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International audience; This study examines whether social sentiment can influence information asymmetry in cryptocurrency markets, and if so, in what way and its qualitative effect? Using a data set on social sentiment by crawling Twitter and trading information on an exchange in Korea. We empirically study the linkage between social sentiment and asymmetric information in two cryptocurrency trading settings. Our results highlight the differentiated impact of positive and negative sentiment variance on information asymmetry according to 1) the spillover effects and 2) the leverage effect of social news characterizing social sentiment. However, the quality of the social sentiment related information is less valuable. Our findings contribute to the growing IS literature on the social media linked to Fintech as well as to the study of verifiability in the cryptocurrency market.

International agricultural price surges in 2007/08 and 2010/11 appeared to undermine the global food system from diverse sources. Soaring agricultural prices may exacerbate food availability for net food buyers in low-income countries. In response, governments in these countries implemented either border or domestic policies in order to stabilise domestic food prices. The contentious impact of these policies on the international agricultural price transmission is often assessed in the literature by applying CGE (Computable General Equilibrium) models. Among the various comparative static general equilibrium models, the GTAP (Global Trade Analysis Project) model is extensively used in policy analyses given its broad data coverage and firm economic assumptions. However, the setup of the standard GTAP model does not fully account for the variations in international agricultural price transmission, causing the simulation results to deviate from the empirical findings derived from econometric analyses. Therefore, the primary focus of this thesis is to enhance the realism of the CGE framework in analysing the international agricultural price transmission and its implications for domestic markets by associating econometric analyses with the standard GTAP model. Against this background, the thesis includes three articles either published or submitted to peer-reviewed journals in addressing the following objectives: (1) to identify the determinants of food price transmission from the international agricultural market to domestic markets; (2) to exploit the impact of border restrictions on food price transmission, accounting for variations in domestic margin services in different countries and regions; and (3) to investigate the impact of increasing agricultural domestic support on China’s domestic market, given the imperfect food price transmission caused by border policy adjustments. Applying econometric time series analyses, our first article identifies and evaluates the determinants causing variations in food price transmission, i.e., a country’s income level and its market integration indicators. The result underscores an inverse relationship between income levels and the price transmission elasticities from international agricultural commodities to domestic food products. The major reason is that a large part of consumed food consists of a high share of domestic margin services e.g., transport, food processing services and retailing. Their share in consumed food is greater in high-income countries, implying a lower price transmission of price shocks to final consumers in these countries than in low-income countries. Following the theoretical development in the first article, our second article extends the standard GTAP model by quantifying the value of domestic margin services in the private household consumption. Thereby, the extended model is able to reflect the price insulating impact by domestic margin services, leading to a weakened magnitude of price transmission from international to domestic markets. The impact is more pronounced in high-income countries, consistent with our previous findings. Furthermore, we demonstrate how the model extension improves the simulation results in analysing impacts of trade restrictions on food price transmission. Our results show that export restrictions implemented by major grain exporters enable these countries to insulate domestic consumers from the surge in international agricultural prices. These policies further increase the volatility of international prices, worsening the net food buyers’ situation in countries where no policies are applied. However, the negative impact of shocks to international agricultural prices on consumer food prices tends to be overestimated particularly in high-income countries, when domestic margin services are not taken into account. After improving the model’s ability to assess the effectiveness of agricultural border policies, our last article addresses the impact of increasing agricultural domestic support on food price transmission. We introduce two extensions to the standard GTAP framework, i.e., a better representation of incomplete price transmission based on econometric analyses, and an updated agricultural domestic support structure according to China’s current domestic policy. Simulation results show that under the assumption of incomplete food price transmission, net importing countries such as China experience less volatility than in the standard GTAP framework. Lowered price increases benefit domestic consumers but insulate producers from receiving higher selling prices. This result is consistent with the observations given during the price surge period from 2007 to 2011. When agricultural domestic support is assumed to increase to its de minimis threshold level, domestic producers have access to higher prices than in the previous simulation, and are thus incentivised to reach higher agricultural production. As a result, consumers potentially benefit from the further reduced price surges. China also exerts less demand pressure on the international agricultural market. In conclusion, this thesis raises the question of how variations in international agricultural price transmission affect domestic markets, especially under the interventions of border and domestic policies. In answering this question, we introduce several extensions to the standard GTAP framework in order to enhance the realism of the model in analysing food price transmission, so that the simulation results are more in line with empirical findings based on our econometric estimations. Our analyses contribute to the current literature with regard to three aspects. First, we extend the scope of current literature in explaining variations in food price transmission by applying a global sample of countries. Second, we evaluate the impact of border restrictions on food price transmission more accurately by accounting for domestic margin services explicitly in the GTAP model. Third, we improve the GTAP framework’s ability to evaluate the development of China’s agricultural domestic support by a detailed representation of incomplete price transmission and domestic structure in the model. We also call for better reconciliations of econometric estimations and CGE modelling through enhanced data availability, and further analyses of other less-distorting policies in stabilising agricultural domestic markets. Der Anstieg der Nahrungsmittelpreise auf den internationalen Märkten in den Jahren 2007/08 und 2010/11 schien das globale Nahrungsmittelsystem auf unterschiedliche Art und Weise zu schwächen. Stark ansteigende Preise für Agrarprodukte könnten die Nahrungsmittelverfügbarkeit für die Verbraucher in Niedrigeinkommensländern verringern. Um dem entgegenzuwirken und somit die inländischen Nahrungsmittelpreise zu stabilisieren, haben die Regierungen der betroffenen Länder entweder inländische Agrarpolitikmaßnahmen oder Handelsbeschränkungen eingeführt. In der wissenschaftlichen Literatur wird der umstrittene Einfluss dieser Maßnahmen auf die internationale Preistransmission oft durch den Einsatz von CGE-Modellen (Allgemeine Numerische Gleichgewichtsmodelle) bewertet. Unter der großen Anzahl allgemeiner komparativ-statischer Gleichgewichtsmodelle wird das GTAP (Global Trade Analysis Project) Modell häufig zur Politikanalyse eingesetzt, da es eine breite Datenbasis und fundierte ökonomische Annahmen enthält. Die Aufstellung des GTAP-Standardmodells ermöglicht es jedoch nicht die Schwankungen der internationalen Agrarpreistransmission vollständig zu erklären. Aufgrund dessen weichen die Ergebnisse der Modellsimulationen von empirischen Befunden aus ökonometrischen Analysen ab. Der Fokus dieser Arbeit liegt daher darin, CGE-Modelle dahingehend realistischer zu gestalten, so dass die internationale Preistransmission und deren Implikationen für inländische Märkte besser analysiert werden können, indem ökonometrische Analysen mit dem CGE Modellen, hier dem GTAP-Standardmodell, verbunden werden. Vor diesem Hintergrund enthält diese Arbeit drei Artikel, die entweder bei wissenschaftlichen Fachzeitschriften eingereicht oder in diesen bereits veröffentlicht wurden und die nachfolgenden Zielsetzungen verfolgen: (1) Identifikation der Determinanten der Nahrungsmittelpreistransmission von internationalen auf inländische Agrarmärkte; (2) Bestimmung oder Quantifizierung der Auswirkung von Handelsbeschränkungen bezüglich der Nahrungsmittelpreistransmission unter Beachtung der Schwankungen inländischer Dienstleistungen in unterschiedlichen Ländern und Regionen; (3) Analyse der Auswirkungen eines Anstiegs der inländischen Agrarmarktstützung auf den Binnenmarkt Chinas, unter der Annahme, dass die unzureichende Nahrungsmittelpreistransmission durch eine Veränderung der Handelsbeschränkungen hervorgerufen wird. Unter der Verwendung ökonometrischer Zeitreihenanalysen identifiziert und beurteilt der erste Artikel die Faktoren, welche die Schwankungen der Nahrungsmittelpreistransmission verursachen. Diese sind unter anderem das Einkommensniveau auf Länderebene und dessen Marktintegrationsindikatoren. Das Ergebnis bestätigt die inverse Abhängigkeit der Einkommenslevel und der Preistransmissionselastizität von internationalen Agrarrohstoffen hin zu inländischen Nahrungsmitteln. Der dafür wesentliche Einflussfaktor ergibt sich daraus, dass ein Großteil der konsumierten Nahrungsmittel mit einem hohen Anteil inländischer Dienstleistungen verbunden ist, wie z.B. Transport, Lebensmittelverarbeitung und Einzelhandelsaktivitäten. Diese Rate ist in Hocheinkommensländern größer und impliziert daher, dass in diesen die Preistransmission an den Verbraucher im Falle von starken Nahrungsmittelpreisschwankungen geringer ausfällt als in Niedrigeinkommensländern. Auf Basis der theoretischen Herleitung im ersten Artikel, wird im zweiten Artikel das GTAP-Standardmodell erweitert, indem der Wert der inländischen Dienstleistungen anhand der privaten Haushaltsnachfrage quantifiziert wird. Das auf diese Weise erweiterte Modell ist nun in der Lage, die Auswirkung einer Preisisolierung durch inländische Dienstleistungen zu berücksichtigen. Dies führt dazu, dass das Ausmaß der Preistransmission von den internationalen auf die nationalen Märkte abgeschwächt wird. Dieser Effekt ist in Hocheinkommensländern stärker ausgeprägt und bestätigt daher die Ergebnisse des ersten Artikels. Zusätzlich wird gezeigt, wie die Modellerweiterung die Simulationsergebnisse verbessert, indem die Auswirkungen von Handelsbeschränkungen auf die Nahrungsmittelpreistransmission analysiert werden. Die Ergebnisse bestätigen, dass die von großen Getreide exportierenden Ländern eingeführten Exportbeschränkungen es diesen ermöglichen, die inländischen Verbraucher von einem Anstieg der internationalen Agrarrohstoffpreisen zu isolieren. Diese Maßnahmen erhöhen die Volatilität der internationalen Preise und führen dazu, dass sich die Situation der Endverbraucher der Länder verschlechtert, die keine Handelsbeschränkungen umgesetzt haben. Es ist jedoch anzunehmen, dass die negativen Auswirkungen starker Veränderungen der internationalen Agrarrohstoffpreise auf die Verbraucher insbesondere in Hocheinkommensländern gerade dann überschätzt werden, wenn die inländischen Dienstleistungen nicht berücksichtigt werden. Nachdem das Modell so verbessert werden konnte, dass auch die Wirksamkeit landwirtschaftlicher Handelspolitiken bewertbar ist, befasst sich der letzte Artikel mit dem Einfluss der Subventionen im Agrarsektor auf die Nahrungsmittelpreistransmission. Es werden zwei Erweiterungen des GTAP-Standardmodells eingeführt, zum einen eine verbesserte Darstellung der unvollständigen Preistransmission auf Basis ökonometrischer Analysen und zum anderen eine detailliertere Berücksichtigung der inländischen Subventionen im Agrarsektor auf Grundlage der aktuellen Agrarpolitik Chinas. Die sich daraus ergebenden Simulationsergebnisse zeigen, dass - unter der Annahme unvollständiger Nahrungsmittelpreistransmission – Nettoimportländer wie China eine geringere Volatilität aufweisen als unter Verwendung des GTAP-Standardmodells. Die inländischen Verbraucher profitieren von geringeren Preiserhöhungen, welche gleichzeitig verhindern, dass die Produzenten höhere Preise erzielen können. Dieses Ergebnis entspricht den Beobachtungen während der Nahrungsmittelpreiskrise von 2007 bis 2011. Sofern angenommen wird, dass inländische Agrarsubventionen auf das WTO de minimis Niveau angehoben werden, könnten Produzenten höhere Preise erzielen als in der vorherigen Simulation und erhalten dadurch einen Anreiz, mehr landwirtschaftliche Güter herzustellen. Daraus ergibt sich zudem ein weiterer Vorteil für die Verbraucher, da dieser Anstieg der Produktion zu einem weiteren Absinken der Preise führt. Gleichzeitig verringert sich dadurch der Nachfragedruck Chinas auf die internationalen Agrarmärkte. Diese Arbeit diskutiert letztlich die Frage, wie die Veränderungen auf der Ebene einer internationalen Nahrungsmittelpreistransmission die Binnenmärkte beeinflussen, unter der besonderen Beachtung des Einflusses von Handelsbeschränkungen- und inländischer Agrarpolitikinstrumente. Zur Beantwortung werden mehrere Erweiterungen des GTAP-Standardmodells vorgestellt, um ein möglichst realistisches Modell zur Analyse der Nahrungsmittelpreistransmission zu erhalten, damit dessen Simulationsergebnisse mit den empirischen Ergebnissen auf Basis der ökonometrischen Schätzungen besser übereinstimmen. Diese Vorgehensweise erweitert den bestehenden wissenschaftlichen Fundus um drei Aspekte. Erstens wird der Anwendungsbereich wissenschaftlicher Literatur dadurch ergänzt, dass Schwankungen der Nahrungsmittelpreistransmission mittels einer globalen Stichprobe verschiedener Länder erklärt werden können. Zweitens wird der Einfluss handelspolitischer Beschränkungen auf die Nahrungsmittelpreistransmission insofern genauer bestimmbar, da explizit die inländischen Dienstleistungen in das GTAP-Modell aufgenommen werden. Drittens wird die Anwendungseignung des GTAP-Modells in Bezug auf die Effekte und Bewertung von Entwicklungen der inländischen Agrarpolitik Chinas durch eine detailliertere Darstellung der unvollständigen Preistransmission und der Binnenstruktur der inländischen Agrarpolitikinstrumente verbessert. Es besteht weiterer Forschungsaufwand darin, die ökonometrischen Schätzungen und CGE-Modelle durch eine verbesserte Datenverfügbarkeit besser zu vereinbaren, und weitere Analysen bezüglich der Auswirkung weniger verzerrender Maßnahmen auf eine Stabilisierung der Agrarbinnenmärkte.

The welfare impact of a disaster does not depend only on the physical characteristics of the event or its direct impacts in terms of lost lives and assets. Depending on the ability of the economy to cope, recover, and reconstruct, the reconstruction will be more or less difficult, and the welfare effects smaller or larger. This ability, which can be referred to as the macroeconomic resilience of the economy to natural disasters, is an important parameter to estimate the overall vulnerability of a population. Here, resilience is decomposed into two components: instantaneous resilience, which is the ability to limit the magnitude of the immediate loss of income for a given amount of capital losses, and dynamic resilience, which is the ability to reconstruct and recover quickly. The paper proposes a rule of thumb to estimate macroeconomic resilience, based on the interest rate (a higher interest rate decreases resilience and increases welfare losses), the reconstruction duration (a longer reconstruction duration increases welfare losses), and a “ripple-effect” factor that increases or decreases immediate losses (negative if enough idle resources are available to cope; positive if cross-sector and supply-chain issues impair the production of non-affected capital). An optimal risk management strategy is very likely to include measures to reduce direct impacts (disaster risk reduction actions) and measures to reduce indirect impacts (resilience building actions).

Seed in agriculture is one of the most important factors and affects yield greatly. Seed multiplication is a difficult and expensive procedure and is subsidized. In this study, results of seeding rate experiments in Sakarya and Pamukova locations were analyzed, and optimum seeding rates for both locations were recommended. The optimum seeding rate was 16.5 kg/da and 20.5 kg/da for Sakarya and Pamukova, respectively. Seeding rate is a function of prices. Therefore, it changes with respect to the prices. Recommendation in seeding rate should be made with considering of this fact., Tohumluk, tarımda en önemli ve verimi en fazla etkileyen unsurlardan biridir. Tohumluk üretimi pahalı ve zor bir iştir ve desteklenmektedir. Bu çalışmada Sakarya ve Pamukova lokasyonlannda yapılan tohum miktarı deneme sonuçları analiz edilerek bu lokasyonlar için verilen şartlarda en uygun tohum miktarı tespit edilmeye çalışılmıştır. Analiz sonuçlarına göre en uygun tohum miktarı Sakarya'da 16.5 kg/da, Pamukova'da ise 20.5 kg/da bulunmuştur. Bu miktarlar fiyatın bir fonksiyonudurlar ve girdi ve ürün fiyatı değişikliklerinde farklılıklar arzederler. Tohum miktarı tavsiyelerinde bu hususlar gözönüne alınmalıdır.

Ubiquitous access to the Internet and supporting technologies gave birth to online labor markets (Malone and Laubacher 1998). Online labor markets enable employers (employers) to contract with professionals (service providers) from anywhere in the world. Firms now are able to greatly expand their workforce and bring a large arsenal of labor to bear on IT jobs, such as software or web development using Internet-enabled procurement platforms such as Freelancer. These markets serve as intermediaries for IT services (outsourcers post Call for Bids (CFBs) for services and providers offer bids for IT services) that help match employers with service providers across the globe. In my dissertation, I try to comprehensively study this Internet-enabled phenomenon from the perspectives of these three entities on global online markets with three separate yet related essays. The first essay focuses on the "global" nature of the market, and assess the effect of global frictions and global labor arbitrage on both provider bidding and employer selection. The second essay focuses on the effect of auction mechanism - sealed versus open bid auction - on providers' bidding dynamics, and the market performance. The third essay focuses on estimating true consumer (employer) surplus of online labor markets with a quality-adjusted measure. I also test its robustness by comparing its effects on consumers' subsequent transactions. I also find that market immaturity, consumers' lack of experience in the market, and consumers' lack of familiarity with IT service providers lead to the difference between the traditional measure and the quality-adjusted consumer surplus.

In this paper we compare alternative approaches for the construction of time series of macroeconomic variables for Unified Germany prior to 1991, and then use them for the construction of corresponding time series for the euro area. The resulting series for Germany and the euro area are compared with existing ones on the basis of both descriptive statistics and results of econometric analyses conducted with the alternative time series. We find that more sophisticated time series methods for backdating can yield sizeable gains. JEL Classification: C32, C43, C82

The 1980s and first half of the 1990s were a very active period in the field of political economy of agricultural protection. While the past decade has witnessed a slowdown in this area, there have been very important developments on political economy in other parts of the economics profession. This paper reviews key new insights and developments in the general political economy literature and draws implications for the study of the political economy of distortions to agricultural incentives.

During the 1960s and 1970s most developing countries imposed anti-agricultural policies, while many high-income countries restricted agricultural imports and subsidized their farmers. Both sets of policies inhibited economic growth and poverty alleviation in developing countries, while doing little to assist small farmers in high-income countries. Since the 1980s, however, many developing countries began to reduce the anti-agricultural bias of sectoral policies, and from the early 1990s the European Union began to move away from price supports to more-direct forms of farm income payments. This paper summarizes a forthcoming book that seeks to explain this evolving pattern of distortions to incentives conceptually and econometrically by making use of new political economy theory and a new globally comprehensive and consistent set of estimates of the changing extent of annual distortions over the past half-century. The distortion estimates involve more than 70 products that cover around 70 percent of the value of agricultural output in each of 75 countries that together account for over 90 percent of the global economy, and they expose the contribution of the various policy instruments (both farm and non-farm) to the net distortion to farmer incentives. Such a widespread coverage of countries, products, years and policy instruments has allowed this collection of studies to test a wide range of hypotheses suggested by the new political economy literature, including the importance of institutions. As a set it sheds much new light on the underlying forces that have affected incentives facing farmers in the course of national and global economic and political development, and hence on how those distortions might change in the future - or be changed by concerted actions to offset political pressures from traditionally powerful vested interests.

This chapter begins with a brief summary of the long history of national distortions to agricultural markets. It then outlines the methodology used to generate annual indicators of the extent of government interventions in markets, details of which are provided in Anderson and appendix A. A description of the economies under study and their economic growth and structural changes over recent decades is then briefly presented as a preface to the main section of the chapter, in which the nominal rates of assistance and consumer tax equivalents (NRA and CTE) estimates are summarized across regions and over the decades since the 1950s. These estimates are discussed in far more detail in the regional chapters that follow. A summary is also provided of an additional set of indicators of agricultural price distortions presented in chapter eleven that are based on the trade restrictiveness index first developed by Anderson and Neary (2005). In chapter twelve the focus shifts from countries to commodities, and all the various distortion indicators are used to provide a sense of how distorted are each of the key farm commodity markets globally. Then chapter thirteen uses the study's NRA and CTE estimates to provide a new set of results from a global economy-wide model that attempts to quantify the impacts on global markets, net farm incomes and welfare of the reforms since the early 1980s and of the policies still in place as of 2004. The chapter concludes by drawing on the lessons learned to speculate on the prospects for further reducing the disarray in world agricultural markets.

Three Economic Research Service cross-commodity models were evaluated to determine the advantages and disadvantages of using them for policy analyses. The three economic models are: FAPSIM (Food and Agricultural Policy Simulator), AGSIM (Agricultural Econometric-Simulation Model), and HYBRID (Econometric-Programming Model). The proposed herbicide use restriction of trifluralin on soybeans is used for comparison of the model results. Although the models have many similarities, they do not perfectly substitute for one another. Appropriate model use depends on the question to be answered