Many countries encourage universities to increase the ethnic and socio-economic diversity of their student bodies, for example, through affirmative action policies. We use unique administrative data for all undergraduate degree students entering English universities between 2008 and 2010 to...

This report examines China’s 2011-13 attempt to maintain a high level of price support for its cotton producers, analyzing the policy’s motivation, its consequences to date, and the impacts of various adjustment alternatives China might pursue. With China’s wages rising rapidly in recent...

Uzbekistan is the seventh largest global cotton producer and third largest cotton supplier for world markets. Uzbekistan’s Government policies largely shield cotton producers from world market price signals, and cotton area has changed little over the past decade despite strong international...

Following a global economic recession and nearly unprecedented price volatility, world cotton consumption in 2014/15 is forecast virtually unchanged from its level of 10 years earlier. A USDA model of world cotton consumption indicates that recent price changes and expectations for global income...

Price volatility in 2008 generated interest in underlying cotton cash and futures markets and highlighted the importance of market participants’ expectations about basis changes over time in production, marketing, and hedging decisions. This analysis examines trends in average U.S. cotton...

Agricultural prices have long been forecast with reduced-form models including ending stocks as an independent variable. In recent years, cotton prices have been persistently low compared with the other agricultural products that compete with cotton for land and other inputs. Furthermore, the...

A Cooley-Prescott model is used to estimate trends in income and price response of end-use demand for cotton in developed countries. By comparing trends in parameter variation between different groups of developed countries it is possible to develop hypotheses regarding the varying impact of...

This study indicates that a number of USDA forecasts lack information that is readily available from monthly U.S. export data. This is determined by comparing the accuracy USDA’s FY2001-04 forecasts with forecasts based on trends for each commodity. ARIMA models utilizing the monthly data...

New multilateral trade negotiations under the World Trade Organization (WTO) were initiated for agriculture in 2000. International trade is particularly important for cotton, since 30 percent of the world’s consumption of cotton fiber crosses international borders before consumption by textile...

USDA's quarterly forecasts of fiscal year agricultural exports by commodity and region were examined for their reliability in predicting annual changes during 1977-89. Most of the forecasts were strongly correlated with actual exports. Most obvious exceptions probably stemmed from rounding...