Search

This paper analyses an incentive payment-based approach to improving food safety in the supply chain. It develops a principal-agent model of the food supply chain in which the principal offers heterogeneous agents a payment to implement costly additional practices to improve food safety. It is shown that the presence or absence of the moral hazard problem affects the balance of benefits and costs from broadening the scope of the system from just lower cost larger agents to include higher cost smaller agents, thereby affecting the optimal design of the system. In particular, broadening the scope of the system to include smaller agents by increasing the size of the incentive payment can ameliorate the moral hazard problem among larger agents to the extent that this more costly approach is socially optimal.

Motivated by recent EC proposals to “strengthen risk management tools” in the CAP in relation to farmers’ increased exposure to market price risk, this paper draws attention to a potential negative consequence of such a change in the CAP – an associated increase in cheating behaviour by farmers in the context of environmental stewardship. A theoretical framework for this policy problem is developed and used not just to illustrate the problem, but also to propose a solution – specifically to combine the introduction of CAP-supported policy changes which reduce farmers’ exposure to market-based risk with changes in environmental stewardship policies which increase the riskiness of cheating and thereby discourage such behaviour.

This paper analyses the role of uncertain demand in determining the government’s choice between an ad valorem and a specific base for its tax to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the electricity generating sector. Using a model of optimal capacity choice for a pricetaking firm facing demand uncertainty it is shown that an ad valorem tax is more effective in reducing emissions than its equivalent specific tax, although this benefit comes at the cost of lower reliability of electricity supply. A numerical analysis provides a robust finding that the ad valorem tax is expected to generate greater tax revenue, thereby providing support for the choice of this tax base in situations where the extra tax revenue can be used to compensate consumers for reduced reliability of supply.

This study is motivated by the proposition that the objectives of the AWB Ltd have changed since semi-privatisation of the Australian Wheat Board under the Wheat Marketing Act, 1989. Conceptualising this change of objectives as a shift from revenue maximization to profit maximization, this study examines the impact of such a change on the pricing policies of a multi-market price-setting firm. More specifically, this paper investigates, using two hypothetical objective functions, a risk averse AWB’s price-setting behaviour in an “overseas” and a “domestic” market in response to recent wheat industry developments. In the analysis these developments manifest themselves as differing price elasticities, differing transport costs and uncertain demand functions, and their implications particularly for the prices paid by domestic consumers are explored.

This study is motivated by the suggestion that the objectives of the AWB Ltd have changed since semi-privatisation of the Australian Wheat Board under the Wheat Marketing Act, 1989. Conceptualising this change of objectives as a shift from revenue maximization to profit maximization, this study examines the impact of such a change on the pricing policies of a multi-market price-setting firm. More specifically, this study investigates, for two hypothetical objective functions, a risk averse firm’s price-setting behaviour in an “overseas” and a “domestic” market, given differing costs of supply, uncertain demand functions and differing price elasticities of demand in each market. The aim is to generate empirically testable hypotheses relating to the impact of a change of objectives on pricing behaviour.

Using the contingent valuation method farmers in the high rainfall region of Western Australia were asked to value the information that they used to reduce risk associated with wool prices. To ascertain whether these values were both valid and reliable they were combined with additional data collected from the questionnaires and incorporated into profit functions so that farmers' attitudes towards risk could be estimated. These risk attitudes may be deemed reliable and valid providing they correspond to those estimated by other researchers. Results showed that the farmers' risk aversion coefficients were comparable to those estimated in the Australian literature. Therefore it may be argued that these farmers were able to nominate valid and reliable valuations for the information that they used.

Using the contingent valuation method farmers in the high rainfall region of Western Australia were asked to value the information that they used to reduce risk associated with wool prices. To ascertain whether these values were both valid and reliable they were combined with additional data collected from the questionnaires and incorporated into profit functions so that farmers' attitudes towards risk could be estimated. These risk attitudes may be deemed reliable and valid providing they correspond to those estimated by other researchers. Results showed that the farmers' risk aversion coefficients were comparable to those estimated in the Australian literature. Therefore it may be argued that these farmers were able to nominate valid and reliable valuations for the information that they used.

This paper presents a new approach to assessing the impact of price support policies on producer behaviour. This approach takes explicit account of the impact of such policies on a producer's uncertain production environment and includes a numerical procedure for calculating ex ante price variability from ex post producer price data. The methodology is applied to European agricultural industries in which intervention purchasing schemes operate. Results show that price support policies can so severely distort the signal producers receive from world markets that their supply response is the opposite of that which would occur in the absence of the policy.

In this paper a method for evaluating the supply response of individual producers to a price underwriting scheme is presented. The method includes precise formulae to take account of the impact of price underwriting on the producer's uncertain conditions. The Australian Wheat Board's guaranteed minimum price scheme is taken as a specific example of price underwriting in practice. Results show the scheme to lead to only relatively small supply responses. The impact on producer behaviour of an increase in price uncertainty in the presence of an underwriting scheme is also demonstrated in the paper.