In the early 1980s, a paradigm shift occurred in the field of food security, following Amartya Sens (1981) claims that food insecurity is more of a demand concern, affecting the poor's access to food, than a supply concern, affecting availability of food at the national level. Despite the wide acceptance of Sen's thinking, many controversies including the relative importance of supply-side versus demand-side variables in causing and solving food insecurity have remained in academic and policy circles. This study develops a recursive household food security model within the framework of consumer demand and production theories following Singh et al. (1986), and parses out the relative importance of supply-side versus demand-side variables in determining household food security in southern Ethiopia. Based on results of a test of full/reduced model and the magnitude of changes in conditional probabilities of food security, we conclude that the supply-side variables are more powerful determinants of food security than the demand-side variables. Copyright 2005 International Association of Agricultural Economics.

A model is developed to explain full-empty movement decisions for motor carriers. The model is estimated for movements to Florida of carriers serving the Florida produce/ornamentals industry. The results indicate that carriers act rationally, basing their decisions on a wide range of factors. The findings also suggest that regulatory restrictions continue to result in unnecessary empty movements.Transportation rates playa crucial role in the determination of economic activity over time and space. Despite this fact, relatively little attention has been devoted to understanding transportation markets. Indeed, it is common in interregional trade modeling to treat transportation supply as perfectly elastic. This tangential treatment of transportation markets has been identified as a major reason for the failure of many, if not most, interregional trade models to reflect adequately the economic activity being depicted (Johnson, p. 63). This article describes a study which focuses on understanding one aspect of these markets: the determinants of full/empty movement decisions. The results help to explain seasonal swings in rate levels, why some rates taper (i.e., increase at a decreasing rate) with distance, the impact of regulatory controls, and the role of expectations in carrier decision making.It is recognized that jointness in the production of transportation services favors full movements. If a vehicle goes from point ito pointj, the marginal cost of obtaining and carrying a load is the cost of search, pickup, and delivery, and the increment in fuel and labor costs over those for running empty (Mohring,. This increment is generally small when compared to total running costs. ThereRichard Beilock and Richard L. Kilmer are an assistant professor and an associate professor, respectively, Food and Resource Economics Department, University of Florida. Authors are listed in alphabetical order; senior authorship is not assigned. This is Florida Agricultural Experiment Station Journal Series No. 6483.Review was coordinated by Peter Heimberger, associate editor.fore, a large share of the transportation costs becomes a fixed cost which does not influence the carrier's full-empty movement decision process (Jara-Diaz). Despite this inducement to avoid empty movements, considerable empty movements are still observed. The Interstate Commerce Commission (lCC) found that over 20% of refrigerated trailers on interstate highways were empty (ICC, p. 12), and the estimates for specialized equipment (e.g., tank truck and bulk goods carriers) ranged as high as 40%. Empty mileage may result from restrictions in the regulatory system, be unavoidable due to freight imbalances between regions, or simply reflect carriers foregoing loads to maximize returns at another location (Paxson, Miller, and Basemann and Daugherty). However, there has been little empirical work to quantify the importance of these factors. In this article, a model is developed to explain full-empty movement decisions of motor carriers. The empirical estimation of the m...

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As a result of economies of size, food processors are generally large and few in number. These characteristics put processors at a bargaining advantage over independent farmers. Marketing cooperatives were established to counter the uneven bargaining position of individual farmers. This article investigates the relative bargaining strength of one milk marketing cooperative and several fluid milk processors. The Nash bargaining model can be used to analyze the negotiated price in the Florida fluid milk market which acts like a bilateral monopoly. The milk marketing cooperatives have bargained well with the milk marketing processors. The monthly bargaining strength of the Southeast Dairy Cooperative, Inc. (SDC), exceeds the monthly bargaining strength of the processors in all twelve months, ranging from a low of 0.6664 in January to a high of 0.7831 in September. The monthly average bargaining strength across all months for SDC is 0.7326.

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Dairy is a highly relevant segment of the Brazilian agribusiness economy. However, this segment has changed significantly after deregulation Thus, it is worthwhile to know what the changes are in the spatial integration of the market and in milk price formation at the farm level after deregulation. The methodology is a modification of Gonzalez-Rivera & Helfand (2001), which is compounded in extension of the market, pattern of integration, and degree of integration. The extension of the market is determined through the measure of self-sufficiency index, unit root test, and Johansen test. The last one is focused on the searching for a common trend between the time series. The pattern of interdependence is studied using the Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). Lastly, the degree of integration is measured by the impulse response functions derived from the Bernanke decomposition. As a result, we found that the milk market in Brazil is composed by Goiás, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Paraná, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and São Paulo. We also discovered that these markets have small speed of adjustment to shocks and there is no leader in milk price formation. Palavras-chaves: integração de mercado, mercado lácteo, formação de preço. KeyClassificação JEL: C22, L11.

Results indicatc that, when comparing the unconditional derived-demand elasticities to the unconditional consumer demand elasticities, signiticant cliffel-cnce\ emerge due to the differences in the first-stage estimation procetlure between the differential production approach and the Rotterdam model. In comparing the consumer demand price/cross-price elasticities to the derived-demand pricclcross-price ela~ticities, it is clear that use of the Rotterclam model when a PI-oduction nppro;~ch should be used can lead l o overestimation. underestimation. and incorrect signs in deriving uncontlitional price effects. T h e Rotterdain [nodel application t o import d e m a n d has been accomplished by a number of studies (Lee, Seale, a n d Jierwiriyapant: Seale, Sparks, a n d Buxton; Zhang, Fletcher; a n d Carley). In past studies, imports are considered t o b c final goods that enter directly into the c o n s u n~e r ' s utility function and the resulting d e m a n d equations for imports are derived from utility maxinii7ation theory. However, given the nature o f international trade. where traded goods are either used in other production processes o r g o t h r o~~g h a nurnber o f do- mestic channels before reaching t h e consumer. it is more appl-opriate t o view imported g o o d s a s intermediate products than a s final consumption g o o d s e v e n if n o transfr~rmation takes place (Davis a n d Jensen). T h e prirnary objective of this article is t o c o m p a r e a n d contrast the use o f the differential production approach with the R o t t e r d a~n model. Both app r o a c h e s a r e a p p l i e d t o J a p a n ' s d e r i v e d denland for imported w h e y differentiated by source country o f production. Unconditional elasticities from both approaches a r e then compared.T h e application o f production theory t o international trade is by n o m e a n s a n e w concept. Past resez~rch that used a production theo r y approach to international trade include Burges\ ( l974a.b). Kohli ( 1978, 199 1 ), Diewert a n d Morrison. a n d Truett a n d Truett. Each of these studies acknowledged that 1no4t g o o d s entering into international trade require further proces\ing before final d e m a n d delivery. T h e y further acknowledged that, e v e n w h e n a traded

Government regulations and consumer concern about pesticide residues in food may increase the costs of production and marketing for producers and processors associated with food safety risks. Vertical coordination is an economic response for mitigating the costs associated with uncertain pesticide residue levels. Data from a survey of Florida strawberry and tomato growers were used to test the hypothesis that vertical integration is associated with a lower mean and variance of pesticide residues. The results confirm a significant negative relationship between vertical integration and fungicide and insecticide residues in Florida strawberries and insecticides in Florida tomatoes. However, fungicides in tomatoes had the opposite effect. [Econ-Lit citations: L220, L660] © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.