World prices for basic food commodities increased significantly in 2007-2008, triggering a worldwide food crisis. Among all the factors that contributed to the rise in agricultural prices in 2008, the depreciation of the U.S. dollar relative to other major currencies cannot be overlooked. The...

This is a broad-ranging discussion of the role of economics and economists in the formation of government policies. The focus is on helping economists who wish to be influential in the policy process. The paper covers rationales for and against economist involvement in the policy process (market...

China has embarked on a major program to modernise agricultural and agribusiness structures with far reaching implications for rural development, international competitiveness / trade and food safety. There are, however, few studies that examine in detail how the modernisation program has...

A regime-switching vector error correction model is applied to monthly price data to assess the impact of BSE outbreaks on price relationships and patterns of transmission among farm and retail markets for bovine in Spain. To evaluate the degree to which price transmission is affected by BSE...