Search

Every year, influenza and other acute respiratory viral infections (ARVI) cause significant morbidity and mortality worldwide. Most people infected with respiratory viruses have an asymptomatic and uncomplicated course of the disease. ARVI is the most common infectious disease affecting all age groups. Among the causes of temporary loss of working capacity, they occupy the first place – even in the inter-epidemic period, 1/6 of the planet’s population is sick because of them. The objective: to analyse the efficacy of immunostimulating agent in treatment of ARVI on outpatient level. Materials and methods. 322 patients from 18 to 65 years old with symptoms of acute respiratory disease participated in the study. Patients were divided into two groups: 250 people who received symptomatic treatment were included in the control group, 72 patients who received symptomatic treatment and immunostimulating drug – in the experimental group. Results. The study showed that in the experimental group the average time for temperature normalization was 5.0 days, while in the control group it was 7.47 days (p

Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models provide valuable insights into economy-wide and aggregate sectoral impacts of trade policies. However, when it comes to the assessment of specific interventions, the level of aggregation in these models is often deemed too coarse to inform negotiations. For example, in the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) Data Base, all vegetables, fruits and nuts – over hundred individual commodities – are represented under one sector. Analysis at the tariff line level is typically provided by partial equilibrium (PE) models, which cannot, however, capture economy-wide effects. In this paper, we contribute to the development of the GTAP-HS framework, which comprises disaggregated values of output, trade flows and domestic absorption with supporting model components nested within the standard GTAP GE model. We construct the GTAP-HS database with GTAP vegetables, fruits and nuts sector disaggregated into 79 commodities. We apply this modelling framework to the assessment of the ongoing trade frictions between the United States and its trading partners. We find that there are significant advantages to using this nested approach to trade policy analysis, including possibilities of the trade policies assessment at the tariff line, representation of the commodity-specific substitution and avoidance of the ‘false competition’ critique.

The objectives of this research are to assess the greenhouse gas mitigation potential of carbon policies applied to the ruminant livestock sector [inclusive of the major ruminant species—cattle (Bos Taurus and Bos indicus), sheep (Ovis aries), and goats (Capra hircus)]—with particular emphasis on understanding the adjustment challenges posed by such policies. We show that market-based mitigation policies can greatly amplify the mitigation potential identified in marginal abatement cost studies by harnessing powerful market forces such as product substitution and trade. We estimate that a carbon tax of US$20 per metric ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent emissions could mitigate 626 metric megatons of CO2 equivalent ruminant emissions per year (MtCO2-eq year−1). This policy would also incentivize a restructuring of cattle production, increasing the share of cattle meat coming from the multiproduct dairy sector compared to more emission intensive, single purpose beef sector. The mitigation potential from this simple policy represents an upper bound because it causes ruminant-based food production to fall and is therefore likely to be politically unpopular. In the spirit of the Paris Agreement (UNFCCC 2015), which expresses the ambition of reducing agricultural emissions while protecting food production, we assess a carbon policy that applies both a carbon tax and a subsidy to producers to manage the tradeoff between food production and mitigation. The policy maintains ruminant production and consumption levels in all regions, but for a much lower global emission reduction of 185 MtCO2-eq year−1. This research provides policymakers with a quantitative basis for designing policies that attempt to trade off mitigation effectiveness with producer and consumer welfare.

Agricultural productivity depends critically on investments in research and development (R&D), but there is a long lag in this response. Failing to invest today in improvements of agricultural productivity cannot be simply corrected a few decades later if the world finds itself short of food at that point in time. This fundamental irreversibility is particularly problematic in light of uncertain future population, income, and climate change, as portrayed in the IPCC’s Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs). This paper finds the optimal path of agricultural R&D spending over the 21st century for each SSP, along with valuation of those regrets associated with investment decisions later revealed to be in error. The maximum regret is minimized to find a robust optimal R&D pathway that factors in key uncertainties and the lag in productivity response to R&D. Results indicate that the whole of uncertainty’s impact on R&D is greater than the sum of its individual parts. Uncertainty in future population has the dominant impact on the optimal R&D expenditure path. The robust solution suggests that the optimal R&D spending strategy is very close to the one that will increase agricultural productivity fast enough to feed the World under the most populous scenario. It also suggests that society should accelerate R&D spending up to mid-century, thereafter moderating this growth rate.

This paper describes dynamic extension of the comparative static computable general equilibrium (CGE) GTAP-BIO model—framework employed in assessments of biofuel policies. In the dynamic extension, called GDyn-BIO, several structural components of the static model, including food demand responses to higher incomes and intensification options in land-based sectors and food processing, were revised to better capture changes in derived demand for land under pressure of growing population and per capita incomes. The impact of 15-billion gallon biofuel mandate on land use, analyzed with the GDyn-BIO model, evolves significantly over time. In particular, net global cropland brought into production due to the mandate declines over time, which is in sharp contrast to the results of static analysis where policy impacts are pictured as fixed for the next 30 years. Despite the fact that land use change impacts of this policy are transitory, environmental impacts and the global warming implications of such policies should not be underestimated. The policy causes earlier conversion of forest and pasture lands to cropland, resulting in earlier GHG emissions and lost carbon sequestration that contribute to global warming.

Recent research has shed light on the cost-effective contribution that agriculture can make to global greenhouse gas abatement; however, the resulting impacts on agricultural production, producer livelihoods, and food security remain largely unexplored. This paper provides an integrated assessment of the linkages between land-based climate policies, development, and food security, with a particular emphasis on abatement opportunities and impacts in the livestock sector. Targeting Annex I countries and exempting non-Annex I countries from land-based carbon policies on equity or food security grounds may result in significant leakage rates for livestock production and agriculture as a whole. We find that such leakage can be eliminated by supplying forest carbon sequestration incentives to non-Annex I countries. Furthermore, substantial additional global agricultural abatement can be attained by extending a greenhouse gas emissions tax to non-Annex I agricultural producers, while compensating them for their additional tax expenses. Because of their relatively large emissions intensities and limited abatement possibilities, ruminant meat producers face the greatest market adjustments to land-based climate policies. We also evaluate the impacts of climate policies on livelihoods and food consumption in developing countries. In the absence of non-Annex I abatement policies, these impacts are modest. However, strong income and food consumption impacts surface because of higher food costs after forest carbon sequestration is promoted at a global scale. Food consumption among unskilled labor households falls but rises for the representative farm households, because global agricultural supplies are restricted and farm prices rise sharply in the face of inelastic food demands.

The taxation of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) represents an efficient means of achieving climate change mitigation, and this is often the starting point in any discussion of long run global GHG reduction. However, the direct effects of such a tax, or equivalently, an emissions trading scheme, will vary across countries and sectors according to the emissions intensity of the sector. We report, for the first time, estimates of such livestock emissions intensities for all regions of the world and decompose the intensities to understand the sources of regional variation. Our findings indicate that most of the variation is due to differences in the value of output per animal in different regions, which in turn is due to regional differences in output per animal (yield) and dollar per unit output (price). Animals with relatively low annual output values tend to be characterized by higher economic emissions intensities. We find this to be the case in many developing countries. Livestock activity in these high emissions intensity regions are hit especially hard by an emissions tax, resulting in disproportionate reductions in output and consumption in many regions already suffering from malnutrition. Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.

It is estimated that 1.5 billion tons (1 t=1 mg=1,000 kg) of carbon (C) are emitted from forests each year due to land use change (Houghton 2008). Looking forward, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (e.g., Nabuurs et al. 2007) suggests that land use change over the coming century could lead to continued large C emissions from forested landscapes, but the estimates of modeling groups vary widely. For example, emission scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggest a range of 35 to 89 billion t C emission from land use over this century across models for just one socioeconomic scenario (Nakicenovic et al. 2000).

This study addresses the trade-off between nutrition and taste in expenditure on breakfast cereal, milk, bread, and soft drinks. Within each category, products have similar cost and convenience, but have markedly different flavor and nutritional content. Using annual expenditure data for a large sample of households participating in the ACNielsen Homescan system, we regress a measure of “healthiness” on household demographics and market prices, and find that households with college-educated heads and higher incomes made significantly healthier choices in all four categories. These effects are puzzling in that the nutritional differences between products were well known to consumers, and there are no cost or convenience differences between them. The presence of children was associated with less healthy choices, especially for cereal and bread, while older households made healthier choices in all categories except milk.

Releases of greenhouse gases (GHG) from indirect land-use change triggered by crop-based biofuels have taken center stage in the debate over the role of biofuels in climate policy and energy security. This article analyzes these releases for maize ethanol produced in the United States. Factoring market-mediated responses and by-product use into our analysis reduces cropland conversion by 72% from the land used for the ethanol feedstock. Consequently, the associated GHG release estimated in our framework is 800 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule (MJ); 27 grams per MJ per year, over 30 years of ethanol production, or roughly a quarter of the only other published estimate of releases attributable to changes in indirect land use. Nonetheless, 800 grams are enough to cancel out the benefits that corn ethanol has on global warming, thereby limiting its potential contribution in the context of California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

This paper analyzes the role of global land-use in determining potential greenhouse gas mitigation by land-based activities in agriculture and forestry. Land-based activities are responsible for over a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet the economics of land-use decisions have not been explicitly modeled in global mitigation studies. In this paper, we develop a new, general equilibrium framework which effectively captures the opportunity costs of land-use decisions in agriculture and forestry, thereby allowing us to analyze competition for heterogeneous land types across and within sectors and input substitution between land and other factors of production. In our analysis of carbon taxation, we find significant changes in the global pattern of comparative advantage as a result of differential mitigation costs across sectors, regions, and land types. We find that forest carbon sequestration is the dominant strategy for GHG emissions mitigation globally in the land using sectors. However, when compared to the rest of the world, land-use emissions abatement in the US and China comes disproportionately from agriculture, and, within agriculture, disproportionately from reductions in fertilizer-related emissions. In the world as a whole, agriculture-related mitigation comes predominantly from reduced methane emissions in the ruminant livestock sector, followed by fertilizer and methane emissions from paddy rice. The results also show how analyses that only consider regional mitigation may under- or over-estimate mitigation potential. For example, U.S.-specific analyses likely over-estimate the potential for abatement in agriculture. Finally, we note that this general equilibrium framework provides the research community with a practical methodology for explicit modeling of global land competition and land-based mitigation in comprehensive assessments of greenhouse gas mitigation options.

The goal of this work is to investigate the role of global integration in determining long-run patterns of land-use change. We utilize a dynamic general equilibrium model that has been modified to incorporate the most important economic features driving global land demand and supply, and simulate a baseline period from 1997-2025 over which land rents world-wide rise sharply and the global allocation of land between agriculture and forestry changes rather significantly in some regions. Through a series of restricted simulations of the model, we are able to isolate the impact on land markets of the following elements of growth and globalization: (i) population growth, (ii) real income growth, (iii) access of new forest lands, and (iv) international trade. We found that international trade plays a very substantial role in mediating between the land-abundant, slower growing economies of the Americas and Australia/New Zealand, and the land-scarce, rapidly growing economies of Asia. In summary, when combined, the forces of globalization are expected to play a large role in determining the pattern of land use change.

This paper develops econometric underpinnings for the behavioral and entropy parameters in the GTAP-Dyn model to add realism to the projections with the model. The long-run equilibrium in the model is defined as the convergence of the risk adjusted net rates of return to capital across regions. In this study, the rates of return to capital are constructed using operating surplus obtained from SourceOECD data base and capital stock documented in Larson et al. (2000). These returns are used to test the hypothesis of convergence in rates of return across countries and to measure the degree of international capital mobility. Based on econometric analysis, the null hypothesis of no convergence is rejected. The speed of convergence in net rates of return to capital in 20 OECD countries is 9% per year. The lagged adjustment mechanisms determine regional investments which include both domestic investment and foreign investment via the global trust. Savings of the regional household, in turn, are spent on investment in the domestic economy and investments in the global trust. Period by period decisions about the investments and savings composition affect the composition of capital and allocation of wealth of a region. In this work, the parameters determining the relative rigidities of composition of capital and allocation of wealth in the GTAP-Dyn model are estimated using country portfolios data base. While there are differences in the relative rigidities of the composition of capital and allocation of wealth across countries, in the majority of countries the split between capital belonging to foreigners and capital belonging to local households is much more rigid than the split between equity in local firms and equity in foreign firms. The results of the econometric investigation are used to set the capital mobility and rigidity parameters in the model.

Over the past decade, biofuels production in the European Union and the United States has boomed – much of this due to government mandates and subsidies. The United States has now surpassed Brazil as the world's leading producer of ethanol. The economic and environmental impact of these biofuel programs has become an important question of public policy. Due to the complex intersectoral linkages between biofuels and crops, livestock as well as energy activities, CGE modeling has become an important tool for their analysis. This chapter reviews recent developments in this area of economic analysis and suggests directions for future research.

The interest of this study is the tradeoff between nutrition and taste in consumer food choice. We examine choice between more and less healthy versions of particular foods within four important grocery categories: breakfast cereal, milk, bread, and soft drinks. Within a category, products do not greatly differ in terms of cost and convenience, and nutritional differences are easily determined. Consumers are less likely to choose unhealthy foods due to cost or convenience advantages, or through ignorance. This makes the choice between taste and nutrition more apparent. We use annual expenditure data reported by a large sample of households participating in the AC Nielsen Homescan data system. For each of the food categories we develop a measure of ‘healthiness’ of household expenditures. This is regressed on household demographics and a measure of market prices. We find that households with college-educated heads and higher income households make significantly healthier choices in all the categories. The former was expected. However, although income is generally associated with healthier diets, this is usually attributed to the cost of healthy foods, an explanation inapplicable here. This suggests a deeper understanding of the role of income in diet is needed. As expected, the presence of children leads to a lowering of household nutrition, but primarily for cereal and bread: beverages are little affected. Older households tend to make healthier choices. Finally, we find a reasonably strong role for prices, perhaps reflecting high substitutability among products whose major difference essentially involves a single dimension.

As growth in Asia continues to outpace that in the rest of the world, attention has once again focused on primary commodity markets. Rapidly growing demand, coupled with relatively inelastic supply, have been boosting prices for agricultural, energy, and mineral products. This chapter projects potential outcomes in this footrace between supply and demand for the year 2025, with a particular emphasis on food markets. It begins with an in-depth analysis of the fundamental drivers of change, including per capita consumer demand, population growth, accumulation of capital and labor, endowments of land by agro-ecological zone, as well as technological change. The last is found to be the critical factor in determining whether or not food prices will reverse their long-run downward trend, as well as determining the likely patterns of trade and structural change. Yet this aspect of economic growth is still not well understood.

The objective of this study is to conduct assessment of the hypothesis that trade sanctions in the form of border tax adjustments (BTAs) used by the United States against China, constitute a viable enforcement mechanism to sustain compliance with a range of emissions taxes in the context of agreements to curb global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). The performance of BTAs is then compared with those of punitive tariffs on the basis of the range of emission taxes that can be successfully enforced by their implementation. Results show that BTAs are a viable enforcement mechanism for international GHG mitigation agreements. However the maximum level of carbon tax that can be enforced varies dramatically with (1) the marginal damage of pollution perceived by Chinese authorities, and (2) the legal limitations that GATT rules may impose on BTAs. Finally, while BTAs seem a promising enforcement mechanism in the context of climate agreements, punitive tariffs seem to be capable of supporting a much stricter environmental target.

The ultimate effect of regular and diet carbonated soft drinks on energy intakes depends on possible relations with other dietary components. With this motivation, this study compared grocery purchase patterns of regular and diet soft drink consumers using a large sample of US single-person households. We tested for differences in food-spending shares allocated to 43 food categories chosen mainly for their desirable/undesirable nutritional properties. We also investigated whether differences in purchased quantity of diet soft drinks are associated with differences in purchases of other food categories. We found a large number of significant differences, virtually all showing that more diet soda prone consumers make better nutrition choices, particularly regarding energy content. The study suggests that use of diet soft drinks does not lead to compensation by increased use of high-energy foods.

In this study we investigate whether changes in antitrust penalties issued by the Department of Justice have led to improved effectiveness of antitrust actions with respect to price-fixing over 1981-2001. We use effectiveness of antitrust enforcement documented by Bosch and Eckard (1991) and Thompson and Kaserman (2001) for 1962-80 as a basis for comparison. Results indicate that the changes in antitrust law do improve effectiveness as measured by changes in market valuations of offenders, but the durability of deterrent effect and the rate of recidivism are left unaffected, suggesting that Sherman Act Section 1 enforcement has little lasting effect.

This paper reviews an analysis of land use change impacts of expanded biofuel production with GTAP-BIO computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. It describes the treatment of energy substitution, the role of biofuel by-products, specification of bilateral trade, the determination of land cover changes in response to increased biofuel feedstock production, and changes in crop yields – both at the intensive and extensive margins. The paper responds to some of the criticisms of GTAP-BIO and provides insights into the sensitivity of land use change and GHG emissions to changes in key parameters and assumptions. In particular, it considers an alternative specification of acreage response that takes into account the degree of land heterogeneity within agro-ecological zone (AEZ) for different AEZs and countries. The paper concludes with the discussion of alternative specifications of land mobility across uses employed in CGE models and the agenda for further research to narrow parametric and structural uncertainty to improve the model's performance.