E. Wesley F. Peterson

University of Nebraska–Lincoln | NU · Department of Agricultural Economics

Effective irrigation management is critical for future food supplies and the prosperity of producers engaged in irrigation production. Through a deficit irrigation field experiment, we determine the financial impact on producers caused by changing irrigation costs, corn prices, extreme weather events, and restricting irrigation levels. Results sugg...

Inflation driven by rising prices for food, energy, and other consumer goods has become a major concern in the United States and other high-income countries. A far more serious issue is the effect of rising food prices on low-income households in many developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Global food prices had been rising in 202...

The Coronavirus pandemic has disrupted economic activities around the world. Many businesses had to cease operations and furlough or lay off their workers. The World Bank (2021) has reported that global economic output fell by 3.4% in 2020. The good news is that the massive infusion of financial support from many governments in high-income countrie...

Background Food insecurity is a global problem that requires a One Health approach. As many households in low- and middle-income nations rely on crops and livestock that they produce to meet their household’s needs, food security and nutrition are closely linked to the health of animals and the environment. Resources controlled by women are more of...

In the June 10, 2020 issue of Cornhusker Economics, the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) was described and the average level of payments to Nebraska Corn and Soybean Producers from this program were estimated. CFAP includes payments for both livestock and crops and in this issue, I explain eligibility requirements, payment sources, and ex...

On April 17, 2020, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP), a new program to assist producers and consumers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (USDA 2020b). CFAP will provide $19 billion in relief to producers and entities throughout the supply chain. This will be done through two programs,...

In a previous issue of Cornhusker Economics ( October 3, 2018, available at https://agecon.unl.edu/ cornhusker-economics/2018/market-facilitationprogram) we reviewed the sequence of events surrounding the trade war between the United States and China, and, in particular, the response of the Trump administration to the retaliatory tariffs imposed by...

Current United States trade policies are in line with an old economic doctrine known as mercantilism which calls for protectionist policies to reduce imports and expand exports with the goal of generating large trade surpluses. This doctrine has been discredited for over 200 years following the analyses of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and other late e...

Agriculture comprises around 9.5 percent of GDP for all developing countries, 26.0 percent for the least developed, 17.6 percent in South Asia and 17.4 percent in Sub -Saharan Africa compared with only 1.1 percent in the United States (World Bank, 2018). Agriculture is the main source of employment and livelihood for many, especially in Asia and Af...

Increasing economic inequality in recent years has triggered an outpouring of analysis and reflection on the causes and consequences of these changes. Several commentators have argued that inequality does not merit all the attention it has been receiving noting that the focus on inequality can divert attention from the real problem, which is povert...

The relationship between population growth and economic growth is controversial. This article draws on historical data to chart the links between population growth, growth in per capita output, and overall economic growth over the past 200 years. Low population growth in high-income countries is likely to create social and economic problems while h...

Labor is the world’s most valuable commodity—yet thanks to strict immigration regulation, most of it goes to waste. (Caplan & Naik, 2015) World economic output (currently about $75 trillion) could double if people were allowed to move freely in response to economic opportunities in other countries (Caplan and Naik, 2015). Workers in developing coun...

The fact that the United States has a global trade deficit as well as bilateral trade deficits with particular countries, such as China or Germany, has recently received extensive commentary in the news (see Irwin 2016, Constable 2017, Goodman 2017). The balance of trade is the difference between the value of a country’s imports of goods and servic...

In 2014 the United States, European Union (EU), and several other countries imposed economic sanctions on Russia in response to its annexation of Crimea and support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine (Nelson, 2017; Europa, 2017). Prior to the 1990s, the use of economic sanctions to challenge the behavior of foreign governments was fairly rare...

Rising economic inequality in the United States and around the world is widely seen as an important public policy issue. While academic social scientists have long been interested in the causes and consequences of inequality, the economic situation in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008-09 has stimulated increased public awareness of this...

International trade is important for Nebraska and U.S. agriculture. Export sales account for about 27% of gross farm receipts in Nebraska, 32% for the United States as a whole. Consumers also benefit from agricultural trade which assures a steady supply of consumer goods ranging from tropical fruits to chocolate, coffee, and other goods that have b...

On June 23, 2016, the citizens of the United Kingdom (UK) voted by a narrow margin to withdraw from the European Union (EU) and on October 2, 2016, the recently chosen Prime Minister, Theresa May, announced that her government would invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty by the end of March 2017 triggering the process of exiting the EU. The purpose...

Dispute resolution; Dispute settlement Body; Dispute settlement panels

Worldwide one in three women will be abused sexually or will encounter physical violence dur-ing her lifetime (Human Development Report (HDR), 2014). That amounts to about 1.2 billion women. Although gender-related abuse and vio-lence exist everywhere, the issues that come to mind when contemplating gender inequality in high-income countries are us...

On May 13, 2014, nine UNL undergraduate students set off on a three-week study tour in the West African country of Benin. The main objectives of the program were to learn about tropical agriculture and sustainable agricultural development in Africa and to discover the rich history and cultural traditions of Benin. The program was organized by Wes P...

In recent decades, there have been very substantial social, economic and political changes in many developing countries. While some noteworthy success stories, notably those of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have been widely reported, the prevailing image for the majority of poor countries is one of civil war, natural dis...

The African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) which was signed into law in 2000 as part of U.S. trade legislation has the objectives of increasing trade and investment between the U.S. and eligible Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, by reducing or eliminating tariffs applied to African exports of different products. This Act represents a promis...

Life on earth depends on water. Unfortunately, water resources are not evenly distributed. There are countries with abundant water supplies, such as Brazil or Canada, and countries that lack water resources, such as Egypt or Jordan. Because water is critical for the production of food and other goods, as well as for human consumption, recreation an...

International trade has been of great importance for United States agriculture since the founding of the nation. Today, about 20 percent of agricultural production in the United States is exported, and the revenue from these exports is an important source of farm income. According to the Economic Research Service over half of U.S. wheat production...

In 2009, the government of Liberia leased 220,000 hectares (543,4000 acres) of land to a Malaysian company, Sime Darby, which intends to develop the land for palm oil and rubber production. While the company has promised that its operations will create jobs and comply with all environmental standards, local farmers have expressed concerns about env...

Land is a critical input for agricultural production. At the same time, land has long been seen as a store of wealth, an asset that may be held for a wide range of purposes and that may account for a significant share of a nation’s resource stock. The way in which land is owned, used and transferred has varied over time and throughout the world. La...

This is the third and final article in a series on property rights. In the previous two articles we saw how conflicts often emerge during the transition from one set of legal or social institutions to another. In this article we consider how such challenges helped spark a prolonged civil war in Sri Lanka, and how they might finally be resolved now...

This is the second in a series of three Cornhusker Economics articles on the institutions governing the ownership, use and transfer of agricultural land around the world. Last week, the focus was on the difficult transition from social to private land ownership in the countries of the Former Soviet Union. This week, the issue concerns the recent in...

Purpose The paper aims to theoretically and empirically investigate the impact on human capital investment decisions and income growth of lowered life expectancy as a result of HIV/AIDS and other diseases. Design/methodology/approach The theoretical model is a three‐period overlapping generations model where individuals go through three stages in...

In 2000, the United Nations adopted the Millennium Development Goals which set targets for raising living standards in low-income countries. The first goal was to “eradicate extreme poverty and hunger” (United Nations). The World Bank defines extreme poverty as income of less than $1.25 per day (World Bank, 2010a). Based on this definition, the Wor...

Fifteen independent countries emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-91. Aside from the Russian Federation, the former Soviet Republics lie in four geographic regions: the Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia); Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan); the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania);...

Given high gasoline prices and the negative environmental effects of burning fossil fuels, there is increased interest in alternative energy sources, including biofuels. Brazil and the United States have been leading the way with ethanol production derived from sugar cane and corn. Recently, there has been increased interest in another biofuel, bio...

In 2002, Brazil filed a complaint about U.S. cotton policies with the World Trade Organization (WTO). After initial consultations and review of the Brazilian complaint, the WTO established a dispute resolution panel in March 2003. The panel returned a ruling in favor of most of the objections in Brazil’s petition in September 2004. The United State...

In this paper, we develop an empirical model to decompose the evolution of the agricultural share of GDP into three components: price changes, factor endowment changes and technological change. Our results suggest that relative prices have a positive but small influence on the share of agriculture in GDP in both the long-run and the short-run. An i...

Government subsidies for agriculture in the industrialized nations of North America, Western Europe and East Asia (Japan and South Korea) have been severely criticized by many commentators because of their negative impact on developing countries. (See, for example, “Protecting the French Farmer,” from the editorial page of the New York Times, Decem...

Most wheat exports are accounted for by a limited number of countries with different policy regimes and specializing, for the most part, in particular classes of wheat. Under these circumstances, there is likely to be considerable interaction among the major exporting countries in the determination of wheat prices. In this paper, price linkages bet...

This paper examines relationships between U.S. and Canadian wheat prices using the cointegration and error correction approach. The use of the error correction model is appropriate because U.S. and Canadian wheat prices are first-differenced stationary and cointegrated. The results suggest that both U.S. durum and hard spring wheat prices respond t...

A three period overlapping generations model is developed to investigate the impact of shorter life expectancy due to disease, on human capital investment decisions and income growth. This research is particularly relevant to Sub-Saharan Africa given the dramatic reduction in life expectancy due to HIV/AIDS and the potential lasting effects on grow...

All children hope that they will someday make more money than their parents; just as parents hope their children will live more fulfilling lives than they did. These goals imply economic growth for the society as a whole. If the country expands its economic pie, there is more to go around for everyone. But economic growth could lead to excessive us...

This study examines the future of Indian food security in light of possible liberalization of its agriculture sector. Demand for major food grains such as wheat and rice is projected after taking into account possible dietary changes due to income growth, urbanization and other demographic changes. Policy Analysis Matrix (PAM) indicators are constr...

In 2002, The U.S. Congress passed legislation giving the executive branch of the government authorization to participate in international trade negotiations. Trade Promotion Authority (previously known as “Fast Track Negotiating Authority”) stipulates that ratification of trade agreements negotiated by the office of the U.S. Trade Representative wi...

The proposed fiscal year 2004 (FY2004) federal budget (available at www.gpi.gov/usbudget) includes details on the allocation of federal expenditures among various budget categories as well as historical tables covering the period 1940 to the present. Of particular interest at this time of potential war are the expenditures related to defense and in...

A three period overlapping generations model is developed to investigate the impact of shorter life expectancy due to disease, on human capital investment decisions and income growth. This research is particularly relevant to Sub-Saharan Africa given the dramatic reduction in life expectancy due to HIV/AIDS and the potential lasting effects on grow...

Representatives of 142 countries met at the Fourth Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in November 2001, in Doha, Qatar, and decided to launch a new round of trade talks. The WTO, the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), was launched in 1995 at the end of the Uruguay Round (1986-1994) with the goal o...

An international environmental organization would need to be loosely structured initially with a focus on a narrow range of environmental issues. It also would need to emphasize consensus and limit the scope of its interventions to avoid defections by important participants. The benefits of such an organization include the potential for achieving m...

International trade patterns are often explained by comparative advantage which is frequently thought to depend on variations in national factor endowments. Government intervention in agricultural markets may also have an impact on trade patterns. This study explores the relation between factor endowments and agricultural trade patterns and examine...

International trade patterns are often explained by comparative advantage which is frequently thought to depend on variations in national factor endowments. Government intervention in agricultural markets may also have an impact on trade patterns. This study explores the relation between factor endowments and agricultural trade patterns and examine...

The Kyoto Protocol on global warming has provoked great controversy in part because it calls for heavier burdens on wealthy countries than on developing countries in the effort to control climate change. The U.S. Senate voted unanimously to oppose any agreement that does not require emissions reductions in low-income countries. The ethics of this p...

The Kyoto Protocol on global warming has provoked great controversy in part because it calls for heavier burdens on wealthy countries than on developing countries in the effort to control climate change. The U.S. Senate voted unanimously to oppose any agreement that does not require emissions reductions in low-income countries. The ethics of this p...

This research analyzes the evolution of rice supply responsiveness in the U.S. for the past three and a half decades using an implicit revenue function approach. Detailed government program provisions were incorporated into supply function estimates for each of four different periods. Although conventional wisdom maintains that the rice supply resp...

This paper specifies an empirical model of the relative decline of the agricultural sector consistent with the neoclassical explanation. We utilize a production theory approach to analyze the effect of changes in relative prices, relative factor endowments and technical change on the share of agriculture in GDP in a growing economy. The model is es...

This study estimates demand for wheat differentiated by classes using a dynamic AIDS model for the United States and the European Union (EU). The results suggest that imported wheat is more price responsive than domestic wheat in the U.S. market but not in the EU market. This may suggest that the Canadian policy that reduces prices of Canadian whea...

This paper examines price integration in the MERCOSUR countries of Argentina and Brazil after the creation of this regional economic agreement using a fractional cointegration analysis. The results suggest that Argentine wheat and corn prices are fully cointegrated with the corresponding world prices, whereas Brazilian wheat prices are not cointegr...

This study examines the Law of One Price (LOP) in international commodity markets using fractional cointegration analysis. For proper evaluation of the LOP, fractional cointegration analysis seems to be appropriate because of its flexibility in capturing a wider range of mean reversion behavior than standard cointegration analysis. Out of nine pair...

International trade and global environmental protection have become the objects of intense debate. One aspect of this debate concerns the effects of environmental regulations on international competitiveness. In this article, the impact of environmental regulations on grain trade patterns is examined using Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek (HOV) equations in w...

In North America and Europe, wheat is a very important commodity that has been at the heart of trade disputes and policy conflicts. This study uses a dynamic Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) to estimate demand elasticities for wheat differentiated by classes, for the United States and the European Union (EU). The results suggest that in the U.S. m...

This paper examines relationships between U.S. and Canadian wheat prices using the cointegration and error correction approach. The use of the error correction model is appropriate because U.S. and Canadian wheat prices are first-differenced stationary and cointegrated. The results suggest that both U.S. durum and hard spring wheat prices respond t...

U.S. wheat producers contend that Canadian production subsidies and implicit export subsidies have undermined the U.S. price support program. The authors examine this contention and assess the relationships between U.S. and Canadian wheat prices using a cointegration and error approach. The results suggest that both U.S. durum and hard spring wheat...

The Law of One Price (LOP) is an important component of most, if not all, international trade models because this assumption allows researchers to use a single representative price for all regions. This paper examines the long-run LOP for international commodity prices using a generalized notion of cointegration called fractional cointegration. Thi...

This case study traces the history of exchange rate risk encountered by a Nebraska agribusiness that sells meat products to Japan. The study describes the strategies used to mange that risk. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

M. C. Hallberg is a professor of agricultural economics at Pennsylvania State University and this book treats agricultural policy almost exclusively from that disciplinary perspective. For Hallberg, agricultural policy is largely confined to the various market interventions of national governments, particularly those programs that have been put in...

This paper explores the links between development assistance, agricultural output growth and imports in 56 developing economies over the period 1974–1990. The empirical model treats agricultural growth and imports, savings and aid as endogenous. The analysis also accounts for differences in macroeconomic policies. The results show that aid had a po...

This paper explores the links between development assistance, agricultural output growth and imports in 56 developing economies over the period 1974–1990. The empirical model treats agricultural growth and imports, savings and aid as endogenous. The analysis also accounts for differences in macroeconomic policies. The results show that aid had a po...

The behavior of individuals currently living will generally have long-term consequences that affect the well-being of those who will come to live in the future. Intergenerational interdependencies of this nature raise difficult moral issues because only the current generation is in a position to decide on actions that will determine the nature of t...

Property rights are important institutions that influence economic performance and reflect the historical, cultural, and political realities of particular societies. Drawing on a variety of concepts from legal and economic studies, a framework for explaining the origin and evolution of property rights is developed and applied to the specific case o...

The U.S. sugar import policy, while supporting domestic producers, has had indirect effects on other markets. This study extends previous analyses to look at effects of sugar policy changes from a total agricultural sector perspective. The effects of sugar policy reform are studied with and without changes in farm program provisions for other crop...

Government intervention in agricultural markets is extensive in most industrialized countries. In the United States, complex policies have been elaborated in an effort to change or regulate producer and consumer prices, farm incomes, and a host of other aspects of the food and fiber system. Within this complex array of policies, the U.S. beef cattl...

This article reviews the history and current state of international law governing the application of technical standards to international trade. Conflicts surrounding the use of technical standards in livestock trade are described to illustrate some of the limitations of current GATT codes. The article includes a case study of a US firm's difficult...

This article reviews the history and current state of international law governing the application of technical standards to international trade. Conflicts surrounding the use of technical standards in livestock trade are described to illustrate some of the limitations of current GATT codes. The article includes a case study of a US firm's difficult...

The purpose of this article is to argue that the multilateral framework offered by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is preferable to alternative approaches to the creation of international institutions for promoting world trade. Multilateral economic arrangements such as the GATT have as their object and purpose a vision of a peace...

When federalist nations are signatories to international economic agreements, potential problems arise because of the inherent conflicts between federal law and legitimate state interests. This paper presents a conceptual framework for analyzing problems surrounding negotiation, ratification, and implementation of international agreements when fede...

Rice is the most important staple food in the People's Republic of China (PRO. In many Asian countries rice appears to have become an inferior good, with income increases leading to declines in per capita consumption as other food products are substituted for rice. In this study, human rice consumption is analyzed with a model that allows income el...