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U.S. ethanol expansion objectives are to improve both energy security and the environmental. However, this expansion has raised issues concerning its detrimental impacts on the price volatility of developing countries’ agricultural commodities. These concerns are addressed by empirically investigating the relations among U.S. ethanol and corn markets with developing countries’ corn prices. Results indicate that U.S. ethanol demand impacts on developing countries’ corn prices vary by country. Further, results reveal that the transmission effects of U.S. ethanol shocks are systematically stronger for countries with higher food import dependency and U.S. food aid.

In the European Union (EU), country of origin labeling (COOL) became mandatory in 2002 in response to the United Kingdom’s bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) crisis. Although the EU has enacted one of the most information rich COOL policies for beef globally, little research has focused on origin labeling in the EU. Therefore, we determined how German and British consumers’ food safety concerns moderated their willingness to pay (WTP) for foreign (country of origin labeled) beef. Additional attributes, such as hormone-free labeling, quality assurance seals and promotional gourmet labeling were also analyzed. Random parameter logit model results indicated that British and German consumers’ WTP for foreign beef is moderated by their specific food safety concerns. For example, as German consumers are increasingly concerned about BSE, their WTP for beef from Great Britain was most negative. When controlling for consumers’ food safety concern in general, British consumers had the lowest WTP for beef from France, and German consumers had the lowest WTP for beef from the U.S. German and British consumers’ had the highest WTP for hormone-free beef. These results are informational to the international trade of beef.

As immigrants settle and extend their stay in the U.S., they may be exposed to a food culture and lifestyle that impacts their food choice decisions and health outcomes. This paper focuses on the behavioral changes and acculturation level of different generations of Asian immigrants on food choice decisions employing the 2013 American Time Use Survey. Heckman two-step regression results indicate that the 1st generation immigrants participate or spend more time on eating and drinking, food preparation, and grocery shopping; and less in travel related eating and drinking compared with natives. The 1st generation is least likely to acculturate into American food culture. The 1.5 generation behaves more similarly to natives regarding the four food choice decisions, and appears to acculturate over time. The 2nd generation shows no significant difference to natives. Immigrants acculturate by food habit change from food at home to food away from home.

Using the exchangeability method, we quantitatively elicit Italian farmers' short- and long-run risk perceptions concerning key crop loss hazards whose relevance depends upon climate developments: hail, powdery mildew for winegrowers and apple dieback for apple farmers. We show that long-run perceptions are significantly higher than short-run perceptions and identify climate change beliefs and experience with crop damages as critical factors in explaining this difference. From a policy prospective, our results suggest that an effective outreach service would benefit from offering farmers first-hand on-farm experience with crop risk and a “segmented” approach that takes into consideration farmers’ climate change beliefs.