This paper introduces habit formation into an otherwise standard model of international trade. Household tastes evolve over time to favor foods consumed as a child. The opening of trade causes preferred goods to rise in price, as these were relatively inexpensive in autarky. Neglecting the...

More than 40% of US grain is now used to produce biofuels, which are used as substitutes for gasoline in transportation. Biofuels have been blamed universally for recent increases in world food prices. Many studies have shown that these energy mandates in the US and EU may have a large (30-60%)...

This paper identifies eight political economy factors that influenced governments' policy choices during the most recent global food price crisis. To explain the variety of responses and the policy failures, a framework is proposed that locates policies along the twin dimensions of unitary vs....

This paper analyses how rising agricultural prices affect heterogenous farm production and access to inputs under credit market imperfections in the CEE transition countries. Using the FADN farm level panel data, which contains 37416 observations for 2004 and 2005, we estimate a farm credit...

We examine co-movements between biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel) and a wide range of commodities and assets in the USA, Europe, and Brazil. The main contributions are twofold. First, we analyze a unique dataset of 32 commodities and relevant assets (between 2003 and 2015) which is unprecedented...