SABIIA - Sistema Aberto e Integrado de Informação em Agricultura (Sabiia)

Salois, Matthew J.; Livanis, Grigorios T.; Moss, Charles B..

Agricultural economists rely on aggregated data at various levels depending on data availability and the econometric techniques employed. However, the implication of aggregation on economic relationships remains an open question. To examine the impact of aggregation on estimation, Monte Carlo techniques and data are employed on production practices.

Fat Taxes and Thin Subsidies: Distributional Impacts and Welfare Effects

Palavras-chave: Research Methods/ Statistical Methods.

Ano: 2006

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/35401

The extant literature on fat taxes and thin subsidies tends to focus on the overall effectiveness of such fiscal instruments in altering diets and improving health. However, little is known about the welfare impacts of fiscal food policies on society. This paper fills a gap in the literature by assessing the distributional impacts and welfare effects resulting from a tax-subsidy combination on different food groups. Using the methods derived from marginal tax reform theory, a formal welfare economics framework is developed allowing the calculation of the distributional characteristics of various food groups and approximate welfare measures of prices changes caused by a tax-subsidy combination. The distributional characteristics reveal that many of the food...

Obesity and Diabetes, the Built Environment, and the 'Local' Food Economy

Palavras-chave: Distributional characteristic; Fat tax; Obesity; Thin subsidy; Welfare.; Health Economics and Policy; D30; D60; H20; I10; I30..

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/91754

Salois, Matthew J..

Obesity and diabetes are increasingly attributed to environmental factors, however, little attention has been paid to the influence of the ‘local’ food economy. This paper examines the association of measures relating to the built environment and ‘local’ agriculture with U.S. county-level prevalence of obesity and diabetes. Key indicators of the ‘local’ food economy include the density of farmers’ markets and the presence of farms with direct sales. This paper employs a robust regression estimator to account for non-normality of the data and to accommodate outliers. Overall, the built environment is associated with the prevalence of obesity and diabetes and a strong 'local' food economy may play an important role in prevention. Results imply considerable...

The Impact of Financial Crises on Trade Flows: A Developing Country Perspective

Palavras-chave: Community-intervention; Diabetes; Food environment; Famers’ market; Leverage points; ‘local’ food; Robust regression; Obesity; Outliers.; Agricultural and Food Policy; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Health Economics and Policy.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/103649

Macias, Jose Brambila; Massa, Isabella; Salois, Matthew J..

The global financial crisis has hit hard international trade that dropped below levels not seen since the Great Depression with disastrous consequences for the developing world. This paper estimates an extended gravity model of trade on a sample of 83 developing countries over the period 1990-2007 to shed light on how banking crises and global economic downturns affect bilateral exports flows from developing countries. In addition to traditional variables, we include a trade finance variable and foreign aid among the regressors. Differences between developing regions are taken into account. Our results show that (i) trade finance has a positive and significant impact on bilateral export flows in all developing regions except Latin America; (ii) foreign aid...

The Impacts of Fat Taxes and Thin Subsidies on Nutrient Intakes

Palavras-chave: Banking Crises; Developing Countries; Foreign Aid; Global Downturn; International Trade; Trade Finance; Mixed Effects Panel Data; Random Coefficients.; Agricultural and Food Policy; C23; F11; F12; F34; F35; G01..

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/91831

This paper examines the health effects of a fiscal food policy based on a combination of fat taxes and thin subsidies. The fat tax is based on the saturated fat content of food items while the thin subsidy is applied to select fruit and vegetable items. The policy is designed to be revenue neutral so the subsidy exactly offsets the revenue from the fat tax. A model of food demand is estimated using Bayesian methods that accounts for censoring and infrequency of purchase (the problem of unit values is also discussed). The estimated demand elasticities are used to compute nutrient elasticities which demonstrate how consumption of specific nutrients changes based on price changes in particular foods from the fiscal policy. Results show that although the fat...

THE HEALTH EFFECTS OF A FISCAL FOOD POLICY

Palavras-chave: Fat tax; Nutrient elasticities; Obesity; Thin subsidy; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; D30; D60; H20; I10; I30.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/108789

This paper examines the health effects of a fiscal food policy based on a combination of fat taxes and thin subsidies. The fat tax is based on the saturated fat content of food items while the thin subsidy is applied to select fruit and vegetable items. The policy is designed to be revenue neutral so that the subsidy exactly offsets the revenue from the fat tax. A model of food demand is estimated using Bayesian methods that accounts for censoring and infrequency of purchase (the problem of unit values is also discussed). The estimated of demand elasticities are used to compute nutrient elasticities which demonstrate how consumption of specific nutrients changes based on price changes in particular foods from the fiscal policy. Results show that while the...

Impact of Income on Calorie and Nutrient Intakes: A Cross-Country Analysis

Palavras-chave: Bayesian estimation; Censoring; Fat tax; Infrequency of purchase; Nutrient elasticities; Obesity; Thin subsidy; Unit values; Agricultural and Food Policy; Consumer/Household Economics; Demand and Price Analysis; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Food Security and Poverty; Health Economics and Policy; D30; D60; H20; I10; I30.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/116394

Salois, Matthew J.; Tiffin, J. Richard; Balcombe, Kelvin George.

The relationship between income and nutrient intake is explored. Nonparametric, panel, and quantile regressions are used. Engle curves for calories, fat, and protein are approximately linear in logs with carbohydrate intakes exhibiting diminishing elasticities as incomes increase. Elasticities range from 0.10 to 0.25, with fat having the highest elasticities. Countries in higher quantiles have lower elasticities than those in lower quantiles. Results predict significant cumulative increases in calorie consumption which are increasingly composed of fats. Though policies aimed at poverty alleviation and economic growth may assuage hunger and malnutrition, they may also exacerbate problems associated with obesity.

A Nonparametric Kernel Representation of the Agricultural Production Function: Implications for Economic Measures of Technology

Palavras-chave: Calorie and nutrient consumption; Food and nutrition policy; Income elasticities; Nonparametric; Panel; Quantile regression.; Agricultural and Food Policy; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Food Security and Poverty; International Development; Research Methods/ Statistical Methods; C11; C14; C21; C23; O10; O47; Q18.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/103647

Livanis, Grigorios T.; Salois, Matthew J.; Moss, Charles B..

The issue of production function estimation has received recent attention, particularly in agricultural economics with the advent of precision farming. Yet, the evidence to date is far from unanimous on the proper form of the production function. This paper reexamines the use of the primal production function framework using nonparametric regression techniques. Specifically, the paper demonstrates how a nonparametric regression based on a kernel density estimator can be used to estimate a production function using data on corn production from Illinois and Indiana. Nonparametric results are compared to common parametric specifications using the Nadaraya-Watson kernel regression estimator. The parametric and nonparametric forms are also compared in terms of...

The Distributional Consequences of a Fiscal Food Policy: Evidence From the UK

Palavras-chave: Nonparametric regression; Nonparametric derivatives; Gaussian kernel; Optimization techniques; Production function; Production Economics; C14; C15; C16; C61; Q12.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/51063