Canada has a huge stock of biomass resources, which provides a basis (and a temptation) for development of a major bio-fuels industry. Both federal and provincial governments have engaged in a wide array of subsidies, mandates, and other measures to stimulate production and consumption of...

Over the past 5 years, real energy and non-energy commodity prices have trended sharply higher. These relative price movements have had important implications for inflation and economic activity in both Canada and the rest of the world. China has accounted for the bulk of incremental demand for...

The potential supply of biomass feedstocks in the US and Canada is estimated using a static supply function approach. Estimated total biomass available at a price of $100 per metric ton is 568 million metric tons in the US and 123 million tons in Canada, which together can displace 23-45 billion...

We examine the effects of Canadas Special Milk Classes Scheme on resource allocation and discuss the rationale for average total cost of production as a measure of payments. Our simple model divides the total supply of fluid milk into two classes: one for domestic consumption and the other for...

We measure the impact of the removal of a railway transportation subsidy on the adoption of technology for Western Canadian farms, using a unique combination of Census and freight rate data. We exploit the large regional variation in these one-time freight rate increases in order to identify...

We estimate the impact of the removal of a railway transportation subsidy on the local economies of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, exploiting the large regional variation in these one-time freight rate increases. We find that higher freight rates - and hence lower farm gate prices -...

This study examines the supply response and the effect of price predictability of corn in the province of Quebec. A generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) process is used to model output price expectations and its volatility. The empirical results show that price...

We examine a two-constraint Linear Approximate Almost Ideal Demand System with both money and time input in the resource constraints. Using Statistics Canada Food Expenditure Survey (FES) and General Social Survey-time use, a two sample two stage least square (2S2SLS) is applied in the data...

We estimate the impact of the removal of a railway transportation subsidy on the local economies of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, exploiting the large regional variation in these one-time freight rate increases. We find that higher freight rates – and hence lower farm gate prices –...

For about seventy years, the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) was one of the world's largest export “single desk” state traders in agriculture, until it was deregulated in 2012 and stripped of its marketing powers. One of the main crops controlled by the CWB was barley. We estimate the impact of...