The 2003 Mid Term Review of the Common Agricultural Policy: A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis for Ireland

A Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model of the Irish economy is built and used to analyse the 2003 Mid Term Review (MTR) of the Common Agricultural Policy. The MTR represents significant reform of agricultural policy in the EU, and has generated widespread interest and numerous studies of its anticipated effects. Economists have employed a variety of modelling approaches, encompassing single and multi-country general and partial equilibrium models. This research contributes a dedicated single country CGE modelling analysis of the MTR for Ireland. IMAGE2 is a CGE model with particular emphasis on the agriculture and food processing sectors, and the careful representation of CAP instruments. The database is the most detailed and current CGE database of the Irish economy. Results from the simulation indicate that agricultural activity will decline following the implementation of the MTR. In particular, labour use in the sector will fall, as some agricultural workers seek off-farm employment and others cease to work. Despite the decline in agricultural activity, the continuation of subsidy support ensures that gross value added at factor price is maintained, and even increases slightly in the short run. There is a change in primary factor usage in agriculture, with significant extensification stimulated by the MTR. Within the sector, there are large changes in the composition of agricultural output. Reductions in output of the previously subsidised products, cattle, sheep and cereals, are accompanied by an increase in output of other agricultural goods such as other livestock, fruits and vegetables, and forestry. Advance estimates of agricultural activity in 2005, the first full year of decoupling, indicate that changes in the sector have followed these broad indications.Agricultural and Food Policy, D5, H2, Q1,

"Impact of the 2003 Mid-Term Review of the Common Agricultural Policy"

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The impacts of COVID-19 containment on the Australian economy and its agricultural and mining industries*

We simulate the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Australian economy using VURM, a detailed computable general equilibrium model for Australia. We identify five sources of economic perturbations: changes to productivity due to changing work practices, changes in household demand imposed by voluntary and mandated social distancing behaviour, changes in international trade due to a weakened world economy and severe curtailment of international travel, reduced population growth due to lower net migration and large debt-financed fiscal stimulus. Variants of these shocks and associated recovery paths are simulated in VURM, with three scenarios describing potential recovery arcs. The macroeconomic and industry impacts are reported for each scenario. Ultimately, our focus is on the impact on output and employment in the agriculture and mining sectors, and on their likely recovery prospects. At the peak of economic impacts, output in these sectors declines by about 6 per cent relative to a no-COVID baseline. Compared to the economy-wide average, the decline in agriculture and mining output is small. This can be explained by relatively minor impacts on work practices, relatively low negative impacts on demand for intensive agriculture (helped by fiscal supports for households) and relatively low disruption to export demand

Connecting Health and Technology (CHAT): protocol of a randomized controlled trial to improve nutrition behaviours using mobile devices and tailored text messaging in young adults

Background: Increasing intakes of fruits and vegetables intake, in tandem with reducing consumption of energy-dense and nutrient poor foods and beverages are dietary priorities to prevent chronic disease. Although most adults do not eat enough fruit and vegetables, teenagers and young adults tend to have the lowest intakes. Young adults typically consume a diet which is inconsistent with the dietary recommendations. Yet little is known about the best approaches to improve dietary intakes and behaviours among this group. This randomised controlled trial aims to evaluate the effectiveness of using a mobile device to assess dietary intake, provide tailored dietary feedback and text messages to motivate changes in fruit, vegetable and junk food consumption among young adults

Telomerecat: A ploidy-agnostic method for estimating telomere length from whole genome sequencing data.

Telomere length is a risk factor in disease and the dynamics of telomere length are crucial to our understanding of cell replication and vitality. The proliferation of whole genome sequencing represents an unprecedented opportunity to glean new insights into telomere biology on a previously unimaginable scale. To this end, a number of approaches for estimating telomere length from whole-genome sequencing data have been proposed. Here we present Telomerecat, a novel approach to the estimation of telomere length. Previous methods have been dependent on the number of telomeres present in a cell being known, which may be problematic when analysing aneuploid cancer data and non-human samples. Telomerecat is designed to be agnostic to the number of telomeres present, making it suited for the purpose of estimating telomere length in cancer studies. Telomerecat also accounts for interstitial telomeric reads and presents a novel approach to dealing with sequencing errors. We show that Telomerecat performs well at telomere length estimation when compared to leading experimental and computational methods. Furthermore, we show that it detects expected patterns in longitudinal data, repeated measurements, and cross-species comparisons. We also apply the method to a cancer cell data, uncovering an interesting relationship with the underlying telomerase genotype

GWAS meta-analysis of intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy implicates multiple hepatic genes and regulatory elements

Intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP) is a pregnancy-specific liver disorder affecting 0.5–2% of pregnancies. The majority of cases present in the third trimester with pruritus, elevated serum bile acids and abnormal serum liver tests. ICP is associated with an increased risk of adverse outcomes, including spontaneous preterm birth and stillbirth. Whilst rare mutations affecting hepatobiliary transporters contribute to the aetiology of ICP, the role of common genetic variation in ICP has not been systematically characterised to date. Here, we perform genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and meta-analyses for ICP across three studies including 1138 cases and 153,642 controls. Eleven loci achieve genome-wide significance and have been further investigated and fine-mapped using functional genomics approaches. Our results pinpoint common sequence variation in liver-enriched genes and liver-specific cis-regulatory elements as contributing mechanisms to ICP susceptibility

Publisher Correction: Telomerecat: A ploidy-agnostic method for estimating telomere length from whole genome sequencing data.

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has been fixed in the paper

The 2003 Mid Term Review of the Common Agricultural Policy: A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis for Ireland

A Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model of the Irish economy is built and used to analyse the 2003 Mid Term Review (MTR) of the Common Agricultural Policy. The MTR represents significant reform of agricultural policy in the EU, and has generated widespread interest and numerous studies of its anticipated effects. Economists have employed a variety of modelling approaches, encompassing single and multi-country general and partial equilibrium models. This research contributes a dedicated single country CGE modelling analysis of the MTR for Ireland. IMAGE2 is a CGE model with particular emphasis on the agriculture and food processing sectors, and the careful representation of CAP instruments. The database is the most detailed and current CGE database of the Irish economy. Results from the simulation indicate that agricultural activity will decline following the implementation of the MTR. In particular, labour use in the sector will fall, as some agricultural workers seek off-farm employment and others cease to work. Despite the decline in agricultural activity, the continuation of subsidy support ensures that gross value added at factor price is maintained, and even increases slightly in the short run. There is a change in primary factor usage in agriculture, with significant extensification stimulated by the MTR. Within the sector, there are large changes in the composition of agricultural output. Reductions in output of the previously subsidised products, cattle, sheep and cereals, are accompanied by an increase in output of other agricultural goods such as other livestock, fruits and vegetables, and forestry. Advance estimates of agricultural activity in 2005, the first full year of decoupling, indicate that changes in the sector have followed these broad indications

A new generation of scientists? The impact of STEM-qualified workers on the Australian economy

Developing capacity in “STEM” (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) is often considered by policy makers to be a panacea for economic growth. We investigate the potential impacts on the Australian economy of a boost to the STEM sector using the single-region, dynamic Victoria University (VU) model of the Australian economy. We consider two scenarios. In the first, we explore the potential for growth through building up the supply of STEM qualified workers. We find a positive deviation in GDP from the business-as-usual forecast in the medium term. The benefit to the economy of additional STEM qualified workers gradually declines as the supply of these workers grows, until the average wage received by STEM workers, initially more than the national average, falls to below the national average wage. For every additional STEM worker, demographic constraints mean that the economy loses a non-STEM worker – perhaps an artist, a labourer, or a hairdresser. In the long run, this has a negative impact. In the second scenario, we analyse the impact of a boost to demand for exports of STEM commodities. The scenario is set up to reflect a compositional change only, with the demand for non-STEM exports declining so that the terms of trade remains on its business-as-usual forecast trajectory. Over the forecast period of 20 years, we find that this compositional change has a positive impact on economic growth. In addition to the usual CGE framework embedded in the 115-industry VU model, in this project we use two detailed industry by occupation matrices, the first specified in wage bill weights and the second in head counts. For these matrices, 97 occupations are identified. Furthermore, we utilise matrices of occupation by skill in wage bill and head count weights, in which 56 “skills” are identified, comprised of 11 fields of study cross-classified by 5 levels of attainment and a final category for no post-school qualification