Last updated on January 2, 2016
I began a three-year term as editor over at Food Policy in 2015, which means that I handle submissions in my areas of expertise, deciding which manuscripts get rejected and which ones get reviewed, selecting reviewers for those manuscripts that do get reviewed, and so on.
Once again, I wanted to feature a few articles from the latest issue of the journal. There is nothing special about those articles beyond the fact that I thought they would be of interest to readers of this blog.
Welfare Impacts of Higher Maize Prices when Allowing for Heterogeneous Price Increases, by Jörgen Levin and Elin Vimefall
Highlights:
- We explore the impact of higher maize prices on regions and groups in Kenya.
- 80% of the population would be negatively affected by higher maize prices.
- Rural landless households would lose the most.
- We let the proportional change in consumer and producer prices to differ.
- We allow for heterogeneity in marketing margins among districts.
- We demonstrate that relaxing these assumptions substantially affects the results.
Price Stabilization and Impacts of Trade Liberalization in the Southeast Asian Rice Market, by Hoa K. Hoang and Willi Meyers
Highlights:
- We model the rice price stabilization policy in Southeast Asia using a dynamic partial equilibrium framework.
- We assess the impact of free trade by phasing out implicit tariffs in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
- The study finds that the presence of state-trading enterprises (STEs) creates a remarkable price wedge.
- The removal of STEs decreases domestic prices and increases world prices.
- The price impact is shared quite evenly among major rice importers (Indonesia and the Philippines) and exporters (Thailand and Vietnam).
Explaining Grain and Oilseed Price Volatility: The Role of Export Restrictions, by James Rude and Henry An
Highlights:
- We examine the impact of export restrictions on food price volatility.
- We use a two-stage approach to estimate the determinants of price volatility.
- We find that export restrictions increased price volatility for wheat and rice but not maize and soybean.
- The contribution of export restrictions to price volatility is the same order of magnitude as key macroeconomic variables.
Subsidy or Market Reform? Rethinking China’s Farm Consolidation Strategy, by Nicholas Rada et al.
Highlights:
- We analyze farm-size expansion in China using a national farm-household sample.
- We question whether grain yields and per-hectare net returns increase with farm size.
- Results suggest regional opportunities to increase grain farm sizes.
- Reducing farmland transaction costs may encourage the desired consolidation.
Mobile Phones and Market Information: Evidence from Rural Cambodia, by Daichi Shimamoto et al.
Highlights:
- Local agricultural markets in Cambodia are featured as oligopsonistic markets.
- We examine the impact of the use of mobile phone to obtain market information.
- The mobile phone use is associated with an increase in the selling price of rice.