The purpose of the agro-ecological zone emission factor model (AEZ-EF) is to estimate the total CO2-equivalent emissions from land use changes, e.g., from an analysis of biofuels impacts or policy analyses such as estimating the effect of changes in agricultural productivity on emissions from...

With the recent adoption by the California Air Resources Board of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, and USEPA’s Energy Independence and Security Act, greenhouse gas releases from indirect land use change triggered by crop-based biofuels have taken center stage in the debate over the...

Deforestation for agriculture is the primary threat to global aboveground carbon stocks. In the absence of strong territorial-governance, zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs), corporate policies to decouple food production from deforestation, remain a central tool to combat this issue. Yet...

In this paper, we review some of the basic energy balance and climate change impact issues associated with biofuels. For both the basic energy and greenhouse gas balances of producing and using a range of fuels, and for the increasingly debated and important issues of non-greenhouse gas impacts...

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...

The purpose of this note is to provide an exhaustive reference for those interested in learning more about the Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) function and its use in the representation of producer behavior in the GTAP Model. Particular attention is paid to the role of technical change...

The universe of existing CGE models can be divided into 3 broad categories. The first class of models (of which the standard GTAP Model is a classic example) emphasizes the static effects of policy related to general equilibrium resource reallocation. The second involves scale economics and...