In recent years there has been a flurry of activity aimed at evaluating the land use consequences of biofuels programs and the associated carbon releases. In this paper we argue that these studies have tended to underestimate the ensuing land use emissions, because they have ignored the role of...

This paper introduces water into the GTAP modeling framework at a river basin level. The new model: 1) distinguishes between irrigated and rainfed agriculture using different production functions; 2) takes into account heterogeneity in land quality across agro-ecological zones; 3) traces supply...

The past decade has seen rapid growth in the global biofuels sector - particularly in the US and the EU. This has had important implications for the global livestock industry - both by raising the cost of feed grains and oilseeds and by forcing onto the market a large supply of biofuel...

Over the past decade, biofuels production in the EU and US has boomed - much of this due to government mandates and subsidies. The US has now surpassed Brazil as the world's leading producer of ethanol. The economic and environmental impact of these biofuel programs has become an important...

Contrary to the opinions expressed by many commentators, the recent price spike in agricultural commodities is a transitory phenomenon. Using projections from SIMPLE – a global model of the farm and food system – we argue that, in the long run, food prices will most likely resume their...

Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models have been widely used for quantitative analysis of global economic issues. However, CGE models are frequently criticized for resting on weak empirical foundations. This paper builds on recent work in macro-econometric estimation, developing an approach...

“Globalization increases poverty” is a common assertion made by critics of globalization. The proliferation of low-wage jobs and higher food prices are some of the arguments brought forward in support of this argument. One of the hallmarks of globalization is the systematic dismantling of...

The breakdown of the WTO negotiations under the Doha Development Agenda has inspired critics to highlight the lack of effort on the part of rich countries to reform their agricultural policies. In this paper, we focus instead the poverty impacts of developing country tariff cuts - particularly...

This paper evaluates the impact of some key labor market reforms on rural-urban inequality and income distribution, using a household-disaggregated, recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of China. We also explore how these factor market reforms interact with product market...

There is a long and distinguished literature involving demand analysis using international cross-section data. Such models are widely used for predicting national per capita consumption. However, there is nothing in this literature testing the performance of estimated models in predicting...