Papers by David Schimmelpfennig
Social Science Research Network, 1990
External Increasing Returns, Short-lived Agents and Long-lived Waste Actions that affect environm... more External Increasing Returns, Short-lived Agents and Long-lived Waste Actions that affect environmental quality both influence and respond to macroeconomic variables. Further, many environmental and macroeconomic consequences of current actions will have uncompensated effects that outlive the actors. This paper presents an overlapping-generations model of environmental externalities and capital accumulation: consumption of the old generates long-lived garbage as a by-product, while young agents invest in both capital and destruction of the existing garbage stock. The model also assumes external increasing returns: increases in the capital stock increase the future productivity of capital. In the model, increases in the natural rate of degradation do, and improvements in society's ability to dispose of garbage may, encourage capital accumulation. Multiple Pareto-ranked equilibria can arise as a consequence of the interaction between garbage and capital accumulation. Underaccumulation of garbage, analogous to dynamically inefficient overaccumulation of capital, can arise in the model. The family which takes its mauve and cerise, air-conditioned, power-steered, and power-braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted buildings, billboards, and posts for wires that should long since have been put underground. They pass on into a countryside that has been rendered largely invisible by commercial art... They picnic on exquisitely packaged food from a portable icebox by a polluted stream and go on to spend the night at a park which is a menace to public health and morals. Just before dozing off on an air mattress, beneath a nylon tent, amid the stench of decaying refuse, they may reflect vaguely on the curious unevenness of their blessings. Is this, indeed, the American genius? J. K. Galbraith, The Affluent Society (1958) What stands between us and a decent environment is not the curse of industrialization, not an unbearable burden of cost, but just the need to organize ourselves consciously to do some simple and knowable things. Compared with the possibility of an active abatement policy, the policy of stopping economic growth in order to stop pollution would be incredibly inefficient. It would not actually accomplish much, because one really wants to reduce the amount of, say, hydrocarbon emission to a third or a half of what it is now. And what no-growth would accomplish, it would do by cutting off your face to spite your nose.
Social Science Research Network, Jan 26, 2012
ABSTRACT An early-warning system generates economic value to the extent that it improves decision... more ABSTRACT An early-warning system generates economic value to the extent that it improves decision making. The value of the information hinges on the degree to which a timely response, aided by warnings, facilitates successful damage mitigation. USDA's Coordinated Framework for Soybean Rust includes a network of sentinel soybean plots and wild kudzu stands monitored by extension agents for the presence of soybean rust, a potentially recurring threat to the U.S. soybean crop since 2005. The linchpin in this early-warning system is a website that provides near real-time, county-level information on the location of the disease. We consider factors that may influence information value. Copyright 2009 Agricultural and Applied Economics Association
Advances in the economics of environmental resources, May 19, 2004
ABSTRACT Crop yield variability is a defining characteristic of agriculture. Variations in yield ... more ABSTRACT Crop yield variability is a defining characteristic of agriculture. Variations in yield and production are strongly influenced by fluctuations in weather, both in terms of overall seasonal weather characteristics and extreme events. There has been substantial public policy interest concerning the consequences of the buildup of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere on long-term climate patterns and associated crop yield effects (Adams et al., 1990; Mendelsohn et al., 1994; Rosenzweig and Hillel, 1995; IPCC, 1996). Identification and predication of seasonal- to-inter annual climate phenomena like the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has also brought attention to possible short-term impacts of climate changes on agriculture. A range of global crop yield effects have been attributed to ENSO and other ocean circulation patterns (Cane et al., 1994). These long and short term climatic phenomena are expected to alter the mean and variance of crop yields.Variability also arises because of the influence of changing production practices such as the introduction of new tools, new hybrids and varieties or cultivars, development of new diseases and pests, and government policy. While some feel that agricultural production is likely to become more variable because of climatic shifts (Mearns, et al., 1997) others argue variability is increasing because of increased use of fertilizer and other managed impacts (Roumasset et al., 1987; Tollini and Seagraves, 1970). Greater correlation between regional production in and between countries caused by standardization of varieties, adoption of common varieties, more uniform planting practices, and timing is also believed to contribute to greater variability in production.In this paper we present background on the variability issue, including a review of the physical and human dimensions of climate change as related to agricultural production. We also present the results of two recent empirical studies on climatic change and variability. We organize our discussion around three questions. 1. What Hypothesis Have Been Advanced about Climate Change and Variability? 2. Does Current Data on Yields Suggest Climate Change Will Increase Variability? 3. What Are the Economic Consequences of Extreme Events Becoming More Common? The exploration of these three questions draws on research and literature reviews from both the topic of long-term climate change and the issue of shorter term climatic variations as exemplified by ENSO-type events.2. Hypotheses Concerning Climate Change, Climatic Variability and Agriculture: Plant systems, and hence crop yields are influenced by many environmental factors, and these factors, such as moisture and temperature, may act either synergistically or antagonistically with other factors in determining yields (Waggoner, 1983). Plant scientists explore these effects on yields using two general approaches, controlled experiments and simulation models. Controlled field experiments can generate information on how the yield of a specific crop variety responds to a given stimulus, such as water or temperature. Such experiments are useful in isolating the influences of a specific factor. However, most quantitative estimates of climate change effects on crop yields are derived from crop simulation models (e.g., Rosenzweig and Parry, 1994) because climate change is likely to cut across a host of environmental factors. Plant scientists also use crop simulators to assess the influence of climate variability on the variability of yields (Riha et al., 1996). While the use of crop simulation models makes tractable the assessment of climate effects across a range of crops, such models are sensitive to the variability of weather conditions that affect production in the field. Thus, it is important to simulate how climate change will affect weather patterns in the field.A number of arguments have been made which relate climate change to changes in weather that agriculture is likely to face in the future.1 First, it has been argued that an increase in mean (maximum and/or minimum) temperature will increase the likelihood of extreme daily temperature events; i.e., a small change in mean temperature will produce a relatively large change in the probability of extremes occurring since the frequency of such events is nonlinear with the change in mean temperature (Mearns et al., 1984; Katz and Brown, 1992).Second, a number of simulations performed with General Circulation Models (GMC’s) show results where seasonal weather patterns change in selected regions or latitude bands. For example in the northern and mid-latitudes, the daily variance of temperature increases in summer, but tends to decrease in winter. In turn the frequency of extreme high temperature events rises due both to the mean shift in temperature and the greater variance. Simultaneously there are decreases in low extremes in winter due to warmer overall mean conditions and the decrease in variance (Meehl…
Iowa State University Press eBooks, 1999
Social Science Research Network, 2009
s d a. go v o o You can find additional information about ERS publications, databases, and other ... more s d a. go v o o You can find additional information about ERS publications, databases, and other products at our website.
Agricultural Economics, Sep 1, 1998
This paper examines the barley and wheat breeding programmes of the Plant Breeding Institute (PBI... more This paper examines the barley and wheat breeding programmes of the Plant Breeding Institute (PBI), which was the most successful public plant breeding institute in the UK, until privatization in 1987. The PBI's shares in barley and wheat seed sales are explained, showing that the success with barley was largely a matter of serendipity, whereas the wheat programme followed a more normal pattern. For wheat, the causal chain, or recursive, model decomposes the well-documented link between research expenditures and increases in agricultural productivity into three stages. These are the effects of R&D expenditures on basic research output, measured by publications, the effect of publications and applied R&D expenditures on trial plot yields, and the diffusion of the trial plot technologies, which raises yields on farms. Applying the model to the PBI's wheat varieties allows estimation of the lag structures. In contrast to the results for aggregate agricultural research, for a single plant breeding programme alone there is a considerable lead time before there is any response, followed by a lag distribution only a few years long. The returns to the R&D investments are calculated from the causal chain model, from single equation estimates and by evaluating the yield advantage of the PBI varieties. All three approaches give consistent results, which show that the returns to barley and wheat alone were sufficient to support the entire PBI budget and still give rates of return to applied research of between 14 and 25%. The return to the basic science expenditures of the John Innes Institute has a lower bound of 17%, but must have been even higher than for the PBI if the other Institutes were taken into account. The paper concludes by commenting on the effects of the privatization of the PBI.
Journal of Productivity Analysis, Jan 19, 2010
Iowa State University Press eBooks, May 27, 2008
Springer proceedings in business and economics, Oct 22, 2020
CABI Publishing eBooks, 2004
Agricultural Economics, Mar 1, 2004
Agricultural research drives increases in agricultural productivity, and the number of private ag... more Agricultural research drives increases in agricultural productivity, and the number of private agricultural input firms has been declining. The empirical relationship between the number of firms doing applied biotechnology crop research and the amount of research output they produce is investigated in a research profit function model. Increases in seed industry concentration have reduced biotech research intensity in the United States in the 1990s. Concentration and research are simultaneously determined and are influenced by the appropriability of research results and the state of technological opportunity.
Over the years, proposals have recommended shifting the focus of public agricultural research fro... more Over the years, proposals have recommended shifting the focus of public agricultural research from applied to basic research, and giving higher priority to peer-reviewed, competitively funded grants. The public agricultural research system in the United States is a Federal-State partnership, with most research conducted at State institutions. In recent years, State funds have declined, USDA funds have remained fairly steady (with changes in the composition of funding), but funding from other Federal agencies and the private sector has increased. Efforts to increase competitively awarded funds for research have fl uctuated over time, as have special grants (earmarks). Along with shifts in funding sources, the proportion of basic research being undertaken within the public agricultural research system has declined. This report focuses on the way public agricultural research is funded in the United States and how changes in funding sources over the last 25 years refl ect changes in the...
Agricultural Science Policy: Changing Global Agendas: Julian M. Alston, Philip G. Pardey, Michael J. Taylor (Eds.), Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, International Food Policy Research Institute, 2001, 285 pp.+ xvi, US $21.95, ISBN: 0-8018-6603-0 (hardcover), 0-8018-6604-9 (pa...
Research Papers in Economics, 1991
This paper examines perfect foresight intergenerational macroeconomic tradeoffs associated with c... more This paper examines perfect foresight intergenerational macroeconomic tradeoffs associated with climate change. Consumption of perfectly competitive agents is associated with exacerbation of the climate change problem. Saving and investment reduce exposure to a negative production externality caused by the greenhouse effect, through a nonprobabilistic catastrophic threshold. In this overlapping generations economy, saving and investment provide benefits to future generations that current individuals are unable to capture. Two kinds of equilibria are shown to exist. The gas stock may remain at a constant or declining level so the threshold does not matter in steady-state equilibrium even with population growth, where consumption, investment and production are all constant in per capita terms. When the threshold does matter because the gas stock is growing in steady state, agents flirt with catastrophe, make strategic economic decisions based on what other agents are doing, and optimize by walking a knife-edge of disaster at the threshold. Like the private provision of a public good, price-taking agents internalize the public bad. This is the focal point symmetric Nash equilibrium, but the potential for a coordination failure is also shown to exist where agents with perfect foresight would find it optimal not to end the economy, but are unable to avoid doing so.
Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy, 2019
Agricultural production can place burdens on natural environments. Profitable crop production pra... more Agricultural production can place burdens on natural environments. Profitable crop production practices can have unintended consequences on farm natural resources that are difficult to monitor. This article considers if precision agriculture's (PrecAg) information technologies can influence the rates, and profit implications, of using best management practices (BMPs) to improve on-farm natural resource stewardship. If PrecAg can increase rice yields with better management of inputs, reducing costs, and increasing profits, resource stewardship may also benefit. U.S. national farm-level production data from NASS (USDA), confirm background hypotheses of links between PrecAg use and BMPs. The main objective is then to test these relationships in a single, comprehensive, treatment effects model that accounts for PrecAg use, resource stewardship, and rice-farm costs and profits. Capital investments in equipment and other fixed costs are included as adoption control variables. The sustainable BMP rice production practices considered include conservation tillage and erosion control, nutrient-level monitoring, crop rotations, scouting for weeds and pests, and written planning. Conservation tillage is significant in the model and lowers costs with all three PrecAg technologies, but reduces profits. Erosion control has the reverse effect with all three PrecAg technologies having a significant and positive affect on costs, but also raises profit.
The ERS report Agricultural Resource and Environment Indicators, 2019 provides a comprehensive so... more The ERS report Agricultural Resource and Environment Indicators, 2019 provides a comprehensive source of data and analysis on the factors that affect resource use and quality in American agriculture. These factors include the biophysical characteristics of the farm and landscape, policy options and incentives for conservation, and availability of technology and other inputs. For example, USDA conservation programs provide nearly $6 billion annually for financial and technical assistance to support the adoption of conservation practices on U.S. farms. One such program, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), focuses its funding on five conservation practices—cover crops, conservation tillage/residue management, conservation crop rotation, terraces and nutrient management.
This article investigates South African supply response in agricultural production. It applies ti... more This article investigates South African supply response in agricultural production. It applies time series techniques to explain production planning decisions of the two dominant crops in the summer-rainfall grain area, maize and sorghum. After establishing the time series properties of the variables, cointegration is determined and used as the theoretical foundation for an error correction model (ECM). Maize area planted in the short run or the long run (or both), is found to depend on two sets of variables. One group changes the quantity or supply (area) of maize directly, like own price, the prices of substitutes like sorghum and sunflowers, and complementary intermediate input prices. The other variables change the supply environment, like rainfall, farmer education, R&D and cooperative extension. Sorghum is found to be a secondary crop dominated by expected changes in the maize variables, and the area planted depends simply on intermediate input prices and rainfall over both th...
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Papers by David Schimmelpfennig