John Stephen Clark

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Dalhousie University

Eco-agricultural technology is crucial in alleviating agricultural resource scarcity and environmental pressures. However, financial constraints affect its successful promotion. Digital finance significantly impacts farmers. However, existing research neglects the impact of digital finance on farmers’ adoption of eco-agricultural technology. This s...

Eco-agricultural technology is crucial to alleviating agricultural resource scarcity and environ-mental pressures. However, financial constraint affects its successful promotion. Digital finance has a significant impact on farmers, but existing research lacks an exploration of the impact of digital finance on farmers' adoption of eco-agricultural t...

This study examines the induced innovation hypothesis (IIH) from 1958 to 2015 for two Canadian agriculture regions: Central Canada (the provinces of Ontario and Quebec) and Western Canada (the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba). There is broadly consistent support for the IIH for Canadian agriculture, especially for Western Canadian a...

Climate change has renewed interest in the production capacity of agriculture. Few researchers paid attention to price policy and heteroscedasticity in yield model. We incorporate rice price policy into the yield model at the expected price using a Tobit procedure and take Kalman filter theory to explore useful information, and then estimate the ri...

The goal of the paper is to develop a simple demand model of health care services that can explain why the demand for health care services, and hence overall expenditures on health care, can rise with the introduction of visit fees based on real data available publicly in the Czech Republic. One of the most common problems with the costs of health...

The Czech cereal market integration into the common agricultural market (EU) between 1993 - 2010 is studied using monthly price data for wheat and barley in Belgium, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. Stability in the law of one price (LOP) equation is studied through multiple structural breaks within the equation. Results indicate that the i...

This study summarizes the empirical literature on fat taxes and thin subsidies to assess their efficiency and efficacy as instruments of public policy to control obesity. Three specific types of taxes are studied in the literature: food group taxes; nutrient taxes; and nutrient index taxes. Anumber of studies use food expenditure data to assess the...

We examine the effect of nutrient prices and other socio-economic and health factors on the Body Mass Index (BMI) of Canadians using the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS). The CCHS data does not include information on nutrition intake, and so the price of fat, carbohydrates and protein are included to capture the effects of diet on BMI. The r...

The study considers the simultaneous estimation of share equations using cost and distance functions. Simultaneous rather than single system estimation utilizes full as opposed to limited information. Econometric results exploit the nonstationary nature of the data and that variables are cointegrated. Under cointegration all variables are endogenou...

This study examines farm to wholesale prices spreads to measure the impact of the BSE disease outbreak on the Canadian beef industry. The study uses structure break tests developed by Gregory and Hansen (1996) and Hansen (1992) examine possible breaks within co integrating relationships. The study finds evidence that the industry began realignment...

This study examines farm to wholesale prices spreads to measure the impact of the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) disease outbreak on the Canadian beef industry. The study uses structure break tests developed by Gregory and Hansen (1996) and Hansen (1992) examine possible breaks within cointegrating relationships. The study finds evidence th...

This paper examines three alternative types of fat taxes to determine how effective they may be in reducing obesity. Upon the examination of the available evidence as to the effectiveness of fat taxes in reducing obesity authors conclude that all types of fat taxes are not sufficiently specific in targeting obesity. In some cases imposition of fat...

This paper examines the presence of diseconomies of size in Canadian prairie agriculture using statistical tests of Gibrat's Law. The tests incorporate the possibility that farm growth rates may be autocorrelated over time and are based on aggregate data for a region, rather than on individual farm level data. Although aggregate level data can lead...

A simple capitalization formula model is used to determine whether subsidies are capitalized into land values. Using Saskatchewan annual data, it is found that while income by itself cannot support the secular growth in land values, income plus subsidies may. The results of this study indicate that income plus subsidies are mildly cointegrated with...

This paper calculates the historical ex ante producer surplus of initial payments acting as price floors to Saskatchewan wheat and barley producers. To do this, a Nerlovian-type partial adjustment model and rational expectations are used. The Nerlovian model is somewhat unique in that it is argued that the Nerlovian partial adjustment model can be...

A systems model is used to estimate acreage responses for crops and summerfallow in the province of Saskatchewan. Summerfallow is modeled as a storage function, which subsequently is supported by statistical results. Short‐ and long‐run elasticities of acreage responsiveness are estimated. In addition, several issues relating to elasticity calculat...

This study analyzed the impact of PVYn and potato wart disease outbreaks in PEI on the potato industry. These disease outbreaks resulted in the loss of the US seed export market to PEI producers. The effects of the disease outbreaks were mitigated through value-added processing. Price premiums for processed potatoes allowed PEI potato producers to...

A 2002 Prince Edward Island (PEI) Agricultural Crop Rotations (ACR) Act and other sustainable land use policies regulate what crops can be grown in rotation with potatoes, and the frequency and sequence of specific crops in such rotation systems. Given that there are alternative crops that may be rotated with potatoes and managed for various rotati...

This study examines the competitiveness of four Canadian agricultural industries (eggs, milk, chicken and turkey) using a general equilibrium farm to retail pricing model developed by Wohlgenant (1989). The model generates retail and farm pricing equations that are estimated using maximum likelihood developed by Johansen (1992). The results indicat...

This study examines the Canadian Dairy Commission’s marketing of butterfat. Previous studies have concentrated on the evaluation of butterfat by using total kilograms of milk. Measuring milk as kilograms is based the assumption of fixed proportions between kilograms of milk and kilograms of butterfat. However, measuring dairy using kilograms may no...

This study analyzed the impact of PVYn and potato wart disease outbreaks in PEI on the potato industry. The two disease outbreaks resulted in loss of the U.S. seed export market to PEI producers. The effects of the disease outbreaks were mitigated through value-added processing. Price premiums for processed potatoes allowed PEI potato farmers to ab...

Price and income elasticities of fat from meats are estimated by decomposing composite demand for meat into the produ ct of total calories, the fraction of calories eat as fat, and a residual measure of quality. This demand-characteristic system provides estimates of the impact of prices and income on the fraction of calories eaten as fat as well a...

This study tests symmetry and homogeneity restrictions on a system of factor demand equations for central and western Canadian agriculture under the assumption that the variables are integrated processes and the demands represent cointegrating relationships. It is well known that the distribution of F-statistics derived from ordinary least squares...

The Canadian Wheat Board justifies its monopoly control over the marketing of barley on the basis of single desk selling. It argues that single desk selling raises the pooled price that farmers receive for their barley over a situation where the Canadian Wheat Board does not have monopoly control over the marketing of prairie barley. Carter (1993b)...

Global climate change does not necessarily imply that temperature or precipitation is increasing at specific locations. The hypothesis of increasing temperature and precipitation trends associated with global climate change is tested using actual annual temperature and precipitation data for nine selected weather stations, spatially distributed acr...

It is not clear whether different measures of dispersion of weather attributes could lead to different conclusions on the nature and direction of climatic variability. The range is commonly used as a measure of variability, while the presence of trend is typically studied on seasonal and/or annual basis. In this study, we used daily average tempera...

This study characterized the costs and benefits associated with adopting ISO 14001 environmental management system (EMS) standard, based on a survey of ISO 14001-registered organizations in Canada. Decision makers are contemplating whether it is necessary to register to one or more of the ISO and other international standards and, if so, which ones...

A new procedure is developed to estimate innovation possibility frontiers and test for biases in technological change. Using data on four inputs (land, machinery, chemicals and labour) from central Canada (Ontario and Quebec) over the period 1926-1985, we find that the innovations possibilities frontier shifts neutrally over time. This is consisten...

When elementary prices move strictly proportionately, aggregation over a group of diverse products is valid, and group demand responses can be decomposed into quality and quantity responses. This study shows that when relative elementary prices and group prices are stochastically independent, a similar decomposition is valid. Empirical results sugg...

Two aggregation schemes for food demand systems are tested for consistency with the Generalized Composite Commodity Theorem (GCCT). One scheme is based on the standard CES classification of food expenditures. The second scheme is based on the Food Guide Pyramid. Evidence is found that both schemes are consistent with the GCCT.

The extent to which agricultural support programs have been capitalized into farmland prices has been examined in this study. A present value land price model was developed which decomposes returns to the land base into its two possible sources (farm production and government subsidies) and allows the discount rates associated with these two income...

The food supply system consists of multiple stages of production, with prices at each stage coordinating the transformation of farm commodities to final consumer products. Food and agricultural policies often stem from public concern about the disparate movements of consumer food and farm prices. Widening spreads between retail food and farm prices...

The relationship between Nerlovian partial adjustment models and error correction models is explored. Unit root tests are employed to test stationarity of price, area and stock data of crops in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The data are found to be consistent with unit root nonstationarity. Evidence in favour of cointegrating relationships...

This article explores the issue of cooperative growth from both an empirical and theoretical perspective. Using total assets as the measure of cooperative size, we present long-term, time-series data from seven of the largest regional agricultural cooperatives in Canada and the United States. We then examine the issue of growth from a theoretical p...

This article explores the issue of cooperative growth from both an empirical and theoretical perspective. Using total assets as the measure of cooperative size, we present long‐term, time‐series data from seven of the largest regional agricultural cooperatives in Canada and the United States. We then examine the issue of growth from a theoretical p...

The impact of price stabilisation schemes on producer expectations has generally been ignored by policy makers. Using a theoretical model of the Canadian prairie barley market, unconditional mean price and two-year moving-average price stabilisation schemes are compared with no stabilisation, assuming rational expectations. Both price convergence a...

A general equilibrium sectoral model of Canadian agriculture was used to determine whether economic payoffs from investment in beef research might be more completely estimated with mathematical programming than with traditional time series analyses. Using this approach, estimated rates of return to beef research were significantly lower than those...

In this study, moving average price stabilization schemes were analyzed under the assumption of rational expectations. It was shown that moving average price schemes may induce cyclical behaviour into market prices where no cyclical pattern previously existed. Moving average price stabilization schemes are important to Canadian agricultural policy...

This paper examines relationships that exist between farm income, land values, and capital asset pricing theory. Using two commonly referenced data sets, it is shown that land prices and land rents do not have the same time-series representations, a necessary condition for the simple capital asset pricing theory to hold. This suggests that a fundam...

Technical change is an omitted variable in econometric models which estimate technical change biases with no direct measure of this variable. Modeling technical change as a deterministic time trend is a restrictive representation that may be inconsistent with the type of nonstationarity of the other model variables. We used a time-series approach t...

This article explores the theoretical and empirical issues in unit root nonstationarity for multiproduct acreage response systems. A wheat/barley acreage response system for the praire provinces region of Canada is estimated and the existence of a unit root cannot be rejected empirically. It is shown that while the estimates of this system are very...

Beginning 1971, initial payments for Canadian Wheat Board grains were announced prior to planting. The intention was to influence producer expectations and hence crop supply. Using a novel estimation procedure designed to conserve degrees of freedom, it is concluded that the new information did tend to reduce output variability. /// L'effet d'une i...

This paper tests for the existence of diseconomies of size for Canadian cities using Gibrat's Law. If diseconomies of size are not present, then the growth rate of cities is shown to contain a unit root. Therefore, testing for Gibrat's Law is equivalent to testing for unit roots commonly found in the time series literature. Our tests indicate that...

Limited Dependent variable regression techniques are used to measure price distortitons caused by initial payments as price floors. The result indicate that the degree of uncertainty producers have regarding the price floor is the critical issue in the level of price distortions.

Pesticide resistance management is modeled in a linear-quadratic form with price expectations being formed rationally. The parameter estimates allow testing of common property versus private property characteristics, and of the existence of resistance buildup. Using aggregate data on U.S. sales of herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, the resul...

Land is defined in terms of its qualitative characteristics in order to focus upon conservation/depletion decisions made with respect to the soil. The qualitative definition of land involves a capital component (total nitrogen content) and a Ricardian component (total precipitation). The economic model developed utilizes neoclassical capital theory...

This study estimates the transfer efficiency of government payments on Canadian agriculture. Three measures of efficiency are used: (1) the capitalization of support into farmland values, (2) the rate of income stabilization, and (3) the effect of past government support on the variance of income. We derive transfer efficiency estimates by applying...

In the Climate Change literature, the range is predominantly used as a measure of variability, and the presence of trend is typically done on seasonal and/or annual basis. In this study, we used daily average temperature values at 15 spatially distributed sites across Canada to test the presence of trend in variability (using both range and standar...