Agricultural Economics—Without Apology
From a similarly titled post by Dave Giles:
- Always, but always, plot your data.
- Remember that data quality is at least as important as data quantity.
- Always ask yourself, “Do these results make economic/common sense”?
- Check whether your “statistically significant” results are also “numerically/economically significant”.
- Be sure that you know exactly what assumptions are used/needed to obtain the results relating to the properties of any estimator or test that you use.
… in a Bloomberg article on quinoa:
Bolivian farmer Rafael Garcia is living larger thanks to one of Jennifer Aniston’s favorite salad ingredients.
“We sleep in good beds. We eat good food,” said Garcia, who heads an alliance of 37 producers of a crop called quinoa in the western Oruro region. “We now have bikes and motorcycles while we used to go everywhere by foot.”
Thousands of miles from celebrities and chefs who tout the health benefits of quinoa — a seed packed with protein and fiber — sales are lifting the fortunes of Andean farmers who’ve grown it for centuries mostly for subsistence. Governments of Peru and Bolivia, which still dominate the $123 million export market, are hoping the trend can last as prices that have doubled to about $3,000 a metric ton since 2007 attract better capitalized competitors.
I am quoted further in the article, when discussing how the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has declared 2013 to be the International Year of Quinoa:
Those attributes will help distinguish Bolivian quinoa from the competition, said Paola Mejia, the manager of the Bolivian Chamber of Royal Quinoa and Organic Products Exporters, which is seeking international certification for the seed grown by the country’s 12,000 farmers.
“There are different sorts of quinoa and the world is going to ask for different quality types,” she said in a phone interview.
It’s not clear the world will keep asking, according to Bellemare. “To say, ‘Let’s make this the next big thing,’ maybe Madison Avenue would be able to do that. I honestly doubt the FAO has the marketing firepower,” he said.
My department is hosting this academic year’s edition of the MIEDC conference:
In the spring of 2014, the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota will host the 11th Midwest International Economic Development Conference on Friday, May 2 and Saturday, May 3 2014 at the McNamara Alumni Center on the University of Minnesota East Bank Campus in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The guest speaker will be Tim Besley, Professor of Economics and Political Science at the London School of Economics, University of London.
We invite you, and any other interested faculty and graduate students in your department or elsewhere, to submit a paper to present at the conference. Papers on any topic related to international economic development are welcome. Submissions for an entire session (of 3 papers) are also welcome.
Deadline for submissions is January 6, 2014. Papers will be reviewed by a committee from the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. You will be notified by January 31, 2014 whether your paper has been accepted.
Information about topics, papers and presenters at last year’s conference is available at:
http://www.aae.wisc.edu/
mwiedc/schedule.asp Additional information about this year’s conference is available at:
http://faculty.apec.umn.edu/
pglewwe/Minnconf/index.html Questions about submissions, contact: Paul Glewwe
Submit papers to: Frank Trnka