for live cattle failed to provide timely and accurate market price information to the cash market prior to the implementation of the federal mandatory price reporting system in South Dakota and Nebraska. Furthermore, empirical evidence does not support the suppostion that a thinning cash market or strategic price reporting had a significant negative effect on the AMS voluntary price reporting system's accuracy or timely transmission of price information. Therefore, we conclude that the AMS voluntary price reporting system provided price transparency for South Dakota and Nebraska producers selling in the cash market and contributed to the price discovery process.grid pricing, price discovery, price reporting, slaughter cattle

Extensive Usage of Insecticide and Changing Crop Rotation Patterns: A South Dakota Case Study

Driven by factors such as an increased reliance on genetically modified crops, government policies, and market forces, the crop mix in South Dakota and elsewhere in the United States has become less diverse and moved toward the production of corn and soybeans as the most predominant cash crops over the past two decades. Coinciding with a reduced complexity of crop rotation practices, the prevalence of mono-cropping has increased and crop chemical usage has changed as well. Overall, the reduced reliance on traditional crop rotation practices for mitigating pests corresponds with an increase in crop acres treated with insecticides, expressed as a proportion of total cropland acres, and referred to in the literature as the extensive usage of insecticides. In this paper, we identify how changing cropping patterns in South Dakota have affected the extensive usage of insecticides, an aspect often overlooked by producers and policy makers. Results indicate that increased corn production has contributed to an increase in the share of cropland acres treated with insecticides at the county level in eastern South Dakota

Biographical Essays of the Secretaries of the Treasury, 1824-1832

[Page] 1- Asbury Dickins (July 29, 1780 - October 21, 1861) [Page] 7- Samuel Delucenna Ingham (September 16, 1779 - June 5, 1860) [Page] 16- Samuel Lewis Touthard (June 9, 1787 - June 26, 1842) [Page] 17- Louis McLane (May 28, 1784 - October 7, 1857) [Page] 37- Richard Rush (August 29, 1780 - July 30, 1859

The Effect of Joint-Product Export Smuggling on Export Tax Policy

This paper analyzes the effect of joint-product export smuggling on the revenue-maximizing export tax rate and tax revenue collection under the small country assumption. The results indicate that the effect of introducing joint product export smuggling is dependent on whether legal and illegal exports are considered a substitutable or complementary activity for the exporting firm. The results of the model are applied to the issue of cigarette smuggling in the United States. The paper concludes that if legal and illegal interstate trade in cigarettes are substitutable activities for firms in the wholesale and retail tobacco industry, then states levying relatively high excise taxes should reduce their tax rates. This action will increase legal trade at the expense of illegal trade and raise the level of tax revenue collected. The proposed increase in the federal cigarette excise tax to fund health care reform is also discussed within the framework of the paper\u27s model. The model suggests that a substantial increase in the federal cigarette tax may generate over-invoicing of cigarette exports and thereby reduce the market share of legal cigarettes. A rise in the cigarette tax rate could therefore have an ambiguous effect on tax revenues collected and jeopardize the funding of the health care program. (JEL: Fl3, H26, H21