Reviewers of manuscripts on classroom experiments often ask the authors to provide evidence of the effectiveness of the method, presumably to justify substituting experiments for lectures. After reviewing the current state of evaluation methodology, we argue that such evidence may be neither...

We argue that economic laboratory experiments can facilitate active learning of theory in the agricultural economics curriculum by placing students in decision-making roles. Three types of experimental protocols are described, along with a discussion of the costs and benefits of experiments. The...

This series of papers is an excellent opportunity to reacquaint agricultural economists in the Southern region with the exciting field of experimental economics and is indeed opportune in light of the recent awarding of the Nobel Prize in Economics to Vernon Smith, considered by many to be the...

Estimating the panel gravity model with bilateral pair and country-by-time fixed-effects separately for each seafood product, we found that food safety regulations have differential effects across seafood products. In all three industrialized markets, shrimp is most sensitive, while fish is the...

This discussion is a review and critique of the three papers in the 2012 Southern Agricultural Economics Association invited paper session titled Causes of Agricultural and Food Price Inflation and Volatility.

Econometric estimates of the effect of exchange rate volatility on international trade are mixed and often wildly divergent, resulting in an ambiguous average effect. It is hypothesized that agricultural trade in particular is more sensitive to exchange rate volatility resulting in more...

Cape Natural Tea Products was a young herbal products company based in South Africa. Rooibos tea was the strongest component of their product portfolio. In South Africa, rooibos was a commodity product and a direct competitor of coffee and tea. Antioxidants and other nutrients made rooibos a...

In this introduction to the special section on zero tolerance rules, we identity examples from the known literature, which focus almost exclusively on deviant behavior. In contrast, we assembled papers that focus on zero tolerance as a characteristic of an increasing number of public and private...

This paper shows that voluntary product standards in EU food and agriculture markets can have significant trade effects. In particular for all countries and for goods that are raw or lightly processed, EU standards can often be trade-inhibiting. However, internationally harmonized EU...