AJAE《美国农业经济学期刊》2022年第104卷第4期目录及摘要

全文链接：

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14678276/2022/104/4

On the value of innovation and extension information: SCN-resistant soybean varieties

Seungki Lee, GianCarlo Moschini

Basis risk in the pasture, rangeland, and forage insurance program: Evidence from California

James B. Keller, Tina L. Saitone

Using inferred valuation to quantify survey and social desirability bias in stated preference research

Alicia Entem, Patrick Lloyd-Smith, Wiktor ( Vic) L. Adamowicz, Peter C. Boxall

Efficiency of forest carbon policies at intensive and extensive margins

Rong Li, Brent Sohngen, Xiaohui Tian

Curvature and competitiveness: Carbon taxes in cattle markets

Brandon Schaufele

The price of cage-free eggs: Social cost of Proposition 12 in California

Sohae Eve Oh, Tomislav Vukina

Trading risk for ambiguity: Production versus health under pesticide application

Daniel C. Voica, Troy G. Schmitz

Fixed or mixed? Farmer-level heterogeneity in response to changes in salinity

Dilek Uz, Steven Buck, David Sunding

Technical efficiency and farmland expansion: Evidence from oil palm smallholders in Indonesia

Bernhard Dalheimer, Christoph Kubitza, Bernhard Brümmer

Uncertainty and learning in a technologically dynamic industry: Seed density in U.S. maize

Edward D. Perry, David A. Hennessy, GianCarlo Moschini

Stringent immigration enforcement and responses of the immigrant-intensive sector: Evidence from E-Verify adoption in Arizona

Tianyuan Luo, Genti Kostandini

Farm labor productivity and the impact of mechanization

Stephen F. Hamilton, Timothy J. Richards, Aric P. Shafran, Kathryn N. Vasilaky

A bird's eye view of farm size and biodiversity: The ecological legacy of the iron curtain

Frederik Noack, Ashley Larsen, Johannes Kamp, Christian Levers

Effects of competing food desert policies on store format choice among SNAP participants

Joel Cuffey, Timothy K. M. Beatty

International trade and standards harmonization: The case of tractors and the OECD Tractor Codes

Jonathan R. McFadden

Profits, prices and productivity in a common pool fishery

John B. Walden, Min-Yang Lee, Christopher J. O'Donnell

On the value of innovation and extension information: SCN-resistant soybean varieties

Seungki Lee    GianCarlo Moschini

Abstract：This paper presents direct evidence on the impact of a specific extension program that is aimed at promoting the adoption of varieties resistant to the soybean cyst nematode (SCN), specifically the Iowa State University SCN-Resistant Soybean Variety Trials. We use two data sources: experimental data from these variety trials and a rich proprietary dataset on farmers’ seed purchases. Combining these data, we estimate the value of soybean cyst nematode-resistant variety availability, and the associated variety trials that provide information on their performance to farmers and seed companies. Given the scope and diffusion of this extension program, the focus of the analysis is on Iowa and northern Illinois over the period 2011–2016. Farmers’ seed choices are modeled in a discrete choice framework, specifically a one-level nested logit model. Using the estimated demand model, we find farmers’ marginal willingness to pay for soybean cyst nematode-resistant varieties, and for related extension information provided by the Iowa State University SCN-Resistant Soybean Variety Trials program, to be large. These results are confirmed by counterfactual analyses showing that, over the six-year period and region of the study, the total ex post welfare change associated with the existence of, and information about, SCN-resistant seeds is about $478 million. About one-third of this surplus is captured by seed suppliers, and two-thirds accrues to farmers.

Basis risk in the pasture, rangeland, and forage insurance program: Evidence from California

James B. Keller    Tina L. Saitone

Abstract：Agricultural producers who are reliant upon rangelands and pasturelands are some of the most vulnerable to weather-related risk given their dependence on climate-sensitive resources. Index-based insurance products, like the Pasture, Rangeland, and Forage Insurance Program, are considered to be an adaptation strategy for mitigating climatic risks. Given that indices are imperfect predictors of losses, residual (basis) risk persists. This study quantifies basis risk and assesses insurance contract quality for nearly 63 million acres of rangelands in California. Basis risk can be summarized by considering false negative probabilities—the probability that an insured producer suffers a loss without receiving an indemnity payment. On California rangelands the false negative probabilities associated with one (both) of insured time intervals failing to indemnify a loss are 31% to 46% (14%–25%). When indemnities were paid, in 36% of the cases the payments are not sufficient to compensate for forage-related losses; the average shortfall in indemnity-related compensation ranged from $1.74/acre to $2.73/acre depending upon the location and underlying value of forage.

Using inferred valuation to quantify survey and social desirability bias in stated preference research

Alicia Entem   Patrick Lloyd-Smith    Wiktor ( Vic) L. Adamowicz    Peter C. Boxall

Abstract：Stated preference methods remain the only means capable of estimating non-use values yet can suffer from many types of well-known biases. We construct an approach to identify the role of social desirability bias, relative to other potential survey biases, using a stated preference survey for improving the status of species at risk. The survey respondents were asked how they would vote, how they think their fellow survey participants would vote, as well as how they think people in their region would vote in an actual referendum. We find that willingness-to-pay estimates for public good (passive use) values differ across these vote question types. Our results demonstrate how stated preference practitioners can use multiple referent groups to help disentangle social desirability bias from other survey biases.

Efficiency of forest carbon policies at intensive and extensive margins

Rong Li    Brent Sohngen    Xiaohui Tian

Abstract：The economic potential of forest carbon sequestration is widely acknowledged. However, no consensus has been reached regarding the appropriate policy instrument for promoting carbon sequestration. In this study, we develop a dynamic framework to measure the effects and efficiencies of alternative carbon policies. A stylized optimal control model of the timber market is first employed to illustrate the mechanisms through which different policies affect the decision making of the forest sector at the extensive margin (i.e., changing forest areas) and the intensive margin (i.e., changing harvest ages). We then introduce carbon price projections and species-specific production information into a multi-age dynamic timber market model. Different carbon policies are simulated numerically. Our results reveal that a carbon tax on forest emissions without compensating for sequestration leads to net carbon emissions and, thus, is the least efficient policy choice. Further, policies that do not increases carbon uptake at the intensive margin result in very high efficiency losses. A per-hectare land subsidy may be more than 10 times more expensive than a per-ton carbon tax and subsidy policy or a carbon subsidy policy.

Curvature and competitiveness: Carbon taxes in cattle markets

Brandon Schaufele

Abstract：Environmental regulation can interact with agricultural markets to produce underappreciated competitiveness and leakage effects. This paper measures effective carbon tax stringency by structurally recovering the domestic supply schedule for a trade-exposed beef cattle industry such that elasticities and carbon tax rates change with product prices (i.e., due to the curvature of the supply function). Two basic propositions from the economics of taxation—that excess burdens increase in elasticities and tax rates—are shown to cause the stringency of uniform carbon policy to vary nonlinearly with output prices. Based on the domestic supply function, the relationship between marginal excess burden, a measure of policy stringency from the industry's perspective, and product prices is estimated. Several policy-relevant counterfactual scenarios are explored. Results show that with moderately high output prices, supply elasticities are small and the efficiency cost of a $40/tCO2e carbon tax (gross of environmental benefits) is less than $0.01 per dollar tax revenue. As prices decline, supply curves become increasingly elastic and marginal excess burdens grow rapidly.

The price of cage-free eggs: Social cost of Proposition 12 in California

Sohae Eve Oh    Tomislav Vukina

Abstract：In November 2018, California passed the so-called Proposition 12 that completely bans selling eggs produced in any type of cages by the end of 2021. The objective of this study is to estimate the welfare effects of Proposition 12 in a partial equilibrium setup where both the supply and the demand side of the market are simultaneously modeled. Our estimates show that the implementation of Proposition 12 would result in welfare losses for both buyers and sellers of eggs in California. The state-level expected annual welfare loss to households amounts to $72 million, whereas the industry level losses at the retail level amount to 18% of their original quasi profits.

Trading risk for ambiguity: Production versus health under pesticide application

Daniel C. Voica    Troy G. Schmitz

Abstract：Pesticide use reduces the variation in crop yields at the expense of potentially negative consequences to farmers and their family members. This article examines the trade-off between decreasing production risk and increasing health ambiguity because of pesticide use. We find that under ambiguity, pesticide application decreases the variation in health outcomes, whereas under risk, it decreases the expected value of health outcomes. Health insurance protects health from the pesticide damage but not from the ambiguity effect of pesticide application, and the optimal choice of pesticide application does not depend on the farmer's health preferences over risk or ambiguity. However, in the absence of health insurance, ambiguity can increase or decrease the optimal choice of pesticide compared to the risk case. This suggests that public policies around pesticide usage should be designed to reflect and account for the multitude of behavioral responses in the presence of ambiguity and risk.

Fixed or mixed? Farmer-level heterogeneity in response to changes in salinity

Dilek Uz    Steven Buck    David Sunding

Abstract：We study supply response to irrigation water salinity—an important and ubiquitous environmental problem facing agriculture around the world. The geographical setting is the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, a main water hub in California, where salinity is a significant part of recent policy debates over water management and infrastructure. We use highly granular farm-level panel data on Delta farming activity to estimate two sets of response parameters using (i) standard (fixed coefficients) logit model, and (ii) a mixed (random coefficient) logit model. The mixed logit results provide evidence for heterogeneity in supply response across farmers. To put these findings in a meaningful economic context, we use the results from both models to simulate estimates for aggregate acreage responses under two alternative salinity scenarios. We implement a method to simulate individual specific responses together with their confidence intervals, which provides additional insight into the composition of farmer heterogeneity. Based on these post-regression simulation results, we find the mixed logit model predicts an elasticity of aggregate acreage for salt-sensitive (hence higher value) crops that is an order of magnitude larger compared to that of the standard fixed coefficients logit method. This result sheds light on category of costs likely to increase in response to rising salinity in the Delta region.

Technical efficiency and farmland expansion: Evidence from oil palm smallholders in Indonesia

Bernhard Dalheimer    Christoph Kubitza    Bernhard Brümmer

Abstract：This study asks whether innovation in smallholder production reduces or accelerates land expansion. Even though innovation in agriculture has reduced land expansion globally, rebound effects can occur locally and often at the expense of vital ecosystem functions. In contrast to other studies that investigate rebound effects in response to technological innovation, our study focuses on technical efficiency, the remaining component of total factor productivity. We use a short panel dataset from smallholder oil palm farmers in Sumatra, Indonesia, and develop a two-stage approach in which we estimate technical efficiency and determine its land expansion effect. Our findings suggest that technical efficiency and in particular land efficiency are low, indicating that 50% of the currently cultivated land could be spared. However, the land-sparing effect of increasing technical efficiency is at risk of being offset by about half due to a rebound effect. To maximize the conservation potential from increasing smallholder efficiency, policies need to simultaneously incentivize well-functioning land markets and stricter protection measures for land with high ecological value to mitigate local rebound effects.

Uncertainty and learning in a technologically dynamic industry: Seed density in U.S. maize

Edward D. Perry    David A. Hennessy    GianCarlo Moschini

Abstract：The large and sustained yield gains achieved since the introduction of maize hybrids in the 1930s (about 1.8 bushels per acre per year) have been accompanied by a remarkably parallel and steady increase in seeding density. This increase occurred in an environment characterized by rapid technological innovation, including genetic engineering, and commercial hybrid varieties with short life cycles. An important question, then, is whether and how breeders and farmers have learned about the optimal planting density. In this paper, we use unique and detailed U.S. farm-level data, consisting of more than 400,000 planting choices from 1995–2016, to assess the nature of learning about seeding density. Importantly, we control for unobserved confounders through both hybrid and farm-level fixed effects. We find that the variance in planting rates for a given hybrid has decreased over time, and that farmers tend to plant a given variety at higher rates over time. This is consistent with Bayesian learning in which risk-neutral farmers possess priors consistently below the true optimal rate. We cast doubt on risk aversion as a credible explanation for this finding by analyzing the contrasting evolution of soybean planting rates (a crop with exogenously different agronomic determinants of seed density). We interpret our results as evidence of inertia: the initial bias in maize farmers' priors is tilted towards the optimal planting rates of varieties planted in the past. One implication of the finding that farmers historically underinvested in seeding rates is that eliminating this tendency could result in productivity gains.

Stringent immigration enforcement and responses of the immigrant-intensive sector: Evidence from E-Verify adoption in Arizona

Tianyuan Luo    Genti Kostandini

Abstract：This article examines the impact of the 2008 Legal Arizona Workers Act on farm wage, production mix, farm capital use, and agricultural innovation using the synthetic control method. The findings indicate that the law significantly reduced farm worker population in Arizona. Farm wage is not affected by the decreased supply of farm labor because farms in Arizona reduced labor-intensive crop production. The agricultural sector does not increase the use of farm capital and experiences a decrease in profits. Moreover, this study finds no impact on agricultural patents and research funding in Arizona.

Farm labor productivity and the impact of mechanization

Stephen F. Hamilton    Timothy J. Richards    Aric P. Shafran    Kathryn N. Vasilaky

Abstract：There is a chronic shortage of agricultural labor in the US. Although growers increasingly turn to guest-worker programs to meet their labor needs, few regard immigrant workers as a viable long-term solution. Many producers of labor-intensive agricultural commodities regard mechanization as a clear long-term solution, making the slow rate of adoption of mechanized harvesting equipment in the US an empirical puzzle. In this article, we demonstrate that wage-setting farmers have an incentive to “overmechanize,” or employ more than the cost-minimizing level of capital when capital and labor are substitutes, but “undermechanize” when labor and capital are technical complements. This outcome can cause agricultural labor problems to persist under complementarity. To assess the potential role of farm under investment in labor augmenting capital equipment, we examine labor market outcomes following the adoption of non-autonomous harvesting aids on a large strawberry farm in Central California. We develop an econometric model of peer-affected productivity that controls for the group performance of farm workers operating in crews and find that mechanical aids complement labor in strawberry production, a finding that helps explain not only the relative lack of mechanized harvesting in strawberry production but, more generally, the persistent productivity gap in agricultural industries. We examine the broader implications of our theory for the slow rate of adoption of mechanical harvesting technologies in US agriculture by comparing general wage trends across several labor-intensive and non-labor-intensive industries in California.

A bird's eye view of farm size and biodiversity: The ecological legacy of the iron curtain

Frederik Noack    Ashley Larsen    Johannes Kamp    Christian Levers

Abstract：Agriculture is a major threat to global biodiversity. A common claim is that large-scale agro-industrial farming is mainly responsible for the biodiversity decline, while smaller family farms are more wildlife friendly. Here we leverage a natural experiment along the former inner German border to estimate the causal impact of farm size on biodiversity. We combine land cover data with bird diversity data to establish the mechanisms through which farm size affects bird diversity. Our main results show that the increase in farm size at the former inner German border reduces bird diversity by 15%. The results suggest further that the decline is the result of land cover simplification rather than land use intensification.

Effects of competing food desert policies on store format choice among SNAP participants

Joel Cuffey    Timothy K. M. Beatty

Abstract：We measure how Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants respond to policies designed to improve access to retail food store formats that stock healthy foods, specifically grocery stores. Supply-side policies seek to increase the supply of grocery stores by subsidizing store openings. Demand-side policies seek to increase the demand for food from grocery stores by, for example, increasing benefits. Unique SNAP administrative data allow us to estimate and compare impacts of grocery store openings and a SNAP benefit increase at a fine geographic scale. We find both policies increase shopping at grocery stores relative to other store formats but observe substantive impacts for grocery store openings only among households in very close proximity to the opening. Furthermore, we find that the impacts are mediated by car ownership and food desert status. In particular, households without cars in food deserts exhibit the largest impact. Grocery store openings decrease SNAP spending shares primarily at ethnic stores, whereas benefit increases decrease SNAP spending shares at convenience stores. Neither policy decreases total SNAP spending at convenience stores. The spillover effects on shopping at other store formats therefore make the potential effect on access to healthy food ambiguous.

International trade and standards harmonization: The case of tractors and the OECD Tractor Codes

Jonathan R. McFadden

Abstract：Although the trade effects of public and private standards—particularly for food safety and environmental quality—in agricultural markets have been well documented, much less is known about standards harmonization and international trade in tractors, a crucial input to agricultural production in most countries. We analyze the trade impacts of the long-lived OECD Tractor Codes—an integrated system of standardized tractor tests for performance and safety, certification, and mutual recognition agreements established in 1959. We hypothesize that this system increases tractor trade between members and possibly among members and nonmembers because it: (1) reduces duplication of tests across import markets, (2) lowers transaction costs of tractor trade disputes, (3) enhances manufacturers' risk management, and (4) boosts farmer demand through greater trust resulting from intergovernmental organization certification. Using bilateral COMTRADE data for 1962–2018, we estimate a structural gravity equation using Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood methods to account for zero trade. After controlling for economic integration agreements and OECD membership, our benchmark analysis suggests trade is roughly one-third larger if both partners are members, a finding that is robust to considerations of gradual adjustment costs and reverse causality. We further find that this effect varies by countries' timing of accession and, to a lesser extent, level of economic development, though trade creation effects are inconclusive. A counterfactual analysis indicates that manufacturers and farmers in nonmember countries, including several middle-income and low-income countries, would benefit from membership. Our results have important implications for standards harmonization and international trade in agricultural machinery.

Profits, prices and productivity in a common pool fishery

John B. Walden    Min-Yang Lee    Christopher J. O'Donnell

Abstract：Profitability change for any firm depends on both price and productivity change. Because most firms have little influence on prices in either output or input markets, oftentimes productivity change is thought to be the most relevant determinant of profitability change. When firms produce a product by harvesting or extracting government-regulated natural resource stocks, it is important for regulators to understand how their decisions influence firm profitability and its underlying drivers. In this study, we use a recently developed index number decomposition method to identify the drivers of profitability, price, and productivity change for vessels operating in the U.S. northeast scallop fishery. Our main finding is that increases in profitability over the period 1996 to 2015 were primarily due to increases in prices for scallops, combined with favorable biomass change. Fishing vessels were able to get higher prices for their harvest because of an innovative spatial harvest strategy, which resulted in catches of large, premium-priced scallops. Remarkably, this system resulted in both an increase in vessels harvesting scallops and large increases in profitability.

——END

相关阅读：

编辑：代安澜

审核：龙文进