The Doha Round Declaration on Cotton: A Catalyst for Poverty Reduction in Africa?

Cotton plays a strategic role in the development policies and poverty reduction programs of a number of African countries. Several African countries have introduced reforms in the cotton sector to improve its quality and competitiveness. The impact of these reforms has to date been virtually nullified by the fact that certain WTO Members continue to apply support measures and subsidies that distort global market prices. These are the arguments behind the Cotton Initiative raised in 2003 in the World Trade Organization (WTO) by Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali, which reflects the position of the African Group countries until the Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong recently. In this conference two important policy changes were agreed in international trade of cotton. First, all forms of export subsidies for cotton will be eliminated by developed countries in 2006. Second, developed countries will give duty and quota free access for cotton exports from the least-developed countries (LDCs). This paper uses a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Zambian economy with a three fold purpose: (a) to study the impact of the Doha Round agreement on the cotton sector in Zambia, (b) to analyze the reality of the Doha agreement versus the African countries' cotton initiative during the WTO Hong Kong conference, and (c) to contribute to the analysis of further agricultural trade liberalization and its implications for poor countries. The results show the extent of the benefits of implementation of both, the Doha WTO Round and the African Countries Proposal in Zambia. We quantify the impacts of both policy initiatives on the Zambian cotton sector (production, exports, prices), and agrarian population welfare. The results show that the positive effects of the Cotton Initiative in Zambia are higher than the Doha Round polices benefits.International Relations/Trade,

Assessing the Economic Impact of Minimum Wage Increases on the Washington Economy: A General Equilibrium Approach

Washington voters passed Initiative Measure No. 688 on November 3, 1998. This bill increased Washington’s minimum wage to $5.70 on January 1, 1999.and to$6.50 on January 1, 2000. The Initiative required that future annual changes in Washington’s minimum wage be indexed to inflation in the BLS Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). As of 2005, Washington had the highest minimum wage in the nation at $7.35 per hour. Eleven other states have minimum wages above the Federal minimum wage of$5.15 per hour; however, Oregon is the only other state with an inflation-indexed minimum wage, which was $7.05 per hour in 2004. A computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Washington economy was used to examine the economic impact of increases in Washington’s minimum wage. Results from the short-run model indicated that a five percent increase in Washington’s minimum wage would cause a loss of 1909 minimum wage jobs (2.5 percent of baseline minimum wage jobs) but the wage bill for minimum wage workers would increase by$22.61 million (2.38 percent of the baseline minimum wage bill). The loss in the total wage and capital bill for the state economy was $14.04 million. The predicted change in gross state product was roughly 0.007 percent. Tracing the impact of increases in the minimum wage across the size distribution of household income, low income households in Washington experienced an increase in welfare and there was a slight decrease in welfare for high income households.Washington's minimum wage, the Washington CGE model, Two-level CES production functions, elasticity of labor-capital substitution, welfare change

A General Equilibrium Analysis of Foreign and Domestic Demand Shocks Arising from Mad Cow Disease in the United States

The discovery of the first case of mad cow disease in the United States in 2003 reverberated across the beef and cattle industry. This study employs a general equilibrium model to analyze the potential economic effects of mad cow disease on the beef, cattle, and other meat industries under three scenarios, ranging form most favorable to most pessimistic. The scenario with 90% foreign demand decline and 10% domestic demand reduction generates results consistent with the actual outcomes after the mad cow disease outbreak. Only if domestic demand declines significantly will the economic hardship in the U.S. beef and cattle industry be very large.demand decline, economic effects, mad cow disease, International Relations/Trade, Livestock Production/Industries,

EFFECTS OF TRADE BARRIERS ON U.S. APPLE EXPORTS

We build a spatial equilibrium trade model for apples using demand and supply relations for each importing and exporting country. The model maximizes welfare subject to demand and production constraints. A trade barrier (free trade) scenario which incorporates (removes) import quotas and tariffs is run. Comparison of the solutions of the two scenarios quantifies the impacts of trade barriers on US apple exports.apples, spatial equilibrium model, trade barriers, International Relations/Trade, F10,

Development of an integrated economic and ecological framework for ecosystem-based fisheries management in New England

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2012. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Progress in Oceanography 102 (2012): 93-101, doi:10.1016/j.pocean.2012.03.007.We present an integrated economic-ecological framework designed to help assess the implementation of ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) in New England. We develop the framework by linking a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of a coastal economy to an end-to-end (E2E) model of a marine food web for Georges Bank. We focus on the New England region using coastal county economic data for a restricted set of industry sectors and marine ecological data for three top level trophic feeding guilds: planktivores, benthivores, and piscivores. We undertake numerical simulations to model the welfare effects of changes in alternative combinations of yields from feeding guilds and alternative manifestations of biological productivity. We estimate the economic and distributional effects of these alternative simulations across a range of consumer income levels. This framework could be used to extend existing methodologies for assessing the impacts on human communities of groundfish stock rebuilding strategies, such as those expected through the implementation of the sector management program in the US northeast fishery. We discuss other possible applications of and modifications and limitations to the framework.This work was supported by the NOAA Saltonstall-Kennedy Grant Program (Award No. NA09NMF4270097), the MIT Sea Grant College Program (NOAA Award No. NA10OAR4170086, Subaward No. 5710002974), and the Johnson Endowment of the WHOI Marine Policy Center

The Lbudget User Guide A Livestock Budget Generator

Cost and return estimates (enterprise budgets) have been commonly done to calculate per acre or per head costs of producing various commodities. Computer programs have assisted greatly in this process